other publications featuring Antwerp, which helped to form the German wartime image of this port city. This chapter takes a closer look at them: in which ways did Antwerp emerge as a topic? What was the extent and quality of the German interest in Antwerp, and how was it related to the war aims debate?
German wartime publications on Antwerp
How much attention did Antwerp get from the German public during the war? This is hard to quantify, yet an indication may be obtained from the published material. I identified over 20 booklets and pamphlets which referred to Antwerp in their titles and which dealt almost exclusively with an Antwerp- related topic.336 In addition to that, many of the more general publications about Belgium – I counted well over 300 books and pamphlets – included significant sections on Antwerp.337 Newspapers and journals, finally, regularly featured articles on this Belgian metropolis. These publications portray a certain popularity of Antwerp as a topic – even though the details of their dissemination and reception are not clear. Some of the authors, moreover, affirmed that the name of Antwerp was constantly to be heard in Germany.338 How, then, can this interest be explained, and what forms did it take? Three reasons suggest themselves.
First, from August to October 1914, the Belgian city was frequently in the news. With the outbreak of war, as German troops marched into Belgium, many papers reported that furious Belgian mobs had attacked the German residents of Brussels and Antwerp. In the case of Antwerp, they spread stories of maltreatment, even murder.339 These were mostly inflated and sensationalist
336 This and the following counts are based on: Deutsches Bücherverzeichnis. Eine
Zusammenfassung der im deutschen Buchhandel erschienenen Bücher, Zeitschriften und Landkarten, Leipzig 1911-1925. Review articles in Der Belfried, vols.1-3. Lefèvre and Lorette,
La Belgique et la première guerre mondiale bibliographie. And library catalogues, especially of the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin, and the Hoover Library in Stanford University, Palo Alto.
337 For example: Ulrich Rauscher, Belgien heute und morgen, Leipzig 1915. Ernst Zitelmann,
Das Schicksal Belgiens beim Friedensschluß, Munich/Leipzig 1917.
338 See for example the preface to Hugo Kehrer, Alt-Antwerpen. Eine kunsthistorische Studie,
Munich 1917.
339 Some of these are cited in Emile Waxweiler, La Belgique neutre et loyale, Paris/Lausanne
tales, which had to be retracted some weeks later. As will be described in chapter 10 below, there had in fact been riots, which had caused damage to property but not any serious bodily injuries. The great exaggerations in the German press were therefore the product of a wartime desire to demonise the enemy. In this way, the city of Antwerp was associated with the emerging German war culture: the victimisation of the peaceful German Colony moreover re-affirmed the German myth of a defensive war. By mid-August 1914, however, the riots in Antwerp (and Brussels) had largely ceased to be a newsworthy subject, partly because most German citizens in Belgium had been quickly evacuated, and partly because they became supplanted by new accounts of ‘Belgian atrocities’ against German soldiers, which were generated by the German ‘franc-tireur
delusion’ of an insidious Belgian resistance against the invasion.340 Thus, the inflated reports about the riots appeared in the end as a sort of prelude to the supposed large-scale franc-tireur terror, rather than something primarily associated with the place of Antwerp.
Second, Antwerp received public notice in the context of the military front, as described in chapter 2: the retreat of the Belgian government and army behind its fortress, the three sorties against the German rear defence, and finally the siege and capture of fortress and city by General von Beseler on 9 October 1914. The
Kölnische Zeitung, for example, featured the headline and a leading article about the siege and fall in at least one of its four editions daily from 4th until 12th October.341 The success was cause for national celebration and a show of flags in Germany.342 It must have been doubly impressive because it was the only major military event at the time, and it conveniently drew away attention from the failure of German victory to materialise in France, the full extent of which had been hidden from the German public. Thus, it is safe to assume that most Germans could identify Antwerp, that they linked it to the present war early on, and that they considered its military conquest a significant event. Of course, the front stabilised further west, and Antwerp saw no further military action – so in this respect it all but disappeared from the front-page headlines.
16b: ‘Aussagen über die Behandlung deutscher Staatsbürger in Belgien, 1914’. See also: Horne and Kramer, German Atrocities, pp. 114, 134, 483 n. 103. The Antwerp riots are discussed in further detail in ch. 10 below.
340 See Horne and Kramer, German Atrocities, esp. pp. 134-5. 341Kölnische Zeitung, 4 – 12 October 1914 (Nos. 1096-1122). 342Kölnische Zeitung, 10 October 1914 (No. 1116).
