Perceptions of Spain in German Popular Culture of the 1950s and 1960s

This article examines clichéd ideas about Spain and, in particular, the enthusiasm for Mallorca in early West Germany in the 1950s and 1960s, using popular songs, novels, films and travel guides as examples. The thesis is that these products of popular culture not only provide information about the wishes and longings of West German citizens, which went hand in hand with the processes of collective identity formation, but also reveal hidden continuities of National Socialist ideology and thus testify to a particularly blatant form of German suppression of memory. Many of these products of popular culture contain a double coding: they address former soldiers and war widows as well as young tourists searching for noncommittal flirtation. The feeling of superiority with which Germans, from soldiers to vacationers, encountered Spaniards in the postwar period often exhibited similar patterns, with only gradual differences.