“Wir wollen immer feiern"

This topic is about cultural appropriation. Imaged shown below are deemed racist and may be offensive.

Discussions on racism and identity politics are rather new in Germany. Little has changed in defining the German identity since its formation as a nation state in 1871, in which its people feel a sense of unity through a common appreciation of nature. With connotations of “race” having ties to the Jewish persecution during World War II, the word is still tabooed. The German identity today does not encompass the history of guest workers from Vietnam, Turkey, and Eastern Europe who were invited over during the 1960s and 1970s to boost German industries. It does not mention marginalized communities and people who are seen as “others” and “unGerman” in the place they call home (El-Tayeb 2016). As argued by Susanne Zantop (1997), the German fascination with the "exotic" is perpetuated by the failures of their past colonial ventures. This has not only led to confusing cultural appreciation for cultural appropriation today but also solidified the idea of the white, Judeo-Christian German as the true German. Today, the warped understanding of being “German” has yet to be fully researched and discussed, allowing a misinterpretation regarding cultural appropriation to persist.

My encounter with a bizarre tradition in a small town that I first learned from a Vice article prompt my research to focus on answering two research questions: To what extent do Germany’s colonial fantasies continue to play into the celebration of Fasching in Dietfurt today? How do German colonial fantasies change how "others" in this context are imagined? As a German studies major at Colorado College, I was fortunate to be able to receive funding from the Keller Family Venture Grant to visit and study the festival first-hand between February 13th to 23rd, 2020.

Fasching, otherwise known as Mardi Gras in other areas of the world, is an annual festival that takes place in Southern Germany. As the word Fasching itself derives from “Fastenschank”, meaning the last servings of alcohol before Lent, the festival itself is a time of mockery and humor in which people dress up to celebrate and overturn societal conventions.

Lying deep within Bavaria, this town of 6,000 residents celebrate Fasching annually by dressing up as Chinese people. Despite the lack of a comprehensive written account, Dietfurt is rich with history. Its defense towers date back to the 1450s, and its earliest mention in literature was in 1144. After the extinction of the Hirschberger family, the ownership of Dietfurt transferred to the House of Wittelberg in 1305. Its location between the Duchy of Bavaria and Prince-Bishopric of Eichstätt made the town one of the main trade routes between Nuremberg and Regensburg. In 1416, Dietfurt became recognized as a city, and in 1479, the town hall was built. In 1540, the city became an independent Parish, and in 1660, Franciscan monks founded a monastery. Until World War II, the main occupations in the town included farming, trading, and running businesses. It is alleged that Dietfurt’s identification with Chinese culture began when they refused to let the chamberlain of Eichstätt enter their city during the 1600s when they had to pay taxes to their duke. By locking their gates and hiding behind their walls, the chamberlain complained that “die Dietfurter verschanzen sich hinter ihren Mauern wie die Chinesen” [the Dietfurters hide behind their walls like the Chinese], as told on the town's information board. The first group to dress up as Chinese was the Dietfurt City Orchestra in 1928 during that year’s celebration of Fasching to celebrate the city’s unique history. As the Chinesenfasching was brought to a halt during World War II, it reemerged in the 1950s. Dietfurt has since gone further to build on its traditions. From electing their first emperor in 1954 and transforming bakeries into “Chinese” bakeries to creating a special hymn for “Bayerische China”, the celebration has become the trademark of the city of Dietfurt.

To prepare for my research, I sought to understand the German conceptions of identity (Bhambra 2009; Said 1979; Hall 1990), the rationalization of “othering,” and the consideration of being “unGerman” attributed to Germany’s history of immigration (El-Tayeb 2016; Yue 2000; Sieg 2002). Using Susanne Zantop’s (1997) notion of “colonial fantasies”, in which she argues was the result of Germany’s colonial failures, and the history of the Sino-German relationship (Crowe & Cho 2014; Daya & Ha 2015; Fuechtner and Rhiel 2015), I conceptualize Chinesenfasching as a modern manifestation of Germany’s colonial aspirations. Building on this body of work helped me structure my research around my questions: To what extent do Germany’s colonial fantasies continue to play into the celebration of Fasching in Dietfurt today? And how do German colonial fantasies change how “others” in this context are imagined? I argue that what Zantop (1997) called “colonial fantasies” continues to play out through the Dietfurter’s genuine interest in Chinese culture, albeit only in what is deemed an “authentic” yet outdated version of Chinese. Their interests persist by virtue of their imaginations of what constitute as Chinese culture. Despite their attempts at appreciating Chinese culture, their understanding of appreciation is limited to what they benefit from and/or would like to extract from it. Drawing on Hsiao-Cheng (Sandrine) Han’s (2019) arguments on cultural appropriation, the Dietfurter’s actions are exactly that, and their “appreciation” only serves to deepen cultural stereotypes of Chinese. As Han describes it, cultural appropriation occurs when one speaks for others in representing them in fictional, legal, artistic, social, or political work as appropriate, particularly when groups that are being appropriated have less social, economic, and political power than the uninvited performer (9). Thus, by drawing connections to Zantop’s (1997) argument on Germany’s missed/failed colonial ventures creating a desire and sense of entitlement to possessions, I argue that not only does the celebration create and add to the social fabric of the Dietfurt identity, but the inclusion of blackface, brownface, and other cultural appropriations make clear what is “unGerman” and, inadvertently, what is German.

