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The dissertation investigates the relationship of three generations of East German intellectuals to their state by focusing on the changing images of the Soviet Union in East German travel narratives and DEFA documentary films. It consists of three parts: post-1945, from the end of World War II; post-1961, after the construction of the Berlin Wall; and post-1989, since German unification. The dissertation traces the change in content and form of the travelogue from an objective approach from 1948 through a subjective one in the 1960s to the self-reflectivity in the post-unification period. The chapter about East German travelogues from 1948 entitled Selective Eyes focuses on Anna Seghers, Eduard Claudius, Stephan Hermlin, and Bernhard and Hellen Kellermann. The so-called founding generation wrote selectively about the Soviet Union in order to establish socialism in postwar Germany. Guided by socialist realism, all of these authors took an objective approach to establish their narrative authority as impartial observers of the Soviet Union. The post-1961 chapter, Subjective Eyes, discusses the so-called generation of construction. It discusses two authors, Brigitte Reimann and Karl-Heinz Jakobs, and two directors, Gitta Nickel and Karlheinz Mund. By envisioning an ideal socialist Heimat in their works about the Soviet Union, they criticized socialist practice in the GDR and hoped to construct a real socialist society. Their subjective voice later developed into subjective authenticity, an influential concept in East German literature. The chapter Retrospective Eyes concentrates on the post-unification period. With the Soviet Union/Russia mirroring the most recent past of the GDR, East German travel narratives and film about it reveal the different relationships between their creators and the GDR. While Helga Schutz, born in 1937, was attached to the GDR, Kurt Drawert and Michael Schindhelm, born in 1956 and 1960 respectively, were rather detached from it. Because of their feelings of homelessness, these authors again looked at the Soviet Union/Russia as the place to negotiate their desires for an alternative society.

The largest white immigrant group in eighteenth-century America (1700-75) came from the German-speaking areas of Europe. Upon hearing tales of abundant land, resources, and freedoms in Pennsylvania, these immigrants left behind their traditionally overcrowded clusters of nuclear villages in southwest Germany and Switzerland. Many of these villages had been devastated by 17th-century warfare and then rebuilt in the early 18th century. By the middle third of the 18th century, overcrowding was again a problem, and many emigrated to eastern Europe and North America. Analysis of published lists of migrants in both Germany and Pennsylvania allows one to study where the migrants came from in Europe, how they emigrated, and how they settled and resettled in the colonies. Further, the letters and diaries of many migrants reveal their hopes and aspirations, and their successes and failures. Often the villagers settled together in Pennsylvania, but even if they didn't, immigrants from a given village frequently stayed in contact with one another, and with the home village. Ethnicity was an important factor influencing how and where immigrants settled: Germans tended to settle with other Germans. Yet even though most Germans settled in large, dispersed, ethnic enclaves, and most made only one move from Philadelphia, or at most two, before settling down for the rest of their lives, they did not become docile subjects who tried to remain aloof from politics. In their own way, they were strongly political and did what they felt was necessary to get and secure land--the primary reason why they had left Europe in the first place. Naturalization became an important measure to secure one's position in the colony, especially in 1765, just as colonial and imperial politics ran on a collision course. Thousands of Germans became naturalized primarily to secure newly-acquired landholdings, and to vote for the people who seemed to be helping the most in the struggle to make it in America. The immigrants helped create a new America, in which the Germans could be German, yet participate in a diverse polity, taking the risks of failure, enjoying the fruits of success.