A NATION OF PROVINCIALS: THE GERMAN IDEA OF HOMELAND IN THE RHENISH PFALZ, 1870--1955

This work examines one aspect of German national identity, namely the persistence of regional particularity within the self-understanding of Germans. It seeks to illuminate the compatibility of local patriotism with national patriotism--a compatibility central to the German idea of homeland, or Heimat. The basis for the study is the experience of one province in Germany, the Rhenissh Pfalz, a small area of land between the border with France and the Rhine river, in the century-and-a-half between the Napoleonic Wars and the Cold War. Although the consequences of political and economic developments are taken into account, the Pfalz is understood primarily in terms of its cultural distinctiveness. The sources for the study are the writings and activities of local people that maintained distinctiveness, including the promotion of local history, folklore, and nature through clubs, publications, and festivities.; A major contribution of the study is to reveal the extent to which the characteristics of a "national identity" or a "regional identity" are created, even invented, by the participants themselves, and not handed down from time immemorial. The preservation of a distinctive Pfalzer identity was, then, a matter of constant attention in the public life of the region. At their most blatant, regional activists actually invented a local "fold costume," whose real purpose, I argue, was to symbolize their communal identity, not to revive some traditional form of clothing. More subtly, these local patriots engaged in creative labelling, bestowing the epithet "Pfalzer" upon even forests, mountains, and ancient ruined castles. Their product was a well-understood and publicly-maintained image of the region, the Pfalz.; The study also contributes to our understanding of the political upheavals of twentieth-century Germany, by illuminating what one might call the moral life of local Germans--their search for the sources of community in a society that seemed to be disintegrating around them. Even in the Nazi Reich, in the face of concerted efforts to break it down and replace it with an outward-turning, racially-defined nationalism, the provincial patriotism of Germans persisted, surviving to serve post-war German society in its search for national healing.