Journal articles: 'Prisoners of war as musicians – France' – Grafiati (2024)

Abstract:

The Argentinean pianist Miguel Angel Estrella was arrested in Montevideo during Operation Condor in December 1977. Accused of being a member of the Montoneros, a Peronist guerilla movement, he was tortured and held incommunicado before being transferred to Libertad, where political prisoners from Uruguay were assembled. Thanks to an intensive and international solidarity campaign, launched by his friends in Paris and led by classical music celebrities as well as diplomats, human rights activists, and a myriad of anonymous music-lovers, Estrella was released and expelled to France in February 1980. Drawing on archival materials from the Estrella support committee, diplomatic files, interviews, and recently declassified documents from the Uruguayan military court, this article retraces the construction of an exceptional “cause,” shedding new light on the relations between music and diplomacy during the Cold War. It examines the musician’s experience in prison, where he painfully managed to play Beethoven sonatas on a silent piano, as if mirroring the media’s portrayal of him as a Beethovian hero, a sort of modern Florestan. It also analyzes the connections between ethics and aesthetics, and the role of emotions in international political mobilizations.

Abstract:

Polo Beyris is a virtually unexplored example of internment under French and German authorities. From 1939 to 1947 the camp of Polo Beyris in Bayonne held successively: Spanish Civil War refugees, French colonial prisoners of war, suspected ‘collaborators’ and German prisoners of war. Despite having up to 8600 prisoners at one time, the large camp and its numerous satellite work detachments were literally ‘forgotten’ for decades. Although similar to other camps in its improvised nature, wretched living conditions, lack of food and constant movement of prisoners, Polo Beyris was also unique: located in a dense urban area, within the wartime Occupied Zone and close to the Spanish frontier. Its civil and military administrators were faced with constantly changing, and often chaotic, political and military circ*mstances. Not a waystation in the Holocaust, Polo Beyris has been lost from the sight of historians. It provides an additional dimension to the complex history of internment in twentieth century France.

Abstract:

The involvement of African combatants in France from 1939 to 1945 probably surpassed the large mobilization of an earlier generation during the First World War. Carefully prepared ideologically and well received by the French public, Africans nevertheless paid a heavy price in lives and suffering as soldiers during the Battle of France and as prisoners of the Germans. Liberation brought a new set of tribulations, including discriminatory treatment from French authorities. These hardships culminated in a wave of African soldiers' protests in 1944–5, mainly in France, but including the most serious rising, the so-called mutiny at Thiaroye, outside Dakar, where thirty-five African soldiers were killed.The war's impact was ambiguous. Tragedies like Thiaroye sent shock waves throughout French West Africa, delegitimizing naked force as a political instrument in post-war politics and sweeping away an older form of paternalism. Yet while a militant minority were attracted to more radical forms of political and trade-union organization, most African veterans reaffirmed their loyalties to the French State, which ultimately paid their pensions.

Abstract:

In 1989, I bought a CD in Paris of the early piano music of André Jolivet. Like many non-French musicians, I had read the name of Jolivet but heard little of his music. Jolivet's reputation as Varèse's leading pupil and the extreme avant-gardist of the pre-World War II group La Jeune France seemed completely at odds with his conventional post-War music occasionally broadcast on Radio 3, such as the Concertos for Trumpet, Piano or Ondes Martenot–music which suggested not fully assimilated influences of Honegger or Hindemith, with little obviously adventurous about it in its rhythmically conservative phrasing and standard formal shapes.

Abstract:

Three trade wars are examined using variable-sum game theory. The Anglo-Hanse trade wars (1300–1700) are explained as an iterated Prisoners' Dilemma that failed to evolve into cooperation due to transaction costs, rent seeking, and economic recession. The late-igthcentury tariff war between France and Italy is a case of an asymmetric trade war that illustrates the danger to a weak country of provoking a trade war with a strong country, with the result that the former is forced to make major concessions. The Hawley-Smoot conflicts of the 1930s are cited as an example of the cooperation-inhibiting effect of publicness in trade negotiations.

