Book contents
- Private Life and Privacy in Nazi Germany
- Private Life and Privacy in Nazi Germany
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- I Interpreting the Private under National Socialism
- 1 Introduction
- 2 A Particular Kind of Privacy
- 3 Private Lives, Public Faces
- 4 Private and Public Moral Sentiments in Nazi Germany
- 5 (Re-)Inventing the Private under National Socialism
- II The Private in the Volksgemeinschaft
- III The Private at War
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - Private Lives, Public Faces
On the Social Self in Nazi Germany
from I - Interpreting the Private under National Socialism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 June 2019
- Private Life and Privacy in Nazi Germany
- Private Life and Privacy in Nazi Germany
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- I Interpreting the Private under National Socialism
- 1 Introduction
- 2 A Particular Kind of Privacy
- 3 Private Lives, Public Faces
- 4 Private and Public Moral Sentiments in Nazi Germany
- 5 (Re-)Inventing the Private under National Socialism
- II The Private in the Volksgemeinschaft
- III The Private at War
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter analyses a selection of personal testimonies written by non-Jewish German refugees and non-Germans with experiences of Germany under Nazi rule to the 1939 Harvard essay competition ‘My Life in Germany before and after 1933’ in order to explore how behaviour in private in Germany under National Socialist rule helped to constitute a ‘bystander society’. It argues that the pressures to demonstrate conformity in public did not simply create dissonance between individuals’ public and private selves, but also transformed private attitudes and habits. As a result, a ‘bystander society’ emerged after 1933 in Germany that was characterised by people tending not to intervene on behalf of the direct targets of persecution: as such, it was a precondition of the Holocaust.
- Type
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- Information
- Private Life and Privacy in Nazi Germany , pp. 54 - 79Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019