Henry Cord Meyer Books

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Drang nach Osten is a phrase well-known in the Slavic, French and Anglo-Saxon world. But the Germans, who are supposed to have originated the term to express their drive to subjugate the Slavs, do not use it. Indeed, they vigorously denounce the concept as a hostile fabrication of their enemies. How, and where, did this household expression originate? By what means, and to what areas, did it spread? Using library resources in America, London, Paris, Marburg, Helsinki and Vienna, Henry Cord Meyer traces the development of the slogan from a corner of ethnic conflict in old imperial Russia to its world-wide use today. Finally, he addresses the strange German reluctance to come to grips psychologically with these intellectual circumstances. More than just an aspect of German-Slav interaction, this book is also a rare and painstaking inquiry into the socio-political process by which a local catchword is transformed into a broadly-held historical concept.