Double Vision: Territorial Strategies in the
Construction of National Identities in
Germany, 1949–1979
Guntram H. Herb
Department of Geography, Middlebury College
The establishment of two separate German states in 1949 had far-reaching effects on German national identity.
Initially, both governments claimed to represent the German nation as a whole, and each professed an identity that
went beyond its state borders. When the two German states started to recognize each other in the early 1970s, the
GDR (East Germany) embarked on a separate path and posited that a separate Socialist nation had developed in
the territorial confines of the GDR. Now the GDR needed to explain how its construction of identity could be unique
when it had the same German cultural roots as the FRG (West Germany). In the FRG on the other hand, the
narration of national identity had to square the recognition of the eastern border of the GDR in international treaties
and with demands to former German territories beyond it. The paper addresses these challenges over territory and
identity in the two German states, using a conceptual framework inspired by works from critical geopolitics and recent
studies on nations as local metaphors. I identify and discuss three key elements that are central to territorial strategies
in the construction of national identities: territorial differentiation, territorial bonding, and territorial script.
Next, I apply these elements to an empirical analysis of identity construction in the FRG and GDR. Sources include geography textbooks and atlases, which have a decisive influence on shaping conceptions of the nation.
Dominant constructions of national identity in the two states did not respond to each other’s initiatives and failed to
produce effective strategies by the end of the 1970s. Key Words: Germany, nation, territory, construction of national
identity, geographic education.
T
he establishment of two separate German states in
1949 had far-reaching effects on German national identity. Throughout the Cold War, the two
Germanys clashed not only over the political ideologies
of their respective blocks but also over the territorial
extent of the German nation. The position of the Federal
Republic of Germany (FRG), was to keep issues of national
territory open and to maintain claims to large areas in
Poland and other East European countries.1 Communist
East Germany, the German Democratic Republic (GDR),
opposed these claims and denounced them as a continuation of the imperialist policies of the Hitler regime. The
GDR regime did not refrain, however, from arguing for
the unification of the German nation under its leadership
until the late 1960s. When the Cold War began to thaw
and the FRG officially recognized the GDR as a result of
Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik, the GDR changed its rhetoric.
Starting in the early 1970s, the government denied the
existence of significant commonalties between East and
West Germany and posited that a separate socialist
nation had developed in the territorial confines of the
GDR. The FRG leaders vehemently rejected this claim
and maintained their stance on the continuity of a greater
German nation.
Each German state faced a dilemma in trying to
construct a convincing vision of its version of national
identity. The construction of national identity in the GDR
needed to show the development of a separate nation
despite common roots in the German national movement
of the 19th century, a movement that was centered on
the cultural unity of all Germans in Central Europe. The
construction of national identity in the FRG was pressed
to explain how the recognition of the eastern border of
the GDR, the so-called Oder-Neisse line, in international treaties could be squared with demands for
German unification beyond the confines of the two
German states. The two challenges were explicitly
territorial in character. In the GDR, the difficulty was to
reduce the spatial extent of its national identity conception to the confines of the GDR state territory, while in the
FRG, the struggle was to keep the full spatial extent of its
national identity conception in light of the restrictive
conditions of realpolitik.
What was the response to these territorial challenges in
each German state? In particular, what strategies were
employed in each state to construct a clear and convincing
image of the territorial foundation of ‘‘its’’ national
identity? To answer these questions, this investigation
Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 94(1), 2004, pp. 140–164 r 2004 by Association of American Geographers
Initial submission, June 2000; revised submissions, September 2001 and August 2002; final acceptance, May 2003.
Published by Blackwell Publishing, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, and 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, U.K.
will focus on the period 1949 to 1979. This time frame was
chosen to trace back the development of the construction
of national identity to the founding of the two states in
1949 to understand the fundamental changes that
occurred around the end of the 1960s, extending to the
end of the 1970s when the notion of a separate GDR
identity was fully developed. The 1980s witnessed new
developments in terms of the identity construction in the
FRG and GDR in the changing context of the appearance
and disappearance of the Second Cold War, which will
be discussed in a forthcoming publication.
The present paper has significance for understanding
not only German identity during the time of division, but
national identity construction in general. The role of
territory in the construction of national identities is an
important part of the political geography literature,
whether dealing with national identity in the context of
globalization (Marden 1997), identities related to associations of states, such as the European Union (Murphy
1999), or regional identities (White 2000). The case of
divided Germany allows a direct comparison of territorial
strategies in national identity construction between a
centralized totalitarian and a federal democratic state and
between an ethnic and a civic identity.
The main argument is organized into three parts. In
part one, I shall develop a theoretical framework for the
investigation, conceiving nations as narrative identities
and combining works from critical geopolitics with recent
studies on nations as local metaphors to offer a more balanced conceptualization of nations as forms of territoriality.
The argument here is that the territorial strategies in the
construction of identities can be made more tenable
through a two-step process. First, the territoriality of
national identity is dissected into its two fundamental
components, territorial differentiation and territorial bonding. Second, the rationale behind the territorial strategy—
what I term the ‘‘territorial script’’—is conceived as a
‘‘geograph.’’ Territorial differentiation and territorial bonding offer insights into the building blocks of territorial
strategies in the construction of national identity. The
script allows us to see the broader narrative that serves
as a justification for the strategy. The advantage of the
approach is that it provides a clear structure and sound
basis for the analysis of a highly complex phenomenon.
Part two employs this two-step process in an empirical
analysis of divided Germany 1949–1979. The main data
sources are schoolbooks and atlases in geography and
related fields. Although other sources, such as novels,
films, and popular magazines are clearly important (e.g.,
Sharp 1998, 2000), geography texts seem particularly
suitable to analyze the construction of national identity
(Buttimer, Brunn, and Wardenga 1999, 130). I shall first
present the two fundamental components of territoriality
in German national identity, territorial differentiation and
territorial bonding. Then I shall address the territorial
scripts in divided Germany, paying particular attentiocons1a4(a)-3
142
understood as patterns of behavior, such as customs
or traditions, but rather as a set of rules and guidelines
that govern behavior (Geertz 1973, 44). A multitude of
memories and a host of different identities coexist in a
nation. Many of them are conflicting. For example,
different groups in the United States can remember the
American Civil War as a victory or a defeat. Race, gender,
class, and religion provide further tensions. Collective
memory represents the process of negotiation and exchange that allows a reconciliation of these often contradictory memories and conflicting identities. It selects the
elements of the past that make up the ‘‘formative sense
of cultural knowledge, tradition, and singularity’’ that is
shared by the members of the nation (Confino 1997, 7–8).
These memories are made real by connecting them to cultural symbols, such as monuments, and to rites of belonging, such as the singing of anthems. The end result is the
invention of a national tradition (Hobsbawm 1983).3
Narrations of national identity are not free-floating
linguistic constructs, but constituted in concrete sociohistorical and spatial contexts. There is no clear separation, however, between the narrative and the material
setting: ‘‘representations of social life [i.e. the nation]4 and
life as lived spatially must be understood dialectically’’
( Jones and Natter 1999, 243). As MacLaughlin (2001)
shows for 18th- and 19th-century Great Britain, middleclass elites actively determined the construction of the
British nation to ensure their dominance in the nationstate, while at the same time their hegemonic role
in the nation-building process was determined by changes
in socioeconomic structures due to industrialization
and modernization.
The narrative construction also reveals national
identity as a dynamic entity because there is no uniform
definition for what is included. The customary use of
national identity as a static concept, for example, to explain the recent conflicts in Kosovo or Rwanda, is misleading. It presupposes the existence of collective groups
who are shaped by their specific history into centuriesold enemies and who will act as a unified whole when
they are threatened (Wodak et al. 1998, 48–49). Alternative versions of the content of national identity exist
even within hegemonic groups. What unifies the various
strands is the distinction of the nation vis-à-vis an
opposing Other. Internal cohesion is achieved by external
differentiation. Nations, therefore, are bounded communities of exclusion (Conversi 1997). The exclusive nature
is so important that nations seek to have freedom from
outside influences (Anderson 1991, 7). But what is the
process by which these boundaries and the identities
they contain are conceptualized and become a dominant vision?
Herb
Despite the crucial role of the us–them distinction in
national identity, the nationalism literature has generally
focused only on social boundaries and neglected their
fundamentally territorial nature. Geographers have long
argued that territory is central to the nation’s selfdefinition (e.g., Knight 1982; Williams and Smith 1983;
Kaplan 1994), but it is only recently that they have
addressed the links between boundaries and identities
from a theoretical perspective. These works fall mainly—
though not exclusively—within the amorphous field of
critical geopolitics. O’Tuathail (1996, 15), Dijkink (1996,
5), Paasi (1996, 1999, 226-27), and Sharp (1993, 2000,
27–29) stress the definition and demarcation of the Other
in the production of ‘‘self’’ and expose the role of spatial
representation, such as regional descriptions and maps in
national identity.
Paasi’s (1996, 32–35) concept of ‘‘institutionalization
of regions’’ illustrates the creation of bounded communities of exclusion, that is, national identities. It explains
that practices such as administrative districting, naming
of regions, and enforcing citizenship are used to define
regions territorially, to express and demarcate them
symbolically, and to reproduce them institutionally and
collectively. National identity construction can be understood in this way as a ‘‘sort of boundary producing political
performance’’ (Ashley 1987, 51, cited after O’Tuathail
and Dalby 1998, 4).
Authors of critical geopolitics stress that identity
construction occurs at different scales (MacLaughlin
2001) and discuss regions below the national level as
building blocks of national identity (Paasi 1996; Häkli
1998a). They also analyze how the ‘‘socio-spatial consciousness’’ that characterizes national identity manifests
itself in everyday practices, the life-world of individuals at
the local scale (Paasi 1996, 204). Critical geopolitics
scholars writing on nationalism respond to the persistent
call for attention to the local in the discipline (e.g., Agnew
1987). All these investigations from the national to the
regional to the local are driven by a concern for boundaries
that separate the nation from the Other (Paasi 1999;
Dijkink 1996; Sharp 2000). Even the sense of place is
understood as imbedded in bounded social groupings and
determined by boundaries between us and them (Paasi
1996, 206, 213).
The focus of critical geopolitics on boundaries introduces an imbalance in its treatment of the territorial
dimensions of nations. It seems to suggest that borders are
the sole means through which a national community
becomes linked to a given territory. Recent studies on
nations as local metaphors by Confino (1997) and Confino
and Skaria (2002) illustrate that bonds between the
nation and the land can also be created independent of
Territorial Strategies in the Construction of National Identities in Germany, 1949–1979
defined boundaries. Both works use the German notion of
Heimat to show how boundaries can be transcended in
national belonging.
