Split Memory: World War I Memorialisation Practices in the Weimar Republic

The problem of historical memory and the politics of memory, the formation and evolution of memorial culture has become relevant in the context of the “mnemonic turn” in historiography, which began in the 1980s and continues until now. The events of World War I and its consequences in the interwar period occupied a central place in the communicative memory of the Germans and were the main object of historical politics in the Weimar Republic. For obvious reasons, there could be no place for triumphal memory in Germany. The memory of heroes acquired a special emotional meaning and pushed the grief memory version into the background, which was a natural compensation for the catastrophic defeat. Attempts by the official authorities and parties of the Weimar coalition to create a common memorial space of the last war for national consolidation and their own legitimisation ended in failure. In the conditions of a deep socio-political split in society on the brink of civil war, the opposing groups created and spread their own versions of the memory of war, not only competing, but also directly hostile to each other. At the same time, its main carriers were veteran organisations of various party affiliations. They were characterised by a specific memorial culture of admiration for the idealised image of the front-line soldier and disdain for the ones in the rear. As a result, the most significant places of memory, i.e. the Tannenberg Memorial in East Prussia and the Neue Wache building in Berlin never acquired national significance. In the confrontation between conflicting versions of memory, the advantage remained on the side of the conservative, nationalist, and anti-republican forces