Politics and Poetics in Discourse about Veterans 1914-1939

Dissertation project by Sarah Mohi-von Känel

In Germany the status of homecoming soldiers and their problematic reintegration into society was an on-going topic of heated debate in the period between World War One and World War Two. Representations of “November 1918” and of the reintegration of returned soldiers and their recuperation became central to propel and symbolise the changes from monarchy to Weimar Republic and to the National Socialist dictatorship. Each political system established its own ways of representing and remembering homecoming soldiers and their status in the precarious post-war society.
The PhD-Project “‘Kriegsheimkehrer’. Politics and Poetics 1914-1939” explores with a comparative discourse analysis how different sections of society represent homecoming soldiers and their role in post-war society from the beginning of the First World War to the beginning of the Second World War. The project investigates the ways returning soldiers are represented by medicine, law, military and politics and sets these representations in comparison with the arts.
What are the politics (mechanisms of controlling and governing a society and a state) and the poetics (rhetorical and narrative patterns) in the discourse about soldiers in society after the First World World War? How does this discourse change in order to re-mobilize German society for the next World War? Which words, images and narratives describe the demobilisation? How do these descriptions provide patterns for ideological statements? How do literary texts, dramatic performances and paintings subvert, support or reinvent the issue and what are the reactions of society to such representations?
The study aims at exploring that and how in talking and writing about veterans between the World Wars more than mere descriptions of a life after military service was at stake. Homecoming soldiers and their status in society were represented in ways that tried to explain and change society. Therefore, discourse about ‘Kriegsheimkehrer’ was a ‘sensor’ and a ‘motor’ for the German transition from Post- to Pre-War Society. The arts played a quintessential role in this discourse inasmuch as they constantly reflected, criticised, hyperbolised or supported non-artistic representations about the homecoming soldiers.