“Heroic Maidens and Women of a Great Era,” is the title of a brochure in the popular series “When Germany Awoke: The People and Events of the Wars of Liberation,” which appeared in 1913 to commemorate the one-hundredth anniversary of the wars of 1813–15. To be sure, the centenary mainly honored the “heroic deeds” of the “brave national warriors” – the volunteers and militiamen who had gone to battle. The observance also paid homage, however, to the “great sacrifices” made by “German women” during these wars. By 1913 it was generally acknowledged that wars fought with conscript armies could be conducted most successfully when they were accompanied by a general mobilization of civilian and military society. This implied that the broad support of women was also necessary for victory. In order to convey this insight to women and girls in the bellicose era on the eve of the First World War, authors of brochures that addressed female readers regularly referred to the “heroic age” of hundred years before, in which, in their interpretation, patriotic consciousness had “awakened” in men and women alike, and members of the “female sex” had actively committed themselves to the fatherland for the first time. The pamphlet noted accordingly that

The failure of the Revolution of 1848–49 was a watershed moment not only for politics and society, but also for literary production. The second half of the nineteenth century became the golden age of “literary realism” in Germany. The literary historian Julian Schmidt and his colleague, the writer Gustav Freytag, were instrumental in developing the program for this movement in their joint literary and cultural journal Die Grenzboten. According to them, authors should only describe “reality,” all the while “awakening and nourishing a sense of the beautiful and the sublime.” As they saw it, “Poetic realism will lead to pleasing works of art when it also seeks out the positive side of reality, when it is combined with the joy of life.” They rejected the socially critical novels of Young Germany and the Vormärz as ugly and unpoetic, along with the mysticism of Romantic literature or the “cookie cutter writers” of historical fiction. They expected historical novels written in the spirit of literary realism to treat the author’s own national history:

In order to offer “a picture [of history] that is vivid and comprehensible down to the slightest detail,” the author of a historical novel will however “need to accommodate to the conditions of history: he will base his picture on provincial history.” At the same time, the novel must be set during a period of this regional history “to which general historical interest is attached.” Only in this way can a provincial novel become a national one that appeals to an audience beyond a single region and attains national and international recognition. This ideal notion of realism within literary theory was faced with a practice in which the term increasingly evolved into a “catchword, a term of approbation” for the combination of literature with history and politics. Particularly since the beginning of the “New Era” in the 1860s, “realism” was used more generally to refer to a national-liberal program of literature and politics that focused on building the nation under kleindeutsch Prussian auspices.

In 2013, the media and museums throughout Germany began to mark the bicentenary of the last, ultimately victorious wars against Napoleon in 1813–15, which are usually referred to as the “Wars of Liberation.” Several academic conferences have debated the history of the period and a plethora of public events – including a vast reenactment of the central battle at Leipzig in October 1813, lectures, readings and “history festivals” – have recalled the wars. Documentaries and other programs on television, newspapers and magazines, popular history books and bestselling historical novels have re-narrated them. The hype around the anniversaries of the Napoleonic Wars began in 2005 in Britain, occasioned by the anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar with a major exhibition on Nelson & Napoleon. Exhibitions in Austria, Germany, Italy, Russia and Sweden followed. The most recent include Napoleon and Europe: Dream and Trauma, a Franco-German project that was shown in Bonn in 2011 and in Paris in 2013. It explores “the close connection between the level of expectation that Napoleon created and the deep distress he caused.” This book also emphasizes the ambivalence, frictions, ruptures and contradictions that marked the period of the wars of the Napoleonic Empire and the preceding French Revolution – which raged across and beyond the Continent between 1792 and 1815 – and its legacy. The sometimes sudden and dramatic transformations in the economy, politics, the military and society that characterized this time occurred unevenly across Europe and were accompanied by stagnation and the persistence of tradition in other areas of work and life, particularly in the culture of everyday life and mentalities. Contemporaries had to cope with the coexistence of accelerated change and cultural continuities, and the contradiction between universalist rhetoric and exclusionary practices. These ambivalences also formed the memories of the Napoleonic Wars from 1803 to 1815, which were at once national and European. The nation – defined, following Benedict Anderson, as an “imagined community” – was the main framework in which most memories of these wars were initially constructed and in which they then evolved and circulated. Many European countries recall the era even today as a “formative period” in the history of their nation. This “nationalization” of memory, which is also reflected in the research, is, however, accompanied by the emergence and formation of a “shared and entangled,” specifically European memory of the same wars.

