A Year of Contradictions [Ein Jahr der Widersprüche]

Abstract

This article examines the German Empire’s most popular magazine—Die Gartenlaube—and its coverage of world events in 1904 as they pertain to the German nation’s image at this time. The Saint Louis World’s Fair and the Herero-Nama genocide in Germany’s colony of South West Africa—the first in the twentieth century—happened concurrently but were covered differently. I argue that the magazine served as a strategic platform to foster German national image by juxtaposing soft power and hard power in its reportage. As the nation sought to assert itself on the world stage, it also positioned its migrants as contributing to the cultural fabric of the United States. Through selective coverage and omissions in the publications around 1904 and through the end of the genocide, the magazine constructed and contrasted an image of Germany as a colonial, cultural, military, (inter)national, and technologically advanced nation, presenting this vision to its domestic and global readership.