Annette Jantzen, Priester im Krieg. Elsässische

Francia­Recensio 2011/4
19./20. Jahrhundert – Histoire contemporaine
Annette Jantzen, Priester im Krieg. Elsässische und französisch­lothringische Geistliche im Ersten Weltkrieg, Paderborn, München, Wien, Zürich (Ferdinand Schöningh) 2010, 367 S., 1 CD­Rom (Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für Zeitgeschichte, Reihe B: Forschungen, 116), ISBN 978­3­506­76873­5, EUR 49,90.
rezensiert von/compte rendu rédigé par
Christopher Fischer, Terre Haute (Indiana)
Annette Jantzen’s »Priester im Krieg« examines how Catholic priests from French Lorraine and German Alsace­Lorraine (especially Alsace) experienced, and more importantly, processed their experiences in the First World War. For Jantzen, the religious worldview of the priests shaped their understanding not just of their role in the conflict, but ultimately of the meaning of the war itself. Indeed, most priests, regardless of their nationality or role during the conflict, viewed the war as »a test, which they hoped would soon be over, but did not alter the character of their belief in Providence.« To come to this conclusion, Jantzen focuses upon how priests interpreted and worked through their experiences on the homefront (including occupied territory), in POW camps, and in service to the French and German armies. The first major section explores priests’ lives on their respective homefronts. For Lorraine’s clergymen the initial shock of the German advance brought with it the possibility of mistreatment, sometimes horrific in nature. Such suffering, and especially death at the hands of Germans, was often viewed in both wartime and postwar accounts through the twin lens of religious sacrifice and national service. Alsatian priests too faced persecution. Suspect as both an untrustworthy regional minority, and as Catholics (at least by Protestant troops from other regions of Germany. It is curious here if the arrival of Catholic troops from nearby Wuerttemberg in 1917 helped to ameliorate the situation, an issue which Jantzen does not take up.), Alsatian priests were criticized by military authorities for their either deutschfeindliche sermons, or homilies which failed to display proper war enthusiasm. German military authorities also forbade the use of French, either with French­speaking Alsatians, and in some places even banned Latin. More importantly, a number of Alsatian priests were prosecuted and expelled from Alsace by German authorities. While the local bishop fought a generally failing rearguard action on behalf of his priests, the priests themselves, Jantzen notes, saw a certain piety in their suffering; many returned at the end of the war appalled at the poor state of their parishes. An extremely brief second section explores those priests interned during the war as POWs; here the focus is mostly how French priests in German camps endured their period of captivity. While some priests were unhappy, others found better conditions in the camps then in their parishes located near the front. Jantzen Lizenzhinweis: Dieser Beitrag unterliegt der Creative­Commons­Lizenz Namensnennung­Keine kommerzielle Nutzung­Keine Bearbeitung (CC­BY­NC­ND), darf also unter diesen Bedingungen elektronisch benutzt, übermittelt, ausgedruckt und zum Download bereitgestellt werden. Den Text der Lizenz erreichen Sie hier: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by­nc­nd/3.0/de
does not pick up the parallel story of the Alsatian priests in Allied camps; such would require going through the archives in Colmar, Paris, Stuttgart, and Munich, not to mention several other French departmental archives with a very fine toothed comb. The third major section turns to priests serving in the respective French and German militaries. Here Lorraine weighs heavily upon the work as materials from the archdiocese of Nancy – a wartime diocesan bulletin for priests, letters to the bishop, and post­war written memorials – provide the core of analysis. Priests often presented their experiences along common lines, seeing the war as a test from God, reflecting upon the difficulties of carrying out religious responsibilities such as saying Mass, and expressing concern about carrying out their military duties; conversely, priests often, even in private letters to the bishop, rarely demanded recognition for their efforts and only indirectly referred to the trauma of the conflict. It is in this section that Jantzen shows the importance of private correspondence in a close, extended reading of the diary of François Godefroy; Godefroy's