Arts, Faculty of
History, Department of
DSpace
Prantner, Emma
Language in Crisis: Der Deutsche Schulverein and German Speakers in the Austro-Hungarian Empire By Emma Prantner Course: HIST 449, Honours Graduating Essay Instructor: Dr. Bradley Miller A graduating thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in The Faculty of Arts History department We accept this thesis as confirming to the required standard Supervisor: Dr. Bryce Committee Members: Dr. Brain and Dr. Byrne University of British Columbia 9 April 2024 2 Table of Contents Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................... 3 Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 4 Chapter 1: The Beginning of the End: The Decline of German Linguistic Hegemony ........... 15 Chapter 2: Imperial Delusions: A New Form of German Nationalism .................................... 33 Chapter 3: Auslandsschulwesen and Linguistic Nationalisation ............................................. 52 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 71 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................ 75 3 Acknowledgements This project could not have come together without the guidance of my supervisor Dr. Bryce and the support of the UBC History department’s professors. Dr Bryce, I’ve learned a great deal from you about writing history. Thank you for your time, encouragement and insights throughout the past year. Dr. Miller, thank you for making HIST433 such an interactive learning space. I value our class discussions and the feedback that you’ve given me. Dr. Byrne and Dr. Brain, thank you for taking the time to think about my thesis and for engaging in conversation over the larger implications of this piece of historical work. I’m honoured to have had the change to contribute something to the historiography of German nationalism. I’d also like to thank my history honours cohort: you’ve all made this year so much more enjoyable. I will look back on our Koerners afternoons with fondness. Among you, I found myself for the first time surrounded by a group of academic peers with whom I could engage in fascinating conversations over a pint of beer. I value all your opinions and the feedback you have given me both in and outside of class. Tenaya, thank you for being a sounding board to bounce my ideas and worries off. Thank you for listening to me and allowing me to talk through my thoughts in a safe space. Thank you for latching onto me last September as hard as I latched onto you. Lastly, to my family: thank you for your endless love and encouragement. Your unwavering belief in my capabilities allowed me to take the initial leap and pursue a major in history. Thank you for never once questioning my decision to move to Vancouver, which, as I’ve learned, is very far from home. 4 Introduction “Since around 1906 German schools abroad have been presented with a new, important task. This is based on the opinion that these schools need to spread the knowledge of the German language and a proper picture of Germany to foreign peoples to a greater extent than before, with the aim to familiarise the widest possible circles with German culture and education in order to win them over as friends of Germany.”1 So began a Memorandum from the Foreign Office on the German Schools Abroad (Denkschrift des Auswertigen Amtes über das deutsche Auslandsschulwesen) in 1914. German Schools abroad, since the inception of the General German School League for the Preservation of Germanness Abroad, Deutscher Schulverein zur Erhaltung des Deutschtums im Ausland, in 1881, were tasked with advancing German education, and more importantly, the German language among German-speaking minorities abroad. At the end of the nineteenth century, the School League linked German language hegemony to the future of the German Empire to give ground for their work to further a German education abroad. The German Schools abroad became a piece of imperial Germany embedded into the local social fabric, bringing together German speakers across the globe in an imagined community. The German School League was founded upon the fear of the German language losing its prestige and power to Slavic, Czech or Hungarian languages: the League saw the German language in crisis. My research studies the very beginning of a global organised school network among German schools, focusing on the unique aspects of German schools and linguistic projects in 1 “Memorandum of the Foreign Office on the German Schools Abroad” (Denkschrift des Auswertigen Amtes über das deutsche Auslandsschulwesen): 7, German Federal Archives, Berlin R901/38602, translation: “Im letzter Zeit, etwa seit dem Jahre 1906, hat eine Bewegung eingesetzt, welche die deutschen Auslandsschulen vor neue, wichtige Aufgaben stellt. Sie Beruht auf der Auffassung, daß diese Schule in größerem Umfang als bisher Die Kenntnis der deutschen Sprache und richtige Vorstellung von Deutschland in Fremden Völker verbreiten und möglichst weite einheimische Kreise mit deutscher Art und Bildung vertraut machen könnten, um sie dadurch zu Freunden Deutschlands zu gewinnen.” 5 central and eastern Europe. What started as Der Allgemeine Deutsche Schulverein zur Erhaltung des Deutschtums im Auslande (German School League) in 1881 Berlin, a group of like-minded Germans fearing for their fellow countrymen abroad, ended after 138 years as Verein für Deutsche Kulturbeziehungen im Ausland in 2019. Alongside a few name changes, the German School League left behind a rich history of the work of a private organization, aiming to create a global German network. It isn’t just the emergence and work of schools abroad, that guided my research, but rather the emerging late nineteenth century question of national identity, particularly in Germany: what did the School League define it as, what distinguished it, and how could it, in the eyes of the League’s nationalists, be gained or lost. In this context the School League, through its work, as I will detail later, worked on creating parameters to what the German national identity was. This research, therefore, situates itself at the conjunction of German, Czech, Slovak, and Hungarian language, culture, and identity. The major ethno-linguistic groups that, according to the School League and its likeminded nationalists, presented a threat to German-speaking minorities were situated in Bohemia and Moravia, comprising respectively of a majority Czech and Slovak populations, and the Hungarian crown lands, bordering today’s Austria, with a majority Magyar population. The map below gives indication to how the different ethno-linguistic groups were spread out within the Austro-Hungarian empire as mapped out by William Shepherd in 1911. It gives indication of the majority language in each region, and whilst it does not allow room for the reality of multilingualism inherently present in these communities, the map displays a useful tool for contextualising major linguistic boundaries within Austria-Hungary. This thesis starts by looking at the perceived decline of German linguistic hegemony and newly emerging form of German national consciousness and ends in examining why and how, for the School League, language and culture were intertwined. 6 Figure 1: "Distribution of Races in Austria-Hungary," in Historical Atlas, by William R. Shepherd (New York: H. Holt and company, 1911):168. Through analysing Die Deutsche Schule im Ausland, a periodical published monthly by the League between 1902 and 1914, I examine the relationship of language, culture, and nationalism in German-speaking minority communities in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The League was a private organization that worked towards collecting funds to build and maintain German schools abroad. Their central goal, however, was to advance German-language education among German communities living outside the Empire and simultaneously create an international German network by uniting German teachers across the globe. To do so, the League devoted considerable resources to the publication of their periodical. The two editors in charge of the publication process were Hans Amrhein (working from Galatz, Romania) and Dr. Bernhard Gaster (working from Antwerp, Belgium). Both were also prominently featured 7 in the periodical among other writings from teachers across the world. As historian Stefan Manz details, the journal proclaimed themselves to be the “voice of the Association of German Teachers Abroad” and argued for “an education in the German school and family on a national basis,” by weaving “a ‘glue’ (‘Bindemittel’) and ‘tape’ (‘Band’) around German teachers abroad.”2 Through examining the League’s publications, I trace the story of an emerging form of nationalist “Germandom”, created and promoted through the struggle for language hegemony and education amidst minority groups of German speakers in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. I argue that the Deutscher Schulverein worked towards advancing German language hegemony through education in efforts to create a pan-German network that would concurrently work towards furthering the German Empire’s international position. In order to construct a narrative of the emergence of German national identity it is essential I first explore the construct of “identity”. Scholars Rogers Brubaker and Frederik Cooper argue that the word “identity” has become diluted, and has lost its meaning as a category of analysis in modern social sciences: If identity is everywhere, it is nowhere. If it is fluid, how can we understand the ways in which self-understandings may harden, congeal, and crystallize? If it is constructed, how can we understand the sometimes coercive force of external identifications? If it is multiple, how do we understand the terrible singularity that is often striven for - and sometimes realized - by politicians seeking to transform mere categories into unitary and exclusive groups?3 Therefore, they make the case that “identity” could often be replaced by the actual characteristics that it is made to represent. For example, using “identification,” allows us to investigate the agents that do the identifying without assuming that identifying leads to 2 Stefan Manz, Constructing a German Diaspora: The "Greater German Empire," 1871-1914 (New York, NY: Routledge, 2014) 243. 3 Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper, ”Beyond Identity,” Theory and Society 29, no. 1 (2000): 1-47. 8 “internal sameness or distinctiveness.”4 On the other hand, Ruth Wodak, in her study into the formation of Austria national identity, argues that “identity” is a relational term: “it defines the relationship between two or more related entities in a manner that asserts a sameness or equality.”5 As such, identity encompasses aspects of “sameness” and “selfhood”, relating us to our surroundings and offering ways of self-characterisation. The German School League identified aspects of sameness, imposed onto those falling under the umbrella of a “German national identity.” In referring to national “identity”, then, I look at the external actor, the League, who sought to impose the category of “German” upon those perceived as ethnically German, and as such, perceived as innately same. Identity, however, receives a further layer of analysis in my thesis through the depiction of language. To interrogate what language is and how it shaped identity, I turn to Patrick Stevenson and Jenny Carl’s research into the hegemony of German language in eastern and central Europe. Their research shows how national orientations towards a certain language and its uses affect policy. Subsequently, articulation of policy is in itself a stance on language practices. Thus, the choosing of a national language affects policies, but likewise the articulation of policy affects local language practices.6 “To understand ‘what language achieves in people’s lives’, we need to understand the historical conditions that create the limits of what is possible for language to achieve.”7 To analyse the link between language and identity, then, we need to determine the values and beliefs ascribed to language in a particular context. For example, the question of language was used as claims to German national unification (achieved in 1871) and in Austria-Hungary after 1880 to campaign for increased 4 Brubaker and Cooper, “Beyond Identity,” 14-17. 5 Ruth Wodak, The Discursive Construction of National Identity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009) 11. 6 Patrick Stevenson and Jenny Carl, Language and Social Change in Central Europe: Discourses on Policy, Identity and the German Language (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010) 5. 7 Jan Blommaert, "Commentary: A Sociolinguistics of Globalization,” Journal of Sociolinguistics 7, no. 4 (2003): 608 cited in Patrick Stevenson and Jenny Carl, Language and Social Change in Central Europe: Discourses on Policy, Identity and the German Language (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010) 202. 9 language rights for the Magyars. Consequently, “what had been intended as a means of ‘measuring’ nations […] formed the basis of independence movements in eastern central Europe in the later part of the century…”8 Because language, as an identity marker, transcended socio-economic positions, and thus mobilised members of across different social strata, nationalist organisations, and later nation-states, used language to spearhead nationalist movements and push for monolingual practices. The League comprised of upper middle-class individuals, who pushed linguistic nationalisation onto lower-class workers, who, as Tara Zahra has pointed out, were often “nationally indifferent” to such practices.9 In writing this thesis, I’m telling a story of imperial German individuals, who in the nineteenth century European context of emerging monolingualism and struggles for national identity, saw schools as an integral part in fully Germanising only partly German-speaking communities in eastern Europe. Although they were mostly teachers, not politicians, their goals still heavily aligned with the German Empire’s political leadership. Manz, writing on what an Auslandsschule was, argued that its definition was inherently blurred.10 Each country of destination presented a different legal framework, educational traditions and organisational structures and thus there existed not one blueprint that could be imposed on these schools.11 For the German government, its interest on the matter stemmed from their goal to “bring emigrants into its fold under the banner of language preservation.”12 The League, however, was not merely a puppet for imperial work, but rather presented an autonomous group that worked for their own goals, which sometimes aligned with the state’s, sometimes did not. This presented an inherent tension running through the League’s history: maintaining 8 Stevenson and Carl, Language and Social Change, 52. 9 For more on national indifference, see: Tara Zahra, Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands 1900-1948, (Cornell University Press, 2011). 10 Manz, Constructing a German Diaspora, 234. 11 Manz, Constructing a German Diaspora, 234-235. 12 Manz, Constructing a German Diaspora, 235. 10 political neutrality among changing domestic politics while still inherently believing in the grand goal of German imperial expansionism. This tension was highlighted in the case of German-speaking minorities in the Austrian Empire, largely by virtue of the two nations shared past. Eagle Glassheim posits how in the century following the 1848 revolutions, the Habsburg monarchy “modernized, nationalized, and ultimately fragmented into a bevy of egalitarian, mostly homogenous nation states.”13 He details how the region, and monarchy, went from unity to diversity as it ceded political power to regional actors, an affair that the League heavily contested. Whereas in the nineteenth century Prague and Vienna were “home to a cascade of languages and cultures,” by the 1950s nationalism and ethnic cleansing had “undermined and then destroyed this diversity.”14 The School League argued that through the diversification of the empire, its days became numbered. Chapter I examines the creation of German-speaking minorities in Austria-Hungary by the 1867 Dual Monarchy and the 1871 unification of the German Empire through examining the subsequent rich field of literature the League put out. Calls against the perceived struggle of German speakers arose in the context of increased linguistic nationalism in eastern central Europe. Stevenson and Carl, however, argue that such nationalism was in direct opposition to the previous dominance of German language in the area. The ensuing struggle for language hegemony would, after World War I and the collapse of the Habsburg Empire, lead the newly formed nation states in eastern Europe to ascribe to official state languages.15 On the emergence of nations in empires, power relations and timelessness, Mrinalini Sinha argues that the nation is socially constructed around systems of “difference” that 13 Eagle Glassheim, Noble Nationalists: The Transformation of the Bohemian Aristocracy (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2005) 227. 14 Glassheim, Noble Nationalists, 227. 15 Stevenson and Carl, Language and Social Change, 203. 11 implicate power relations.16 Nations and national identities are therefore continuously formed and reformed but are, however, also rooted in concrete historical situations.17 The nation is represented as an organic community whose members, like those of the family, share “natural” rather than accidental or optional ties. The imagery of the family offers the “invented” or “imagined” nation thus a legitimizing language of naturalization.18 Sinh argues that if scholars ignore the significance of the family trope for nationalist discourse, they underestimate the force of representing the nation, like the family, as timeless, natural, and organic. “Hence nationalism, as some scholars suggest, resembles less such modern political ideologies as liberalism or conservatism, than it resembles religion with its promise of immortality, or the discourse of kinship and ethnicity which emphasizes the inevitable, as opposed to the merely accidental or chosen connections between members of the collectivity.”19 The German School League’s nationalism was a blend of very specific contexts that guided their project: on the one hand German migrants came to be ascribed with a sense of timelessness in League publications. As such, emigrants’ bodies were vessel on which German nationalism abroad could be constructed, regardless of geographical location or time. In Germany, imperial fantasies were linked with contemporaneous debates over mass migration during the mid-nineteenth century as anxieties about the increasing volume of emigration were mixed with fantasies about international rule, increasing trade networks, and spiritual superiority. 20 Furthermore, historian Nancy Reagin argues that nineteenth and twentieth century German literature documented change over time in different German communities abroad, but that “lifestyle and domesticity, a sort of Germanness” remained 16 Mrinalini Sinha, “Nations in an Imperial Crucible,” in Gender and Empire, edited by Philippa Levine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) 181. 17 Sinha, “Nations in an Imperial Crucible,” 185. 18 Sinha, “Nations in an Imperial Crucible,” 187-188. 19 Sinha, “Nations in an Imperial Crucible,” 191. 20 Bradley D. Naranch, “Inventing the Auslandsdeutsche: Emigration, Colonial Fantasy, and German National Identity, 1848-71” in Germany's Colonial Pasts, ed. Eric Ames, Marcia Klotz, and Lora Wildenthal (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005) 22. 