Food, Culture and Identity in Germany's Century of War

Even in the harsh conditions of total war, food is much more than a daily necessity, however scarce-it is social glue and an identity marker, a form of power and a weapon of war. This collection examines the significance of food and hunger in Germany's turbulent twentieth century. Food-centered perspectives and experiences "from below" reveal the social, cultural and political consequences of three conflicts that defined the twentieth century: the First and Second World Wars and the ensuing global Cold War. Emerging and established scholars examine the analytical salience of food in the context of twentieth-century Germany while pushing conventional temporal frameworks and disciplinary boundaries. Together, these chapters interrogate the ways in which deeper studies of food culture in Germany can shed new light on old wars.

Auteur
Heather Merle Benbow is a scholar of German Studies at the University of Melbourne, Australia.
Heather R. Perry is Associate Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA.

Contenu

1. Hunger Pangs: The Contours of Violence and Food Scarcity in Germany's Twentieth-Century Wars

2. Onward Kitchen Soldiers! Gender, Food, and Health in Germany's Long Great War

3. Food, Drink and Hunger for World War I German Soldiers

4. Public Feeding in the First World War: Berlin's First Public Kitchen System

5. Coping with Hunger in the Ghettos: The Impact of Nazi Racialized Food Policy

6. Bee Stings and Beer: The Significance of Food in Alabamian POW Newspapers

7. The Productive Heimat: Territorial Loss and Rurality in German Identity at the Stunde Null

8. Postwar Food Rumors: Security, Victimhood, and Fear

9. The Taste of Defeat: Food, Peace and Power in US-Occupied Germany

10. Cold (Beer) War: The German Volksgetränk in East German Rhetoric (19451971)

11. Brewing Global Relations during the Cold War: Coffee, East Germans, and Southeast Asia, 19781990