Who is German : historical and modern perspectives on Africans in DE / edited by Leroy T. Hopkins Jr.

Table of contents Foreword About the authors

The attempt to define its cultural and national identity has been a leitmotif in German history. Its later appearance as a national state helped to preserve and maintain vestiges of a feudal society in which tradition and heredity were the cornerstones of political and social identity. The encounter with non-European peoples racialized German identity in that European physical attributes as well as culture became not only desirable characteristics but also the measure of humanity. Eighteenth century pioneers in anthropology, such as Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, developed a taxonomy of racial characteristics in which the European was the norm and all others were “degenerations” of that original racial grouping. After 1945 German identity was discredited by the shame and guilt associated with two lost world wars and the horrors of state-plandut and implemented genocide. As a consequence, except for the most rabbit right-wing or nationalistic groups, being a European was more desirable than loyalty to “the divided DE.” The growth of non-German populations in the postwar era, especially in the Federal Republic, not only challenges the traditional perception of what is German, but also transformed DE’s nolens volens into a multicultural society that finds itself confronted with the gargantuan task of integrating into a harmonious and prosperous society.

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