Academic literature on the topic 'Germany. Germans Germans'

In the early 1920s the Weimar Republic commissioned a series of new light cruisers of the Königsberg class and in July 1926, the keel of the later christened Karlsruhe was laid down. The 570 feet long and almost 50 feet wide ship was used as a training cruiser for future German naval officers. Between 1930 and 1936 the ship conducted in all five good-will tours around the world, two under the Weimar Republic and three under the Third Reich. These good-will tours or gute Willen Fahrten were an important first step in reconciling Germany to the rest of the world and were meant to improve international relations. The Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defense carefully orchestrated all stops of the vessels in conjunction with the respective embassies abroad. Final arrangements were made at least six-nine months before the scheduled visits and even small adjustments to the itinerary proved troublesome. Further, all visits were treated as “unofficial presentations.” The mission of the Karlsruhe was twofold: first to extend or renew relations with other nations, and second to foster notions of Heimat and the Germandom (Deutschtum) abroad. The dissertation is divided in two large parts; the individual training cruises with all the arrangements, the selection of the individual nations and ports, and explores the level of decision making amongst the various agencies, departments, and organizations involved. For the Weimar Republic, the ship represented modernity and a break with the past, and embodied at one and the same time, traditional German culture and the idea of progress. Since the cruiser continued its training abroad after 1933, a comparison between the “two Germanies” makes sense. The second part of the research will explore the notion of Heimat and the Germans living abroad and how the Karlsruhe acted as a symbolic link between the two. The concept of Heimat is important to the self-understanding, or identity construction of the Germans. It is the quintessence of Germaness (Deutschtümelei). This multi-layered and complex idea embodies not only language, but also traditions and customs, nature and politics. It evokes feelings of belonging, comfort, sanctuary, and safety. We can identify the term with family, birthplace, nation, dialect, race, even food. Heimat is a place where one doesn’t have to explain oneself. The German navy encouraged the sailors to write diaries during the voyages, cadets were required to do so. Several of the diaries and letters provide the foundation for this dissertation. Other primary sources include reports, logbooks, navy policies and procedures found at the Foreign Office in Berlin, the German Naval Archives in Flensburg, the Archives at the Museum for Maritime History in Bremerhaven, the University of Hamburg, the University of the Bundeswehr in Hamburg, the British National Archives in Kew, and the National Archives in Washington, D.C. particularly the records of the German Naval High Command, as well as cabinet meetings from the Weimar period. Various navy journals and the official Merkblätter (information sheets) from the Karlsruhe are also included. Printed onboard, these pamphlets contain general information about the local population, including the form of government, important industries, and the number of Germans living there. German newspapers, but also newspapers from each country or port visited were be incorporated.

Language learning in UK secondary schools is in sharp decline. Of the three most commonly taught languages, French, Spanish, and German, German uptake is dropping at the fastest rate. Societal attitudes towards languages and the target language communities of speakers are commonly blamed for the decline, however, few previous studies have investigated this area via empirical evidence. The current study explores the relationship between motivation for German learning in adolescent language learners in England, and the representations of German, the Germans, and Germany in private and public UK discourses. Through a mixed methods, cross-sectional research design, private grassroots discourses in a school setting and public discourses in the national press are examined to gain an insight into how beliefs and attitudes around German are constructed and conceptualised, and results are related to the factors that underlie learner attitudes, motivation for German learning and language uptake decisions. The study’s theoretical framework draws on a range of key concepts from second language (L2)-specific and mainstream psychological motivation theories, such as Gardner’s socio-educational model, as well as on aspects of cognitive-situated and self-based models. Main participants were 506 13 to 16-year-old German learners from a range of four secondary schools at the time they were asked to decide whether to continue or drop German. Further respondents included four German teachers and four head teachers from the participating schools. For the school settings strand, learner data were collected via focus groups and a questionnaire combining items which generated quantitative (such as motivation mean scores) as well as qualitative (such as metaphor) data; teacher and head teacher data were collected via interviews. For the public discourse strand, a specialised corpus of 40,000 UK national newspaper articles around German, the Germans, and Germany was compiled, and explored using discourse analysis techniques. Four research questions investigated the motivational dimensions relating to learners’ choices to continue or discontinue with the study of German, how German is represented in discourses of key players in school settings, how German is represented in newspaper discourses in the press, and the relationship between public and private discourses around German, the Germans, and Germany in the UK. Contrary to what is commonly thought about motivation for language learning, results suggest that adolescent learners in England are motivated to continue German not by instrumental rationales, but rather by their enjoyment of the classroom learning situation, and by a sense of personal relevance. The growing elitification in language learning in the UK manifests in the study’s data, in that a higher socio-economic background is associated with continuing German, more conducive attitudes, a higher sense of personal relevance, and a view of language learning as a worthwhile process which requires effort and persistence. In press discourses, German is mainly represented in terms of politics and war, Germans mainly in terms of war, and Germany mainly in relation to other countries and football. The wider discourses in the press are reproduced in a reciprocal relationship with private discourses in the school setting. The study contributes to knowledge by presenting new insights into the motivation of adolescent German learners in the UK, and by validating elements of pre-existing motivation models, such as self-determination and self-worth theory. Furthermore, through its novel design of bringing together private and public discourse domains, it provides empirical evidence for previously unsubstantiated claims of links between the representation of target language speakers and communities in the mass media, and language learner motivation at English secondary schools.

