Unprecedented in scope and critical perspective, American and the Germans presents an analysis of the history of the Germans in America and of the turbulent relations between Germany and the United States. The two volumes bring together research in such diverse fields as ethnic studies, political science, linguistics, and literature, as well as American and German History.
Contributors are leading American and German scholars, such as Kathleen Neils Conzen, Joshua A. Fishman, Peter Gay, Harold Jantz, Günter Moltmann, Steven Muller, Theo Sommer, Fritz Stern, Herbert A. Strauss, Gerhard L. Weinberg, and Don Yoder.
These scholars assess the ethnicity and acculturation of German-Americans from the seventeenth century to the twentieth; the state of German language and culture in the United States; World War I as a turning point in relations between German and America; the political, economic, and cultural relations before and after World War II; and the midcentury state of affairs between the two countries. Special chapters are devoted to the Pennsylvania Germans, Jewish-German immigration after 1933, Americanism in Germany, and a critical appraisal of current research.
American and the Germans presents a fascinating introduction to the subject as well as new perspectives for a more critical and comprehensive study of its many facets. It can be used as a reader in the fields of German studies, American studies, political science, European and German history, American history, ethnic studies, and German and American literature. Although each of the 49 contributions reflects the state of current scholarship, they are formulated with the uninitiated reader in mind.
Inhoudsopgave
Hyphenated America: The Creation of an Eighteenth Century German-American Culture
German Immigration to Colonial America: Prototype of a Transatlantic Mass Migration
The Pattern of German Emigration to the United States in the Nineteenth Century
Germ an-Americans and the Invention of Ethnicity
The German-American Immigrants and the Newly Founded Reich
The German Language in America
The Challenge of Early German-American Literature
The Representation of America in German Newspapers Before and During the Civil War
Women of German-American Fiction: Therese Robinson, Mathilde Anneke, and Fernande Richter
Over de auteur
Frank Trommler is Professor Emeritus of German at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Die Kultur der Weimarer Republik. Joseph Mc Veigh is Professor of German Studies at Smith College