12 fixed.21 This unchanging underlined a feeling of timelessness of German communities abroad. Therefore, the emerging German national identity was influenced by history with migration and ideas about the German past. On the other hand, the League operated in a specific context of late nineteenth century European political landscape. Debates about German emigration during the nineteenth century were framed by a globalizing world, new technologies and a new form of nationalism in Europe. Nation-states and migration are intimately intertwined in history, as was the case with the newly established German Empire. The “politics of citizenship,” the set of legal and normative policies concerning the status of migrants, was present alongside discussions on mass migration and the changing political landscape of imperial Germany at the end of the nineteenth century.22 However, fantasies about German superiority were met with the disappointing reality of indifference towards nationalism by people living both at borderlands of the empire and abroad in emigrant communities.23 Through the changing European landscape of the nineteenth century, German national consciousness developed alongside a pronounced ideology about an imagined national community of Germans abroad.24 This ideology rested on the perceived superiority of the German race, and the subsequent drive to import that superiority across the globe. Chapter two will trace this ideology and its presence in the League’s publications. I examine an emerging form of national identity, rooted in a history of emigration and a belief in Germany’s superiority as a world power. Furthermore, 21 Nancy Reagin, “German Brigadoon? Domesticity and Metropolitan Germans’ Perceptions of Auslandsdeutschen in Southwest Africa and Eastern Europe” in The Heimat abroad: the boundaries of Germanness, ed. Krista O'Donnell, Renate Bridenthal and Nancy Ruth Reagin (University of Michigan Press, 2005) 254. 22 Rogers Brubaker, “Migration, Membership, and the Modern Nation-State: Internal and External Dimensions of the Politics of Belonging Migration and Membership,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 41, no. 1 (2010): 63-64. 23 For more on national indifference in the Bohemian borderlands, see Tara Zahra, Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands 1900-1948, (Cornell University Press, 2011). 24 Naranch, “Inventing the Auslandsdeutsche,” 22. 13 the chapter traces how this national identity was advanced in German speaking communities in eastern Europe in efforts to eventually create a global community of Germans. Lastly, German national identity was formed in contrast to and in discussion with emerging German-speaking minorities. The aspect of language, thus, presented a central theme in the League’s work. Especially at the border of the German- and within the Austrian Empire, where German linguistic frontiers were met with local language traditions of communities living between multiple political, and increasingly national, entities. By 1900, an awareness of “Germans abroad” became part of the articulation of German national identity.25 This “ethnographic gold lode”, which was the study of German communities abroad to create and validate German national identity was actively sponsored by a network of organizations, such as the League.26 Reagin argues that an emerging literary field, blooming in the interwar years, implied that linguistic boundaries should be equated with national boundaries. I posit, however, that this notion was present well before the first World War, and thus the merging of linguistic and national boundaries needs to be examined from a wider pre-World War perspective. Chapter three ties together analysis from previous chapters and analyses the importance of language in German schools abroad, tracing how the “ideology of language” that linked together mother tongue and national identity was utilised by the League in their campaign for the German language in communities in Bohemia, Moravia and parts of the Hungarian crown lands.27 The linguistic nationalism analysed in the chapter owed its conception to Johann Gottfried von Herder. Stevenson and Carl attribute the conception of a nation as made up of speakers of one language to von Herder’s philosophy.28 25 Reagin, “German Brigadoon?” 248. 26 Reagin, “German Brigadoon?” 248. 27 Steveson and Carl, Language and Social Change, 52. 28 Steveson and Carl, Language and Social Change, 55. 14 Consequently, the claim that each nation should have its own language arose in the context of emerging nations within empires and led to the formation of nation-states after World War I. Chapter 1: The Beginning of the End: The Decline of German Linguistic Hegemony “Bearing in mind the old saying that who holds power over schools also holds the future in their hands, the fresh and happy Czechification of schools began.”1 In 1880 the Austrian government passed a compulsory language law that resulted in a regulation which demanded all holders of public office in the Bohemian lands to speak both official languages: German and Czech.2 The change was perceived by the German School League as a further strike against the German-speaking minority in the tumultuous decades leading up to the twentieth century. Although but one example from a time that was ripe with political changes, the instance displays the raison d’etre of the League: the fear of strengthening nationalistic calls from other ethnicities in the Austro-Hungarian Empire resulted in increased anxieties over the threat perceived to be looming over German minorities. The creation of German-speaking minorities had two foundational moments: the 1867 Austrian-Hungarian Ausgleich, which granted the Hungarian kingdom increased political independence, and the 1871 German unification that established the Reich-German citizen with a centralised political entity. Outside of this new state, the members of the German cultural group became minorities in a newly defined way with increased political ramifications. I argue that the subsequent emergence of German minorities as distinct groups, especially in the eastern European parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, facilitated the creation of a distinct German national identity for Reich-German nationalists. In the ensuing 1 Einst von Treumund, Das Deutschtum in Österreich und Ungarn jetzt (Berlin: Mosse, 1884) 12, translation: “Des alten spruches eingedenk, daß, wer über die Schule verfügt, auch die Zukunft in Händen hat, ging man zunächst an die frische und fröhliche tsechifizierung des Unterrichtswesens.” 2 von Treumund, Das Deutschtum in Österreich, 12. 16 discussion, I make a distinction between two groups of Germans: those who were citizens of imperial Germany and those who were citizens of Austria-Hungary. Both groups identified themselves as culturally German, and spoke the German language, but those who were citizens in Austria-Hungary were increasingly identified as a German-speaking minority by Imperial German nationalists. I ground my analysis of the German School League in Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius’ framework, which traces the emergence of myths about the “East” that shaped German national identity in interaction with anxieties regarding, and fascination with, the “East.” Liulevicius describes the “East” as a geographically undefined area, and the notion implied “not a location, but a state of being;” in the case of German fantasies, a state of “disorganization or underdevelopment.”3 The myths ascribed to the “East,” he proposes, influenced the ways in which Germans described themselves.4 Austria-Hungary subsequently existed in the complex position as a geographically distinct location with a clear cultural overlap with Germany. In further constructing Austria-Hungary as a place, I turn to Kate Brown’s research into Soviet Ukrainian borderlands. Brown constructs the phenomena of borderlands as a place moulded, not by just one state, or one political ideology, but rather a multiplicity of ongoing historical and political contexts. Under such conditions, borderlands consisted of a mixture of traditions and practices, characterised differently from locality to locality, and thus were hard for empires to generalize and manage. 5 The key goal of the governing entity, therefore, was to make the “mosaic cultures [of the] contested borderland into an ‘ethnically 3 Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, The German Myth of the East 1800 to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009) 3. 4 Liulevicius, The German Myth,1-2. 5 Kate Brown, A Biography of no Place: From Ethnic Borderland to Soviet Heartland (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2004) 6. 17 pure nation-space.’”6 The goal of German imperialism, both private and state driven, was to homogenize German speakers in multilingual communities in Austria-Hungary under the banner of Germandom. Borderlands of the Austrian crown lands, where German-speaking minorities met with Slavic-, Czech-, and Magyar-speaking populations in every-day interactions, underwent change at the end of the nineteenth century. The formation of the dual monarchy changed the internal power structures of the empire, and subsequent political developments contributed to rising trends of nationalisms from Czechs in the Bohemian and Moravian lands as well as Slovaks and Magyars in the eastern parts of the Hungarian Kingdom against previous ethnic German hegemony. The Ausgleich of 1867 split the Austrian Empire into two governing entities: Austria and Hungary. Although united under the banner of one empire, the Hungarian lands gained autonomy and remained connected to Austria through a shared dynasty and financial- and military affairs, as well as a unitary foreign policy.7 Similarly to Brown’s distinction of borderlands, Hermann Kuprian argued in his work that before World War I the Habsburg monarchy was characterized by ethnic-linguistic diversity of which the territorial boundaries were not always clearly drawn.8 In aiming to unify the diverse empire, the monarchy committed to the preservation and cultivation of the culture and language of each of the state’s ethnic groups.9 Consequently the German minorities within the empire felt threatened, leading the League and its prominent nationalist voices to argue for a doomsday narrative of the start of the end for the empire, which I analyse further in this chapter. The Dual 6 Brown, A Biography of no Place, 2. 7 Hermann Kuprian, “On the Threshold of the Twentieth Century: State and Society in Austria before World War I” in Austria in the Twentieth Century, ed. Rolf Steininger (New Brunswick and London: Translation Publisher, 2002) 15. 8 Kuprian, “On the Threshold,” 16. 9 Kuprian, “On the Threshold,” 11-12, Benedict Anderson, “Official Nationalism and Imperialism,” in Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism (New York; London: Verso, 2006) 84, and Frederick Hertz, The German Public Mind in the Nineteenth Century, trans. Eric Northcott (New Jersey: Rowman and Littlefield, 1976), 379-380. 18 Monarchy, due to its vast geographic spread, only possessed a minority of German speakers who mostly resided and ruled from Vienna.10 The emerging wedge between the Habsburg monarchy and the German-speaking elite in Vienna, in the early nineteenth century, led to calls for Anschluss (unification) with the German Empire by the elite.11 Seemingly restricted from the German nation, German speakers in Austria nurtured a sense of German cultural identity in the face of increased multiculturalist policies enabled by the monarchy.12 Accordingly, the School League saw a need for more active educational and cultural policies to counter the growing diversification of both Viennese and the larger Austro-Hungarian society. The dual monarchy, however, despite the commitments to diversity, did not satisfy the roiling waves of nationalism emerging between different ethnicities. John Breuilly argues in his book Austria, Prussia and the Making of Germany 1800-1871 that, for example, many Slavic populations were left unhappy with the seemingly warped power balance of Germans in the west and Magyars in the east to which the 1867 Ausgleich contributed to.13 A war between Prussia and Austria in 1871 widened an emerging wedge between the German-speaking elite of Vienna, who, Frederick Hertz argues, claimed ties to a German cultural identity, and the ruling Habsburg monarchy who aimed to unify their empire by embracing its diversification.14 However, a model, sketched in 1846 by German politician Heinrich von Gagern, provided a sliver of light to the German speakers; the model envisioned an inner circle, consisting of the German Empire (Kleindeutschland), connected to an outer circle (the 10 Jonathan Knickerbocker, “Österreich und Anschluss Ponderous Dilemma of Austrian Identity (1848-1948)” (master’s thesis, University at Albany, State University of New York 2014), 1. 11 Knickerboecker, “Österreich und Anschluss,” 4-8. 12 John Breuilly, Austria, Prussia and the Making of Germany 1800-1871(Harlow, United Kingdom: Pearson Education Limited, 2011) 89 and Hertz, The German Public Mind, 382. Hertz argues that after the Austrian departure of the Bund, a political alliance between Prussia and the Austrian Empire, a distinct sentimental tie of political importance was preserved by German speakers in Austria. 13 Breuilly, Austria, Prussia and the Making of Germany, 87-88. 14 Hertz, The German Public Mind, 381-383. 19 Habsburg Empire) by an overlapping German culture: the sphere of German nationality.15 This conception was well received by the German-speaking elite in Austria as well as Germans in the imperial home, and contributed to many publications by the League hailing the sphere of German nationality, which seemingly bound all Germans together. The quote at the beginning of this chapter stems from German author Einst von Treumund’s book, Das Deutschtum in Österreich und Ungarn jetzt, on the status of German speaker in Austria-Hungary in 1884. Treumund’s writing, published in imperial Germany, suggests he was a promoter of German linguistic hegemony among German-speaking communities in eastern Europe. Although not much has been documented of his life, his book provides an interesting snapshot into the dilemma that governed the work of the League and other German nationals, and thus this chapter focuses on a close reading of Treumund’s work. I devote considerable space for his writing because it provides a very thorough tracing of how he, as a late nineteenth century writer from Imperial Germany, thought about the dangers that loomed over German-speakers in multilingual communities in Bohemia, Moravia and the Hungarian crown lands. Whilst this chapter subsequently analyses Treumund’s views and visions, the narratives that he promoted formed the bedrock of the German School League. The subsequent chapters will base on, and complicate, this close reading by utilising a wide berth of League sources. I begin this chapter by tracing how the School League framed the perceived failure of the Austrian government and the subsequent formation of a German minority in the empire. The League saw the conditions under which a German minority emerged as a threat to their ideas of pan-German unity and German imperialism. This was contrasted by the two empires’ military alliance, that further complicated the perceived plight of German speakers in parts of 15 Breuilly, Austria, Prussia and the Making of Germany, 52. 20 Austria-Hungary. I then turn to trace the German School League’s narrative of the changing status of German-speaking minorities. For that, I return to Liulevicius’ framework of the “German myth of the ‘East’” to determine how German imperials constructed themselves and the Austrian Empire in contrast to Magyars. A Failure of the Government Tracing the state of Germandom in Austria and Hungary at the start of the 1880s, Einst von Treumund painted a picture of the decline of the Habsburg monarchy and the failure of the Austrian government. In his short publication, Treumund outlined how the diverse people of Austria-Hungary began to fracture in the face of the recent political waves coursing through the Empire: In order to centralize, of course, one had to Germanize; one necessarily led the other with it. Only that, on the one hand, the government stopped halfway, and did not find the courage to throw the historical-political individualities of the crown lands into the junk room and neither reconciled nor oppressed the nations through its half-measures, but [they] did know how to embitter them [… ]Basically, the Germans did not gain any advantage, but they did have to undeservedly bear the odium of centralizing absolutism compared to the other ethnicities.16 Treumund hailed Germandom as the only viable way to unify the empire’s different people, however, for him the Austrian government had deeply failed to do so. The dual monarchy, ensuing political rights of Hungary and the resulting waves of nationalisms roaring their 16 von Treumund, Das Deutschtum in Österreich, 4, translation: “ Um zu zentralisieren, freilich, musste man germanisieren, das eine führte nothwendig das andere mit sich. Nur das einerseits die Regierung doch auf halbem Wege stehen blieb, nicht etwa den Muth fand, die „historisch-politischen Individualitäten“ der Kronländer in die Rumpelkammer zu werfen und die Nationen durch ihre halben Maßregeln weder zu versöhnen noch zu unterdrücken, wohl aber zu erbittern wusste [...] Im Grunde erwuchs den Deutschen kein Vortheil, wohl aber mussten sie den anderen Stämmen gegenüber unverdienterweise das Odium des zentralisierenden Absolutismus tragen.“ 21 heads within the empire, were presented as the result of a weak, un-German government. As a by-product, Treumund created a picture of “us”, the German speakers, against “them;” both the government of Austria and the other ethnicities of the empire. The threats mounting against the German speakers were thus twofold, and, in addition to illustrating the government as innately against Germans (for if the government wasn’t for Germans, then they had to be against them), Treumund was increasingly more worried about the rising nationalisms gathering against German speakers. Thus, for him, as Hungary and the Magyar became more and more independent, they also became more anti-German: “The numerous Slavic tribes, the Czechs, Hannaks and Slovaks, the Poles, the Croats, the Serbs, the Slovenians also began to feel each other and unite, however much their paths might otherwise diverge, in an instinctive hatred of Germanness.”17 Treumund was paranoid that everyone else in the empire united against Germans and would overrun the already weak Austrian government. A stroke of luck, Treumund detailed, seemed to come as the “glorious victories of German arms in the years 1870/71 greatly inflamed the national consciousness of the Germans of Austria as well.”18 His setting of German-speakers in Austria-Hungary against the Habsburg monarchy presents a window into his nationalist thinking. Austria’s loss in the war with Prussia, a decade before Treumund published his opinions, correlated to the Habsburg monarchy’s loss of prestige and power within the empire in 1867. Thus, for Treumund, the government hadn’t only made one bad choice, but rather a series of turns away from what, for him, was the only way to unite the empire: Germandom. Consequently: 17 von Treumund, Das Deutschtum in Österreich, 3, translation: “Auch die zahlreischen slavischen Stämme und Stämmschen, die Tsechen, Hannaken und Slovaken, die Polen, die Kroaten, die Serben, die Slovenen begannen sich zu fühlen und vereinighten sich, wie sehr im überigen ihre Wege auseinandergehen mochten, in instinktivem Hasse gegen das Deutschtum.” 