UC Santa Barbara

This paper investigates the formation of German national identity between 1899 and 1922 through articles on museums in the magazine Die Denkmalpflege, the premier historic preservation magazine in Germany. I analyzed the magazine’s full run from its 1899 founding until it changed its name in 1923, and read all articles about museums in depth. Based on this archival research, I argue that museums were categorized not according to their collections but according to their location and audience: local, regional, or national. Articles in Die Denkmalpflege argued that the nation was too abstract a concept to foster popular identification, and that local museums were therefore an essential step in developing nationalism among the lower and middle classes. These local museums were seen as developing love of the local homeland (Heimat) and were opposed to national museums, which were seen as allied with scholarly history. I argue that these local museums portrayed an idealized, depoliticized, peaceful, rural, and timeless past that was supposedly the shared heritage of all classes. Museums created the visual and material elements of a conservative worldview that aimed to divert the energies of an emerging mass society toward militaristic nationalism. Ironically, the techniques employed in these museums mirror some of those used in displays of colonized countries. In my conclusion, I argue that Nazi cultural politicians would later utilize the vocabulary of this idealized past as a justification and camouflage for the Third Reich’s techno-industrial pursuit of violence and power.