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Louisiana State University

Germanophilia

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British Identity And The German Other, William F. Bertolette Jan 2012

British Identity And The German Other, William F. Bertolette

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

British identity evolved through conscious comparisons with foreigners as well as through the cultivation of indigenous social, economic and political institutions. The German other in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain, like the French other in previous centuries, provided a psychological path toward unity against a perceived common enemy. Because German stereotypes brought into sharp focus what the British believed themselves not to be, they provided a framework for defining Britishness beyond Britain’s own internal divisions of race, ethnicity, class, religion, gender and politics. Post-World War II devolution and European integration have since revived British internal national divisions. The image of innocuous …


German Stereotypes In British Magazines Prior To World War I, William F. Bertolette Jan 2004

German Stereotypes In British Magazines Prior To World War I, William F. Bertolette

LSU Master's Theses

The British image of Germany as England's "poor relation," a backward cluster of feudal states, gave way during the nineteenth century to the stereotype of England's archenemy and imperial rival. This shift from innocuous Old Germany to menacing New Germany accelerated after German unification in 1871 as German economic growth and imperial ambitions became topics for commentary in British journals. But the stereotypical "German Michael," or rustic simpleton, and other images of self-effacing servile, loyal, honest and passive Old Germany lingered on into the late nineteenth century as a "straw man" for alarmist Germanophobes to dispel with new counter-stereotypes. These …