18 von Treumund, Das Deutschtum in Österreich, 8, translation: “Die glorreichen Siege der deutschen Waffen in den Jahren 1870/71 fachten das nationale Bewußtsein auch der Deutschen Österreichs mächtig an.” 22 “[t]he Germans in Austria public opinion began to rebel more and more violently against the unconstitutional and illegal actions of the pro-slav government.”19 Setting Treumund’s opinion against the historiographic discussion of the twenty-first century suggests that his feelings were a rather over exaggeration of a complex issue. As historians have shown, the Austrian government was torn between wanting to unite the empire by embracing its diversity and at the same time fearing a loss of control over its vast geographic region.20 Furthermore, the initial turn to German as the state’s official language in 1780 was not for the sake of promoting an innate link to Germandom, but rather was done as a deliberate move away from Latin.21 In summary, Treumund presented that the dual fracturing of the empire created a dividing line between the public opinion of German speakers and the pro-Slavic Government, as well as a mounting opposition of other ethnicities against German speakers. Of course, pro-Slavic meant the absence of explicitly anti-Slavic policies, rather than a declared political stance against German speakers. As such, Treumund told his readers a story of a rising enemy in the east threatening Germandom. Treumund argued that the minority group of German speakers should understand that they alone must fight against the threat of their Volkstum: “But the realization also dawns on the German people of Austria that they cannot expect salvation from above, not from the abolition of a particular system of government and from the fact that a specific other system takes its place, but simply from the serious and zeal with 19 von Treumund, Das Deutschtum in Österreich, 9, translation: “Die Öffentliche Meinung Deutsch Österreicher begann sich heftiger und heftiger gegen die verfassungs- und rechtswidrige Aktion der slavefreundlichen Regierung zu empören.” 20 For more, see: Knickerboecker, “Österreich und Anschluss,” Breuilly, Austria, Prussia and the Making of Germany, and Kuprian, “On the Threshold.” 21 Anderson, “Official Nationalism and Imperialism,” 83-84. Anderson argues that Germany’s turn from Latin to German was not done “against the Magyar language,” but because emperor Joseph II thought that “on the basis of the mediaeval Latin administration of the nobility, no effective work in the interest of the masses could have been carried on.” German was chosen as the official language of the administration due to its vast existing literary culture and the considerable minority that spoke it throughout the empire. 23 which it sets about fulfilling its national task.”22 His call for German speaking minorities in Austria-Hungary to rally against the threat of other nationalisms was contested with the newly formed political alliance between Austria and Germany. Alliance The Dual Alliance between Austria and Germany was formed in 1879 as a military alliance, which would, in 1882, expand to include Italy and would remain in place until the First World War.23 Although formally binding the two empires together under the banner of military goals, the German School League made it clear that for them an alliance with Austria was conditional: unless the Austrian regime explicitly recognised the superiority of its German-speaking citizens, the alliance was doomed to fail. Thus, the discourse within the League was interlaced with different facets of German superiority in the face of Austrian failure. Talking about this military alliance, in the report on its third annual general meeting, the League outlined: “For several years now we have had an alliance with Austria-Hungary. We Germans have welcomed this alliance with joy, and hope that it will continue to exist for a long time. Our mutual national interests do not collide at all, but rather go hand in hand...”24 Of course, the national interests of two culturally German states would not collide. However, 22 von Treumund, Das Deutschtum in Österreich, 26, translation.: “Aber auch die ernste und heilsame Erkänntniß dämmert in dem deutschen Volke Österreichs auf, daß es kein Heil nicht von oben zu erwarten habe, nicht von der Beseitigung eines bestimmten Regierungssystems und davon, daß ein bestimmtes anderes an dessen Stelle trete, sondern einfach von dem Ernste und Eifer, mit welchem es selbst an die Erfüllung seiner nationalen Aufgabe schreitet.” 23 Imanuel Geiss, “Dual and Triple Alliance, 1879-82," in Germ Foreign Policy 1871-1914 (London: Routledge, 1976), 35-43. 24 “Bericht über die dritte General-Versammlung des ADSchV zu Berlin” in Korrespondenzblatt des Allgemeinen Deutschen Schul-Vereines in Deutschland 1 (Berlin: Gebrüder Fickert, 1884), 19-20, translation: “Seit einigen Jahren haben wir ein Bündniß mit Osterreich-Ungarn. Wir Deutschen haben dieses Bündniß freudig begrüßt und hoffen, daß es noch lange bestehen möge. Unsere gegenseitigen statlichen Intressen kollidieren durchaus nicht, sondern gehen vielmehr Hand in Hand.“ 24 the story would take a sharp turn if the Austrian government failed to maintain a culturally German Empire: “we cannot have any friend, nor ally, who would oppress our tribal cousins, the Germans in Transylvania… So, if this alliance that we have concluded with Austria-Hungary is to last, the Magyar injustices against our countrymen must stop.”25 These two forces: a bilateral military alliance between two sovereign countries and the bitter fear that their German fellows in Austria-Hungary were under oppression by concessions made to other ethnicities by the government, presented a dilemma for the League. On the one hand, an international military alliance suggested that the League had to be careful about interfering in the domestic affairs of Austria-Hungary. On the other hand, the League did not hold the bond viable without the Viennese government’s recognition of the superiority of their German citizens. The League, as a private organization with little to no sway over government decisions, could not march into another state’s domestic business, allies or not. Consequently, their report on the third general meeting stated: “We naturally have no right to interfere in the internal affairs of Austria-Hungary [...]”26 However, as with everything else so far, the conditions of German speakers took priority, and the League could further the publication of books and articles, and the export of German teachers across the globe. Referencing the same “fracturing” as Treumund did, the League commented that: “Is it perhaps a coincidence that in Austria, now that Hungary has acquired such a commanding position, the Czechs, the Slavs and other people of interest [interassente Völkerschaften] are also turning against the 25 “Bericht über die dritte General-Versammlung,” 20, translation: “Wir können überhaupt keinen Freund, keinen Bundesgenossen haben, der unsere Stammesvettern die Deutschen in Siebenbürgen unterdrückt…Soll also dieses Bündniß, daß wir mit Osterreich-Ungarn geschlossen haben, von Dauer sein, so müssen die magyarischen Ungerechtigkeiten gegen unsere Landesleute aufhören.“ 26 “Bericht über die dritte General-Versammlung,” 20, translation: “Wir haben natürlicher weise kein Recht, uns in die inneren Angelegenheiten von Österreich-Ungarn zu mischen, ...“ 25 Germans in the same way as the Magyars?”27 This perceived turn of other ethnicities against Germans, prompted the League in their report to come to the conclusion that: “But if the unity of the Austrian army is undermined, then, I maintain, Austria is incapable of forming an alliance.”28 And as such an avenue for indirect intervention had been established, and the League had found a driving cause for its mission. Out of the perceived failure of the Austrian state on the one hand and the military alliance with Austria on the other hand, arose the question of how to best advance the interests of the German-speaking minority in Austria-Hungary. Stating their stake in the discussion, the report on the general meeting continued to detail: But we Germans in the Reich cannot be indifferent to these events. We are bound to Austria through a strong alliance. Our sympathy for the people and our interest for the state requires a kingdom in which the German is in charge. The instinct of self-preservation forces us to protect the land of our fathers better against Romanians and Slavs than has happened in the last centuries. It is impossible for us to watch calmly as one piece after another is handed over to our enemies, the Poles, Czechs and Slovenians. .... If the Germans of Austria put up with this, how can respect be created among the Slovenians, Hungarians, Romanians and Czechs?29 Together, the alliance and the “sympathy for fellow Germans in Austria” as well as imperial Germans’ self-interest, called for action. In this self-interest, imperial Germany was not fond 27 “Bericht über die dritte General-Versammlung,” 20, translation: “Ist es vielleicht ein Zufall, daß in Osterreich jetzt, nachdem Ungarn die so gebietende Stellung bekommen hat, auch die Tzechen, die Sklaven und andere ‘interessante Völkerschaften‘ in derselben Weise sich gegen die Deutschen wenden, wie die Magyaren?“ 28 “Bericht über die dritte General-Versammlung,” 20-21, translation: “Ist aber die Einheit der österreichischen Armee untergraben, dann, behaupte ich, ist Österreich bündnißunfähig.” 29 “Die Lage des Deutschtums an der Adria” in Korrespondenzblatt des Allgemeinen Deutschen Schul-Vereines in Deutschland 3 (Berlin: Gebrüder Fickert, 1884) 5, translation: “Uns Deutschen im Reiche können aber doch diese Vorgänge nicht gleichgültig sein. Wir sind durch ein festes Bündniß an Osterreich gekettet. Unsere Sympathie von Volkswegen und unser Interesse von Staatswegen erheischt dort ein Reich, in welchem der Deutsche die Führung hat. Der Selbsterhaltungstrieb zwingt und, gegen Romanen und Slaven das Land der Väter besser zu wahren als es in den letzten Jahrhunderten geschehen ist. Wir können unmöglich ruhig zusehen, wie ein Stück nach dem anderen unseren Feinden den Polen, Tschechen, Slovenen überantwortet wird. .... Wenn sich die Deutschen Osterreichs dies gefallen lassen, wie soll bei Slovenen, Magyaren, Rumänen, Tschechen Achtung und Respekt entstehen?“ 26 of the idea of having a non-German neighbouring empire in the south. As a solution, the League called for a “kingdom in which the German is in charge.” Simultaneously, as I’ve demonstrated, von Treumund presented the Viennese government as weak and unable to act. In short, the League tried to argue that Germany could not remain indifferent to what was going on in Austria-Hungary, as the German speakers’ fate was bound with the fate of the German state. Author Karl Vormeng, detailing the foundation of the League’s establishment, criticized the indifference of imperial Germans regarding the threat looming over Austrian Germans: “As long as you just don't talk about it, just don't give the Reich German citizens the pure truth about how Germanness in Austria is treated by the anti-German government of Poles and Czechs; the same quiet approach we used to take towards the violent deeds of the Magyars.”30 Arguing for the need to intervene and reprimanding their silence, Vormeng continued: “The school league could not agree with such views, and a rich field of activity in this area arose. In word and writing they tried to spread light about the actual conditions of the Germans in Austria and to encourage the press to take more vigorous action.”31 Where the imperial Germans and the German state failed, the German School League stepped in to help bring about the truth of the ongoing struggles in Austria. For Vormeng, the solution to the dilemma of intervention was increased action on the part of private organisations and the press to solidify a connection between German speakers in Austria-Hungary and the German 30 Karl Vormeng, Geschichte des Allgemeinen Deutschen Schulvereins zur Erhaltung des Deutschtums im Auslande (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1900) 28, translation: “Also nur ja nicht drein reden, nur ja nicht den reichsdeutschen Bürgern reinen Wein darüber einschenken wie das Deutschtum in Osterreich von der deutschfeindlichen Regierung von Polen und Tschechen behandelt wird; dieselbe Leisetreterei, wir früher den Gewalttaten der Madjaren gegenüber.” 31 Vormeng, Geschichte, 28, translation: “Solchen Anschauungen konnte sich der Schuvberein nicht anschließen, und ihm erwuchs ein reiches Feld der Tätigkeit auf diesem Gebiete. In Wort und Schrift suchte er über die tatsächlichen Verhätnisse der Deutschen in Österreich Licht zu verbreiten und die Presse zu kräftigerem Vorgehen anzueifern.” 27 Empire. Whilst the imperial governments hands were bound, as a private organization the League campaigned for the plight of Germans in hope for a change. Germans against Magyars, or Magyars against Germans? Kuprian argues that the threat of nationalisation of the masses did not only occur on an official level, but also indirectly through an elaborate network of organisations and associations, such as the School League.32 The Ausgleich, and ensuing new constitution in 1867, created tensions that pitted national groups against German-speaking Austrians dominance.33 This further enforced the narrative held by Einst von Treumund about bias the Habsburg monarchy held against the German-speakers. Within this setting, the League’s publications tell a story of Germans as a contrary identity to Magyars. The narrative sheds light on what all shaped the emergence of German national identity as the Magyar’s gained increased political power and the German minority lost the upper hand in Transleithanian politics. Writing in correspondence with the League in 1906, priest and principal to the German School in Bucharest, R. Honigberger criticized the new regulations set by Hungarian minister of education Georg Lukacsm: “The content of these regulations is such that their implementation would not only deprive the Transylvanian-Saxon schools of their German character in one fell swoop but would also make them unable to achieve their previous teaching goals. They would be reduced to the level of institutions for Magyar language 32 Kuprian, “On the Threshold,” 28. 33 Kuprian, “On the Threshold,” 28-29. 28 teaching.”34 One of the consequences of these regulations was that all teachers in Transleithania were mandated to speak adequate Magyar, and those who could not, were replaced by Magyar teachers. Consequently, if a school dismissed two German teachers for this reason, the school would be closed and, in its wake, a Magyar state school be opened. Honigberger argued that the legislation exemplifies ‘unjust manipulation’ of the law by Magyar politicians and calls on the dual monarch to protect the constitution, and thus the Germans. The constitution, which guaranteed protection for all minority languages, would suggest that the Magyars were practicing the very same politics that the League was: protecting their language and cultural heritage. A similar case could be found in Treumund’s writing. Criticising Magyar actions, he wrote: In December 1872, the Hungarian Reichstag decided, contrary to the clear wording of the law, that the language of negotiations in the new municipality of Budapest, a half-German city, should only be Magyar. When a citizens' meeting of the Ofener-district in 1874 requested that the official documents no longer be drawn up exclusively in Magyar, but also in German, ‘because although Ofeners value and respect the Magyar language, they do not understand it’ - this case of tame protest was of course rejected with derision.35 Treumund sought to provoke his readers to think about why the Magyar language was clearly benefitted over the German, despite Budapest being a half-German speaking city. In a similar 34 R. Honigberger, “Das siebenbürgische Landeskonsistorium und die ungar. Unterrichtsverordnung” in Die Deutsche Schule Im Ausland 2, no. 4 (Wolfenbüttel: Heckners Verlag 1906), 56, translation: “Der Inhalt dieser Verordnungen ist derartig, daß durch ihre Durchführung den siebenbürgisch-sächsischen Schulanstalten mit einem Schlage nicht nur der deutsche Charakter geraubt würde, sondern daß sie überhaupt außer Stand gesetzt würden, ihr bisheriges Lehrziel zu erreichen. Sie würden durch sie auf das Niveau von Anstalten für magyarischen Sprachunterricht heruntergedrückt werden.” 35 von Treumund, Das Deutschtum in Österreich, 22, translation: “Im Dezember 1872 beschloß der ungarische Reichstag - auf Antrag eines deutschen Abgeordneten - gegen den klaren Wortlaut des Gesetzes, die Verhandlungssprache der neuen Großgemeinde Budapest, einer zur Hälfte deutschen Stadt, habe ausschließlich die magyarische zu sein. Wenn dann 1874 eine offene Bürgerversammlung darum ersuchte, daß die amtliche Aktenstücke nicht mehr ausschließlich in magyarischer, sondern auch in deutscher Sprache ausgefertigt würden, ‚denn obwohl Ofener die magyarische Sprache schätzen und hochachten, so verstehen sie dieselbe doch nicht‘ - so wurde solch ein zahmer Protest natürlich mit Hohn zurückgewiesen.“ 29 vein, his critique uncovers a simmering discontent: why did the Magyars seemingly get to push for protection of their language, but when the German speakers pushed for their linguistic advantages, their efforts were shot down? Here Treumund seemed to ignore the fact that the German School League had with vigour acted on behalf of Germandom for a good few years already. Twisting the legislation, which was supposed to protect Magyar and Czech minority languages, to benefit the German imperial agenda, Treumund continued: “None of this prevents the [Austrian] state from being obliged by the legal regulations of 1868 to ensure the education of the individual nations of the country, including the Germans, up to the level of academic instruction!”36 For him, if the law benefitted any other language than German, it inherently worked to disadvantage the German being. Treumund continued to detail how the Czech national “fights” became stronger and stronger and in places that were historically “German”, Germandom was increasingly pushed aside: “The Czech national ‘struggles’ became more and more intense, and in all areas Germandom, the centuries and millennia old state-building and state-maintaining element of the old Danube Empire, is being pushed back, reconciled, one area after another is being alienated and torn away from.”37 Historically German places now saw the rise of Slavic nationalism that pushed aside Germandom. The years of work to unite the monarchy under the dual banners of Austria and Hungary had, for Treumund, culminated in national greed, excessively increased demands of non-German nations and the destruction of general trust in the government due to the corruption of other nationalities. Treumund depicted a conception 36 von Treumund, Das Deutschtum in Österreich, 23, translation: “Das alles hindert nicht, daß durch die gesetzliche Bestimmungen von 1868 der Staat verpflichtet ist, für die Bildung der einzelnen Nationen des Landes, also auch der Deutschen, bis zur Stufe des akademischen Unterrichts Sorge zu tragen.“ 37 von Treumund, Das Deutschtum in Österreich, 11, translation: “Die tschechischen national ‘kämpfe‘ wurden immer mehr und stärker, und auf allen Gebieten wird das Deutschtum, seit Jahrhunderten und Jahrtausenden das staatenbildende und staatenerhaltende Element des alten Donaureiches, zurückgedrängt, vergewaltigt, versöhnt, ein Gebiet nach dem anderen wird ihm entfremdet und entrissen.