reflections on the war often paralleled the more public writings explored elsewhere, but also show a penchant for criticizing French military leadership as the war continued and deep concern about the relative irreligious attitude of both the French nation generally and his fellow comrades specifically. The place of Alsatian priests in the German military, in comparison, receives less attention. Unlike in Nancy, the diocese in Strasbourg did not create a newsletter for its priests, nor did it collect remembrances after the war. Indeed, Alsatians in general, not just Alsatian priests, commemorated the war in often ambivalent fashion, especially in the late 1920s when the autonomy movement was in full swing; such issues, however, lay beyond the ken of Jantzen’s study. Instead, Jantzen is only able to sketch the outlines of the Alsatian experience. Much like their fellow Alsatians serving in the French military, Alsatian priests were often shipped off to the Eastern Front, feared by the German military as potential turncoats if allowed to serve in the West. Many priests sought permission to return home; when such efforts (normally) failed, priests sought positions as military chaplains. Not surprisingly, at the end of the war, Alsatian priests expressed relief that the war was over, but commented little on the future national belonging to the region. Jantzen’s work is paired with a CD­ROM which includes many of her sources, each listed as a separate PDF file, which the reader can then access by number (Quelle 1, 2, etc.) when working through the text. It is a rare opportunity, but one that would have been enhanced by a more developed CD, with a central index and slightly heavier annotating of the sources. For example, Jantzen does not provide some of the same information (names, dates) for letters in the sources on the CD; to take one source, we learn of Albert Saint­Dizier's time working in a tuberculosis hospital in 1915 in Quellen 144/145, but the PDFs merely contain text, not the additional information that one would have to go back and find in the Lizenzhinweis: Dieser Beitrag unterliegt der Creative­Commons­Lizenz Namensnennung­Keine kommerzielle Nutzung­Keine Bearbeitung (CC­BY­NC­ND), darf also unter diesen Bedingungen elektronisch benutzt, übermittelt, ausgedruckt und zum Download bereitgestellt werden. Den Text der Lizenz erreichen Sie hier: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by­nc­nd/3.0/de
footnotes. In addition, Jantzen often quotes the sources at great length, an odd choice for a work that already includes fuller versions. It is also surprising that politically engaged priests such as Émile Wetterlé receive little attention. Wetterlé, an ardently francophile priest, newspaper owner, and politician, fled to France in summer 1914 to work for the French government during the war; his own extensive personal papers in Colmar, much less materials in Strasbourg or Paris, appear not to have been consulted. More generally, the politically active members of the Alsatian clergy – many of whom before, during, and after the war served in the national legislatures of Germany then France – remain largely absent from Jantzen’s account. Despite the stronger sections on Lorraine, Jantzen nonetheless demonstrates the importance of religion in shaping the experience of priests during the war. More understated is the issue of nationalism; French Lorrainer priests, and especially the archbishop of Nancy, often could reconcile their religious and national identities, seeing in the French victory a vindication of French civilization over German barbarity, a victory ultimately ordained by God. Alsatian priests, not surprising from their treatment during the war, embraced more fully a regional rather than a national identity, but remained more muted on issues of national belonging, points that Jantzen does not overplay.
Scholars of the First World War will find in Jantzen’s work a valuable contribution to the religious history of the war. Regional historians, or those interested in comparative perspectives on the war, will discover »Priester im Krieg« an engaging study of the how the war impacted the border regions of Alsace and Lorraine. Lizenzhinweis: Dieser Beitrag unterliegt der Creative­Commons­Lizenz Namensnennung­Keine kommerzielle Nutzung­Keine Bearbeitung (CC­BY­NC­ND), darf also unter diesen Bedingungen elektronisch benutzt, übermittelt, ausgedruckt und zum Download bereitgestellt werden. Den Text der Lizenz erreichen Sie hier: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by­nc­nd/3.0/de