Roger Ray Institute for the Humanities

Symposium: Memories of WWI

Art illustration of soldiers standing

Nov. 9, 2018

Nov. 11, 2018 commemorates 100 years since the end of World War I. Generally referred to as the first “total war,” WWI blurred the boundaries between front and home front, forever changing the face of modern warfare. By its end, the “Great War” was one of the deadliest armed conflicts in history, with the toll of civilian and military casualties reaching 40 million. In its aftermath, the rise of social and political movements in many countries supported suffrage and political activism by minority groups, but also caused a radicalization of nationalist movements. This led to totalitarian regimes in several countries, as well as changes in political configurations on the world stage. Today, representations, reactions and responses to WWI are found in art, film, literature and theatre throughout the 20th century and all over the world.

This free and public UT symposium brings scholars from various disciplines and institutions to discuss and critically examine cultural representations and memories of WWI. While registration is optional, we encourage you to do so, as you will help symposium organizers better prepare.

presenters

Barbara Floyd, Professor Emerita of Library Administration, former Director, Ward M. Canaday Center, William S. Carlson Library, University Libraries 
“Brand Whitlock: Savior of Belgium”

Brand Whitlock began his career as a reporter. He moved to Toledo from Urbana, Ohio, to work for the Toledo Blade and, in 1891, went to work for the Chicago Herald. There he became active in Progressive-era politics working for Illinois Governor John Altgeld. In 1896, Altgeld’s political career ended when he pardoned the Haymarket Square rioters.  Whitlock returned to Toledo after Altgeld’s reelection defeat, and became a supporter of Toledo’s Progressive mayor, Samuel “Golden Rule” Jones. After Jones’s death, Whitlock ran for mayor and was elected in 1906, serving four terms. In 1914, Whitlock was appointed minister to Belgium by President Woodrow Wilson.  When World War I broke out, Germany occupied Belgium and blockaded all ports, and the people of the country faced extreme hardship.  Whitlock was the only foreign minister to remain in the country, and oversaw the distribution of food sent by the Commission for Relief in Belgium, saving thousands from starvation. Whitlock reluctantly left Belgium when the United States declared war on Germany. In 1915, as the relief effort was getting underway, the school children of Belgium wrote letters of thanks to the people of the United States, which were sent to Whitlock. Hundreds of these letters are preserved in the Ward M. Canaday Center. The letters reflect the deeply-felt thanks of the Belgium people. This presentation will focus on some of these letters, and the lasting legacy of Whitlock in Belgium, where he is perhaps better known today than in Toledo where he served four terms as mayor.

Mike McMaster, Education Programs Coordinator, Wood County Historical Society 
“Henry County in the Great War: German-Americans, Patriots, and Loyalty”

In the spring of 1918, an organization in Napoleon, Ohio called the League of American Patriots of Henry County was formed to reputably stamp out “Pro-German sentiment.” This league, led by Napoleon’s Methodist and Presbyterian ministers, and manned by second rate Republicans, began to conduct Loyalty Trials against Henry County’s prominent German democrats. The League then set its fury on the loyal German Lutheran Churches and parochial schools in Henry County. The apex of the League, and their persecution of the German Lutherans, came to a head at the tiny Henry County hamlet of West Hope, Ohio where a mob of over 500 League men surrounded the parsonage of a German Lutheran minister. In 1918 in Henry County, Ohio, like many other places in the United States at the time, petty religious, political, and personal grudges were exacerbated by the German spy hysteria that gripped America. Patriotism was used as a cloak to settle these scores. 

James Campbell, Distinguished University Professor, Department of Philosophy, College of Arts and Letters 
“The Impact of WWI on American Higher Education”

After briefly indicating the context of a larger project on the history of the American Philosophical Association, this presentation will consider the impact of World War One on the American academic situation, the work of philosophers, and the activities of the philosophical associations. Depending on time constraints, specific themes include the traditional role of Germany in American higher education; the turn against Germany after April 1917; the danger to be perceived by “pro-German” professors; the nationalization of American higher education in 1918; the views of specific philosophers like A.O. Lovejoy, Josiah Royce, and John Dewey; and the content of various annual meetings during the War. 

