Race, Gender, and Imperialism in Wilhelmine Young Adult Literature
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University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations Dissertations and Theses November 2015 Young Germans in the World: Race, Gender, and Imperialism in Wilhelmine Young Adult Literature Maureen O. Gallagher University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2 Part of the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, German Literature Commons, and the Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons Recommended Citation Gallagher, Maureen O., "Young Germans in the World: Race, Gender, and Imperialism in Wilhelmine Young Adult Literature" (2015). Doctoral Dissertations. 478. https://doi.org/10.7275/7470670.0 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/478 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. YOUNG GERMANS IN THE WORLD: RACE, GENDER, AND IMPERIALISM IN WILHELMINE YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE A Dissertation Presented by MAUREEN OLDHAM GALLAGHER Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY September 2015 German and Scandinavian Studies © Copyright by Maureen O. Gallagher 2015 All Rights Reserved YOUNG GERMANS IN THE WORLD: RACE, GENDER, AND IMPERIALISM IN WILHELMINE YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE A Dissertation Presented by MAUREEN OLDHAM GALLAGHER Approved as to style and content by: ______________________________________ Sara Lennox, Chair ______________________________________ Andrew Donson, Member ______________________________________ Laura Doyle, Member ___________________________________ William Moebius Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The names of the many people who deserve thanks for helping to make this achievement possible are almost too numerous to mention. I would above all like to thank my family, who, even if they didn’t always exactly understand what I was doing, made every attempt to micro-manage my life from a distance with offers of new clothes, job advice, and support. Despite what I might sometimes say, I am truly grateful. I can’t thank the members of my committee enough. I owe an enormous debt to my advisor Sara Lennox who never failed to offer support and guidance over the many years of writing this dissertation and who pushed me to be a better thinker and writer. Andrew Donson encouraged me to think like a historian and challenge the assumptions of my own discipline, and Laura Doyle stepped in at the last minute and encouraged me to think comparatively. I would also like to thank all of the faculty members at UMass with whom I worked and studied and who offered various forms of support and encouragement, in particular Sky Arndt-Briggs, Barton Byg, Robert Rothstein, Jonathan Skolnik, and Robert Sullivan. Thanks also go to Denise Della Rossa, CJ Jones, and the entire faculty of the Department of German and Russian at the University of Notre Dame. I would also like to thank Jennifer Drake Askey, Maggie Stanley Majors, Carolyn Kay, and Jennifer Redmann, with whom I had many discussions of my research and the fascinating topic of Wilhelmine German girls and their literature. I also owe a debt of gratitude to the librarians of the Kinder- und Jugendbuch Abteilung at the Berlin Staatsbibliothek for their willingness to share their knowledge with me and offer me a iv home-away-from-home in Berlin for my research. I would also like to offer thanks to Jeff Bowersox for generously sharing his draft manuscript with me. Thanks also go to the various members of an interdepartmental writing group who were who were some of the first readers of my draft dissertation chapters— Ute Bettray, Matthew Goodwin, Nahir Otaño Gracia, Rachel Thibault, Evan Torner, and Delene Case White. Ultimately, this dissertation would not have been possible without the generous financial support of the Fulbright program, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the German Historical Institute, the Children’s Literature Association, the UMass Graduate School’s fellowship program, the University of Notre Dame, and the Coalition of Women in German. In addition, two writing retreats sponsored by the UMass Graduate School were critical to complete the final writing and revision of my dissertation, and I would like to most sincerely thank the organizers Kathleen Baldwin, Lisha Daniels Storey, and Lauren Goodman and the participants who provided a supportive writing community. I would like to particularly mention how honored and humble I am to have been the recipient of a Zantop Travel Award from the Coalition of Women in German. This award is named after the late Susanne Zantop, whose path-breaking work on race and colonialism was critical to my own intellectual and scholarly development and who was taken from this world far too soon. I hope that, even in a small way, my work can continue her legacy. I also wish to thank all the women [and men] of the Coalition of Women in German, in particular those I served with on the Steering Committee, for being mentors v and role models for feminist scholarship and activism in academia. The members of WiG have offered me feedback, encouragement, advice and community throughout my graduate career, and I truly don’t think I would have made it this far without the support of this organization and the people in it. Finally I would like to thank the friends who made the dissertation process bearable by sharing meals, bad movies, and vats of tea: Elizabeth, Jes, Noga, Rachel, and Dan, among many, but above all I would like to thank Antonia, Manuela, and Nahir for always being available to offer a critical eye or a writing date; support, gossip or advice; wine, chocolate or coffee, sometimes all at the same time. vi ABSTRACT YOUNG GERMANS IN THE WORLD: RACE, GENDER, AND IMPERIALISM IN WILHELMINE YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE SEPTEMBER 2015 MAUREEN OLDHAM GALLAGHER, B.A., M.A., UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA– LINCOLN Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Sara Lennox This dissertation shows how popular reading material for young adults was used to craft a new generation of German imperial citizens in the Second Empire (1871-1918). Uniting insights from contemporary postcolonial theory, gender studies, and the global history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Germany, it shows the intersectional development of German national identity in the children’s and young adult literature of Wilhelmine Germany. As literature written by adults for young people, designed both to entertain and instruct, children’s and young adult literature offers a unique window on how Germany built nation and empire simultaneously during this period. Focusing on texts set outside of the European borders of Germany by authors such as Else Ury, Sophie Wörishöffer, Karl May, Friedrich Pajeken, Bertha Clément, Brigitte Augusti, and Carl Falkenhorst, it shows how German literature carves a space for Germans outside of Germany to settle in the Americas, colonize Africa, and travel from the peripheries to the metropole and back again, and how Germany’s understanding of its place in the world undergoes a dramatic shift in light of the outbreak of the World War in 1914. German young adult literature from this period offers a portrait of German identity as both racial and cultural and shows vii German heroes and heroines as racially superior to indigenous people and culturally superior to other immigrant groups or colonizers. Narrative literature for young people from this time features young heroes and heroines who come of age abroad—boys who learn how to be men in Africa, South America, or the Wild West and girls who grow to maturity and marriage in various colonial settings—and reveals how metropolitan authors conceived of the nature of German identity in a period of globalization and colonization. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................................................... iv ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................................ vii LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................................................... xi INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................................... 1 Wilhelmine Germany in an Age of Globalization ............................................................. 6 Race ................................................................................................................................................... 8 Gender ............................................................................................................................................. 11 Imperialism ................................................................................................................................... 13 Outline ............................................................................................................................................ 16 CHAPTER 1. GROWING UP IN WILHELMINE GERMANY: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND .. 21 Introduction ..................................................................................................................................