In the idea of Heimat, the nation is conceived as and
subordinated to a local metaphor. The nation’s boundaries
lose their importance; its shape and size become flexible.
Heimat is a malleable and dynamic notion that can
represent interchangeably the locality, the region, and the
nation (Confino and Skaria 2002, 11). Confino and Skaria
often use the term ‘‘locality’’ as the equivalent for Heimat,
which I find problematic since it masks the dynamic
nature of the concept and relegates it to a specific scale,
that is, the local. The key difference between Heimat and
the local in critical geopolitics is that Paasi (1996, ch. 8)
and others seek to demonstrate how the national is
reproduced locally while Confino and Skaria (2002, 9–10)
insist that Heimat—what they term the ‘‘other local’’—
goes beyond the national and that it is this ‘‘other local’’
that penetrates, engages, and molds the nation and not
the other way around. Yet, the difference between Paasi
(1996) and Confino and Skaria (2002) is not crucial. They
simply approach national identity construction from two
different foci, territorial boundaries and territorial bonding. Their views can be combined in a fruitful manner, as
I shall argue below. First, though, I shall explain how
national identities can become a dominant vision. Sharp’s
(1993) notions of popular and elite ‘‘geographs’’ and
MacLaughlin’s (2001) discussion of hegemonic processes
are particularly helpful in this regard.
Geographs are geographical descriptions that structure
how people see the world and make sense of political
events and activities (Dalby 1993; Häkli 1998a; O’Tuathail 1992). They should be conceived as ‘‘frames’’ or
‘‘scripts’’ that tell us how to interpret events (Myers, Klak,
and Koehl 1996, 25). These scripts, not specific events or
facts, make reality (O’Tuathail 1992, 157). While elites
produce geographs, such as maps, that define national
identity, their views do not simply ‘‘trickle down’’ to
popular conceptions of national identity. Rather, there is a
constant interaction between these two discourses; elite
geographs influence themes learned in schools and
reproduced in the media (i.e. popular geographs) and are
at the same time influenced by them (Sharp 1993, 493;
Häkli 1998b, 335). Viewed in this way, popular geographs
are integral parts of a process that links elites with the
‘‘national-popular mass’’ and helps them exert hegemony
(Sharp 2000, 30–31).
MacLaughlin (2001) provides further insights into the
dissemination of national narratives. He uses Gramsci’s
notion of organic intelligentsias to explain that elites
become hegemonic in nation building through fundamental beliefs they share with a national-popular mass.
143
Thus, the construction of national identity involves
‘‘cultural capital and political leadership, not just the economic power that ownership of the means of production
conferred upon any one class’’ (MacLaughlin 2001, 39).
A crucial element in making conceptions of national
identity into hegemonic visions is education (Gellner
1983). As Hobsbawm (1990) has pointed out, schoolteachers were particularly influential in the nationalist
movements of the 19th century. They shared the class
background and vernacular of the peasantry from which
the majority of them had descended, and they were
familiar with existing popular conceptions through close
contact with their students and communities (see also
MacLaughlin 2001, 38–39).
All texts with a wide audience, including popular
magazines, schoolbooks, novels, films, or news reports, are
important in the ‘‘common-sensical construction’’ of the
nation (Sharp 1993, 494–95), but school geography texts
are uniquely suited to convey the border between us and
the Other that is at the heart of national identity (Paasi
1999, 226–27). Moreover, they are consumed at a crucial
stage in the development of sociospatial knowledge of
the nation (Schleicher 1993, 23–24; Dijkink 1996, 2–3).
Textbooks do not fall neatly into the category of popular
geographs, however. Textbooks reflect popular conceptions, but they are written by an intellectual elite, and their
content is regulated by ‘‘gatekeepers’’ such as publishers
and government ministries (Buttimer, Brunn, and Wardenga 1999, 130). Thus, they are at the intersection of elite
and popular geographs and a bona fide reflection of the
shared beliefs between elites and national popular masses.
At the same time, the impact or reception of texts on
national identity is difficult to measure. Surveying the
spatial perceptions of individuals to determine the spatial
extent of ‘‘regional consciousness’’ (i.e., national identity)
as suggested by Blotevogel, Heinritz, and Popp (1987) is
problematic. On the one hand, it is virtually impossible to
trace the perceptions to specific texts. On the other hand,
such objectivist studies of spatial consciousness privilege
the spatial over the human (Reuber 1999; Werlen 1997).
Yet, space does not have a separate ontological existence;
it is only a formal concept and a system of classification.
Space can only be experienced in the intentions and
activities of individuals. This means that empirical
analyses of regional identity should forego surveying the
spatial markers used by the inhabitants (e.g., Pohl 1993),
but instead investigate either how institutions, organizations, and elites employ regional terms, images, and
symbols for their hegemonic purposes (Hard 1996, 38–39)
or how the region is ‘‘constructed (perceived and interpreted) and instrumentalized’’ by different actors in the
context of their life-world (Reuber 1999, 35). Rather than
144
investigating the activities of selected individuals involved in policy decisions as suggested by the latter work,
the paper adopts the first approach to determine the
prevalence of different strategies in the construction of
identity in East and West Germany.
The foregoing discussion of narratives, territoriality,
and geographs provides a basis for the conceptual
approach taken in this paper in the analysis of identity
construction in divided Germany. On the most basic level,
I consider nationalism a form of territoriality. As Sack
(1986) has shown, territoriality is to be understood as a
strategy to influence, affect, and control. In the case of
national identity, this means a strategy to create a community that is ‘‘deemed worthy of the ultimate sacrifice—
to give one’s life for its continued existence’’ (Herb 1999,
16; see also Aschauer 1996, 10).
While scholars of critical geopolitics have shown
convincingly how boundaries are crucial in constructing
a national identity, I feel their treatment is imbalanced
because it does not give sufficient attention to the process
of attachment that is exemplified in the notion of the
nation as a local metaphor. I wish to restore the balance as
follows: As a first step, I propose dissecting territoriality
into its two fundamental components. One is establishing
the border of the national territory, or ‘‘territorial
differentiation.’’ This defines who is included and who is
excluded and makes the us–them distinction that is so
fundamental to national identity visible (Anderson 1991,
7). The other component of territoriality is assigning or
linking the nation to the territory, or ‘‘territorial bonding.’’
This fuses the national population to the land and creates
an emotional bond that makes the ‘‘belonging’’ tangible.
The process transcends specific boundaries. The two basic
components of territoriality allow us to see the construction of the nation as a dual process: the construction can
emphasize external difference or internal unity (Herb
1999, 17–18).
Yet, the two components alone do not constitute
a ‘‘strategy,’’ but simply a tactic. For territoriality to be a
strategy, there needs to be a larger design or rationale that
explains the importance of the territory to the nation
and justifies claims to the territory. This rationale is
a geographic narrative or ‘‘territorial script’’ that helps
members of the nation make sense of the world. It is a
geograph and can be analyzed as such. Thus, territorial
strategies in the construction of national identities should
be conceived as a synthesis of the basic components
(territorial differentiation and bonding) and a broader
script that serves as an explanation and justification.
The three dimensions (differentiation, bonding, and
script) of territoriality in national identity can be
illustrated with the analogy of a religious temple.
Herb
Territorial differentiation is akin to the walls or other
physical barriers, such as fences or enclosures. These
structures serve to separate what is holy (inside) from what
is profane (outside) just as national boundaries serve to
identify who is included and who is excluded. The act of
territorial bonding is similar to the rituals that are
performed in a temple. These rituals are given profound
meaning because in general they relate to fundamental
human experiences such as birth and deaths. They tie the
individual to the temple and to its community of members
just as individuals are tied to the nation through placebased experiences that have been interpreted as local
metaphors of the nation. Territorial scripts are analogous
to the sanctification narrative of a temple. Temples are
established for a reason, and there is a narrative that
explains and justifies their holy nature. This story of
the temple is reinforced by the physical structures of the
temple and the rituals that are performed there. It
expresses the destiny of the religious community. Similarly,
the territorial script expresses the destiny of the nation and
builds on territorial differentiation and territorial bonding.
I shall elaborate further on each of the three territorial
dimensions (differentiation, bonding, and script) in the
empirical section where I also discuss their specifically
German dimensions. The metaphor of the temple will be
helpful in the interpretation of the empirical findings.
This approach to the territorial construction of national
identity has important advantages. Dissecting the strategy
into territorial differentiation, territorial bonding, and
territorial scripts allows for a clearly structured and more
comprehensive analysis. This dissection aids a direct,
explicit, and nuanced comparison of different territorial
constructions of national identity. A comparison of the
strategies as a whole runs the danger of failing to see subtle
changes and hidden processes. We need to understand
how each of the dimensions of the strategy is affected by
material contexts and practices to expose different layers
of the discourse of national identity construction.
In following sections of the paper I shall apply this
approach to an empirical analysis of the competing
constructions of national identity in divided Germany
1949–1979. I shall compare and contrast how the FRG
and GDR used territorial differentiations and territorial
bonding and then incorporate these findings in the
contextual examination of conflicting territorial scripts.
Dimensions of Territorial Strategies in
Divided Germany: Empirical Findings
The previous discussion lays the foundation for the
analysis of territorial strategies in divided Germany. After
Territorial Strategies in the Construction of National Identities in Germany, 1949–1979
explaining the process of data collection, I shall offer and
interpret selective findings from a more comprehensive
study that covers the entire period of division 1949–1989,
which will be published elsewhere. I only present those
findings here that best exemplify the insights that can be
gained with the proposed conceptual framework. The two
basic components—territorial differentiation and territorial bonding—will be discussed first. As building blocks
for territorial strategies, they help take the analysis of the
territorial scripts that follows one step further. Since
the three dimensions (territorial differentiation, territorial
bonding, and territorial script) are not unchanging universals, but context dependent, each of them will be
prefaced by a general characterization that elaborates on
their specifically German aspects.
