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Submergence, Persistence and Identity: Generations of German Origin in the Barossa and Adelaide Hills, South Australia
Author(s) -
BURNLEY IAN
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
geographical research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.695
H-Index - 47
eISSN - 1745-5871
pISSN - 1745-5863
DOI - 10.1111/j.1745-5871.2010.00643.x
Subject(s) - german , settlement (finance) , psychological resilience , resistance (ecology) , identity (music) , urbanization , persistence (discontinuity) , cultural identity , geography , government (linguistics) , ethnology , state (computer science) , musical , assertion , sociology , gender studies , genealogy , history , political science , archaeology , economic growth , social science , aesthetics , ecology , art , philosophy , algorithm , psychotherapist , negotiation , linguistics , world wide web , computer science , engineering , visual arts , biology , psychology , payment , programming language , geotechnical engineering , economics
This paper examines settlers of German ancestry and their cultural resilience in the Barossa Valley, Light and Adelaide Hills districts of South Australia. After five to seven generations of local settlement, cultural persistence has resulted from: the strong religious reasons for the original migration; early congregational exclusivity; maintenance of German as the liturgical language for over 80 years; and rural community self‐sufficiency. The excoriating public and State Government rejection of integration during World War One reinforced their cultural assertion. This was manifested in religion, family and place identity, musical events, traditional and hybrid cuisines and festivals, and has continued despite counter‐urbanisation into these German‐settled areas. Therefore the landscape and community consequences of persistence, resistance and reinvention have survived far longer than most inter‐generational models of socio‐cultural change would otherwise have predicted.