Introduction: German community – German nationality? Baltic German perceptions of belonging in the nineteenth and twentieth century

ABSTRACT

The aim of this special issue is to explore whether the term “National Indifference” can be applied to the Baltic region, and in particular to the Baltic Germans. In the second half of the nineteenth century and during World War I, their rootedness in German culture and language brought them into conflict with national perceptions of “Russianness” in the Russian Empire. After becoming citizens of interwar Estonia and Latvia, their national affiliation continued to be questioned by nationalists. The authors of this volume investigate Baltic Germans’ perceptions of belonging during the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth Century. The articles explore aspects of national flexibility and identity perceptions beyond the national paradigm in an era when the nation-state became the norm.

KEYWORDS:

• national indifference
• homeland
• official nationalism
• census
• Baltic Germans

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the European Studies Center at the University of Pittsburgh for supporting the proofreading of this volume with a grant, and my research assistant Elizabeth Pindilli for her thoughtful and attentive reading of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Katja Wezel

Katja Wezel is DAAD Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh. She studied History and English at the universities of Heidelberg (Germany), Aberystwyth (UK) and St. Petersburg (Russia). In 2011, she received her PhD from Heidelberg University for a thesis on memory politics in post-Soviet Latvia. Katja Wezel’s research interests focus on 19th and 20th century Baltic history and transnational, comparative approaches to the study of memory politics and ethnic conflicts in Eastern Europe. She is author of Geschichte als Politikum. Lettland und die Aufarbeitung nach der Diktatur (Berlin: Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag 2016). Other recent publications include “Loyalty, Minority, Monarchy: The Baltic German Press and 1905” in The Russian Revolution of 1905 in Transcultural Perspective. Identities, Peripheries, And the Flow of Ideas ed. by Felicitas Fischer von Weikersthal et al. (Bloomington, In.: Slavica, 2013).