The German Myth of the East

Synopsis

In this book the geographic East refers to eastern parts of Germany as well as lands that are east of Germany's borders. According to Liulevicius, this German view of the East was mixed. Influential people from high culture to popular culture saw the East as wild, dangerous, disorganized, and dirty, while others conversely saw it as captivating, intoxicating, as a transformational experience or as a desirable place of endless promise and opportunity. Each of these beliefs provided a rationale for a possible future civilizing mission.

So, the book analyzes this phenomenon from around 1800 to 2009, the year the book was published. However, these popular psychological projections stretched from the Middle Ages until the second World War's end in 1945. Hence, focusing on the East was occurring well before Germany unified as a nation state.

Also, this focus on the East has its counterpart in America's own romanticized view of the Wild West. For example, the mythologized East as a destination served as the German's equivalent of America's Manifest destiny. Likewise, according to the book, the German people were impacted by the mythologized East in the same way that Americans have been affected by their own formative stories based on the mythical West.