Published on behalf of the Association for Australian Studies by Herausgegeben im Namen der Gesellschaft für Australienstudien von Henriette von Holleuffer, Hamburg, Germany Oliver Haag, University of Edinburgh; Linnaeus University Advisory Board Rudolf Bader, PH Zurich | Elisabeth Bähr, Speyer | Jillian Barnes, University of Newcastle | Nicholas Birns, Eugene Lang College, New York City | Boris Braun, University of Cologne | David Callahan, Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal | Maryrose Casey, Monash University | Ann Curthoys, University of Sydney | Kate Darian-Smith, Australia Centre, University of Melbourne | Brian Dibble, University of Western Australia (em.) | Corinna Erckenbrecht, Mannheim | Gerhard Fischer, University of New South Wales | Victoria Grieves, University of Sydney | Reinhold Grotz, University of Bonn (em.) | Helen Idle, King’s College, London | Jeanine Leane, Australian National University | Gerhard Leitner, Free University Berlin (em.) | Aileen Moreton-Robinson, University of Technology, Brisbane | Suvendrini Perera, Curtin University Perth | Norbert Platz, Trier University (em.) | Xavier Pons, Université Toulouse-Mirail | Peter Read, University of Sydney | Mitchell Rolls, University of Tasmania | Anne Rönning, University of Bergen (em.) | Werner Senn, University of Bern (em.) | Gerhard Stilz, University of Tübingen (em.) | Adi Wimmer, University of Klagenfurt (em.) Technical Editor Stefanie Affeldt, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg Correspondence and manuscripts: [email protected] Information for contributors: https://australienstudien.org/ZfA/StyleSheet_ZfA.pdf Sale Price for an individual issue: € 5 plus P & P Membership of the GASt includes a subscription to the ZfA | ASJ Copyright © the authors ZfA | ASJ 33-34/2019-2020: https://doi.org/10.35515/zfa/asj.3334/201920 ISSN 1617-9900 Contents From the editors of this issue 5 Race and Racism in Australian-German Relations Wulf D. Hund, Stefanie Affeldt ‘Racism’ Down Under 9 The Prehistory of a Concept in Australia Antje Kühnast Johann Friedrich Blumenbach’s ‘Neuholländer’ 31 Naomi Appleby, Lloyd Pigram, Fiona Skyring, Sarah Yu The Tides are Turning 57 Reconciling the Hidden Pearling History of Broome Oliver Haag Translating the History of Race 81 Indigenous Australian Literature in German Stefanie Affeldt, Wulf D. Hund From ‘Plant Hunter’ to ‘Tomb Raider’ 89 The Changing Image of Amalie Dietrich Bush Fires and the Spanish Flu in Australia Lisa-Michéle Bott, Sebastian Fastenrath Australian Bushfires 127 Current trends, causes, and social-ecological impacts Henriette von Holleuffer Die Demaskierung des Virus oder die Konstruktion einer historischen Analogie 137 Der Pressespiegel des Dr. John Howard L. Cumpston und die ‘Spanische Grippe’ von 1918-1920 in Australien 4 Contents Reviews Katrin Althans Geoff Rodoreda, The Mabo Turn in Australian Fiction 155 Ralph Body Anne-Louise Willoughby, Nora Heysen 159 Bettina Burger Xu Daozhi, Indigenous Cultural Capital 163 Victoria Herche Jennifer Debenham, Celluloid Subjects to Digital Directors 167 Henriette von Holleuffer Renate S. Meissner, Exil in Australien 173 The Editors 181 The Contributors 182 ASJ | ZfA Style Sheet 187 DOI: 10.35515/zfa/asj.3334/201920.01 Australian Studies Journal Zeitschrift für Australienstudien 33/34 — 2019/2020 From the editors of this issue The present issue combines two years of work, with the last one under heavy restrictions, postponements and loss. In early 2020, Australia was ravaged by fires that can be explicated not merely as the result of global warming but also as the effects of economic exploitation with all its implications of social and racial injustice. The following worldwide spread of SARS-CoV-2 has led not only to unprecedented restrictions in modern academic life – including the cancella- tion of the 2020 German Australian Studies conference – but it has also shown the intricacies between questions of ecological sustainability, social justice and the exploitation of resources. Persisting and tenacious yet equally malleable and adaptable, narratives of race and racism have infiltrated the debates around socio-ecological disasters and health protection, while at the same time exhibit- ing extant patterns of prejudice. Think of higher mortality rates among socially disadvantaged groups, for one, or the re-awakening of fantasies of nationalist protection. The fears of imported diseases, it can be argued, mirror the fears of a dissolution of national integrity. Historically, references to physical health and disease indeed acted as inte- gral devices to script racialised bodies, with the in-group considered the epitome of utmost health and the subjected out-group inscribed with plagues they were said to be carrying over centuries. To take an admittedly extreme