SOURCE: Natter, Wolfgang G. “Remembering the Body: Bruno Vogel's Es Lebe Der Krieg! Ein Brief” In Literature at War, 1914-1940: Representing the “Time of Greatness” in Germany, pp. 192-202. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999.

In the following excerpt, Natter demonstrates both how Bruno Vogel's Es Lebe Der Krieg! Ein Brief and its usage of the letter form bear witness to the conditions in Germany affecting the literary representation of World War I in three distinct phases: the war years, the Weimar Republic, and Nazi Germany.

Even while the four-to-one ratio between war-affirmative and antiwar books published as of 1933 suggests the unequal footing of political-aesthetic forces, the government's role in guiding the representation of the war during the Weimar period, though much diminished compared with its role of 1916-1918, cannot be discounted. Although the Republic had proclaimed that “censorship does not take place,” the controversy over Bruno Vogel's...