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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Grit WesserORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND).
This article uses the secular coming-of-age ritual Jugendweihe as a case study to argue that any analysis of a life-cycle ritual requires attention not only to the public ceremony but also to the family celebration to understand its social significance. Jugendweihe is closely associated with the former East German state, which employed it as a means of secularisation and of creating ‘socialist personalities’. Empirical studies on Jugendweihe therefore largely focus on the public ceremony, reinforcing the view that in modern state societies the state (public/political) and kinship (private/domestic) are two distinct domains, in which ‘the family’ is believed to be unimportant to the public domain. By contrast, I analyse the Jugendweihe family celebration as providing initiates with both ‘roots’ and ‘wings’: re-creating ties to kin and regional home (roots) and socially acknowledging the initiate’s end of childhood (wings).
Author(s): Wesser G
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology
Year: 2023
Volume: 88
Issue: 4
Pages: 882-899
Print publication date: 01/10/2023
Online publication date: 09/05/2021
Acceptance date: 27/04/2021
Date deposited: 12/04/2024
ISSN (print): 0014-1844
ISSN (electronic): 1469-588X
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2021.1924218
DOI: 10.1080/00141844.2021.1924218
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