Fred Bridgham 
The First World War as a Clash of Cultures [PDF ebook] 

Essays examining the rift between British and German intellectual and cultural traditions before 1914 and its effect on events.


This volume of essays examines the perceived rift between the British and German intellectual and cultural traditions before 1914 and how the resultant war of words both reflects and helped determine historical, political, and, ultimately, military events. This vexed symbiosis is traced first through a survey of popular fiction, from alarmist British and German ‘invasion novels’ to the visions of Erskine Childers and Saki and even P.G. Wodehouse; contrastingly, the ‘mixed-marriage novels’ of von Arnim, Spottiswoode, and Wylie are considered. Further topics include D. H. Lawrence’s ambivalent relationship with Germany, Carl Sternheim’s coded anti-militarism, H. G. Wells’s and Kurd Lasswitz’s visions of their countries under Martian invasion, Nietzsche as the embodiment of Prussian warmongering, and the rise in Germany of anglophobic, anti-Spencerian evolutionism. Case histories of the positions of German and English academics in regard to the conflict round out the volume.


Contributors: Iain Boyd White, Helena Ragg-kirkby, Rhys Williams, Ingo Cornils, Nicholas Martin, Gregory Moore, Stefan Manz, Andreas Huther, Holger Klein


Fred Bridgham is Senior Lecturer in the Department of German at the University of Leeds.

Tabla de materias

Introduction – Fred Bridgham

Anglo-German Conflict in Popular Fiction 1870-1914 – Iain Boyd Whyte

Perversion and Pestilence: D. H. Lawrence and the Germans – Helena Ragg-Kirkby

‘Und muß ich von Dante schweigen, zieht Italien gegen uns?’: Carl Sternheim’s Opposition to the First World War – Rhys W. Williams

The Martians Are Coming! War, Peace, Love, and Reflection in H. G. Wells’s
The War of the Worlds and Kurd Lasswitz’s
Auf zwei Planetenand Kurd Lasswitz’s
Auf zwei Planeten –

Nietzsche as Hate-Figure in Britain’s Great War: ‘The Execrable Neech’ – Nicholas Martin

Darwinism and National Identity, 1870-1918 – Gregory Moore

Bernhardi and ‘The Ideas of 1914’ – Fred Bridgham

Peacemaker and Warmonger: Alexander Tille and the Limits of Anglo-German Intercultural Transfer – Stefan Manz

‘In Politik verschieden, in Freundschaft wie immer’: The German Celtic Scholar Kuno Meyer and the First World War – Andreas Huether

Austrian (and Some German) Scholars of English and the First World War – Holger Klein