H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-German@h-net.msu.edu (November, 2009)

Waldemar Zacharasiewicz. _Images of Germany in American Literature_.
Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2007. 264 pp. $39.95 (cloth),
ISBN 978-1-58729-524-9.

Reviewed for H-German by Gabor Szegedi, Central European University

Accounts of the "Other"

Waldemar Zacharasiewicz's book about images of Germany in American
literature deals with a relatively long time period--about two hundred
years--stretching from the beginning of the nineteenth century until
the end of the twentieth. The author does not intend to present the
reader with a snapshot of an era, but rather wants to show continuity
and change in the way Germany was seen in America and make the reader
realize how much has changed throughout these two hundred years and
how much has remained the same. The author is a professor of English,
American, and Canadian studies and the book he wrote is a truly
interdisciplinary one: the sources are literary texts, travelogues,
letters, and even other types of media (films, caricatures) and the
book places itself in the new interdisciplinary field of "comparative
imagology," that is, how literature depicts the different images
certain nations have created about each other.

In the introduction, as part of the presentation of his methodology,
the author also notes that literature can be understood as "part of a
social practice in which the power politics of dominant groups and the
interplay of forces acquire considerable importance" (p. 2). In other
words, literature in this book is presented not as art or aesthetics,
but rather as a group of sources that conveys an image of the social
reality of a certain society or even as a tool for participating in
politics either on the national or the international scene.
Zacharasiewicz also notes that the images conveyed in these literary
texts are "heterostereotypes," or stereotypes of the other, and they
are intended to confirm or perhaps to challenge the autostereotype,
the stereotype of the self. Thus, when we read about Americans writing
about Germany and the Germans we should always keep in mind that the
stereotypes presented are in a way related to the image of American
society that exists in the mind of the author (or perhaps in the
collective self).

The book proceeds in chronological order, starting with the early
nineteenth century and finishing its analysis at the end of the
twentieth century and providing a glance towards the future. The
diachronic analysis enables us to see how stereotypes of Germans
changed from decade to decade and we are also reminded of the
background--the social or political reality that is the origin of
these new images. For example, in the first half of the nineteenth
century, the image of Germans was primarily shaped by American
scholars and students traveling to famous German universities as well
as by the fame of German artists and thinkers (_Dichter und Denker_).
The heterostereotypes presented in literature also reflected this
positive attitude. Nevertheless, when Germany was united under the
aegis of the militaristic Prussian state, and especially after the
Franco-Prussian War, this image changed significantly, not just
because Germany itself was transformed but also because new
"messengers" were reporting about the changing country. A new group of
American authors (a notable example was Henry James) saw Germany as a
threat and an opponent of American values and thus changed the
heterostereotype that had existed for many decades. Zacharasiewicz
mentions a few authors that played a vital role in shaping these
changing images and many of them will be familiar to readers even
slightly acquainted with American literature of the past two hundred
years. The book is an exciting reading experience in this sense; one
is able to discover the new sides of already familiar American authors
and obtain ideas for new readings of these writers. The list of
authors (and their texts) is impressive--including Mark Twain, Kurt
Vonnegut, James, and William Styron, just to name a few; it shows the
depth to which the author reached to compose his thorough
"imagological" analysis. It was an excellent idea to include short
detours from literature to discuss films and political cartoons. This
material is naturally much less detailed, providing only an overview
of general tendencies. Nevertheless, it adds some new angles on the
picture constituted in literature by confirming the idea that the
definition of "literature" or "text" has become much broader in the
past few decades. The political cartoons and caricatures included in
the book enable us to visualize more easily the "images" presented in
these heterostereotypes.

The stereotypes discussed in this book are not unfamiliar: the
studious, stern, and hard-working Germans; German housewives,
restricted to _Kirche_, _Küche_ and _Kinder_; German "Gemütlichkeit"
and love of worldly pleasures; and, from the twentieth century, the
barbarous Hun and the Nazi, both excellent heterostereotypes for
Americans, as they represent everything that America as "home of the
free" opposes. In the closing chapter of the book ("A Look Toward the
Future"), Zacharasiewicz tries to assess current images of Germany in
America and think about possible new images that may appear in the
future. He reflects on the debate initiated by Daniel J. Goldhagen's
work, mentioning that the generalizations Goldhagen made about Germans
were criticized both in Germany and America; even so, he acknowledges
that the large amount of literature and films on the Holocaust and the
fact that the image of "the Nazi" has remained vivid in the American
mind suggests that Germany is still very often associated with
National Socialism. Zacharasiewicz hopes for new, more positive
stereotypes about Germans and believes that the end of communism might
have initiated a reassessment of central Europe among American
intellectuals. At the same time, however, he remains realistic by
stating that another generation may need to pass before new, more
positive stereotypes about Germans will start to develop on the other
side of the Atlantic.

Citation: Gabor Szegedi. Review of Zacharasiewicz, Waldemar, _Images
of Germany in American Literature_. H-German, H-Net Reviews. November,
2009. URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=24205

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States
License.

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