Chapter 4 Evening in Germany: - Williams Students Online

Chapter 4
Evening in Germany:
National Socialism and the Myth of Langemarck
The film version of Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front had its German
première in Berlin on December 4, 1930. The German version had been modified slightly from the
American original, removing some material that might have been seen as anti-German. It passed the
censors without objection. The première was quite successful; the Vossische Zeitung wrote approvingly,
“The frightful irrationality of war emerges most clearly in the film’s big battle scenes… [the] most
moving which we have experienced in sound-film so far.” 1
Elsewhere in Berlin, the Nazi parliamentary
faction had been gathered since December 3. Joseph Goebbels, then Gauleiter [regional party leader] of
Berlin, perceived that the showing of the film was an “opportunity [for him] to show off in front of the
party bosses.” 2
On December 5, he and roughly 200 other SA men and Nazi MPs attended the screening
of the movie in the Mozartsaal cinema. They scattered themselves throughout the cinema; about ten
minutes into the film, the darkened theater fell into chaos. The Nazis threw smoke-bombs and paper
bags filled with sneezing powder from the balcony into the audience. They released white mice in the
stalls. They shouted things like “filthy film,” “pigsty,” and “throw the Jews out.” 3 The film was stopped;
Goebbels declared that “Hitler is in the front of the gates of Berlin.” The police were called in to clear
out the cinema. Goebbels, writing in his diary, reflected on the demonstration:
The cinema has been turned into a madhouse a mere ten minutes after the start of the film….
The Jews try to make themselves invisible…. Afterwards I sit in a café with my lads;
experiences are swapped; it is hilariously funny, but everything has worked well.... Once again I
have had the right scent. 4
For the next few nights, the manager of the cinema was able to keep the Nazis at bay with the
help of police protection; a demonstration of 8,000 people on December 9 prompted the head of police to
1 Quoted in Martin Broszat, Hitler and the Collapse of Weimar Germany (New York: Berg, 1987), 32.
2 Ibid., 33.
3 Ibid.
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prohibit all demonstrations in Berlin. By this time, though, the scandal had grown so large that the film
board decided to withdraw their support, banning the film with the claim that the controversy was
endangering Germany’s reputation abroad. 5 Der Angriff justified the protests by referring to the memory
of the dead soldiers. “Yesterday evening in the vicinity of the Nollendorfplatz and the Wittenbergplatz
30,000 to 40,000 Germans protested against the insulting and sullying of the German front soldiers, in
particular the heroic youth of Langemarck.” 6
As this story suggests, memory of the War was at the center of the cultural and political life of
the Weimar Republic. Just as in Britain, the issues raised by the war books and films were as important
as they were controversial. Allegiance to the legacy of the War, especially the legacy of Langemarck,
was a crucial part of the public image that the National Socialists wished to project. Comparing the
soldiers of the War to the Nazis who died in the failed putsch of 1923, the author Fritz Fink wrote that
“the yearning for the Reich that flared up at Langemarck found its fulfillment at the Feldherrnhalle.” 7
Before examining the Nazi appropriation of the myth of Langemarck, though, it is necessary to consider
the peculiar nature of Nazi ideology.
Nazi Ideology and the Weakness of the Weimar Republic
To examine Nazi ideology is to delve into controversy, for the ideological bases of the
movement are still widely debated. It is important to make three points to clarify the discussion. First,
despite the claims that many have made that Nazism was fundamentally opportunistic, it did have an
ideology. Though not always coherent, nor terribly consistent, the Nazi movement was based on a core
4 Quoted in Broszat, 34.
5 Ibid., 35.
6 Der Angriff, December 9, 1930 (Gestern abend protestierten im Umkreis des Nollendorfplatzes und
Wittenbergplatzes 30.000 bis 40.000 deutsche Menschen gegen die Beschimpfung und Besudelung der
deutschen Frontkämpfer, insbesondere der heldenhaften Jugend von Langemarck.).
7 Quoted in Uwe- K. Ketelsen, “»Die Jugend von Langemarck« Ein poetisch-politisches Motiv der
Zwischenkriegszeit,” in Thomas Koebner, Rolf-Peter Janz, and Frank Trommler, eds., »Mit uns zieht die neue
Zeit« Der Mythos Jugend (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1985), 79 (Die Sehnsucht nach dem Reich,
die in Langemarck aufgelodert war, fand ihre Erfüllung an der Feldherrnhalle.).