Dale Snauwaert, Professor of Educational Theory and Peace Studies, Department of Educational Foundations and Leadership, College of Education 
“Making the World Safe for Democracy: A Reflection on War Propaganda, Democracy, and Noumenal Power”

On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson appealed to Congress for a Declaration of War against Germany in order that the world “be made safe for democracy.” Subsequently, Congress voted to declare war. This paper will explore the idea of the protection of democracy as a justification for the use of military force. It will be argued that military force did not protect democracy in the case of WWI, that WWI was fought over empire and not democracy; and that European democracy is the result of political and economic integration, paralleling Immanual Kant’s idea of a democratic republican peace. The paper will conclude with a reflection on current attempts to undermine democracy in Europe and the United States by a Russian propaganda strategy that calls into question factuality and provokes division undermining civil discourse. It will be argued that the distribution of power is the core question of democracy; that authentic power is nominal, consensual, and not coercive; and thus efforts to safeguard democracy are mainly fought on the plane of ideas rather than on the battle field of physical force. 

Steven Bare, Doctoral Candidate, Department of History, College of Arts and Letters 
“Bivouacs of the Dead, Landscapes of Memory: The ABMC Administered WWI Cemeteries and Memorials”

Cemeteries and memorialization of the dead go back to ancient times. Beginning in the early nineteenth-century, Europeans and the United States began cataloging the dead in rational cemetery designs and memorializing the inhabitants. With the scale of death wrought by the American Civil War, the nature of burying the casualties of conflict changed. Cemeteries became veritable “cities of the dead,” but also emerged as sites of veneration, historical memory, and mourning. This presentation looks at US cemetery design following World War I and the efforts made to memorialize the fallen from the first truly industrialized war. Using George Mosse’s conceptualization of the “cult of the fallen soldier,” we can trace a clear rationality in cemetery design, choice of materials, standardization of grave markers, and attendant memorials/monuments. The argument made is that the US actively sought to create spaces reinforcing patriotism, sacrifice to the state, and hero veneration. In the process, historical memory and mourning entwined with state wishes. 

Thor J. Mednick, Associate Professor of Art History, Department of Art, College of Arts and Letters 
“National Identity, Ready-to-Wear”

A remarkable feature of the Treaty of Versailles was the provision it made for deciding the border between Germany and Denmark. In 1864, the territory of Sleswig (in Danish, Southern Jutland) had been taken by German invasion. The Treaty ordered a plebiscite and, on 10 February 1920, Southern Jutland voted overwhelmingly to be reintegrated with Denmark. Denmark’s cultural community played an interesting role in the run-up to this long anticipated reunion. In 1914, a commission was established to arrange “The Artists’ Gift to Southern Jutland,” a collection of contemporary Danish art to be dispersed amongst Southern Jutland’s cultural institutions, if and when. While the goal was achieved (in the end, more than 400 works were handed over), the project was not without controversy. Speaking for the commission, painter Agnes Slott-Møller (1862-1937) argued that the tragedy of Southern Jutland was that it had been deprived of its mother-culture for fifty years; at a time when socialist movements had cast such language in serious doubt, however, Slott-Møller’s campaign created a fissure in Danish cultural life from which her reputation, and those of many of her compatriots, never recovered. While The Artists’ Gift indicates the political role that the arts played in twentieth-century Denmark, it also represents the tenuous and contested place of national memory in Danish cultural life. 

Linda Marie Rouillard, Professor of French and Chair, Department of World Languages and Cultures, College of Arts and Letters) 
“Crossing the Line: Transvestism and World War I”

War is essentially about challenging accepted and recognizable boundaries, about crossing lines. In World War I, at the geo-political level, Europe saw numerous frontiers affronted. There is, however, another level of boundary-crossing that sometimes happens in war, involving sexuality and gender identity. In literature, pop-culture, and in fact, some individuals face war or escape war by cross-dressing, essentially blurring and breaching the line between the sexes: Achilles’ mother dressed her young son in women’s clothing, hoping to protect him from battle. Toledo’s own Jamie Farr played a television character who unsuccessfully tried to be removed from the Korean War front by dressing as a woman. We know of historical women who cross-dressed in order to fight during the American Civil War, or find their husbands; and historical men and women who cross-dressed to fight the battle against sexual stereotypes and the battle for sexual equality. Of concern, here, is Paul Grappe (1891-1928), a French man who cross-dressed as a woman to escape military service in WWI. Avoiding detection by his disguise and moving to Spain, Grappe returned to France ten years after the war, benefitting from the general amnesty awarded to all who went AWOL. Grappe lived as a woman (Suzanne) along side his wife Louise for many years before returning to a male identity. This presentation considers the hostility and struggle between Paul/Suzanne and Louise as a microcosm of the greater political combat between nations who sought to maintain their identities and those who fought to change European identities during World War I. 

