Raising Germans in the age of empire : youth and colonial culture, 1871-1914 / Jeff Bowersox.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bowersox, Jeff, author.

Contributor:

Alumni and Friends Memorial Book Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Imperialism in popular culture--Germany--History--19th century.

Imperialism in popular culture.

Imperialism in popular culture--Germany--History--20th century.

Youth--Germany--Attitudes--History--19th century.

Youth.

Youth--Germany--Attitudes--History--20th century.

Education and state--Germany--History.

Education and state.

History.

Germany.

Germany--Social conditions--1871-1918.

Social conditions.

Physical Description:

xv, 239 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford, United Kingdom : Oxford University Press, 2013.

Summary:

Raising Germans in the Age of Empire is a cultural history of the German colonial imagination around the turn of the twentieth century. Looking beyond the colonialist movement, it focuses on young Germans who grew up during this era and the various commercial and educational media through which they daily encountered the wider world. Using their imaginary colonial encounters, Jeff Bowersox explores how Germans young and old came to terms with a globalizing world. Chapters on toys, school instruction, popular literature, and the Boy Scouts (or Pfadfinder) reveal how Germans, through mass consumer culture and mass education, built a definitive association between colonial hierarchies and Germany's place in the modern age. By 1914 this colonial sensibility had been accepted as common sense, but it always remained flexible and vague. It could be adapted to serve competing and contradictory purposes, ranging from profit and pedagogical reform to nationalist mobilization and international socialist solidarity. Thus, as young Germans used images of imperialism to construct their own fantastical adventures, adults tried to use those same images to ward off the worst excesses of industrial modernity and to mold young people into capable and productive citizens. The result was a chaotic multitude of imagined empires vying for space in the public arena as Germans debated how best to raise the next generation of children. Raising Germans in the Age of Empire explains how colonial visions not only shaped Germans' engagement with globalization but also determined how they understood themselves as a modern nation. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction : grappling with empire

Playing empire : toys, games, and the German colonial imaginary

Studying empire : classroom instruction, school geographers, and pedagogical reform

Seeing empire : colonialist expertise and spectacular lessons outside the classroom

Reeding empire : politics, gender, confession, and class in commercial youth literature

Living empire : the pathfinders and conflicts between patriotism and pedagogy

Conclusion : growing up with empire.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Alumni and Friends Memorial Book Fund.

ISBN:

9780199641093

0199641099

OCLC:

847140389