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set of beliefs. The pragmatic element certainly was present, but it was not the only, or the prime,
motivating force. Second, National Socialism, for all the features it shared in common with other
European fascist movements, especially the Italian one, was uniquely German. It depended on certain
beliefs about culture, civilization, and history that had developed primarily in Germany. Finally, the Nazi
movement was essentially a war movement. It had its genesis in the war of 1914-1918 and its end in the
war of 1939-1945 and preached war in between. For this reason, the myth of Langemarck, which was a
war myth, was very important to Nazism as a whole.
The elements that comprised the myth of Langemarck—youth, nation, and sacrifice—may
initially seem at odds with the Nazi emphasis on machines, technology, and “new men.” Langemarck
was essentially a backward-looking product of Romanticism; by contrast, many elements of Nazism were
oriented toward the future, following on the heels of the futurist F. T. Marinetti, who wrote, “Why should
we look back, when was we want is to break down the mysterious doors of the Impossible? Time and
Space died yesterday. We already live in the absolute, because we have created eternal, omnipresent
speed.” 8 Bernd Hüppauf, in his excellent article, “The Birth of Fascist Man from the Spirit of the Front,”
deals with the contradiction easily; the myth of Langemarck, he says, was used cynically by the Nazis
because of its mass appeal; it was little more than “a smoke-screen.” 9 In his account, the really important
myth for the Nazis was not that of Langemarck, but that of Verdun, a myth “of the emotionless and
hardened modern warrior who functioned like a machine.” 10
However, it is not necessary to dismiss the
importance of Langemarck to the Nazis so quickly. As was argued in chapter 2, the apparent apolitical
idealism of Langemarck was only an illusion, for the myth could be read in a number of more aggressive
ways. Its close connection to the youth movement, especially, left the myth of Langemarck strongly
opposed to Weimar democracy. Further, Nazism itself was not solely a worship of machines and
technology. One of its most important characteristics, in fact, was its embrace the paradoxical opposites
8 Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, “The Futurist Manifesto,” in Adrian Lyttelton, ed., Italian Fascisms: From
Pareto to Gentile (London: Cape, 1973), 212.
9 Bernd Hüppauf, “The Birth of Fascist Man from the Spirit of the Front: From Langemarck to Verdun,” in John
Milfull, ed., The Attractions of Fascism (New York: Berg, 1990), 56.
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of past and future, a combination Jeffrey Herf calls “reactionary modernism.” 11
Modris Eksteins, in
discussing the idea of the fusion of past and future, suggests that Nazism wished to use the past or the
myth of the past to pursue the future, phrasing it this way:
The implication of [one description] is that Nazism used the tools and technology of modernity
in an attempt to impose on Germany a vision of the past. As we have argued, that would be to
misinterpret, in fact to reverse, the central thrust of the movement in the context of its age. 12
The view of the idealized past the Nazis were able to project through the language of Langemarck
enabled them to pursue their modernist designs. These two elements, past and future, technology and
myth, were not entirely separate as Hüppauf suggests, but rather, amid the confusions of fascist ideology,
one and the same.
Hitler, as the Nazi propagandists never tired of mentioning, was a veteran of the War. In Mein
Kampf, he recounted his experience at Langemarck:
We marched silently through a wet, cold night in Flanders, and just as the sun began to disperse
the fog, an iron greeting was sent our way and shrapnel and shells exploded all around us; but
before the smoke had cleared, the first hurrahs welled up from two hundred voices as the first
messengers of death. Then we heard the crack and roar of gunfire, singing and yelling, and
with wild eyes we all lunged forward, faster and faster, until suddenly man-to-man fighting
broke out in turnip fields and thickets. We heard the sounds of a song from afar which came
closer and closer to us, passing from one company to another, and then, just as men were dying
all around us it spread into our ranks, and we passed it on: “Deutschland, Deutschland über
alles, über alles in der Welt!” 13
It was an introduction of youth to adulthood: “seventeen-year-old boys,” he said, “now looked like
men.” 14 The theme of youth was combined with those of death and maturity, or, rather, a rejuvenation of
manhood by youthful vigor. Hitler’s political vision was a translation of this experience of war into a
sweeping program for society. “Only by understanding the Fronterlebnis [experience of the front],” said
10 Ibid., 61.
11 Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
12 Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age (New York: Doubleday,
1989), 328.
13 Quoted in Jay W. Baird, To Die For Germany: Heroes in the Nazi Pantheon (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1990), 4.
14 George L. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (New York: Oxford University
Press), 72.
