Willy Jaeckel’s representations of soldiers as victims during the First World War in Germany

This article interrogates the position of the anarchist movement towards state authorities and the mainstream society from fin de siècle to the end of the First World War in Germany. Looking both at its ideological contents and propagandistic means, the article interprets anarchism as a movement beyond the sphere of ‘legitimate politics’. During the late 19th century, the movement was perceived and represented as a both criminal and insane organisation that aimed at political murderer and social upheaval. With the early twentieth century, especially the anti-militarist aspect of the anarchist ideology arose the suspicion of the security organs. With the outbreak of war in August 1914, anarchist press largely fall prey to a rigorous censorship. Under military rule, many activists were imprisoned and others conscribed to the army, leading to the quasi extinction of the movement by the end of the conflict.

In the Lilla scenen of Uppsala Stadsteater (City Theatre), a haunting echo of the past emerged, meticulously stitched from the pages of Stig Dagerman’s raw recounting of post-war Germany, German Autumn, a series of articles for the newspaper Expressen collected as a book published in 1947 that has never been out of print. Dagerman was considered a wunderkind of the Swedish literary scene that included writers Erik Lindegren and Karl Vennberg. While many of Dagerman’s literary works and plays have been staged, this is the first theatrical adaptation of German Autumn. The adaptation is less a homage to Dagerman than a critical engagement with his reflections on the immediate aftermath of the Second World War in Germany – referred to by Harald Jähner as the ‘Time of Wolves’ – often pushed aside in hushed tones and shameful silences. Director, Anna Takanen, and dramatist and journalist, Stig Hansén, have taken up the demanding task of adapting a work without the usual fictional scaffolding, crafting a cohesive narrative tapestry out of Dagerman’s travel essays. 1 1. For a review of this production, please see: Bryce Lease, ‘“German Autumn” at the Uppsala Stadsteater’, The Theatre Times, September 20, 2023, https://thetheatretimes.com/german-autumn-at-the-uppsala-stadsteater/. In this interview, Bryce Lease discusses the adaptation with Takanen and Hansén about their exploration of loss, redemption, guilt, shame, and humour in a landscape laid waste by war.

Algunos comentaristas alemanes se han referido al año 2014 como el Supergedenksjahr –el año de la súperconmemoración– que señala el 25 aniversario de la caída del Muro de Berlín, el 75 aniversario del comienzo de la Segunda Guerra Mundial y el centenario del estallido de la Primera Guerra Mundial. Este artículo ofrece varias observaciones acerca de la conmemoración de la Primera Guerra Mundial dentro del contexto más amplio de las política con respecto al pasado en la Alemania contemporánea. En primer lugar, la Primera Guerra Mundial emerge de las sombras de otros dos eventos de enorme importancia en la historia alemana del siglo XX –el Tercer Reich y la división de Alemaniasuperada en 1989. Si esto se mantendrá así es incierto, puesto que la atracción por los otros dos eventos se mantiene pujante. En segundo lugar, si hubo algún debate primordial en Alemania sobre la Primera Guerra Mundial se debe en gran parte al éxito del libro Sonámbulos, de Christopher Clark. Su tesis sobre la responsabilidad compartida se analizó en contraposición a la tesis de fondo de Fritz Fischer, que atribuía gran parte de la responsabilidad a los imprudentes líderes alemanes. A su vez, el resurgimiento del debate sobre la culpabilidad de la guerra se relacionó con los debates actuales sobre el rol de Alemania en la política europea. Para terminar, la conmemoración se ha caracterizado por un alejamiento del marco estado-nación, por lo que muchas exhibiciones y programas adoptan o una perspectiva global o local.