Nevertheless, the military capture of Antwerp had a sustained attraction. At least five of the publications mentioned above kept up its glorification: for example, the first volume of Joachim Delbrück’s edition of soldiers’ letters and a collection of articles, poems and photos edited by Hermann Hillger.343 In this illustrated way, the reader could retrace every step that led to what was sometimes called a ‘world-historical event.’344 Such hyperbole seemed to have primarily a military meaning: it expressed the pride of having swiftly overcome one of the strongest fortresses of the time. It was hence complemented with exaltations of the commanding general, von Beseler, and of ‘big Bertha’, the decisive 42 mm siege cannon, apparently nicknamed after Friedrich Krupp’s wife. A similar fascination with the fall of Antwerp was expressed in an Austrian volume of art sketches, which featured the effect of the Austro-Hungarian mortar batteries.345
A third explanation for the German interest in Antwerp was forcefully articulated in the introduction to one of the later books on Antwerp:
‘When our troops marched victoriously into Antwerp on 10th October 1914, many German hearts were filled with the feeling of witnessing the most important day in world history since 1871. This sentiment did not arise so much from the fact that one of Europe’s strongest fortresses had been defeated after an astonishingly short battle; rather, it reflected the idea of the great significance that this port city has for world trade and for German economic life.’346
As seen above, this interpretation cannot be substantiated by the publications of October 1914. In the Kölnische Zeitung, in Hillger’s collection and in the soldiers’ letters, references to the economic importance of Antwerp’s port were very rare – though it is plausible that a vague idea of it was at the back of people’s minds when they talked about the military success. During the following years of the war, however, the economic aspect did indeed come to the fore: most of the published texts focused on it.
343 Joachim Delbrück (ed.) Der deutsche Krieg in Feldpostbriefen, vol. 1:
Lüttich/Namur/Antwerpen. Mit einer Einleitung von Generalleutnant Imhoff z.D., Munich 1915. Hillger, Krieg und Sieg. See also: Joseph-Karlmann Brechenmacher, Antwerpens Belagerung und Fall. Schilderungen aus dem Weltkrieg dem deutschen Volke und der deutschen Jugend dargeboten, Donauwörth 1916. Ludwig Ganghofer, Der offene Weg. Zum Falle von Antwerpen, Munich 1914. Ernst Niederhausen, Der Weltkrieg. Eine Sammlung belehrender Jugendschriften, vol. 4: Namur und Antwerpen, Leipzig 1915. Friedrich Schiller, Belagerung von Antwerpen durch den Prinzen von Parma in den Jahren 1584 und 1585, Leipzig 1915.
344 See for example Hillger, Krieg und Sieg, p. 47. 345 Goltz, Belagerung von Antwerpen.
It seems reasonable to attribute this shift to the prolonged occupation of the city by Germany. The long-term fact of occupation must have roused some curiosity in Germany about the local features of the occupied country, and the presence of so many Germans in Belgium provided the experts to write about them. No matter what the original focus was, these publications inevitably became involved in the German war aims debate.
Despite public assurances from the Kaiser and the Chancellor, during the first week of August 1914, that Germany was fighting a purely defensive war, the advances of the German armies and the occupation of enemy territory – in the words of Hans Gatzke – set the table for an annexationist feast.347 Far-reaching expansionism was publicly advocated in right-wing newspapers and in many pamphlets, until the public discussion of detailed war aims was banned towards the end of the year – although some loopholes remained, for example in the circulation of private prints. The German governments’ refusal to publicly commit itself to specific war aims while rejecting the notion of a complete return to the status quo ante further fuelled the speculations and debates about war aims, particularly by leading figures of German political, economic and intellectual life.
There was a remarkable correlation between the objects of German war aims and the areas occupied in the course of the war.348 In the public debate, the ‘conquered’ enemy territory was arguably a welcome diversion from the stalemate on the front. Consequently, when the censorship directives were relaxed again in late November 1916, the army command stressed that areas not under its control must not be considered for German expansion, except as exchange bargains.349
Ten books and a number of articles have been selected from among the publications on Antwerp in order to illustrate their close connection with the
347 Gatzke, Drang nach Westen, p. 9. See also, especially for what follows: Fischer, Griff, pp. 87-
109. For annexationist literature see: Grumbach, Das annexionistische Deutschland, concerning Belgium: pp. 81-90.
348 See ch. 3.
349 Wilhelm Deist (ed.) Militär und Innenpolitik im Weltkrieg 1914-1918, Düsseldorf 1970, doc.
178 (‘Telegramm … Entwurf der Richtlinien für Freigabe der Kriegszielerörterungen in der Öffentlichkeit’ 28.10.1916), Art.3. Other relevant censorship directives: Deist (ed.) Militär und Innenpolitik, docs. 20, 40, 178, 180.
occupation and the war aims debate. A short description of their content will also give a useful overview of the topics that the texts addressed.
