Elizabeth de Kadt

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The paper focuses on the preservation of the German language introduced by nineteenthcentury immigrants to colonial Natal, which in certain communities is - surprisingly - still spoken today. One feature of these communities is their fascination with the past. This has resulted in the production of numerous family, parish and school histories, which recreate the five or six generations spent in South Africa. I investigate five of these family histories and explore their role in myth-making and in maintaining the selfperception of these ethnic groups as German - though on the basis of a vision of 'Germanness' which is peculiar to the local South African context.