Data Sources
The main data sources for the analysis are geography
textbooks and atlases. Although there are many other
potential sources to examine the construction of national
identity, such as novels, films, and popular magazines, I
have selected textbooks and atlases in geography for
specific reasons. As mentioned above, textbooks represent
an interaction between elite and popular geographs. Their
dissemination and impact is widespread; given mandatory
schooling in both German states, all school-age children
were exposed to them and required to engage with them in
class. The content of textbooks reflect popular conceptions, the professional expertise of the authors, the mass
marketing decisions of publishers, and the views of the
government ministries that approve them. Paasi (1996,
1999) argues that schoolbooks in geography are particularly influential: ‘‘no other documents employed in
education have such a power for the creation of sociospatial consciousness’’ (Paasi 1996, 70). Therefore, geography textbooks are ideally suited to investigate which
visions of the nation are dominant at different times.
These ‘‘visions’’ express the territorial strategies in the
construction of the nation that are hegemonic.5 The empirical analysis will focus on texts, images, and maps.
The interpretation of the rhetoric and ideological dimensions of these artifacts and their discursive role will pay
careful attention to the larger political, societal, and
intellectual context (Häkli 1998b, 335).
The relevance of ‘‘reading’’ such texts for an assessment of national identity construction in the two
Germanys is revealed in the controversies surrounding
their production and use. For example, in the FRG,
changes in the designation of national boundaries in
school atlases resulted in debates in news media and
145
parliaments, court action, scholarly studies, and attacks
on publishers by teachers and private organizations.6
Conversely, in the GDR, the institutions involved in the
production and regulation of maps were so obsessed with
forestalling any potential controversy that they censored
existing publications for the most insignificant inconsistencies even though this must have incurred significant
financial costs.7
The selection of the textbooks and atlases was guided
by several criteria, including the need to ensure (1) that
the publications were representative of national policies,
(2) that they covered issues related to German national
identity in sufficient depth, (3) that they were directed at
similar audiences in the two states to allow comparison,
and (4) that they went through enough editions to be able
to see changes in argumentation over time.
In the case of the GDR, the selection was straightforward since the GDR was established as a unitary state, that
is, a highly centralized system with one power focus,
Berlin. Further concentration of power was achieved by
placing members of the Socialist Unity Party (SED) in all
leading positions. As a consequence, there was only one
official version of textbooks and atlases, and their designs
were centrally controlled. A more difficult situation
existed in the FRG. As a federal democratic state, the
secondary regional divisions or Länder of the FRG had
autonomy in the education sector and regulated schoolbook designs or curriculum content. In addition, textbook
production occurred in a free-market context, which
meant that different publishers were involved as well. By
necessity, I had to restrict the number of sources, and I
chose to concentrate my efforts on the most prominent
textbooks, that is, those publications that were certified
for use in several Länder and went through enough
editions to trace developments over time. Incomplete
preservation of textbooks and atlases further reduced
the sources for the FRG by default. While essentially
all GDR textbooks and atlases could be accessed, some
FRG publications were even missing in the specialized collections of textbooks at the Georg-Eckert-Institut
für internationale Schulbuchforschung, Braunschweig
and the Bibliothek für Bildungsgeschichtliche ForSchung, Berlin.
Published surveys of German national issues in geography textbooks (Engel and Sperling 1986; Ittermann
1991) and teaching guidelines (see appendix 3) complement the analysis and enhance its comprehensive character. The textbooks and atlases that were used in the
empirical analysis are listed in appendix 2. Since geography education in the FRG and GDR generally focused
on the national territory in the 5th and 6th grade, I
concentrated on textbooks from this grade level.
146
Sources for the contextual analysis of the textbooks and
atlases included primary documents in archives, published
documents, and publications on education (see Appendix
3). Correspondence relating to map design and initiatives
by publishers in the FRG was surveyed at the Westermann
Werkarchiv (WWA), the archive of one of the largest
geography textbook publishers in the FRG. Information
on map design in the GDR and publisher’s activities had to
be collected indirectly. Despite repeated attempts, I was
denied access to the records of the GDR publisher
Herman Haack. I was informed that the collection was not
organized and that there were no funds to hire personnel
to remedy the situation. The records on cartographic
censorship in the GDR that are held at the Bundesarchiv
(BA) in Dahlwitz-Hoppegarten offered the only way to get
a glimpse at the process. Published documents, such as the
materials of a commission of the German Bundestag and
ministerial directives were combined with publications
dealing with educational guidelines to round out the
investigation.
Territorial Differentiation and
German National Identity
The German nation has been challenged from its
beginnings to outline the limits of its territory. Islands of
ethnic German settlements historically have been dispersed far into Eastern Europe, and the boundaries of
political control have fluctuated widely. Yet, to fulfill its
ultimate goal to be free from outside influence, a nation
needs to have the territorially sovereign power of a state
and thus clear territorial boundaries (Herb 1999). Natural
borders, such as mountain ranges, rivers, or coastlines, are
preferred solutions, as they appear just by virtue of their
‘‘organic’’ origins. The reference to rivers and straits in the
first verse of the original German anthem illustrates this
well.8 Such verbal descriptions, however, only convey a
general sense, not a clear territorial image. Effective
territorial differentiation requires visualization, in particular, maps (Herb 1997). Presented in the language of
measurement and computation, maps and the boundaries
depicted on them appear authoritative (Harley 1989;
Black 1997). As Latour (1986, 19–22) explains, such
devices make it possible not only to see the invisible, that
is, the national community, but also to prove its existence,
an existence that can be controlled since it is moveable across time and space. These qualities make maps
excellent tools to outline claims to national territory. In
the aftermath of World War I, when national selfdetermination was elevated to a just cause, the common
practice was to outline the region where a national group
had the majority (Herb 1997). The abuse of such
Herb
ethnically based claims by the Nazis, however, has made
claims based on historical boundaries the only acceptable
justification since then (Murphy 1990, 537). Given the
multitude of historical and existing German boundaries—
some of them hotly disputed—territorial differentiation
in divided Germany was a daunting enterprise in the
two states.
For the GDR, the most conspicuous aspect of territorial
differentiation was the infamous Wall, a border that came
to be a West German metaphor for the entire system. The
GDR was often called Mauerstaat or ‘‘wall state’’ in
the FRG. In the GDR, the preferred term for the Wall was
Antifaschistischer Schutzwall, or anti-Fascist protective
barrier. Yet, the obsession with an impenetrable western
boundary was not part of the founding ideology of the East
German state; rather, territorial differentiation from the
FRG came into being step by step.
During the early years of the GDR, the western border
with the FRG did not even appear on most GDR maps.
The territories of the GDR and the FRG were always
depicted as a unified whole that was labeled ‘‘Germany.’’
Even after the border with the FRG was officially closed on
26 May 1952, maps in school texts continued to omit it for
another two years (Figure 1).
Explicit territorial differentiation started only in 1959,
when the GDR appeared as a fully independent state
with regular international boundaries for the first time. A
directive by the Ministry of Culture from the summer of
1960 confirms this explicit differentiation as a policy
change. It prohibited the term ‘‘Deutschland’’ (Germany)
and required the use of distinct territorial colors for
East and West Germany on maps.9 In 1965, differentiation from the FRG was taken all the way. The geography
curriculum was restructured to deny any connection with
the German territory in the west. Henceforth, the Federal
Republic was to be studied like a foreign country and
during fewer lessons. Maps of the Federal Republic were
placed in a separate section in atlases, and most maps of
the GDR itself left blank the territory to the west (Thiele
1989, 45). The terminology for the Federal Republic
reflected the new vision. Before, it was called Deutsche
Bundesrepublik or DBR, which had a corresponding other
half in the Deutsche Demokratische Republik or DDR. Now,
it was simply called Westdeutschland, with the preferred
label WD on maps (see Figure 2). The name change
ensured the priority of the GDR in the mind of its
population. On alphabetical lists the FRG now appeared
far behind the GDR. The official abbreviation BRD was
only used after the Basic Treaty of 1972, which entailed
mutual recognition as separate states.
The cartographic denial of the FRG in 1965 does not
square with changes in the GDR’s official ideology. From
Territorial Strategies in the Construction of National Identities in Germany, 1949–1979
147
Figure 1. Territorial differentiation in the GDR in the early years. The existence of the two German states was silenced on GDR maps for several
years after their founding in 1949. Even when the border was sealed off by the GDR in 1952, its maps continued to omit the border for another two
years. Source: Atlas zur Erd- und Länderkunde. Groe Ausgabe. Berlin: Volk und Wissen and Gotha: VEB Geographisch-Kartographische Anstalt,
1954, 7 (detail).
its very beginnings until the late 1960s, the GDR professed
a gesamtdeutsch, or German unification ideology. It publicly espoused a German territorial identity that included
the area of the FRG, while it simultaneously silenced the
FRG’s existence in its maps. Further signs of a shift in
ideology came two years later, in 1967, when the names of
organizations and institutions were slowly being changed
from deutsch or Deutschland to DDR (Azaryahu 1991, 121–
22). The official rejection of a larger German identity
came with the new 1974 constitution of the GDR. It made
an unequivocal official statement in this regard by
eliminating the term ‘‘German nation’’ when it talked
about GDR citizenship. Party ideologists quickly retreated
from earlier positions of a unified German nation and
published books and articles to provide a theoretical
backing for the assertion that a separate socialist nation
had developed within the territory of the GDR.10
Territorial differentiation toward the East was clear
from the beginning. The eastern boundary of the GDR,
which ran along the rivers Oder and Neisse, was always
depicted as an international boundary, be it for united
Germany or for the GDR alone. The formerly German
territories that were now part of Poland and the USSR
were never mentioned. German place names in these
territories were prohibited even if they were scientific terms.11
The representation of distinct GDR boundaries was
regulated with obsessive precision, an indication of the
crucial role differentiation played in the narration of GDR
identity. The government office in charge of maps,
Verwaltung Vermessungs- und Kartenwesen (VVK), issued
base maps that contained instructions on the size of the
lettering, on the type of line symbols, and on their
placement in rivers.12 Adherence to the rules was strictly
enforced, and even if a deviation of the course of the
border was only discernible with a magnifying glass,
the maps were rejected. The preferred method for
the representation of distinct GDR boundaries was the
148
Herb
Figure 2. Territorial differentiation in the
GDR in the mid-1960s. Starting in 1965,
GDR maps maximized territorial differentiation from the FRG. The two states were
depicted as if the other did not exist, such
as in this map of agricultural land use in the
FRG. Source: Atlas der Erdkunde. Berlin:
Volk und Wissen Volkseigener Verlag,
1967, 23.