“ 30 that other ethnicities were inherently in the wrong, despite working for the same cause, their nationalism, as Germans in Austria and German imperials. The report on the third general meeting of the League echoed such sentiments: If the Slavs of Austria hate the Germans and strive to push them out, this can never be condoned, but it can certainly be understood. On the other hand, the behaviour of the Magyars against our countrymen in Hungary remains almost incomprehensible. The Magyar knows very well that his worst enemy is Slavism, he also knows that only Germany is able to protect him from this enemy, just as Germany helped him to become independent, and yet nowhere do we experience greater persecution of this Germanness, a worse rape of our countrymen than in Hungary.38 The League depicted Germandom as a key figure in a joint resistance of German and Magyar speakers against Slavism. Slavic nationalism was presented as a common enemy, on no other ground except that it seemed to further German agendas at this given moment. On the flip side, the League depicted Germandom as a saviour of Magyars, despite having vehemently worked against their calls for further independence. The twisting of this the narrative, to account for the gratefulness expected from Magyars, did not account for the same dual monarchy that had been criticized by the League before. Vormeng, tracing inherent differences between German and Magyar character, told his version of the events of 1867: The Germans were different. Their aim was to ensure that all peoples of Cisleithania benefitted equally from the great freedom achievements of the new constitution. They wanted to be free and good Austrians, nothing more. They didn't think about securing their people against any future dangers while they still 38 “Bericht über die dritte General-Versammlung,” 21, translation: “Wenn die Slaven Österreichs die Deutschen hassen und zu verdrängen streben, so läßt sich das zwar nimmermehr billigen, wohl aber verstehen. Dagegen bleibt das Auftreten der Magyaren gegen unsere Landesleute in Ungarn geradezu unbegreiflich. Der Magyar weiß ganz gut, daß sein schlimmster Feind der Slavismus ist, er weiß auch, daß nur Deutschland im Stande ist ihn vor diesem Feinde zu schützen, wie denn auch Deutschland ihm zur Selbstständigkeit verholfen hat, und doch erleben wir nirgends eine größere Verfolgung des Deutschtums, eine schlimmere Vergewaltigung unserer Landesleute als gerade in Ungarn.” 31 had power in their hands. They relied on the survival of German culture and on the gratitude of other peoples who owed their intellectual and material development to this culture. They forgot that there is no gratitude in the national life of peoples and that the promotion of one's own interests is the sole guideline in the struggle for existence.39 In Vormeng’s narrative, the Germans of Austria were equal to innocent lambs, who, erroneously, believed in the “goodness of humans.” In his view, the German-speaking elite should have concentrated on amassing power to themselves. Instead, by virtue of being German, in their good heartedness they focused on treating all ethnicities as equal. This trusting nature of Germans even reached so far as to not insist on setting German as the official state language of both halves of the empire. Treating the gullibility of Germans in Austria as a cautionary tale, which set the scene for the need of the League in the first place, Vormeng criticized the current political situation of the empire: as the Czechs and Slavs got increasingly more rights, they consequently became increasingly more aggressive against the good-natured Germans. Conclusion To conclude this chapter, we need to return to the beginning. The first assertion I made was that the League perceived that the Austrian government failed the German-speaking minority in Bohemian, Moravian, and the western Hungarian crown lands. As such, the dual monarchy 39 Vormeng, Geschichte, 3, translation: “Anders die Deutschen. Ihr Streben ging dahin, die großen, Freiheitlichen Errungenschaften der neuen Verfassung allen Völkern Zislethanien gleichmäßig zu gute kommen zu lassen. Freiheitlich wollten sie sein und gut österreichisch, nichts weiter. Ihr Volkstum gegen etwaige Gefahren der Zukunft sicherzustellen, so lange sie die Herrschaft in Händen hatten, daran dachten sie nicht. Sie bauten auf die Überlebenheit der Deutschen Kultur und auf die Dankbarkeit der anderen Völker, welche dieser Kultur ihre geistige und materielle Entwicklung verdankten. Sie Vergaßen, daß es im nationalen Leben der Völker keine Dankbarkeit gibt, und daß die Förderung der eigenen Interessen die alleinige Richtschnur im Kampfe ums Dasein bildet.” 32 was the start of the end: in order for the empire to have unified, they should have Germanised. In failing to do so, Treumund presented that the empire let down its German citizens. The alliance between Germany and Austria brought on a political level to the discussion of intervention. Whilst the two empires might have been in an alliance, the rift between German speakers’ public opinion and the Austrian government widened, presenting the League with tempting opportunities for intervention. Lastly, the Germans in the empire, and otherwise, were characterized in opposition to the Magyars: the laws that accompanied the dual monarchy were seen as benefitting the Magyar at the expanse of the German. The two following chapters will trace a narrative of German superiority, setting them in conversation with the political context of the German-speaking minorities outlined in this chapter. The setting of Magyars against Germans in this chapter will provide a foundation for the narrative that imperial Germans present in the next chapter. 33 Chapter 2: Imperial Delusions: A New Form of German Nationalism The unification of Germany in 1871 changed the landscape of the European world and gave rise to fantasies about imperialism in the form of a new national consciousness. New fears surrounding the apparent loss of “Germanness” in the face of increasing emigration combined with new domestic realities heightened anxieties about Germany’s world position. Die Deutsche Schule im Ausland, a monthly periodical of the Deutscher Schulverein, allowed for authors, who were predominantly German teachers abroad, to air their grievances over the status of German speakers and German schools abroad. As Chapter I detailed, German nationals within the German Empire took issue with the declining linguistic hegemony that German-speaking minorities faced in the Bohemian-, Moravian- and Hungarian-lands of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. They also saw the emergence of a rift between the Habsburg monarchy, who governed from Vienna, and the German-speaking communities in faraway administrative territories. This chapter turns to trace the emergence of a new form of German national consciousness in relation to the feared loss of German linguistic prestige. The importance of a German education amidst German-speaking minorities affected the shape that German nationalism took within the German School League and likeminded nationals. But what did it mean to possess “Germanness”? How did one lose their “Germanness” and was this loss merely the loss of language? This chapter traces the emergence of a new German national consciousness as fantasized by the League and German individuals. I argue that the unfolding “cult” of Germandom embodied imperial fantasies and anxieties and held a belief in the inherently timeless aspect of German superiority. 34 The Second Reich, 1871-1918, arose in the context of mass nationalism that swept across Europe in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.1 According to historian Stefan Berger, the establishment of the Second German Empire also came at a moment where nations were beginning to emerge within Empires.2 Nations were constructed within empires to strengthen the imperial centre, however as a by-product they created tensions between the multi-ethnic empires and their imperial cores.3 As the emerging “national” was not congruent with the existing “political,” empires were underlined by tensions between those who belonged and those who the new idea of nation sought to exclude. nineteenth century German nationalism, thus evolved at the conjunction of imperial expansion and nationalist exclusion. Discourse regarding nationalism was shaped by “a long history of intervention and containment by more centralized and more powerful states, and the emigration of millions of Germans, especially to the Americas, encouraged a nationalism that fused pride and aggression with insecurity and pessimism,” summarized scholar Shelley Baranowski.4 The idea that the newly formed German state would inevitably expand, by virtue of its status as an empire, was embedded into the unification process of 1871.5 Historian Helmut Walser Smith presented that the newly established empire saw themselves as an heir to the Holy Roman Empire. 6 Subsequently, the belief that of ethnic Germans scattered across Europe should be absorbed into its territorial borders would be a core part of its future foreign policies. However, as the young empire had been pieced together from multiple smaller states 1 Stefan Berger, “Building the Nation Among Visions of German Empire,” in Nationalizing Empires (Budapest: Central European University Press: 2015) and Benedict Anderson, “Official Nationalism and Imperialism” in Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism (Verso: 2006). 2 Berger, “Building the Nation,” 307. 3 Berger, “Building the Nation,” 307 and Stefan Berger, Alexei Miller, “Introduction: Building Nations In and With Empires—A Reassessment” in Nationalizing Empires (Budapest: Central European University Press: 2015): 3. 4 Shelley Baranowski, Nazi Empire: German Colonialism and Imperialism from Bismarck to Hitler (New York: Cambridge, 2011): 13. 5 Baranowski, Nazi Empire, 6-7. 6 Helmut Walser Smith, German Nationalism and Religious Conflict: Culture, Ideology, Politics, 1870-1914 (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1995). 35 and entities, it struggled with unity. Contemporary scholars have characterized the unification of 1871 as “incomplete” or “unfinished,” as many ethnic Germans remained outside the borders of the Empire.7 For example, as Edward R. Dickinson lays out, those who referred to themselves as culturally German before 1914 were found in three different empires: the Hohenzollern, Habsburg and Romanov Empires as well as the Confederation of Switzerland.8 Stefan Berger argued that such “transnationalism” produced tensions that affected the shape which German national identity eventually took on.9 The League believed that the German national movement had taken form far before the spatial convergence of state formation, and therefore they saw it as one of their fundamental aims to fold German-speaking minorities in eastern parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire under the umbrella of German national consciousness. Subsequently, the intellectual inclusion of large minority communities outside the empire into the pan-German network was seen as a key goal to enhancing Germany’s imperial standing. The formation of German national identity was also influenced by long histories of migration. Before 1871, claims to citizenship and identity were typically based on birthplace and, therefore, after unification it became difficult to reconcile increased social mobility and global expansion of their power with the way Germanness could be defined, bestowed, and sustained outside central Europe.10 In the context of the second Reich their pre- World War I aspirations to expand, thus also joined together two goals: the creation of internal cohesion and marginalization of domestic “enemies,” and the achievement of global power.11 The 7 Smith, German Nationalism and Religious Conflict, Berger, “Building the Nation,” 250 and Baranowski, Nazi Empire. 8 Smith, German Nationalism and Religious Conflict and Edward Ross Dickinson cited in Berger, “Building a Nation,” 250. 9 Berger, “Building the Nation,” 250. 10 Bradley Naranch, “Inventing the Auslandsdeutsche Emigration, Colonial Fantasy, and German National Identity, 1848-71” in Germany's Colonial Pasts, ed. Eric Ames, Marcia Klotz, and Lora Wildenthal (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005): 26 11 Baranowski, Nazi Empire, 3. 36 School League thought the German past to be inherently intertwined with migration, which has spread the “German people” over various, sometimes changing, state lines.12 This history with migration was seen by Germans as deeply influential to German nation building through hindering Germany from evolving into a unified Empire, such as, for example, France or the British Empire. At the same time, however, the League identified an innate relationship between “German and human spiritual education”: “And there is another fact connected to this presence of Germanness that deserves to be mentioned here, the fact that no people on earth has carried out linguistic and spiritual studies to such an extent and to such depth as the Germans.”13 These two narratives dominated the discussion around Germans abroad, especially German speakers in eastern Austria-Hungary. They were intertwined with colonial fantasies, anxieties, and the firm believe in the superiority of German spirit and language. Lastly, German national identity before its unification was marked by fantasies of colonial futures. Marcia Klotz argues that through pre-colonial fantasies, which arose before Germany acquired any colonies abroad and which were, thus, marked by idealism, the German “nation” came into being as an imagined community at a time when there was no state or government in which that “nation” could find political representation.14 The main content of these pre-colonial narratives revolved around a singular theme: Germany, understood as a loosely formed community of German speakers, developed a kind of ego-ideal through these colonial fantasies.15 In summary, German national identity pre-1871 was characterized by non-territoriality, which meant it was also not exclusively based on local 12 I use “German people” as a translation form the German “Volk”. 13 Handbuch des Deutschtums im Auslande: Heft eines Adressbuchs der deutschen Auslandschulen, vom Allgemeinen Deutschen Schulverein zur Erhaltung des Deutschtums im Auslande (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer, 1906): XXII, translation: “Und mit dieser Gegenwart des Deutschtums hängt nun noch eine Tatsache zusammen, die hier Erwähnung verdient, die Tatsache, dass kein Volk der Erde in solchem Umfang und in solche Tiefe sprachliche und geistliche Studien vertrieben hat wie das deutsche.” 14 Marcia Klotz „Introduction,“ in Germany's Colonial Pasts, by Eric Ames, Marcia Klotz, and Lora Wildenthal (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005): xii. 15 Susanne Zantop cited in Klotz, “Introduction,” xii. 37 customs, regional loyalties or religious traditions.16 Subsequently, it was in a precarious position to gain influence from pre-colonial fantasies and dreams of what could be, which were countered by the reality of mass migration of Germans to the Americas and the seemingly far lying goal of unification.17 After 1871, the short-comings of the unification further shaped the emerging national identity. The League’s publications respond to both fantasies of what could be: the romanticised history of migration and colonial fantasies fuelled calls for unification of Germans globally. This chapter analyses the emergence of a new form of German national identity, Germandom, which the Deutsche Schulverein created and maintained, in relation to the context and arguments presented in chapter one. I begin my chapter by examining how the League presented “Germanness” and how it rooted this conception in the long historical processes of German migration and the nineteenth century increased German international presence. A firm belief in the inherent cultural superiority of Germans and a strive for world hegemony fuelled the theory behind “Germandom”. I then turn to analyse how the League’s periodical provided an avenue for imperials to export the cult of “Germandom” to the various German communities living abroad. The fantasies that Germany held over their future as a global power affected the rhetoric that the League used in their publications. However, Germany was a new empire, and although it industrialised quickly leading up to World War I, many of their colonial fantasies did not come true. The League emerged and worked at the junction of fantasy and reality, images of a great German Empire that would span the globe and the reality of the unfinished unification. Thus, if the fantasies were not going to be achieved through a formal empire spanning the globe, the League turned to the notion of a pan-German network in its place. 16 Naranch, “Inventing the Auslandsdeutsche,” 23. 17 Naranch, “Inventing the Auslandsdeutsche,” 23-24. 38 Fantasies About Germandom This newly emerging form of German national identity evolved out of the history of German migration. The League advanced a narrative that linked together past trends of German migration with the emergence of a shared culture perceived to bind all Germans together, regardless of their geographic placement or origin. Accordingly, Otto von Hentig, league correspondent, lawyer, and minister of state to the duchy of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha stated in an article published by the League in 1909 that: “The citizenship-status of those almost 100 million who remained conscious of their Germanness is diverse, but they are, even if outside the borders of the Reich, internally connected by the same descent, language, customs and culture, by the same talents of mind and spirit, by a shared great past.”18 Despite diverse state- and political affiliations, German emigrants were believed to actively have remained true to their “Germandom” and were thus all seen as being inherently connected. This idea of a shared culture manifested itself in the conception of “Germandom”, that is, the physical and mental characteristics that every German possessed irrespective of their citizenship. Germandom also quelled from the German colonial conquests of the late nineteenth century, or rather, fantasies of a colonial future without a colonial past, as Klotz describes. 19 According to von Hentig: “[…] it was a natural event of our colonial and global economic development in the last generation that the expansion of our shipping and our trade resulted in settlements, inhabited and managed by Germans, in almost all parts of the world.”20 18 Otto von Hentig, “Ein Lebensgesetz des Deutschen Volkes,“ in Das Deutschtum im Ausland: Vierteljahersheft des Vereins für das Deutschtum im Ausland, no1, herausgegeben vom Hauptvorstand 1909: 3. Translation from German: „Vielfältig ist die staatliche Zugehörigkeit jener nahezu 100 Millionen, die sich ihres Deutschtums bewußt geblieben, aber sie sind, wenn auch außerhalb der Reichsgrenzen, innerlich verbunden durch gleiche Abstammung, Sprache, Sitte und Kultur, durch gleiche Anlagen des Geistes und des Gemüts, durch eine gemeinsame große Vergangenheit.“ 19 Klotz, “Introduction,“ xi-xii. 20 Von Hentig, “Ein Lebensgesetz des Deutschen Volkes,“ 2, translation: “Endlich war es ein natürliches Ereignis unserer kolonialen und weltwirtschaftlichen Entwicklung im letzten Menschenalter, daß die 39 Although quickly industrialised, Germany’s colonial developments remained small at the beginning of the twentieth century. Developments on the international scale, however, depicted a belief in the innate superiority of German character and material skills. Economic developments furthermore set the scene for the intellectual rise of a globe-spanning pan-German network. This network was built on the notion of Germandom, which for the League consisted of two distinct characteristics; it assumed an inherent German cultural superiority and relied on the notion of Pan-German unity. Newly awakened German imperialism and the strong belief in the superiority of German culture led the League to lobby for policies that would guard the German state, her people, and the German nationality. For example, the Handbuch des Deutschtums im Auslande, published by the League in 1906, stated that: “to serve ‘Germandom’ is to serve humanity: German education - human education.” 