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one supporter, “can one understand National Socialism.” 15
Hitler believed that a modern future was
made possible by looking back to the War and, further, back to a mythical German past; Langemarck
combined these two elements perfectly.
The role of the Langemarck myth in Nazi ideology is especially important because of the crucial
role of a publicly presented ideology in the rise of the Nazis and the corresponding fall of Weimar. The
Weimar political system was troubled from birth. It was born under an inauspicious cloud of defeat in
the War. The Republic did not spring from a long-standing tradition of representative democracy; it
was in some ways a “makeshift democracy,” produced by the loss of the War. 16
One of its first
significant actions was to accept the Treaty of Versailles, a treaty that not only imposed harsh
reparations but also explicitly assigned responsibility for the War to the Germans. Many Germans,
believing the overoptimistic propaganda that was was produced by the High Command until the end,
were genuinely surprised by the conclusion of the War. They felt, wrongly, that the German troops
had not been defeated in the field, a belief supported by the German military. The frustration with the
sudden, unfavorable conclusion to the War was therefore not attached to the military that lost the War
but rather the government that accepted the consequences of the loss. In 1919, General Paul von
Hindenburg presented the official military version of the end of the War:
An English general said with justice: “The German army was stabbed in the back.” No guilt
applies to the good core of the army.... Where the guilt lies has clearly been demonstrated. If it
needed more proof, then it would be found in the quoted statement of the English general and in
the boundless astonishment of our enemies at their victory. 17
The civilians were blamed for the military defeat; they, said Hindenburg, had lost their “will to victory.” 18
Further, the civilian government was not in a strong position to combat this pernicious myth; it could not
afford to attack the suffering or courage of the soldiers of the War. Friedrich Ebert, chancellor and leader
15 Quoted in Eksteins, 307.
16 Eberhard Kolb, The Weimar Republic (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988), 3.
17 Paul von Hindenburg, “The Stab in the Back,” in Anton Kaes, Martin Jay, and Edward Dimendberg, eds., The
Weimar Republic Sourcebook (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 16.
18 Ibid., 15.
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of the Social Democrats, welcomed the soldiers returning to Berlin in December 1918 by claiming that
they were returning undefeated. 19
German propaganda, in line with the stab-in-the-back myth, asserted that returning soldiers were
generally dishonored by the civilians: their sacrifices forgotten, they were left to unemployment and
poverty. The image of soldiers having their insignia torn from their uniforms as they arrived home was a
common one. However, as Richard Bessel has argued, this was not really the case at all. German
soldiers were fairly successfully reintegrated into German society. In this case, though, the myth was as
important as reality, and the myth represented the soldiers as betrayed and subsequently dishonored by
the civilians. Amid the period of stabilization and reintegration, therefore, there was also a burgeoning
myth of a government betraying the German spirit embodied in its soldiers.
For this reason, even as the Weimar Republic weathered the crises of its early years and began to
show signs of succeeding, there was an undercurrent of deep bitterness directed against the government
and against the civilians. This tendency, never fully repressed by a weak government, was to return in
strength when the Republic began to face the economic probems that were to lead to its downfall. One
member of the Freikorps expressed it by saying, “People told us that the War was over. That made us
laugh. We ourselves are the War.” 20
The War formed part of the identities of many people, and evoked
correspondingly strong emotions. The myth of Langemarck, as one of the most common stories about
the War, was centrally important for an interwar Germany struggling with its past.
In conjunction with the problems resulting from the loss of the War, Weimar democracy faced a
number of structural problems. The system of proportional representation established by the Constitution
was on the cutting edge at the time, considered the most fair system of electing governments. It meant,
however, that splinter groups of the extreme left and right would not be shut out of the government by
their inability to win majorities. This, combined with the parties largely left intact from the imperial
19 Richard Bessel, “The Great War in German Memory: The Soldiers of the First World War, Demobilization,
and Weimar Political Culture,” German History 6 (April 1988), 21.
20 Quoted in Barbara Ehrenreich, foreword to Klaus Theweleit, Male Fantasies, vol. 1 (Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 1987), x.
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days, produced a fragmented political system. The parties represented class and economic interests, not
philosophical or ideological positions. The initial agreements between the employers and the trade
unions made possible a coalition government which encompassed both left and right. When, however, in
the depressed economic circumstances of the late 1920s this coalition fell apart, majority rule became
impossible. The authoritarian solution, first practiced by Chancellor Heinrich Brüning as allowed by the
Constitution, signaled the end of the viable democracy in Weimar.