Throughout the Second Reich’s short life, military affairs were synonymous with those of the state. Indeed, it was the zeal and blood of Prussian soldiers that allowed the creation of a unified German empire. After solidifying itself as a major power, things grew more complicated as the Reich found itself increasingly surrounded by hostile rivals. To the west, French humiliation over their catastrophic defeat in 1870-71 continued to fester while, in the east, Russian sympathies for the new empire waned. The finalization of a Franco-Russian alliance in 1894 meant Germany faced formidable adversaries along her eastern and western borders. That unsettling realization dictated the empire’s military policy until its downfall in 1918. Drawing from the writings and speeches of Wilhelmine Germany’s military and political leaders, this work seeks to examine and analyze the Second Reich’s military policies and decision-making processes over the three decades preceding the First World War.

This empirical study is based on qualitative interviews with three generations of ethnic German families, who migrated to Germany after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The grandparents in these families lived in German settlements until their expulsion to the far East of the SU. Their children grew up in these places of exile in the shadow of their parents' histories, striving to become model Soviet citizens in an effort to escape the stigma associated with their parents' fate. The grandchildren in these families were youngsters at the time of migration to Germany. This thesis explores experiences around migration, post-migration life and integration. It examines these experiences through a framework of (post)- Soviet and German cultural memory, investigating, on the one hand, how in both societies public memory (or the lack thereof), along with social discourses and state policies, have shaped, framed and homogenised this group; and, on the other hand, how memory and the forgetting of the repression of the grandparents shape identity, belonging and intergenerational dynamics today. The memory of the persecution leads people to frame their migration to Germany in terms of homecoming. This homecoming narrative is, however, extremely contentious. Not only has the adoption of this narrative created a hierarchy of migrants, leading to an unequal immigrant society, the idea also exerts social and self-imposed pressures to be perceived as ‘authentically German’. Especially younger interviewees often conceal their background by ‘passing’ for ‘real Germans’. These young people appear to follow in the footsteps of the ‘generation of parents’ who concealed their German backgrounds in the SU. This cross-generational concealing and the underlying shame are often unaddressed. There are still many silences, and very little dialogue across the generations about their traumatic history. All of these aspects make it difficult, particularly for the young, to recognise their complex and diasporic identity.

This thesis examines and assesses the Gleichschaltung of the Germandom organizations from 1933 to 1939. The first chapter outlines the Peace Treaties of Versailles, Trianon and St. Germain and their effect upon the increased German minority in Europe. This body of Germans in countries outside Germany, Austria and Switzerland are referred to as the Volksdeutsche. The policies of the Weimar Government towards the German minorities in Europe are then examined. The second chapter outlines the minority policy of the National Socialist Party and various prominent National Socialist leaders. Chapter three outlines the major non-National Socialist and National Socialist Germandom organizations. Particular emphasis is given to the Verein fur Deutschtum im Ausland or the VDA, the Volksdeutscher Rat or the VR, Auslandsorganisation der NSDAP or AO, the Buro Kursell and the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle or VoMi. Chapters four through six deal with the events that lead to the Gleichschaltung of the Germandom organizations. Although the non-National Socialist Germandom organizations maintained a degree of independence from Nazi influence from 1933 until 2 July 1938, there was never any doubt that eventually the National Socialist Germandom organizations would gain ascendancy over them. In late 1936, the National Socialist Germandom organizations began to achieve lasting power and influence. By 1938, the non-National Socialist Germandom organizations were virtually impotent. The Gleichschaltung of the Germandom organizations, therefore, mirrors the Gleichschaltung that occurred on all levels of society in Germany following Adolf Hitler's appointment as Chancellor on 30 January 1933.