Johnnie said:
Don't be so defensive about 'looking German'. And drop the 'Nazi' element, that's getting rather old and tired.
And yes, indeed, different nationalities DO have a certain physical
'look' about them, ie Italians, Irish....Chinese...LOL.
I do in fact think Grace looked more like her German side of the family as she got older (her mother, Margaret Majer, was of German descent).
Let's do what the mod wants and talk about Grace LeVine here: as several posters remarked how she resembled her aunt Grace Kelly, we can safely say that the comment about the "German looks" fits in with GL as well, as she is the granddaughter of Ma Kelly of the German descent.
Okay - the Nazi-comment. There was no such idea about a "German look" before the Nazis. The history of "Germany" has always been the history of most of the people of the middle of Europe as well - for centuries the Holy Roman Empire of Germany included European countries from the Baltic to Italy and from the French Border to Osmanic Turkey. It was only in the era of nationalism from around 1830 onwards that the expression "German" began to include only the countries that form today the Federal Republic of Germany, the Federal Republic of Austria and the German-speaking South Tyrolia, which is today a part of Italy.
Still, till the end of WW1 being "German" could mean an enormously wide range of ethnic origins, because being "German" was much more a political origin than an ethnic one. It still is that when it comes to the internal affairs of our country. While the South-Tyroleans feel like "Tyrolean Germans" with an Italian passport, I myself feel like a Palatinian with a German passport, because I'm from the Palatinate, even though I live in Bavaria today. It is an important part of our national identity that we don't really have a national identity, only a political one with a very complicated history.
As for the "German" looks - in reaction to the lost WW1 and the dire punishment the "German" countries received in the German parts of the former Austrian-Hungarian empire and in Germany itself political parties formed that made it their aim to further nationalism and national pride. It was not only the Nazis but these were the most sucessful. All things "Germanic" were put on a pedestral while all things "foreign" were treated as "sub-human". With it came the somehow pervese creation of the public image of the "typical German" with Nordic blond looks and the blue eyes - the "fair" type of Northern Europe. This image was used in all kind of propaganda efforts to make all people who were different in looks appear as second-class people. Notably the Jews and the gipsys, but the same happened to people from Poland, Czech and Slowakia countries, Hungaria, Romania.
While very young Jewish children with blond hair and blue eyes were more than once saved from concentration camps and given to typical "German" families for raising. Or Germanic looking children were stolen from their parents in Denmark and Norway after these countires were occupied and taken to Germany by force for a "German" education.
It's this historic background that makes me so angry when I see that while American children sometimes don't even learn in school where Germany is at all (it's right in the middle of Europe, on the northern part of continental Europe), many of the Americans I met still believe that there is something like "German looks". Claudia Schiffer and Heidi Klum simply don't represent the "Germans". There is no thing like the "Fraeuleinwunder". It could be funny, especially as it is obvious that it's mostly the Germans of Scandinavian descent who have these looks, but not the majority of Germany's citizens.
But for many Germans it is not funny. We've overcome the Nazi regime but we obviously can't overcome the Nazi myth of how we are looking if we are "real" Germans. It's a form of racism, even if it is not meant in any way as negative or insulting, but it's a way to distinguish between "real" Germans according to this Nazi-myth and the rest of us. Which could be treated light-heartedly, I agree, but should not in view of the not so long ago past.
So it's IMHO alright to state that both the daughter and grand-daughter of "Ma" Kelly have looks which remind of fair Europeans as part of their ancestry but there is no such thing as a "German look".
I hope I could make my point clearer.
Greetings from Bavaria in the South of Germany, which is north of Austrian Tyrolia and the Tyrolean North of Italy, Jo of Palatine.