At the same time, the extreme political fragmentation produced frustration within the voters.
With the focus on narrow interest groups, the only possible mass party would be one which could cut
across these interest groups with an ideology with mass appeal. The nature of the middle class in
Germany, further, meant that such a group could only form on the political right; the left, especially the
KPD, continued to grow, but could not hope for a majority. In these conditions, the National Socialists
were thrust forward during the campaign against the Young Plan in 1929. Their first widespread public
appearance, aided by the deep pockets of the industrialist Alfred Hugenberg, was in a campaign against
the Republic’s acceptance of the conditions of Versailles. The Young Plan was economically helpful for
Germany, but the Nazis gained status by standing apart from the negotiations that took the German defeat
in the War as its fundamental basis. The Nazis offered a foundation in ideology rather than in economic
interest; moreover, they were headed by a charismatic leader. Their ideology, combining a Romantic
praise of the past and of youth with a modernist vitality and energy which contrasted well with the
perceived lifelessness of Weimar, was quite attractive to many Germans.
In short, the Nazis appeared in favorable circumstances preaching an ideology tailored to suit
those who were dissatisfied with the Republic. Although they never attained a majority, the National
Socialists became the largest party in the Reichstag; eventually the government tried to accommodate
them, little realizing that they could not be accommodated. Heinrich Mann traced the attraction of Hitler
to the inner condition of the German people: “they have not overcome the war; it continues to rule them
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and, in their feelings, has never ended.” 21 Hitler’s opportunity, he said, came because of the mentality of
the Germans: eternally besieged, they looked to the one who offered them an ideology and a way out of
their condition. Like the crowds at Hitler’s nighttime rallies, rallies held late in the evening in order to
catch the audience tired and ready to submit, the nation of Germany was worn down by its struggle and
was consequently susceptible to the appeal of Nazism: “It is already evening in Germany,” he wrote, “if
not midnight.” 22
The Legacy of Langemarck: Use and Politicization
The myth of Langemarck was at the center of the War’s continued influence. A 1934 headline
in the Völkischer Beobachter, a Nazi paper, proclaimed proudly, “The Spirit of Langemarck Lives!” 23 In
the words of another writer, “this word [Langemarck] has become a living force” to keep alive the past. 24
The adoption of the myth of Langemarck by the Nazis was gradual, as the myth was slowly rewritten to
emphasize its aggressive connotations and to ignore the apolitical ones. Part of the significance of the
myth of Langemarck arose from the lack of competition; it appeared in something of a mythical vacuum.
At the Nuremberg rally of 1935, Hitler said that history values no nation except those that build their own
monuments. 25
By this standard, the Weimar Republic was particularly unsuccessful. It could not settle
on an accepted day of national celebration. Some parties supported a day of celebration on the
anniversary of the founding of the Reich in 1871 and some supported a commemoration of the founding
of the Republic in 1919; nothing was resolved. Likewise, no Day of Mourning for the War was
universally accepted; there were a number of competing ideas (including a national celebration of the
21 Heinrich Mann, “The German Decision,” in Kaes, Jay, and Dimendberg, 165.
22 Ibid., 164.
23 Völkischer Beobachter, November 13, 1934, 2.
24 Karl August Walther, ed., Das Langemarckbuch der Deutschen Studentenschaft (Leipzig: Verlag von K.F.
Koehler, 1933), 11 (Dieses Wort is eine lebendige Kraft geworden).
25 George Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses (New York: Howard Fertig, 1975), 183.
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Day of Langemarck supported by students’ and veterans’ organizations). 26
In the same way, the
Republic was unsuccessful in constructing convincing memorials. A shrine in honor of the tenth
anniversary of the outbreak of the War was proposed in 1924, but it never came to fruition; the process
was paralyzed by the competing offerings and ideas proposed by various organizations and cities. The
few memorials it did build were departures from traditional German memorial iconography. One
memorial to honor the dead of the War was a hall that contained a library and a reading room; another
was a huge crystal ball. The library drew on rational and intellectual ideals; the crystal ball was more
modernist in its references. Neither was successful. Such efforts, suggests George Mosse,
were considered by some as a negation of patriotic and warlike themes. National monuments
continued to be viewed as sacred places, as secular, national shrines, frameworks for acts of
national worship. Neither reading rooms nor crystal balls could fulfill this function. 27
This poverty of memorial expression that marked the Republic led to many perceiving it as “cold,
rationalistic and dull.” 28 The Republic’s failure to produce significant memorials was symptomatic of its
inability to inspire loyalty. Even in its best years, many of those supporting it did so with little emotional
enthusiasm.
