Publisher's Synopsis
Like its European sisters Gallia / La France / Marianne, Britannia or Italia, the personification of "Germania" goes back to antiquity. As the embodiment of a German nation, however, it was a modern invention - with long-term consequences: until the 20th century, literary and visual images of Germany as a mother, bride or warrior conveyed messages about an endangered nation that is protected or liberated by its husbands and sons should. In her symbolic history of "Germania", Bettina Brandt takes a look at the changing history of relationships in a German nation and examines the significance and semantic functions of gender images in national and political discourses of modernity. It not only shows that in the family and love theater of 'Germania' competing ideas of nation and political participation were performed. The long-term perspective shows above all that the emancipatory and participatory promises of the modern nation were based on a newly formulated gender order in which femininity embodied the limits of these promises.
