Reviewed by Tim Prchal | Reviews | Journal of American Ethnic History, 27.2

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Reviewed by Tim Prchal | Reviews | Journal of American Ethnic History, 27.2 | The History Cooperative

Reviews

Images of Germany in American Literature. By Waldemar Zacharasiewicz. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2007. viii + 253 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index. $39.95 (cloth).

In Images of Germany in American Literature, Waldemar Zacharasiewicz traces the evolution of treatments of that country—and, by extension, its residents—by American authors of the early nineteenth to the late twentieth century. According to Zacharasiewicz, the literary picture begins positively, with Germany seen as a land of "poets and thinkers," but takes a negative turn around the time of the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71). This souring of Germany's image in American literature is really Zacharasiewicz's focus. With fine detail, he explores how authors here have perpetuated, and sometimes challenged, stereotypes that include military aggressiveness, obedience to authority, gluttony, and efficiency. The penultimate chapter deals with the grips that World War II and the Holocaust retain on American authors, many of whom seem unable to move beyond "those negative stereotypes frequently associated in American fiction of the 1970s and 1980s with the Germans and resulting from the heavy burden left on them by the Nazi regime" (p. 171).

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