Inselkarte or island representation. Here, the GDR’s
borders were akin to a coastline because the surrounding
territory was left blank or given a uniform shade. The
Inselkarte approach also facilitated territorial differentiation at a larger scale. Starting in the mid-1960s,
the ‘‘island’’ of the GDR was expanded to include the
Communist world to the East. Such a presentation linked
the GDR with the Communist block and maximized
differentiation from the capitalist FRG (see Figure 3).
The obsession about the accuracy of the GDR
boundaries becomes clear when we apply the notion of
collective memory. The GDR boundaries could not be
placed into the existing collective German memory
without drawing attention to the fragmentation of the
German nation. The independent GDR had to be based
on a tabula rasa to avoid creating associations with
memories it had in common with the FRG. The new GDR
identity had to treat the other borders as if they had
Territorial Strategies in the Construction of National Identities in Germany, 1949–1979
149
Figure 3. ‘‘Inselkarte’’ of Socialist Europe. Insert map and section of a two-page map on industry and agriculture from an atlas for the general
public. As part of its attempt to maximize territorial differentiation from the FRG, maps in the GDR after 1965 started to represent the two German
states as integral parts of their respective blocks. In the early years, the left margin of the map was extended to fit in the GDR. Thus, the inclusion of
the GDR appeared somewhat ‘‘forced.’’ Source: Atlas für Jedermann. Gotha: VEB Hermann Haack, Geographisch-Kartographische Anstalt, 1988,
26 (detail).
disappeared and turn to the future (Halbwachs 1992, 77).
Permanence and continuity of the GDR borders could
only be evoked by making sure that all representations of
them were completely identical.
In direct contrast to the GDR’s obsession with clearly
defined, inviolable borders, the FRG’s territorial differentiation was characterized by ambiguity. Maps of the
Federal Republic during the period of division always
included multiple boundary designations in the East. As
Figure 4 illustrates, three different Eastern boundary lines
were used in the FRG: (1) the border between the FRG
and the GDR; (2) the eastern border of the GDR, the socalled Oder-Neisse border; and (3) the border of the
German Empire on 31 December 1937. The last boundary
was considered to be the legal basis of a future reunited
Germany. The emphasis given to these boundaries changed significantly over time.
Up until the end of the 1960s, the 1937 border was the
most prominent. Federal decrees in 1952 (Bezeichnungsrichtlinien) and 1961 (Kartenrichtlinien) mandated the
inclusion of this border on official maps and strongly urged
that private publications adopt the same principles.13
The 1937 boundary stood out in nearly all school atlases
because it was depicted with a thicker line than other state
boundaries, such as the one between France and Belgium,
and because the area it enclosed was colored in a uniform
hue. It was included on thematic maps as an eye-catching
red line. The other two borders were portrayed as internal
administrative divisions or as lines of demarcation, that
is, as provisional perimeters (Sperling 1991, 24–28). The
lettering also indicated the transitional character of
the existing internal divisions and stressed the unity of the
1937 territory. Maps labeled the entire area as Deutschland
but did not recognize the GDR territory as such. If it was
named at all, it was called ‘‘Soviet Occupied Zone.’’ The
areas east of the GDR were identified as ‘‘currently under
Polish (or Soviet) administration’’ (see Figure 5).
In the latter half of the 1960s, the 1937 boundaries
became controversial in the FRG. In 1965 the Protestant
and Catholic Churches advocated reconciliation with
Poland and recognition of its boundaries. Mounting public
criticism of the existing maps led the association of
schoolbook publishers to press the government for reform
of the decrees in 1967. Yet, despite repeated attempts, the
federal government refused to take action and argued that
the regulation of school atlases fell into the educational
authority of the Länder. Change came only after the Treaty
of Warsaw with Poland was signed in December 1970;
seven months later, the decrees were revoked without
substitute.14
In the absence of official decrees after 1971, FRG
atlases changed their representations of the territories east
of the Oder-Neisse line. Publishers were eager to show in
their political maps that the territories east of the OderNeisse line were now part of Poland and the Soviet Union
by shading them in the same color as those countries (see
150
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Figure 4. German borders after 1945. Maps
of the Federal Republic during the period
of division always included multiple boundary designations in the East. The rows of
Eastern boundary lines included (from west
to east): (1) the border between the FRG
and the GDR; (2) the eastern border of the
GDR (so-called Oder-Neisse border); and
(3) the border of the German Empire on
31 December 1937. The last boundary was
considered to be the legal basis of a future
reunited Germany.
Figure 6). A few atlas publishers, such as the Westermann
Verlag, even started to omit the 1937 border and labeled
the combined territory of the GDR and FRG as Deutschland. Yet, the change would not last. Conservatives and
right-wing interest groups such as Der Stahlhelm and the
Vertriebenenverbände viciously attacked the new maps.15
By the mid- to late 1970s, the 1937 boundary reappeared in all atlases and the term Deutschland was once
again used to denote the territory this boundary enclosed.
Apart from these changes, however, the depiction of
German national territory was plagued by great inconsistencies. There was a deep gulf between those renouncing claims to eastern territories and those holding on to
the maximum demand of the 1937 borders, or in the words
of Ash (1993, 224) between: ‘‘politician-journalists of the
left and politician-jurists of the right.’’
The federal government chose not to become directly
involved in the dispute over German territories. The
controversy in the FRG was now played out at the level of
the Länder, which asserted their educational authority.
Länder that had an SPD majority refused to approve atlases
that featured the 1937 boundary while those with a CDU/
CSU majority mandated that all maps of Germany show it
(Sperling 1991, 29–30). A 1973 German Supreme Court
decision had contributed to this mess. The decision was
made in regard to the Basic Treaty of 1972 in which the
FRG and GDR had recognized one another and formalized
relations. The court argued that the German Empire in the
boundaries of 1937 continued to exist as a legal entity—of
which the FRG was the only true representative—but it
also recognized the existence of the GDR.
Throughout the period, maps in the FRG carefully
avoided complete territorial differentiation from the GDR
territory. Line symbols identified the border between the
two German states either as a special boundary or as an
administrative division, even during the most liberal
period in the early 1970s when publishers started to fully
recognize the GDR. Blumenwitz (1980, 53), a legal
scholar dedicated to the task of preserving German claims
to the 1937 territory, had to concede that the border
between the FRG and the GDR was always represented as
something less than a regular international boundary.
Differentiation was only contradictory for the OderNeisse line and the 1937 border.
The development of territorial differentiation in the
FRG was markedly different from the GDR. In the FRG,
the depiction of German national territory was initially
uniform, but it became contradictory starting in the mid1970s. The main reason for this change was that the
federal government was no longer willing to issue official
regulations or binding guidelines. The territorial vision
became dependent on the political orientation of the
different Länder governments and the pressure exerted
by private interest groups and the media. As a result,
there was a rift in the national narrative of the FRG;
the contradictive depictions of the boundaries, and the
memories associated with them, were not reconciled, but
existed side by side.
In the GDR, the vision of the early years was
ambiguous, and there was no clear differentiation of the
two German states. The GDR only began to define itself as
completely distinct from the FRG in the mid-1960s. By
Territorial Strategies in the Construction of National Identities in Germany, 1949–1979
151
Figure 5. Territorial differentiation in the FRG up to the end of the 1960s. As the political and physical maps illustrate, the Federal Republic
during this period used the 1937 boundary to lay claim to the territory of the greater German nation. Source: Diercke Weltatlas. Braunschweig:
Georg Westermann Verlag. 139. Auflage, 1957, 40-41, 84 (details).
152
Herb
Figure 6. Territorial differentiation in the FRG in the early 1970s. In the context of rapprochement between the FRG and GDR, maps started to
omit the former German territories east of the Oder-Neisse border. On the bottom map, Germany is now shown to reach only as far east as the
Oder-Neisse border. Source: Diercke Weltatlas. Braunschweig: Georg Westermann Verlag. 185. Auflage, 1974, 30, 84 (details).
Territorial Strategies in the Construction of National Identities in Germany, 1949–1979
the mid-1970s, the GDR followed up on this territorial
differentiation with the public declaration that it constituted a separate Socialist nation. Thus, the FRG started
to lack a uniform territorial image at the very time that the
GDR’s differentiation from the FRG was most explicit
and pronounced. It appears that when the GDR began
to fortify the walls of its temple, the FRG lacked the
determination to build an even higher wall around it.
Instead, in the FRG, several rows of walls were presented,
but there was no indication which ones were to hold up the
roof. As the metaphor of the temple shows, the unfortunate consequence was that the FRG’s territorial strategy
for national identity was not well constructed.
Territorial Bonding and German National Identity
In Germany, the idealized rural origins of the nation
have been particularly important. This is most forcefully
expressed in the notion of Heimat, which connotes an
organic unity formed by the people and the land. Here the
bond is presented as a deep-seated emotional attachment
to the area of descent, which provides a feeling of womblike security (Boa and Palfreyman 2000, 26–27). The
concept was taken to the extreme in the ‘‘blood and soil’’
ideology of völkisch nationalism, which was a precursor
of National Socialism.
Heimat seeks to create a feeling of belonging among the
members of the nation by attaching the collective group to
the national territory. Other nations employ similar tactics
of territorial bonding and present emotive descriptions of
the regional geography to make people love their country
since ‘‘one only loves what one knows’’ (Capel 1981, 52).
Such emotive regional narratives stress the special qualities of the national landscape and its pristine character
that hearkens back to an idyllic past when people lived in
harmony with the land (Herb 1999, 19; Agnew 1987,
232). Some nations focus on unique features, such as the
Jutland Heath in Denmark (Olwig 1984) or the mountains of Wales (Gruffud 1995, 223); others, such as
France and Finland, see unity in diversity (Häkli 1998a,
138; Lowenthal 1994, 19). In German national identity,
the focus is not on specific landscape features or the Gestalt
of the landscape. Instead, Heimat refers to the quasinatural character of the bond to the land. In early German
nationalism, this attachment was considered to be so deep
that it was presented as akin to trees being rooted in the
soil (Mosse 1981, 16, 155).
Heimat cannot be translated into English as ‘‘home.’’ It
is a politicized term with a wider range of connotations.
These connotations are illustrated by combinations such
as Heimaterde (native soil), Heimatforschung (local history), Heimatrecht (right of residence) or the fact that
153
Heimat does not refer to a dwelling (Boa and Palfreyman
2000, 1). Heimat has different meanings in everyday usage
and in the literature, but on a personal level, it seems to
denote the ‘‘deep-seated psychological need’’ for security,
identity, and belonging (Boa and Palfreyman 2000, 23).
