Germany and America

 

NATIONALITY AND COLONIAL STRATEGIES

19^th Century German Views of America

by Jens-Uwe Guettel

How the American Expansion Resonated in Germany

— Introduction, Interview, Excerpt, Dissertation, Lesson plan

— Topics: Sociology, Cultural underpinnings of war

 

 

Introduction

We all tend to see what we want to see — in ourselves, in our friends, in our culture, and in other cultures. In his dissertation, Jens-Uwe Guettel takes a penetrating look at how Germany viewed America over the course of the 19^th century, the period of America’s great expansion westward.

In the following interview and excerpt, you will find highlights of Prof. Guettel’s wide-ranging consideration of the many authors, themes and images which were part of this cultural “moment.”  In the dissertation itself, you will find a deeper look at the novels and writings which reflect the complex attitudes and ideas of the times. Germans certainly noticed what Americans were doing as they expanded the nation westward, but not always the same we saw ourselves.

What makes this dissertation so explosive (to me, anyway) is what comes next – what is off-screen, so to speak. When Prof. Guettel brings up the concept of lebensraum, we realize that his thesis is by no means an obscure topic of study: the colonial attitudes of the 19^th century can be seen to lead directly to the German nationalism of the modern era and to the rise of the Third Reich. Most certainly, German views of American colonialism formed the roots of the two world wars which dominated the 20^th century.

Understanding the deeper cultural roots of war is important to all of us. As I write this, our entire nation is at war – two wars, actually – and each and every citizen is part of that decision. We need to understand why these conflicts have happened in the past, are happening today, and may break out again soon.

Interview With Jens-Uwe Guettel 06/2011

Was Germany’s view of America unique? How did other countries and cultures – France, or Spain, or Norway, or India, for example – view American expansion in the 19^th century?

A very good question and one to which I can only give a tentative answer. From my perspective, views of America as an expanding colonial empire were not uniquely German. French politicians and thinkers held similar views and regretted that they did not heed Anglo-American examples of liberal settlement policies before France lost its American possessions. If I had to guess, I would say that it is likely that these sentiments were shared by colonialists from other nations as well.

 

You mention that the flow of Germans to America caused problems in Germany. What changes or consequences did this bring about?

The flow of German immigrants to America brought about a sense of powerlessness and, at times, panic among liberal German nationalists after 1848: They termed German emigrants to be “the fertilizer of nations” (Völkerdünger), i.e. they saw them as adding to the growth (and greatness) of other nations (mostly the U.S.) while subtracting from Germany’s development and future potential. To a certain degree, these reformers were right: The mass exodus (which lasted until the last decade of the nineteenth century; beginning in the 1890s, Germany’s staggering economic growth turned the German Empire into a destination for immigrants) alleviated social problems and pressures and stabilized Germany’s political structures, thus making another revolution after 1848 unlikely.

 

What were American views of Germany at that time? There were large contingents of German settlers all over America, so there must have been strong feelings about the homeland.

It is probably fair to say that when it came to questions of growth and expansion, Germany was not a particularly relevant focal point for Americans during the nineteenth century, with one exception: By the late nineteenth century, the German university system was the best in the world, comparable (or even more important) to the status U.S. universities occupy today. At the turn of the century, many (if not most) Americans with PhDs had received their degrees in Germany and thus brought German ideas to America. American academics like Frederick Turner (“frontier thesis”) were thus influenced by German geographers like Friedrich Ratzel, the creator of the infamous term “Lebensraum,” although Turner himself had not received his degree in Germany. (See my above-mentioned article for more information on this particular subject).

 

Is there a parallel process today between two other cultures? Is China or another nation capturing attention the way America did during the 19^th century?

On a purely economic and materialist level, China is obviously highly interesting and relevant, for both Europeans and Americans. However, for nineteenth century Europeans the United States was certainly a land of economic opportunity (maybe even first and foremost), but the country was also always more than that. It inspired liberal reformers in Europe and Germany, and through its sheer existence, according to the eminent nineteenth-century German historian Leopold von Ranke, moved the principle of popular sovereignty from being a mere thought experiment into the realm of concrete political possibility.

