A Lost Homeland, a Reinvented Homeland: Diaspora and the ‚Culture of Memory‘ in the Colony of Danube Swabians of Entre Rios
This essay details the emergence of an idea of Danube Swabians as eternal colonizers, created by and about one group that settled Entre Rios, in the state of Paraná in postwar southern Brazil. This essay traces the wanderings of these Danube Swabians from south-eastern Europe to Brazil, and it explores how the intersection of their memories of multiple expulsions and survival were coupled with their characterizations as Germans in both Europe and Brazil. In turn, it shows how the colonists and others used those couplings to construct the basis of their trans-Atlantic identity as Germans/Swabians/Brazilians.
Quelle: http://gh.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/33/3/439?rss=1
The Enduring Politics of German-Brazilian Ethnicity
This article explores the divergent ends to which historical actors deployed notions of ethnic and national identities in shifting local, national and transnational contexts. Specifically, it traces the trajectory of one German-Brazilian ethnic voluntary association—the 25th of July Movement—as various stakeholders attempted to inscribe both positive and negative notions of Germanness on the group and its members. It argues that the politics of identification was of enduring significance not just to Brazil’s ethnic Germans themselves, but also to the emergence of postwar West Germany and Brazil.
Quelle: http://gh.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/33/3/423?rss=1
‚Auslandsdeutschtum‘ in Brazil (1919-1941): Global Discourses and Local Histories
German emigrants became the focus of attention for German proponents of colonialism in the nineteenth century. German emigrants in southern Brazil especially were supposed to stimulate German trade as well as secure German prestige and influence. After World War I, German colonial discourses about Brazil continued under different circumstances and in a slightly new constellation of actors. Private societies, ecclesiastical institutions and scientific actors continued to preserve Deutschtum in Brazil, but instead of constructing the Germans in Brazil as civilizing pioneers, as they did before 1918, they co-opted them into a wider conception of the German Volksgemeinschaft that was constructed as a community of victims. The loss of the war led to this discourse, which covered not only Brazil, but also other regions in the world with German-speaking communities, and above all eastern Europe. The image of the misjudged German fitted well to the Brazilian context, where German-speaking persons were nationalized and in some cases persecuted during the war. However, the immigrants not only adopted these ideas but also criticized and changed them by elaborating new German-Brazilian identities.
Quelle: http://gh.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/33/3/405?rss=1