Thus, it can be conceived as a ‘‘sense of place’’ in the
tradition of humanist geography (e.g., Relph 1976; Tuan
1977). Of relevance here, however, is not how the
individual experience of Heimat (i.e., a specific place,
the life-world of individuals) contributes to the formation
of national or regional identity. Rather, the question is how
the concept of Heimat (i.e., what it symbolizes) can serve
as an element of a strategy to construct German national
identity; in other words, how Heimat becomes a building
block for German collective memory.
As a basic component of a national territorial strategy,
Heimat reinterprets the individual experience of place
into a collective feeling of belonging to a group and its
values—the German nation (Bastian 1995, 125). Heimat
is taught and school education, geography in particular, is
key. When children learn about place names, historical
events, folklore, and other ‘‘facts’’ of their local area, when
they celebrate its splendor through activities such as
hiking, painting, and singing, they are taught to recognize
(and love) its ‘‘German’’ essence. In other words, they are
made aware that what they feel is not personal or local, but
thoroughly German. Heimat is a particularly powerful
narrative of territorial bonding because it builds on what
appears to be a fundamental individual human need
for security and identity (Wollersheim 1998, 54–55). As a
result, the bonds to the local territory and its inhabitants
have a ‘‘natural’’ or organic feel; they appear like the
biological bonds of a family. The boundaries of the local
area where this ‘‘national education’’ occurs become
secondary. It is not important where the local area ends,
but of what it is a part.
Through Heimat, the German nation becomes palatable and ‘‘real’’ because German national values and beliefs
are ‘‘exposed’’ in the local life-world—the ‘‘everyday life
experienced by the inhabitants of a specific place’’
(Strzelczyk 1999, 25). It is important here to stress that
Heimat seems to represent the rich diversity of specific
places but in actuality it embodies universal German
national values. The idea of Heimat does not encourage
diversity; it serves to foster national similarity. Heimat is
local and national at the same time (Confino and Skaria
2002, 11).
Heimat is an intrinsic part of the narratives of German
national identity and reflects the demands of the early
German national movement (Boa and Palfreyman 2000,
199, 204; Bastian 1995, 121–22). The term was politicized
in the 19th century when it came to denote a longing for
154
an idyllic past when Germans lived in harmony with the
earth and were an integral part of a ‘‘true’’ community.
Heimat was considered a panacea for the changes brought
about by industrialization, urbanization, and greater
mobility (Bastian 1995, 122). As such, it is antimodern
and antiurban. At the same time, Heimat has an explicitly
utopian dimension; it represents the goal to create an
idealized world where social, material, and environmental
ills are transcended in the organic unity of the community.
This vision of a harmonious and egalitarian community made Heimat also attractive to the political left (Boa
and Palfreyman 2000, 25). Thus, Heimat has the very same
Janus-faced quality as national identity; it is an identity that
looks to the past and at the same time to the future.
The idea of Heimat was perpetuated through cultural
organizations dedicated to preserve German folklore,
customs, art, and monuments (Heimatpflege and Heimatschutz), through romantic literature and, above all,
through education. The interest in Heimat dovetailed
nicely with reforms in pedagogy instigated by Pestalozzi
and Fröbel, which called for active and experiential
learning (Capel 1981, 50–51). Heimatkunde, or the knowledge of the Heimat region, was considered to be vital to the
national interest, and geographers were its chief proponents in the educational sector (Engel 1984, 9).
Heimat provides flexibility for the symbolic representation of the German nation. Any place or region—from the
local to the national level—can be imbued with national
German values by identifying it as Heimat: Heimat
Stuttgart, Heimat Schwaben, Heimat Baden-Württemberg,
Heimat Deutschland. This flexible identification allows a
construction of national identities that is independent of
specific boundaries. Paasi (1996), Häkli (1998a), and
Wollersheim (1998) have shown clearly that naming is
instrumental in creating a regional identity. This means
that only specific regions are able to acquire a strong
regional identity: those that have been named and
symbolically reproduced for an extended time and in an
intensive fashion. In the German case, ‘‘Heimat’’ makes
naming and symbolic representation in a sense universal.16
Heimat is the decisive signifier because of its powerful appeal described above; the adjunct place names
and the territories they represent are only of secondary
importance.
The territorial flexibility of Heimat explains how the
concept helps mediate the potential conflict between
national German identity and regional identities such as
Bavaria or Prussia. As the long history of German
particularism illustrates, many regions in Germany, such
as Bavaria, Saxony, or Prussia, had centuries of separate
dynastic rule or political independence. Thus, a Bavarian
identity not only can evoke feelings of being German, but
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also of being profoundly different from Prussia or Saxony.
But Bavaria, Prussia, and other German regions cannot be
‘‘imagined’’ without connecting them to place-based
experiences. Yet, these experiences are already thoroughly interpreted as national German; they are Heimat
(Confino 1997).
During the period of division, territorial bonding in the
two German states differed significantly. The GDR faced
significant problems when it tried to alter the established
notion of Heimat to make it conform to its Socialist vision.
The creation of new Socialist territorial bonds had to be
carried out very gradually and carefully given the powerful
appeal of the traditional Heimat concept. A precursor was
the second party conference of the SED in March–July
1952 that demanded the study of the history of local
workers’ movements and of industrial plants (Betriebsgeschichte) to further the development of Socialism in the
GDR. The result was the founding of numerous regional
history commissions that produced an astonishing amount
of work over the next decades (Schmid 1990, 51–52;
Sonnet 1982). Such publications were intended to give
scientific backing to a new Socialist version of Heimat
that was propagated in earnest after 1957. The change
became apparent when several old-style Heimat journals,
which were dedicated to the study of regional folklore
and traditions, were closed down in that year (Schmid
1990, 50).
School curricula and textbooks illustrate the new
emphasis on Socialist territorial bonding. Until the late
1950s, they still used the more traditional Heimat concept
that stressed an emotional attachment to Germany as a
whole. After that, the focus was squarely on Socialist
economic structures. (Schmid 1990, 49–50). For example,
when students were introduced to their local districts
in the 3rd and 4th grade Heimatkunde, the texts only
covered issues relevant to the development of Socialism,
such as the persecution of workers under Fascism or the
friendship with the Soviet Union. Regional culture and
folklore were completely excluded. When cultural aspects
were mentioned at all, such as in a section on cultural
monuments, they were always related to the workers’
movement (e.g., Heimatkunde. Lehrbuch für die Klasse 4,
1974, 25–27).
Over time, the new Socialist concept of Heimat became
more and more sterile and dogmatic (see Figure 7). While
the textbook in 1970 started the section on the home
district with idyllic pictures of a mechanized farm, factory,
city hall, and other Socialist-style buildings, the 1976
edition only featured a close-up photo of a major industrial
plant (Heimatkunde. Klasse 3, 1970 and 1976). The 1976
text also omitted pictures of playgrounds and other
references to the personal sphere of the children. It delved
Territorial Strategies in the Construction of National Identities in Germany, 1949–1979
Figure 7. The Socialist version of Heimat. In an attempt to sever
connections to the German past, the GDR developed a Socialist
version of Heimat. However, as this cover photo of a section in a thirdgrade text illustrates, the concept became more and more sterile over
time and failed to evoke emotional attachment. The image was used
from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s. Source: Heimatkunde, Klasse 3.
Berlin: Volk und Wissen Volkseigener Verlag. 6. Auflage, 1983, 7.
straight into the political structures that existed at
the local level, trying to legitimize the superiority of the
Socialist system. This shift toward an unambiguous Socialist identity takes place in the context of the official declaration in 1974 that the GDR is a nation separate from
the FRG. Yet, the selective emphasis on political elements
in the Socialist Heimat came at a price. It made it difficult to conceive Heimat as an organic community and
the discussion became so abstract that it is unlikely it
engendered any emotional attachment to the GDR.17
In contrast to the GDR, the FRG faced few challenges
in territorial bonding. It could latch on to the established
notion of Heimat since it presented itself as the ‘‘true’’
descendant of the old German nation. Here, territorial
bonding played a decisive role from the beginning.
Education ministries in the Länder of the FRG quickly
reintroduced the old-style Heimatkunde in the curriculum
(Mitzlaff 1985, 1104), and movies dealing with an idyllic
155
village life, so-called Heimatfilme, had a heyday in the
1940s and 1950s. As in many other spheres of public life,
1945 was not taken as an opportunity to embark in new
directions. Geography textbooks continued with the
regional focus that sought to fill the students’ hearts with
love for Germany.
As in the case of territorial differentiation, change
occurred during the more liberal climate of the late 1960s
and early 1970s. A general reform of the educational
system (Bildungsreform) restructured the geography curriculum in 1970. The old regional descriptions (LänderKunde) were replaced by exemplary topics (Schultze 1998,
Köck 1986). Now, rather than imparting an intimate
knowledge of a given region in the FRG or Germany at
large, textbooks would only deal with a region if it was
representative of a certain type of human activity, such
as coal mining. Emotional attachment was replaced by
an emphasis on universal geographic concepts, such as
industrial location or urbanization.
Two factors accounted for this change. First, there was a
paradigm shift within German geography. Spurred by
initiatives from American geography, the subject was
redefined as a spatial science. Instead of regional description, the focus was on generalizations and geographic laws
in order to give geography greater legitimacy among other
social science disciplines (Engel and Sperling 1986, 382).
Second, there was a larger sociopolitical context. The
student revolts of the late 1960s and the coming of age of
the postwar generation led to a reevaluation of the Nazi
legacy. Under the rallying call of ‘‘der Gestank von tausend
Jahren unter den Talaren’’ (the stench of a thousand years
under the gowns), students questioned the continued
influence of Nazi members in high official positions such as
university professors, judges, and ministers. Traditional
German notions such as Heimat became suspect, and they
were discredited by their prominent role during the Nazi
reign. The new German cinema was born, and Heimat
films were replaced by anti-Heimat films that portrayed
rural communities as repressive and xenophobic (Geisler
1985, 36–38; Boa and Palfreyman 2000, 12; Klemann
1997). Heimatkunde was eliminated as a curricular subject
and replaced by Sachkunde, a subject that purported to
introduce children to the technological, socioeconomic, and political realities of modern society (Roth 1986,
138–40). Identification with German national territory
faded from the instructional scene.
