Session 5: National Identity

Session 5: National Identity
Chair: Ginger C. Wang

Defining Deutsch: Encyclopedias, Dictionaries and the Problem of National Belonging in Imperial Germany
Jason Hansen
Department of History, University of Illinois, USA

After many long years of waiting, the nationalist dreams of German patriots were finally answered in 1871 by the creation of a new, explicitly national German state.  Its first constitution affirmed this principle, stating in its opening paragraph that it had been formed “zur Pflege der Wohlfahrt des Deutschen Volkes.”  But who were these ‘Germans’ in whose name the new Reich had been established?  For German national identity prior to 1871 had generally been imagined in ethno-cultural, rather than political terms.  What was to be the relationship between the Empire and millions of ‘Germans’ who lived outside its borders?  Would members of other ‘national’ groups (Danes, Poles, Frenchmen) living within it now be recognized as ‘Germans’?
This paper will examine the answers Germans developed to the problematic nature of national identity after 1871 within the context of popular dictionaries, encyclopedias and almanacs, who were supposed to convey knowledge about the nation to a broader reading public. (My primary sources will be: Brockhaus Konversations-Lexikon, Meyers Konversations-Lexikon,  Universal-Lexikon der Gegenwart und Vergangenheit.) In particular, I examine the ways in which they tried to differentiate between conceptions of Kultur- and Staatsnation, ideas which they tried to map onto the terms Volk and Nation.  I follow the evolution of this discourse from unification until 1914, showing how these efforts failed to produce consensus about both the location of national belonging and the meaning of the terms used to represented different viewpoints of it.
In the end, I hope to reveal the enduring nature of the complexities of negotiating political versus cultural identity in the Kaiserreich, while suggesting that popular culture and its image of the nation was much more resistant to the forces of modernity/modernization than scholars of nationalism (Gellner) have previously argued.  On the eve of the First World War, German national belonging was still in a process of negotiation, constructed primarily at the local or individual level.

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The Nation in the News – Managing National Identities in Old and New Media
Sidsel Fabech
Copenhagen Business School, IKK – Department of International Culture and Communication Studies, Frederiksberg, Denmark

In my paper media texts are analysed in order to find places in everyday discourse, where identity constructions are constructed and contested. I explore the role that old and new media play in the construction and distribution of national identity constructions. Media like television, newspaper and newsmagazines have long been said to hold the power to define and represent national culture and identity. With the increasing globalization of cultures and the following need to redefine and negotiate national identity, the function of media as carrier and creator of identity seems to be reinforced.
It is my aim to discuss how news media establish themselves as representatives of a certain national identity and narrative and are positioned in the national media landscape according to this. This paper raises the questions: Do national identity constructions need their “own” national media in order to settle and gain importance? And how do rather stable and traditional identity landscapes react to the new media? What possibilities do new media bring for especially alternative identity constructions?
To answer these questions I focus on Austrian national identity. Due to the cultural and political metamorphosis which this nation has undergone this last century, it compresses the cultural history of Europe and therefore makes a relevant case study. In this single case one encounters processes of cultural change ranging from the multiculturalism of the imperial Austria to the “germanization” of the National Socialism and now finally the migration processes of the globalization. Drawing on this history I aim to show that today’s rivalry between contesting national Austrian identities is often rooted in the question of how to manage media narratives about the nation’s past as well as its future role in a globalized world.

(Re)inventing Rabin: A Case Study in the Construction of Israeli Identity
Katherine Harbord
Institute for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, School of Government and International Affairs, Durham University, Durham, United Kingdom

“Break their bones!” This was Yitzhak Rabin’s order to the soldiers involved in trying to put down the Palestinian uprising at the end of the 1980s.  Yet less than ten years later, in the wake of his assassination in 1995, Rabin was hailed as a “martyr for peace”.  This paper examines this transformation in the Rabin narrative, and contextualises it within the narrative of Israeli identity.
Taking an ethno-symbolic approach, this paper contends that Israeli identity has strong components of myth, symbol and territoriality within it, and argues that these elements undergo a process of constant redefinition and reinterpretation.  The paper asserts that this is a partial result of the strong cultural impact of “Jewishness”, particularly in terms of commemoration and collective memory, upon Israeli identity.  Using the case of Rabin, the paper then illustrates the way in which myths are developed to serve the needs of national identity within Israel.  It demonstrates that these myths are mutable and subject to constant redefinition, influenced by a number of factors, including the perception of the “other”.
Although the paper acknowledges that Rabin’s transformation began somewhat prior to his assassination, it focuses on the process during the first year after the murder, and then conducts a reassessment of this at the ten-year stage.  The paper explores various facets by which Rabin became transformed into the “ultimate sabra” and the “nation’s grandfather” and examines the way in which the Rabin myth has been used to promote and strengthen the nation’s identity during the last ten years.  Focussing on the use of cultural tradition to root this myth within the national psyche, the paper examines issues of commemoration, territory and symbolism surrounding the Rabin narrative, and the ways in which these have changed.
The paper concludes by demonstrating the similarities between this process and those surrounding earlier national myths, showing that the collective cultural element is a vital component of Israeli identity.