example from German history, as Bernd Gausemaier outlines, Jewish people, since ostensibly exposed to tuberculosis in the past, were classified as resistant transmitters of tuberculosis under Nazism.1 Although most contemporary debates deviate in tone and effect from such radical concepts, they can still hint at similar, if not common, origins. The unearthing of such origins as well as their resonance in the present can hardly be wholistic and straightforward, but rather partial. Race, gender, nation, sexuality, Indigeneity, dis-ability, to name a few, are not isolated socio-historical categories, but entangled. Their analytical disentanglement is a matter of complexity through time and space. An innovative approach to the very disentanglement can be achieved through decidedly trans-national and trans-historical lenses. While the following arti- cles do not systematically combine the three aforementioned subjects per se and while not all of them are strictly trans-national, it is their combined reading that can result in radical interventions in social categories. Contemporary bush fires, for instance, can be related to concepts of race and racism, as much as the trans- lation of Indigenous literature can evince the national and historic shifts in racial narratives. And Australian discourses around the current pandemic, it seems, resemble those of the Spanish Flu of 1918/19 – rhetorics of nationalism and race included. Put succinctly, we invite our readers to also direct their attention to 1 Bernd Gausemaier, Rassenhygienische Radikalisierung und kollegialer Konsens, in: Carola Sachse, Die Verbindung nach Auschwitz. Biowissenschaften und Menschenversuche an Kaiser-Wilhelm-Instituten, Göttingen: Wallstein 2003, p. 186. 6 From the editors subjects beyond their immediate research interest and, instead, to read across the individual articles – indeed to read across time, space and academic disci- plines. We hope this may lead to a broadening not only of individual interest but also of insight to how much seemingly unrelated subjects can exhibit striking relatedness. Henriette von Holleuffer & Oliver Haag (December 2020) Race and Racism in Australian-German Relations DOI: 10.35515/zfa/asj.3334/201920.02 Australian Studies Journal Zeitschrift für Australienstudien 33/34 — 2019/2020 Wulf D. Hund, Stefanie Affeldt ‘Racism’ Down Under The Prehistory of a Concept in Australia Abstract: The conceptual history of ‘racism’ is hitherto underdeveloped. One of its assertions is that the term ‘racism’ originated from a German-centric critique of völkisch and fascist ide- ology. A closer look at the early international usage of the categories ‘racialism’ and ‘racism’ shows that the circumstances were much more complex. Australia lends itself for validation of this complexity. It once shared a colonial border with Germany, had a substantial number of German immigrants, and, during both world wars, was amongst the opponents of Germany. Even so, the reference to Germany is only one of many elements of the early concept of ‘racism’. Racism is older than its name.1 Depending on the interpretative approach, the difference ranges from decades to centuries. Moreover, the conceptual history of ‘racism’2 is a desideratum. Despite the current omnipresence of the term, its etymological emergence and intellectual development are mostly unexplored. This has found widespread expression in the fact that, until today, ‘racism’ is often considered an exonerative term for a kind of racial thinking purportedly not affected by it. This observation applies to early attempts of distinction between race theory and racism that were meant to rescue racial thinking as value-neutral scientific consideration. It also applies to later analyses that consider ‘racism’ as a reaction to the Nazis’ discrimination of parts of the white race. The background of such discursive strategies is observable in the entry “Rasse” [‘race’] in ‘Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe’ [Basic Concepts in History], a principal work of conceptual histo- ry. 3 It was edited by three conservative historians, Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, 1 In the current discussion of the history of racism (which does not deal with the conceptual history), the following positions are, amongst others, taken: – a. Racism is a reactionary ideology that emerged in the nineteenth century (cf. Detlev Claussen, Was heißt Rassis- mus?); – b. Racism has its theoretical roots in Enlightenment thinking (cf. Emmanuel Chuk- wudi Eze, Race and the Enlightenment); – c. Racism is a white ideology that emerged in the context of colonialism and transatlantic slavery (cf., besides numerous contributions from ‘Critical Whiteness’ research, Joe Feagin, The White Racial Frame); – d. Racism dates back at least to the politics