Battle of Nations Monument

Battle of Nations Monument The colossal Battle of Nations Memorial illustrates the use of monuments to create cultural memory and national consciousness. Begun in 1871, after the proclamation of the Second German Empire, it was erected on the site of the Battle of Nations near Leipzig, a battle in October 1813 in which nearly 1 million soldiers from Austria, Britain, Russia, France, Prussia and the other German states fought to determine the future of Europe. Under Napoleon the outnumbered French forces managed to beat back the larger armies of the Allies for over a day, but then retreated in defeat, marking the end of Napoleon's Empire east of the Rhine River. Although some Germans fought on the side of the French, Germans remembered the event as one of the founding moments of the German Nation, for it was the first time that troops from nearly all the independent German states--Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, Hesse, Hanover, etc.--were united against the French enemy. The building of the memorial by the new Imperial regime was intended to commemorate that founding moment and associate the recent victory over France as a fulfillment of the German military prowess of 1813. The Emperor Wilhelm II chose to inaugurate the monument officially on October 13, 1913, in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Nations. The colossal size of the monument can be taken as a measure of the significance attributed to both the great battle and the Second German Empire. It is 911 meters tall, the largest memorial monument in Europe. The sculptures used to adorn the monument evoked the origins of Prussia under the rule of the Teutonic Order in the 13th century. A military crusading order founded in Jerusalem by Papal authority in the 12th century, the Teutonic Order was invited by a Polish duke in the early 13th century to subdue the Prussian peoples and convert them to Christianity. After subduing the Prussians, the Order established a feudal state and continued its mixed mission of conversion and territorial expansion into the northeast areas that went as far as Lithuania. Although rule by the Order came to an end in 1410, when a combined Polish and Lithuanian army defeated them, the Teutonic Knights continued to hold territories in the Germanies until 1809. Moreover, their conversion to Christianity of the Prussian tribes through an armed crusade was often represented as a liberation from the evils of heathenism and the origin of modern Prussia.

Near the top of the monument, huge sculptures representing Teutonic Knights, heads bowed, solemnly stand guard over the battle site and memorial.

At the base, the giant figure of Saint Michael is portrayed as a Teutonic Knight, starring firmly as if toward the German future. Note how the sculpture as well as the monument dwarfs the human visitors. Below is a propaganda poster of the National Socialist Workers Party (Nazis) in the early 1930s before Hitler came to power in 1933. Here, the white image of a Teutonic Knight is used to legitimize the Nazi movement, suggesting that Teutonic Order's crusade against the evils of heathenism is being taken up again by the Nazis, here represented by a figure of the paramilitary Brown Shirts, carrying the Nazi flag while drawing strength from the helping hand of the Knight. The enemies of the 1930s are carried by a three-headed snake: opposing parties--Communists, Social Democrats, and the RF--and Jews