Schnitker, A. J.

English

During the nineteenth century, Europe saw the development of national identities
as the cornerstone of people's sense of belonging. This process, carried to a large
extent by writers, had various outcomes, from the state-building that occurred in
Germany and Italy, to the fragmentation it caused in the Balkans. The aim of this
thesis is to determine the precise role of writers in the process of imagining the
nation amongst two European peoples, the Germans and the Flemings. Of particular
interest is the interrelationship that existed between these peoples and their
intellectuals in the period under consideration, the exchange of ideas which occurred,
and the similarities and differences in the processes through which `Germany' and
`Flanders' were created in the minds of their peoples. In turn, the Flemish and
German examples will throw more light upon the wider process through which
European national identities came into being.

The men chosen as case studies for this thesis are the Flemings Jan Frans Willems
(1793-1846) and Albrecht Rodenbach (1856-1880), and the Germans Jacob Grimm
(1785-1863), his brother Wilhelm (1786-1859) and August Heinrich Hoffmann von
Fallersleben (1798-1874). They can be divided into two categories of `nationalist'
writers: the philologist-researcher and the poet-songwriter. Together, these men
shaped imagined communities for their peoples by providing a national past, a
pantheon of national heroes, an ideal national man and woman, even a national
landscape. In addition, they created the parameters for a national morality and ethos.

This thesis aims to show that the process through which national identities were
created was far from simple. The inevitability suggested in many studies on
nationalism simply fails to materialise in case studies such as these. The following
chapters highlight the interaction between intellectuals and the great currents of
history, and will show the volatility of the dynamics. The resulting story will clarify
the ambiguity of the process through which national identities were written into
existence in Germany and Flanders

Schnitker, Anna Jane

Edinburgh Research Archive

Writing the nation: the contribution of writers to the shaping of a national identity in nineteenth-century Germany and Flanders

https://era.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/1842/7183/1/496342.pdf

Writing the nation?: the contribution of writers to the shaping of a national identity in nineteenth-century Germany and Flanders

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