Today, Germany is one of the world’s leading immigration destinations; nearly one in three residents claims a “migration background.” Yet whether Germany is an “immigration country,” who belongs, and who counts as “German” remain controversial. Although Germany’s present demographic makeup is novel, these questions are anything but. They have been fought over across every era of modern German history, from nineteenth-century mass emigration to the Third Reich to the refugee debates of today. How have ideas about culture, race, gender, religion, citizenship, and belonging changed as Germany went from exporting people to importing them? What happens when a nation organized around an ethnic identity grapples with becoming a multicultural society? This seminar introduces the history of modern Germany through the lens of migration. We will meet colonial settlers and colonial subjects, Jewish refugees and ethnic German expellees, Korean nurses and Turkish factory workers, Afro-German activists and Syrian asylum seekers. Our sources range from scholarly texts and memoirs to films, oral histories, and video games. This discussion-driven seminar will build students’ skills in academic writing and argumentation through a combination of analytical essays, guided revisions, one-on-one meetings, and peer feedback. No background in German or European history is expected; only curiosity about how the movement of people remakes the societies they enter and the ones they leave behind.
- Instructor of record, Other editing teacher: Ben Van Zee