| Book Review | Journal of World History, 19.1

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| Book Review | Journal of World History, 19.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Heimat Abroad: The Boundaries of Germanness. Edited by KRISTA O'DONNELL, RENATE BRIDENTHAL, and NANCY REAGIN. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005. 336 pp. $75.00 (cloth); $29.95 (paper).
This book takes up a theme not common among historians of Germany: it argues that Germans living far away—around the world, in places as far away as North Dakota or China—played a role in German history that was as important as that played by Germans living inside Germany, and in some cases more so. It raises the question that has baffled us for centuries: What is Germany? What does it mean to be German? It is an immensely learned book, top heavy with detail. Though professional historians will find faults in it, the book runs over with insight, truth, and even excitement.	1
Its seventeen essays, each written by a different author, recount the experiences of Germans living abroad. It displays the frustrations, tensions, and joys of these men and women as they interacted with the inhabitants of the host countries and sought to retain a special relationship with their Heimat. The relatively relaxed and mature arrangements for cultural exchange in much of the period covered by the book (1871 to the present) made easy the movement of individuals along and across borders all over the world.	. . .

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