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Germans have been one of the most mobile and dispersed populations on earth. Communities of German speakers, scattered around the globe, have long believed they could recreate their Heimat (homeland) wherever they moved, and that their enclaves could remain truly German. Furthermore, the history of Germany is inextricably tied to Germans outside the homeland who formed new communities that often retained their Germanness. Emigrants, including political, economic, and religious exiles such as Jewish Germans, fostered a nostalgia for home, which, along with longstanding mutual ties of family, trade, and culture, bound them to Germany.

The Heimat Abroad is the first book to examine the problem of Germany's long and complex relationship to ethnic Germans outside its national borders. Beyond defining who is German and what makes them so, the book reconceives German identity and history in global terms and challenges the nation state and its borders as the sole basis of German nationalism.

Krista O'Donnell is Associate Professor of History, William Paterson University.

Nancy Reagin is Professor of History, Pace University.

Renete Bridenthal is Emerita Professor of History, Brooklyn College of the City University of New York.

Table of Contents

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  1. Cover
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  1. Frontmatter
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  1. Contents
  2. pp. vii-viii
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  1. List of Abbreviations
  2. pp. ix-x
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  1. Introduction
  2. pp. 1-14
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  1. Part 1. The Legal and Ideological Context of Diasporic Nationalism
  1. Chapter 1. Diasporic Citizens: Germans Abroad in the Framing of German Citizenship Law
  2. pp. 17-39
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  1. Chapter 2. Home, Nation, Empire: Domestic Germanness and Colonial Citizenship
  2. pp. 40-57
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  1. Chapter 3. German-Speaking People and German Heritage: Nazi Germany and the Problem of Volksgemeinschaft
  2. pp. 58-81
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  1. Part 2. Bonds of Trade and Culture
  1. Chapter 4. Blond and Blue-Eyed in Mexico City, 1821 to 1975
  2. pp. 85-110
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  1. Chapter 5. Jews, Germans, or Americans? German-Jewish Immigrants in the Nineteenth-Century United States
  2. pp. 111-140
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  1. Chapter 6. German Landscape: Local Promotion of the Heimat Abroad
  2. pp. 141-166
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  1. Chapter 7. In Search of Home Abroad: German Jews in Brazil, 1933–45
  2. pp. 167-183
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  1. Part 3. Islands of Germanness
  1. Chapter 8. Germans from Russia: The Political Network of a Double Diaspora
  2. pp. 187-218
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  1. Chapter 9. When Is a Diaspora Not a Diaspora? Rethinking Nation-Centered Narratives about Germans in Habsburg East Central Europe
  2. pp. 219-247
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  1. Chapter 10. German Brigadoon? Domesticity and Metropolitan Germans’ Perceptions of Auslandsdeutschen in Southwest Africa and Eastern Europe
  2. pp. 248-266
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  1. Chapter 11. Tenuousness and Tenacity: The Volksdeutschen of Eastern Europe, World War II, and the Holocaust
  2. pp. 267-286
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  1. List of Contributors
  2. pp. 313-315
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  1. Index
  2. pp. 317-326
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