In contrast to territorial differentiation, territorial
bonding in the FRG shows some commonalties with the
situation in the GDR. Initially, both states employed the
traditional version of Heimat. In the early 1950s, the GDR
abandoned this focus and started to develop a Socialist
version of Heimat, while the FRG held steadfast to the
156
existing style. In the 1970s, the FRG followed suit and cast
off the traditional type of Heimat during the educational
reform. Now, territorial bonding lacked emotional power
in both states. In the FRG, the focus was on universal
principles, and uniquely German elements disappeared. In
the GDR, the singular emphasis on Socialist values made
the concept so austere that it became sterile. Thus, in the
1970s, both states instituted brand new temple rituals that
felt strange to its community members because they
lacked referents to past events or experiences; there was
no continuity. The rituals did not connect to the shared
cultural knowledge and traditions that configure the
construction of collective memory (Halbwachs 1992;
Confino 1997). Unfortunately, this change came at a time
when the walls appeared unfamiliar as well. The GDR
built new fortified walls and the FRG could not decide
which walls were to be the real ones. These new
developments did not bode well for the success of either
temple, in other words, for the success of national identity
construction.
Territorial Scripts and German National Identity
Territorial scripts, or geographs, are the rationales that
tie together the fate of the nation and the territory. They
explain why a given territory belongs rightfully to the
nation, how the nation arrived at the present territorial
situation, and which territory would fulfill the destiny. For
example, if a nation does not have sovereignty over its
territory, that is, freedom from outside influences, a
territorial justification will make this discrepancy between
what the nation deserves and what the nation has
plausible. It might present the nation as a victim of past
aggression or as being wrought with internal conflict.
Territorial scripts are written with intentions behind them,
but these goals are not always explicitly vocalized. The
intention of the overall strategies in the FRG and GDR
can be deduced by tracing the development of arguments
in schoolbooks over time. The empirical findings from the
previous section complement this endeavor. Paying
attention to the basic components of territoriality ensures
that the investigation goes deeper than what is explicitly
vocalized in the texts. As suggested by Häkli (1998a,
1998b), the analysis considers the larger political and
intellectual context.
At the height of the Cold War, up to the mid-1960s,
both sides were busy rebuilding their economies and their
relationship was openly hostile. Each state claimed to be
the only legitimate representative of the German nation.
The GDR presented itself as the essence of a socially just
German nation that represented the very best of German
heritage. It was a heroic nation that had defeated its
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Fascist past and was thus a model for the entire German
national territory made up of the FRG and the GDR. The
inability to include the territory of the German brothers
and sisters in the West was first explained by the evil
influence of the Western powers, particularly the United
States: ‘‘In 1948 they [the Western powers] split off the
territory they occupied from the rest of Germany in order
to undertake their preparations for war without being
disturbed’’ (Lehrbuch der Erdkunde für das 5. Schuljahr,
1953, 10).
When the FRG became sovereign in 1955, the Germans in the western territory were presented as victims
not of other powers, but of their own system. Now, the
FRG state was characterized as the offspring of National
Socialism. Schoolbooks explained that ‘‘a large part of the
Fascist war criminals fled from the territory of our
republic’’ and that SS members ‘‘even receive pensions
from the west German state of more than 1000 Marks per
month’’ (Lehrbuch der Erdkunde für die 5. Klasse, 1959, 11,
122). The stated goal of the FRG government was to wage
war against the GDR: ‘‘They [the warmongers in West
Germany] would not even shy away from attacking our
fatherland with nuclear weapons’’ (Lehrbuch der Erdkunde
für die 5. Klasse, 1959, 12). By contrast, the GDR was
portrayed as having freed itself from Fascism and
capitalism with the help of the Soviet Union. The inner
strength of the ‘‘better’’ German nation was most vividly
illustrated with a reinterpretation of the 1945 liberation of
the Buchenwald concentration camp in the texts of the
early 1960s. The German Communist inmates were now
identified as the heroes who had staged an uprising
inspired by the GDR hero Ernst Thälman:
His [Thälmann’s] example gave the other prisoners time and
again solace and new hope. . . . This international solidarity
and readiness to help reached its pinnacle when the prisoners
liberated themselves shortly before the end of the war. This
prevented the murder of the remaining camp inmates.
—(Lehrbuch der Erdkunde für die 5. Klasse, 1963, 152–54)
This new narrative illustrates how events of the past
can be reinterpreted and reframed and how collective
memory only selects those elements of the past that fit
within the cultural context of the group, in this case
the power of Communist resistance (Halbwachs 1992). The
actions of the 3rd U.S. Army, which had dispersed the SS
guards and thus enabled the inmates to open the gates,
were conveniently left out.18
While the script of the GDR as the German hero
supports the official pro-unification position of the GDR
during that time, a closer examination reveals that the
subtext was changing. As we have seen, territorial bonding
and differentiation strategies experienced major shifts.
Territorial Strategies in the Construction of National Identities in Germany, 1949–1979
German traditions were slowly abandoned when Heimat
was reinterpreted in Socialist terms in 1957. The GDR and
FRG were no longer portrayed as being part of a larger
Deutschland by 1960. Finally, German national territory
outside the GDR disappeared from maps in 1965. Thus,
the script was subtly being rewritten to turn the ‘‘better’’
German nation into a ‘‘separate’’ GDR nation.
In the Federal Republic, territorial scripts in the 1950s
and 1960s did not stress the FRG as the sole representative, but simply represented the German nation as if it
continued to exist in its previous political from. The
division was presented as transient. In the early years, up
to the late 1950s, the prevailing notion was simply to
ignore the territorial changes or the GDR. The texts took
the children on an excursion to discover the beauty of
Germany unhindered by political realities (Engel and
Sperling 1986, 386–87). When the separate existence of
the FRG and GDR was solidified in the late 1950s—the
FRG was recognized as sovereign and the two states joined
their respective blocks, NATO and the Warsaw Pact, in
1955—the FRG textbooks began to acknowledge the
changed reality. New short sections treated the fortified
border between the two German states, the division of
Berlin, and the occupied territories in the East (Deutsche
Landschaften 1964, 50–55, 114–15; Ittermann 1991, 124–
25). Nonetheless, the German national territory was still
described as a comprehensive whole. The new sections
were simply inserted in different places in the existing
regional geography framework without any further explanations. They appeared as though an afterthought
(Ittermann 1991, 124).
Territorial differentiation in the FRG during this period
helped maintain the illusion that the German nation
continued to exist in its previous territorial shape. The use
of ‘‘Soviet Occupied Zone’’ for the GDR on maps until the
late 1960s, the downgrading of the boundary between the
FRG and GDR to an administrative division, and
especially the prominence of the 1937 boundary made
the larger German nation visible. The intense focus on
Heimat during this period provides additional insights.
The utopian idyll of Heimat offered solace from the reality
of the division and made the illusory script of a nation
unaffected by change palatable. Heimat focused on the
bonds among Germans and on their unique characteristics
without having to outline territorial boundaries for these
commonalities. Thus, the responsibility for the division or
how it could be overcome was conveniently bracketed out
(Confino and Skaria 2002).
Starting in the mid-1960s and throughout the 1970s,
tensions between the FRG and GDR eased in the context
of détente. Conciliatory moves by church groups and visits
by Chancellor Brandt to Erfurt, Moscow, and Warsaw
157
paved the way for the 1970 Eastern Treaties and the 1972
Basic Treaty (Grundlagenvertrag). As a result, contacts
between the two German states increased. For the GDR,
this meant that it finally gained the international
recognition it sought so eagerly, but also that it had to
sever its links to an all-German past fully if it wanted
to maintain a separate identity and distinguish itself
more clearly from the FRG. For the FRG, détente meant a
balancing act between recognizing the other German state
and still professing claims to the German national territory
occupied by the GDR. The territorial scripts reflect these
challenges.
In the textbooks of the GDR, the dominant theme was
the GDR as an inseparable part of the Socialist brotherhood. What made the GDR unique was not its German
heritage, but its Socialist character. Now, the anti-Fascist
and anti-FRG arguments became less dominant. Rather
than emphasizing the historical continuity of the Nazi
threat to the present, the threat was presented as
ideological. The GDR needed to protect itself because
it was at the forefront of the East-West confrontation
between Communism and capitalism, not because of
Fascist warmongers in the FRG.19 The territorial script
also became more matter of fact. The textbooks before
1965 were flamboyant when they juxtaposed the valiant
struggle for equality in the GDR with the evil and
exploitative nature of the capitalist and militarist FRG.
The new generation of textbooks dispensed with comparisons and presented the GDR on its own. For example,
the 1966 geography textbook for the fifth grade started the
year-long survey of the GDR only with an overview map of
the administrative organization and a few statistics, such
as population size. The GDR was presented as an entity
whose existence was indisputable, but there was no real
stress on a unique GDR identity. Identification with the
GDR nation was placed in the context of identification
with the Socialist world:
Of special importance is the unity of patriotic and
internationalized (internationalistischer) education. . . . The
pupils therefore must recognize and understand already in
grade 5 that the German Democratic Republic is an
inseparable part of the community of Socialist states. . . .
—(Unterrichtshilfen, 1979, 8)
Having renounced the powerful ethnic German roots,
the leadership of the GDR sought refuge and strength
in the transnational character of the Socialist revolution.
The stress on a national identity that is imbedded in a
larger Socialist community comes across most clearly in
territorial bonding and differentiation. The increasingly
sterile character of Socialist bonding, which is exemplified
in the 1976 textbook image of a factory as a symbol for the
158
Socialist Heimat, reveals that attachment to the GDR was
sought through stressing not uniqueness, but Socialist
commonality. The factory had no specific locational
referent; it could have been anywhere in the Socialist
world. The same message was sent when the GDR was
cartographically divorced from the FRG and depicted in
the ‘‘island maps’’ of Socialist Europe after 1965. The GDR
was worth identifying with because it was an essential
member of the alliance of Socialist nations.
In the FRG, the territorial scripts changed a few years
later than they had in the GDR, influenced not only by the
spirit of détente, but by the changed disciplinary context
around 1970. The geography curriculum was redesigned
to conform to the spatial-science approach, and universal
concepts replaced regional description. Now the impact of
the boundary between the two German states was
discussed in the context of general functions of political
boundaries. The boundary with the GDR was compared to
the boundaries with other countries. Schoolbooks downplayed emotive cultural bonds to the other fragments of
the German national territory. The focus was mainly on
economic problems, such as border regions being isolated
or cut off form their traditional market areas (e.g.,
Erdkunde 6, 1979; Neue Geographie 5/6, 1971, 1976;
Schäfer Weltkunde 5/6, 1978). Little in the curriculum
engendered personal identification with the members of
the German nation outside the FRG (Ittermann 1991,
125–28; Engel and Sperling 1986, 386–89). The narratives pointed to the negative effects of the division but did
not make a direct appeal for unification.
