Images of Germanness and L.A.’s mid twentieth century German-speaking community.

In the mid twentieth century, Los Angeles boasted a large community of German speakers. Drawing from archival research, this paper will examine the ways in which German language weekly newspapers and a German language cinema conceived of and communicated with their audiences. Through examinations of both language usage and visual imagery, this paper argues that, despite a plurality of German speakers in L.A., German language media organizations marketed to a European-based notion of Germanness. Such marketing reveals a practice of exclusion of non-typical German speakers and ultimately provides insight into the early postwar Angeleno German-speaking community. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]