Background: It is widely acknowledged that Donald Munro in the United States (1936) and Ludwig Guttmann in the United Kingdom (1944) are the founders of the modern treatment of spinal injuries. However, Germany was the birthplace of neuropathology and led the field in neurology and psychiatry. The first effective spinal injury units were established by Wilhelm Wagner in Königshütte, Silesia and Emil Kocher in Bern, Switzerland at the end of the 19th century. Summary: The modern principles of spinal injury treatment emanated from the work carried out by Wagner and Kocher. This knowledge was applied during the First World War in Germany, France, Austria, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Marburg established a unit in Vienna, Dr. and Mrs. Déjerine and their team of French doctors treated casualties from the First World War and, in the United Kingdom, Gordon Holmes, George Riddoch and Henry Head treated soldiers suffering from spinal injuries in specialised units. After the war these units closed down, doctors went back to their previous occupations and the expertise gained was lost or, in the case of Germany, suppressed. It was only in 1939 when Ludwig Guttmann, a Jewish refugee, arrived in the United Kingdom that this specialised knowledge was used to set up satisfactory treatment. Key Messages: Many of the key principles of treatment for spinal injuries were developed at the end of the 19th century and during the First World War but units closed down and the knowledge gained was forgotten. With the advent of the Second World War, German refugees, many of whom had worked in the field of neurology (including Ludwig Guttmann), came to the United Kingdom armed with a thorough training in neurology and rehabilitation and applied these principles to the treatment of spinal injuries for the benefit of the country which gave them refuge.

As German men were conscripted into the armed forces during the Second World War, more and more wives were left to manage their families alone. At the same time more women than ever entered paid employment to fill the gaps in the market left by their soldier husbands. Scholars working in the field have made much of the dislocation to gender roles prompted by the Second World War. This article questions whether women's wartime experiences changed their views on being confined to the home. Ultimately, this article argues, women wanted to return to a sense of normality at the end of the war. In the aftermath of defeat, in which mere survival rather than speculation about potentially improved models of the family set-up were paramount, "normality" was most obviously represented by prewar gender roles. Women were hoping for normalization, not only in the public sphere in the sense of a flourishing economy, but also in the private sphere with the return of the men and a resumption of the old role divisions. It was therefore not only conservative politicians who wished to preserve prewar structures within the home - so too did women themselves. The re-emergence of the traditional family model in the wake of the Second World War was thus as much the result of popular aspirations "from below" as of government policies imposed "from above".

Faced with the possibility of being drawn into a war on several fronts, the United States sought to win Mexican support for a new strategy of Hemispheric Security, based on defense collaboration by governments throughout the Americas. U.S. leaders were concerned that Mexico might become a base for enemy operations, a scenario that, given the presence of pro-Axis lobbies in Mexico and the rumored fraternization between Mexico and Germany in World War I, seemed far from implausible in 1939-41. Strategy, Security, and Spies tells the fascinating story of U.S. relations with Mexico during the war years, involving everything from spies and internal bureaucratic struggles in both countries to all sorts of diplomatic maneuverings. Although its focus is on the interactions of the two countries, relative to the threat posed by the Axis powers, a valuable feature of the study is to show how Mexico itself evolved politically in crucial ways during this period, always trying to maintain the delicate balance between the divisive force of Mexican nationalism and the countervailing force of economic dependency and security self-interest.

The collection of periodicals of camps for displaced persons and the Ukrainian emigrant press are considered as a study source for investigation of historical and cultural heritage of the Ukrainian Diaspora. It is highlighted that despite challenging conditions after the Second World War, the Ukrainian emigrants cared not only about material needs, but also preserved national cultural heritage. It is argued that the process mentioned above took place in constant struggle with the Soviet repressive system, which aspired to bring back as many displaced persons as possible. However, deliberate Ukrainian intellectuals had different political views but were united by the Ukrainian national idea and created significant historical and cultural heritage after the Second World War, particularly in Germany, part of the heritage was described on the pages of periodicals of the Ukrainian Diaspora. Number and social composition of the Ukrainian emigrants after the Second World War in Germany and Austria is analyzed on the basis of the periodicals, particularly «The Bulletin of Information Help Service». Establishment of educational institutions, archives and libraries in 1945–1948 in Germany is described. Considerable attention is paid to analysis of periodical the «UFAS Chronicle», and investigation of activities of the museum-archive, scientific library and «The Society for the Protection of Ukrainian Heritage Abroad» of the Ukrainian Free Academy of Science in Germany is based on these materials. Significant attention should be drawn to activities of the Scientific and Research Institute of the Ukrainian Martyrology of the Ukrainian Political Prisoners League. Study of the Ukrainian Diaspora periodicals enables to formulate source study vision for students to understand participation of Diaspora in preservation of the heritage and ways of utilization in tourist activities.