It is in this context that the return of the dead in the myth of Langemarck is to be understood. By
its very nature traditional and spiritual, Langemarck was in opposition to the perceived rationalism of the
Weimar Republic. Because of the political situation, it was nearly impossible for the emotions associated
with Langemarck to be mobilized in favor of the Republic. Langemarck, mobilizing the vocabulary of
the distant Germanic past, stood for everything the Republic was perceived as standing against. If the
War was remembered primarily in terms of Langemarck, in terms of the sacrifice of youth betrayed by a
civilian denial of the German spirit, then it would only be to the detriment of the Republic. The political
struggle of the 1920s and 1930s was a struggle about the legacy of the War; this legacy was determined,
26 Bernd Hüppauf, “The Birth of Fascist Man from the Spirit of the Front: From Langemarck to Verdun,” in
John Milfull, ed., The Attractions of Fascism (New York: Berg, 1990), 54.
27 Mosse, Nationalization, 71.
28 Hüppauf, 54.
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in part, by the vocabulary used to represent it. There were to be consequences for the increasing use of
the vocabulary of Langemarck.
This vocabulary began to evolve almost immediately. In 1915, on the first anniversary of the
battle, many newspapers published editorials about the “Day of Langemarck.” The Deutsche
Tageszeitung wrote that “the Day of Langemarck will forever remain a day of honour for the German
youth.... Our grief for the bold dead is so splendidly surpassed by the pride in how well they knew
how to fight and die.” 29
This praise of the youth of Langemarck would only grow in the years after the
War. There were national celebrations in 1919, 1924, 1928, and 1932; from 1919, the national student
organization supported a Langemarck Day (November 10, opposed to the ceremonies on November 11,
Armistice Day) celebration in most of the German universities. 30
In 1924, around two thousand members of the Bündische youth met in the Rhön to witness the
opening of a memorial to the soldiers of Langemarck on the tenth anniversary of the beginning of the
War. They camped on the mountain, and then gathered around campfires, singing and chanting; a
medieval Rhenish mass prepared them for a speech by a veteran and poet. The daytime was spent in
games, modeled on the games of the Greeks. 31
R. G. Binding, reporting on the 1924 gathering, wrote
that the events of Langemarck,
no longer form part of history, where some day they would be paralyzed and buried, but belong
to the continuously creative, continuously rejuvenating, continuously living, power of myth.
The death of the brave has already established itself as such, since German youth has taken
possession of it as the symbol and foremost image of youthful revolt, to which among all
peoples on earth only this youth has a true entitlement. 32
In 1928, Hans Schwarz spoke to the student union at the University of Greifswald, where the
National Socialist Student Organization represented fifty-three per cent of the students. His remarks
were later turned into the very successful and widely distributed book Die Wiedergeburt des heroischen
29 Quoted in Hüppauf, 49.
30 Ibid., 50.
31 Baird, 5.
32 Quoted in Hüppauf, 51.
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Menschen (The Rebirth of Heroic Man). 33
He used the myth of Langemarck to contrast the particular
mission of Germany with that of Britain, France, and the United States. German identity, he argued, was
embodied in the collective experience of Langemarck and valued pure culture and nature against debased
Western, modern civilization; Langemarck allowed Germans to perceive their inner character obscured
by modern rationalism. This perception would rejuvenate the German people much more than the
Republic ever would: “an ecstatic Volk changes life more deeply than the agitated masses of 9 November
[that is, of the Republic] could have wished for.” 34
Schwarz also assigned a political position to the
myth, saying, “The singing of Langemarck and the singing of the proletariat revolution do not sound
good together.” 35
In speeches like this one to university audiences, the myth of Langemarck was
becoming a way for the National Socialists to approach many of the educated youth, those “longing for
metaphysical shelter and meaning in history.” 36
The Langemarck Committee, founded in 1921 by students, nationalists, and veterans, took part
in a trip to a student congress in Paris in August 1928. While the students were in the area, they visited
Langemarck. 37
While there were well-kept British, French and Belgian cemeteries, there was no such
German cemetery. German graves were scattered and overgrown with weeds. Remembering the words
A people that does not honor their dead
Is not worth their sacrifice, 38
they resolved to build an appropriate cemetery, one which would honor the spirit of the dead. With the
help of the German war graves committee, the Volksbund Deutsche Kriesgräberfürsorge, and its lead
architect, Robert Tischler, they began construction. 39
The cemetery, like many German war cemeteries,
emphasized uncontrolled nature through its use of large trees; unlike British cemeteries, there were no
33 Ibid., 53.
34 Quoted in Hüppauf., 54.
35 Quoted in Ketelsen, 82 (Das Singen von Langemarck klang nicht mit dem Singen der proletarischen
Revolution zusammen.).
