‘Auf uns sinken die Toten’: Anti-War Sentiment in Expressionist Women’s Writing from the First World War

TY - CHAP

T1 - ‘Auf uns sinken die Toten’

T2 - Anti-War Sentiment in Expressionist Women’s Writing from the First World War

AU - Smale, Catherine Helen

PY - 2019/2/5

Y1 - 2019/2/5

N2 - Recent historical studies by Ingrid Sharp, Ute Planert, Jennifer A. Davy, Karen Hagemann have highlighted competing contemporary debates on women's roles in the First World War. However, significantly less attention has been paid to the ways in which literary texts also participate in and contribute to these debates. How do literary texts of the period negotiate these varied constructions of gendered engagement with the war? How, in particular, do women writers position themselves in relation to mainstream discourses which depicted women as enthusiastic supporters of the war? And how do their texts engage with and critique patriotic ideals of women’s suffering and sacrifice? This chapter addresses these questions by focusing on poems by expressionist writers such as Berta Lask (1878-1967), Hilde Stieler (1879-1965), Frida Bettingen (1865-1924), Franziska Stoecklin (1894-1931) and Trude Bernhard (dates unknown). These women wrote socially-engaged verse which, in different ways, conveys a powerful sense of gendered opposition to the war. Motivated by a sense of personal and collective loss, these writers challenge women to examine their responsibility for sustaining the myths which perpetuated the war. The chapter argues that their work sheds light on the ways in which women wrote themselves into the historical events of the period, either as observers or direct participants, and how they conceptualized their writing as a vehicle for social and political change.

AB - Recent historical studies by Ingrid Sharp, Ute Planert, Jennifer A. Davy, Karen Hagemann have highlighted competing contemporary debates on women's roles in the First World War. However, significantly less attention has been paid to the ways in which literary texts also participate in and contribute to these debates. How do literary texts of the period negotiate these varied constructions of gendered engagement with the war? How, in particular, do women writers position themselves in relation to mainstream discourses which depicted women as enthusiastic supporters of the war? And how do their texts engage with and critique patriotic ideals of women’s suffering and sacrifice? This chapter addresses these questions by focusing on poems by expressionist writers such as Berta Lask (1878-1967), Hilde Stieler (1879-1965), Frida Bettingen (1865-1924), Franziska Stoecklin (1894-1931) and Trude Bernhard (dates unknown). These women wrote socially-engaged verse which, in different ways, conveys a powerful sense of gendered opposition to the war. Motivated by a sense of personal and collective loss, these writers challenge women to examine their responsibility for sustaining the myths which perpetuated the war. The chapter argues that their work sheds light on the ways in which women wrote themselves into the historical events of the period, either as observers or direct participants, and how they conceptualized their writing as a vehicle for social and political change.

KW - World War I

KW - Gender

KW - Women's Writing

KW - Expressionism

KW - Grief

KW - Accountability

KW - Activism

M3 - Chapter

SN - 9780854572687

SN - 9783862056224

VL - 102

SP - 77

EP - 92

BT - Pacifist and Anti-Militarist Writing in German, 1892-1928: From Bertha von Suttner to Erich Maria Remarque

A2 - Robertson, Ritchie

A2 - Kramer, Andreas

PB - Iudicium; Institute of Germanic Studies, University of London

CY - Munich

ER -