The publication of novels dealing with the years 1806–15, like memory production more generally, began immediately after the wars. Yet the proportion of novels of the recent past was still comparatively small when measured against total novel production in the period 1815–20; during the first five postwar years, no more than about 6 percent of all novels of the recent past addressed these wars. None of these early novels, whose most famous authors included Karl Gottlob Kramer, Caroline de la Motte Fouqué and Caroline Pichler, were reprinted frequently or entered the literary canon, but all of them were very popular among lending-library readers, and their authors were among the libraries’ most successful between 1815 and 1848. Kramer and Pichler retained this status until the end of the nineteenth century. With the exception of Ludwig Rellstab, the authors whose novels appeared from the 1820s to the 1840s did not achieve the large number of new editions and translations that some of the bestsellers in the second half of the century did. Writers such as Willibald Alexis, who began his career in the early 1820s, Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué and Karl Ludwig Häberlin, alias H. E R. Belani, were very well known among contemporary readers, as suggested by the borrowing records of the lending libraries. Their audience was socially far more circumscribed than in the second half of the century, though, consisting largely of the educated classes.

The many conflicts and debates over the “legacy” of the era of the Anti-Napoleonic Wars, their proper commemoration and their significance for present-day society and politics – as expressed not just in autobiographies and war memoirs but also in novels of the recent past and historical fiction – are quite fascinating in light of the assumption among historians, which persisted so long after 1945, that the monarchic-conservative and nationalistic interpretations had been the dominant readings of the Anti-Napoleonic Wars in nineteenth-century collective memory since the restoration period. The same is true of the obvious importance of the gender dimension in these memories, which has been completely ignored by historians until recently. In memories of this period and in their appropriation for the present – as at the remembered time itself – gender images and gender relations assumed a central significance in the continuing imagination of the nation as a Volk family, an imagination in which the collective memories of the period of the Anti-Napoleonic Wars played a crucial role.

Because West German historians writing after 1945 based their interpretation of collective memories of the period from 1806 to 1815 on works by their earlier counterparts – the recognized academic historians of Imperial Germany – and did not deign to descend into the depths of middlebrow literature with its numerous novels of the recent past, works of historical fiction, autobiographies, war memoirs and the like, they de facto simply continued the master narratives of the leading Wilhelmine historians. They overlooked the continuous competition and conflict in public memory production, influenced not only by regional, social, generational, ethnic, religious and political as well as gender differences, but also by the literary market, different media of memory and last but not least the changing political culture.

A few days before the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III officially declared war against Napoleonic France in March 1813, the Silesian newspaper Schlesische Provinzialblätter wrote:

The article called on male readers to follow the king’s example and “ennoble and improve” both their public activities and their domestic lives according to his model. In this way they would prove themselves to be “worthy” sons of the “beloved father of the country [...] So that the German spirit and way of thinking may arise ever more amongst us, and we may increasingly reject the tattered, shallow and undomestic life with which foreigners have sought to inoculate us, and turn away in contempt.”

Like many other publications at the time of the Anti-Napoleonic Wars, this article propagated the image of the Prussian nation as a Volk family. This image organized the participation of men and women of different generations, familial statuses and regional and social backgrounds in the nation in a seemingly “natural” fashion, while simultaneously serving to contain demands for increased political participation in the state. At the head of the Prussian Volk family was the monarch as the “father,” and at his side the queen as the “mother of the people”; the two were bound to each other, as to their children and subjects, in love and solicitude. At the same time, in his role as supreme military commander, the father of the people also led the fraternal community of valorous male “citizens of the state.” He was even stylized as the “first citizen of his state.”

