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Germany and Britain, 1870 - 1914 Sonderdrucke aus der Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg JÖRN LEONHARD Construction and Perception of National Images: Germany and Britain, 1870 - 1914 Originalbeitrag erschienen in: The Linacre Journal 67 (2000), S. [45] - 67 * The Linacre Journal A Review of Research in the Humanities `The Fatal Circle: Nationalism and Ethnic Identity into the 21st Century The Linacre Journal A Review of Research in the Humanities The Linacre Journal is an interdisciplinary academic forum for those with an interest in the strength and direction of research in the humanities and social sciences. The Linacre Journal publishes research papers and 'work in progress' from current and former members of the College as well as from other Oxford colleges and the wider academic community. Preference is given to articles in the humanities and social sciences, although contributions from the pure sciences are also welcome provided that the work is accessible to non- specialists. GENERAL EDITORS (ISSUE 4) Daniel Gallimore and Dimitrina Mihaylova The Editors would like to thank Christopher Garner (Nuffield), who conceived the issue's theme, and among college staff Stephen Hague, Dr. Anne Keene, and Emma Clack. They would also like to thank John Carlarne, Jean de Lannoy, Justin Meiland, Elizabeth Zacharias and many other students for their help in this issue's production. Previous Editors Debbie Gupta and Ian Ochiltree (1997) Joe Luscombe and Christine Parsons (1998) Cecily Crampin and Christine Parsons (1999) To contribute to future issues, write to The Linacre Journal, Linacre College, Oxford OX1 3JA, or send an e-mail to journal@ linacre.ox.ac.uk. Back-copies of Issues 1, 2 and 3 (Gilbert Ryle issue) are available from the above address at the reduced price of £6.95 each. The Linacre Journal is published with the financial assistance of the Governing Body and Common Room of Linacre College. All materials published in The Linacre Journal are the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the General Editors or of Linacre College. Published material remains under copyright and cannot be reproduced without permission. © The Linacre Journal ISSN 2368-7263 Construction and Perception of National Images: Germany and Britain, 1870-1914 Jam Leonhard This paper investigates the complex function and mechanism of national stereotypes in developing and expressing national identities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, by examining national images of Germany in Britain and of Britain in Germany from 1870 to the First World War and by taking into consideration different levels of literary, scientific and political discourse. After discussing the theoretical background of national images, national stereotypes, and the nation as a cultural system, the paper analyses the representation of Germany and Germans in English literature of the period, demonstrating the politicisation of specific cultural sterotypes after 1870. This is followed by an examination of the political and scientific discourses in Britain in which Germany first appeared as a positive model of progress. After 1890, however, the changing political climate led to a new image of Germany as a political and industrial rival. The comparison with German views of Britain underlines an asymmetrical perception: for German liberals in particular Britain served as a political and constitutional model, but, depending on different political and social groups, negative stereotypes of Britain developed during the 1880s and 1890s. Finally, the radicalisation of national stereotypes during the First World War in Germany and to a © The Linacre Journal ISSN 2368-7263 Number 4, December 2000 46 The Linacre Journal lesser extent also in Britain was based on a specific conception of an apparently unavoidable conflict between antagonistic cultures. On the basis of this comparative analysis, the paper finally discusses specific functions and mechanisms of national stereotypes for internal nation-building in both countries. From mild to cold blue eyes: British perceptions of the German between 1870 and 1914 Writing on the period around 1870 and the general image of Germany and Germans in Britain, Frederic William Maitland remarked that it had been common in these days `to paint the German as an unpractical, dreamy, sentimental being, looking out with mild blue eyes into a cloud of music and metaphysics and tobacco smoke' (Maitland 1911: 475). Yet at the same time that Maitland's papers were published in 1911, Katherine Mansfield portrayed Germany and Germans in a completely different way, but again referring to the blue eyes of a German. In her collection In a German Pension, published the same year, she described a German in the short story `Germans at Meat': 'He [Herr Rath] fixed his cold blue eyes upon me with an expression which suggested a thousand premediated invasions' (Mansfield 1964: 10). Rudyard Kipling went even further when, in the same year 1911, he remarked on the occasion of the second Morocco crisis: 'Meanwhile the Teuton has his large cold eye on us and prepares to give us toko when