America in the Eyes of the Germans: An Essay on Anti-Americanism [Paperback]

Dan Diner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 18, 1996

In this essay, German-Israeli historian Dan Diner argues that the European consciousness uses America as a metaphor for the dark sides of modernism. He finds an especially aggressive variant of this negative judgement in Germany, the roots of which he traces back to the Romantic period.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The author presents a short history of a rather complex idea that began around the year 1800. Though the United States was often viewed by the people of Germany as a land of opportunity, a portion of the intelligentsia, with which this book is principally concerned, tended to see the U.S. as the home of greedy hypocrites estranged from and envious of all higher culture. From the beginning of the Romantic period and throughout all the turnings of German history to the end of the Cold War, this theme was embellished differently in each era, but its essence remained remarkably unchanged. Diner has written a popularization of the subject for the nonprofessional reader, but the book is also valuable for presenting ideas that are not usually part of the political and cultural discourse concerning the U.S. The ideas are sometimes made murky by the translator, who unfortunately has retained too much of the phrasing and style of the original German, but the author's outlook remains accessible. It is of particular interest now that the former Iron Curtain countries have begun looking to Germany rather than to the U.S. as the model upon which to rebuild their societies. Foreword by Sander Gilman and illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Anti-Americanism is not an exclusively German phenomenon. But the German version tends to lead to contempt for and underestimation of the Americans... The merit of this book lies in revealing the disastrous results of anti-Americanism for Germany's history.... a provocative study." -- Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

"In his brilliant and refreshingly polemical essay, German-Israeli historian Dan Diner argues that the European consciousness uses America as a metaphor for the dark sides of modernism. The United States represents the negative counterpart to all West European societies, but the author finds an especially aggressive variant of this negative judgment in Germany, the roots of which he traces back to the Romantic period. The Romantics originated the idea of a fundamental difference between true "culture" [allegedly characteristic of German society] and mere "civilization" [allegedly characteristic of societies to the west of Germany], which has had a normative role in German intellectual and political history.... In this scheme of thinking, America stands for money, interests, and the stock exchange.... Anti-Americanism is a constant indicator for a German ongoing attempt to pull away from the West." --North German Broadcasting Corp.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 169 pages
• Publisher: Markus Wiener Pub; English Language Ed edition (April 18, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1558761055
• ISBN-13: 978-1558761056
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,932,193 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lucid. Very, very lucid., October 27, 2005

By 

Thomas J. Cassidy (Arlington, Virginia USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: America in the Eyes of the Germans: An Essay on Anti-Americanism (Paperback)

Dan Diner's history of German anti-Americanism is an eye-opener to the first-time reader. The history of such an irrational phenomenon - it didn't begin in World War I - makes for a "sidebar" history of some interesting psychological underpinnings of a normally rational set. Like the ugliest of garden weeds, this has some deep roots hard to get out.

The one or two awkward translation questions mentioned in above reviews were simple cases of choice of words. I find Diner's work highly readable and informative.

0 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Filthy lucre, July 21, 2007

By 

Harry Eagar (Maui) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: America in the Eyes of the Germans: An Essay on Anti-Americanism (Hardcover)

Germans hate dollars. Not enough to refuse them. Probably they feel dirty after accepting one, like a preacher after a visit to the whorehouse, but they force themselves to do it, anyway.

So instead of hating themselves for accepting the dollars, they hate the Americans for giving them to them.

That's my explanation, anyway, and it fits easily enough into Israeli-German political scientist Dan Diner's more nuanced and evolutionary explanation.

Diner was inspired to write his polemic by the hatred of America unleashed by Gulf War I. He traced it back to an entirely different matter in the early 19th century. For him, America -- not any very real America, but a symbol -- was the convenient whipping boy for Romantics who were upset by the modernization of Germany and the decay of familiar hierarchical social relations.

He notes, of course, that this was a feeling hardly shared by German peasants and workers, who escaped to America when they could. Anti-Americanism was a phenomenon of religious, academic and social elites. In Germany, that included a lot of "vons."

I think Americans underestimate how much monarchism and aristocratism still resonate in Europe even in the 21st century. It was even more so in the recent past. Most of Hitler's generals were not radical street fighters jumped up by the revolution of 1933. They were Prussian barons.

As Diner traces German anti-Americanism, it of course gets conflated with anti-Semitism. Anything a German despises -- whether it is worthy of being despised or not -- will sooner or later (usually sooner) be blamed on the Jews.

From the beginning, but even more so after being beaten twice on the battlefield -- no greater insult can be imagined by a German -- Germans looked for flaws with which to beat the Americans. Slavery was always there, and also the decimation of the American Indian.

Those are two valid points, though odd coming from Germans, who decimated the Lithuanians and were enthusiastic slave-catchers as recently as 1945. That critics who hold themselves out as superior moralists and intellectuals should continue to make the same complaints in the 21st century just shows how crazy they all are.

Diner's essay was published in German in 1993 and translated into English in 1996 (and very poorly, too). Since then something important has happened.

While the German right has never pulled any punches about its Jew-hatred, the left and liberals had to tread warily after 1945. The first intifada was an Allah-send to them, as it allowed them to stop pretending they were not anti-Semitic.

Since, as Diner shows convincingly, in German eyes, anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism are two sides of the same coin, the coming of Gulf War II was the trigger for paroxysms of gleeful hate fests.

That's one thing you have to give the Germans credit for. They can't win wars against anybody but the French, but nobody hates better.