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CHAPTER 6 Mobilizing Social Memory: Gendered Images of War and Sacri‹ce A large international art and garden show opened in Düsseldorf in September 1904 to considerable fanfare. After all, the duchess of Baden, Luise, was the honored guest, a point of extensive attention in the newspaper and of‹cial accounts of the inaugural events.1 The appearance of the royal ‹gure prompted the magistrates to arrange the requisite ceremonies of homage that, in turn, worked to the credit of the same of‹cials tied at that moment into the dynastic state system of honors and rewards. The crowds of common folk lined up to greet the duchess were large and enthusiastic , according to of‹cials, but even more impressive were the young schoolgirls on display in front of the Palace of Art—by one account over three thousand in total. The duchess proceeded to wade through these layers of cheering participants, speaking to the one and then the other, a “triumphal march” (Triumphzug) as one local newspaper put it in an effort, perhaps, to place a mantle of consensus on the events in the streets.2 The welcoming speech was given by Professor Roeber, president of the exhibition’s planning committee. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, given the nature of the exhibit, it centered on a distinct memory of the wars of German uni‹cation. The trigger for such recall is easy to pinpoint: the 217 1. GK, Abt. 69, no. 227, Besuch der Grossherzogin in Koblenz und Düsseldorf vom 18–20 September 1904. The collection contains clippings of the Düsseldorfer Zeitung, September 20, 1904, and of the Städtische Nachrichten; the Of‹zielle Ausstellungs-Zeitung für die Internationale Kunst-Ausstellung und grosse Gartenbau-Ausstellung, Düsseldorf, 1904, and a clipping of the Anstädter Tageblatt, October 13, 1904. 2. Kaschuba, “Von der Rotte zum Block,” 87–89, for a discussion of the procession (Zug) used by the Left to mobilize sympathy and pressure opponents. For a compelling recollection as a child of waiting for the arrival of the royalty, Bäumer, Lebensweg durch eine Zeitenwende, 73. genealogical connections of the Hohenzollern dynasty. The presence at the ceremony of the daughter of William I—the duchess Luise—prompted Roeber’s memories about war. It was the present context—a speech before colleagues and friends with an eye to its publication—that emboldened his patriotic sensibility. His political inheritance seemed to prove the glory of past events. “Now that the light of the sun’s rays of peace is shining, the second generation can burst forth with rich harvests, . . . the seeds of which were given by the life and work of the father.”3 Besides, Roeber could remind everyone in the audience of the close and special ties that Empress Augusta had established with the people of the Rhineland and Westphalia . Professor Roeber’s memory of war, however, went beyond the standard litany of phrases in patriotic invocations of the founding of the Reich, although they were, of course, part of his presentation. He, too, drew on familiar, if rearranged, tropes, describing, for example, the uni‹cation era as a “phenomenal” (gewaltig) and “iron” (eisern) age. But his memory attached itself to the person of the Landesmutter Luise, whom he speci‹cally praised as a “loyal and steadfast companion and advisor in times of dif‹culty.” He conjured up the work she had performed in war, the ministerings by her own hands that had “bound the wounds and helped them heal and mend.” These expressions of sacri‹ce were all the more necessary since war in his view was “inexorable” (unerbittlich). Indeed, the memory of past service had direct consequences for the future, in which the same pattern of care would be awakened again to meet war’s inevitable sacri‹ces. These words seemed to lend authority to his characterizations of time, in which the past was a projection for the present of a particular vision of the future.4 These temporal connections were enacted in a stylized exchange that accompanied the opening speech. In carefully choreographed dialogue, a young daughter of the mayor recited a poem to the “noble princess of the Hohenzollern dynasty” whose very name awakened “sacred memory”; for her part, Luise stressed the signi‹cance of a deepening understanding of the events surrounding the founding of the Reich, as she saw it, preserved today as a “precious achievement” by her husband and William II; its future, too, was safeguarded by the strength of the...

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