| Sweeping the German Nation: Domesticity and National Identity in Germany, 1870-1945 Contributor(s): Reagin, Nancy R. (Author) |
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ISBN: 0521841135 ISBN-13: 9780521841139 Publisher: Cambridge University Press OUR PRICE: $114.00 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: October 2006 Annotation: Is cleanliness next to Germanness, as some 19th century nationalists insisted? This book explores the relationship between gender roles, domesticity, and German national identity between 1870???1945. After German unification, approaches to household management that had originally emerged among the bourgeoisie became central to German national identity by 1914. Thrift, order, and extreme cleanliness, along with particular domestic markers (such as the linen cabinet) and holiday customs, were used by many Germans to define the distinctions between themselves and neighbouring cultures. After 1933, this idealized notion of domestic Germanness was further racialised and incorporated into an array of Nazi social politics. In occupied Eastern Europe during WWII Nazi women's groups used these approaches to household management in their attempts to 'Germanize' Eastern European women who were part of a large-scale project of population resettlement and ethnic cleansing. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Social Science | Gender Studies - History | Europe - Germany |
| Dewey: 943.08 |
| LCCN: 2006007557 |
| Physical Information: 0.87" H x 6.28" W x 9.3" (1.07 lbs) 264 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - Germany |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Is cleanliness next to Germanness, as some 19th century nationalists insisted? This book explores the relationship between gender roles, domesticity, and German national identity between 1870-1945. After German unification, approaches to household management that had originally emerged among the bourgeoisie became central to German national identity by 1914. Thrift, order, and extreme cleanliness, along with particular domestic markers (such as the linen cabinet) and holiday customs, were used by many Germans to define the distinctions between themselves and neighboring cultures. What was bourgeois at home became German abroad, as "German domesticity" also helped to define and underwrite colonial identities in Southwest Africa and elsewhere. After 1933, this idealized notion of domestic Germanness was racialized and incorporated into an array of Nazi social politics. In occupied Eastern Europe during WWII Nazi women's groups used these approaches to household management in their attempts to "Germanize" Eastern European women who were part of a large-scale project of population resettlement and ethnic cleansing. |
Contributor Bio(s): Reagin, Nancy R.: - Nancy R. Reagin is Professor of History and Director of the Women's and Gender Studies Program at Pace University, New York. She received her PhD from The Johns Hopkins University. She previously taught at the University of Texas, Austin. She is the author of A German Women's Movement: Class and Gender in Hanover, 1880 1933 (1995) and is co-editor of The Heimat Abroad: The Boundaries of Germanness (2005). She has been awarded fellowships by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Deutscher Akademischer Austasuchdienst. |