Deutschamerikanertum und Volkstumsgedanke. Zur Ethnizitätskonstruktion durch die auslandsdeutsche Kulturarbeit zwischen 1918 und 1945

This study deals with the construction of German-American ethnicity as a mixture of ethnicism and ethnical nationalism in the time between WW1 and WW2 by ‘inland-German’ and German-American ‘identity managers’. Ethnicity as an ideological construct of the modern age is neither a mere invention nor an object of limitless manipulation. Ethnical consciousness uses selectively elements of actual discourses and depends on economical, political, social and cultural circumstances. The construction of ethnicity was the main part of ‘auslandsdeutsche Kulturarbeit’ (foreign-German cultural activity). Its dominating term was ‘Volk’ in the meaning of ‘Ethnos’ which was defined accordingly to the ideology of ‘Kultur’ and ‘Rasse’. ‘Kulturarbeit’ intended the organization of all German-borns without regard of national boundaries. The introduction of the category ‘Volk’ was an attempt to diminish the importance of the category ‘state’. Therefore the ‘Kulturarbeiter’ (cultural activists) postulated the care of German national traditions (‘deutsches Volkstum’) by which they meant the culture of the German folk. Already at the end of the 18th century there existed a lot of anti-American stereotypes in Germany and in the 1840ies theoretical and practical approaches of ‘Kulturarbeit’ were formulated. Furthermore there was a slowly increasing revival of the ‘foreign-German idea’ in the German Empire since the 1880ies. In the meantime the German-American movement reached its peak. After 1918 the flourishing anti-Americanism in Germany and the rather negative assessments of the future of ‘German-America’ hindered activities for the German Americans. Here first differences between ‘inland-German’ and German-American ‘Kulturarbeitern’ appeared by the dispute about the German Americans as ‘Kulturdünger’ (cultural fertilizer). This objection meant the loss of German national traditions and led therefore to the ‘inland-German’ request for remigration after 1935. The three pillars of German-American ethnicity consisted in the construction of the ideal German American, the German language and the German-American historical consciousness. The ideal German American was formed from ‘German’ virtues and exemplified by ideal German-American groups and persons. Generally language had been the prime factor for the construction of German-American identity. In the face of little hope for the language preservation the German language had been glorified. The legend about the defeat in the vote – due to a single vote of a German American – about German becoming the national language of the USA had been stylized to a warning signal of language loss. And ‘Pennsylvania-Dutch’ was pointed out as an example for language preservation. With a higher historical consciousness identity constructors aimed for more social influence. In order to legitimate own demands and weaken the Anglo-American claim as ‘first Americans’ it was also searched for earlier references of German immigration. Furthermore the ‘German-American’ achievements were emphasized, ‘German’ virtues were connected with German-American heroes and their worship was pushed. Above all ethnical theorists looked for the connection of US-myths like the ‘winning of the west’ to German-American identity. In order to interest Germans and German Americans for their history and to produce a borderless all-German consciousness the ‘Kulturarbeiter’ propagated genealogy. Although the ‘Kulturarbeiter’ on both sides of the Atlantic had a great deal in common there existed also differences in their theoretical and practical performance due to different circumstances. Thus the ‘Kulturarbeit’ of the German-American protagonists was less dissimilatoric than the one of the ‘inland-Germans’. Especially in Germany in the time of the Third Reich the following changes of paradigms can be found: a) the equating of the German Americans with the ‘foreign-Germans’ (Auslandsdeutschen) in Europe, b) the replacement of the primacy of language by ‘Rasse’, c) the orientation away from the urban to the rural Germanness, d) caused by the war devaluation of the attachment to the soil and enhancement of the preparedness for migration. The success of ‘auslandsdeutsche Kulturarbeit’ in Germany was based on the compensation of the loss of Germany’s world-wide recognition. The ‘Volk’ as a secularized religion replaced the reduced unloved new state. Further the success depended on the educated classes who looked at it as their very own matter and hoped to improve their social status by it. However ‘Kulturarbeit’ failed in the USA because in the end it was an ‘Inland-German’ activity. For instance more than 90 % of the German-American ‘identity managers’ had been born in Germany and mostly secondary socialized there. ‘Auslandsdeutsche Kulturarbeit’ had only been attractive for a few German Americans and the vast majority missed its relation to their everyday life.