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Germany's Wild East

Constructing Poland as Colonial Space

Kristin Kopp author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:The University of Michigan Press

Published:30th Jan '17

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Germany's Wild East cover

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, representations of Poland and the Slavic East cast the region as a primitive, undeveloped, or empty space inhabited by a population destined to remain uncivilized without the aid of external intervention. These depictions often made direct reference to the American Wild West, portraying the eastern steppes as a boundless plain that needed to be wrested from the hands of unruly natives and spatially ordered into German-administrated units.

While conventional definitions locate colonial space overseas, Kristin Kopp argues that it was possible to understand both distant continents and adjacent Eastern Europe as parts of the same global periphery dependent upon Western European civilizing efforts. However, proximity to the source of aid translated to greater benefits for Eastern Europe than for more distant regions.

"This fascinating historiographical work focuses on fiction, film and cartography in an attempt to understand how Poland was represented in German culture from the middle of the nineteenth century up until the years leading up to the Second World War."— Jildy Sauce

ISBN: 9780472036820

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 440g

270 pages