21 Meant to awaken German nationalism, these words established the illusion of an inherent underlying connection between Germany and a wider cause for humanity. By presenting Germans as the leaders of a metaphoric pan-human movement, the Handbuch created a foundation upon which the League could construct a narrative of German cultural and educational superiority. Alongside cultural superiority, the notion of Germandom relied on the idea of a pan-German network. This was especially important considering that the young empire had been stitched together into a patchwork political entity from smaller, previously independent, dutchies between 1867 and 1871. As twenty-first century scholar David G. Williamson depicts, the unification of North Germany in 1867 was of unsparing nature and the Ausdehnung unserer Schiffart und unseres Handels in fast allen Teilen der bewohnten Erde Niederlassungen zur Folge hatte, die von Deutschen bewohnt und geleitet werden.” 21 Handbuch des Deutschtums im Auslande, XVIIII. Translation from German: „Dem Deutschtum dienen, heißt der Menschheit dienen: Deutsche Bildung –Menschenbildung.“ 40 subsequent motivation to establish a strong German identity was significant.22 German patriotism saw an upsurge during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 and the final unification of Germany came as a consequence of growing diplomatic and military uncertainties aided by growing nationalist feelings.23 Calls for pan-German unity, advanced by the League as means to strengthen German nationalism abroad, thus also served to fulfil the unfinished unification in 1871. “Isn't it the most natural of all duties of Germanness, first of all, to hold and consolidate the vanguard, the external borders of its much-threatened Central European position at the linguistic frontiers, but also everywhere to counter the attacks on its right to life and development with the sum of its cultural forces?”24 posed von Hentig. He outlined the proto-legal foundation that Germans, and thus the School League, had, not only the right, but the duty to act in effort to save itself. Strong nationalism, therefore, was a key component of safeguarding the homeland. To protect the empire, it was Germany’s natural duty to export the cult of Germandom and, in order to do so, the German language had to be fortified. Von Hentig’s argument depicted a link between the proliferation of the German language and Germany’s position as a world power. Calling for German speakers in Bohemia, Moravia and Hungary to counter the ongoing attacks on Germany’s “right to life and development,” von Hentig urged his compatriots to actively pledge themselves to the cause of “Germandom.” The League, therefore, presented the conviction that, as dispersed minorities abroad, Germans were in a constant state of endangerment, threatened by other cultures. Especially at the outskirts of the 22 David G. Williamson, “The Creation of the North German Confederation, 1866–1867” in Bismarck and Germany (Routledge, 2010): 44-45. 23 Williamson, “The Creation of the North German Confederation,” 44-45 and David G. Williamson, “The Franco-Prussian War and the Unification of Germany, 1870–1871” in Bismarck and Germany (Routledge, 2010): 54-58. 24 Von Hentig, “Ein Lebensgesetz des Deutschen Volkes,“ 9, translation: “Ist es da nicht die natürlichste aller Pflichten des Deutschtums, zunächst die Vorhut, die Außenwerke seiner vielbedrohten zentral-europäischen Stellung an den Sprachgrenzen zu halten und zu festigen, überall aber den Angriffen auf sein Lebens- und Entwicklungsrecht die Summe seiner kulturellen Kräfte entgegenzusetzen?” 41 German linguistic boundary, where the German language met Czech, Slavic and Hungarian, small communities were at stake to be assimilated into foreign cultures, thus jeopardizing the greater German Empire and her world position. Such rhetoric served as the foundation for the League’s philosophy and gave rise to calls for greater German nationalism across the globe. For von Hentig, the belief in German superiority formed another part of “Germandom” and was needed to maintain a strong imperial centre. The mission of the League was thus clear: to advance the cult of Germandom across the globe, to strengthen ties of small German communities abroad with the wider pan-German network and to ensure the longevity and strength of the German mother tongue. Subsequently, von Hentig held at the core of his call the awakening of a healthy national spirit in wider circles of German people: If one day a clear understanding of the values of all kinds, which arise from the mutual activity of the community feeling of many millions of fellow countrymen [Stammesgenossen], will dominate every German in the Reich and abroad, especially everyone who emigrates, who temporarily moves far away for gainful and professional purposes, Whoever undertakes a journey of research, recreation and pleasure, observation and experience will soon teach the usefulness of that activity. With each individual example of its expansion, its increased success will increase.25 He believed that only when all German speakers understood the values of the empire that a strong community of Germans around the globe would be established, and the position of Germany secured. According to the League’s mentality, every German needed to understand the importance of German values in order to be sufficiently able to teach them forward, thus 25 Von Hentig, “Ein Lebensgesetz des Deutschen Volkes,“ 9, translation: “Der erste Schritt zu solcher Pflichterfüllung wird auf die Erweckung gesunden Volksbewustseins in immer weiteren Kreisen des deutschen Volkes zu richten sein. Wenn dereinst klares Verständnis für die Werte aller Art, die aus der gegenseitigen Betätigung des Gemeinschaftsgefühls vieler Millionen Stammesgenossen erwachsen werden, jeden Deutschen im Reiche und im Auslande beherrscht, namentlich jeden, der auswandert, der zu Erwerbs-und Berufsuzwecken vorübergehend in die Ferne zieht, Der Forschungs-, Erholungs- und Vergnügungsreise unternimmt, so werden bald Beobachtung und Erfahrung die Nützlichkeit jener Betätigung lehren. mit jedem Einzelbeispiel ihrer Ausdehnung wird ihr erhöhter Erfolg zuwacksen.” 42 proliferating “Germandom” and strengthening the pan-German community. Especially emigrants were seen as important vessels for Germandom. Hentig’s call for action represented the belief in pan-German unity as an innate bond, irrespective of time and space, which all German peoples possessed. Historian Bradley Naranch presents that over the course of the nineteenth century, public discussion over German emigration slowly turned into a sort of paternalistic curiosity and concern for the “kinfolk” abroad, which shaped the way German nationalism was characterized and bestowed upon Germans abroad.26 Moving away from fears of national dispersal, slowly emigrants were bestowed with a sense of timelessness and endurance of self. This notion of a durable international imagined comradeship was the foundation upon which the global German Empire was to be built, as imagined by the League and its contemporaries.27 Hentig wrote for the journal in the context of growing depictions of nationalism in mid nineteenth century Europe. Benedict Anderson traces the emergence of “official nationalisms” throughout European dynasties.28 As the prominence of nationalist views were spreading across Europe, major royal families ‘declared’ national identifications, such as “Russian”, “German” or “Greek”, irrespective of their empire’s borders and leading to the “naturalization” of European dynasties. These official nationalisms and declared national belongings were meant to combine naturalization with maintaining dynastic power of “polyglot domains” that had been accumulated since the Middle Ages.29 Nationalisation thus began as a dynastic policy and continued to be a political tool throughout the nineteenth century. 26 Naranch, “Inventing the Auslandsdeutsche,” 27. 27 I use Benedict Anderson’s conception of “imagined communities,” See: Benedict R Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, revis ed. (London: Verso, 2016). 28 Benedict Richard O'Gorman Anderson, ”Official Nationalism and Imperialism,” in Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism (Verso: 2006): 85-86 29 Anderson, “Official Nationalism,” 86-88. 43 Like von Hentig, Bernard Gaster, the director of the German school in Antwerp and a central figure in the publication of the League’s periodical, rejoiced over the fantasy of German unification. Writing in 1908, he marvelled over how Germans abroad did not seemingly have the same issues of divergence, such as polarizing opinions about ethnic differences, as Germans back home in the Reich: “It is gratifying that the differences among Germans abroad are diminishing [...] although everyone retains their own kind of German coziness [...] It is also gratifying that party questions [...] are being pushed aside abroad and the national point of view is the only one that comes into consideration.”30 Scholars of modernization theory, such as Hans-Ulrich Wehler and Edward Ross Dickinson, have argued that Germany’s early twentieth century was characterized by tensions between rapidly modernizing economy, society, and culture on the one hand and the stagnant political structure on the other.31 Subsequently, German nationalism grew under tensions: unification against expansion, and mobilisation against state intervention.32 For Gaster, however, such tensions were not of central focus when it came to advancing “Germandom:” rather, those likeminded nationalists, writing, for example, for the periodical, could centre their attention on the unifying aspects of a pan-German identity. In the domestic sphere, however, as a result of early twentieth century tensions, insecurities were woven into the very essence of the German Empire after its unification in 1871 and, thus, German nationalism was built between fear of dissolution and a “will to power.” Despite that, Gaster advanced the representation that German speakers across the globe shared a horizontal bond irrespective of time, place, and politics. Nonetheless, he also implicitly suggests that such a bond seemed to be more 30 Gaster, “Die höheren deutschen Schulen im Auslande,” Die Deutsche Schule im Auslande 7, no. 7 (Wolfenbüttel: Heckners Verlag, 1908) 344, translation: “Erfreulich ist es, daß die deutschen Stammesunterschiede im Auslande sich abschleifen [... ] wenn auch jeder die ihm eigene Art deutscher Gemütlichkeit bewahrt [...] Ebenso ist es erfreulich, daß Parteifragen, [...] im Auslande beiseite geschoben werden und dafür der nationale Gesichtspunkt einzig in Betracht kommt.” 31 Edward Ross Dickinson, “Introduction” in Sex, Freedom, and Power in Imperial Germany, 1880-1914 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014): 5. 32 Baranowski, Nazi Empire 11. 44 unifying abroad then it was domestically. Rather than worrying about domestic policies, he concludes his article, Germans abroad could focus solely on the enhancement of “Germandom” and pan-German unity under the guidance of the League. The reliance on pan-German unity, the notion of a shared culture, and the call for German world hegemony were all a part of the newly emerged national identity of Germans. Karl Vormeng envisioned that “[i]n the coming centuries, Germany will not be a dwarf next to giants, but will stand on an equal footing with England, North America and Russia if it ensures that its settlers, who move abroad every year, maintain their national culture. This can be achieved through a strong, national education and by constantly maintaining close contact with our emigrants.”33 For Vormeng, this meant the establishment of a strong foreign school system which would serve to educate and nurture young German minds abroad. Most importantly, such schools needed to awaken national pride in children and teach them the foundation for life: “It is the task of the school to awaken national pride in every child and to instill in them the principle for life that it is shameful to give up or deny the German language and manner.”34 To achieve this, Vormeng outlined the need to erect a strong national upbringing, so that imperial Germans and Germans living abroad would stay in close contact and comradery. 33 Karl Vormeng, Geschichte des Allgemeinen Deutschen Schulvereins zur Erhaltung des Deutschtums im Auslande (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1900): 50, translation: “ Deutschland wird in kommenden Jahrhunderten nicht ein Zwerg neben Riesen sein, sondern gleichberechtigt neben England, Nord-Amerika und Rußland dastehen, wenn es dafür sorgt, daß seine alljährlich in die Fremde ziehende Ansiedler ihrem Volkstume erhalten bleiben. Das kann erreicht werden durch eine kräftige, nationale Erziehung und dadurch, daß wir mit unseren Auswanderern stetig in inniger Fühlung bleiben.” 34 Vormeng, Geschichte des Allgemeinen Deutschen Schulvereins, 48. 45 Exporting Germandom As demonstrated, German identity at the end of the nineteenth century was undergoing a significant evolution. The emerging cult of “Germandom” was, according to the League’s philosophy, to be exported across the globe to strengthen and safeguard the empire at home. The new empire was characterized by social Darwinist ideas, which grew popular in the decades following unification, and which presupposed a global struggle for survival among world empires, in which only Germany’s triumph as a global hegemon could guarantee its long-term survival and prosperity.35 Consequently, the idea that German emigrants might be absorbed into the local culture abroad was a nightmarish situation for many at home because it suggested that German national identity abroad was susceptible to decline and resulted in active efforts to export Germandom. This next section analyses the visions which the League held for the future of Germany and the importance that these placed on safeguarding the Reich. The foundation of the League’s operation and philosophy, much like the characteristic of “Germandom”, was the belief in the superiority of German art, culture, and life as the very base upon which life itself was built. Max Jähn, a German military author and officer of the Prussian army, envisaged in 1900 a theory over the different natures of German borders. In his book Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland? (1900) he divided German borders into natural, state or political, and linguistic borders. He characterized linguistic borders as having “nothing to do with geography or politics, but [they] are a product of human freedom to spread out and wander.”36 Subsequently, the German language encompassed a vast geographic area in Europe, both historically and contemporaneously, and thus the German language border 35 Baranowski, Nazi Empire, 13. 36 Max Jähn, Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland? (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1900) 5, translation: “also die Sprachlichen Grenzen, die haben nichts mit geographie oder politik zu tun, sondern sind produkt des menschlichen Freiheits, sich zu bereiten und wandern.” 46 spanned across many different state and natural borders. His theory led Jähn to argue that “no people in Europe, however, has advanced so much foreign power as the German one; because no one is so fond of wandering and adventurous things; No one was so rightly asked to fertilize and colonize as the Germans, especially in the east of their closed national territory”37 Therefore, for Jähn, threats to the German language abroad were threats to the larger German state. Jähn’s theory served as a founding pillar of the League’s policy and subsequently the League came to see language as inherently connected to state security. From this arose the need to organize missions to export and maintain Germandom in German communities abroad. The effects of the political and social change that rippled through Europe at the end of the nineteenth century were also felt along German language borders. The most notable of these changes was the Prague peace of 1866, which concluded the war between Prussia and Austria. According to von Hentig: “[ …] the events of the nineteenth century, namely the Peace of Prague on August 30th, 1866, alienated millions of our fellow kinsmen politically from the German heartland.”38 Writing retroactively in 1909, von Hentig, and likeminded nationalist, viewed the lands of the Austrian crown under the Habsburg monarchy’s rule to have been, up until 1866, at their core intrinsically Germanic: “[p]ossessing an ancient culture... in constant interaction with the empire, the Germans were considered the natural leaders and rulers of Slovenians, Czechs, and other tribes within the wide borders of Austria.”39 However “[b]ecause Austria withdrew from political connection with the German 37 Jähn, Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland? 6, translation: “Kein Volk aber hat in Europa so viel Außenpoften vorgeschoben als das deutsche; denn keines ist so wander- und unternehmungslustig; keinen bot sich mit so großem Rechte die Aufforderung, zu befruchten und zu kolonisieren wie den Deutschen, zumal im Osten ihres geschlossenen Volksgebietes.” 38 Von Hentig, “Ein Lebensgesetz des Deutschen Volkes,” 2, translation: “[...] so trennten die Ereignisse des 19. Jahrhunderts, namentlich der Prager Friede von 30. August 1866 Millionen unserer Stammesgenossen politisch vom deutschen Kernlande.” 39 “Anruf” in Korrespondenzblatt no. 4 (Berlin: Gebrüder Fickert, 1884) 3, “ Im Besitze einer alten Kultur ... in steter Wechselwirkung mit dem Reiche galten die Deutschen als die geborenen Leiter und Herrscher über Slovenen, Tschechen, und andere Völkerstämme innerhalb der weiten Grenzen Osterreichs.” 47 Empire, in the eyes of the Viennese court, German nationality no longer appeared to be the solid support of the state.”40 The League argued that with the abolishment of all political ties between Berlin and Vienna, the Viennese court no longer saw the German nationality as a stable pillar of the state: “Even in Vienna, the Magyar and Slavic sympathies are seen as the marker of a good Austrian Patriot.”41 For the League, the status of German speakers was directly linked with the security of the imperial home. Historian Shelley Baranowski presents that the post-1871 German Empire presents an example of “tension of empire”, where aspirations to imperialist expansion are met with fear of dissolution at the hands of its imperialist rivals. The memory of the late medieval decline of German settlements in the Slavic lands of Eastern Europe and the “triumphant but incomplete” unification of 1871 which left large communities of ethnic Germans beyond the boundaries of the empire allowed for the marginalization of domestic enemies.42 In the case of Austria-Hungary, this meant concrete fears that the German speakers would be out-ruled by Slavic populations, thus weakening the status of the German. This created and spread calls for protecting German culture at its linguistic frontiers. To ensure the empire’s continued prevalence on the world stage, the League presented two key principles: an emphasis on trade networks and strengthening ties of communities abroad with the fatherland. The League declared in the Handbuch that “The situation today is different than it was 100 years ago; the German no longer stands shyly aside when world hegemony is debated.”43 Thus, it was of central importance to the League that German 40 “Anruf,” 3, translation: “Indem Osterreich aus der politischen Verbindung mit dem deutschen Reich ausschied, erschien in den Augen den Wiener Hofes die deutsche Nationalität nicht mehr als die feste Stütze des Staates.” 41 “Anruf”, 3, translation: “Selbst in Wien sieht man jetzt magyarische und slawische Sympathien als das Kennzeichen eines gut österreichischen Patrioten an.” 42 Shelley Baranowski, “Introduction” in Nazi Empire: German Colonialism and Imperialism from Bismarck to Hitler (New York: Cambridge, 2011): 3-6. 