Wolfgang G. Natter
Literature at War, 1914-1940: Representing the "Time of Greatness" in Germany
New Haven: Yale University Press. 1999. Pp. 280. $35.00
Reviewed by Ann P. Linder

In this intriguing new study, Wolfgang Natter revises the definition of German war literature, and inverts conventional critical approaches to it. For Natter, the literature of the First World War includes not only the narratives and poetry on which scholars have generally focused their attention, but also newspaper and magazine articles, official reports and histories, and collections of soldiers' letters; in short, any reading material pertaining to the war and intended for general consumption in Germany (including occupied areas) or abroad.

Natter's approach to this huge body of printed material is essentially historical rather than literary. Instead of analyzing the end products, he examines their production, concentrating on the intellectual framework within which the regulating institutions, agencies, and individuals functioned. Natter theorizes that the control of wartime literary production through censorship, self-censorship, and various forms of editorial and production control ensured not merely the survival of the Wilhelmine paradigm of war through World War I and the Weimar Republic, but its eventual absorption into National Socialist ideology. Through his Chapter 2 examination of Walter Bloem's prewar literary work and wartime service as head the Feldpressetell (army field press agencies), Natter establishes the nationalist prototype of war that emerged from the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. The key elements of that ideological paradigm - devotion to duty, comradeship, and love of country - are set within the framework of the unification, the "becoming," of the German nation, and couched in conventionally elevated rhetoric. The Franco-Prussian War emerges as one segment of a continuous and necessary national development based on conflict and projected victory.

This paradigm of war shaped official censorship practices in the First World War, especially in the selection of "suitable" materials from the front for publication. Bloem's agency encouraged stories from the front that exalted the Frontgeist (front spirit) of the German troops, strengthened the bond between home and front, and provided personal accounts of military life to supplement the impersonal communiqués of the general staff. The soldierly virtues mythologized in such reports later merged into the literature of soldierly nationalism, which was in turn subsumed into the cultural political ideology of National Socialism.

Chapter 3 examines the central role of soldiers' letters in the dissemination of information at home, and thus in setting the tone and structure for future literary representations of the war. After a thorough discussion of censorship and selection practices for letters to be published in the national and regional press, Natter devotes the majority of the chapter to a penetrating analysis of Philipp Witkop's influential collections of students' war letters, Kriegsbriefe deutscher Studenten. He traces Witkop's preference for letters that reflected his personal belief in the rule of spirit and the significance of Bildung, and his conviction that the war was a Bildungserlebnis (formative experience) for the soldiers, and then moves on to discuss the evolution of the collection in the successive editions of the letters, including the rarely discussed 1933 edition.

In Chapter 4 Natter turns to the response of German publishers to what they regarded as a Kulturkrieg (a culture war), in which they were charged with the responsibility of disseminating icons of German literary culture to the troops at the front. He recounts the birth of the inexpensive book (ancestor of the paperback) in Germany through the efforts of Ullstein and Reclam to provide easily transported books to the troops. Natter also catalogues the development of field libraries and bookstores, including an illuminating discussion, albeit based on limited evidence, of what the troops really liked to read (not the great classics).

Chapter 5 examines the collaboration between the military authorities and the organized book trade to produce affirmative war books, books that reflected the "spirit of 1914". Natter's analysis focuses on the firm of Cotta, the only publishing house for which substantial archival records of wartime activities exist. In his view, continuity of editorial policy, especially a policy that encouraged affirmative depictions of the war and avoided realistic violence, contributed to the maintenance of the nationalist paradigm. The realistic violence characteristic of most German First World War narratives is actually typical of books published after the war, not during it.

In his final chapter and conclusion, Natter examines the legacy of this wartime cultural mobilization in the Weimar Republic and beyond. He maintains that the framing of the war as a glorious episode in the development of the nation, or at worst a magnificent and unwarranted defeat, effectively limited the willingness of the German people to support the Republic, and to accept any reading of the war that did not coincide with the nationalist one. This, in his view, accounts for the failure of most liberal and leftist books about the war that appeared during Weimar, and for the ease with which National Socialism was able to profit from the literature of the war.

This study has much to offer a student of Great War literature, although not in the usual way. There is very little of traditional literary criticism here. In fact, Natter derogates the position of the author and instead sees the literary work as the result of a cultural and social process. He provides an outstanding overview of the tangible origins of war literature in Germany during and following World War I. Although no conclusions are offered that are not already familiar to any scholar of the period, the study is superbly researched, drawing on hitherto untouched archival resources that reveal the astonishing breadth and depth of censorship and production control during the war. The illustrations are appropriate and well-placed to enhance the text. For those of us who still annotate, the margins are agreeably wide. Even though the deconstructionist philosophy that has become de rigueur among many scholars may annoy traditional literary critics, this is an essential study for any student of the period.