Selective Affinities

Selective Affinities offers in-depth insights into the formation, historical development, and present-day features of British-German cultural relations. Based on rarely considered source material, it tells the story of a uniquely rich relationship in cultural history and examines its synergies and controversies, its misunderstandings and the prejudices resulting from them. It discusses aspects of British Germanophobia and German Anglophilia with a particular focus on the nineteenth century, which influenced British-German relations into the twentieth century.

The emphasis is on 'affinities' between British and Germanic culture throughout the last five centuries; at times they were too close for comfort but they were shaped by particular individuals who acted as 'transferants', or mediators, between both cultures. Accordingly, the work of artists, translators, and in some cases diplomats, takes centre stage, ranging from Hans Holbein the Younger, as the portraitist of the late Tudor period, to Michael Hamburger, the German-born exile poet and translator of Hölderlin and Celan. The role of German immigrants to Britain throughout the centuries but predominantly after 1933, is an integral part of the story; but so is the presence of English culture in Germany, first in the shape of the nineteenth-century traveller, or early tourist along the Rhine and Danube, and later, after 1919 and in particular after 1945, through the educational and organizational work of the British Occupation Forces. Ten years after the Brexit-referendum, Selective Affinities provides a balanced and analytical account of these strands in the cultural history of both countries with its fruitful ups and tragic downs that provide us with insightful pointers towards a continuation of these relations, once again in precarious times.