Login, E. (2013) ‘Monuments and Memory in Eastern France’
Rosetta 12.5: 35-42.
http://www.rosetta.bham.ac.uk/Colloquium2012/login_monuments.pdf
Rosetta 12.5. http://www.rosetta.bham.ac.uk/Colloquium2012/login_monuments.pdf
Monuments and Memory in Eastern France
Emma Login
PhD Candidate, 2nd Year
University of Birmingham, College of Arts and Law
Context
The last three decades have seen a dramatic increase in academic interest in the
study of memory and in particular “collective” and “social” memory.1 This has been
paralleled by popular interest in memory and especially genealogy and family
history. However the area that has received perhaps the greatest attention, both
academic and public, has been the memory of conflict.2 Initial research into
memorials and commemoration took a ‘top down’ approach, viewing memorials as
political instruments aimed at promoting nationalism and as justification for state
sponsored killing.3 This was subsequently challenged by an approach favouring the
role of memorials in relation to the psychological processes of mourning and the
emotional needs of a bereaved public.4 However recent scholarship has
demonstrated that the developments of memorials from political to personal forms
are neither separate nor sequential.5
In addition to this the discipline has also suffered from an approach that takes into
account only one small period of commemoration.6 Motivations for memorialisation
are concerned specifically with the circumstances of that particular conflict and fail to
take into account the memorial tradition itself. In order to overcome these problems
this research seeks to take a wider temporal perspective; situating war
memorialisation within a longer process in order to examine changes that occur over
1
See, for example, Berliner 1995; Confino 1997; Gedi and Elam 1996; Olick 1999; Olick and Robbins
1998.
2
See Keren, M. and H.H. Herwig 2009.
3
See, for example, Mayo 1988; Mosse 1990; Rowlands 1993.
4
See, for example, Sherman 1998; Tarlow 1999; Winter 1995.
5
Varley 2008: 9.
6
The First World War has dominated the study of memorialisation, for recent examples see Levitch
2006; Stamp 2007; Stephens 2007; Winter 2009; Winter 2011.
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time. By examining war memorialisation from the time of its initial emergence the
research seeks to demonstrate how understandings of the monuments evolve as
time passes from the conflict they commemorate and the ways in which
commemoration responds not only to the past being commemorated but to earlier
commemorations, and hence enacts a “memory of memory”. 7
The study area
Eastern France forms arguably the most contested area in modern European history.
Between 1871 and 1945 the region passed between French and German authority
four times, during three separate conflicts. The areas surrounding Sedan and Metz
are particularly representative of these changes. Both areas featured heavily in the
Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 and in the First and Second World Wars which
followed. Sedan was the site of humiliating French defeat on 1 September 1870 but
remained French through the peace terms that followed, only to be occupied again
during the First World War. Metz, the site of another great French defeat during the
1870-71 conflict was annexed by Germany until 1918 when it was returned to France
through the Treaty of Versailles. These areas are uniquely placed therefore to
demonstrate the changing processes of memorialisation and the ways in which these
evolved in France, first from the defeat of the Franco-Prussian War and then from
the victory of the First World War. The close proximity between French memorials
and their German counterparts also allows for a comparison of their treatment.
War memorials in eastern France
When war broke out between France and Prussia in 1870, few in France believed
that it would be anything other than a swift French victory. Yet, less than a year after
its outbreak, the conflict had resulted not only in the consolidation of the newly
formed German Empire but the total destruction of the military power of Imperial
France.8 This led to problems of memorialisation that France had yet to experience;
a conflict in which France had failed to win a single battle could not be memorialised
7
8
Olick 2007.
Howard 1961: 2.
