Chantal Metzger, Hartmut Kaelble, eds. Deutschland - Frankreich - Nordamerika: Transfers, Imaginationen, Beziehungen. Schriftenreihe des Deutsch-Französischen Historikerkomitees. Frankfurt: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2006. 228 pp. EUR 42.00 (paper), ISBN 978-3-515-08926-5.
Reviewed by Elana Passman (Department of History, Indiana State University)
Published on H-German (July, 2009)
Commissioned by Susan R. Boettcher
"Old Europe" and America, "Land of the Future"
As its title succinctly promises, Deutschland--Frankreich--Nordamerika: Transfers, Imaginationen, Beziehungen investigates the connections among three nations via three methodologies.[1] In fact, the essays in this collection take an even more ambitious and multifaceted approach by employing comparative history, the history of cultural transfer, the examination of images of the other, and a more traditional study of international relations, or some combination of these methods. Taken from the 2004 Colloquium of the Comité franco-allemand de recherches sur l'histoire des 19e et 20e siècles held in Bonn, the volume offers a grab-bag of the latest research to link Germany, France, and the United States.
Not surprisingly, the conference proceedings cover a sprawling subject matter, from the immigrant experience to technology transfer to views of the death penalty. Rather than struggling to reign in these disparate themes, Chantal Metzger's four-page introductory essay situates the 2004 conference in the contemporary geopolitical context of the Iraq War. In this sense, the introduction succeeds more in preserving the debates and tenor of the original conference as an artifact for future scholars of transatlantic relations during the Iraq War than it does in framing the essays in terms of their themes or methodologies. To be sure, the authors bring together the three nations in so many different ways as to make basic summary impossible. But the introduction neither effectively assesses the relationship of the three nations across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries nor does it address methodological debates about transnationalism, Kulturtransfer, and comparative history--debates to which co-editor Hartmut Kaelble has elsewhere consistently lent an authoritative voice. The editors have not provided a conclusion.
Kaelble's conference report for H-Soz-u-Kult, unfortunately not included in the printed account, provides a useful diagram of the conference talks and reading it adds a sense of organization to the proceedings (by illuminating the volume's table of contents). In the report, Kaelble divides the colloquium into three main "dimensions": post-1945 cultural and political relations, nineteenth- and twentieth-century images of America, and nineteenth- and twentieth-century transfer.[2] Another way to navigate this anthology--embracing more fully its cross-cutting spirit--is via the Internet, where all contributions are accessible (unabridged and gratis) at the European portal of Clio-online. The Web editors have thoughtfully cross-listed these articles (along with dozens of other essays on European history of potential interest to H-German readers) by the volume in which they were published as well as by period, region, and themes such as "Economy and Environment," "Space and Frontier," and "Europe and the World." This approach to the book may be preferable for many, not only for its cost savings and convenience, but because it allows readers to pick and choose those items of particular interest from four different edited volumes. In fact, the diffuse nature of this collection lends itself best to the Web, where we expect and even celebrate eclecticism.
The volume opens with a plea from François Scheer, who served as the French Ambassador to Germany for much of the 1990s, for France and Germany to mend their differences, pick up their slack, and "again take up their responsibilities" (p. 14) to ensure the future of the European Union. Contending that France and Germany must work together to resolve issues confronting the European Union such as enlargement and a constitution, Scheer maintains that the Franco-German engine--and with it "old Europe"--are not so much "anachronistic" as they are in need of revival. While North America remains virtually absent from the piece, Scheer's tract urges Europeans to take action, presumably to challenge Donald Rumsfeld's 2003 affront.
A number of contributions address more directly the historic ways in which Americans and Europeans have imagined one another. André Kaspi's short, stimulating essay asks why, in the immediate aftermath of World War II, the United States viewed its recent foe Germany more favorably than France, which was quickly deemed an "incommodious ally" (p. 16). Annie Lacroix-Riz, in turn, tallies French suspicions about American efforts in postwar Germany that helped restore the old capitalist order and lent support to former "heralds of the great Reich" (p. 26).
A running theme considers whether these nations perceived each other as positive or negative role models. A parade of nineteenth- and twentieth-century French and German writings demonstrates the wide range of perspectives about America; it could represent anything from Europe's mythic past (Jean-Jacques Rousseau) to its hopeful future. But as Jean Nurdin argues, America's growing influence elevated European anxieties about the American "specter." Nurdin's contribution thus explores intellectuals' perceptions of relative power, whether political, intellectual, or moral. Armin Heinen calls into question the United States' alleged status as more progressive than Europe. In this provocative piece, Heinen charts changing views of the death penalty in France, Germany, and the United States. Although these nations had generally walked in step on this issue, in the late 1960s, the United States began to turn away from the progressive "trend"; this marked the "zivilisatorischer Bruch" between the United States and Europe (p. 211).
Marianne Walle and Heike Bungert examine the immigrant experience, Walle from a bilateral, Bungert from a triangular perspective. Walle enumerates the contributions of German immigrants--mostly '48ers--to the United States, from the intellectual (whether language instruction or the dissemination of revolutionary ideals) to the physical (bodily sacrifice in the Civil War). To a lesser extent, Walle also questions the way '48ers from central Europe may have influenced European-American relations. Bungert's compelling piece addresses relations between German-Americans and French-Americans during the Franco-Prussian War. Bungert looks to how both sets of immigrants expressed allegiance to their native lands, how they strengthened their respective local ethnic communities via fundraisers and parades geared to the war effort, and how they shaped "Anglo-American" understanding of the war, the French and German peoples, and the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine.
