However, in Germany...
However, as a cultural historian writing on transnational fascism, I see the [apparently not-uncommon in Germany flying of the Confederate] flag as part of a longer history of German nostalgia for the American antebellum South. Germans’ identification with the region stretches back, paradoxically, to the very book that helped bring an end to that era of slavery: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”...This hazy romanticization was undergirded by racial prejudice, which found in Stowe’s depiction of Tom as a “happy slave” a justification for racial hierarchy. Though “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was originally cultivating sympathy for Black slaves, by the early 20th century it was invoked by both German progressives and conservatives as proof of Black inferiority and as a justification for colonization. An introduction to a 1911 German edition of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” describes how “the Negroes are undeniably an inferior race, and, now that they have been freed, are widely perceived to be a plague in the United States.”
Bettina Hofmann, a professor of American studies at Bergische Universität Wuppertal, argues that “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” introduced racial terms to the German language that foreshadow the Nazi race categories. However, as she qualifies, “it would be an anachronism to accuse Stowe of having paved the way for Hitler’s thoughts on race.”Still, it remains a dim possibility that “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” had at least some influence. Stowe’s novel was, after all, one of Hitler’s self-proclaimed favorite books.
You can't make this stuff up, really you can't.
UPDATE: Meanwhile, in Croatia…
6 comments:
I saw this traveling through southern Germany a few years back. It was just one flag out in front of a home, but it caught my attention. Not at all what I expected.
There's a motorcycle club that's fairly common in Australia, called the Rebels MC. They use it too. And there's a group of Confederate descendants in South America, people who emigrated there after the war. They have festivals. You see it in a lot of unexpected places, and it means something different to everyone who uses it.
That's one of the thing that annoys me with the NPR-lecture style 'this is what the Confederate Flag means in 2026' posts currently flooding the local space. Even pretty clearly defined symbols are still symbols; and as symbols, they carry the potential to mean different things. Symbols by nature mean things other than themselves. I know the history as well as most are likely to do; but the symbol gets redefined all the time. Everyone who handles it gets to do that at least a little.
Yes. When I was in Japan, the Confederate flag just meant "We play American country music here." They just saw it in country music videos and picked it up from there. They are often only vaguely aware that we had a civil war and don't seem to associate the flag with it.
I found out some years ago from Davids Medienkritik , a blog that focuses on German media coverage of the US, that there was a station on the Berlin subway called Uncle Tom's Cabin. I used to read and comment there regularly, perhaps in part because my brother-in-law came over from Germany as a child. The blog posts much often than it used to.
Wiki: Onkel Toms Hütte (Berlin U-Bahn)
I had some trouble locating the Medienkritik article on it, but eventually found it on Page 9 of previous posts. Die Tageszeitung: “Uncle Barack’s Cabin”
Ever read those quotes we have on our sidebar about anti-Americanism in German media continuing beyond Bush?
June 5,2008 (page 9)
I also located some articles that a German journalist wrote about the US. Oldie but a baddie. Die Tageszeitung: “Uncle Barack’s Cabin”
Ever read those quotes we have on our sidebar about anti-Americanism in German media continuing beyond Bush?
June 5,2008 (page 9)
Previous anonymous was Gringo. Correction follows.
I also located some articles that a German journalist wrote about the US. Oldie but a baddie.Page 14: Markus Guenther's yellow journalism about the US.
Gringo
So... I was stationed in Germany for 4 years, my husband was stationed there for more than 10 years. Confederate flags, which are legal to fly but scandalous, are the signal and stand-in for Nazi flags, which are illegal to fly. Basically, if you see the Confederate flag displayed in a bar, etc. you can pretty much bet that there are Nazi flags, Hitler portraits, etc. under the counter that will come out later in the evening. That house with the Confederate flag out front, probably had a basement full of illegal Nazi memorabilia from grandpa's days in the Totenkopf division, and the house owner would probably bang on about how Hitler was a great man but just didn't go far enough, when he's with a group of friends. I don't think it reflects any actual attachment to any part of the USA (Nazis and skinheads mostly hold us in contempt as mongrels).
I also doubt very much that Uncle Tom's Cabin introduced any novel words, let alone concepts, to German society. It's just wishful thinking that this terribly destructive trend (antisemitism and racism) somehow came from outside of Germany, and doubly wishful thinking that it came from the US in fact. When, in reality, violent antisemitism and ethnic genocide is well established in European history long before Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
-- Janet
PS: A quick search on the internet shows that the "Uncle Tom's Cabin" stop referred to a 19th century biergarten at that place, run by... a guy named "Tom", and which had pavilions, or huts, available for rent. In the 1920s, Berlin built "social housing" on the spot, and named it "Uncle Tom's Cabin" after the book. No racial animus needed to explain it.
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