
Germany's Wild East: Constructing Poland as Colonial Space (Social History, Popular Culture, and Politics in Germany)
Kristin Kopp
In the 19th and early 20th 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.
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About Kristin Kopp
Reviews for Germany's Wild East: Constructing Poland as Colonial Space (Social History, Popular Culture, and Politics in Germany)
Choice
Choice
"Kopp’s real achievement is the way in which she bridges two active areas of recent scholarship, one on colonial discourse in German culture and the other on the place of the East in the German spatial imagination, adding rich cultural analysis to the argument that German designs on Polish space are best understood as part of a colonial project. Kopp’s lively and engaging study makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the place of Poland within the history of colonialism, both in Germany and beyond."
German Studies Review
German Studies Review
"I wish this book would be required reading in German and Polish Schools."
Sally Boss, The Sarmatian Review
The Sarmatian Review