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Monuments, Kitsch, and the Sense of Nation in Imperial Germany

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 January 2017

Helmut Walser Smith
Helmut Walser Smith*
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University
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Abstract

This article shows how the material culture of nationhood can reveal a different perspective on the problem of nationalism. Using simple time graphs and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), the article considers temporal and spatial dimensions of “nation objects” in an effort to understand the allusive phenomenon of banal, everyday national identity. Specifically, it brings together quantitative evidence for the pervasiveness of veterans monuments, Kaiser Wilhelm I and Otto von Bismarck monuments, as well as monuments to Germany's great intellectuals, and then examines the world of objects, largely kitsch, that these monuments brought forth. The article argues that, especially in small-town Germany, objects signifying the nation point to a national sentiment governed less by the sharp logic of ideology than by the harmonizing tendencies of kitsch.

Dieser Aufsatz zeigt, wie die materielle Kultur der nationalen Einheit eine andere Perspektive auf das Problem des Nationalismus bieten kann. Durch die Verwendung einfacher Zeitgraphiken und Geographic Information Systems (GIS) werden die zeitlichen und räumlichen Dimensionen von “Nationalobjekten” betrachtet, um das anspielungsreiche Phänomen banaler, alltäglicher Nationalidentität zu begreifen. Konkret werden quantitative Nachweise weit verbreiteter Kriegsdenkmäler, Denkmäler für Kaiser Wilhelm I. und Otto von Bismarck sowie Denkmäler für Deutschlands führende Intellektuelle zusammengeführt und im Anschluss daran die Welt der Objekte – größtenteils Kitsch –, die diese Denkmäler hervorgebracht haben, untersucht. Dabei wird argumentiert, dass diese die Nation repräsentierenden Objekte vor allem im kleinstädtischen Deutschland auf ein Nationalgefühl verweisen, das weniger durch klar definierte Ideologie als vielmehr durch die harmonisierenden Tendenzen von Kitsch bestimmt ist.

Type
Articles
Information
Central European History , Volume 49 , Issue 3-4 , December 2016 , pp. 322 - 340
Copyright
Copyright © Central European History Society of the American Historical Association 2016 

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References

1 The relevant literature is cited in Judson, Pieter M., “Nationalism in the Era of the Nation-State, 1870–1945,” in The Oxford Handbook of Modern German History, ed. Smith, Helmut Walser (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 499–526 Google Scholar.

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8 It is difficult to select the outstanding exemplars in this tradition, even when the sample is limited to Imperial Germany, the subject of nationalism, and English-language publications. Within this group, the older works include Blackbourn, David, Class, Religion, and Local Politics in Wilhelmine Germany (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Koshar, Rudy, Social Life, Local Politics, and Nazism: Marburg, 1880–1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Applegate, Celia, A Nation of Provincials: The German Idea of Heimat (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Confino, Alon, The Nation as a Local Metaphor: Württemberg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory, 1871–1918 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997)Google Scholar. Of the newer works, see esp. Zimmer, Oliver, Remaking the Rhythms of Life: German Communities in the Age of the Nation-State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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