Inventing the German Nation in Travel Literature, 1738-1839

Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-1-64014-138-4
Verlag: Boydell & Brewer

Buch, Englisch, Band 248, 290 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 558 g

Reihe: Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture

Argues that German national identity was fostered, and even invented, in and through travelogues and other travel writing.

Far into the nineteenth century, Germany remained a collection of separate principalities. Scholars have long debated the causes and implications of this "belatedness" relative to other European nations like England and France. This book offers a fresh perspective by arguing that travel literature helped shape a distinct and cohesive German identity well before political unification in 1871. Beginning in the eighteenth century, foreign travelers' accounts depicted "Germany" as a distinct place despite its political divisions, thus allowing German readers to imagine their fragmented nation as a conceptual whole. Ethnographic descriptions from distant places further aided this process as Germans learned to view themselves through this particular lens. Around 1800, Germans, too, began to explore their homeland and describe their experiences, creating travelogues that solidified the nascent sense of national identity.

Drawing on a vast collection of German, British, and French travelogues, travel handbooks, and popular geographic texts, Karin Baumgartner examines how travel writing reflects shifts in geographic paradigms and national identity in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Germany. Incorporating discourses of nationalism and geography, including Edward Soja's influential concept of Thirdspace, Baumgartner illuminates how these texts encapsulated evolving perceptions of space that forged a specific German national identity.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Baumgartner, Karin

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Deutsche Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Deutsche Literatur
• Sozialwissenschaften Sport | Tourismus | Freizeit Tourismus & Reise Reise & Urlaub: Führer, Landkarten, Pläne
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gender Studies, Geschlechtersoziologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments
Introduction

1. On the Beaten Track: Foreign Travel in Germany, 1749-1839
2. Travel and Exploration in Cotta's Morgenblatt für gebildete Stände, 1807-1828
3. Discovering the Nation within: Domestic Travelogues, 1781-1821
4. The German Homeland in Das malerische und romantische Deutschland in zehn Sektionen
5. Finding the Proto-Nation at the Spa

Conclusion
Appendix: Travelogues used in Data Set
Works Cited
Primary Sources
Secondary Sources
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Baumgartner, Karin
KARIN BAUMGARTNER is Professor of German at the University of Utah.