Cover not available
Part of
Metaphor, Nation and Discourse
Edited by Ljiljana Šarić and Mateusz-Milan Stanojević
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 82] 2019
► pp. 177–200

Chapter 7
The meaning of state created through symbols and metaphors

German Heimat and Russian Motherland

This chapter compares the role of symbols and metaphors in constructing the meaning of the state in its relation to the nation. Building on Paul Ricœur’s theory, it considers symbols and metaphors as two different discursive devices and applies this theoretical approach to the analysis of pre-Nazi German (1871–1933) and late imperial Russian (1860s–1917) political discourses as reflected in political speeches, policy documents, government records, correspondence, and other texts produced by political leaders and thinkers. The findings are that the symbol of the German Heimat and the metaphor of the Russian Motherland contributed significantly to the discursive development of two distinct types of state-to-nation relations: in Germany, the nation legitimized the state, while in Russia the state dominated the nation.
Keywords: state, nation, nationhood, metaphors, symbols, Heimat , Motherland, Germany, Russia, political discourse analysis
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Imagining a state in symbols and metaphors
  • 3.The symbol: From individual of home to of
  • 4.The Motherland metaphor: Consolidating the vertical state authority
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Note
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 20 May 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.82.08cep
References

Primary sources

Alexander III
1884/2000 “Pis’ma Marii Fedorovne [Letter to Maria Fedorovona], 18 April–18 December 1884.” Quoted in Scenarios of Power: From Alexander II to the Abdication of Nicholas II, ed. by Richard Wortman, 179. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Alexandrovich, Nicholas
1861/2000 “Pis’ma syna Nikolaia Imperatritse Marii Aleksandrovny [Letter of the Son Nicholas to Maria Alexandrovna], 31 August 1861.” Quoted in Scenarios of Power: From Alexander II to the Abdication of Nicholas II, ed. by Richard Wortman, 420. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Alexeev, Mikhail Vasiliyevich
1917/1927 “Speech at the Congress of Officers of the Army and Navy, 20 May 1917.” In Documents of Russian History 1914–1917, collected and translated by Frank Alfred Golder, 406. New York: the Century Co.Google Scholar
Bauer, Otto
1907 Die Nationalitätenfrage und die Sozialdemokratie [The Nationality Question and Social Democracy]. Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Volksbuchhandlung Ignaz Brand.Google Scholar
Bismarck, Otto von
1847/1914 “Ein Brief an Fräulein Puttkamer [A Letter to Miss Puttkamer], 1 February 1847].” In Fürst Bismarcks Briefe an seine Braut und Gattin [Prince Bismarck’s Letters to His Bride and Wife], collected by Prince Herbert Bismarck, 7–12. Stuttgart: J.G. Cotta.Google Scholar
Duma
1917/1927 “Resolution, 5 August 1917.” In Documents of Russian History 1914–1917, collected and translated by Frank Alfred Golder, 478–479. New York: the Century Co.Google Scholar
First Army Committee
1917/1927 “Appeal, 1 November 1917.” In Documents of Russian History 1914–1917, collected and translated by  Frank Alfred Golder, 401–402. New York: the Century Co.Google Scholar
Kerenski, Alexander
1914/1927 “Speech in the Duma, 8 August 1914.” In Documents of Russian History 1914–1917, collected and translated by Frank Alfred Golder, 477–478. New York: the Century Co.Google Scholar
Kerschensteiner, Georg, and Karl Alexander von Müller
1926 Deutsche Volksbildung [German Nation-Building], April Issue. PA AA R60097.
Kornilov, Lavr
1917/1927 “Appeal to the People to be Circularized in All Cities and Railways, 11 September 1917.” In Documents of Russian History 1914–1917, collected and translated by Frank Alfred Golder, 522–523. New York: the Century Co.Google Scholar
League for Germans Abroad [Bund der Auslandsdeutschen]
1928 German Foreign Calendar [Deutscher Auslandskalender]. PA AA, R60250.Google Scholar
Losev, Aleksei
1941/1993 Zhizn: Povesti, rasskazy, pis‘ma [Life: Novels, Stories, Letters]. St. Petersburg: Izdateľstvo AO Komplekt.Google Scholar
Müller, Karl Alexander
1951 Aus den Gärten der Vergangenheit: Erinnerungen 1882–1914 [From the Gardens of the Past: Memoirs 1882–1914]. Stuttgart: Gustav Kilpper Verlag.Google Scholar
Nicholas II
1909/2000 “Speech on the 200th Anniversary of the Battle of Poltava, 16 July 1909.” Quoted in Scenarios of Power: From Alexander II to the Abdication of Nicholas II, ed. by Richard Wortman, 392. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
1914/1927 “Address at Reception for Members of the Imperial Council and the Duma, 8 August 1914.” In Documents of Russian History 1914–1917, collected and translated by Frank Alfred Golder, 30–31. New York: the Century Co.Google Scholar
Pobedonostsev, Konstantin
1808 Reflections of a Russian Statesman. London: Grant Richards.Google Scholar
Provisional Government
1917/1927 “Declaration, 21 July 1917.” In Documents of Russian History 1914–1917, collected and translated by Frank Alfred Golder, 467–469. New York: the Century Co.Google Scholar
State Council
1917/1927 “Telegram of Members of the State Council to the Tsar, 13 March 1917.” In Documents of Russian History 1914–1917, collected and translated by Frank Alfred Golder, 279–280. New York: the Century Co.Google Scholar
Stresemann, Gustav
1925a “Rede beim Bund der Auslandsdeutschen in Berlin [Speech before the Confederation of Germans Abroad], 29 August 1925,” 269–279. [URL] (Accessed 8 November 2017).Google Scholar
1925b “Rede vor dem Verein der Berliner Presse [Speech to the Association of the Berlin Press] 13 December 1925,” 472–475. [URL] (Accessed 8 November 2017).
1927 “Nobel Peace Prize Lecture, 29 June 1927.” [URL] (Accessed 8 November 2017).
1918/1930 “Speech in the Town Hall of Osnabrück: Germany of Yesterday and Today, 19 December 1918.” In Essays and Speeches on Various Subjects, translated by Christopher R. Turner, 82–95. Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press.Google Scholar
Wilhelm II
1918 “An das Deutsche Heer und die Deutsche Marine [To the German Army and the German Navy], 31 July 1918.” [URL] (Accessed 8 November 2017).

