The image of the soldier in German culture, 1871-1933

General Information

Author/Creator
Fox, Paul (art historian), author. 1968-
Language
English.
Published
London ; Oxford ; New York ; New Delhi ; Sydney : Bloomsbury, 2018.
Physical Description
xi, 225 p. : 25 cm.

Contents/Summary

Summary
"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.

Subjects

Subject
Soldiers in art.
Soldiers > Germany > History.
Franco-Prussian War, 1870-1871 > Art and the war.
World War, 1914-1918 > Art and the war.
Masculinity in art.
Militarism > Germany.
Germany > History, Military > Historiography.

Bibliographic Information

Responsibility
Paul Fox.
Series
A modern history of politics and violence
Content
Representing armed conflict in the industrial age -- Adolph Menzel and the rhetoric of command -- Combat and the politics of border landscapes : soldier-farmers -- Combat and the politics of landscape : trench warfare -- Combat and the politics of landscape : aerial photography, maps, and the cold gaze -- Technology and combat in the Franco-Prussian war -- Technology and combat in the First World War -- Conclusion.
Library Special Collection
The Roger Griffin ComFas Collection
Available in another form
Online version: Fox, Paul (Art historian), author. Image of the soldier in German culture, 1871-1933 London ; New York : Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, [2018] 9781474226158 (DLC) 2017050876
ISBN
9781474226141

Holdings

Item Type Current Location Collection Call Number Volume Info Shelving Location Public Note
BookOSA Archivum LibraryGeneral collection704.9/4994308 FOXGeneral Stacks-

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