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in the traditional triumphal way.9 If Landsberg is correct and monuments were
‘intended to serve as guarantors of national memory [that] both created the illusion of
a stable, recognisable past and promised to serve as a bulwark against further social
upheaval’ then the traditional form of war monument was definitely not suited to the
aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War.10 Yet rather than choosing not to
commemorate the conflict, it instead gave rise to what has been described ‘one of
the greatest waves of commemoration that the country had ever seen’.11
Yet this commemorative construction was very different from the war memorial forms
that had come before. Without great victories to commemorate attention was instead
turned to the human cost of war and the bravery of the common soldier. For
centuries soldiers had been treated as little more than criminals;12 but in the peace
terms that followed the Franco-Prussian War specific provisions were made not just
for the bodies of the fallen but also their memory.13 Ossuary monuments were
created to house the bodies of the dead both on the battlefields themselves and in
the surrounding villages. In addition to this commemorative monuments, not
associated with physical remains, were constructed on the battlefields themselves.
Although this itself was not a new phenomenon14 the scale of construction and the
tolerance shown towards these monuments by both sides was unprecedented. In
addition to this for the first time memorials were constructed in the village from which
the deceased came. Attitudes towards these memorials demonstrates an
understanding that they were not intended to glorify war, but instead were concerned
with marking the sacrifice of the men and women who had lost their lives as a
consequence of the conflict.
It was this implicit understanding of the memorial form that paved the way for a new
wave of commemoration; one which was concerned with the memory of the conflict
9
Of which France’s Arc de Triomphe commemorating the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars
provides the quintessential example
10
Landsberg 2004: 6.
11
Varley 2008: 1.
12
For example less than sixty years earlier, following the Prussian defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of
Leipzig, one German physician remarked that he had come across the ‘naked bodies of fallen
soldiers, lying in a local school yard to be eaten by ravens and dogs’ Mosse 1990: 47.
13
As outlined by Article 16 of the Treaty of Frankfurt. This stated that the French and German
authorities reciprocally agreed to respect and maintain the tombs of soldiers buried on their respected
territories. Varley 2002: 326.
14
See Carman, J. and Carman, P. 2006.
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rather than the dead, but which had been legitimised by the memorials that had
come before. Twenty years after the initial phase of memorialisation memorials
began to be constructed in order to deliberately shape the way that the conflict is
perceived and therefore the way it will enter the collective memory of future
generations. This was of particular relevance for the towns of eastern France, many
of which had become synonymous with defeat. In Sedan for example, in 1897,
twenty-six years after the end of the conflict, a memorial was unveiled which used
the image of a dying soldier in an effort to recast the memory of conflict from shame
and dishonour to bravery in the face of adversity. This demonstrates the complex
mix of political and bereavement narratives, in which a political message is made
acceptable through association with the fallen. Concerns expressed at the time
regarding the legitimacy of feelings behind these memorials suggests an early
understanding of the complexities involved with the construction of war memorials
and the ways in which they could be manipulated for political purposes.15 This
demonstrates, at the time of their construction, a conscious understanding of the
complex
nature
of
memorialisation
processes
and
its
accompanying
commemorations.
This understanding was to prove vital in the commemoration of the First World War.
The return of Alsace and Lorraine to France following the conflict demonstrates the
changes that had occurred. Implicit understandings of war memorials as distinct from
other monumental forms was made clear when German war memorials were allowed
to remain on returned French land, even when other traces of Germanification were
erased. This reiterates the recognition of the unique nature of this form of war
monument, which was legitimised through its association with the war dead.
Memorials to the 1870-71 became an important part of the later commemorative
narrative often forming the basis for First World War memorials. The construction of
new memorials saw the revival of revanchist narratives16 and many memorials were
dated 1870- 1918, effectively eliminating the defeat of 1871. The study of First World
War memorialisation in this region thus contributes not only to the understanding of
15
For example in 1909 the president of Lorraine von Zepplin wrote that the Souvenir Alsace-Lorraine
was ‘an association whose efforts are all orientated, under the guise of devotion and remembrance, to
the artificial maintenance of French sympathies’ Hamman, 2009: 323.
16
Revanchism (revenge) had been a popular sentiment following the Franco-Prussian War amongst
some nationalists who called for immediate revenge and the reversal of territorial losses through a
second conflict.
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the processes which accompany the emergence of new memorial forms but also to
patterns visible in the treatment of exiting memorials, viewing memorialisation as a
dialectic process rather than one which is influenced only by external factors.
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