Along with the articles on migration, several other contributions focus on the transfer of people and ideas across borders. Françoise Berger points out that the Americanization of Europe did not begin with the influx of jazz, jeans, and rock 'n' roll in the postwar period. She instead aims her gaze at the steel industry in the interwar years, when representatives of Wendel et Schneider and Mannesmann, for example, learned about the latest technological, managerial, and organizational developments through international conferences and specialized journals as well as, above all, by visiting plants in the United States. Berger contrasts the penetration of American methods in France and in Germany--as well as the exchange of ideas across the French-German border--to account for Germany's relative advances in the field. Philippe Alexandre likewise looks to a much earlier period in order to explore the transnational nature of the pacifist movement. In the years leading up to the Great War, pacifists traveled among the three nations in support of their mission and developed strong international networks. In light of the rising power of the United States, French and German pacifists worked hard to publicize their message in America, but, as Alexandre contends, it was the United States, in the end, that stood as a beacon of hope for pacifists in a war-torn Europe.
Some articles tackle postwar global politics. Turning to the Cold War, Gottfried Niedhart details the intricacies of French, West German, and American reactions to East-West détente in the 1970s. Each viewed détente through the distorting lens of its own hopes, interests, and anxieties. Reinhart Marcowitz likewise sees in the 1960s and 1970s a moment of fundamental importance to the European-American relationship. Marcowitz argues that although western Europe pulled away from the United States in an "emancipation process" (p. 112) in the late 1960s and European states began increasingly to resemble one another throughout the 1970s, these integrating forces coincided with Europe's political stagnation and a sense of "Eurosklerose."
In her contribution on European perceptions of the 1995 referendum on Quebec's independence from Canada, Helga Bories-Sawala reminds us that Canada often falls out of the transatlantic equation. Not only is this the only essay in a volume entitled Deutschland-Frankreich-Nordamerika that does not deal with the United States, but its content also relates to how Europeans often forget about the United States' neighbor to the north. Bories-Sawala reveals the German press's shocking ignorance about Canada. Whereas the French press intelligently parsed the debates around separatism (and even the Italian press showed some sympathy to the plight of the Québécois), the German press neglected to analyze the situation at hand and instead fell back upon wildly off-base analogies to the catastrophe in the Balkans, stereotypes about the French they projected onto the Québécois, or other similarly misguided assumptions.
The most interesting contributions from a methodological perspective braid multiple strategies together. Some, for example, look to how cross-cutting influences served to shape each culture, and how these changes, in turn, affected perceptions of the other. Thomas Raithel's methodologically complex essay on French and German attitudes toward the "American challenge" in the 1920s is a comparative history (France versus Germany) of images of a third (United States); moreover, it addresses how these views evolved in relation to the transfer of ideas, people, and cultural products (from film to the "Bubikopf") across the ocean. The Germans and the French were both fascinated by and apprehensive of the United States, but German reactions to America hit more extreme highs and lows. Dietmar Hüser employs what he calls "Kultur-Transfer-Vergleich" to compare the Americanization of both France and Germany through the vehicle of rock 'n' roll. Hüser shows how Germany proved more open to musical influences from abroad than did France. Whereas young Germans in the 1950s enjoyed music from France and especially the United States, the French resisted the Americanization of its music scene and hardly listened to German music at all.
Although all of the articles include some kind of transatlantic component and most boast a triangular perspective, the book skews a bit more toward the European side of the Atlantic. With the exception of European politician François Scheer, the contributors are housed at German and French universities. The articles themselves are about half in German, half in French; no articles appear in English. The references, too, seem to have been drawn largely from French- and German-language sources.
The collection makes clear that the German-French-American triad, what Marcowitz calls the ménage à trois, made for an exceptionally interdependent and often troubled group. They envied, feared, and resisted each other. But repeatedly they worked together, or, out of admiration, appropriated each other's ideas. They imagined the others should feel indebted to them: the French had supported the American Revolution; the Germans had served in the Civil War; Americans had liberated Europe from the Nazi menace. Such attitudes jeopardized any sense of balanced partnerships and fed notions of imagined superiority.
From a purely historical standpoint, Deutschland-Frankreich-Nordamerika reveals that the distinction between an old Europe and a new America is nothing new in politics, economics, society, or culture. But it also indicates that such clichés are--and always have been--evidence of blinkered thinking. For each moment that forces of progress swept in from the East, there have been moments when they came from the West; more often, ideas flowed in both directions. In this way, the book's triangular apparatus and the sheer diversity of topics provide a useful testing ground for big concepts like Americanization and Europeanization.
The collection also strikes a political chord. Multiple articles share the sense that close transatlantic ties--and close Franco-German ties--are vital to the future of global politics and that periods of mistrust have engendered damaging consequences. Within the context of this conference and twenty-first-century politics more generally, the implication is that the United States ignores "old Europe" at its peril. This argument applies equally to the world of politics as to the world of academe.
Notes
[1]. Though the title (of both the conference and the book) refers to North America, most papers only address the United States.
[2]. See H-Soz-Kult report by Hartmut Kaelble, "Deutschland-Frankreich-Nordamerika: Transfers, Imaginationen, Beziehungen," http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/tagungsberichte/id=607
[3]. Clio-online has generously made these articles available at http://www.europa.clio-online.de/site/lang__de/40208732/default.aspx . The portal also provides a number of maps and primary sources.
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Citation:
Elana Passman. Review of Metzger, Chantal; Kaelble, Hartmut, eds., Deutschland - Frankreich - Nordamerika: Transfers, Imaginationen, Beziehungen.
H-German, H-Net Reviews.
July, 2009.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=24471
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