Friederike Emonds, Associate Professor of German, Department of World Languages and Cultures, College of Arts and Letters 
“Gendered Memories: German Literature and the Great War”

The catastrophe of World War I created a traumatic rupture between past and present in many European countries. In Germany, war memories continued to haunt its society long after the devastating defeat and framed the politically volatile years of the Weimar Republic. Ten years after the end of WWI, the memory discourse culminated in a sudden boom of war literature. War narratives such as All Quiet on the Western Front (1928) quickly turned into (inter)national bestsellers. Like Remarque’s novel, most of those war narratives were male-authored and centered on the front experiences of the soldiers. While women writers had greatly contributed to the sub-genre of war literature during the war years, their silence ten years later is rather conspicuous. Paul Fussel showed in his influential work The Great War and Modern Memory (1975) that the language of war literature has framed modern memory. Drawing on Fussel’s theories as a point of departure, this paper investigates the consequences of the lack of female-authored war narratives in the late Weimar Republic for the collective memory discourse of WWI in German society today. 

Paula Reich, Interpretive Projects and Managing Editor, Toledo Museum of Art 
“Art on the Front Line: Artists and Art Transformed by the Great War”

[“I have been drawing; that protects one from death and danger.” — Max Beckmann from the Western Front, 1914] How does art respond to war, especially war on a previously unimaginable scale? For avant-garde artists in Europe during World War I — many of whom served in their nation’s armed forces — this was an urgent question. Their personal experiences of the Great War, whether on the front lines or on the home front, suffused their art, even decades later. As these artists sought to understand, reflect on, and even reject a world irrevocably transformed by the War, new movements and philosophies arose, among them Dada, New Objectivity, Suprematism, and Surrealism. Avant-garde movements that preceded the War, such as Cubism, Expressionism, and Futurism, were altered by their encounter with it. This presentation examines some of the ways in which World War I remade the face of Modern art and culture, reshaping attitudes toward the Machine Age, political revolution, utopian ideals, and the very concept of art. It focuses particularly on artists for whom the War precipitated personal and artistic transformation, including Otto Dix, Max Beckmann, Käthe Kollwitz, and Fernand Léger. 

Matt Forte, Assistant Professor of Music History, Director of Orchestras, Conductor of Toledo Symphony Youth Orchestras, Department of Music, College of Arts and Letters) 
Des Helden Walstatt: The Romantic Symphony in the Trenches”

This presentation postulates that the system of values that made musical Romanticism a dominant mode of aesthetic expression of late 19th-century Europe was comprehensively extinguished by the trump of the First World War. In its brutality, its futility, its inhumanity, and its degradation, the Great War utterly destroyed many of the cultural presumptions that were necessary in order for Romanticism to exist. By tracing the apogee of musical Romanticism — and its perhaps most quintessential form, the large-scale symphony — in the first decade of the twentieth century, and its quick demise in the second, this presentation will demonstrate that the Great War had a profound and lasting impact on European musical culture. 

Matt Foss, Assistant Professor of Theatre, Department of Theatre and Film, College of Arts and Letters 
“From Novel to Play: Ethical and Aesthetic Adaptation for Today’s Audience”

The process of adapting literature for the stage begs the question of how the original piece’s given circumstances can speak within the immediacy of a theatrical event. It is an effort that combines an understanding of its original form and point of view with a thought toward making a meaningful contribution to the contemporary conversation. This presentation will examine the process of adapting Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front for the stage and discuss the aesthetics and ethics of adaptation, creation, and the transition of literature to performance. It will discuss the process of honoring the who, what, when, and where of source material, while reanimating it toward an impactful why for today’s audiences. 


TOOLKIT FOR EDUCATORS 

Are you interested in learning more about World War I? Here is a list of recommended readings: 

    • Under Fire, Henri Barbusse (trans. from the original French Le Feu: journal d'une escouade, 1916)
    • The Return of the Soldier, Rebecca West (1918)
    • Three Soldiers, John Dos Passos (1921)
    • Drums in the Night, Bertolt Brecht (trans. fr. the original German Trommeln in der Nacht, first performed 1922)
    • The Enormous Room, e.e. cummings (1922)
    • The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann (trans. fr. the orig. German Der Zauberberg, 1924)
    • Parade’s End, Ford Madox Ford (1924)
    • Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf (1925)
    • All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque (trans. fr. the orig. German Im Westen nichts Neues, 1928)
    • A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway (1929)
    • Goodbye to All That, Robert Graves (1929)
    • Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, Siegfried Sassoon (1930)
    • Testament of Youth, Vera Brittain (1933)
    • The Regeneration Trilogy, Pat Barker (2014)
    • On War and Writing, Samuel Hynes (2018)

For more information about the war, here are a few useful links:

 

Last Updated: 6/27/22