Abstract:

The Œuvre de secours aux enfants (the “Society for Children’s Aid”, or OSE) was one of several humanitarian organizations working within the confines of the Rivesaltes transit camp in southern France during the Second World War. The OSE, a Jewish humanitarian aid organization, was particularly concerned with Jewish child prisoners in transit and internment camps like Rivesaltes. Members of the OSE entered Rivesaltes camp on a daily basis throughout the war in order to distribute food and offer supplementary educational opportunities to the young children interred there. Its primary objective, however, was to oversee the safe removal of as many Jewish children as possible from Rivesaltes. To do this, the OSE relied on its established children’s homes throughout the country, as well as new ones that were instituted during the war, to petition the Vichy government for the liberation of Jewish children from Rivesaltes. These procedures were expensive, bureaucratic, and lengthy; however, they allowed the OSE to secure the release of many Jewish children from Rivesaltes and other camps. Throughout the course of the Second World War, the OSE—operating legally and transparently—succeeded in liberating hundreds of Rivesaltes’s youngest prisoners.

Abstract:

ABSTRACTDuring the wars of the eighteenth century, French prisoners on parole in Britain were placed in a paradoxical situation of captives with privileges. Instead of studying these men as if they dwelt in a world apart, this article focuses on captivity zones as a social laboratory, where people of different status would socialize. These spaces accordingly provide a lens through which to glimpse the repercussions of international conflicts at the level of local communities. The disputes which opposed these captives to the English population, which were the object of letters of complaints sent by the French prisoners to the authorities, shed light on the normative and moral resources which were used by eighteenth-century Englishmen and Frenchmen to legitimize themselves in situations of social conflict. As a configuration characterized by shifting social relations, the parole zone brought together local, national, and international issues, intertwined primarily in the rhetoric of honour. In these incidents, there was no systematic alignment of class and national discourses and actions, while the precise standing of these Frenchmen on the social ladder was constantly challenged and debated. The resulting quarrels therefore reveal a series of social inversions: dominant groups in France were in many respects dominated in England. Rather than being a mere reflection of pre-existing social hierarchies, such micro-incidents reinvented them.

Abstract:

Between 1914 and 1918, the British Expeditionary Force fighting in France and Flanders sustained 2.7 million battle casualties. Just over one quarter (26.1%) were never seen by the medical services. These were men who had been killed (14.2%), were missing (5.4%), or were prisoners of war (6.5%). Most of those who were missing had been killed and their bodies never recovered. Just under three-quarters of the wounded (73.9% or 1 988 969) were seen and treated by the medical services and 151 356 died.[i] The worst single day in British military history was Saturday 1 July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme, when there were 57 470 casualties, of whom 20 000 were killed or died from their wounds. In nearly a quarter of a million admissions dealt with by the medical services, 58.5% of wounds were caused by high-explosive shellfire, 39% by bullets (mostly from machine guns), 2% were caused by grenades, and 0.5% from bayonets.

Abstract:

During World War I, the Swiss state interned nearly 30,000 foreign soldiers who had previously been held in POW camps in Germany, France, Britain, Belgium, Austria, and Russia. The internment camp system that Switzerland implemented arose from the Swiss diplomatic platform of defensive humanitarianism. By offering good offices to the belligerent states of WWI, the Swiss state utilized humanitarian law both to secure Swiss neutrality and to alleviate, to a degree, the immense human suffering of the war. The Swiss government mixed domestic security concerns with international diplomacy and humanitarianism. They elevated a domestic policy platform to the international diplomatic level and succeeded in building enough trust between the party states to create an internment system that reconceptualized the treatment of foreign soldiers from the holding of prisoners to the healing of men.

