Migration And Cultural Contact Germany And Australia

The collected essays in Migration and Cultural Contact: Germany and Australia investigate historical documents, letters, film, literature and other cultural sources to reveal how each country influenced the culture, intellectual thought and aesthetics of the other from earliest colonial times through to today.

This book approaches Australo-German relations from comparative and interdisciplinary perspectives. It maps new pathways into the rich landscape of the Australo-German transnational encounter, which is characterized by dense and interwoven cultural, historical and political terrains. Surveying an astonishingly wide range of sites from literary translations to film festivals, Aboriginal art to education systems, the contributions offer a uniquely expansive dossier on the migrations of people, ideas, technologies, money and culture between the two countries. The links between Australia and Germany are explored from a variety of new, interdisciplinary perspectives, and situated within key debates in literary and cultural studies, critical theory, politics, linguistics and transnational studies. The book gathers unique contributions that span the areas of migra tion, aboriginality, popular culture, music, media and institutional structures to create a dynamic portrait of the exchanges between these two nations over time. Australo-German relations have emerged from intersecting histories of colonialism, migration, communication, tourism and socio-cultural representation into the dramatically changed twenty-first century, where traditional channels of connection between nations in the Western hemisphere have come undone, but new channels ensure cross-fertilization between newly constituted borders.

This book deals with immigration processes of Germans who have arrived in Australia since 1945. It is an attempt to catch the voices of these people, to let them talk about their hopes, aspirations, achievements and disappointments. In 2010 notices were sent out all over Australia, asking ‘Germans’ (most of them Australians today) to write about their experiences, about challenges and positive happenings. The book contains 28 chapters written by German-born women and men from all walks of life, some came to Australia as children, some as adults, others talk about the lives of their immigrant parents, one person pays tribute to a partner he has lost recently, and who describes her impressions about university life in Germany and in Australia, another person looks back at twenty-three years in Australia and the fine line that divides him and the Australian people. Most, but not all, are success stories. This book also includes three chapters about organisations that provided a buffer zone for new arrivals in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s: Club Harmony of Melbourne, the Club of the Danube Swabians in Adelaide, and the SA German Club. The final chapter is an interview with a person who had to flee Nazi Germany in 1938, with Ernie Salomon.

His books includes Czech-German Relations and the Politics of Central Europe (2002).

How have Australia, France and Germany engaged with immigration and ethnic diversity? Are there national stereotypes that have blocked effective policy-making and exacerbated conflicts? This book looks at the role of the social sciences in national discourses of migration and how scholars can explain how migration is shaping global society.

These essays and papers constitute a first comprehensive and authoritative stock-taking of German-Australian relations since the end of the Second World War. Studies by scholars, diplomats, artists and public servants address themselves to a wide range of subjects, including German-Australian Political Relations, Foreign Policy Perspectives on the Australia-Germany Partnership, German Migration to Australia, German-born Artists and Academics on the Fifth Continent, The Reception of Aboriginal Art in Germany, German-Australian Academic Relations, Comparisons of the Political Economies of Germany and Australia, German Business and Business German in Australia, Images of Australia in German Cinema and a Critical Review of the Role and Future of Germanistik at Australian Universities.

At the time of Australian Federation in 1901, German immigrants constituted two per cent of the population of Victoria. This book examines how they settled, formed a communal infrastructure, and how they related to their Anglo-Celtic hosts. It is shown that their attempts to form a cohesive community failed, by investigating the role played by the Lutheran Church, German associations, community leaders, and the rift between rural and urban communities. The changing relationship between the British Empire, the German Reich and emerging Australian nationalism receives close attention. The book tests and then proves a hypothesis that rural communities were more resilient and better equipped to survive, while urban communities were not.

Remembering German- Australian Colonial Entanglements emphatically promotes a critical and nuanced understanding of the complex entanglement of German colonial actors and activities within Australian colonial institutions and different imperial ideologies. Case studies ranging from the German reception of James Cook’s voyages through to the legacies of 19th- and 20th- century settler colonialism foreground the highly ambiguous roles played by explorers, missionaries, intellectuals and other individuals, as well as by objects and things that travelled between worlds – ancestral human remains, rare animal skins, songs and even military tanks. The chapters foreground the complex relationship between science, religion, art and exploitation, displacement and annihilation. Contributors trace how these entanglements have been commemorated or forgotten over time – by Germans, settler-Australians and Indigenous people. Bringing to light a critical understanding of the German involvement in the Australian colonial project, Remembering German- Australian Colonial Entanglements will be of great interest to scholars of colonialism, postcolonialism, German Studies and Indigenous Studies. But for the editors’ substantial new introductory chapter, these contributions originally appeared in a special issue of Postcolonial Studies.