BRITISH IDENTITY AND THE GERMAN OTHER A Dissertation ...

contextual boundaries in the case of separately targeted groups, such as German professors,
peasants, Junkers or clerks, who were represented as possessing undesirable qualities endemic to
the entire German “race.” Certain stereotypical images, like the rustic German Michael, the
philosophically speculative German or the German bully, also transcended narrow definitions to
act as powerful symbols of Anglo-German difference. While contextual emphasis clearly shifted
over time in relation to events, stereotypes remained remarkably consistent, only taking on new
forms with the emergence of “New Germany.” The strong pull of continuity, however, ensured
the inevitable comparison, usually negative, of these newer images with older, time-honored
stereotypes of national character.
The printed evidence of stereotypes represents a point at which the investigation of
subjective and objective realities come together, a nexus between psychology and history.
Although the two disciplines seem to pursue opposite ends—psychology looking for
subconscious motives using case histories, history trying to avoid speculation about subconscious
motivation by discerning mentalities from historical records—an understanding of the
psychology behind stereotypes can clarify their historical significance as more than mere sources
of amusement. 58 A further methodological difference between psycho-historical research and
histories of sociological phenomena lies in the distinction between individually held and
consensual or “cultural” stereotypes. 59 The present study deals with stereotypes in print and
visual media and only indirectly with the way individuals adapted them according to their own
58 See Peter Gay, Freud for Historians (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1985), 18, on methodological differences and the interdependency of history and psychology.
59 See Thomas F. Pettigrew, “Extending the Stereotype Concept,” chap. 9 in Hamilton,
Cognitive Processes, 312-15.
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