43 Handbuch des Deutschtums im Auslande, XVIIII, translation: “Anders als vor 100 Jahren ist heute die Lage der Dinge; der Deutsche steht nicht mehr scheu beiseite, wo um die Herrschaft der Welt gestritten wird.” 48 Geistesbildung, spiritual culture, and the German language did not lose their position in the World: “And now the consequence of all this: it is of immeasurable importance that German intellectual education and the German language, its magnificent vessel, are preserved in their world position in the future.”44 Language, for the League, was seen as the key to trade and with economic alliances shifting, due to international rivalries, von Hentig saw the need to strengthen the German language in foreign communities. Fears over the continued self-reliance of countries with a strong colonial presence, such as the British Empire, drove von Hentig’s arguments.45 Among other fears, von Hentig arguments was the fear that the increasing numbers of German emigrants in the United States and other foreign countries would lose their Germanness. To prevent Germany from being excluded from the European race for economic superiority, he called for every means possible to strengthen German economic world positioning: If Great Britain and its colonies developed into a trade policy unit on the basis of a program like that of Joseph Chamberlain and, through the tariff preference given to English products in their own colonial areas, the sales of the products of our industriousness were significantly impaired, the German would probably be For the sake of its existence, the people should not leave any of the sources of strength unused that could secure and strengthen their economic position in the world. The German language community is one of these sources of strength. There is no need to prove that the equality of mother tongues makes business transactions possible in many cases and facilitates them in all.46 44 Handbuch des Deutschtums im Auslande, XXII, translation: “Und nun die Folge aus alldem: es ist von unermesslicher Wichtigkeit, dass die deutsche Geistesbildung und die deutsche Sprache, ihr herrliches Gefäß, in ihrer Weltstellung auch in Zukunft erhalten bleiben.” 45 For more on the the economic relations between the British- and German empires during the late 19th century, see: Kees van Dijk, "Germany Enters the Colonial Race," in Pacific Strife ( Amsterdam University Press, 2015) 97-119. 46 Von Hentig, “Ein Lebensgesetz des Deutschen Volkes,” 4, translation: “Käme dazu, daß Groß-britannien mit seinen Kolonien auf der Grundlage eines Programms wie des Joseph Chamberlainschen sich zu einer Handelspolitischen Einheit entwickelte und durch die tarifmäßige Bevorzugung englischer Fabrikate in den eigenen Kolonialgebieten die Erzeugnisse unseres Gewerbefleißes in ihrem Absatz erheblich beeinträchtigte, so dürfte das Deutsche Volk um seines Bestandes willen keine der Kraftquellen unbenutzt lassen, die seine wirtschaftliche Weltstellung sichern und verstärken könnten. Zu diesen Kraftquellen gehört in erster Linie die 49 Such means, most importantly, included the deepening of the German linguistic community, because he believed that a common mother tongue would facilitate and strengthen Germany’s trade networks. For von Hentig, exporting “Germandom” was synonymous with exporting the German language. Continuing von Hentig’s line of thinking, Gaster emphasized that the most important connection between foreign communities and the imperial home was the school. In an article written for the periodical of the German School League in 1907, he described: “[t]he main reason why our German schools abroad have developed so brilliantly in the last 40 years is not due to a particularly increased national consciousness among Germans abroad, but rather to positive needs in the material area.”47 Because German national prosperity had increased, Germandom demanded and pulled a strong presence in global trade and world industry, even outside the bounds of the German state. Both authors place emphasis on the connection between language and Germany’s strong position on the international stage. Economics and trade for Gaster presented one aspect of imperial nationalism, forming a pillar upon which the German was constructed. The League considered the second principle of strong imperial standing to be strong ties between communities abroad and the fatherland. Von Hentig exemplified the League’s worldview by stating that “thus, a ring of foreign national aspirations closes around all the land borders of the German Reich, the overall pressure of which is directed almost deutsche Sprachgemeinschaft. Es bedarf keines Beweises, daß Die Gleichheit der Muttersprache den geschäftlichen Verkehr in vielen Fällen erst ermöglicht, in allen erleichtert.” 47 Bernhard Gaster, “Die höheren deutschen Schulen im Auslande,“ Die Deutsche Schule Im Ausland (Wolfenbüttel: Heckners Verlag 1908), 341, translation: “Der Hauptgrund dafür, daß sich unser deutsches Ausland-schulwesen in den letzten 40 Jahren so glänzend entwickelt hat, liegt nicht etwa in einem besonderen gesteigerten Nationalbewußtsein der Deutschen außer Landes, sondern in erfreulichen Notwendigkeiten auf materiellem Gebiete.” 50 exclusively at Germanness.”48 For him, the Reich was threatened by the rise of nationalism across Europe, which, for him, must by extension threaten German existence. This presented another aspect of the form of imperial nationalism propagated by the League: the link between language and “Germandom” was for the School League innate. Conclusion In conclusion, this chapter expands on the context in which the German School League was established, focusing on Imperial Germany in contrast to chapter one. The voices in this chapter spoke from a newly fashioned imperial Germany, whose unification had been guided my fantasies of colonial conquests across the globe. Although it became clear by 1914 that German colonial achievements had played out differently than envisioned, the emerging national identity embodied an aspect of timelessness. The brand of nationalism that emerged was composed of German immigrants, who exported German qualities to their new communities abroad. Ideas about German immigrants enforced notions of German cultural superiority and laid down the foundation for the pan-German network which rested on communities abroad tasked with the aspect of proliferating Germandom. The theory behind “Germandom”, a renewed German nationalist identity, and the anxieties regarding the new empire’s world position drove the subsequent policies of the German School League. Furthermore, the League was the product of anxieties and fantasies about emigration, the future of the Empire, and increased nationalism among the German population. Their aim was to strengthen and maintain German world positioning and consequently, the League built 48 Von Hentig, “Ein Lebensgesetz des Deutschen Volkes,“ 10, translation: “so schließt sich um alle Landgrenzen des Deutschen Reichs ein Ring von fremdnationalen Bestrebungen, deren Gesamtdruck nahezu ausschließlich auf das Deutschtum gerichtet ist.” 51 German schools abroad to strengthen and advance the ideals of a global German community. The next chapter proceeds to trace the connection between language and Germandom, and the policies that stemmed from this connection. 52 Chapter 3: Auslandsschulwesen and Linguistic Nationalisation “The survival of the German culture, as expressed by German schools, exerts a promotional force in strengthening Germanness that should not be underestimated.”1 In 1884 the authors of the German School League’s Korrespondenzblatt publication were enraged: the law school in Sibiu (Hermannstadt), Hungary, had cut all its courses offered in German. The academy lost its prestige when “the Germans were thrown out and Magyar teachers took the positions instead,” the article exclaimed.2 This example from the Austro-Hungarian Empire depicts one of the battles that the German School League fought after the organisation’s inception and symbolised for the League the beginning of the feared decline of the new German Empire. The dual Monarchy after 1867, allowed for the creation of a Hungarian-speaking education and administrative system, making Hungarian the “de-facto language” in Hungary, argue Patrick Stevenson and Jenny Carl.3 Although German was not outright limited in the administrative fields, starting in 1870 a series of amendments increasingly forbade the use of German in courts and the state school system, making it increasingly hard to advance in society without the knowledge of Hungarian.4 Such amendments to the law led the League’s members to fear over the declining status of the German language and, thus, spurred to life calls to protect their precious tongue outside of the German Empire through the invocation of German schools abroad. As this chapter 1 A. Brandl, “Die Bedeutung der deutschen Sprache über See für Deutschlands Weltmachtstellung,” Die Deutsche Schule im Auslande. Organ des Vereins deutscher Lehrer im Auslande, 2, no. 2 (Wolfenbüttel: Hecknerschen Verlag: 1903), translation: „Die Überlegenheit der deutschen Kultur, wie sie sich im deutschen Schulwesen ausdrückt, übt so eine nicht zu unterschätzende werbende Kraft aus zur Stärkung des Deutschtums.” 2 ”Aufhebung des deutschen Lehrkurses in Ungarisch-Altenburg und der Rechtsakademie in Hermannstadt,” in Korrespondenzblatt des Allgemeinen Deutschen Schul-Vereines in Deutschland, 4 (Berlin: Gebrüder Fickert, 1884):16-20. 3 Patrick Stevenson and Jenny Carl, Language and Social Change in Central Europe: Discourses on Policy, Identity and the German Language (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010) 56. 4 Anna Fenyvesi, “Linguistic Minorities in Hungary” in C. B. Paulston and D. Peckham, Linguistic Minorities in Central and Eastern Europe (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 1998) 142 cited in Patrick Stevenson and Jenny Carl, Language and Social Change in Central Europe, 56. 53 demonstrates, the Auslandsshulwesen was shaped through the League’s responses to anxieties at the end of the nineteenth century. The Auslanddschulwesen referred on the one hand to German schools abroad. On the other hand, however, the rich field of literature that emerged surrounding the Auslandsschulwesen engaged with active efforts to spread German language and Germandom. The League’s periodical propagated a belief that the Auslandsschulwesen was the most important field that would systematically strengthen Germandom abroad. This belief rested on innate qualities ascribed to the German language. By prominently featuring voices of German teachers abroad, the periodical shaped the narrative of the Auslandsschulwesen, cultivating it as a project to support Germany’s position in the world by strengthening the German language abroad. As such, the Auslandsschulwesen was an innately imperialistic project. The idea that language was the prime marker of belonging to Germandom has long roots in German Romanticism and had, in the nineteenth century, become the centre of a collective German identity.5 Historian Stefan Manz argues that nineteenth century German philosophers thought that through a common language humans interpreted the world around them, creating a strong social bond and thus linking identity to language.6 In the case of Germany, the League saw language as the clue that formed, and bound together, the Volk. This “linguistic de-territorialisation of national belonging,” according to Manz, saw that on the one hand, for nineteenth century German scholars, language was the expression of one’s innermost thoughts. On the other hand, it was presented as the pinnacle of the development of a collective identity for a group of people.7 This created a stable framework that the 5 Stefan Manz, Constructing a German Diaspora: The "Greater German Empire," 1871-1914 (New York, NY: Routledge, 2014): 228. 6 Manz, Constructing a German Diaspora, 228. 7 Manz, Constructing a German Diaspora, 229. 54 Auslandsschulwesen was built on through the engagement of teachers with the School League’s periodical and the field of literature that advanced the idea of a collective German-speaking Volk in calls for unifying German people. Simultaneously however, by relying on language, the German nationalists granted the pan-German narrative a political nature. Moving towards the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, German nationalism began to be characterised through discourse on children, education and the perceived national indifference of people living in rural borderlands of the German Empire. Twenty-first century scholar of eastern Europe Tara Zahra criticises the dominating narrative of the late nineteenth century that communities living on the outskirts of empires were succumbing to a plague of national indifference.8 Local traditions, such as practices of multilingualism, were viewed as national indifference by contemporary political elites. Nationalism as described by such elites, however, did not exist in the day-to-day life of rural peoples. In a quest to turn these communities into vessels for nationalism, by forcing them to definitively declare a national belonging, children and language became political tools to mobilise an indifferent population in the name of the nation. By focusing on the Auslandsschulwesen, propagated by the League, I analyse the space where language overlaps with efforts of institutionalisation from a private association. Such rural borderlands to the German Empire, most notably Bohemia and Moravia, were simultaneously spaces perceived by the League and likeminded nationalists as language frontiers. Borderlands were spaces, literally at the borders of the empire, where multiple languages and cultures were mixed in everyday life to create unique customs that coloured the backdrop of rural communities. By virtue of consisting of a mixture of local language traditions and practices, language frontiers suggest that national identity possessed a fluid 8 Tara Zahra, Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands, 1900-1948. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008). 55 character, rather than a fixed, ascribed quality.9 Rather than identifying themselves as either German or Czech, local communities possessed an individual identity, constructed of multiple varying components. Having studied language frontiers of imperial Austria, scholar Pieter Judson argues that borderlands as language frontiers assigned pre-determined characteristics to their inhabitants.10 German language frontiers in Austria-Hungary ascribed people with national indifference, ignorance, and rural backwardness. Furthering Judson’s analysis, my chapter examines the implied superiority of German-speaking political elites in Vienna over those rural people they sought to claim as “German.” Both Zahra and Pieter Judson argue that language frontiers were not places of contested battle like the nineteenth century narrative presented, but rather places were local traditions bridged gaps between multiple languages and practices. The Auslandsschulwesen, advanced through articles written by teachers abroad and published in the League’s periodical, was used to ascribe national consciousness and the German language onto local communities of German-speakers through the education of children. Discourse over language frontiers and national indifference emerged in the context of a nineteenth century European trend of nationalism that uncovered tension between nation and dynasty: within empires, nations were emerging, creating exclusive social groups in relation to outsiders.11 The wave of nationalisms in late eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe caused the emergence of official state languages, which, in the case of Austria complicated the relationship of the imperial centre to its diverse populations.12 Simultaneously, as Benedict Anderson argues, a new conviction spread in Europe, presenting 9 Pieter M. Judson, Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2006) 2. 10 Judson, Guardians of the Nation, 2-3. 11 Benedict Anderson, “Official Nationalism and Imperialism,” in Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism (New York; London: Verso, 2006). 12 In 1780 the Austrian emperor decided to turn to German as the official state language for the empire. This turn away from Latin caused debates among ethnic minorities of the geographically vast empire. For more this linguistic turn, see: Anderson, “Official Nationalism and Imperialism.” 56 languages as the personal property of specific defined groups. This “lexographic revolution,” as Anderson terms it, drove the Germans of the League to view themselves in relation to others, not just based on ethnicity but also through language.13 As chapter two argued, the foundation of the League’s operation and philosophy was the belief that German art, culture, and traditions were the very base upon which life itself was build. Late nineteenth century German imperialism relied on the belief of a “biologically defined national community,” which, as this chapter demonstrates, was increasingly also defined through language as it was paralleled with biological traits.14 Chapter two established that Germandom rested on the innate goal of “keeping people German.” This chapter will further that argument by considering how the notion of the Auslandsschulwesen was used to achieve this goal. To do so, I examine why the League held language as the primary tool to keep people German by arguing for a perceived intrinsic link between language and the soul of Germandom on which the Auslandsschulwesen depended. Next, I analyse how the periodical talked about language and schools abroad as bearers of Germandom in the face of increasing imperial anxieties and wider trends of nationalisation that weaved through Europe at the time. Lastly, I situate the League’s voices in conversation with the increasing awareness of the German state on the status of Germandom abroad. The Auslandsschulwesen was defined by the goal of strengthening and advancing the German language, and therefore, I argue that the Auslandsschulwesen presented a space in which German national identity was moulded and expanded. 13 Anderson, “Official Nationalism and Imperialism,” 84. 14 For more on German imperial expansion and German search for “Lebensraum see: Bradley Naranch, “Inventing the Auslandsdeutsche Emigration, Colonial Fantasy, and German National Identity, 1848-71” in Germany's Colonial Pasts, ed. Eric Ames, Marcia Klotz, and Lora Wildenthal (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005). 57 Sprachbereitschaft The following section analyses emerging practices of monolingualism that the League promoted in spaces traditionally defined by multilingualism. To do so, I trace the importance the League ascribed to language and present an emerging fear that would end up governing their activities moving forward: the fear that children would be lost to Germandom. Twenty-first century scholar Yasemin Yildiz traces the emergence of a monolingual paradigm, which, beginning in the nineteenth century, has functioned to “obscure from view the widespread nature of multilingualism, both in the present and in the past.”15 Monolingualism, Yildiz argues, is more than “a simple quantitative term designating the presence of just one language.”16 Rather, it constitutes key principles that govern modern social life, such as the construction of individuals, the formation of disciplines and institutions, and the creation of imagined collectives such as cultures and nations around the idea of one shared language.17 The nineteenth century belief that individuals possessed one true language was thus linked to an exclusive ethnicity, culture and nation that served to strengthen the tentacles of German imperialism and “displaced previously unquestioned practices of living and writing in multiple languages.”18 Furthermore, language became a “clearly demarcated entity,” with a name and a countable value, that belonged only to the one group, and thus served to distinguish their behavioural and cultural norms.19 Viewed through this framework, the periodical’s publications served to link language to the political ideas of the German nation and, through its actions, the League made the German language into a demarcated entity. Furthermore, the fear that individuals may have “been lost to Germandom” promoted a 15 Yasemin Yildiz, “Introduction,” in Beyond the Mother Tongue: The Postmonolingual Condition (New York: Fordham University Press, 2012): 2. 