On the Harvard campus, relics of Germanic high culture are never far away: a bronze replica of a medieval lion sculpture from Lower Saxony graces the courtyard of Adolphus Busch Hall, named for an émigré who made his fortune selling—what else?—beer and diesel engines. A counterpoint to that building’s historicist opulence can be found in the sober Modernism of the Law School’s graduate dorms designed by a team led by Walter Gropius during his tenure at the university. As ciphers for rigor, perfection, and intellectual prowess, mythical versions of Germany are deployed as fodder for the Harvard myth itself. “Made in Germany? Art and Identity in a Global Nation,” at the university’s Busch-Reisinger Museum, adds a further chapter to this transatlantic double vision, focusing on art since 1980 from the GDR and the Federal Republic (FRG). However, national myth-making here gives way to an astute selection of artworks that pry open the cracks in a state that defines belonging foremost through adherence to cultural and linguistic standards, evident in the language and knowledge test that immigrants must pass for naturalization. “Made in Germany?” coaxes out the tense dialectics between a nation’s openness towards outside cultures and economies, and the nationalist …