Secondary sources

Anderson, Benedict
2002 Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. London and New York, NY: Verso.Google Scholar
Applegate, Celia
1990 A Nation of Provincials: The German Idea of Heimat. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Berger, Stefan
2006 “Germany.” In What Is a Nation? Europe 1789–1914, ed. by Timothy Baycroft and Mark Hewitson, 42–63. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
2015 “Building the Nation among Visions of German Empire.” In Nationalizing Empires, ed. by Stefan Berger and Alexei Miller, 247–308. Budapest-New York, NY: CEU.Google Scholar
Bisha, Robin, Jehanne M. Gheith, Christine C. Hoden, and William G. Wagner
  (eds.) 2002 Russian Women, 1698–1917: Experience and Expression, an Anthology of Sources. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Boa, Elizabeth, and Rachel Palfreyman
2000 Heimat: A German Dream. Regional Loyalties and National Identity in German Culture, 1890–1990. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Buzan, Barry
2007 States, People & Fear. Colchester: ECPR Press.Google Scholar
Confino, Alon
1993 “The Nation as a Local Metaphor: Heimat, National Memory and the German Empire, 1871–1918.” History and Memory 5 (1): 42–86.Google Scholar
2006 Germany as a Culture of Remembrance: Promises and Limits of Writing History. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Feuchtwanger, Edgar
2001 Imperial Germany 1850–1918. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Golder, Frank Alfred
1927. Documents of Russian History 1914–1917. New York: the Century Co.Google Scholar
Hemenway, Elizabeth Jones
1997 “Mother Russia and the Crisis of the Russian National Family: The Puzzle of Gender in Revolutionary Russia.” Nationalities Papers 25 (1): 103–121. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hewitson, Mark
2010 Nationalism in Germany, 1848–1866: Revolutionary Nation. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hosking, Geoffrey
2005 “The State and Russian National Identity.” In Power and the Nation in European History, ed. by Len Scales and Oliver Zimmer, 195–211. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kohn, Hans
1960 Pan Slavism: Its History and Ideology. New York, NY: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Koselleck, Reinhart
1982 “Begriffsgeschichte and Social History.” Economy and Society 11 (4): 409–427. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1988 Critique and Crisis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Krzyżanowski, Michał
2016 “Recontextualisation of Neoliberalism and the Increasingly Conceptual Nature of Discourse: Challenges for Critical Discourse Studies.” Discourse and Society 27 (3): 308–321. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Laak, Dirk van
2005 Über alles in der Welt: Deutscher Imperialismus im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert [Above All in the World: German Imperialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries]. München: Verlag C.H. Beck oHG.Google Scholar
Lakoff, George
2002 Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think, 2nd ed.  Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Laruelle, Marlene
2009 “Rethinking Russian Nationalism: Historical Continuity, Political Diversity, and Doctrinal Fragmentation.” In Russian Nationalism and the National Reassertion of Russia, ed. by Marlene Laruelle, 13–48. Abington: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Miller, Alexei
2012 “Istoria poniatiia natsiia v Rossii [History of Understanding Nationality in Russia].” In Poniatia o Rossii: K istoricheskoy semantike imperskogo perioda [Concepts of Russia: Toward a Historical Semantics of Imperial Russia], ed. by Alexei Miller, Denis Sdvizhkov, and Ingrid Schierle. Moscow: NLO.Google Scholar
Rancour-Lafarriere, Daniel
1995 The Slave Soul of Russia: Moral Masochism and the Cult of Suffering. New York, NY and London: NYU Press.Google Scholar
Ricœur, Paul
1976 Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning. Fort Worth, TX: Texas Christian University Press.Google Scholar
1978 “The Metaphorical Process as Cognition, Imagination, and Feeling.” Critical Inquiry 5 (1): 143–159. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2003 The Rule of Metaphor: The Creation of Meaning in Language. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Sheehan, James J.
1994 German History: 1770–1866. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Šarić, Ljiljana
2015 “Metaphors in the Discourse of the National.” Družboslovne Razprave XXXI (80): 47–65.Google Scholar
Tsygankov, Andrei P.
2014 The Strong State in Russia: Development and Crisis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Walzer, Michael
1967 “On the Role of Symbolism in Political Thought.” Political Science Quarterly 82 (2): 191–204. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wilson, Jeffrey K.
2007 “Imagining a Homeland: Constructing Heimat in the German East, 1871–1914.” National Identities 9 (4): 331–349. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wortman, Richard
2000 Scenarios of Power: From Alexander II to the Abdication of Nicholas II. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Musolff, Andreas
2021. The Nation as a Body or Person in Slavic L1-Language Samples: Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Serbian, Croatian and Bulgarian. In National Conceptualisations of the Body Politic [Cultural Linguistics, ], ► pp. 113 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 18 november 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.