Discourses on the Nation, War and Gender

In his “List of Historical-Political Writings Censored in the Month of February 1815,” the Prussian censor Heinrich Renfner complained once more about the monotony of the literary products he was compelled to read. The occasion for his lament was an article by the Berlin history professor Friedrich Rühs, “On the Unity of the German People,” in the Zeitschrift für die neueste Geschichte, die Staaten- und Völkerkunde. This journal of contemporary history and politics was published by Georg Andreas Reimer, one of the leading publishers in the Prussian capital, from 1814 to 1816. In his article Rühs supported the reconstitution of a German empire. As long as political circumstances rendered this impossible, unity could only be created and maintained by the agreement of the German people. To this end, all Germans must be regarded as compatriots and attain the same rights in each German state, for which universal legislation was necessary. Rühs suggested establishing a federal council of German states with Austria and Prussia at the helm. The states would have a common foreign policy toward non-German states, and henceforth no individual member would be permitted to maintain envoys at foreign courts. The defense of the German fatherland would be secured by a reorganization of military affairs, with a general militia as its main element. To make German men better able to defend their country, they should undergo regular military training during peacetime. Fostering a sense of common purpose among all Germans, Rühs believed, demanded instruction in German history, the promotion of German language and customs and the introduction of a German national costume and festivals. As Renfner commented tersely on the essay, “All in all, the same suggestions we have already read in a hundred pamphlets and presumably will read again ad nauseam usque.” In fact, we can find similar recommendations in many other pamphlets, broadsheets, magazines and newspapers of the time. If we look at the range of political literature, it soon becomes apparent that much of what Arndt, Fichte or Jahn – the best known German-national authors of their time – wrote in their texts was also shared by many less famous contemporary authors.

On 9 October 1806, Prussia declared war on France. This was the first time since 1795 that the monarchy had joined in a coalition war against France. In the separate Peace of Basel of 5 April 1795, Prussia had made a pact of neutrality and left the fight against the French army above all to Britain, Austria and Russia. As a consequence of this decade of neutrality, large parts of central, eastern and northern Germany, unlike the south and southwest, had escaped war. But when the Prussian government learned in August 1806 that Napoleon was engaged in alliance negotiations with Britain and had unilaterally offered the return of Hanover as an inducement, an unambiguous response seemed unavoidable. Hanover, a German electorate in personal union with the British monarchy, had been occupied by France in 1803. When French troops in 1805 violated the neutrality of Ansbach in Prussian territory on their march to face the Austrians and Russians, Prussia had remained at peace with France because of a formal treaty promising to give Hanover to Prussia in exchange for Ansbach being awarded to France’s ally Bavaria. Thus, when Napoleon offered Hanover to Britain, the path to war seemed inevitable for the Prussian monarch Friedrich Wilhelm III, who saw no “honorable” alternative.

Germany changed dramatically over the hundred years between the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the beginning of World War I. No area of the economy, society, politics or culture remained unaffected. Processes such as industrialization, population growth and urbanization transformed the face of the countryside and cities alike and led to rising social mobility, but they also caused new problems. The steam engine and other new technologies revolutionized craft and industrial production, and the railway system connected businesses and people in different regions. Long before unification, the German economy and society had begun to coalesce. The literary market also became increasingly national. More and more people were able to read. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Germany had one of the highest literacy rates in the world, nearly 100 percent. Technological changes in paper manufacturing and the printing industry allowed for the production of cheap illustrated reading matter. Books, newspapers and magazines became mass commodities, sources of profit, but also of unease. The conservative elites in state and society feared the spread of “subversive” liberal, democratic and socialist literature to broader strata of the population. As before, the response of governments was political suppression of the opposition and censorship. But the forms of communication control were adapted to the new social and political circumstances.

