6 - Commemorating World War I Soldiers as Martyrs

Summary

Abstract

Jan Willem van Henten takes a speech by the English Bishop Arthur Winnington Ingram from 1914 for the bereaved families of fallen soldiers as point of departure for a survey of the commemoration of soldiers who died in World War 1 as martyrs. Winnington Ingram characterises the soldiers whom he commemorates as martyrs and links them to Stephen, the proto-martyr of the Church (Acts 7). Van Henten explores whether Winnington Ingram's speech is an isolated case or if others also commemorated soldiers who were killed during the Great War as martyrs, indirectly or explicitly. Van Henten concentrates on several case studies about German and British soldiers: a mosaic referring to the soldiers, a chapel at two German military cemeteries in Belgium (Hooglede and Menen), and a stained glass window and a table with names of the fallen at the All Saints Church at Huntingdon (Cambridgeshire). This chapter discusses the particularities of these commemorations as well as how the soldiers are associated with martyrdom and the reward of martyrs with the help of Christian pictorial traditions and specific biblical passages.

Keywords: World War I martyrs, Christian pictorial traditions, war memorials and cemeteries, commemoration, national heroes

Introduction: Commemorating the Fallen of World War I as Martyrs

Martyrdom traditions have become a fascinating framework of reference for commemorating soldiers and other victims of mostly military violence during WWI. Individual persons who were believed to have made an exceptional sacrifice during WWI are sometimes commemorated as martyrs. One example of such a person is the nurse Edith Cavell, who is, among other things, commemorated as a ‘nurse, patriot, and martyr’ on her memorial outside Norwich Cathedral. The Germans executed her on 12 October 1915, because of the help she had given to Allied soldiers trapped in occupied Belgium. Edith Cavell was a devout Anglican and widely perceived as a Christian martyr, as several monuments imply. Her statue in London at St. Martin's Place near Trafalgar Square, created by Sir George Frampton, is mainly secular in tone but surmounted by a Cross and Virgin with Child.

A second type of commemoration as martyrs concerns soldiers killed in the Great War. Such a commemoration is common in Turkey as the successor of the Ottoman Empire, but much rarer in countries of North-West Europe. This makes the exceptions all the more interesting.