Skip to Main Content
Frequently Asked Questions
Submit an ETD
Global Search Box
Need Help?
Keyword Search
Participating Institutions
Advanced Search
School Logo
Files
File List
osu1345476644.pdf (1.52 MB)
ETD Abstract Container
Abstract Header
Soldiering On: Images of the German Soldier (1985-2008)
Author Info
Richards, Kevin A.
Permalink:
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1345476644
Abstract Details
Year and Degree
2012, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Germanic Languages and Literatures.
Abstract
The criminal legacy of National Socialism cast a shadow of perpetration and collaboration upon the post-war image of the German soldier. These negative associations impeded Helmut Kohl’s policy to normalize the state use of the military in the mid-eighties, which prompted a politically driven public relations campaign to revise the image of the German soldier. This influx of new narratives produced a dynamic interplay between political rhetoric and literature that informed and challenged the intuitive representations of the German soldier that anchor positions of German national identity in public culture. This study traces that interplay via the positioning of those representations in relation to prototypes of villains, victims, and heroes in varying rescue narrative accounts in three genre of written culture in Germany since 1985: that is, since the overt attempts to change the function of the Bundeswehr in the context of (West) German normalization began to succeed. These genre are (1) security publications (and their political and academic legitimizations), (2) popular fantasy literature, and (3) texts in the tradition of the Vergangenheitsbewältigung. I find that the accounts presented in the government’s White Papers and by Kohl, Nolte, and Hillgruber in the mid-1980s gathered momentum over the course of three decades and dislodged the dominant association of the German soldier with the villainy of National Socialism. The new dominant account established in the genre of security policy publications and their political and academic legitimations positions the German soldier as a European Christian hero and displaces the villainy previously associated with his image onto foreign powers and their populace. An overview of the developments in the genre of popular Nibelung adaptations echoes the development of the antagonistic accounts in the White Papers of their periods, but then these adaptations conform to the generic expectations of the Nibelungen material, though the last novels I discuss break free from this. In the genre of literature in the tradition of the Vergangenheitsbewältigung, authors engage in the broader public debates concerning the German soldier and national identity and produce counter-narratives that are both antagonistic to the dominant narrative as well as other antagonistic accounts.
Committee
John Davidson, PhD (Advisor)
Anna Grotans (Committee Member)
Katra Byram (Committee Member)
Pages
242 p.
Subject Headings
Germanic Literature
;
Modern History
Keywords
German Soldier
;
Bundeswehr
;
Jurek Becker
;
Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung
;
Stephanie Zweig
;
Normalization
;
Discourse
;
Cognitive Narratology
;
Marcel Beyer
;
Wolfgang Hohlbein
;
Thorsten Dewi
;
Juergen Lodemann
;
Flughunde
;
Bronsteins Kinder
;
Recommended Citations
Refworks
EndNote
RIS
Mendeley
Citations
Richards, K. A. (2012).
Soldiering On: Images of the German Soldier (1985-2008)
[Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1345476644
APA Style (7th edition)
Richards, Kevin.
Soldiering On: Images of the German Soldier (1985-2008).
2012. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation.
OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center
, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1345476644.
MLA Style (8th edition)
Richards, Kevin. "Soldiering On: Images of the German Soldier (1985-2008)." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2012. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1345476644
Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)
Abstract Footer
Document number:
osu1345476644
Download Count:
1,956
Copyright Info
© 2012, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.