Enemies, Friends, Strangers?

America was never indifferent to the Germans. The United States was the epitome of "benevolent hegemon" and hanged numerous enemy images. They were admired or condemned as cultural strangers. But the German perspectives were hardly dispassionate or static.

Historians, political scientists, Americanists, social and literary scholars show in this volume that the U.S. was often at the same time friend, enemy and alien. Exchange, adaptation and rejection often existed side by side in Germany. The glimpses of the U.S. range from romantic post-war American images to Americanization and anti-Americanism of the 1970s and 1980s, to the 9/11 attacks and the recent past.