Title The nation as a local metaphor : Württemberg, imperial Germany, and national memory, 1871-1918 / Alon Confino

Published Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, ©1997

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Description 1 online resource (xiii, 280 pages) : illustrations (some color) Contents Thinking about German nationhood, 1871-1918 -- pt. 1. Germany and Wurttemberg: an uncomfortable coexistence in Sedan Day -- The nation in the locality -- Sedan Day: a memory for all the Germans? -- An unfulfilled national community -- pt. 2. Germany and Wurttemberg: a nation of heimats -- A system of knowledge and sensibilities -- A national lexicon -- The nation in the mind -- Afterword: Heimat, Germany, and Europe Summary All nations make themselves up as they go along, but not all make themselves up in the same way. In this study, Alon Confino explores how Germans turned national and argues that they imagined the nation as an extension of their local place. In 1871, the work of political unification had been completed, but Germany remained a patchwork of regions with different histories and traditions. Germans had to construct a national memory to reconcile the peculiarities of the region and the totality of the nation. This identity project, examined by Confino as it evolved in the southwestern state of Wurttemberg, oscillated between failure and success. The national holiday of Sedan Day failed in the 1870s and 1880s to symbolically commingle localness and nationhood. Later, the idea of the Heimat, or homeland, did prove capable of representing interchangeably the locality, the region, and the nation in a distinct national narrative and in visual images. The German nationhood project was successful, argues Confino, because Germans made the nation into an everyday, local experience through a variety of cultural forms, including museums, school textbooks, popular poems, travel guides, posters, and postcards. But it was not unique. Confino situates German nationhood within the larger context of modernity, and in doing so he raises broader questions about how people in the modern world use the past in the construction of identity Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 255-272) and index Notes Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL English Print version record digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL Subject Nationalism -- Germany -- Württemberg National characteristics, German. Collective memory -- Germany POLITICAL SCIENCE -- Political Ideologies -- Nationalism. Collective memory National characteristics, German Nationalism Politics and government Nationalbewusstsein Nationale identiteit. Nationalisme. Nationalism -- Germany. SUBJECT Württemberg (Germany) -- Politics and government Germany -- Politics and government -- 1871-1918. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85054634 Subject Germany Germany -- Württemberg Württemberg Württemberg (Germany) -- Politics and government. Germany -- Politics and government -- 1871-1918. Form Electronic book LC no. 96052039 ISBN 0807860840 9780807860847

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