In 1915, two professors of geography, Hans Praesent and Alfred Rühl, each published a short descriptive work on the geographical position and general economic function of Antwerp.350 Significantly, Praesent’s work appeared in the wartime series Kriegsgeographische Zeitbilder. Land und Leute der
Kriegsschauplätze (‘Contemporary Images of the Geography of War. Lands and
Peoples of the Theatres of War’). A similarly introductory booklet appeared in 1916 by the war correspondent Heinrich Binder: Antwerpen: Rückblicke und Ausblicke (‘Antwerp: Retrospectives and Prospects’). It provided an atmospheric narrative of the city’s cultural heritage, its political history, its fate during the war, and its relationship with Germany – including, as indicated by the title, a vision of the future. Binder had been among the German troops entering the city on 9th October 1914 – ‘pistol in hand, I trekked through the smoking lanes…’ – and in 1916, he returned for three months in order to witness the German occupation and to research in the city’s archives.351 During that time, he befriended the deputy head of the German civil administration in Antwerp, Freiherrn von Plettenberg Mehrum, to whom he dedicated the book. Early in 1917, Hugo Kehrer published a book on the visible remains of sixteenth-century Antwerp. A professor of history of art in civilian life, Kehrer was an officer under the German Fortress Governor of Antwerp during the war. His book was based on two lectures that he had given in the German School of Antwerp to members of the German Colony.352
Paul Ehlers, legal advisor to the Verein Hamburger Rheder (Association of Hamburg Shipping Companies), wrote a pamphlet on ‘England, Antwerp and the Belgian barrier’ (1916), in which he argued that Belgium, and particularly Antwerp, had always been the key to British continental politics.353 Importantly, in the autumn of 1914, Ehlers had been on the Hamburg-Bremen commission to Antwerp, which investigated the reasons for Antwerp’s successful competition in attracting German trade before the war. The end-result of its work was a
350 Hans Praesent, Antwerpens geographische Lage und wirtschaftliche Bedeutung, Leipzig 1915.
Alfred Rühl, Antwerpen, Berlin 1915.
351 Heinrich Binder, Antwerpen. Rückblicke und Ausblicke, Munich 1916, pp. 85, 13. 352 Kehrer, Alt-Antwerpen, preface.
thoroughly documented book, describing the Verkehrswirtschaft (economy of transport) of the port.354 Later on, Ehlers received further employment in the Government-General, working out a confidential treatise on Belgian shipping interests, using the Belgian Foreign Ministry’s records.355
Then there were the publications of the economists discussed in the previous chapter (5), which attempted to unravel the economic conundrum of the Antwerp Question. As seen, these authors, especially Wiedenfeld and Schumacher, intended their writings to be more than treatises on an ‘academic’ problem and strove to influence the attitude of the imperial government towards the Belgian port city. Due to their central importance in the public debate about Antwerp, their published texts will have to be revisited in this chapter.
In occupied Antwerp itself, there appeared in 1917 a study by the Flemish economist Max Oboussier on the port of Antwerp and the Paris Economic Conference.356 As described in more detail in chapter 9, Oboussier belonged to the small group of Flemish ‘nationalist’ collaborators, the ‘activists’. Accordingly, he argued in his book that a post-war tariff barrier against the central powers, such as the Allied Economic Conference of Paris had proposed in June 1916, would signal the ‘death of Antwerp.’357 Oboussier’s book was originally only available in Flemish and French but a German propaganda organisation, the German-Flemish Society, commissioned a German translation that appeared in 1919.358 Another activist tract that this Society had translated before the end of the war dealt with ‘the economic independence of Flanders.’ Using Oboussier and Schumacher, it argued that Antwerp should become the centre of urban activity in the new Flanders.359
354 Ehlers, et al., Verkehrswirtschaft. It was only available to interested parties at request. See
letter Wiedenfeld, 1 May 1916, in: StA Hamburg, 111-2, A IV, b, fol. 13. See also ch. 4 below.
