The First World War as a Clash of Cultures - (Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture) by Fred Bridgham (Hardcover)

About the Book

Essays examining the rift between British and German intellectual and cultural traditions before 1914 and its effect on events.

Book Synopsis

Essays examining the rift between British and German intellectual and cultural traditions before 1914 and its effect on events.

This volume of essays examines the perceived rift between the British and German intellectual and cultural traditions before 1914 and how the resultant war of words both reflects and helped determine historical, political, and, ultimately, military events. This vexed symbiosis is traced first through a survey of popular fiction, from alarmist British and German "invasion novels" to the visions of Erskine Childers and Saki and even P.G. Wodehouse; contrastingly, the "mixed-marriage novels" of von Arnim, Spottiswoode, and Wylie are considered. Further topics include D. H. Lawrence's ambivalent relationship with Germany, Carl Sternheim's coded anti-militarism, H. G. Wells's and Kurd Lasswitz's visions of their countries under Martian invasion, Nietzsche as the embodiment of Prussian warmongering, and the rise in Germany of anglophobic, anti-Spencerian evolutionism. Case histories of the positions of German andEnglish academics in regard to the conflict round out the volume.

Contributors: Iain Boyd White, Helena Ragg-kirkby, Rhys Williams, Ingo Cornils, Nicholas Martin, Gregory Moore, Stefan Manz, Andreas Huther, Holger Klein

Fred Bridgham is Senior Lecturer in the Department of German at the University of Leeds.

Review Quotes

[A]n invaluable resource for further work on Anglo-German relations.-- "JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN STUDIES"

Gathering contributions by experts in various disciplines, this volume elucidates antagonistic cultural crosscurrents between England and Germany in the period prior to WWI.... A book for historians and scholars of literature and cultural studies.-- "CHOICE"

The essays collected in this volume discuss the war of ideas that contributed to the sense that the First World War was more than simply the solution of political conflicts through armed action: it was a genuine 'clash of civilisations.-- "FORUM FOR MODERN LANGUAGE STUDIES"

This admirably cohesive volume of cultural history essays addresses an important gap in the existing scholarship, linking prewar attitudes to wartime propaganda and arguments. ... The essays here make a strong contribution to the scholarship of the early twentieth century by elaborating upon Niall Ferguson's comment that World War I was 'caused by culture.-- "GERMAN STUDIES REVIEW"