In my book I argue that during the nineteenth century German colonialists were fascinated by the United States because, in their view, the U.S. demonstrated that the establishment of a liberal, progressive (and thus inspirational) political order (apparently) had to go hand in hand with spatial expansion. As far as China is concerned, I very much doubt that many people in the western world find China’s political structure inspiring. For obvious reasons, the material/economic aspect appears to be all that counts.

 

You refer to the forming of a German empire. When did this take place, and what was the process? Why was Germany late to the colonial game? You also mention that Germany had few overseas colonies.

The German Empire was founded in January of 1871 after the united German forces (led by Prussia) had defeated France. Germany was late to the colonial game for this very reason: As a united, modern nation state it only existed as of January 1871. Only afterward was Germany capable of projecting its power across the globe, and it did so beginning in 1884 with the acquisition of a number of colonies. However, German intellectuals and reformers had pondered the acquisition of colonies long before the German Empire came into being.

 

“Amerika, du hast es besser” – is this still the case today? How does Germany view America today? Do different classes or factions within Germany view America differently?

The answer is yes. Germany, like all western states, is a pluralistic, open, and democratic society in which many different political sentiments exist side by side. The Bush years between 2001 and 2009 have certainly nourished sceptical (and at times hostile) attitudes toward the United States, yet West Germany’s long partnership with the United States, and George Bush’s clear support for German re-unification in 1989-90, are not forgotten and especially Germany’s political class is aware of the necessity of excellent German-American relations.

 

Why did Germany’s view of America change from transnational to nationalist?

This question offers me the opportunity to “advertise” my book, which traces German-American expansionist connections from 1776 all the way to 1945. It is currently under review and is tentatively entitled Globalizing America: German Expansionism and the United States, 1776-1945. People interested in the actual ‘application’ of American methods within the context of the German colonial empire can also check out my article in Modern Intellectual History (Jens-Uwe Guettel, “From the Frontier to German South-West Africa: German Colonialism, Indians, and America Westward Expansion,” Modern Intellectual History, 7, Nov. 2010, pp 523-552).

 

What is next in this field of study? Where would you like to see future scholars look?

Some of the previous questions, in my view, are indicative of where more research can and should be done: Clearly, from a nineteenth-century German perspective, the United States was not only exemplary politically, but also when it came to territorial expansion. What about other nations? France? Great Britain? Or Japan? Further research could potentially uncover a global network of colonialist/expansionist sentiments fuelled by shared perceptions about the United States and its continental growth.

 

 

Excerpt from the dissertation

This dissertation explores transatlantic history with a focus on Europe, Germany America, and on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century transnational processes of cultural exchange. The project traces the transfer and impact of writings about the United States’ westward expansion in Europe, concentrating especially on German reactions towards encounters with racial Others. These responses reveal how many Germans saw America as rather unexceptional: By no means did nineteenth-century Germans and Europeans always view the United States as a beacon of liberty, individual rights, and republicanism. Instead, the country was seen as a colonial empire that continuously enlarged its national territory by pushing aside America’s native population. In consequence, German intellectuals believed that the United States was governed by political developments also at work in Europe and understood the United States as an imperial power, not unlike Britain or France. The United States was therefore, despite its republican constitution, perceived as an integral part of a world dominated and colonized by the major European powers.

Eventually, this belief had a strong impact on German colonial discourse in late nineteenth-

century Germany, as German imperialists began to view the United States as a model empire. After the founding of the German Empire, Germans could draw on a vast body of imagery that had America as its focus, and which painted a picture of a nation destined to expand, educate and dominate other races. Once the right political conditions were in place, Germans incorporated this perception of America into their own expansionist ideologies.

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German imperialists began to view the United States as a model empire … first and foremost, America was big.

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This dissertation traces the transformation of German observations of American expansion and race from the time of the French Revolution to the beginning of the twentieth century, delineating how these images changed from transnational visions of the American frontier as part of the global advance of European civilization.

