Jan Vermeiren. The First World War and German National Identity

At the beginning of the First World War, Stefan Zweig wrote in the Neue Freie Presse that “out of neighborly friendliness emerges unity” and that “Germany’s fate has become inseparable from our own.” Zweig, who enjoyed an international reputation that would only increase after the war, would later regret his stance at the beginning of the First World War. But for a moment, he felt a vital connection between himself, a Viennese Jew, and his fellow German-speakers of the German Empire. Zweig was not the only intellectual who thought about the historical, political, and, indeed, ethno-linguistic connections between Germany and Austria-Hungary. Jan Vermeiren’s The First World War and German National Identity: The Dual Alliance at War explores the ways in which Germany’s intellectuals thought about and imagined their Austrian ally in the crucible of the First World War. Simmering in the background is the received history of the First World War and the contours of the German nation as it subsequently was conceived by the German political Right. For it was the conservative, national wing of German politics that argued that the First World War forged a revived “Germandom” that transcended political boundaries. The community of war and sacrifice had, in their minds, overcome the divisions between “Reich Germans” in the German Empire and the ethnic Germans in other states, scattered about Central and Eastern Europe. Of course, important for this moment were the over ten million German-speakers in Austria and Hungary who, for the right-wing German nationalists, now shared in the sacrifices and in the eschatology of the German mission.

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