American traits from the point of view of a German / by Hugo Münsterberg.

  • Hugo Münsterberg
Date:
1902
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: American traits from the point of view of a German / by Hugo Münsterberg. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    mysteries of politics, ventures to take an impar- tial view of this interesting emotional case ? To live up to all the opportunities of scholarly display which this chapter of social psychology offers, I ought to go back to the seventeenth cen- tury or at least to Frederick the Great, whose en- thusiasm for the American struggle for independ- ence furnishes plenty of material for all who like to make such introductions. But I am afraid that the usual fine quotations which show the absence of American-German frictions in earlier times have hardly any direct bearing on our present case. The Germans of a generation ago did not look much beyond the ocean in any case, and the German imagination pictured the land rather than the nation, — the land where gold was lying in the streets, and where every newcomer still found the chance of a free life. The American as a special type of man had not been discovered; neither favorable nor unfavorable information about him was diffused, simply because nobody asked for it. On the American side it was some- what different. Millions of German immigrants had poured into the land, and had become an hon- est and most industrious part of the population. Moreover, while they were bringing the spirit of the German working classes, thousands of young Americans were going abroad to bring home the
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