Ethnicity, Language and Politics in North-east Turkey

Abstract

In 1994 the city of Weimar celebrated the 250th anniversary of the birth of one of its most famous sons. Johann Gottfried von Herder does not occupy quite as prominent a place in the history of German romanticism or the current packaging of the city as Goethe and Schiller, whose statues stand next to each other in front of the Weimar theatre. Nonetheless it is Herder who has attracted the attention of later generations of social scientists. He is associated with a version of ethnicity and nationalism that has had a fundamental impact on the modern world (and incidentally a number of very direct implications for modern anthropology). His argument is that humankind is divided into discrete peoples or communities, and the key to understanding each unique culture lies in its language: ‘Denn jedes Volk ist Volk; es hat seine National Bildung wie seine Sprache.’ (cited by Kemilainen 1964: 42; also by Anderson 1983: 66) Weimar was until recently part of the German Democratic Republic. It was splendidly preserved by its socialist rulers, who carefully excluded both the heavy industry and the influx of migrant labour that have transformed other German cities. A few years after reunification it was only fitting that the citizens of Weimar should celebrate the Herder anniversary with appropriate cultural programmes; the political implications for contemporary Germany were so obvious that there was no need to state them explicitly.