16 Yildiz, “Introduction,” 2. 17 Yildiz, “Introduction,” 2. 18 Yildiz, “Introduction,” 6. 19 Yildiz, “Introduction,” 7. 58 monolingual paradigm, and through its practices and publications the League worked to erase many local language traditions. Especially German language frontiers in communities in Bohemia, Moravia, and in the Hungarian crown lands, due to the presence of prominent German minorities, were targeted by the League’s aim of monolingualising people. German professor Dr. A. Brandl, featured in the periodical’s publications, declared in a speech in October 1902: “There is no denying it and no glossing over it: culture is not attached to the ground, to forms of government, to collections and buildings, but to language, because language is the tool of our thinking.”20 Through this declaration, Brandl established a connection, not only between language and culture, but between language and the deeper essence of “Germany.” Through tethering language to Germandom, Brandl outlined the argument that through language the culture of Germandom was spread throughout the pan-German network. Brandl was not alone in arguing this, as twenty-first century historian Susan Gal has shown. She traces the philosophical view, which derived national spirit and mentality from the national language, to the eighteenth century German philosophers, such as Johann Gottfried Herder and Heymann Steinthal.21 By asserting that language shaped thought, the national language was understood to be the reflex of the speakers’ “authentic self.”22 Such a uniformity among speakers was then taken as evidence of social cohesion that, in the case of Germany, justified the demand for political unity.23 Furthermore, as speakers were credited with a “Sprachgefühl,” a special knowledge of the norms of their own 20 A. Brand, “Die Bedeutung der deutschen Sprache,” 96, translation: “Da gibt es kein Leugnen und kein Beschönigen: Kultur haftet nicht am Boden, an Regierungsformen, an Sammlungen und Bauten, sondern an der Sprache, denn die Sprache ist das Werkzeug unseres Denkens.” 21 Susan Gal, "Polyglot Nationalism. Alternative Perspectives on Language in 19th Century Hungary," Langage Et Sociéte 136, no. 2 (2011): 31-54. 22 Gal, “Polyglot Nationalism,”40. 23 Gal, “Polyglot Nationalism,” 38. 59 language, the mother tongue was “increasingly linked to childhood, identity, private interactions, and […] sentimentality.”24 A further layer to this discussion is brought up by an anonymous article published in 1903 in the periodical, in which the author argues: “At any given moment an individual has only the inherited and acquired ability to speak and concretely apply one individual language.”25 This perceived Sprachbereitschaft, a linguistic willingness and ability to speak and think in only one language, annulled historical practices of multilingualism and local language traditions. For example, the author argued, a German learning to speak Romanian would begin by forming sentences in their mind in German and translating them into Romanian word for word. Therefore, at its core, the language he thought in was German. However, if individuals were exposed to the foreign language for long enough, they would begin to think in that language. Therefore, “[w]hen I start to think in Romanian after spending a long time in Romania, I have changed my individual language. But with this the content of my soul has also shifted, where thinking takes place in a foreign language, the soul also changes in the foreign world.”26 The author presented the belief that the dominant language of an individual determined the disposition of their soul and as such outlines the source for an emerging fear: individuals who forgo German language were thus also lost to Germandom. 24 Claus Ahlzweig, Muttersprache-Vaterland: Die Deutsche Nation Und Ihre Sprache (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1994) and Lia Formigari, Daniele Gambarara, and John Benjamins, Historical Roots of Linguistic Theories (Amsterdam; Philadelphia: J. Benjamins, 1995) cited in Susan Gal, "Polyglot Nationalism. Alternative Perspectives on Language in 19th Century Hungary," Langage Et Sociéte 136, no. 2 (2011): 31-54. 25 “Das Deutsche Lesebuch in unseren Auslandsschulen,” Die Deutsche Schule im Ausland 2, no.9/10 (Wolfenbüttel: Hecknerschen Verlag: 1903), 427 translation: “Der Einzelmensch hat in jedem Augenblicke nur eine ererbte und erworbene Sprachbereitschaft und ihre gegenwärtige konkrete Anwendung.” 26 “Das Deutsche Lesebuch,” 428, translation: “Wenn ich nach längerem Verweilen in Rumänien rumänisch zu denken beginne, habe ich meine Individualsprache verändert und gewechselt. Damit hat sich aber auch mein Seeleninhalt verschoben, wo ein Denken in fremder Sprache stattfindet, da ändert sich auch die Seele in der fremden Welt.” 60 Consequently, German imperialists saw an inherent link between language and Germandom. In the closing statement of his speech Dr. Brandl outlined the ramifications of this language theory: “If we keep our countrymen overseas tethered to our Volkstum [German spirit] and our joint intellectual goals, then […] we will be represented in every corner of the world and our neighbours will regard our language as worth learning.”27 As a consequence, “[…] our work will gain in quality if we keep the intellectual tentacles extended [… ] our interests will become more diverse, our perspective will be broader, our contact with foreign achievements will be more direct, and Germans will perhaps be the first global citizens”28 Brandl linked language through culture and spirit to imperial visions and achievements. A goal to be of the “first global citizen,” surely did not encompass inclusivity and respect for minorities. Rather the nineteenth century vision that German imperialists held was that of a pan-German network that spanned the globe and thus pictured a “citizen” living in a distinctly German world. Schools as Bearers of Germandom The fear of children “abroad” straying away from Germandom shaped the League’s view of schools as bearers of Germandom. Unlike previously held fears of national dispersal, nineteenth century ideas about emigrants evoked a sense of timelessness and endurance. Historian of German emigration, Bradley Naranch, argues that at the conjunction between the anxieties of the past and dreams of the future, emigrants “evoked memories” of rupture and 27 A. Brand, “Die Bedeutung der deutschen Sprache,” 96, translation: “Wenn wir nämlich rechtzeitig die Landsleute über See unserem Volkstum erhalten und zu gemeinsamer geistiger Arbeit heran-ziehen. Dann sind wir nicht bloß zahlreich genug, sondern auch in allen Weltgegenden hinreichend vertreten, um unsere Sprache für die Massen der Nachbarvölker erlernenswert zu machen.” 28 A. Brand, “Die Bedeutung der deutschen Sprache,” 96, translation: “Zugleich wird unser Schaffen qualitativ gewinnen, wenn wir die geistigen Fangarme … Afrikandern ausgestreckt halten; unsere Interessen werden mannig-facher, unser Blick weiter, unsere Fühlungnahme mit fremden Leistungen unmitelbarer, der Deutsche vielleicht der erste Weltbürger sein.” 61 separation whilst advancing a feeling of German spiritual unity and a homogenous population.29 The Auslandsschulwesen was seen as a way to prevent children from fracturing from this homogenous group by guiding schools to act as the proper bearers of German teaching, language and individual character. Anxieties regarding Germany’s precarious position acted as a commanding force in establishing policies for the Auslandsschulwesen. Exemplifying imperialist hopes over the future of the empire, nineteenth century German author Karl Vormeng argued that in the future Germany would no longer be a dwarf next to giants but would stand equal among England, the United States and Russia.30 For Vormeng: “[t]his can be achieved through a strong, national education and by constantly maintaining close contact with our emigrants.“ By creating a strong bond to the emigrants, Vormeng believed that they would remain loyal to Germany and thus contribute to the globe-spanning pan-German network. As conduits for past and present, Vormeng emphasised the need to tether emigrants to the imperial centre. Emigrants were further placed amid a wider trend of linguistic nationalism that swept through Europe beginning in the 18th century and that further informed national policy in the nineteenth century. Active efforts and calls, such as Vormeng’s, to increase language education abroad aided in the process of German monolingualisation of the emigrant. Some historical scholars have argued that linguistic nationalism, based on the presumption of a single language, was viewed as the “proper mediator of a properly modern polity” and, therefore, states and their ruling elites enforced monolingual practices among their citizens.31 This larger trend linked education with monolingual practices among Europe 29 Bradley Naranch, “Inventing the Auslandsdeutsche Emigration, Colonial Fantasy, and German National Identity, 1848-71” in Germany's Colonial Pasts, ed. Eric Ames, Marcia Klotz, and Lora Wildenthal (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005): 26. 30 Karl Vormeng, Geschichte des Allgemeinen Deutschen Schulvereins zur Erhaltung des Deutschtums im Auslande, (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1900): 50, translation: “Das kann erreicht werden durch eine kräftige, nationale Erziehung und dadurch, daß wir mit unseren Auswanderern stetig in inniger Fühlung bleiben.” 31 For more, see: Richard Bauman and Charles L. Briggs, Voices of Modernity: Language Ideologies and the Politics of Inequality (New York; Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2003), Susan Gal, 62 as schooling became mandatory. It was within this configuration that Karl Vormeng and the League pushed for increased German education and continued contact to emigrants to strengthen the network of Germandom. The biggest threat to the German language, and by extension the German Empire, was the perceived children’s “loss of Germandom” (dem Deutschtum verloren gehen). The phrase encapsulated a key fear, which the League through its periodical aimed to combat. Linguistic borders, Sprachgrenzen, represented areas where speakers of two or more languages lived together in close proximity. “Such familial and social mixing was anathema to most nationalists, who saw it as a sign of demographic weakness. If an individual were bilingual, then what would prevent him and his children from crossing over to the other side?”32 Situated in between increasing nationalist movements and sentiments among state elite and the lived realities of the lower classes, emerged the idea of “national indifference.”33 Often, and especially for communities living at linguistic border lands, the mixing of two or more languages was a normal practice. After the German unification in 1871, German nationalists aimed to “create a link between the specific territory they claimed and their concept of Germanness,” to draw the public’s attention to the danger that these multilingual practices posed to children.34 For Pieter Judson, language, both in schools and in bureaucratic institutions, provided “key legal fields for activism” pursued by different nationalistic movements and imperial agendas.35 By focusing public campaigns aimed at parents, elite circles tried to school parents out of their “national indifference” and into choosing one language and, thus, one national loyalty for themselves and their children. In this context, "Polyglot Nationalism. Alternative Perspectives on Language in 19th Century Hungary," Langage Et Sociéte 136, no. 2 (2011): 31-54. 32 Judson, “When Is A Diaspora,” 231. 33 Here I am referring to “national indifferene” as presented by Zahra, for more, see: Tara Zahra, “Introduction,” in Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands, 1900-1948. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008). 34 Judson, “When Is A Diaspora,” 226. 35 Judson, “When Is A Diaspora,” 224. 63 children were seen more and more as “national property.”36 Although not as prominent as during the first World War and after, the League depicted many of these imperial fears over the loss of German children to foreign languages. Returning to the idea of one “true” Sprachbereitschaft, the same anonymous author called his readers’ attention the phenomenon of bilingualism in “our” children abroad, creating a picture of the multilingual danger looming above the “national property” of imperial Germany: “We see in our children abroad that the elimination of the intermediate element [speaking] of the mother tongue can lead to the extinction of this element [ability to speak].”37 He was not alone in fearing for the linguistic abilities of German children abroad. Nineteenth century German domestic teacher, Wilhelm Wintzer, pointed out that danger did not only come in the form of foreign languages, but also through the lure of the foreign: “The only thing that matters is whether the self-confidence based on precise knowledge of the advantages of Germany is strong enough to keep alive the memory of the charms of the homeland despite the dazzling advantages of the foreign country.”38 Both writers called attention to the education that German schools abroad offer to combat with which continued contact with Germany could be established to prevent children from being lost to Germandom. The call to action that guided schools abroad was combatting this possible loss. For Vormeng, the schools needed to: “[…] awaken national pride in every child and to instil in them the principle for life, that it is, it would be shameful to give up or deny the German 36 Tara Zahra, “Introduction,” 3. 37 “Das Deutsche Lesebuch,” 427, translation: “Daß die Ausschaltung des Zwischengliedes der Muttersprache bis zu einer Auslöschung dieses Zwischengliedes führen kann, sehen wir zuweilen an unseren Kindern im Auslande.” 38 Wilhelm Wintzer, “Voraussetzungen für die Bewahrung der deutschen Nationalität in fremder Umgebung,” Die Deutsche Schule im Ausland (Wolfenbüttel: Hecknerschen Verlag: 1904) 26, translation: “Es kommt dann nur darauf an, ob das auf genauer Kenntnis der Vorzüge Deutschlands beruhende Selbstgefühl stark genug ist, um die Erinnerung an die Reize der Heimat trotz der blendenden Vorzüge des Fremden wach zu erhalten“ 64 language and manner.”39 This call found echo outside of the private circles of the League. In 1914 in a memorandum regarding the German schools abroad, “Denkschrift des Auswärtigen Amtes,” the Foreign Office detailed that: “It [a German school abroad] is based on the view that this school could spread the knowledge of the German language and the correct idea of Germany to foreign peoples to a greater extent than before, and familiarize as wide a circle as possible with the German way and education in order to win them over as friends of Germany.”40 Although only published in 1914, the Foreign Office’s memorandum detailed a shift in discourse: what started as imperial dreams of private individuals began to turn into a state project for imperial Germany. Through this, the memorandum for the first time detailed a need to lay out and clearly demarcate what the Auslandsschulwesen was. Thus, the Memorandum outlined that the Auslandsschulwesen encompassed those German schools that were “located abroad and not encompassed in the school system, Schulwesen, of the foreign state.”41 As a result of state involvement, a new field of cultural propaganda opened, previously untouched by the League. A policy of cultural propaganda Situating the League’s voices and their fears against the increasing awareness the German state had of the status of Germandom abroad uncovers a growing tension between 39 Vormeng, Geschichte, 48, translation: „Sache der Schule ist es, in jedem Kinde nationalen Stolz zu wecken und ihm den Grundsatz fürs Leben einzuprägen, daß es schmachvoll sei, deutsche Sprache und Art aufzugeben oder zu verleugnen.” 40 Memorandum of the Foreign Office on the German Schools Abroad (“Denkschrift des Auswertigen Amtes über das deutsche Auslandsschulwesen”): 7, German Federal Archives, Berlin R901/38602, translation: “Sie Beruht auf der Auffassung, daß diese Schule in größerem Umfang als bisher Die Kenntnis der deutschen Sprache und richtige Vorstellung von Deutschland in Fremden Völker verbreiten und möglichst weite einheimische Kreise mit deutscher Art und Bildung vertraut machen könnten, um sie dadurch zu Freunden Deutschlands zu gewinnen.” 7 41 Memorandum of the foreign office, 2, translation: “Unter Deutschen Auslandsschulwesen werden im folgenden diejenigen deutschen Schulen verstanden, die in fremden Ländern bestehen und dem Schulwesen der fremden Staaten nicht eingefügt find.” 65 the League and the imperial state. On the one hand, the School League vowed to stay away from domestic politics, however, on the other hand, their goal of building an international community was inherently politically charged. This tension was most apparent in the differing views the League and the state held of the task of German schools abroad. Consequently, the League, advocating as the voice of teachers abroad, had to balance between the German state’s visions and the inherent individuality of schools abroad. Since its inception in 1881, the League had actively pursued a policy of political neutrality, aiming to create a haven for imperial minds alike to gather regardless of domestic quarrels. In a call published in 1884 made in the name of their 130 regional groups, the League called for total political neutrality as their foundational principle: “the German School League does not recognize political party differences, or denominational strife [… ] The League is a neutral place where arguing parties or religious arguments do not take over.”42 The League strove to represent a place where arguments on imperial politics could rest and people could come together to realize that: “[a]nd it seems to us as if such a neutral ground is very desirable for the Germans in the motherland, where they can rest from strife and become aware of what connects us, where the heart and the blood can be recognized.”43 Political neutrality, for the League, explicitly referred only to the sphere of domestic politics: choosing to actively distance themselves from questions that divided the German people in the empire. Simultaneously, the League was a deeply imperialistic project and, by actively engaging in projects and discussions aimed at furthering German international standing, was also entrenched in politics. This became clearer as the German government took a more active 42 “Anruf,” in Korrespondenzblatt des Allgemeinen Deutschen Schul-Vereines in Deutschland, no 4 (Berlin: Gebrüder Fickert, 1884): 5. Translation: “Der Deutsche Schulverein kennt keine politischen Parteiunterschiede, kennt keinen konfessionellen Hader. Der Schulverein ist ein neutraler Boden, zu welchem das verworrene Geschrei der kämpfenden Parteien nicht empordringt, auf welchem sich der giftige Mehltau der religiösen Streitigkeiten nicht herabsenkt.” 43 “Anruf,” 5, transltion: “Und es will uns scheinen, als ob für die Deutschen im Mutterlande solch‘ ein neutraler Boden sehr erwünscht sei, wo sie vom Hader ausruhen können und sich dessen bewußt werden, was uns alles verbindet, wo was Herz, das Blut sich zu erkennen giebt.” 