TY - JOUR TI - Schleswig-Holstein meerumschlungen and the call for nationalism DO - https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T3FF3R9W PY - 2012 AB - My dissertation examines selected German and Danish literary texts of the late nineteenth century that employ ideological notions of nationalism for the purpose of constructing and stabilizing national identity. The groundwork for the research centers on specific times in nationalist movements in Europe and a specific setting on the border region of Schleswig-Holstein. The urgency of this project lies especially in the effort to understand the shifting qualities and perceptions of nationalism as both a destructive and productive force in current discourses of globalization. In my analysis of four literary narratives, Theodor Storm’s novellas Ein grünes Blatt (1850) and Abseits (1863), Theodor Fontane’s Unwiederbringlich (1891), and Herman Bang’s Tine (1889), I demonstrate how national identity is constructed on the basis of a firm nationalism and constantly destabilized when confronted with the presence of an Other by the border. In the chosen literary works, national identity, at all stages of its formation and in all classifications and depictions as German, Prussian, Danish, or Frisian, is fundamentally about attaining the subject’s recognition as sovereign and universal. And because the subject functions as a representation of the nation with which it identifies, the construction of the subject’s national identity is ultimately about achieving international recognition. In the selected narratives, national identity—whether German or Danish—is constructed by the authors in a very similar fashion. While nationalism is criticized and condemned to different degrees, it also serves as the necessary ground for shaping effectively one’s national identity. The three authors under discussion operate with a nationalist project in which they set out to construct a national self: in the texts under consideration, nationalism functions as a temporary but necessary formative stage in the construction of the subject’s national identity. The selected authors also experience and triumph over nationalism in their personal lives. Ultimately, this dissertation will point to the crucial significance of the regional particularity—given by the margins of a border area—for the representation of the national totality. KW - German KW - German literature--19th century--History and criticism KW - Danish literature--19th century--History and criticism KW - Nationalism and literature--Germany--19th century KW - Nationalism and literature--Denmark--19th century LA - eng ER -