Transatlantic Images and Perceptions: Germany and America since 1776

by Edited by David E. Barclay , Elisabeth Glaser-Schmidt

• ISBN13: 9780521580915
• ISBN10: 0521580919
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-03-28
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Over the last two centuries, Germans and Americans have been rivals, friends, opponents, and, most recently, allies. This cross-disciplinary collection of essays analyses how German and American views of each other developed and periodically shifted, providing a fresh analysis of the often complex German-American relationship. The images that resulted from encounters between the two countries frequently reflected significant cross-currents of the contemporary relations, and often foreshadowed important trends. The nine German and eight American contributors to this volume analysed travelogues, private letters, diaries, diplomatic reports, and newspaper articles from the wake of US independence through the reunification of Germany, and also post-1945 movies, that reflect these cross-cultural encounters and illustrate how political agendas, prejudices, stereotypes, and pragmatic forces influenced individual, group and mass perceptions of the other society.

Table of Contents

List of Contributors	vii
Introduction	1	(18)
David E. Barclay
Elisabeth Glaser-Schmidt
1 "Through a Glass, Darkly": Changing German Ideas of American Freedom, 1776-1806	19	(22)
A. Gregg Roeber
2 "Germans Make Cows and Women Work": American Perceptions of Germans as Reported in American Travel Books, 1800-1840	41	(24)
Hermann Wellenreuther
3 Weary of Germany -- Weary of America: Perceptions of the United States in Nineteenth-Century Germany	65	(22)
Hans-Jurgen Grabbe
4 "Auch unser Deutschland muss einmal frei werden": The Immigrant Civil War Experience as a Mirror on Political Conditions in Germany	87	(22)
Walter D. Kamphoefner
5 Different, But Not Out of This World: German Images of the United States Between Two Wars, 1871-1914	109	(22)
Wolfgang Helbich
6 From Culture to Kultur. Changing American Perceptions of Imperial Germany, 1870-1914	131	(24)
Jorg Nagler
7 The Reciprocal Vision of German and American Intellectuals: Beneath the Shifting Perceptions	155	(16)
James T. Kloppenberg
8 Germany and the United States, 1914-1933: The Mutual Perception of Their Political Systems	171	(20)
Peter Kruger
9 Between Hope and Skepticism: American Views of Germany, 1918-1933	191	(26)
Elisabeth Glaser-Schmidt
10 "Without Concessions to Marxist or Communist Thought": Fordism in Germany, 1923-1939	217	(26)
Philipp Gassert
11 The Continuity of Ambivalence: German Views of America, 1933-1945	243	(22)
Detlef Junker
12 Cultural Migration: Artists and Visual Representation Between Americans and Germans During the 1930s and 1940s	265	(20)
Marion F. Deshmukh
13 Representations of Germans and What Germans Represent: American Film Images and Public Perceptions in the Postwar Era	285	(24)
Beverly Crawford
James Martel
14 Chancellor of the Allies? The Significance of the United States in Adenauer's Foreign Policy	309	(24)
Hans-Jurgen Schroder
15 American Policy Toward German Unification: Images and Interests	333	(20)
Konrad H. Jarausch
16 Unification Policies and the German Image: Comments on the American Reaction	353	(10)
Frank Trommler
Index	363