For example, the 1964 edition of Deutsche Landschaften
explained the border between the GDR and the FRG as
follows:
A visit to the GDR ( 5 German Democratic Republic) is by
contrast much more difficult, even though it is German land.
From the Czech border near Hof to the Bay of Lubeck this
border covers more than 1381 km. It is accompanied by
barbed wire and mine fields. . . . Quite a few who tried to
leave the GDR have lost their life here. While pedestrians
walk along the barbed wire on the side of the Federal
Republic of Germany, the other side is dead and empty. . . .
The border cuts thousands of roads and pathways, interrupts
3 highways (Autobahns) and 33 railroad lines that used to be
frequented by heavy traffic before. . . . Germans are separated from Germans. (54–55)
By contrast, the much shorter text of 1978 edition of
Schäfer Weltkunde, 5/6. Schuljahr states:
Borders between states are sometimes difficult to cross. . . .
Some states require visas for entry and stays. . . . The GDR
( 5 German Democratic Republic) also requires a visa for
stays. Only a few crossings allow a transit across the border.
Herb
The border runs across Germany from the Bay of Lubeck to
Czechoslovakia. The GDR installed barbed wire fences and
minefields. . . . While pedestrians walk along the barbed
wire on the side of the Federal Republic of Germany, the
other side is desolate and empty. (128)
The omission of the statement about Germans living on
either side of the border and the general tenor of the 1978
text make the GDR appear similar to other foreign
countries. The border was still considered ‘‘unique’’
(Grenze besonderer Art), though not because it separated
Germans as in the 1964 text, but solely because it was
aggressively enforced by the GDR authorities.
The lack of emphasis on cultural and emotional aspects
of the division in the FRG’s script is reflected in the
rejection of the traditional Heimat concept in territorial
bonding. The findings from territorial differentiation
during the 1970s add another insight. The oscillating
depictions of the eastern German borders sent conflicting
messages about the extent of the German nation. Thus,
the territorial script was not only presented in more
detached and scientific terms (i.e., it was less hostile and
nationalist as before), but it also was ambiguous. This was
the low point of the territorial script of the German nation
in the FRG.
To employ the metaphor once more, by the end of the
1970s, the narratives of the two German temples did not
inspire great devotion. Neither story pointed out what was
particularly holy or unique about the temple, but each
stressed how it was a perfect example of its larger ideology.
In the GDR the temple embodied the notion of Socialist
equality, while in the FRG the temple represented the idea
of Western industrial progress. The failure to inspire great
devotion can also be seen in the lack of passion in the
language of the narrative. The story was seen only through
a political eye in the GDR and through only a scientific eye
in the FRG.
Conclusion
The purpose of this paper is to understand the
territorial strategies in the construction of national
identities in the FRG and the GDR during the time of
division. The GDR’s first strategy was to establish its
preeminence in the German national territory that
covered both states by claiming moral superiority. The
GDR represented the hero of the German nation. The FRG
did not develop a new strategy in response. It refused to acknowledge the GDR, considered the division as temporary,
and continued with territorial strategies established
before the war.
The next strategic initiative again came from the GDR.
In the late 1950s, the GDR laid the groundwork. It tried to
Territorial Strategies in the Construction of National Identities in Germany, 1949–1979
create new links between its population and the GDR
territory that were independent of German traditions. A
few years later, it began to present itself as territorially
distinct from Germany and the FRG and by the mid-1960s
it offered a rationale for these changes in its textbooks.
The GDR identity was no longer determined by its
German origins, but by its fundamental Socialist character.20 Initially, this new strategy was ignored in the FRG.
A new strategy appeared in the 1970s, but, again, it did not
respond directly to the GDR. The FRG’s strategy sought
only to raise awareness of the negative effects of the
division in a matter-of-fact style. There was no interest in
presenting it as a uniquely German issue. Thus, throughout the period, the two states never engaged directly with
each other’s strategy. Instead of confrontation, they pursued separate agendas. National identity construction in
divided Germany 1949–1979 was a case of double vision.
On a more general level, the paper helps us better
understand the construction of identity under different
political systems and for different types of nations. As the
situation in the GDR illustrates, totalitarian regimes can
initiate new strategies easily and they can use their
centralized control apparatus to smooth the transition
between different scripts by subtly changing the subtext
of differentiation or bonding. They are easily blinded,
however, by their power into trying to change the script
too drastically. The notion of the Socialist nation in the
1970s was built on a version of bonding that did not have
the support of the GDR majority. On the other hand, in
democratic states with a federal structure, these ‘‘debates’’
over territorial scripts or bonding and differentiation can
lead to a regional fragmentation of identity construction as
the case of the different textbook policies in the Länder of
the FRG shows.
Could these differences in identity construction in the
FRG and GDR also be explained by the customary
qualitative distinction that many leading authors (e.g.,
Smith 1998; Gellner 1983) make between more ‘‘natural’’
or ‘‘primordial’’ ethnic nations and artificial civic nations?
I would argue no. As MacLaughlin (2001, 15, 33–36)
stresses, ethnicity should not be reified and attributed with
historical agency, but neither should ethnic identity be
placed above class identity. Rather, ethnic nationalism
should be viewed as an ideology similar to socialism, liberalism, and communism that is influenced by concrete
social and geographic settings as well as by the activities of individuals. The GDR project did not fail because it negated
the ‘‘call of the blood,’’ but because some of its strategies
employed elements that were alien to the population.
These ill-conceived strategies severed the ‘‘organic’’ links
between the elite and the national popular mass that are
necessary for hegemony (MacLauglin 2001, 39).
159
This interpretation also allows us to reconcile Gellner’s
(1983) claim that nations are the products of mass education with Smith’s counter argument that mass education systems in communist and liberal societies have
failed to produce loyalties in their populations (Smith
1998, 40). Mass education is crucial for the construction of
national identity, but state-sponsored indoctrination with
values that are divorced from existing popular ideas will be
ineffective. Only conceptions of national identity to
which the public is already attuned can be successfully
inculcated through mass education and the media.
The paper points to several avenues for further study.
First, to follow the argument by Häkli (1998a, 143–46)
the present focus on hegemonic strategies needs to be
complemented with an examination of tactics of resistance. Second, it is important to analyze how the
territorial strategies changed after unification. A look at
the changes in strategies will help us understand how the
present construction of national identity in Germany deals
with the continued ‘‘wall’’ in the heads of the people
(Kienbaum and Grote 1997). Third, the crucial role of
Heimat in German territorial bonding that emerges from
the discussion has to be investigated in a larger context. As
we have seen, a focus on the emotional attachment to
Heimat in the FRG allowed an escape from the realities of
territorial division. Heimat can even been used to explain
German unification. Ackermann (1995, 791–92) has
argued that the renaissance of regional cultural traditions
in the GDR in the 1980s brought Germans in East and
West together. Heimat should be compared to territorial
bonding processes in other national narratives. Such a
comparison will help separate the aspects of territorial
bonding that are universally applicable from those that are
uniquely German.
From a methodological view, the framework promises
to be useful in investigating other territorial expressions of
national identity, such as landscapes and monuments. The
definition of a unique national landscape and its distinction from other national landscapes can be conceptualized
as territorial differentiation. Examples are differentiation
via unique cultural features in the landscape, such as the
German Volks-und Kulturboden of the 1920s (Penck 1925),
or the role of natural features, such as mountains, in Welsh
identity (Gruffudd 1995). The practices through which
people are made to engage with the landscape and establish an attachment to it can be seen as territorial bonding.
These might include processions, regional festivals, or
other activities associated with landscape preservation and
heritage. The narratives about the landscape, such as their
glorification in film and fiction, represent territorial scripts.
For the study of nationalist monuments, the framework
provides a new perspective. The notions of territorial
160
bonding and territorial scripts are reflected in Johnson’s
view of monuments as ‘‘concentrated nodes’’ or ‘‘circuits
of memory’’ (1995), but they are not separated out conceptually. Johnson’s (1995) approach conflates the act of
bonding via rituals and ceremonies with the larger
justifications that guide the strategy. Moreover, by not
distinguishing territorial bonding, its corresponding basic
component, territorial differentiation, is left out entirely.
Territorial differentiation prompts us to ask directly about
the location of the monuments in the territorial structure
of the nation. We need to understand how monuments
help define the borders of the nation and make the shape
of the territory distinctive.
The metaphor of the religious temple that has been
used to illustrate the conceptual framework appears to be
advantageous in conceptualizing other areas of inquiry in
the geography of nationalism. The walls of the temple also
determine the internal structure, which points to the role
of internal boundaries, such as administrative districts,
and institutional reach in national discourse. The ascription of different spaces in the temple, such as the inner
sanctum versus more publicly accessible areas, raises
questions about hierarchies of meaning in the national
territory. Moreover, wall hangings, floor coverings, and
other décor items reflect national iconography and style.
The caveat is that the metaphor of the temple may in
some cases be limiting. As the long tradition of tools of
visualization in geography suggests, however (MacEachren et al. 1992), metaphors offer new insights into highly
complex phenomena, such as the construction of national
identity. In the German case, it has allowed us to see that
the national territorial visions that were dominant in the
two states ultimately did not result in a clear picture of
what it means to be German. This ambiguity is the legacy
unified Germany has to contend with in the ongoing
narration of German national identity. The discontinuities and changes brought about by unification are still
unresolved, and even though the plot has been revisited, it
does not produce a coherent story for all members of the
German nation.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by a generous sabbatical
leave from Middlebury College during the academic year
1998–1999 and a grant from the Ada Howe Kent
Foundation. I would like to thank the following institutions for their kind assistance: Zentrum für Zeithistorische
Forschung, Potsdam; Georg Westermann Werkarchiv,
Braunschweig; Georg-Eckert-Institut für Internationale
Schulbuchforschung, Braunschweig; Bibliothek für Bil-
Herb
dungsgeschichtliche Forschung, Berlin; Bundesarchiv in
Berlin and Dahlwitz-Hoppegarten. I am also indebted to
Malcolm Cutchin, four anonymous reviewers, and the
Annals editors for ‘‘People, Place, and Region,’’ John Paul
Jones III, and Audrey Kobayashi. All of them provided
insights that substantially improved the final paper.
