German imperial thinking long rejected multi-ethnicity and pursued ethnic homogeneity

Evidence

The two cases reveal different conceptions of expansion and imperial rule that were pushed to their extremes at the very moment they ended in 1945 and 1962 respectively. Baranowski stresses the long-term rejection of multi-ethnicity in modern Germany, characterizing the German empire as being obsessed with ethnocultural homogeneity. This stood in stark contrast to other empires’ tendency to acknowledge, reinforce, and manage diversity among their subjects. Following the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, ethnocentrism pervaded the German imagination, with an enlarged Germany in the ‘East’ seen as uniting a dispersed and divided people. The Citizenship Law of 1913 put emphasis on descent and reflected the fear that Poles and Jewish immigrants would be unable to assimilate and that Polish immigrants would reinforce the resistance to Germanization in East Prussia. Against this backdrop, the Nazi wartime empire in Eastern Europe pushed this logic to its extreme, pursuing a vision of an ethnically homogeneous ‘East’ through resettlement and genocide. — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 66

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The FRG’s citizenship law unified diverse German groups by descent — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 183; Nazi empire differed from colonial empires by destroying difference rather than managing it — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 50; Imperial ethnic citizenship survived in West Germany long after empire’s end — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 68 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• German race-thinking arose as a substitute for missing political nationhood #corroborates (0.82)
• German racial-biological nationalism emerged as a substitute for failed political nationhood #qualifies (0.75) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 446
• Multi-national states without a dominant ethnic core proved unstable in interwar Europe #exemplifies (0.70) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2490