The Image of the Soldier in German Culture, 1871-1933

"This study examines the force of tradition in conservative German visual culture. It explores thematic continuities in the post-conflict representation of battlefield identities, from the 25th anniversary of the Franco-Prussian War in 1895 to the demise of the Weimar Republic in 1933. Using 40 carefully chosen images from both high and low culture, Paul Fox discusses complex and interdependent responses in German visual culture to a wide spectrum of operational military experience. These include regional conflict, total war, internal security operations and border skirmishes during the period. The book demonstrates how conservative artists, illustrators, photographers, and sculptors engaged in representing this full spectrum of conflict were preoccupied with the inequalities of battlefield encounters and the consequential quest for moral advantage. They furnished material that exemplified everything positive the ideal German male could hope to be when at war - even when the outcome was defeat. Their construction of an imagined martial masculinity based on an aggressive moral superiority was so deeply rooted that the continuities taken forward eventually provided a basis for a programmatic imagining of how Germany might again exert its political presence as a great military power in Central Europe after 1918. The Image of the Soldier in German Culture, 1871—1933 is an important volume for any historian interested in cultural history, the history of modern Germany or the First World War."—Provided by publisher.