Appendix 1: Glossary
BRD – Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic of Germany)
Bundesrepublik Deutschland – Official term for
the Federal Republic of Germany
DBR – Deutsche Bundesrepublik. (Terminology
used by GDR for the FRG)
DDR – Deutsche Demokratische Republik (German Democratic Republic)
Deutsche Demokratische Republik – official term
for the German Democratic Republic
FRG – Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany)
GDR – German Democratic Republic (East Germany)
WD – Westdeutschland (Terminology used by GDR
for the FRG)
WB – Westberlin (Terminology used by GDR for the
Western sector of Berlin)
Appendix 2: Geography Textbooks
GDR
Atlas zur Erd- und Länderkunde. Kleine Ausgabe. Berlin: Volk und
Wissen and Gotha: Justus Perthes, 1952.
Atlas zur Erd- und Länderkunde. Groe Ausgabe. Berlin: Volk und
Wissen and Gotha: VEB Geographisch-Kartographische
Anstalt, 1954.
Atlas zur Erd- und Länderkunde. Groe Ausgabe. Berlin: Volk und
Wissen and Gotha: VEB Hermann Haack, GeographischKartographische Anstalt, 1957, 1959.
Atlas der Erdkunde. Berlin: Volk und Wissen Volkseigener Verlag,
1958, 1960, 1962, 1965, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970.
Atlas für die 6. bis 11. Klasse. Gotha: VEB Hermann Haack,
Geographisch-Kartographische Anstalt, 1978.
Atlas für Jedermann. Gotha: VEB Hermann Haack, GeographischKartographische Anstalt, 1988.
Geographie Lehrbuch für Klasse 5. Berlin: Volk und Wissen
Volkseigener Verlag, 1977.
Heimatkunde. Lehrbuch für die Klasse 4. Berlin: Volk und Wissen
Volkseigener Verlag, 1974.
Heimatkunde. Klasse 3. Berlin: Volk und Wissen Volkseigener
Verlag, 1970, 1976.
Lehrbuch der Erdkunde für das 5. Schuljahr. A: Deutschland; B: Die
Sowjetunion. Berlin: Volk und Wissen Volkseigener Verlag,
1953.
Territorial Strategies in the Construction of National Identities in Germany, 1949–1979
Lehrbuch der Erdkunde für die 5. Klasse. Unsere Deutsche
Demokratische Republik und die deutsche Bundesrepublik.
Berlin: Volk und Wissen Volkseigener Verlag, 1959.
Lehrbuch der Erdkunde für die 5. Klasse. Die Deutsche Demokratische Republik, unser sozialistisches Vaterland. Berlin: Volk
und Wissen Volkseigener Verlag, 1963.
Unsere Deutsche Demokratische Republik. Geographie für die 5.
Klasse. Berlin: Volk und Wissen Volkseigener Verlag, 1966.
161
Unterrichtshilfen Geographie Klasse 5. Berlin: Volk und Wissen
Volkseigener Verlag, 1979.
Köck, Helmuth, ed. 1986. Handbuch des Geographieunterrichts.
Band 1: Grundlagen des Geographieunterrichts. Cologne: Aulis
Verlag Deubner & Co.
Notes
FRG
Deutsche Landschaften. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1964,
1970
Diercke Weltatlas. Braunschweig: Georg Westermann Verlag,
1957, 1959, 1971, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1978, 1979.
Erdkunde 5. Donauwörth: Verlag Ludwig Auer, 1978.
Erdkunde 6. Donauwörth: Verlag Ludwig Auer, 1979.
Neue Geographie 5/6. Düsseldorf: August Bagel Verlag, 1971,
1976.
Schäfer Weltkunde. 5/6. Schuljahr. Paderborn: Ferdinand
Schöningh, 1978.
Terra: Geographie 5/6. Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Verlag, 1976, 1981.
Terra: Geographie 9/10. Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Verlag, 1979
Appendix 3
Archival Sources
1. Westerman Werkarchiv (WWA), Braunschweig
WWA 2/J261
WWA 2.3/11
WWA 2.3/76
WWA 2.3/77
WWA=Dokumentation: Karten/Atlanten, Behördliche Anweisungen und Richtlinien für die Karteninhalte, prepared by Verena Kleinschmidt.
2. Bundesarchiv, Dahlwitz-Hoppegarten
DO1/15 .0 Verwaltung Vermessungs- und Kartenwesen
Published Documents
Mitteilungen des Bundesministers für innerdeutsche Beziehungen vom 6. 7. 1971, Iib, 4321, 11082/71 (GMBl 1971,
Nr. 16: 272)
Materialien der Enquete-Kommission des Deutschen Bundestages ‘‘Aufarbeitung von Geschichte und Folgen der SEDDiktatur in Deutschland,’’ 12. Wahlperiode des Deutschen
Bundestages, vol. III
BVerfGE 36 (Decision on the Basic Treaty, 31 July 1973).
Teaching Guidelines
Heimatkunde. Zur Fachlichen Vorbereitung auf den Unterricht,
Klasse 1 bis 4. Berlin: Volk und Wissen Volkseigener Verlag,
1975.
Unterrichtshilfen für den Geographieunterricht in der 5. Klasse.
Berlin: Volk und Wissen Volkseigener Verlag, 1967, 1974.
1. The terminology regarding the two German states has
always been contested; both states issued directives on
‘‘correct’’ labeling. The political implications of different
versions will be discussed below. There is a glossary of
abbreviations and terms in the appendix. The terms I use
have no political connotation, but are chosen for reasons of
style. All translations of terms or text passages are by the
author unless indicated otherwise.
2. For a discussion of the contributions of geographers in the
creation of national myths, see Schultz (1998).
3. A fascinating recent example is pointed out by Michael
Ignatieff in the BBC production Blood and Belonging (vol. 1,
‘‘The Road to Nowhere: Yugoslavia,’’ Princeton, NJ : Films for
the Humanities and Sciences, 1993). He filmed the changing
of the Croation National Guard, a ritual that appears to be a
century-old tradition, but in reality was newly orchestrated
for the occasion of Croation independence in 1991.
4. My addition.
5. To make the prose more concise, I will identify these
hegemonic strategies as ‘‘strategies of the FRG/GDR’’ or state
that, for example, ‘‘the FRG/GDR developed a strategy,’’ etc.
As the discussion of the notions of ‘‘organic intelligentsias’’
and of textbook as hybrids between elite and popular
geographs suggest, I do not view these ‘‘territorial strategies’’
as top-down impositions of ideas or the product of a monolithic state.
6. Many of these controversies are documented in Westermann
Werkarchiv, Braunschweig (WWA 2/J26; 2.3/76; 2.3/77;
2.3/11). See also the studies by Engel and Sperling (1986),
Sperling (1991), and Blumenwitz (1980) which was financed
by the leagues of expellees (Vertriebenenverbände).
7. For example, they released a new version of a school atlas only
a few months after publication simply to change the name of
Stalinallee in Berlin to Karl-Marx-Allee (Atlas für Erdkunde,
5th ed. 1962; one version states ‘‘redaktionell abgeschlossen
Juni 1961,’’ the amended version ‘‘September/December
1961’’). The ‘‘correct’’ depiction of national issues even had
priority over the thematic content of the maps. This primacy
of national issues is revealed in the correspondence regarding
corrections to thematic maps in the Atlas of the GDR as well
as in the debate about the use of the geologic term ‘‘Sudeten’’
discussed below (Bundesarchiv, Dahlwitz-Hoppegarten,
DO1/15, Nr. 48398-99).
8. The first verse of the German national anthem reads
Deutschland, Deutschland über alles,
Über alles in der Welt,
Wenn es stets zu Schutz und Trutze
Brüderlich zusammenhält;
Von der Maas bis an die Memel,
Von der Etsch bis an den Belt:
Deutschland, Deutschland über alles,
Über alles in der Welt!
162
Herb
Germany, Germany above everything,
Above everything in the world,
When, always for protection and defense,
It stands united like brothers;
From the Maas to the Memel,
From the Etsch to the Belt;
Germany, Germany above everything,
Above everything in the world!
(http://www.goethe.de/in/d/frames/schulen/lkpc/
Nationalhymne.htm [last accessed 25 July 2003])
9. There were still thematic maps in school atlases, however,
that depicted the GDR and FRG together, such as economic
maps (e.g., Atlas der Erdkunde, 1962, 22/23). The 1960
directive is mentioned in the files of the Westermann
Werkarchiv, Braunschweig (WWA 2.3/77).
10. The change in theoretical arguments is illustrated by the two
works by Kosing (1964, 1976). See also Venohr (1984);
Holzweiig and Schumacher (1981, 3–5).
11. For example, the request by a geologist to use the internationally accepted term of ‘‘Sudeten’’ in an article led to a
lengthy discussion among censors and other government
experts. Correspondence from 1980 in Bundesarchiv, Dahlwitz-Hoppegarten, DO1/15, Nr. 53466.
12. The use of base maps to enforce a uniform depiction seems to
have been pioneered by the GDR. The VVK sent out samples
of its base maps to cartographic institutes in other Socialist
countries in the late 1970s. Their responses indicated that
they did not issue comparable products. For example, see
the letter of the Hungarian topographic office of 18 August
1978 (Bundesarchiv, Dahlwitz-Hoppegarten, DO1/15, Nr.
53465).
13. The Bezeichnungsrichtlinien are reprinted in Sperling (1991,
146–50). The Kartenrichtlinien are reprinted in Sperling
(1991, 150–53), albeit with a wrong date.
14. The public criticism and the refusal of the federal government
to become involved in the issue is mentioned in correspondence records of the Westermann Verlag (Westermann
Werkarchiv, Braunschweig: WWA 2/J261; WWA-Dokumentation). The withdrawal of the decree is published in
‘‘Mitteilungen’’ (see Appendix 3: Published Documents).
15. A sample of letters attacking the maps exists in Westermann
Werkarchiv, Braunschweig (WWA 2.3/76).
16. The universal nature is revealed in the generic iconography of
Heimat posters and postcards. The landscapes they depicted
lacked a specific local referent (see Confino 1997).
17. See the statement by Maria Michalk, a member of the
Bundestag Enquete Kommission, who posits that the Socialist version of Heimat was an alien concept for the majority
of the population in t...
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