Hurray patriotism
Cheer patriotism is a pejorative term for a form of patriotism that goes hand in hand with war euphoria. It usually contains elements of nationalism and chauvinism , often also racism .
Etymology and conceptual history
The word is derived from the battle cry Hurray , which accompanied bayonet attacks by the infantry among the Prussian troops in the War of Liberation in 1813 . The battle cry can be found in the poetry collection Leyer and Schwerdt (including sword song or Das ist Lützow's wild, daring hunt ) by the poet of the Wars of Liberation, Theodor Körner . In the sword song it says, referring to the “Hurray! ” At the end of each stanza: “At the 'Hurray!' the swords are clinked. ” Then the battle cry found its way into the regulations of the Prussian army , as the Brockhaus of 1880 explains. From then on, enthusiasm for war in connection with the battle cry “Hurray!” Became powerful again and again during the 19th century in Germany, in war clubs and associations, but also in patriotic poetry. A prominent example is Ferdinand Freiligrath , who wrote shortly after the outbreak of war in 1870: “Hurray, you proud beautiful woman, / Hurray, Germania! / How bold you stand there with your body bent forward / On the Rhine! / In the full fire of the July glut, / How do you draw your sword fresh! / How do you step angrily and cheerfully / As protection in front of your hearth! / Hurray, hurray, hurray! / Hurray, Germania! "
Such excesses gave rise to the ironic word formation "Hurrapatriotismus", which initially aimed primarily at the war-glorifying customs in the area of the Pan-German Association , the German Fleet Association , the warrior clubs, etc., on special festive days such as Sedantag , Emperor's birthday or anniversaries such as which the Wars of Liberation took place in concentrated form. Two exemplary evidence of this concept formation in its use before the First World War : Lily Braun mentioned in 1911 in her memoirs of a socialist the “artificially whipped up cheer patriotism of the present day war memorial celebrations”. In a letter to Gerhart Hauptmann in 1912 when he was commissioned to write a festival to mark the centenary of the war of liberation, Max Reinhardt's managing director Gersdorff wrote: “ No cheap cheer patriotism” should be expected.
First World War
In 1914 there were in Germany, but also z. In France, for example, there was a real wave of enthusiasm for war, which is now known as the August experience . This enthusiasm and its propagandistic use and orchestration following the above. It was primarily phenomena that were understood in the Weimar Republic and later under the term hurrapatriotism. Kurt Tucholsky, for example, directed his criticism particularly sharply against the militarism represented in war clubs and student corps , which aimed at a revision of the war results from 1918/19 - and thus at a repetition of 1914. An example of this is his text next door from 1922: A war club celebrates in the next room of a restaurant ("Hurray! Rra! Rra!") , in the taproom a war disabled man without arms follows the performance and comments on it. Tucholsky, however, did not use the expression “cheering patriotism” - the term “patriotism” was sufficient for him to characterize the attitude he criticized: “In patriotism, we allow everyone to surpass ourselves - we feel international. In the homeland love of nobody ” ( Heimat , 1929).
Reception in literature
An impressive description of jingoism in Wilhelminism supplies Heinrich Mann in the subject in 1916: "Hurray, shouted Diederich, for everyone was shouting it. And in the midst of a mighty thrust of people who were screaming, he suddenly came under the Brandenburg Gate. The Kaiser rode through two paces in front of him. Diederich could look into his face, into the stone seriousness and the flashing, but it blurred before his eyes, he screamed so hard. An intoxication higher and more glorious than that conveyed by the beer raised him on tiptoe, carried him through the air. He waved his hat high above everyone's head in a sphere of enthusiastic frenzy, through a sky where our extreme emotions revolve. Stone on the horse there in the gate of the victorious incursions and trains and flashing rode to power. " Even Hedwig Dohm used the term in connection with the First World War . Ernst Toller , once a hurray patriot himself, wrote to Hinkemann and Der unleashed Wotan against war and nationalism in his plays after his return from the First World War .
today
Today the term can be described as internationalized: in the German-speaking debate, cheer patriotism is often accused of the USA or Great Britain , while the German point of view is usually characterized by a distinction from cheer patriotism. For example, the term was used by Gerhard Schröder in a speech on October 3, 2003 on the Day of German Unity , in which he stated that the Bundeswehr missions abroad had taken place "without any hurray patriotism" , or in the following statement about the SPD : “We are truly a patriotic party. But we are not a party of hurray patriotism ” (March 21, 2004, according to taz of December 8, 2005). This also indicates that the critical potential of the term in its use today is limited, as it is regularly used for the warlike nationalism of others, from which one's own patriotism can then be distinguished.
The English-language form of cheering patriotism in the British variant is jingoism , in the USA also so-called spread eagleism .
swell
- ↑ cf. http://www.dhm.de/lemo/html/kaiserreich/index.html
- ^ "Expressionist Ernst Toller: The Art of Rebellion" spiegel.de. dated October 18, 2008