About 3,000–5,000 Estonians who served in the imperial Russian army in World War I ended up as prisoners of war (POWs) in German prison camps. Initially, they were treated as any other ‘Russians’ and endured malnutrition, backbreaking labor, and harsh treatment by the guards. From 1917, however, as Germany settled on the strategic aim of conquering the whole of the Baltic region, they began to be subjected to special treatment with the goal of making them more ‘German-friendly.’ The new German policies meant better living conditions, but also some exposure to German propaganda. This article considers the impact of these German policies on the lived experience of the Estonian POWs.

Heroic soldiers represented the masculine ideal throughout nineteenth-century Germany. The Wars of Liberation and Unification reinforced the political and cultural construction of martial masculinity and were influential in securing enthusiastic support for the outbreak of war in 1914. Drawing on wartime self-portraits produced by German soldier-artists during World War I, this article argues that the war experience led men to challenge and redefine traditional male identities based on heroic soldiering. The confrontation with violent mass death engendered an existential crisis that invalidated old notions of wartime bravery and heroism. For mobilized German artists, self-portraiture represented a means of defining alternative wartime roles and presenting the soldier as survivor.

In the article investigational three magazines which went out after Second World war in Germany and Austria in the environment of the Ukrainian emigrants, is «Theater» (edition of association of artists of the Ukrainian stage), «Student flag» (a magazine of the Ukrainian academic young people is in Austria), «Young friends» (a plastoviy magazine is for senior children and youth). The thematic structure of magazines, which is inferior the association of different on age, is considered, by vital experience and professional orientation of people in the conditions of the forced emigration, paid regard to graphic registration of magazines, which, without regard to absence of the proper publisher-polydiene bases, marked structuralness and expressiveness. A repertoire of periodicals of Ukrainian migration is in the American, English and French areas of occupation of Germany and Austria after Second world war, which consists of 200 names, strikes the tipologichnoy vseokhopnistyu and testifies to the high intellectual level of the moved persons, desire of yaknaynovishe, to realize the considerable potential in new terms with hope on transference of the purchased experience to Ukraine. On ruins of Europe for two-three years the network of the press, which could be proud of the European state is separately taken, is created. Different was a period of their appearance: from odnogo-dvokh there are to a few hundred numbers, that it is related to intensive migration of Ukrainians to the USA, Canada, countries of South America, Australia. But indisputable is a fact of forming of conceptions of newspapers and magazines, which it follows to study, doslidzhuvati and adjust them to present Ukrainian realities. Here not superfluous will be an example of a few editions on the thematic range of which the names – «Plastun» specify, «Skob», «Mali druzi», «Sonechko», «Yunackiy shliah», «Iyzhak», «Lys Mykyta» (satire, humour), «Literaturna gazeta», «Ukraina і svit», «Ridne slovo», «Hrystyianskyi shliah», «Golos derzhavnyka», «Ukrainskyi samostiynyk», «Gart», «Zmag» (sport), «Litopys politviaznia», «Ukrains’ka shkola», «Torgivlia i promysel», «Gospodars’ko-kooperatyvne zhyttia», «Ukrainskyi gospodar», «Ukrainskyi esperantist», «Radiotehnik», «Politviazen’», «Ukrainskyi selianyn» Considering three riznovektorni magazines «Teatr» (edition of Association Mistciv the Ukrainian Stage), «Studentskyi prapor» (a magazine of the Ukrainian academic young people is in Austria), «Yuni druzi» (a plastoviy magazine is for senior children and youth) assert that maintenance all three magazines directed on creation of different on age and by the professional orientation of national associations for achievement of the unique purpose – cherishing and maintainance of environments of ukrainstva, identity, in the conditions of strange land. Without regard to unfavorable publisher-polydiene possibilities, absence of financial support and proper encouragement, release, followed the intensive necessity of concentration of efforts for achievement of primary purpose – receipt and re-erecting of the Ukrainian State.

