1998/10/01 by Oliver Zimmer · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Environmental Science · #Central European national history #European history and politics #Ecology, Conservation, and Geographical Studies
paper · doi:10.1017/s0010417598001686
openalex publication_date 1998/10/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
Elias Canetti, in a brief passage of his Crowds and Power (first published in German in 1960), argued that neither language, nor territory or history are at the heart of what today we would call national identity. What nations can not do without, however, and what has contributed most to turning different individuals into conscious members of a particular nation, is a national “crowd symbol.” Canetti then went on to show that most European nations possessed one such symbol around which a popular feeling of national belonging could be generated and sustained. In the case of England, he maintained, it was the sea that took this function; while for the Germans it was the forest. In France, on the other hand, it was the Revolution that came to play this very role. And in Switzerland—the case Canetti probably knew best from his own experience—it was the mountains (see Canetti 1960:191–203).