Drawing on cultural anthropology and cultural studies, this book sheds new light on the everyday politics of heritage and memory by illuminating local, everyday engagements with Germanness through heritage fetishism, claims to hometown belonging, and the performative appropriation of cultural property.

'Jason James has written a beautiful book, one that shows the massive virtues of anthropological research into national identity. Heritage is not just a context, but an active construction of real people in real time. Preservation and National Belonging in Eastern Germany is a nuanced portrait of people struggling to make meaning in a landscape fraught with competing pressures, and captures the complexities of that process exceptionally well.'

• Jeffrey Olick, University of Virginia, USA

Autorentext
JASON C. JAMES is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Mary Washington, USA. In addition to his research on Eisenach, he has published journal articles on the reconstruction of the Church of Our Lady in Dresden and the politics of culture in unified Germany.

Inhalt
Acknowledgements List of Figures The Historic Cityscape and the Unified Nation Heimat Eisenach Cultural Heritage and Germanness Heritage Fetishism and the Heimat Imaginary Claiming Cultural Belongings Redemption and the Voice of Trauma List of Works Cited Index