In this article I discuss the prosthetic phenomenon during the First World War and Weimar Germany. As opposed to contemporary trends, with their inflationary use of the ‘prosthesis’, sometimes even hypothesizing ‘prostheticization’ as a paradigm, I seek to return the debate about the prosthesis to its historical concreteness. I describe the phenomenology of the prosthesis in three senses: first, in the statistical sense, in the form of a dramatic growth in the number of prostheses; second, in the visual sense, in the form of a dramatic growth in the visibility of the prosthesis. Basing myself on the Heideggerian perception of the ‘phenomenon’, I seek to reveal an additional, third, aspect of the phenomenology of the prosthesis. It is my contention, against the background of the major catastrophe of the First World War and the frequent crises that afflicted Weimar Germany, but also in the light of additional contexts — technological, economic, cultural — that the prosthesis was increasingly perceived as a phenomenon, i.e. as something which appeared in a wide range of ways — as prosthesis, as tool (hammer, writing instrument), as an organic limb (hand, leg), and even as a paradigm (man as ‘prosthetic God’, man as ‘Dasein’).

The phenomenon of the huge number of disabled veterans belongs to the most bitter of long-term consequences of the industrialised warfare of the First World War. In the defeated nation of Germany, it was the handling of precisely these many millions of war victims which proved to be a difficult inheritance for the Weimar Republic and greatly complicated its inner stability throughout the 1920s. It was ultimately National Socialism that was able to massively exploit the unresolved question of the war victims and thus the embattled memory of the First World War.

There can be no reasonable doubt that twentieth-century total wars had a significant impact on the domestic populations of the countries involved. Most obviously there was the removal of millions of young men into the army, there was also a major re-orientation of production towards war industries and this had a major impact on employment and consumption, and finally, in most of the combatant nations, there were substantial restrictions on everyday life brought about by shortages and government controls. Similarly, it should be obvious that the intensity of the impact of these pressures would have varied between nations: depending above all on whether they were defeated, invaded, or both. Thus there was a dramatic contrast between Britain and Belgium during World War I, with the latter experiencing drastic declines in living standards and an increase in death rates among non-combatant age groups of up to 60 per cent. Equally there was a striking contrast between Britain and Germany in World War I as the British stranglehold over sea-borne trade gradually brought the German economy to its knees.1 Since Britain was not invaded and came out on the victorious side, it would seem likely that her domestic population suffered much less during World War I than that in most continental nations.

Interest in the history of military psychiatry has intensified during the past two decades. Writers have tended to focus on circumstances affecting a single armed force during a single conflict—notably Britain and Germany in World War I, and the United States following the Vietnam War. The treatment of psychogenic trauma has attracted the most attention. Ben Shephard's book stands out from previous studies in several respects. It spans eighty years and includes the two world wars, the Korean Conflict, the Vietnam War, and the wars in the Falklands and the Persian Gulf, although most of the book concerns British, American, and German psychiatry during the world wars. While First World War psychiatry has been the object of considerable scholarly attention, the treatment of psychiatric casualties in the Second World War is less well explored—until now at least, for nearly half of A War of Nerves is devoted to this war.

INTRODUCTION By World War I, improvements in technology, particularly the innovation of long-range coastal defense guns, mines, and submarines, had all but ruled out “close blockades” of the type that characterized warfare from the English-French continental wars of the eighteenth century through at least the American Civil War. Earlier, most blockades were “close blockades,” that “must be confined to ports and coasts belonging to or occupied by the enemy.” By 1914, however, “ close ” blockades had been replaced by “ distant ” ones. The blockading vessels were now almost always positioned further out to sea, with a corresponding potential for more contact with nonbelligerent shipping; however, as long as the blockade can adequately restrict movements into and out of enemy ports, this form of interdiction is considered legally valid. Another important change is that although in the twentieth century most blockades have been enforced by government-owned-and-operated vessels, in the past the blockading vessels have included private ships operating under letters of marque as government approved privateers. Historically, the distinction between private and government blockades raised a number of issues including legal questions of controls over appropriate behavior and domestic questions involving the relative size of peacetime and wartime navies. LESSONS FROM THE PAST: WORLD WAR I Given its precursors and the size of the conflagration, it is not surprising that policies adopted during World War I almost entirely rewrote the rules of naval blockades; and the history of the war itself appeared to confirm that, in the future, the convoy was to become the ultimate weapon against a “distant” blockade.