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The Politics of Memory in Annexed Lorraine: The Conflicts between Germanification and French Stalwarts at the beginning of the 20 th Century
Author(s) -
HAMMAN PHILIPPE
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
journal of historical sociology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.186
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1467-6443
pISSN - 0952-1909
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-6443.2009.01352.x
Subject(s) - politics , nationalism , german , politics of memory , collective memory , empire , history , sociology , phenomenon , political science , law , ancient history , epistemology , philosophy , archaeology
The article examines how the uses of memory in turn‐of‐the‐century Lorraine structured political discourse and presented enduring difficulties for the actions of German administrators and local community leaders. In this border region, memory was always contested and challenged, and thereby unstable. This paper approaches “the politics of French memory” through the examination of various pro‐French “memory societies” and networks such as the Souvenir Français . The central question is how did conflicts over memory impact Lorraine's political life and its place in the German Empire in the years leading up to the Great War? Regarding this point, the growth of nationalism is analysed as a phenomenon that reached far beyond French nationalist circles.