he feels good and ready' (Miillenbrock 1995: 303, 311; Miillenbrock 1964: 98). Maitland's, Mansfield's and Kipling' s account of the changing blue eyes, from mild to cold, reads like a literary reflection of the major transformation of the image of Germany which took place in Britain during the last third of the 19th century. Whereas Maitland represented a still merely depoliticized view of romantic Germany, Katherine Mansfield's description of 1911 implicitly anticipated her audience's essentially political understanding of `cold blue eyes' as an expression of political aspiration: the German Herr Rath was no longer the dreaming, idealistic, independent, yet slightly odd Professor TeufelsdrOckh of Carlyles's Sartor Resartus (1833/34) (Hollenberg 1974: 166; O'Sullivan 1994; Oergel 1998). Mansfield's use of a distinctly negative connotation reflected a specific expectation of her audience (Weinek 1938; Schultz 1939; Hildebrand 1980; Fischer 1981; Dose 1986; Blaicher 1992). National Images: Germany and Britain, 1870-1914 47 National images, national stereotypes, and the nation as a cultural system This paper examines different perceptions of national images of Germany in Britain and of Britain in Germany in the period between 1870 and 1914 in order to analyse the diversity of national images and their functions and to challenge the often implicitly underlying or explicit view of an inevitable Anglo-German 'antagonism' before 1914. For this analysis it is essential to distinguish between images and perceptions on the one hand and political, socio-economic and cultural realities as objects of perception on the other. On a second level, the specific interrelation between image, object and position and interest of the perceiving institution, be it an individual or a social group, is of prime interest. Starting with a definition, national stereotypes can be described as those images of a certain temporary constancy and discoursive consistency which are designed so as to understand other nations' particular character in contrast to, that is on the basis of an implicit or explicit comparison with one's own nation (Lippmann 1922; Allport 1954/66; Horkheimer 1963; Jervis 1983; Krakau 1985). The basic premise of this paper is based on to the distinction between individual and collective perceptions. National images/stereotypes form part of the nation as a cultural system (Geertz 1973; White 1975; Duijker/Frijda 1960). This in turn refers to internal nation-building as being determined by such factors as collective memories, traditions, political and social arrangements, value patterns and particular institutions. In order to survive as a nation in a context of potentially antagonistic nations, it is necessary to produce positive meaning of ideas, concepts and interpretations which define each individual's role within the nation's collective. This is the function of myths and symbols and also that of national images/stereotypes: as autostereotypes they are designed to justify the historical and social existence in relation to the own nation or, as heterostereotypes, in relation to external nations' otherness (Krakau 1985: 16). Politicisation of a cultural stereotype: Germany and Germans in English literature Maitland's description of the romantic character of Germans stood for an interpretation which had already reduced Germany's complex political reality in the first half of the century to a rather simple national but overall unpolitical image. In the words of Robert Browning, the Germany of the early century was similar to 'a tall, old, quaint irregular town' (Pulzer 1996: 48 The Linacre Journal 235). This image still dominated English literature in the 1870s, as for example in Matthew Arnold's collection of essays Friendships Garland (1866-1870), but it became more and more challenged in the aftermath of the French-Prussian war of 1870/71. The cliché of the barbarious German, which had formed part of the image of the Germans since the middle ages following Tacitus' Germania, was still intact and had also been implicitly included in the Romantic image. Thus Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who knew Germany from many journeys there, portrayed the German cultural nation and the country of Dichter and Denker (`poets and thinkers'). His novel The Parisians (1873) referred to the barbarian but regarded rather the French as the prime example of this national category (Bulwer-Lytton 1889: 278; Miillenbrock 1995: 312). A different picture emerged, however, from the British press following the events in 1870, especially after the battle of Sedan and the bombardment of Paris by German artillery. A changing paradigm was anticipated in these comments. In his essay on 'France and Germany', John Morley insisted 'that Germany at this moment stands for any barbarous principles; for military power, for aristocracy and feudalism, for divine right, and so on' (Morley 1870: 370). In an even more aggressive tone, Frederic Harrison revoked Tacitus' stereotype of a people of warriors when mentioning German soldiers who had destroyed French villages 'in cold blood' (Harrison 1870: 632).
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