Zwischen Geschichte und Mythos: La guerre de 1870/71 en chanson. Eine komparatistische Untersuchung zu den identitätsstiftenden Inhalten in deutschen und französischen Liedern zum Krieg

In the 19th century, a century of intensified nationalism, the Franco-German war of 1870/71 not only took place on the battlefield; it was also a decisive moment in the founding or reflection on national identity in Germany and France. The popular genre of song or chanson serves the purpose of forming a national identity to the same extent on both sides of the Rhine. A binational corpus of a total of 360 song texts on the Franco-German War of 1870/71 forms the starting point for the study of war-related arguments in songs and chansons. In these song texts, the nation of the neighbor = opponent = enemy is the perceptual construct of one's own patriotic interests and national identity. Songs and chansons, as "militant means of identification," are capable of reactivating or reinventing the different reflections of German and French national myths. In recourse to mythical motifs of earlier epochs, Wilhelm is mentioned here as the new Barbarossa and Joan of Arc and the heroes of the Revolution are mentioned there; German "God's people" and French "people in arms," "imperialism" and "republic," German national myth in the sign of masculinity and French national myth in the image of femininity form the most important strands of the contrastive representation of ideological counter-images. The various components of the respective national founding myths are directed against a distinctive perception of the enemy that equates France with evil, as exemplified by Napoleon III and sinful Paris, on the one hand, and Germany with barbarism, on the other.