Main description:

In this study Erika L. Briesacher argues that festivals in Lubeck, Germany spanning 1920 to 1960 demonstrate interlocking economic, social, and cultural factors that contribute to local, national, and international identity formation. Focusing on institutional records as well as public discourse and material artifacts, the author traces the mobilization of "Nordic" as a distinctly German in-group during the Weimar, Nazi, and early Cold War eras, highlighting particular ways participants included and excluded racial, religious, and other cultural identities in their own "imagined community." Focusing on the festival as both a site of participation and consumption, the author assesses two postwar periods as well as the legacy of the Holocaust in a northwest German town.

Contents:

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1: Finance, Festivals, and the Aftermath of the Great War

Chapter 2: Celebration, Culture, and Commerce: The Case of Nordische Woche

Chapter 3: Evolving Identity: The Nordische Gesellschaft, 1921-1938

Chapter 4: Nazi Nordicism in War and Occupation

Chapter 5: New Nordic Days

Conclusion: Identities over Time

Bibliography

About the Author