Overview

Forging Germans explores the German nationalization and eventual National Socialist radicalization of ethnic Germans in the Batschka and the Western Banat, two multiethnic, post-Habsburg borderland territories currently in northern Serbia. Deploying a comparative approach, Caroline Mezger investigates the experiences of ethnic German children and youth in interwar Yugoslavia and under Hungarian and German occupation during World War II, as local and Third Reich cultural, religious, political, and military organizations wrestled over young people's national (self-) identification and loyalty. Ethnic German children and youth targeted by these nationalization endeavors moved beyond being the objects of nationalist activism to become agents of nationalization themselves, as they actively negotiated, redefined, proselytized, lived, and died for the ""Germanness"" ascribed to them.Interweaving original oral history interviews, untapped archival materials from Germany, Hungary, and Serbia, and diverse historical press sources, Forging Germans provides incisive insight into the experiences and memories of one of Europe's most contested wartime demographics, probing the relationship between larger historical circumstances and individual agency and subjectivity.

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9780198850168

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Reviews

The topic itself is undoubtedly praiseworthy, and the same can be said for the way in which the author approached it. * Zoran Janjetovic, Currents of History *

"Mezger offers a fresh and methodologically sound investigation of social and political complexities faced by the German minority, and not least of the Nazi influence during the interwar and Second World War period. [...] Forging Germans: Youth, Nation, and the National Socialist Mobilization of Ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia, 1918-1944 enters the field as a must-read for scholars and readers interested in questions of post-1918 minority issues, nationalization policies, nation- and state-building, and most importantly the youth and children and their participation in these processes. * Goran Miljan, Uppsala University, American Historical Review * Forging Germans: Youth, Nation, and the National Socialist Mobilization of Ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia, 1918-1944 is an exciting and readable study that can be recommended to anyone interested in the nationalization of childhood and youth in the interwar and wartime period. * Stefan Johann Schatz, Erziehungswissenschaftliche Revue * Caroline Mezger's study of ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia between 1918 and 1944 is a welcome addition to the history of Donauschwaben in the twentieth century, especially the radicalization of ethnic German children in the Batschka and the Western Banat in the first half of the twentieth century [...] Mezger's book should be read by experts on ethnic German minorities, but also by individuals interested in the Second World War and the radicalization of Germanness during that time period. * John C. Swanson, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, German History * Mezger's fluidly and accessibly written study will surely become one of the authoritative English-language sources for specialists and non-specialists alike on the interwar and wartime history of Yugoslavia's Donauschwaben community of the Batschka and the Western Banat and the role that its youth played in actively shaping the transformation of their community during this era. Forging Germans is also an important, broader meditation on the homogenizing impact of modern European nationalism, as ethnic diversity-and the multiplicity of identities within ethnicities-was to be flattened and repurposed for the interests of the predatory nationalizing state, and for the communities and individuals that helped define and serve it."" * Gregor Kranjc, Brock University, H-Net * This detailed and engrossing book joins a growing body of literature focused on a hitherto somewhat neglected group: the ethnic Germans of East and Southeast Europe * Mirna Zaki'c, Ohio University, Social History * The topic itself is undoubtedly praiseworthy, and the same can be said for the way in which the author approached it. * Zoran Janjetovic, Currents of History * The manipulation by Nazi Germany of political agitation among ethnic German communities in central Europe is well documented, but the focus is usually on those Germans living along the borders of the Reich in Austria, the Czech lands, Poland, and Alsace. The ethnic Germans of Yugoslavia that are the subject of Caroline Metzger's new study were to be found further afield, in the northeast corner of interwar Yugoslavia, where its border met those of Hungary and Romania: the Vojvodina...Metzger's study is a tremendous achievement and a worthy inclusion in Oxford's impressive new Studies in German History series. It is based on archival sources from both Germany and Serbia, a wide range of contemporary publications, and not least a number of interviews with members of the Donauschwaben diaspora. * Tim Kirk, Newcastle University, Journal of Modern History *"

Author Information

Caroline Mezger is an historian at the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich. She holds degrees in history from Yale University and Central European University (Budapest), as well as a PhD in History and Civilization from the European University Institute (Florence). Her research focuses on the twentieth-century history of Central and Southeastern Europe, World War II and the Holocaust, borderland minorities, migration, communication, and the history of childhood and youth. As of June 2019, she is Junior Research Group Leader of the international, Leibniz Association-funded project 'Man hört, man spricht': Informal Communication and Information 'From Below' in Nazi Europe.

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