From the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries, German interest in the United States always had various foci. The American Revolution, America’s political system, and the country’s fast-paced, “modern” social and economic life were among them. However, there also existed darker currents of the German discussion of the United States. Racism, racial segregation, expulsion of Native Americans and territorial expansion were issues that nineteenth-century Germans frequently pondered when reading and thinking about “Amerika.” These largely ignored aspects of the German fascination with the U.S. are the subject.

“Amerika, du hast es besser” –“America, you are better off.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe made this often-quoted statement in 1827. Voiced roughly in the middle of the period covered by this study, Goethe’s words indicate some of the changes that German perceptions of America underwent from the time of the French Revolution to the end of the nineteenth century. As a young man, Goethe was not very curious about the United States. Even his interest in the American Revolution was limited. Regarding the events during the Revolutionary War and after, Goethe stated “I myself and the circle of my closer friends did not concern ourselves with newspapers and news; we wanted to study mankind; man as such we left alone.” And yet, as time progressed, Goethe began to change his views. In 1807, Alexander von Humboldt’s return from his travels for the first time stimulated Goethe’s interest in America. About two decades later, he was again inspired, this time by the journey to the United States of Duke Bernhard, the son of Goethe’s patron.

Goethe was less fascinated with the United States as a political phenomenon than with its geographical Other- and newness. As a result, his interest in America grew in response to the increasing number of German reports and travelogues about that country, which began to be published in the nineteenth century. To be sure, unlike the young Goethe, many eighteenth-century Germans were in fact enthralled by America.

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By no means did nineteenth-century Germans and Europeans always view the United States as a beacon of liberty, individual rights, and republicanism. Instead, the country was seen as a colonial empire that continuously enlarged its national territory by pushing aside America’s native population

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Eighteenth-century German intellectuals, and the German public sphere in general, were not interested in America solely because of its republicanism or enlightened politics, but also because of its general Otherness. America was different from Europe in more than just its politics and social structure; the land itself was different too. First and foremost, America was big. Time and again, eighteenth-century travelers commented on the fact that even the thirteen original states stretched out over a space larger than Western Europe. In addition, America was home to non-white, non-European racial Others. German fascination with America’s native population dated back to the news of Columbus’ “discovery” of a new continent.

“Red” Indians were not the only racial Others on American soil. The presence of (mostly) black slaves tainted – or added to, depending on the commentator’s viewpoint – the attractiveness of American republicanism. Especially before the abolition of slavery in the English colonies in the 1830s, the topic of American slavery was intertwined with the general debate about human bondage among the participants in the transnational enlightened Republic of Letters. As a result, the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century German discussion of slavery in the United States was rarely limited to the “peculiar institution” in the American South. German views on American slavery therefore reveal the interconnections between the different focal points of this study. Discussions of slavery in North America easily broadened into debates about slavery as a worldwide phenomenon. In turn, slavery in general was naturally linked to the problem of European overseas expansion. Thus the topic of human bondage, on American soil as well as elsewhere, was frequently discussed simultaneously with the topic of colonialism.

This dissertation thus links two fields of historical research. First, it scrutinizes the German discussion of America from the late eighteenth to the end of the nineteenth century, analyzing German perceptions of America with a special focus on German sensitivities towards the problem of racial difference in the United States. Second, this work asks questions about the relevance of German imagery of America’s westwards expansion and treatment of racial Others for the nineteenth-century German colonial discourse. In consequence, it looks at late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German images of America from a new vantage point.