Abstract:

Abstract Even though scholarship on music and exile under Franco has grown steadily for the past three decades, little attention has been paid thus far to exiled performers who were active primarily as members of orchestras and bands. This article makes an initial contribution to this field by focusing on the Banda Madrid as a case study. The Banda Madrid was founded in the spring of 1939 in the internment camp of Le Barcarès (France) by Rafael Oropesa. Its members went into exile in Mexico City and became a fixture of the Spanish exile community until 1947. I discuss how the Banda Madrid and the stories of some of its individual members expand our understanding of politics and modernity in the Spanish Republican exile. In order to do this, I follow the trajectories of Banda Madrid musicians before, during, and after the Civil War, and contrast them with those of left-wing composers in exile.

Abstract:

This article examines the self-perception of Jews and the perception by others in a concentration camp that was not built for the genocide of European Jews, but for the gradual extermination of domestic and foreign opponents of the regime through forced labour and malnutrition. How did the survivors remember the presence of Jews in a camp for political prisoners? Which factors determined positive and negative judgments? How did the Jews, who constantly feared being discovered and murdered, perceive themselves in relation to the majority of the others? The study is based on autobiographical texts in French by forty-eight French survivors of the Mauthausen concentration camp and five Eastern European Jews who emigrated to France after the war.

Abstract:

“Where Porpora is concerned, misfortune is bound to ensue. Beware, in faith, of having anything to do with his company.” Metastasio’s damning indictment of Nicola Porpora in a letter published in his Opere (the offending passage omitted from Charles Burney’s English translation) is put into the context of the “Palchetti Wars” in Rome in 1732/33 and a court case against the impresario Francesco Cavanna of the Teatro della Dame. The court case was filed by a group of musicians, presumably led by Porpora, after the cancellation of the premiere of his Issipile during the spring of 1732 as a result of the closing of the theatres by the pope due to the controversy between the ambassadors of France and Austria over their boxes (palchetti) at the opera. In the court case between two of his old friends, Metastasio took the cause of the impresario over the composer because the case resulted in the bankruptcy of Cavanna and the closure of the della Dame. Although arrangements were made for the premiere of Porpora’s Issipile the following year at an alternate venue, the Teatro Pioli—which got around the theatrical ban by replacing its palchetti with a large balcony or palchettone, the della Dame, preserving its celebrated five tiers of palchetti—remained closed until 1738. This was probably part of the strategy of the directors of the delle Dame in dealing with the twists and turns of the palchetti controversy.

Abstract:

This article aims to analyse the role of the Alsatian football club Racing Club de Strasbourg throughout the re-establishment process of the French-German football relations after the Second World War. Because of its geographical location between France and Germany and due to the double annexation of the Alsace by the German Reich the club held a special position in the French football landscape. To examine the difficulties and conflicts that came along with the attempt to restore international sport relations between West Germany and France, the paper focuses on three aspects: German prisoners of war in France, efforts to organise football games between French and German top-level-clubs, and the re-establishment of international matches between the two countries. As a result, Racing’s attitude can be situated in a field of tension between hurtful wartime experiences on the one hand and sporting as well as financial benefits on the other hand. While the former was an argument held against an over-hasty spirit of understanding between the French and the German teams especially by the Alsatian Football Association, the latter were a reason for Racing to intensify its pragmatical efforts to re-establish sport relations with West German clubs. This ambivalence is further exemplified by the dualism between Aimé Gissy, secretary general of the Alsatian Football Association (1935-1939, 1945-1974), and Willy Scheuer, president of Racing Club de Strasbourg (1952-1960).

Abstract:

The article is concerned with the history of organization and transportation of the first two Czechoslovak echelons from Russia to France. It is aimed at tracing the idea of sending of a part of Czech and Slovak prisoners of war to the Western front. This intention was for the first time expressed by leaders of the Czechoslovak National Council founded in Paris in February 1916. This decision appeared in connection with the shortage of soldiers in the French army and of workers in the war industry of the Third Republic. In this respect, the research touches upon the basic aspects of the negotiations conducted by J. Dürich, M. R. Štefánik and T. G. Masaryk with the Russian governmental and military institutions. The article also dwells on the preparation of departure of these Czechoslovak units by the northern route - via Arkhangelsk and Murmansk and the cooperation between the Branch of the Czechoslovak National Council and the French military missions in Russia in supplying for the volunteers. The article is based on the documents from the collections of the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Empire, Russian State Historical Archive, Military Central Archive of Czech Republic and published materials.

