1. War Remembrance and Geschichtspolitik in Weimar Germany
HI175 – The Historian’s Toolkit
War Remembrance and Geschichtspolitik in Weimar Germany

2. War Remembrance
The scale and nature of the First World War led to a cultural shift in the ways that nations commemorated war.
New styles and forms of monument needed to reflect the huge numbers killed and problem of those whose remains were unidentifiable or never recovered.
Demand for national monuments as well as local memorials.
But debate about what types of monument and the iconography that they should employ were appropriate, often reflecting wider political or social divisions.

3. Nagelfigur

4. War Remembrance in Inter-war Germany
In 1919 the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge (German War Graves Commission) established as a private charity in accordance with Article 225 of the Treaty of Versailles.
A number of public sites and acts of remembrance to commemorate those killed in WW1: War Cemetries, memorials, a proposed Volkstrauertag (people’s day of mourning).
Often these the focus of political disagreement – part of a larger struggle over identity and memory in the Weimar Republic which often incorporated very different versions of Germany’s recent history.

5. The Debate over a National Memorial
The Neue Wache (New Guardhouse) on the Unter den Linden, Berlin, was designated "Memorial of the Prussian State Government” in It is now the Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany for the Victims of War and Dictatorship.

6. “Nationalist” vs. “Pacifist” Iconography
The sculptor Ernst Barlach’s Magdeburger Ehrenmal (Magdeburg commemorative sculpture,1929) and Der Schwebende (Hovering Angel, 1927) in Güstrow cathedral were controversial due to their perceived pacifism.

7. Geschichtspolitik
Literally, ‘History Politics’ or the ‘Politics of History’.
“The politically motivated use of historical narratives within the pubic discourse” (Robert Gerwarth)
The “political use of history in the public sphere, in order to achieve mobilizing, politicizing, or legitimizing effects in political debate” (Edgar Wolfrum)
The struggle over the Weimar Republic’s place in German history and therefore a struggle for political legitimacy and national identity.

8. Creating a Republican Tradition?
Election poster for the Volksblock candidate in the 1925 presidential election presenting the Weimar Republic as the fulfilment of the liberal nationalist vision of 1848 (Left). The caption reads: “What our fathers thought in ’48, their grandchildren of ’18 have accomplished! Who wants to betray the banner which Grimm and Uhland unfurled?”

9. Communist Visions of the Past and Future
Left: Rosa Luxemburg ( ): “the wretchedness of the German March revolution [of 1848] was the ball and chain hindering Germany’s entire modern development”. Right: The Memorial to fallen Sparticists, in Friedrichsfelde (1926).

10. Nationalist Visions of German History
Top: German National People’s Party (DNVP) posters drawing on Prussian history – the Teutonic Knight, Prussian King Frederick the Great and Bismarck. The captions read “Save the East” (left) and “Save my Prussia” (right)
Bottom: Nazi postcard showing the continuity between Hitler and Prussian leaders. The Caption reads “What the king conquered, the prince formed, and the field marshal defended, was rescued and united by the soldier”

11. Conclusions
The scale of the destruction wrought by the First World War resulted in a demand for new ways to commemorate the dead.
But this was not uncontroversial: significant differences in the ways that different countries commemorated the conflict and political debate over how it should be remembered.
In Germany and elsewhere this linked to wider debates over memory, national identity and the “ownership of History”.
Such debates often a feature of modern pluralist societies and important in forming how a community sees itself and legitimising a vision of state and society.
The past is political!