36 Hüppauf, 53.
37 Günter Kaufmann, “Einführung der Jugend in den Frontkämpfergeist,” in Hans-Jochen Gamm, Führung und
Verführung: Pädagogik des Nationalsozialismus (München: List Verlag, 1964), 359.
38 Hansgeorg Moka, “Die Langemarck-Arbeit der Deutschen Studentenschaft,” in Walther, 210 (Ein Volk, das
seine Toten nicht ehrt, / ist ihrer Opfer nicht wert.).
39 Moka, 210-1; Mosse, Fallen Soldiers, 85-6.
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neatly arranged and colorful flowers, which were seen by the Germans as an attempt to disguise the
tragic and heroic death of the fallen. 40
The entrance to the cemetery was through a chapel built to look
like a fortress (Fig. 6) within which was inscribed the names of the students who died at Langemarck.
Figure 6. Langemarck cemetery seen through entrance
Author’s photograph
There were similar Totenburgen (fortresses of the dead) in a number of German cemeteries; they were
Hitler’s favorite burial monuments. 41
After four years of construction, the cemetery was completed. It was opened on July 10, 1932.
“The earth of Flanders,” wrote one observer, “which drank the blood of German youth, has once again
become holy ground.” 42 Conflicts between the Student Union and the National Socialists (many students
were upset by previous ceremonies which had become little more than Nazi rallies) minimized the Nazi
participation, but their involvement was still very noticeable. 43
The keynote speaker, Josef Magnus
Wehner, was a prominent Nazi author. His most famous book, 7 Vor Verdun, had appeared during the
40 Mosse, Fallen Soldiers, 85.
41 Ibid.
42 Moka, 213 (Flandrische Erde, getränkt von deutscher Jugend Blut ist ihr wieder heilige Erde geworden.).
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war books controversy as a rebuttal to Remarque’s Im Westen Nichts Neues. His address was read
publicly at all German universities. He opened by reminding the present generation that they had
inherited the legacy of the dead youth of Langemarck:
In this hour, German students, your first chairman will receive the key to the cemetery of
Langemarck.... In this hour you will receive, German students, the guard of the dead, of the
nameless coffins of the German youths of the Great War. 44
He continued by invoking this spirit of Langemarck, a spirit forsaken by the cold Republic of Weimar:
Before the Reich veiled itself in shame, those at Langemarck sang. The dying sang, the
attacking sang, they sang in their ranks, bullets in their hearts, they sang on the run, the young
students, they sang amidst their own extermination, the overpowering, thousand guns of the
roaring enemy: “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles, über alles in der Welt.” Through the
song, with which they died, they were resurrected, a thousand times, and will be resurrected
again, a thousand times until the end of the Reich, that is, our world. 45
For him, the dead were still being resurrected, still returning, still alive. One Nazi would later write that,
in Germany, no one is more alive than the dead. 46
Drawing on these eternal dead, Wehner called for the
students to begin constructing a state that would embody the spirit of Langemarck, a state not limited by
borders and countries but as limitless as the world itself. 47
The students were finally called to a spiritual
meeting with the dead of Langemarck:
They [the dead] come and greet us, the survivors, the suspicious ones, the doubters, the
despairing. Now they are more alive than we, now they sing and speak:
Build the colums of the Reich
Over the decay of the World! 48
43 Hüppauf, 57.
44 Josef Magnus Wehner, Langemarck. Ein Vermächtnis (München: Albert Langen / Georg Müller, 1933), 3 (In
dieser Stunde, deutsche Studenten, übernimmt euer erster Vorsitzer die Schlüssel zum Friedhof von
Langemarck.... in dieser Stunde übernehmt ihr, deutsche Studenten, die Totenwache an den namenlosen Särgen
deutscher Jünglinge des grossen Krieges.).
