War Memorials

I have long been interested in the German approach to the commemoration of war and last year's centenary of the beginning of the First World War caused me to think about the subject even more.  Both my boys attend school in Germany and I was determined that they should learn something about the awful conflagration that enveloped Germany and Britain (and of course others) 100 years ago, especially since the subject's coverage in Germany was low profile to say the least.  The centrepiece of my efforts involved a short detour to some First World War cemeteries and battlefields in Belgium as we drove back to Germany from the UK last summer.

"The Greiving Parents" by Käthe Kollwitz statues in the Vladslo German war cemetery - Duiksmuide, Belgium

We visited the German war cemetery at Diksmuide in Flanders.  The cemetery is famous for a remarkable pair of statues by the German sculptress Käthe Kollwitz.  The pair, modelled on Kollwitz and her husband, kneel at the head of the cemetery in which their own son, Peter, is buried. The effect is the antithesis of heroism and glory and one cannot help feel the consuming grief felt by a bereaved mother and father – in this instance in perpetuity.  The contrast with the Commonwealth Tyne Cot cemetery a few miles down the road could not be starker.  The scale and majesty of the British imperial architecture and the immaculate rows of individually engraved headstones is hugely impressive and redolent of the words “Dulce et Decorum est pro patria mori” - before Owen used them in an ironical sense in his great war poem. 

 

Tyne Cot Commonwealth War Cemetery - Passendale, Belgium



I am not sure what deductions, if any, one should make in comparing these two styles, except perhaps to note the Kollwitz erected her masterpieces in the 1930s and that, therefore, in some circles at least in Germany at that time, war was already perceived of as something awful and to be avoided at almost any cost.



War Memorial at Klotze, near Wolfsburg

Just as in the UK, after the First World War nearly every German village, town and city erected memorials to commemorate their dead.  Their style is sometimes simple as here in the small village of Klotze near the Drömling, and in other cases more ornate including idealised statues of soldiers - I have to say that these are less common maybe because of extra cost involved. 



War Memorial at Bühne, south of Braunschweig

At the end of the Second World War, just as in the UK, the names of the dead were, in most cases, added to the existing memorials.  But I think the national psychosis experienced by Germany after 1945, was so profound that the country turned its back on anything that reminded them of their recent past - including memorials to their war dead.  Sadly it's not uncommon to see memorials blighted by graffiti and broken glass which would be unheard of in the UK.  On the other hand, Germany's meticulous approach to facing up to her past has ensured that dreadful effects of war are never forgotten.  And this continues to shape this remarkable country's attitude to foreign policy and international relations even today.  Returning to Käthe Kollwitz, there is no finer example of this than the installation in 2007 of another one of her sculptures in the Neue Wache in central Berlin.  Kollwitz's epitaph is a memorial for all the victims of war.

"Mutter mit totem Sohn" - Neue Wache, Berlin