Pacifying War Heritage

Patterns of Cosmopolitan Nationalism at a Danish Battlefield Site

Bibliographic Data

ID5800931
AuthorsMads Daugbjerg (0000-0002-6059-2138, Aarhus University, corresponding author)
Year2009
Volume15
Issue5
Pages431-446
Publication date2009-07-24
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Journal of Heritage Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1352-7258 • E-ISSN: 1470-3610
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13527250903072765
OpenAlexW2067352172
LanguageEN
Citations received17
References cited18

Former battlefields are often held to be important nodes in national iconographies. This article offers an analysis of a Danish battlefield site which has historically been taken to epitomise fervently ethnic national qualities. The article traces significant shifts in the ways its relevance has been and currently is being imagined and expressed. The heritage and commemorative practices conducted here are analysed as an ongoing symbolic struggle between 'civic' and 'ethnic' conceptions of nation. It is argued that a third mode of identification, termed 'cosmopolitan nationalism', seems to be on the rise here. In such an understanding, the war site becomes 'pacified', i.e. symbolically associated with qualities of peace-keeping and humanitarianism. Importantly, however, such agendas do not simply erase the site's national significance but are analysed, rather, as re-imbuing the site with a new strand of Danishness-now taken to entail cosmopolitan and reconciliatory values. Keywords: War HeritageNational IdentityCosmopolitanismDenmarkDanishnessDybb⊘l Notes [1] E.g. Pollard, 'Burying the Hatchet?'; Carman, 'Legacies of War'. [2] Edensor, National Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday Life, 45. [3] This article is based on ethnographic fieldwork at and around Dybb⊘l, the main part of which was conducted during spring and summer 2006. [4] E.g. Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism; Breton, 'From Ethnic to Civic Nationalism'. [5] Beck, 'The Cosmopolitan Society and its Enemies'. [6] Beck and Sznaider, 'Unpacking Cosmopolitanism'. [7] This brief historical outline is composed from Embree, Bismarck's First War; Bj⊘rn and Due-Nielsen, Dansk udenrigspolitiks historie; Christensen and Stevnsborg, 1864: Fra helstat til nationalstat; Kidde Sauntved and Eberhardt, 1864. [8] The original Low German formulation from 1460 was 'dat se bliven ewich tosamende ungedelt'. See e.g. Christensen and Stevnsborg, 1864: Fra helstat til nationalstat, 22. [9] These figures comprise both sides in total; dead and wounded. For more details, see Kidde Sauntved and Eberhardt, 1864, 135-6. [10] Adriansen, 'Dybb⊘l-et dansk og tysk nationalt symbol'; Adriansen, Nationale symboler i det danske rige, 245-75. [11] The other two being Prussia's victory over Austria 1866 and, most importantly, the defeat of the French in 1870. See Adriansen, Nationale symboler i det danske rige, 257. [12] Adriansen, Nationale symboler i det danske rige, 209-10. [13] Danish author and 1917 Nobel Prize-winner in literature Henrik Pontoppidan wrote a powerful poem on the prospect of the return of the lost land in which he coined the metaphor of the 'robbed daughter, deeply lamented' (reproduced in Adriansen, Nationale symboler i det danske rige, 347, my translation from Danish). [14] Macdonald, 'Museums, National, Postnational and Transcultural Identities', 1. [15] Abt, 'The Origins of the Public Museum', 128. [16] Macdonald, 'Museums, National, Postnational and Transcultural Identities', 1 (italics original). [17] Anderson, Imagined Communities, 163-85; Edensor, Tourists at the Taj, 22-8. [18] E.g. Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism; Breton, 'From Ethnic to Civic Nationalism'; Smith, The Ethnic Origin of Nations; Díaz-Andreu, 'Guest Editor's Introduction'. [19] Renan, 'What is a Nation?', 19. [20] Herder, Über den Ursprung der Sprache; Fichte, Reden an die Deutsche Nation. For more on this classic French/German contrast, see e.g. Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism; Kedourie, Nationalism; Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany. [21] Calhoun, Nationalism, 89. [22] E.g. Damsholt, 'Om begrebet "folk"'; Damsholt, 'En national turist i det patriotiske landskab'. [23] E.g. Østergaard, 'En r⊘vet datter dybt begrædt', 22. [24] Bennett, 'Civic Seeing', 263. [25] Macdonald, 'Museums, National, Postnational and Transcultural Identities', 5. [26] Ibid., 3-4. See also Mitchell, Colonizing Egypt, 18-23. [27] Edensor, Tourists at the Taj, 15-16. [28] In this, I am inspired by Scott Lash's argument, in Another Modernity, that, apart from the 'first modernity' of the Enlightenment-the cognitive modernity of reason and progress-we may speak of a 'second modernity' with 'a different rationality' comprising acceptance and even embracement of the contingent, ephemeral and transient nature of being in the modern world. For a parallel take on modernity, see Rojek, Decentring Leisure. [29] Bennett, The Birth of the Museum, 59-88. [30] See Stephen Bann's analysis of two early Parisian museums for an eloquent example of how we should not confine these two opposed museum modalities to separate periods. Bann's aim-just as mine-is not one of placing the two modes at 'different points in a single evolutionary scheme, but of showing how their differing types of discourse relate to different epistemological totalities'. Bann, 'Poetics of the Museum', 73. [31] Margarita Díaz-Andreu argues that, on a European level, predominantly civic approaches to the concept of nation were eclipsed by ethnic understandings in the wake of the unifications of Italy and Germany in 1870 and 1871. Díaz-Andreu, 'Guest Editor's Introduction', 435-8. [32] Damsholt, 'Om begrebet "folk"', 43. [33] Freddie and Lohse 1989, cited in Adriansen, 'Dybb⊘l', 280-1; my translation from Danish. [34] This interview excerpt, in common with all excerpts from interviews, speeches and sermons reproduced in this article, are my translations from Danish. [35] The article is written in Danish. The English title mentioned here is the one devised by its author. Dragsbo, 'At være eller vælge'. [36] Letter to the editor cited in Larsen, 'De uforsonlige s⊘nderjyder', 100; my translation from Danish. [37] This and the following excerpts are from the written version of the speech downloaded from the website of the Danish Armed Forces: http://forsvaret.dk/fko/ (accessed 10 May 2006; my translations from Danish). [38] Beck, 'The Cosmopolitan Society and its Enemies', 17; and see Beck, 'The Cosmopolitan Perspective'; Beck, Der kosmopolitische Blick; as well as Beck and Sznaider, 'Unpacking Cosmopolitanism for the Social Sciences'. [39] Beck and Sznaider, 'Unpacking Cosmopolitanism for the Social Sciences', 2. [40] Ibid., 20. [41] Ibid. [42] Beck, 'The Cosmopolitan Society and its Enemies', 29 (italics original). [43] Beck, 'The Cosmopolitan Perspective', 88. [44] Ibid., 92. [45] I have not been able to obtain a written version of the sermon. Thus, all quotes are based on my fieldnotes from the day. [46] Macdonald, 'Commemorating the Holocaust', 55-6

Battlefield · Cosmopolitanism · Balkans: History, Politics, Society · Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation

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