Narrating Empire: Die Gartenlaube and Germany's Nineteenth-Century Liberal Expansionism

Abstract

Contrary to widespread belief that naval power and overseas colonies were anathema to the liberal conception of the German nation, both were in fact essential to the national-liberal understanding of what characterised a successful nation-state. An analysis of a wide variety of contributions in Ernst Keil's ostensibly apolitical periodical Die Gartenlaube illustrates how this liberal vision of the German nation-state as a first-rank Weltmacht was endorsed in popular cultural discussions of the role and future of the German nation abroad during the 'pre-colonial' era.