Abstract:

AbstractMaximilien Robespierre was deposed on 27 July 1794/9 Thermidor Year II when the charge that he was a tyrant burst spectacularly into open political discussion in France. This article examines key aspects of how that charge had developed, and been discussed in veiled terms, over the preceding months. First, it analyses a war of words which unfolded between Robespierre and the duke of York, the commander of the British forces on the northern front. This involved allegations that Robespierre had used an assassination attempt against him in late May as a pretext for scapegoating the British – including the orchestration of a notorious government decree of 7 Prairial/26 May 1794 which banned the taking of British and Hanoverian prisoners of war. Second, the article explores how these developments fitted within a larger view of Robespierre as aiming for supreme power. In particular, they meshed closely with a reading of French politics which likened Robespierre to the ancient Athenian leader Pisistratus, a figure who had subverted the city's constitution – including posing as a victim of violent attacks – in order to establish his tyranny. Pisistratus's story, we argue, offered a powerful script for interpreting Robespierre's actions, and a cue for resistance.

Abstract:

The authors’ research attention is focused on the specifics of the Australian memorial practices dedicated to the World War I. The statement is substantiated that in the Australian context memorials and military monuments formed a special post-war and post-traumatic part of the visual memory of the first Australian global military conflict. The features of the Australian memorial concept are clarified, the social function of the monuments and their important role in the psychological overcoming of the trauma and bitter losses experienced are noted. The multifaceted aspects of visualization of the monumental memory of the World War I in Australia are analyzed. Monuments and memorials are an important part of Australia’s visual heritage. It is concluded that each Australian State has developed its own concept of memory, embodied in various types and nature of monuments. The main ones are analyzed in detail: Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne (1928–1934); Australian War Memorial in Canberra (1941); Sydney Cenotaph (1927-1929) and Anzac Memorial in Sydney (1934); Desert Mounted Corps Memorial in Western Australia (1932); Victoria Memorials: Avenue of Honour and Victory Arch in Ballarat (1917-1919), Australian Ex-Prisoners of War Memorial (2004), Great Ocean Road – the longest nationwide memorial (1919-1932); Hobart War Memorial in the Australian State of Tasmania (1925), as well as Villers-Bretonneux Australian National Memorial in France dedicated to French-Australian cooperation during the World War I (1938). The authors demonstrate an inseparable connection between the commemorative practices of Australia and the politics of national identity, explore the trends in the creation and development of memorial practices. It is noted that the overwhelming majority of memorial sites are based on the clearly expressed function of a place of memory, a place of mourning and commemoration. It was found that the representation of the memorial policy of the memory of Australia in the first post-war years was implemented at the beginning at the local level and was partially influenced by British memorial practices, transforming over time into a nationwide cultural resource.

Abstract:

The authors’ research attention is focused on the specifics of the Australian memorial practices dedicated to the World War I. The statement is substantiated that in the Australian context memorials and military monuments formed a special post-war and post-traumatic part of the visual memory of the first Australian global military conflict. The features of the Australian memorial concept are clarified, the social function of the monuments and their important role in the psychological overcoming of the trauma and bitter losses experienced are noted. The multifaceted aspects of visualization of the monumental memory of the World War I in Australia are analyzed. Monuments and memorials are an important part of Australia’s visual heritage. It is concluded that each Australian State has developed its own concept of memory, embodied in various types and nature of monuments. The main ones are analyzed in detail: Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne (1928–1934); Australian War Memorial in Canberra (1941); Sydney Cenotaph (1927-1929) and Anzac Memorial in Sydney (1934); Desert Mounted Corps Memorial in Western Australia (1932); Victoria Memorials: Avenue of Honour and Victory Arch in Ballarat (1917-1919), Australian Ex-Prisoners of War Memorial (2004), Great Ocean Road – the longest nationwide memorial (1919-1932); Hobart War Memorial in the Australian State of Tasmania (1925), as well as Villers-Bretonneux Australian National Memorial in France dedicated to French-Australian cooperation during the World War I (1938). The authors demonstrate an inseparable connection between the commemorative practices of Australia and the politics of national identity, explore the trends in the creation and development of memorial practices. It is noted that the overwhelming majority of memorial sites are based on the clearly expressed function of a place of memory, a place of mourning and commemoration. It was found that the representation of the memorial policy of the memory of Australia in the first post-war years was implemented at the beginning at the local level and was partially influenced by British memorial practices, transforming over time into a nationwide cultural resource.