German imperialism and its ideological underpinnings have typically been traced back to what has been termed “social imperialism,” i.e. the attempt to solve domestic problems through expansionist imperial policies. This study focuses on a so far largely neglected set of attitudes and ideas linked to German colonialism: the specific indebtedness of the nineteenth-century German colonial discourse to German perceptions of America. To be sure, during the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries, eastern Europe was the consistent object of Prussia’s and later on Germany’s expansionist desires. However, during the same time period German visions of America provided a popular literary counterweight to this so-called “Drang nach Osten” [“Drive to the East”]

As Susanne Zantop has shown, colonialism occupied the imagination of many Germans prior to the founding of the Empire. By the time Germany began to actively pursue colonial policies, a broad range of colonial dreamscapes and visions, constructed and expanded since the mid-1700s, had already formed German views of racial Others and quite literally colored German sensitivities regarding the country’s place in a world dominated by white Europeans and North Americans.

The United States was much more than merely another national competitor for Imperial Germany. It was also the most popular setting for German colonial dreamscapes, as the vastly popular novels of authors like Friedrich Gerstäcker and Karl May show. Yet until now, analyses of the German “Amerikadiskurs” have usually confined themselves to scrutinizing either the German discussion of America’s political system or, during the first third of the twentieth century, the contemporaneous debates about modernization, “Fordism,” or the so-called “American peril” [“Amerikanische Gefahr”], a term referring to both the precariousness of Germany’s international standing vis-à-vis the United States in a competitive global economy and the feared phenomenon of domestic “Americanization.”

After the founding of the German Empire, these images then influenced the notion of “settlement colonialism” and the infamous concept of Lebensraum [living space].

However, even the idea of Lebensraum, which is so closely linked to German imperialism during both the time of the Empire and the Third Reich, was never exclusively restricted to Germany. Similar views could also be found in the late nineteenth-century United States. In order to do justice to this and other examples of kinship of ideas across borders and oceans, this study approaches German, European, and American history from a transnational vantage point.

 

Virtual Encounters with North American Native Peoples and Black Americans, 1790-1806

Germans, Indians, and America, 1789-1806

European Images of Amerindian and Racial Others, 1500-1800

 

Columbus’s “discovery” of America presented Europeans with an intellectual challenge. The indigenous peoples of this continent had been unknown to Biblical and classical authorities, so questions arose about how to explain their existence. Were they part of the human race at all? In the sixteenth century, Christian doctrine provided a clear answer to this question. God had created humankind and all of humanity had sprung from the first two humans created. Christian intellectuals thus posited that, at least in theory, Indians were as “human” as Europeans — yet this did not mean that both were actually equal.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, most European intellectuals explained the structure of the universe in the context of the idea of a Great Chain of Being. In the face of civil and religious wars all over Europe, philosophers like Leibniz and Locke (both harbingers of the Age of Enlightenment in their respective countries) tried to reconcile Christianity and their belief in a rationally-ordered universe with the increasing pace of social, political, intellectual and scientific change. The Great Chain of Being offered solace because it promised stability and order. Each and everybody found its, hers, or his destined place in this system, and American Indians and black Africans were classified as occupying the intermediate ranks between apes and white Europeans.

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Like other Europeans, eighteenth-century Germans were fascinated by the indigenous peoples discovered in the New World

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From the Renaissance to the seventeenth century, two separate theories offered explanations for the American Indians’ low ranking on the Great Chain of Being. On one hand, more secular worldviews perceived humanity to be in a continuous cycle between periods of renewal and periods of decline — Amerindian societies were believed to have reached an exceptionally low level in the cycle. On the other hand, Christian doctrine posited humankind’s corruption after its expulsion from paradise, which led to the belief that Indians were corrupted versions of older European civilizations: the savage American natives were believed to have lost almost all of their original knowledge of God, civilized customs and society. Both the Christian assumption of humankind’s monogenesis and the seemingly contradictory perception that Indians were “lesser” humans than Europeans could thus be combined and upheld. Even in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, despite the Enlightenment’s propagation of human progress, these pre- and early modern concepts of corruption and decline never lost all of their influence; they were simply incorporated into new explanatory models.