66 role in the creation of German schools abroad for propaganda reasons. Thus, with the beginning of World War I, and exponentially increasing during the interwar years, the scope of Auslandsschulwesen became more politically charged and aimed more clearly at policies of cultural propaganda.44 The government’s aim to utilise German schools abroad rested on increasingly racial division between children abroad as the world moved towards world war. Outlined in the 1914 foreign office memorandum, children were divided into three differently valued categories. Ethnically German children were divided into those who were born and, at least partially, raised in the Reich, and those who were born abroad to German parents. Children born in Germany were not seen as at-risk to “be lost from Germandom,” whereas children born abroad had never known the true call of the motherland. Emphasis of education was subsequently placed on ensuring that should they want to; these children could return and work in Germany. They were then contrasted with “foreign” children. With seemingly different traits and risks, foreign and German children were assigned a different value in the Auslandsschulwesen. Therefore, the state outlined the need for designated schools to offer a German education and upbringing to entirely foreign children in a memorandum of the Foreign Office: “For a long time now, numerous German schools abroad have also opened their doors to local students; but it is obvious that the education and teaching of German and local children are tasks that are too different for one school to be able to serve them simultaneously in the long run without harming one or the other.”45 Therefore, it was of central importance to treat these children as inherently different. Manz, writing on the schools 44 For more on German cultural propaganda after World War I, see: Jens Waibel, “Die deutschen Auslandsschulen – Materialien zur Außenpolitik des Dritten Reiches” (master’s thesis, Europa-Universität Viadrina Frankfurt, 2010). 45 Memorandum of the foreign office, 8, translation: “Seit langem haben zwar zahlreiche deutsche Auslandsschulen ihre Tore auch einheimischen Schülern aufgetan; es liegt aber auf der Hand, daß Erziehung und Unterricht der deutschen und der einheimischen Kinder zwei zu verschiedenen Aufgaben sind als daß eine Schule ihnen auf die Dauer gleichzeitig dienen könnte, ohne die eine oder die andere zu schädigen.” 67 as a nationalizing imperial project, argues that opening German schools abroad to encompass local pupils was part of a larger programme of “peaceful imperialism.”46 The next “logical step” in Germany’s nationalizing imperialism was to build “propaganda schools,” geared for local elites and designed to increase Germany’s cultural influence in strategically important regions.47 However, the League, and the German schools abroad, were not merely parts of a larger project for cultural propaganda. Gaster, as one of the editors of the periodical resisted imagery that would link the League with any notions of the Empire’s “peaceful imperialism” and thus also from formal notions of cultural propaganda. Rather, the League was concerned with ethnically German children abroad and the maintenance of those within the influence of the German cultural and linguistic sphere. For Gaster and his peers, German schools abroad were not merely tools for German imperialism. Instead, Gaster’s writing showed an image of a hybrid space balancing between imperial desires and foreign realities. For Gaster, one characteristic of such a hybrid space was the aim of schools abroad to merge characteristic of domestic schools with the needs of the specific host country: “[t]he foreign schools will not be copies of imperial German schools, because the foreigners are not imperial Germans, but the schools can develop freely as is convenient in the countries, and of course always keep an eye on the real Germany.”48 Gaster tried to accommodate imperial needs without explicitly taking part in the domestic discussion about imperial expansion. As an editor for a journal seeking to build a community among teachers positioned across the globe, Gaster was in a precarious position: he had to balance serving the empire’s formal interests without upsetting German communities abroad. 46 Manz, Constructing a German Diaspora, 240. 47 Manz, Constructing a German Diaspora, 240. 48 Bernhard Gaster, “Der Einfluss der Schulreform in Deutschland auf die Entwicklung der höheren deutschen Schulen im Auslande,” Die Deutsche Schule im Ausland 2, no. 1 (Wolfenbüttel: Hecknerschen Verlag,1903), 8, translation: “Die Auslandsschulen werden nicht Kopien von Reich deutschen Schulen sein, weil die Ausländer ja keine Reichdeutsche Länder sind, aber die Schulen können sich frei Entwickeln wie es in den Ländern günstig ist, und dabei natürlich immer den Blick auf das echte Deutschland halten.” 68 Many German teachers and school communities abroad had developed their own practices and traditions, suggesting reshaping these schools after a “fits all” model would have upset his readers. Simultaneously, the empire was increasingly taking a more involved interest in German schools abroad, creating the risk of these schools becoming consumed by the imperial-state’s projects of cultural propaganda. A further element of hybridity in German schools abroad was made up of their dual language aspect. Gaster argued that: “[...]the foreign language of the country must absolutely stand alongside the German language on an almost equal footing, so that the German, despite all his attachment to his German language and German descent, can also gain influence and respect in a foreign country.”49 It was equally important that Germans stay loyal to the empire whilst adapting to the host country in order to become effective bearers of Germandom.50 Balancing again between imperial and foreign desires, Gaster laid emphasis on the individual’s ability to blend into the host country. Rather than individual gain, however, assimilation was conducted in order for individuals to serve as the ideal vessels for exporting Germandom to create a strong pan-German unity that could serve the empire’s best interests in the future. For the periodical’s editor, the Auslandsschulwesen, therefore, worked to promote German interests in the broadest sense, from increasing material wealth to strengthening the ideal appeal of the German name.51 It was with this goal in mind that Gaster wrote 5 years later, in 1908, on the status of foreign children in German schools. He positioned the schools’ task of providing the possibility for a German education to entirely foreign children not as propaganda but as 49 Bernhard Gaster, “Der Einfluss der Schulreform in Deutschland auf die Entwicklung der höheren deutschen Schulen im Auslande,” Die Deutsche Schule im Ausland 2, no. 2 (Wolfenbüttel: Hecknerschen Verlag,1903): 66, translation:“...die fremde Sprache des Landes muß unbedingt der deutschen Sprache fast gleichberechtigt an die Seite treten, damit der Deutsche, bei aller Anhänglichkeit an seine deutsche Sprache und deutsche Abstammung auch im fremden Lande sich Einfluß und Achtung erringen kann.” 50 Gaster, “Der Einfluss der Schulreform,”66. 51 Bernard Gaster, “Die höheren deutschen Schulen im Auslande,” Die Deutsche Schule Im Ausland 7, nr. 7, (Wolfenbüttel: Hecknerschen Verlag,1908): 338-340. 69 means for trade: “ An important, perhaps the most important area in which planned work is being done to consolidate and expand German influence abroad, to promote German interests in the broadest sense, from increasing material wealth to strengthening the ideal reputation of the German name, is the German Auslandsschulwesen[...][emphasis added]“52 By familiarizing wide networks of local peoples with Reich German culture and education Gaster aimed to win them over as friends of Germany, because: “the sentence that trade follows language is probably more correct than its reverse; but trade is the warfare of peace for a share of world wealth.“53 The emphasis in educating foreign children lay thus on teaching the German language, rather than trying to include these children into the wider global community of German people. Although proliferating the German language would enhance German trade relations across the globe, foreign children were not regarded as innately possessing German qualities, and therefore were not included in the wider rhetoric of “Germandom”. In the end, Gaster’s publications, although balancing on the line between imperial and foreign desires, inclined to represent imperialist agendas. Conclusion This chapter analysed the different components of Auslandsschulwesen, as both encompassing German schools abroad, as well as resting on the belief that the German language was the most efficient way to propagate Germandom. To achieve this, the German language was ascribed with different qualities. It rested on the belief of only one, true, 52 Gaster, “Die höheren deutschen Schulen im Auslande,” 338, translation: “Ein wichtiges, vielleicht das wichtigste Gebiet, auf welchem planmäßig für die Befestigung und Erweiterung des deutschen Einflusses im Auslande, für die Förderung deutscher Interessen im weitesten Sinne, von der Mehrung des materiellen Reichtums bis zur Stärkung des ideellen Ansehens des deutschen Namens gearbeitet wird, ist das deutsche Auslandschulwesen...” 53 Gaster, “Die höheren deutschen Schulen im Auslande,” 340, translation: “...der Satz, der Handel folgt der Sprache, dürfte richtiger sein als seine Umkehrung; der Handel ist aber die Kriegsführung des Friedens um den Anteil an dem Weltreichtum.” 70 Sprachbereitschaft (the readiness to speak a language). Language was thought to be linked with thinking and thus to the very being of an individual. This laid the foundation for the fear of children being lost to Germandom (dem Deutschtum verloren gehen). Therefore, it was increasingly more important to ensure that children retained the ability to speak German fluently, lest they lose the very being that made them German. The Auslandsschulwesen helped to inform German national identity building through forcing the League to counter questions of multilingualism and local language traditions. The Auslandsschulwesen, thus, became something that the League constructed themselves in relation with: through exporting and writing about German schools and national identity abroad, they also created themselves. The Auslandsschulwesen were tied to imperial projects and the German imperial standing, leading to the discussion on cultural propaganda. One the one hand, the League wanted to create an apolitical space, open to all Germans. On the other hand, the start of the twentieth century saw the German Empire’s increasingly racialised division of German and local children. In the end, the periodical and its authors had to balance between retaining aspects of political neutrality while upholding those imperial aims that were seen to connect all Germans. 71 Conclusion “There are 135 German schools abroad recognized by the Federal Republic of Germany. Schools abroad are places of encounter and intercultural dialogue. They value the multilingualism and individual support of their students, who can acquire German, international and local school qualifications.” So reads the website for the Bundesamt für Auswärtige Angelegenheiten - Zentralstelle für das Auslandsschulwesen (Federal Office for Foreign Affairs - Central Office for Schools Abroad) in 2024.1 Located across the globe, these German schools build a network of independent entities, bound together by their shared goal: to further a German education among children abroad. Such schools, as this thesis has demonstrated, are not new conceptions, their roots reaching far back into the young, 1871-established, German Empire. This thesis has demonstrated that the Deutscher Schulverein, the first organisation to actively work on building a global network of German schools abroad, was an example of a national obsession with German linguistic hegemony. The School League offers a glimpse into the Germanisation fervour of the late nineteenth century that swept across previously multilingual and multicultural communities. This thesis has examined such communities, located in Bohemia, Moravia, and parts of the Hungarian crown lands, which acted as spaces where inhabitants did not necessarily identify along national identity, as Tara Zahra’s research has shown.2 Rather, these communities favoured a local identity that was constructed through the interaction of multiple norms, languages, and 1 “Weltkarte der Auslandsschulen,” Bundesamt für Auswärtige Angelegenheiten Zentralstelle für das Auslandsschulwesen, accessed 27 March 2024, https://www.auslandsschulwesen.de/DE/Schulnetz/DAS/Weltkarte/weltkarte_node.html, translation: “Weltweit gibt es 135 von der Bundesrepublik anerkannte Deutsche Schulen im Ausland. Die Auslandsschulen sind Orte der Begegnung und des interkulturellen Dialogs. Sie legen Wert auf die Mehrsprachigkeit und individuelle Förderung ihrer Schülerinnen und Schüler, die sowohl deutsche als auch internationale und einheimische Schulabschlüsse erwerben können.” 2 Tara Zahra, Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands 1900-1948, (Cornell University Press, 2011). 72 practices. The work of the League presents a study into how these spaces were, in the late nineteenth century, increasingly subject to attempts of homogenisation under the banner of a German national identity. German imperialists, therefore, contributed considerable resources to creating parameters around “national identity” in order to export and ascribe it onto those they saw as belonging to the shared culture of “Germandom.” Modern scholarship struggles with articulating what “identity” is and how it can be used as a category of analysis whilst respecting it as a metaphysical entity that people possess. Language, on the other hand, was for the League innately tied to culture, practices, norms, and, increasingly during the nineteenth century, to national identity. Consequently, questions such as: “Who is German? How is one German? And how can one lose their Germanness?” were guiding questions that this thesis has answered. Through examining the Schools League’s narratives on the emergence of German-speaking minorities abroad and the struggle for language hegemony in eastern Europe, I have argued that the Deutscher Schulverein was an important part of the history of German national consciousness. Furthermore, modern scholarship into language struggles and power relations in eastern and central Europe have tended to focus on the years after World War I once the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed into independent nation-states and the struggle for national languages picked up. The roots of this, however, and of the prevalence of German language and the struggle for language hegemony after World War I, lie at the end of the nineteenth century. Der Allgemeine Deutsche Schulverein zur Erhaltung des Deutschtums im Auslande, the General German School League for the preservation of Germanness abroad, worked in the context of heightened national consciousness in Europe at the end of the nineteenth century. They aimed to advance German-language education among German communities living outside the Empire and create an international German network by uniting German 73 teachers across the globe. Through examining Die Deutsche Schule im Ausland, as well as other texts published by like-minded German imperialists and the School League, I have traced the story of an emerging form of nationalist “Germandom”, created and promoted through the struggle for language hegemony in education amidst minority groups of Germans in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. To answer the question: “what did German schools abroad mean for the German School League and their vision for the German Empire’s future?” I shall briefly summarise the main arguments my chapters have presented. My first chapter saw the emergence of a German-speaking minority in Austria-Hungary, which, as I argued, facilitated the creation of a distinct German national identity. The socio-political context of the nineteenth century Europe saw both the Ausgleich of 1867 and the German unification of 1871, the diversification, and subsequent internal fracturing, of the Habsburg monarchy, as well as the emergence of nations within large and complex empires. Together, these created the conditions in which the League worked. The second chapter analysed the emerging form of German national consciousness, “Germandom,” promoted by the League. Germandom was fantasised as a timeless quality that bound German emigrants across the globe to each other and to the imperial home. It arose in direct conversation to the perceived threat of German minorities abroad as well as the emerging fear that children might lose their Germanness abroad if schools were not established to stop this shift. Lastly, chapter three examined the importance of language to this fantasy of German global superiority and, thus, Germandom became increasingly defined not only through biology and culture, but language. Building on chapters one and two, which presented the argument that Germandom rested on the innate goal of “keeping people German,” this chapter presented how the League utilised the notion of Auslandsschulwesen, to achieve 74 unity. The beginning of the twentieth century saw the increased interest of the German state in the status of German emigrants abroad, and, therefore, set the League against a new dilemma: how to maintain their sworn goal of domestic political neutrality, when their very raison d’etre was inherently enshrined in the sphere of imperial politics. This thesis has been a part of the larger historiography of language and the struggle for monolingualisation of central Europe that started in the nineteenth century. Today, policies to promote multilingual practices play an increasing role from the national to the supranational level. These policies are part of the “postmonolingual condition,” as Yasemin Yildiz has argued.3 However, at the same time the world has become vastly more mobile and intertwined in the twenty-first century, resulting in tensions between official state languages, that were ascribed onto nations in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, and the multiplicity of minority languages that increased migration furthers. Therefore, this thesis has added a further narrative into the historiography of the German language and nationalisation by bringing forth voices from the German School League. 3 Yasemin Yildiz, “Introduction,” in Beyond the Mother Tongue: The Postmonolingual Condition (New York: Fordham University Press, 2012): 75 Bibliography Primary Sources Allgemeiner Deutscher Schulverein zur Erhaltung des Deutschtums im Auslande. “Handbuch des Deutschtums im Auslande: Heft eines Adressbuchs der deutschen Auslandschulen,” Berlin: Dietrich Reimer, 1906. “Anruf.” Korrespondenzblatt no. 4. Berlin: Gebrüder Fickert, 1884. ”Aufhebung des deutschen Lehrkurses in Ungarisch-Altenburg und der Rechtsakademie in Hermannstadt.” Korrespondenzblatt des Allgemeinen Deutschen Schul-Vereines in Deutschland, 4. 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Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands 1900-1948. Cornell University Press, 2011. Unpublished Secondary Sources Knickerbocker, Jonathan. “Österreich und Anschluss Ponderous: Dilemma of Austrian Identity (1848-1948).” Master’s thesis, University at Albany, State University of New York 2014. Waibel, Jens. “Die deutschen Auslandsschulen – Materialien zur Außenpolitik des Dritten Reiches.” Master’s thesis, Europa-Universität Viadrina Frankfurt, 2010.
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Language in Crisis : Der Deutsche Schulverein and German Speakers in the Austro-Hungarian Empire
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