In this chapter, I first describe the changes in political culture and communication control, which were one important factor that influenced the production of collective memories. Then I explore the transformation of the literary market, which played a crucial role as well, and finally I look at the development of the reading public over the long nineteenth century. My main argument is that the process of constructing nationally shared – albeit contested – collective memories of the Anti-Napoleonic Wars would have been impossible without the evolution of a culture-consuming national public. And, conversely, that the emergence of nationally shared memories in literature contributed to the making of a national reading public.

One of the few poems from the wars of 1813–15 still known today is Arndt’s “The German’s Fatherland,” which was written in early 1813 and became a kind of German national anthem. No poem was reprinted and recited more frequently during this era. Wherever people wished to demonstrate national belonging they chose this poem, which was soon also set to music. It begins with the rhetorical question “What is the German’s Fatherland?” For Arndt, the answer was obvious. The “German fatherland” should extend to everywhere that “the German tongue rings out.” There, the same virtues and customs would prevail:

1. There is the German’s fatherland!

2. Where oaths attest the grasped hand,

3. Where truth beams from the sparkling eyes,

4. And in the heart love warmly lies.

5. That is the land!

6. There, brother, is thy fatherland!

1. That is the German’s fatherland,

2. Where wrath pursues the foreign band,

3. Where every Frank is held a foe,

4. And Germans all as brothers glow.

5. That is the land!

6. All Germany’s thy fatherland!

In this song, Arndt defines the main objective of the patriots: to reestablish the external and internal unity of the German nation. In addition to military liberation from French domination, this primarily meant a return to the German language, culture and virtues as well as the Christian faith, which together formed German identity. The song’s popularity suggests that Arndt’s vision of the German fatherland struck a chord with many of his educated contemporaries.

In this chapter I explore in more detail how the nation and national identity were defined in the discourse of the era. Apart from the topical literature of the time, I survey encyclopedias, since they provide information on how terms and concepts commonly used at a time were defined and understood especially in middle- and upper-class circles, where most readers of lexica stemmed from. First, I explore the changing definitions of Nation, Volk (people) and Vaterland (fatherland) then I analyze the gendering of the national discourse and examine the contemporary debates over the national, ethnic and racial borders of the nation.

On 20 October 2013 a great battle took place on the outskirts of Leipzig. On a battlefield measuring 500,000 square meters, 6,000 men from 26 countries (women were allowed only as camp followers on the edges of the battlefield) donned their colorful period uniforms, cleaned their old muskets, loaded them with blanks and brought their cannon into position to reenact, with much thunder and gun smoke, the so-called Battle of the Nations of 16–19 October 1813. The event organizer, the Verband Jahrfeier Völkerschlacht b. Leipzig 1813 e.V. (Association to Commemorate the 1813 Battle of the Nations at Leipzig), repeatedly emphasized to the public and the press – 350 journalists from home and abroad observed the spectacle – that the reenacted scenario was historically accurate and had been developed and checked by a military history commission. The combat demonstration by the infantry, cavalry and artillery lasted several hours. A total of 35,000 spectators were admitted, but the same number had to be turned away because the crowd that gathered to watch the spectacle surpassed all expectations.

The reenactment was the spectacular close to a commemorative week in Leipzig and environs recalling the Battle of the Nations and the consecration 100 years later of the monument erected to it. Numerous events surrounding the double anniversary took place throughout the year under the slogan “Leipzig 1813–1913–2013 – A Landmark of European History,” organized by the city of Leipzig, especially the museums and city archive, in cooperation with the Verband Jahrfeier Völkerschlacht b. Leipzig 1813 e.V. and financed by private sponsors and the tourism industry. The public commemoration in 2013 focused on military combat (in the reenactment), the history of memory of the battle and the “Wars of Liberation” and the associated national myths and legends (in the exhibition at the Leipzig City Museum, Helden nach Maß or Heroes Made to Measure), and the hardship and suffering of the civilian population (in the massive panorama “Leipzig 1813 – Amidst the Confusion of the Battle of the Nations” by artist Yadgar Asisi in Leipzig’s Gasometer).