During this research project, the main methodology was interviewing folks attending the festival. Given that the city is located deep within Southern Germany, I brought along my friend Astrid, a student at the University of Göttingen, to help me with understanding and transcribing the heavy Bavarian accents.

This section documents the festival itself.

As one of the few ethnically Chinese people at the festival, it was interesting to experience this fetishisation of my culture in person. Even two days prior, I had felt that my existence in the town was questioned; upon the morning of Unsinniger Donnerstag, locals were calling out "Ni Hao!" to me left and right. Unsure of whether this friendliness was invoked by the large volumes of beer consumption, the direct and indirect microaggressions that I experienced at Chinesenfasching were unavoidable and uncomfortable.

The interviews and research conducted confirm three things about Bavarian China (examples in the list below): the celebration of Chinesenfasching in Dietfurt does foster a sense of identity in Dietfurt; Chinesenfasching is not only celebrated by Dietfurters, but also by visitors, including those from China; and Dietfurters only practice a superficial understanding of Chinese culture because the entire festival exists only to serve the Dietfurters. These conclusions support Zantop’s (1997) analysis on German colonial fantasies in which the yearning for colonial possessions is fulfilled through cultural appropriation. From such, the extraction of specific aspects of Chinese culture in Bavarian China serves only the German themselves. Much like their past colonies, xenophobia persists in the clear definition of the “other” against the internalized idea of the self.

1. In speaking with locals, it was interesting to hear that the individuals from Dietfurt were aware that Chinesenfasching and the identification with Chinese culture is only a part of their history and actually has nothing to do with China. It is therefore an imagined, self-serving tradition.
2. At the festival, I was able to speak with Chinese students who were currently studying at a nearby university as well as a young Chinese couple who had just newly immigrated to Germany. A large number of interviewees were also visiting from cities far away, coming just because they had heard of this festival on the news.
3. During the celebration, imaginary Chinese characters were assumed and depicted by many strokes and random lines. Many of the Chinese-themed floats during the parade often evoked stereotypical themes of Chinese culture, including references to dim sum, dragons, and wonton fonts. To build upon the collective imaginations about the “other”, the Dietfurters have built their imaginations on what they believe to be, but are not truly, Chinese.

Quoting Dietfurt's  Chinesenhymne , the national anthem of the festival, "Wir wollen immer feiern" [we will always celebrate] is telling of Bavarian China's attitudes on the festival. The lack of awareness over issues of cultural appropriation and the intentional desire to possess an external culture demonstrate a modern manifestation of Germany’s colonial aspirations. Not only does the Dietfurters’ adoption of the “best” aspects Chinese culture fulfill the internalized aspirations of possessing while imposing Germanness on the “other”, but the entitlement to dress up and claim any culture during Chinesenfasching also helps to define what is unreal and imagined against what is German. Thus, by using a secondary culture to define its own primary German culture, Dietfurt is able to create a sense of internal identity for its citizens.

Upon graduation and the completion of this project, I hope to edit and refocus this research into an academic research paper that focuses on and lays the foundation regarding the topics of race and identity in Asian German studies. Although this research only focuses on Chinese cultural appropriation, and because Asian German studies is an emerging field, there is much to be researched and said about the relationship between China and Germany. While Chunjie Zhang’s (2017) book considers transculturality—the idea that there is mutual exchange in the colonizer-colonized paradigm—there is a general lack of foundational critical research about decolonization in Germany. Without this research, ideas such as transculturality may perpetuate the erasure of Germany’s colonial brutalities similar to the way colonial fantasies do. Furthermore, there is also room to talk about the other cultural appropriations that take place as the festivalgoers practiced these as well. With the annual unspoken theme of people from all over the world celebrating the arrival of the emperor, the parade showed appropriation of all colonized cultures: black face, brown face, yellow face, and red face were all evident. As Germany begins its attempts at decolonization, it is only a hope that efforts in curating these discussions around appreciation and appropriation will reach this small city in deep Bavaria.