In the spring of 2006, to create greater opportunities for scholarly interaction, a core organizational group of scholars, from several departments,  proposed to organize a research seminar on Modern Germany and Central Europe for the 2006-07 academic year under the auspices of the University of Tennessee Humanities Initiative. This faculty research seminar proposal was successful in competition and received funding for 2006-07 from the University of Tennessee Humanities Initiative. That funding has been renewed for 2007-08 and our hope is to continue building a strong track record of organizational activity which would serve as a foundation for continuing events and undertakings in German studies here at UT. The immediate aim of the faculty research seminar is to promote our individual research agendas and create a forum for intensive interaction on larger interdisciplinary questions related to the study of modern Germany and Central Europe. In 2006-07, the seminar served as a means to further an atmosphere of professional seriousness and exchange, and we invite the entire community of interested faculty and graduate students from across the university (many of whom joined us for a discussion of common ventures at a larger meeting in spring 2006 in McClung Tower, convened by Stefanie Ohnesorg and Vejas Liulevicius) to join us for our planned 11 seminars over the upcoming academic year. These seminars will include a mix of book discussions and research presentations by faculty from UT and beyond. We hope to continue this research seminar in future years, strengthening this growing venture, and to incorporate the ideas and suggestions of our colleagues as to both themes and organization.

While the overarching and broad theme of the seminar in general is topics in Modern Germany, one of the prominent thematic strands woven into events of the coming year is “Insiders and Outsiders: Contested German Models of Belonging and Community.” Within German-speaking Central Europe in the modern era, the question of national belonging has always been a complicated one. As a “land of the middle,” without clear “natural” national frontiers, Germany has been defined in many differing ways. From the Napoleonic invasions and collapse of the intricate Holy Roman Empire through unification under Bismarck, total wars, Nazism, and the divided states of the Cold War, the notion of a German national community has proven a highly unstable and contested concept. German thinkers and politicians have variously sought to define being German as belonging to an apolitical people of “poets and thinkers” (defined by culture and language), loyal subjects of the state (defined by dynasty and an ethos of obedience), or a revolutionary people (defined by ideological commitment, in the view of the liberals of 1848 or of Karl Marx’s socialism). Most notoriously, Hitler’s Nazis sought a racial definition of German belonging and identity, and their vast crimes in pursuit of that vision make clear the existential stakes of this perennial question of what it means to be German. As a result, the themes of belonging and exclusion have produced a rich field of historical and cultural study, particularly in recent decades. These themes also unite the research of the core participants in this proposed workshop. In particular, we share an interest in the ways that national identity interacts with other forms of community, whether these be other levels of territorial organization  (cities, regions, or smaller dynastic states), other kinds of allegiances (cultural, religious, scientific or political), or competing visions of group identity (related to anti-Semitism, other religious or ethnic minorities within the national state, or the populations of neighboring states).  We will trace the evolution of the models of belonging and exclusion through literature, music, images, science, and political philosophy, and will also explore the many tragedies produced in the name of these themes/concepts.

Georg Grosz
Eclipse of the Sun, 1926