‘But in death he has found victory’: the funeral ceremonies for the ‘knights of the sky’ during the Great War as transnational media events1

Abstract

In contrast to most literature on the First World War, which holds that fallen soldiers in the Great War were buried as equal comrades, this article seeks to show that some of the fallen were accorded more prestige than others. This will be explored by analysing the fate of some of the most famous German and French ‘knights of the sky’. Their death and, most of all, their funeral ceremonies show to what extent they were exploited for political and propaganda purposes, communicated by the print media. The funeral ceremonies will be analysed with regard to a ‘new political history’ or ‘history of politics’, and it will also be discussed how the air war in the First World War was perceived in a transnational perspective and in what manner the ‘knights of the sky’ were communicatively produced. Overall, the funeral ceremonies for the fallen fighter pilots followed a more or less determined ritual that, as a communicative action, was meant to send manifold messages to the public sphere, which were not limited to the aviator's own nation but directed to the whole world, so that these ceremonies can be described as transnational media events. These examples show which rituals and symbolic practices politics can draw on in order to visualise power and leadership through political communication.