45 Ibid., 6 (Ehe das Reich sich verhüllte, sangen die von Langemarck. Sterbende sange, Stürmende sange, sie
sangen in Reihen, die Kugel im Herzen, sie sangen im Lauf, die jungen Studenten, sangen in die eigene
Vernichtung hinein, von dem übermächtigen, aus tausend Geschützen brüllenden Feinde: “Deutschland,
Deutschland über alles, über alles in der Welt.” ... Über mit dem Liede, mit dem sie starben, sind sie wieder
auferstanden, tausendmal, und werden wieder auferstehen, tausendmal bis zum ende des Reiches, und das ist:
unserer Welt.).
46 Kaufmann, 358.
47 Wehner, 7.
48 Ibid., 10 (Sie nahen und grüssen uns, die Nachlebenden, die Zwielichtigen, die Zweifler, die Verzweifelten.
Nun sind sie lebendiger als wir ... nun singen und sagen sie: “Pflanzt die Säulen des Reichs / In die Verwesung
der Welt!”).
13

Figure 7. Cover illustration showing singing youth in battle
Reprinted from Karl A. Walther, ed., Das Langemarckbuch der Deutschen
Studentenschaft (Leipzig: Verlag von K. F. Koehler, 1933).
Frustrated in their attempt to make the opening of the cemetery a purely partisan affair, the Nazis
issued a book in conjunction with the event. This book, Das Langemarckbuch der Deutschen
Studentenschaft (Fig. 7), was filled with contributions from prominent Nazis on the theme of
Langemarck and letters from the front written by soldiers who fell at Langemarck. Most of the articles
worked to establish a connection between the spirit of Langemarck and the spirit of National Socialism.
Langemarck, an eruption of the German soul that was repressed by the Weimar Republic, found its
fulfillment in the Nazis. “Langemarck,” wrote one contributor, “is the slogan under which we will march
forward with Adolf Hitler into a free, strong, fortune-filled German future!” 49
The leader of the student
union referred to the stab-in-the-back, saying, “We, who involved ourselves in the War out of our own
free will, had no place in the country after the war, and we, who fell for Germany, came to be
49 Walther, 8 (“Langemarck” heisst die Parole, unter der wir mit Adolf Hitler vorwärtsmarschieren in eine freie,
starke, glückhafte deutsche Zukunft!).
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egretted as sacrifices for a ‘pathetically executed’ lie.” Only by understanding the spirit of
Langemarck could one find “sense and meaning” in the sacrifice. 50
The Langemarck cemetery had become, like the Menin Gate earlier, a site of pilgrimage. It was
constructed, said the editor of the Langemarckbuch, in order to provide a “place of pilgrimage for
German students, German mothers, fathers, and sons.” 51
There was another pilgrimage in November
1932 made by several members of the SA, an organization seen as the continuation of the spirit of the
front into interwar life. “The SA man,” wrote the Völkischer Beobachter, “stands alongside the heroes of
the world war.” 52
Unrestricted by the limitations of student organizations, the participants in this
pilgrimage were able to make the connection between Langemarck and Nazism even more explicitly.
One participant spoke of the legacy of Langemarck:
Just as once the rhythm of the gray columns thundered on the roads of Flanders, and just as our
young Wandervögel brothers in gray coats died here on the field of Langemarck with a song on
their lips – so our lives must be like their deed: brave, unselfish, strong and pure. We have two
weapons to achieve this: we have our swords and we have our Adolf Hitler. 53
In a crucial step in the trajectory from apolitical idealism to applied ideology, the myth of Langemarck
began to lose its individualistic aspects. The youth of Langemarck, like everyone else, were portrayed as
needing a strong leader.
Increasingly, the myth of Langemarck was expanded to include not merely the youth who died
in the War but also the spirit of the front shared by all German soldiers. In emphasizing the communal
spirit, the myth was held up against the class divides of Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany. 54 The heroes
of Langemarck were no longer referred to solely as students, but also as workers, craftsmen and
teachers. 55
Though probably more historically accurate (students likely formed little more than ten per
cent of the total dead), this change did not occur for reasons of accuracy but rather in order to make the
50 Ibid., 9 (Wir, die als Freiwillige in den Krieg zogen, hatten in dem Nachkriegsstaat keinen Raum und die, die
für Deutschland fielen, wurden als Opfer einer “Pathetisch hingerichteten” Lüge bedauert.).