The Indian Image in Germany, 1789 – 1806

 

Like other Europeans, eighteenth-century Germans were fascinated by the indigenous peoples discovered in the New World. Until the second half of the eighteenth century, the German image of the Indianer had mostly been shaped by works of prose or poetry. In these works, the Amerindian appeared most frequently as “noble savage” and, in the tradition of Tacitus’ Germania was often used to criticize European society and behavior. The image of the “noble savage” appeared in much of Germany’s serious literature, beginning with the Swiss-German writer Johann Jakob Bodmer and ending with Goethe and Schiller.

 

On the one hand, America represented the German enlightened reformers’ dreams come true. On the other, the young United States already seemed to shed light on the many potential pitfalls of enlightened politics, most importantly on the question of who should and who should not participate in the political affairs of the state. Crassly illuminated by the existence of slavery, the United States presented one answer to this question: only white men should be allowed to bear political responsibility. Surprisingly, this example was also attractive to eighteenth-century Germans.

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Unlike France, Holland, Denmark, or Great Britain, eighteenth-century Germany had no colonies and was almost completely uninvolved in the slave trade.

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Because Native Americans continued to be perceived as unfathomable and exotic, “civilizing” them was viewed to be a necessary and urgent undertaking. Converting them to Christianity was deemed to be an essential first (and sometimes final) step of this process. The Christianization of America’s native population also served as proof of the superiority of the Christian religion.

The accounts of the Lewis and Clark expedition were published after the successful end of their voyage and had a significant influence on how the American West was perceived by those who had never been there – East-Coast Americans as well as Europeans and Germans. The expedition had not merely been undertaken for scientific purposes, of course, but also for the promotion of the “Indian policy goals of the republic.” As a result, the description of Indian life, rites, and customs compiled by the expeditionary corps was naturally colored by the expedition’s ultimate goal of bringing the western tribes into the economic and political sphere of influence of the United States. With some tribes, the expedition corps had good relations, based on mutual respect and friendship. However, Lewis and Clark’s contempt for other tribes,

By and large, these descriptions confirmed “classic” European and German stereotypes about Native Americans. While Europeans had evolved from the first developmental stage of hunters and nomads to “civilized” merchants, American Indians had remained at the initial stage of human development.

 

Indians and Expansion

 

The barely twenty years from the politically charged early 1830s to the revolutionary events of 1848 was a time of political and social anxieties – not only in countries like the German

lands or France that would undergo abrupt political change in 1848, but also in England and the United States. The effects of industrialization were increasingly felt everywhere. In Great Britain, the Chartist- and Anti-Corn-Law movements aroused apprehension among the ruling elites. In the United States, the first stirrings of working class activism, the success of Andrew Jackson’s Democracy party, and the founding of many often religiously-motivated reform associations accompanied America’s transition from a republic to a democratic mass society. In the German states, the events of the French July Revolution of 1830 stirred up domestic political activity that found its most famous expression in the “Hambacher Fest” of 1832, whose participants were representatives of Germany’s liberal and nationalist opposition to the forces of restoration in the governments belonging to the German Confederation.

For many contemporary observers, whether they were German, French, English, or American, the issue of the day was control – controlling one’s life as an individual and citizen as well as controlling broad historical developments. In his introduction to the first volume of Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville described his “religious terror” in the face of the sociopolitical process of change he believed he was observing in the United States and the countries of Western Europe. America was facing these monumental changes before Europe.

In consequence, Tocqueville feared that while at the moment the European states were still holding their political fates “in their own hands; (…) they may lose control” very soon. In this most famous of his publications, Tocqueville was attempting to show how the, as he perceived it, unstoppable process of social leveling and democratization could be checked and controlled lest it would again produce events like the Terror of the French Revolution. The United States offered examples of how such a task could be accomplished. Yet for Tocqueville and many of his contemporaries, gaining control was as much connected to space as to sociopolitical processes. After having lost control of much (or all) of their North American lands, in the first half of the nineteenth century both Britain and France began to enlarge and consolidate their possessions in Africa and Asia, a development that prompted Tocqueville to write extensively on colonialism and empire. For Tocqueville and his intellectual peers in other countries, the questions of controlling sociopolitical developments were inextricably linked to the control of land.

