Visiting War: Royal Journeys to the Front in the First World War

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ABSTRACT In the First World War, royal visits to the front were important events for the cohesion of warring societies and the legitimation of European monarchies. As heads of state and (nominal) supreme commanders of their armies, European kings and emperors regularly travelled to the front to visit their troops in the field and establish a connection between the soldiers at the front, the people at home and the monarchy itself. However, as this article shows, royal visits to the front were also sensitive situations with complex dynamics in which the necessity and the difficulties of European monarchies to adapt to the political, social and military developments of the war became particularly visible. While the presence of the supreme commander and head of state at the front still fascinated many soldiers, the realities and experiences of war challenged the traditional languages of legitimation of European monarchies. In the light of the diminishing influence of European monarchs on military and political decisions as well as the brutal and stagnating war, royal representations as glorious leaders and superior beings appeared increasingly outdated. Instead, images of human and accessible monarchs who shared the suffering and hardships of the front life with their soldiers and subjects better corresponded with the experiences and developments of the war. Following the example of the Belgian King Albert I, more and more rulers tried to present themselves as modest and exemplary rulers. However, these new strategies of legitimation did not come without difficulties: The touristic character of many royal visits to the front and the problems of many European monarchs in finding a common language in personal interactions with their soldiers undermined the claims that the monarchs shared the hardships and suffering of the war with their subjects. Furthermore, the unwillingness of Europe’s autocratic rulers and their courts to adapt their strategies of legitimation to the experiences of the war and their reluctance to adopt new styles of representation contributed to the destabilisation of monarchies in Germany as well as in Austria-Hungary and Russia. Therefore, the article uses an international perspective on royal visits to the war zone, including various examples from Great Britain to Romania, to show the more and less successful adaptations of different European monarchies to the challenges of the First World War and contribute to a better understanding of the political and social transformations of the war.