Report: German Studies Association Session Nr. 29: "Creating the Eternal
Nation: Popular Science and Historical Knowledge in Imperial Germany"


Panelists and Papers:

"Telling the Story of Ancient Germany: Prehistoric Archaeology as a Literary
Source in Imperial Germany," Brent Maner, Kansas State University.

"The Woodland Metaphor: The Forest as Social and Racial Model," Jeff Wilson,
University of New Orleans.

"Racializing the Nation: The Mobilization of Anthropology during World War
I," Andrew Evans, SUNY New Paltz.

Commentator: Lynn Nyhart, University of Wisconsin, Madison.


This panel analyzed one of the more important aspects in the continuing
discussion of modern nationalism: the ways that scientific and cultural
endeavors explained the nation as a natural entity.   The papers addressed
the ways in which scientists from three very different fields of endeavor -
forestry, domestic archeology, and physical anthropology - argued for
natural and physical constants in the long narrative of German history in
order to explain Imperial Germany as a unified and historic entity,
particularly when addressing their work to a wider public.  As Lynn Nyhart
explained in her comments, all three papers were concerned with "how
particular Germans took the idea of 'Germanness' out of the changing,
political, present and identified it with features that transcended the
moment."  Although these "particular Germans" were situated in a variety of
professional and non-professional settings, they all mobilized the prestige
and authority of science to bolster their claims.

Brent Maner's paper explored the use of prehistoric archeology in late
nineteenth-century literary narratives.  His particular focus was a series
of historical novels that appeared in the 1870s, each of which drew on
growing popular enthusiasm for archeology and prehistory to locate the roots
of the German nation-state in the pre-medieval past.  In each case, authors
referenced local archeology in an attempt to link the concept of nation
tightly to place and create mythologies of national continuity.  David
Friedrich Weinland's novels _Kunig Hartfest_ and _Rulaman_ not only
connected romantic narratives of the Germanic past to the present day, but
also included detailed descriptions of archeological finds and museum images
of excavated objects to fire the historical imagination of his readers.
Felix Dahn's _Ein Kampf um Rom_ provided a narrative of ancient Germanic
leaders who fought for freedom against obstructionist powers and outside
influences.   In these works, prehistory served as the concrete link between
the contemporary nation and Germany's ancient past.  Maner concluded that
historical novels combined with public practices like local digs and the
construction of the Hermann memorial near Detmold to make
late-nineteenth-century archeology a crucial avenue for connecting the
modern German nation-state to an ancient German past.

Jeff Wilson analyzed the construction of the nation in scientific writings
on the German forest.  His paper examined the ways in which three writers
used the forest as a model or metaphor to understand society and the nation.
The zoologist Emil Rossmaessler, the microbiologist Raoul France, and the
forester Rudolf Dueesberg went beyond simple comparisons of vegetable and
human societies.  Wilson argued that they transformed the sylvan metaphor
into a program for reform and applied biological models to society.
Rossmaessler, a liberal of the 1848 generation, compared trees to
individuals and used the forest to advance a vision of a harmonious nation
of "citizens" in which class divisions were normalized.  France saw
cooperation and hierarchy in the metaphorical world of the woods, where
formations of plant life suggested to him that similar collaboration between
unequal class groupings were essential to hold society together.  Dueesberg,
on the other hand, offered a racialized vision of the German woods in his
turn-of-the-century work.  In his view, the German forest had been disrupted
by industrialization, just as alien capitalism had severed the traditional
connection between the "German race" and the soil.   Wilson argued that in
all three cases the forest provided a model of social unity in an age when
the bonds of nationhood were tenuous.  Each writer "found alternative images
of the nation - stressing social harmony and political unity - in the
woods."

Andy Evans' paper analyzed the "mobilization" of physical anthropology
during World War I.  From 1914 to 1918, a number of German scientists
applied anthropological analysis to the peoples and events of World War I in
a variety of public venues and popular publications.  Evans argued that
anthropologists of varying political and professional backgrounds undertook
a biologization of the nations and ethnic groups involved in the war.  By
drawing on the flexible notion of "blood," members of the discipline implied
that nations were not simply political or cultural entities of relatively
recent lineage, but rather categories with deeper biological and racial
histories.  Anthropologists posited biological links among the peoples of
the Central Powers on the one hand, while also portraying European enemies
as non-European racial aliens on the other.  Evans suggested that this
wartime practice marked a further move away from an earlier liberal
tradition in the discipline, which had been characterized in part by an
unwillingness to address the issue of nationality.

In her commentary, Lynn Nyhart analyzed the papers in relation to the two
parts of the session title.  On the issue of "Creating the Eternal Nation,"
she noted the different methods of identifying the nation-state with
features that rose above the present political moment, including the
"naturalization" of the concept of nation, the creation of transcendent
national symbols like Hermann, and the construction or national origin or
lineage stories.  The bulk of Nyhart's comments, however, were directed at
the second half of the session title, "Popular Science and Historical
Knowledge in Imperial Germany."  Approaching the papers as an historian of
science, Nyhart astutely argued that there was great potential for tension
in the use of science to construct symbols or metaphors of nation, since
science claimed to be concerned with objective knowledge, not symbolic or
metaphorical meanings.  She further suggested that closer attention to the
professional and institutional contexts in which the various actors operated
might be useful in making sense of these tensions.  A botanist or anatomist
speaking from the professor's lecturn, for example, might negotiate the
potential contradictions between symbolic meanings and scientific claims
differently than a professional popularizer or novelist.  Nyhart also
expressed enthusiasm for the analysis of "origin stories" as a way to bridge
the gap between science and symbol.  On the whole, Nyhart supported the
attempt to explore the connections between science and nation.   She further
encouraged each panelist to connect texts more directly to contexts in order
to get a richer sense of the meanings operating in each.

A central question that emerged in the wider discussion that followed was
what exactly the scientists in each paper were arguing against.  What were
the contemporary discourses about nation that these scientists were anxious
to disprove or refute?  Audience members also asked about the use of race
and the timing of the racialization present in the papers by Wilson and
Evans.  Was the increased use of race around the turn of the century and
during World War I in any way connected to colonialism and the racialization
of non-Europeans in the imperial realm?  Brent Maner was asked about the
romantic search for an early past in about other national literatures.  Was
this a phenomenon that occurred in other countries besides Germany?  The
ensuing discussion continued over lunch, where the panelists and several
members of the audience convened to talk about their research in more
detail.

Andrew Evans
History Department
SUNY New Paltz


For a complete listing of all sessions at the 2002 German Studies
Association Conference, please visit www.g-s-a.org/.

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