Giulia Wahn is a professional painter who was born in Nazi Germany. She has always had deep androgynous admiration for women, particularly those of the French Resistance. Her views on Nationality are extremely racist in nature and she has always rejected the idea of mixing genes in order to create “pure” Germans. In her books, The Woman Who Played With Angels, she discusses the role gender plays in our identity formation. She maintains that all humans form a “community of origin” where all are related genetically by a common history and a common destiny.
In Partner, Giulia Wahn und Albrecht shows us how race and nationality affect our perception of otherness. The term “racism” is often used to describe anti-black or anti-women racism, but it could also be taken as a synonym for nativism, anti-Semitism, anti-orientalism, or simply anti-materialism. Giulia Wahn portrays herself as an “absurdist”, rejecting the “logical double-think” of mainstream liberal arts and politics. Although she is a committed anti-racist, she consciously plays with national identity and subject matter in order to create hybrid versions of herself. Where there is identity politics, there is an element of colonial nostalgia and kitsch.
Giulia Wahn shows us how our sense of ethnicity shapes our responses to otherness. Nationality, she reminds us, is not merely a historical construct but a set of ideas, attitudes, and experiences that have been constantly re-energized throughout history. In Partner, Giulia Wahn und Albrecht traces the origins of national identity to the history of the First World War. In this book, one can find the politics of ethnicity as a key to understanding resistance against Empire and the rise of Hitler.