Abstract:

Sydney Leach will be remembered as an outstanding and inspirational scientist, an irreplaceable friend to many—artists and musicians as well as academic colleagues. He encouraged and influenced numerous scientists as a mentor. After graduating from King's College London and carrying out war work at Farnborough, he spent all his scientific life based in Paris, working principally at Orsay and, in his later years, at the Observatoire de Paris–Meudon. Sydney was a major influence in establishing chemical physics in France after World War II, founding the highly influential Laboratoire de Photophysique Moléculaire (LPPM) at Orsay, where much of his pioneering work was performed. The ‘Sydney lab’ lives on in the newly created Institut des Sciences Moléculaires d'Orsay. Early experiments often took place at the synchrotron source (ACO, Super-ACO), just a few hundred yards from LPPM. He was a pioneering advocate of synchrotron radiation, and a driving force for its use in spectroscopy and photodynamics, along with free-electron lasers, supersonic jets, coincidence spectroscopy and matrix isolation—techniques that were applied and refined over decades and used to explore fundamental processes such as photoionization, vibronic coupling and radiationless transitions. Sydney's seminal studies of polyatomic molecular ions led him towards fresh horizons in planetary atmospheric and space science. His work opened new vistas in cometary spectroscopy, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, fullerenes and their possible roles in the chemistry of the interstellar medium and, finally, biologically relevant species, helping to instigate the newly developing subject of astrobiology—a perfect example of his sustained prescience in the world of science.

Abstract:

On the basis of the archival papers, the research of the relations of Ukrainian People’s Republic with the allies of The Triple Alliance agreement, in particular with France, has been made. The system of relations of the Ukrainian People’s Republic institutions with the representatives of The Triple Alliance in Kyiv has been researched. However, the analysis of these relations has been made in the context of the events taking place in the entire European system of relations. In particular, the analysis of works of the French representative in Kyiv, General J. Tabouis, aimed at establishing systematic relations with the General Secretariat of the Ukrainian People’s Republic. Though, it has been determined that the activity of J. Tabouis in Kyiv had been driven on suppressing the Ukrainian People’s Republic activity and had also been concentrated at creating the situation of political instability at deterring the command of the German-Austrian troops from the movement of the troops from the “Ukrainian” territory from the Eastern front to other areas. General J. Tabouis has also been actively cooperated with the Ukrainian national organizations, among members of which were the prisoners of war of Austrian-Hungarian, German, Polish and Czech and Slovaks armies. After the signing of The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and the liberation of Kyiv from the Bolshevik army, the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian People’s Republic clearly expressed the hostile reaction to the mission of the Triple Alliance countries in Kyiv. In particular, some Ukrainian officials expressed the accusation regarding the participation of the French mission in creating chaotic conditions in Ukraine, in their subversive activity and their agreement with the Bolsheviks. Moreover, the Council of Ministers of Ukraine expressed the idea that due to the fact that the participation of Ukraine in the First World War was over, and The Triple Alliance did not accept the Ukrainian People’s Republic, the presence of the representatives of these countries in Kyiv was unsuitable. Thus, the Council of Ministers of Ukrainian People’s Republic and the command of the German troops in Ukraine demanded from the representatives of The Triple Alliance to leave the Ukrainian territory. So, the Ukrainian People’s Republic constrainedly put itself in the position of the actual collaborationist government, which had to withdraw the missions of the countries of The Triple Alliance because of the demand of occupation troops, which was not politically profitable in comparison to the state of the government of the Russian Federation.

