Germany's Wild East : Constructing Poland As Colonial Space

In The Nineteenth And Early Twentieth Centuries, Representations Of Poland And The Slavic East Cast The Region As A Primitive, Undeveloped, Or Empty Space Inhabited By A Population Destined To Remain Uncivilized Without The Aid Of External Intervention. These Depictions Often Made Direct Reference To The American Wild West, Portraying The Eastern Steppes As A Boundless Plain That Needed To Be Wrested From The Hands Of Unruly Natives And Spatially Ordered Into German-administrated Units. While Conventional Definitions Locate Colonial Space Overseas, Kristin Kopp Argues That It Was Possible To Understand Both Distant Continents And Adjacent Eastern Europe As Parts Of The Same Global Periphery Dependent Upon Western European Civilizing Efforts. However, Proximity To The Source Of Aid Translated To Greater Benefits For Eastern Europe Than For More Distant Regions.--publisher's Website. Introduction : Germany's Wild East -- Constructing German Colonial Space In The Eeast : Gustav Freytag's Soll Und Haben As Colonial Novel -- The Black Pole And Racialized Space In German Inner Colonial Literature -- A German Dracula : Fontane's Effi Briest And The Anxiety Of A Reverse-diffusional Slavic Flood -- Post-colonial Mappings : Cartographic Representations Of Lost Colonial Space In The Interwar Period -- Architectural Doppelgänger And Post-colonial Spatial Claims In Fritz Lang's Nibelungen. Kristin Kopp. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.