The Insider As Outsider

Current discussions about how Germans can live together harmoniously arise from a long tradition of ideas about the meaning of Germany as a cultural, political, or geographic entity. Especially deserving of attention with regard to such debates are earlier texts which have challenged the insider/outsider dichotomy in positing a collective German identity, writings which simultaneously represent and under‐mine the term ‘German’. A set of narratives from the earlier half of this century which are striking in their veneration of ‘German tradition’ and concurrent questioning of traditional ideas of German identity are the autobiographical texts of Ricarda Huch (1864–1947). This essay investigates Huch’s depiction of herself as an exotic insider/alien. A comparison of how she recreates herself as ‘foreign’ to her cursory treatment of other outsiders, such as her family’s former slaves, adds a new perspective to her ideas about collective German identity. Her position as an ‘Inappropriate Other’ connects to the current questioning of distinctions between insider and outsider. Huch’s texts destabilise the idea of Germanness, blurring the differences that separate it from what is foreign

Aesthetics · Art · Depiction · Epistemology · German · Identity (music · Insider · Linguistics · Literature · Meaning (existential · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Theology · Veneration · German History and Society · German legal, social, and political studies · Law · Literature and Cultural Memory · Philosophy