american—german love affair

Native Americans in German popular culture have, since the 18th century, been a topic of fascination, with imaginary Native Americans influencing German ideas and attitudes towards environmentalism, literature, art, historical reenactment, and German theatrical and film depictions of Indigenous Americans. Hartmut Lutz coined the term, Indianthusiasm, for this phenomenon.However, these "Native Americans" are largely portrayed in a romanticized, idealized, and fantasy-based manner, that relies on historicised, stereotypical depictions of Plains Indians, rather than the contemporary realities facing the real, and diverse, Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Sources written by German people (for example, Karl May) are prioritised over those by Native American peoples themselves.After the Second World War, Indianthusisam served as a way of coping with the guilt, and avoiding taking responsibility for, the Holocaust, through both escapism into a fantasy past and blame-shifting the burden of genocidal qualities onto the victors of World War II. In 1985, Lutz invented the term Deutsche Indianertümelei ("German Indian Enthusiasm") for the phenomenon. The phrase Indianertümelei is a reference to the German term Deutschetümelei ("German Enthusiasm") which mockingly describes the phenomenon of celebrating in an excessively nationalistic and romanticized manner Deutschtum ("Germanness"). It has been connected with German ideas of tribalism, nationalism and Kulturkampf.

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