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Transcending Intellectual Nationalism: Teaching U.S. History in German Universities
Sabine N. Meyer
Pioneers live in isolated places, have to make do with scarce local resources, have to assert and defend their existence against various man-made and natural obstacles, and, in order to secure more than their bare subsistence, depend on a network of exchange whose operators are far away and beyond their control. While local conditions shape their daily lives and provide a living, they know they need to communicate and exchange goods with the more densely populated centers of production and consumption. In that sense, I think of myself as a pioneer writing and teaching American history under frontier conditions.
—Willi Paul Adams, "On the Significance of Frontiers in Writing American History in Germany," Journal of American History, Sept. 1992.
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| With those words, Willi Paul Adams described his position as a German historian researching and teaching U.S. history in German universities. Regarding the discipline of U.S. history, he likened Germany to the American frontier settlements of the nineteenth century, focusing on the lack of resources, the "man-made and natural obstacles" scholars face in the course of their work, and the dearth of intranational networks. The real "centers of production and consumption," he argued, are in the United States and therefore difficult to access.1 |
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While his description holds some truth, I would like to shed a more positive light on the work of German scholars active in the field of U.S. history in Germany. In the last two decades, their mobility has greatly increased, allowing closer collaboration with U.S. history scholars all over the world. The Internet has facilitated these interdisciplinary, intercultural, and multilingual networks and has enabled these German scholars to tap into the treasures of American libraries and access research literature and source material. Despite obstacles, such as some students' lack of historians' tools and occasional language difficulties, teaching U.S. history in German universities offers a singular chance to help students negotiate their self-understanding and their understanding of others and thus to enhance their intercultural competence. |
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Teaching U.S. history in Germany is not restricted to history or political science departments; it also takes place in English and American studies departments, the latter being amalgams of language, literature, history, and culture. Some of the scholars in those departments are "purist" historians, while others, like myself, have degrees in history and American studies. One result of this structural interdisciplinarity in the German university system is that one often teaches U.S. history to language and literature specialists rather than to trained historians. It is certainly challenging to introduce efficiently the tools of historical analysis to these students and make them understand the worth of analyzing source material. After some initial skepticism, however, they learn to appreciate the benefits they can reap from analyzing historical documents. If the instructor simultaneously introduces literary renderings of the topic at hand, such as Walt Whitman's poem "A Passage to India" in the context of expansionism, the students begin to acknowledge the true worth of interdisciplinary work.2 |
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