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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | The past in the present: family histories written by German-speakers in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa |
Author: | De Kadt, Elizabeth |
Year: | 2004 |
Periodical: | Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa |
Volume: | 16 |
Issue: | 1 |
Pages: | 96-106 |
Language: | English |
Geographic terms: | South Africa Natal |
Subjects: | self-concept colonists Germans colonial history |
Abstract: | This paper focuses on the preservation of the German language introduced by 19th-century immigrants to colonial Natal, which in certain communities is still spoken today. One feature of these communities is their fascination with the past. This has resulted in the production of numerous family, parish and school histories, which recreate the five or six generations spent in South Africa. The paper investigates five of these family histories and explores their role in myth-making and in maintaining the self-perception of these ethnic groups as German - though on the basis of a vision of 'Germanness' which is peculiar to the local South African context. Bibliogr., sum. [Journal abstract] |