51 Ibid., 11 (ein Pilgerort deutscher Studenten, deutscher Mütter, Väter und Söhne).
52 Völkischer Beobachter, November 13, 1934, 2.
53 Quoted in Baird, 9.
54 Ketelsen, 84.
55 Hüppauf, 58.
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lessons of Langemarck, and the spirit of the front, easily accessible and applicable to a broader range of
people. One commentator referred to the “students and workers, professors and farmers” of
Langemarck. 56
Bernd Hüppauf believes that this shift indicates the cynical nature of the Nazi use of
Langemarck: they used Langemarck to court bourgeois youth while that was necessary; when this was
done sufficiently, they changed the focus of Langemarck. 57
It is more likely that this shift was merely a
product of the success of the politicization of the Langemarck myth; as it became more powerful, it was
applied to, and accepted by, more and more people.
Soon, the word Langemarck was everywhere. In 1933, Heinrich Zerkaulen wrote a play entitled
Jugend von Langemarck. In 1934, this was followed by another play, Langemarck. Der Opfergang der
Deutschen Jugend. 58
In 1935, there was a ceremony of celebration on Langemarck Day organized by
Baldur von Schirach, leader of the Hitler Youth; a choral version of Eberhard Wolfgang Möller’s The
Letters of the Fallen was sung and von Schirach spoke to the veterans among the audience:
You have given us the great gift of the heroic experience. We are spirit of your spirit. You
gave birth to the socialism of the front. This is the meaning of Langemarck! That we forget
ourselves, that we sacrifice ourselves, that we are loyal, that is the message of the fallen to the
living, that is the call from the beyond to our times.... Because the German dead have risen.
With our flags waving we march together with them into eternity. 59
Again, the individualism of the students was denied; what was most important, said von Schirach, was
that they “forgot” themselves in their sacrifice. Further, the Nazis were keeping the War alive; the return
of the dead was connected with their refusal to accept defeat. The Weimar Republic acknowledged
German defeat, but the Nazis argued that the War was still being fought, and would be fought into
eternity.
After the Nazis had gained power, the use of the word Langemarck was institutionalized, tied
both to the Nazi emphasis on youth and the effort to construct “new men” for Germany. In 1936, there
was a celebration entitled “Langemarck - Heritage of the Hitler Youth” organized by the Hitler Youth
56 Walther, 12 (der Studenten und Arbeiter, Professoren und Bauern).
57 Hüppauf, 58.
58 Ketelsen, 85-6.
59 Baird, 11.
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and the military; it was broadcast on all national radio stations. The Langemarck organizations were
placed under the control of the Reich ministries and the Hitler Youth. The Day of Langemarck became
the day when new student members were admitted to the party. Further, indicating perhaps the value of
the word Langemarck in cultural exchange, a compulsory Langemarck pfennig, paid each month, was
introduced for every member of the Hitler Youth in 1938. 60
Also in 1938 a Langemarck educational
program was introduced, with the aim of producing a “new man” who would comply with the Nazi goal
of a “specific unified type.” 61
The program, financed by the party, the student unions, and industry, was
offered in nine universities; emptied of many of its original connotations, the myth of Langemarck had
become little more than “the primitive idea of breeding a genetically clean and ideologically streamlined
elite.” 62
The task of building “new men,” originally associated with the defiant self-expression of the
prewar youth movement and then the political assertiveness of the Bündische Youth, now involved youth
“forgetting” themselves as they fell into line with Nazi standards.
With the Langemarck educational program, the trajectory of the myth of Langemarck was
complete. It had been claimed almost completely by the National Socialists, and the National Socialist
reading of Langemarck as an example of the self-denial and self-sacrifice in the service of the nation was
dominant. The aim of Nazi ideology and policy was to return Germany to the vision they glimpsed at
Langemarck and Verdun: a nation brave and youthful and powerful and German. One propagandist
claimed that “National Socialism and ‘Langemarck’ are one and the same.” 63
Appropriately, not long
after this task was begun, Hitler himself returned to Langemarck. It was a spectacular pilgrimage, a visit
to a holy site presaged by tanks and planes and “lightning war.” Nazism and its leader were obsessed
with the past and the War; it was not surprising that Hitler fought the next war as if he was still trying to
win the last one. The German army fought again in the Flanders fields where the heroes of the last war
were buried. The military communiqué of May 29, 1940, reported that “the Reich war flag is waving
60 Hüppauf, 59-60.
61 Ibid., 60-1.
62 Ibid., 61.
63 Quoted in Hüppauf, 60.
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[again] over the monument to the German youth at Langemarck, the scene of the heroic struggle in
1914.” 64 For many, the waving of the war flag had never stopped.
64 Baird, 11.
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