The image of the ever-expanding United States was a powerful one. It could be found in novels and travelogues, as well as in political and geographical journals. As Friedrich Gerstäcker’s later writings show, beginning with Germany’s unification in 1871, America was increasingly perceived as a threat to Germany’s national interests, and Germany had to take measures in order to stay competitive with this country. Eventually, during the last decade of the nineteenth century, the geographer and proponent of German imperialism Friedrich Ratzel, who had traveled the United States in the 1870s, would incorporate his perceptions of American westwards expansion into his imperialist Lebensraum concept, thereby introducing American expansionism as a political yardstick into the German colonial discourse. America was successful because it expanded. If Germany wanted to be successful, it had to do the same.

The United States appeared to show that territorial expansion was a feasible solution for a wide range of social problems. To be sure, America had to face different sociopolitical troubles than the German lands, yet either way expansion and/or emigration looked like possible answers to these problems. The United States was moving, changing, and expanding, while the German lands were trapped in rigid, old-fashioned political structures. Expansion created opportunities, for both American society and American individuals.

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The image of the ever-expanding United States was a powerful one … America was successful because it expanded. If Germany wanted to be successful, it had to do the same.

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From ‘Manifest Destiny’ to German Imperialism – American Continental Expansion and German Imperialist Ideology, 1848-1900

The German geographer Friedrich Ratzel (1844-1904) coined the term “Lebensraum,” or “living space” in the last decade of the nineteenth century. Ratzel started out as a journalist, but in 1875 a long trip to the United States, Cuba and Mexico changed his life. He studied the influence of German-Americans and other ethnic groups in North America and upon his return to Germany immersed himself in the field of geography. He first taught in Munich and then became a professor at the University of Leipzig in 1886, a post he occupied until his death in 1904. In the 1890s, Ratzel began to connect his geographical research with notions of biological determinism that he also applied to the development of humankind. In 1897, he linked the perceived problem of racial conflict with his views on modern agricultural developments and territorial expansion; questions he soon after subsumed under the phrase Lebensraum. Ratzel’s “living space” theory described the space needed to sustain a people, and also maintained that in order to survive a people had to expand its Lebensraum, by conquest, colonization, and migration.

Until the middle of the nineteenth century, Germans therefore saw the expansion of the United States not merely as nationally American, but as a European process. For them, the settlers who moved westwards over the American continent were part of a global advance that spread superior European “civilization” over the world. According to prominent eyewitnesses of this process like Gottfried Duden, this development was natural, even if it meant the displacement and extinction of Native Americans.

Curiously enough, similar views also existed in the United States: Even at the end of the nineteenth century, a racially and nationalistically charged concept like Lebensraum therefore still displayed traces of its transnational genesis. After all, German images of the United States were not only inspired by German fantasies about “Amerika,” as could be found in May’s novels for example, but also by perceptions that white Americans had about themselves. The visions of the American West created by Cooper, or Lewis Cass’s racialized concept of (white) America’s destiny to expand across the whole North American continent while pushing the native population out of the way shaped both American and German visions of “the West,” and the need for territorial expansion.

According to the historian David Wrobel, during the 1880s and 1890s the disappearance of the Frontier created feelings of “gloom and doom” in the U.S. These emotions were similar to the anxieties felt by German proponents of settler colonialism: Heavily settled areas, whether in cities or in the countryside, with dependent industrial or farm laborers were perceived to threaten the traditional independently-agrarian fabric of American society. Unsurprisingly, these anxieties led to calls for expansion abroad, demanding “more breathing space [sic] for this vast and growing aggregation of humanity.” The powerful attraction of visions of an endless process of expansion and domination of virgin lands that had helped to create the myth of the American West had thus shaped both the American and the German colonial imaginary. As a consequence, these conceptions could be easily utilized by proponents of overseas expansion in both countries – and even the language used to express imperial demands was similar on both sides of the Atlantic

