Template-Type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Author-Name: Tobias Haimin Wung-Sung
Author-Name-First: Tobias
Author-Name-Last: Haimin Wung-Sung
Author-Email: tobias@sam.sdu.dk
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Border Region Studies, University of Southern Denmark
Title:  ‘We Remain What We Are’. North Schleswig German Identities in Children’s Education after 1945
Abstract: Like many other ethnic Germans in Europe, the German minority in Denmark supported the Nazi regime in Germany and its policy of territorial expansion. But unlike most German minorities of Europe, the Germans in Denmark avoided post-war forced deportation or assimilation. Able to stay in their native region, the minority reconstructed their civic life over the next 25 years. The minority regarded education vital for securing the group’s long-term survival. The success of re-building schools, however, did not leave the minority unchanged. Over time, the identities that were constructed and communicated in the new schools changed as much as society surrounding them. The article brings forward this identity transformation through an analysis of the education system reconstruction process, 1945-1970. The article shows that children and youths of the German-minded minority in post-war North Schleswig attended schools that gradually replaced hostility and national separatism with transnational inclusion and an international outlook.
Length:  17 pages
Creation-Date:  2015-07
File-URL: http://static.sdu.dk/mediafiles//2/8/4/%7B28486F2E-F46F-4B22-9ACB-9ADED51B3838%7D8-TobiasHaimin-2015-WP-draft1.pdf
File-Format: Application/pdf
Number: 8
Classification-JEL: J15, I20, N44
Keywords: minorities, children, education, identity, history, Schleswig, Denmark, Germany
Handle: RePEc:sdn:wpaper:8