Parameters of Low German Identity: Ernst Moritz Arndt’s Other Fatherland

2012 ◽  
pp. 99-112
Author(s):  
Arne Koch
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Benjamin W. Goossen

During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the global Mennonite church developed an uneasy relationship with Germany. Despite the religion's origins in the Swiss and Dutch Reformation, as well as its longstanding pacifism, tens of thousands of members embraced militarist German nationalism. This book is a sweeping history of this encounter and the debates it sparked among parliaments, dictatorships, and congregations across Eurasia and the Americas. Offering a multifaceted perspective on nationalism's emergence in Europe and around the world, the book demonstrates how Mennonites' nationalization reflected and reshaped their faith convictions. While some church leaders modified German identity along Mennonite lines, others appropriated nationalism wholesale, advocating a specifically Mennonite version of nationhood. Examining sources from Poland to Paraguay, the book shows how patriotic loyalties rose and fell with religious affiliation. Individuals might claim to be German at one moment but Mennonite the next. Some external parties encouraged separatism, as when the Weimar Republic helped establish an autonomous “Mennonite State” in Latin America. Still others treated Mennonites as quintessentially German; under Hitler's Third Reich, entire colonies benefited from racial warfare and genocide in Nazi-occupied Ukraine. Whether choosing Germany as a national homeland or identifying as a chosen people, called and elected by God, Mennonites committed to collective action in ways that were intricate, fluid, and always surprising.


1991 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 120
Author(s):  
Philip V. Bohlman ◽  
Doreen Helen Klassen
Keyword(s):  

1997 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 282-308 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. James Mcadams

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the concept of “normalcy” has occupied a prominent place in the pronouncements of Germany's most powerful politicians and policy makers. In addition, it has also suffused much of the emerging literature on the domestic and international implications of German unification. Some observers argue that unification embodies the call to normalcy, offering Germany's leaders the opportunity to put their nation's past behind them. Others treat the events of 1989–90 as part of an ongoing challenge to German identity. Finally, a third group of scholars regards the invocation of German unity as an excuse for papering over the crimes of the Nazi past. Although there is no a priori basis for considering any one of these approaches the most appropriate for assessing contemporary German affairs, this does not mean one's choice of terms is totally arbitrary. If German normalcy is to mean anything analytically, it must minimally represent an attainable and worthy goal to which the leaders of the Federal Republic can aspire in their efforts to make Germany more like other European states.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-79
Author(s):  
Alexander Werth

Abstract: This paper deals with German kinship terms ending with the form n (Muttern, Vatern). Firstly, data from newspapers are presented that show that especially Muttern denotes very special meanings that can only be derived to a limited extent from the lexical base: a) Muttern referring to a home where mother cares for you, b) Muttern standing for overprotection, and c) Muttern representing a special food style (often embedded in prepositional phrases and/or comparative constructions like wie bei or wie von Muttern). Secondly, it is argued that the addition of n to kinship terms is not a word-formation pattern, but that these word forms are instead lexicalized and idiomatized in contemporary German. Hence, a diachronic scenario is applied to account for the data. It is argued in the present paper that the n-forms have been borrowed from Low German dialects, especially from constructional idioms of the type ‘X-wie bei Muttern’ and that forms were enriched by semantic concepts associated with the dialect.


2021 ◽  
Vol 80 (4) ◽  
pp. 476-491
Author(s):  
Erika Langbroek ◽  
Francis Brands

Abstract This article provides an edition and stemmatological analysis of a 15th century Low German version of the medieval German krutgarden text. This Low German krutgarden version has gone unnoticed by general scholarship because the MS containing it resided in Russia until the 1990s.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document