“A nation that does not dare to speak boldly will dare still less to act boldly,” wrote the Prussian officer and military reformer Carl von Clausewitz in a letter of December 1808 in which he reflected on the future of Prussia and Germany. Like most patriots, he believed in the power of “public opinion” (öffentliche Meinung). Without its mobilization, he supposed, it would be impossible to turn Prussia into a “valorous nation.” This belief reflected the enlightened quest to probe and grasp the world rationally, which since the end of the eighteenth century had increasingly included political and social phenomena, and was decisively fed by the experience of the French Revolution and Napoleonic rule. Both had impressively demonstrated the power of public opinion. Views of what constituted this power and how it should be handled differed, to be sure. There was, however, a broad consensus in patriotic circles that the formation of “public opinion” was the “most important and indispensable pillar of any well-ordered state organization,” as the Prussian official Baron Friedrich Ludwig von Vincke wrote in his August 1808 memorandum for the king, titled “Aims and Instruments of Prussian State Administration.” For that reason, Vincke supported the systematic promotion of “publicity” or free access to the public sphere. His model was England with its extensive press freedom, where only abuses were prosecuted. He firmly opposed preventive censorship such as existed in Prussia.

The decades after the Napoleonic Wars witnessed the publication of a veritable flood of autobiographies and war memoirs in Germany as in many other European countries. The sheer number of these texts differentiates this postwar period from all earlier ones. And yet it was also the distinct quality of these accounts that set them apart from previous texts, as David A. Bell emphasizes:

Emerging Romantic notions of the self inspired the autobiographies and war memoirs not just of middle-class men who joined the army as volunteers; even texts by many noblemen who served during the wars as professional officers or generals reflect the trend to greater realism and the psychologization of autobiographical accounts. This confirms the shift to a more “modern regime of selfhood” based on interiority and innate qualities.

The dramatic historical experiences of revolution, war and crisis that many educated contemporaries underwent in the decades of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries promoted a turn toward historical self-reflection and with it autobiographical writing. Literary fashions too, especially those texts that were intensely discussed among the literary public, strongly influenced these new types of writings. Of considerable impact were, first and foremost, the more self-reflective autobiographies by well-known authors, such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s From My Life: Poetry and Truth (the first three volumes were published in 1811–14 and the fourth and final one a year after his death in 1833).

In his 1810 book German Folkdom, Friedrich Ludwig Jahn presents his extensive suggestions for the formation of a German “folk culture” under the heading “folk sensibility” (Volksgefühl). For him, the “language of signs” spoken by “festivities, ceremonies and customs,” was a “language of the heart,” a “need of man, who recognizes the spiritual more purely in a mediating symbol.” This language comes “to the aid of memory,” because it creates a “lasting effect of constant realization.” Jahn perfectly understood the importance of emotions for the cultural construction of a nation, and the central role that ceremonies, rituals and symbols played in this process. He and many other patriots therefore intensively discussed the development of a patriotic-national festival culture in the context of the debate over the best forms of mobilization for war that began after the defeat of 1806–07.

The suggestions they made for this patriotic-national festival culture were a mix of old traditions and new ideas. Early modern European monarchies had used ceremonies and rituals to display and increase their political power and prestige. The king’s coronation, his birthday or important battlefield victories were typically celebrated with grand festivals. Military parades in splendid dress uniforms became a part of these ceremonies when early modern states introduced standing armies and the drilling of soldiers became commonplace. Churches were often used for state-ordered services of intercession and thanksgiving during and after wars, and eighteenth-century Prussia and Germany were no exception in this regard. In the 1770s and 1780s, however, a novel discourse emerged in Central Europe and elsewhere. Enlightened reformers proposed a refashioning of the public festival culture, which they now understood as part of “national culture.” They believed that such celebrations could be used to foster patriotism and a feeling of national belonging among the population. Revolutionary France was the first state to demonstrate vividly the potential of a state-organized festival culture for national mobilization in the early 1790s, and in the following years it became a model for others, even its enemies.