Sweeping the German Nation: Domesticity and National Identity in Germany, 1870-1945Is cleanliness next to Germanness, as some nineteenth-century nationalists insisted? This book explores the relationship between gender roles, domesticity, and German national identity between 1870–1945. After German unification, approaches to household management that had originally emerged among the bourgeoisie became central to German national identity by 1914. Thrift, order, and extreme cleanliness, along with particular domestic markers (such as the linen cabinet) and holiday customs, were used by many Germans to define the distinctions between themselves and neighboring cultures. What was bourgeois at home became German abroad, as 'German domesticity' also helped to define and underwrite colonial identities in Southwest Africa and elsewhere. After 1933, this idealized notion of domestic Germanness was racialized and incorporated into an array of Nazi social politics. In occupied Eastern Europe during WWII Nazi women's groups used these approaches to household management in their attempts to 'Germanize' Eastern European women who were part of a large-scale project of population resettlement and ethnic cleansing. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
The Habitus of Domesticity | 16 |
FourYear Plan | 144 |
Domesticity and Germanization in Occupied | 181 |
Bibliography | 225 |
Index | 245 |
Other editions - View all
Sweeping the German Nation: Domesticity and National Identity in Germany ... Nancy R. Reagin No preview available - 2008 |
Sweeping the German Nation: Domesticity and National Identity in Germany ... Nancy Ruth Reagin No preview available - 2007 |
Common terms and phrases
advice literature argued associations autarkic BA NS BA R 49 Berlin block wardens bourgeois housewives bourgeois women bourgeoisie Catholic housewives Christmas clean cleanliness clothing colonial consumer consumption cooking courses culture Deutsche Hausfrau deutschen discussions DNVP domestic science ethnic German f¨ur families family’s female Frau Frauenschaft German advisors German bourgeoisie German domesticity German housewives German identity German national identity German Southwest Africa German women Germany’s Hashude Hausfrauen Hauswirtschaft holiday home economics household management housekeeping housewife housework imagined community Imperial Germany Jewish leaders Lina Morgenstern linens metropolitan German Mother Cross Nazi Four-Year Plan Nazi Party Nazi women’s groups Nazi Women’s League norms NS Women’s NS-Frauenschaft NWSM policies Polish political popular practices programs promoted Quark racial recipes Reich resettled rural housewives shortages symbols thrift tions University Press urban housewives Volk Volksdeutschen Volksgemeinschaft Weimar period wives woman Women’s Bureau women’s movement women’s organizations working-class