355 Paul Ehlers, ‘Die belgischen Seeschiffahrtsinteressen’, (= report no. 11, Section VII, Political
Department of the Government-General [= PA GG]), n.d. [1918]. Copies are for example in: AGR Brussels, T 454, 92. StA Hamburg, D z, 68, fol. 29.
356 Max Oboussier, De Haven van Antwerpen en de economische conferentie te Paris, Antwerpen
1917. German translation by Karl Mittler, Berlin 1919.
357 This theme was also argued in the Antwerp collaborationist newspaper Het Vlaamsche Nieuws
in 1917. For secondary reading on ‘activism’ (and bibliography) see De Schaepdrijver, Groote Oorlog, chs. 5, 8. On the Allied Economic Conference see Soutou, L'Or et le sang, pp. 233 ff.
358 On the Deutsch-Flämische Gesellschaft, see: Dolderer, Deutscher Imperialismus und
belgischer Nationalitätenkonflikt, ch. 8.
Finally, many of the above books and pamphlets were reviewed in newspaper articles that sometimes added critical or original material.360 The most important independent articles seem to have been those of the journal Der Belfried. A wartime foundation, it was published by the Volkswirtschaftliche Gesellschaft in Belgien (‘Society for Political Economy in Belgium’).361 This society had been created in November 1915 by prominent members of the Civilian Administration of the Government-General, with the aim of orchestrating an infiltration of the Belgian economy with German capital.362 Its first correspondences, or
Mitteilungen, informed its members about its activities and were strictly confidential. These soon became publicly available, however, and the reports were restricted to general economic matters. In the spring of 1916, it printed a series of nine short essays on different aspects of Antwerp: the German Colony, the German seafaring interests, the historical development of the port, its contemporary technical data, and its global economic significance.
From July 1916, then, in cooperation with the Leipzig publishing house Insel, the society started to bring out the Belfried: a high-quality monthly journal, primarily directed at a German readership to inform them about Belgium. Although it focused on cultural topics, it continued publishing essays on economic aspects as well – among which the ‘Antwerp question’ assumed a prominent position. This was discussed in terms of the Belgian interior waterways, the political history of the river Scheldt, and the supposed anti- German post-war plans of the Belgian government, contrasted by accounts of the historical development of German-Belgian economic relations. Its most important authors were Josef Grassmann, a councillor in the Bavarian Ministry for Transport, Jakob Strieder, an economic historian who had been sent by the Bavarian Academy of Science to research in Antwerp archives, and Heinrich Waentig, a national economist and the head of a press section in the
360 See for example: Schröter in Kölnische Zeitung, 26 Juli 1916. The contributions by Franzius
and by Schumacher in Technik und Wirtschaft, 9/12 (December) 1916. Pan-German views on Antwerp were for example expressed in: Das neue Deutschland, 1 February 1917 (by Schwering and by Schulze-Bahlke).
361 On the Belfried, see: Ulrich Tiedau, 'Kulturvermittlung in Kriegszeiten? Deutscher
Auslandsbuchhandel und Kulturpropaganda in Belgien während des Ersten Weltkrieges,'
Buchhandelsgeschichte, /4 (1998), pp. 193-5.
Government-General. Waentig, who has already been introduced in chapter 5, was the most prolific contributor, with more than six essays relating to Antwerp.
Several features of the Antwerp publications emerge. The supposed maltreatment of Germans in Antwerp in August 1914, and especially the military conquest of the city, had made Antwerp a household word in Germany that was strongly associated with the war. However, the continual occupation of Belgium was mostly responsible for inspiring and facilitating the production of literature on that country in general and on Antwerp in particular: most of the authors on Antwerp were connected to the occupation regime. The majority of the texts were concerned with the modern port of Antwerp, although some also considered the historical and cultural sides. In the absence of concrete official war aims, the authors were very conscious that, as Heinrich Waentig put it in August 1916: ‘Antwerp is a wide field, and the last word about it has not yet been spoken at all.’363 The texts were intended to clarify Antwerp’s position, so that at the end of the war an informed decision could be made about its future.364 In this way, it makes sense to analyse in detail first how they portrayed the Antwerp-German relationship and then how they thought this might change under the impact of the war.
The special relationship between Antwerp and Germany
Taking all the German wartime publications on Antwerp as a total, one can discern two levels on which they explored the relationship between Antwerp and Germany: a personal and a structural one. On the personal level, they depicted