'We were always brothers': Natives of the Americas in (East) German Children's Literature

A brief survey of modern German hobbies, plays, school celebrations, and juvenile literature reveals a surprising presence: the American Indian. The American Indian is a character that appears to have been based on representations of natives of the Americas. Germany itself has no fourth world population or colonies in the Americas and thus no colonial subjects who were natives of the Americas. Germany also had no specific period of mass influx of immigrants who were natives of the Americas. Despite this, the number and frequency of events and texts centered around the Indianer points toward an unexpected and ongoing fascination with the historical tribes of the Americas. While the Indianer figure itself is a staple, the tribal specificity of that figure is not stable or predictable. And, rather than functioning as a cultural other, the Indianer seems to be a figure that is somehow specifically tribal and German.;The juvenile texts considered in this project begin to show how the Indianer, who might be expected to function as a cultural other, works to define Gemanness outside of social and political upheaval in the eastern portion of modern Germany. The texts considered here are written in various genres and for various age groups. This textual variety allows for cross-genre and cross-developmental-stage investigations into the pedagogical functionality of the Indianer figure. The Indianer protagonists in these texts are not representations of individuals with those tribal memberships. Instead, they are imagined inhabitants of Germany's imagined colonial space. Their imagined status allows them a fluidity denied to individuals existing in reality. By embracing this fluidity, readers can themselves become either Indianer (leaving their German identities behind) or hybrid German-Indianer. The imagined Indianer have, over the course of the century, achieved hero status in the consciousness of their readers, making them imagined national folk heroes in a region in which a proud national identity and historical national folk heroes was otherwise problematic. Taking existing accuracy debates as a point of departure, this project explores the genres and the depictions of Indianer protagonists to begin to explore the role of the Indianer figure in German society.