In the ideologically and nationalistically charged atmosphere of the fin-de-siècle, Lebensraum made sense. The United States had a whole continent to settle (although at the end of the nineteenth century, Americans themselves were worried about the fact that this was no longer the case), and German travelers and novelists had acquainted the German public with this image of America through countless newspaper articles, monographs, and novels. By the end of the nineteenth century, the myth of Lebensraum and the dream of never-ending possibilities of expansion had thus become so powerful that they replaced reality. After all, Germany’s European rivals Britain and France also had large colonial empires. The lesson to be drawn was that Germany could not afford to fall behind in the race for “living space.” Yet even after Germany had lost this race as a result of its defeat in the Great War, the expansionist visions inspired by the German “Amerikadiskurs” remained attractive and continued to stimulate dreamscapes of imperialist grandeur.

German and European perceptions of America’s expansion westwards changed over time. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, the frontier was not viewed as a phenomenon with exclusively American national consequences. Instead, it represented challenge and opportunity to all white Westerners. In consequence, the “civilizing” of America’s natives or the cultivation of formerly unoccupied lands was perceived as success for white Europeans and North Americans alike. The basic thrust of this line of reasoning was thoroughly transnational. It was based on conceptions of civilizing, cultural, and racial superiority that Germans shared with other Europeans and white North Americans.

However, because the early nineteenth-century German debate about American slavery, Native Americans, and American expansion was linked to concepts of colonialism, it eventually had consequences for purely national disputes. This discussion slowly eroded the negative associations that enlightened ideas of open trade had conferred upon national ventures of colonial aggrandizement. By the second half of the nineteenth century, and in even more pronounced fashion after the founding of the German Empire, the formerly transnational perception of American expansion was thus transformed into nationalist feelings of competition. Men like Friedrich Ratzel believed that America was successful because it was able to expand its territory. If Germany wanted to maintain and improve its position in the global competition, it had to engage in a similar process of territorial expansion. Especially for Germans, who during the first half of the nineteenth century were not engaged in colonial enterprises of their own, the American experience was therefore important. After the founding of the German Empire, Germans could draw on a vast body of imagery on “Amerika that painted a picture of a nation destined to expand, educate and dominate other races (benignly or aggressively). Once the right political conditions were in place, Germans like Friedrich Ratzel and later Hans Grimm incorporated this perception of America into their own expansionist visions. From the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries, German interest in the United States always had various foci. The American Revolution, America’s political system, and the country’s fast-paced, “modern” social and economic life were among them. And yet, there also existed other, darker currents of the German “Amerikadiskurs.” Racism, racial segregation, expulsion and expansion were issues that Germans frequently discussed and pondered when reading and thinking about “Amerika.” The United States represented light and shadow, and eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century Germans were fascinated and influenced by all of these aspects of “Amerika.”

End of excerpt: The entire dissertation is available on ProQuest.

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 Jens-Uwe Guettel is Senior Lecturer in History and Religious Studies at The Pennsylvania State University.  He earned both his Ph.D. in History and Master of Philosophy degrees from Yale University. His most recent book is German Expansionism, Imperial Liberalism, and the United States, 1776–1945 (Cambridge University Press, 2012).

 

 

POSTSECONDARY LEVEL

L E S S O N   P L A N    T O   A C C O M P A N Y 

19^th Century German

Views of America

JOURNAL OF EMPIRE STUDIES SUMMER 2011

 

 

1. What is the author’s thesis?

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2. How does he prove it?

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3. How did Germans view America’s expansion? How did Americans view it? Who was correct?

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4. According to the author, why were the works of James Fenimore Cooper so popular in Europe?

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5. How many colonies did Germany have, compared to England and France? How did Germany conceive of itself in relation to other nations?

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6. What is “lebensraum”? How could such an innocent-sounding idea be so dangerous? Does it exist today, in any nation?

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7.  The author writes about encounter with racial “Others.” Do those exist today? Are there novels you have read or movies you have seen which deal with encounters between “Others”?

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8. Today, is America perceived differently by outside nations than Americans perceive ourselves? Is Germany?

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