Abstract:

In 1756, the young John Howard set out for Portugal. His ship was taken by a privateer, and Howard became a prisoner of war in France. Twenty years later, he launched the movement for prison reform in Britain. Renaud Morieux challenges historians to more fully connect war imprisonment and the debates it engendered about prisoners’ rights to the emergence of prison reform in the 1770s and 1780s (p. 92). In this article, I take up that challenge. I suggest, however, that the connections are complex and twisted. Concerns about prisoners of war may have inspired prison reform, but they also made the project more confusing.

Abstract:

Britain and France were at war with each other for over half of the long eighteenth century. This period of sustained conflict produced immense changes, in both countries, in the character of the state and the course of economic development. Yet one of the most obvious ways in which contemporaries would have encountered the war was in the presence of large numbers of prisoners of war held by their country. Early in the century there were thousands of such captives, and by its end they numbered in the tens of thousands. Renaud Morieux takes this neglected topic for the focus of his multifaceted study. These prisoners created challenges that were legal and diplomatic, as well as administrative and financial. The citizens of each country found themselves having to learn to live with captives of a nation with which they were at war. In a work that is both theoretically informed and exhaustively researched, Morieux offers fresh insight into the consequences of war for European society.

Abstract:

Leslie Wallace Lauste (1908–2001) was an English surgeon of French ancestry who practised in Brighton. This article used his memoirs and interviews to describe his life during the Second World War. In 1940, after declining evacuation by the Royal Navy, he was captured at Boulogne- Sur-Mer. Lauste went on to work in the following hospitals, of which most were attached to prisoner of war (POW) camps: Dannes-Camiers (France), Lille (France), Enghien (Belgium), Malines (Belgium), Dieberg (Germany), Klein-Zimmern (Germany), Stadtroda (Germany), Treysa (Germany), Kloster Haina (Germany), Lamsdorf (Poland), and Moosburg (Germany). Lauste’s memoirs indicate that most surgical work was routine rather than trauma-related. He gained considerable freedoms in camp and attended external hospitals to give a surgical opinion. Lauste witnessed the consequences of allied bombing raids on German cities and considered these a “genocide.” Lauste’s life offers insight into the Nazi mistreatment of Russian prisoners, management of a typhus outbreak, camp liberation, and extraordinary journeys within occupied Europe. His memoirs provide new insight into the life of a British POW surgeon and reveals personal courage, kindness to others, and passion for medicine. Lauste never married. He died in Brighton in 2001.

Abstract:

<p>Thousands of Wing-Shot Migratory Birds. Soldier Graves and Danish-French Places of Remembrance Approx. 1915-1925</p><p><br />During the months following the end of the First World War in November 1918, some 100,000 prisoners of war passed through Denmark on their way home from the camps on the Eastern Front. Some did not make it all the way, but died from exhaustion and the Spanish flu during their stay in Denmark. The present article deals with the part that these dead soldiers came to play in the formation of a remembrance culture in a country which had not itself taken part in the war. More specifically, it deals with the monuments which a small group of nationally-conservative men and women with ties to the armed forces and the social elite erected between 1919 and 1925 in remembrance of the dead French soldiers. To their minds, France had been the sole serious ally in the struggle for the return of North Schleswig to Denmark. For that reason, they were also behind two monuments in France to commemorate the fallen Danish-minded Schleswigers and the fallen Danes of the French Foreign Legion. Their national-conservative engagement<br />and criticism of the policy of neutrality pursued during the war by the Danish government largely determined the creation and the form of the cemeteries.</p>

Abstract:

Drawing on recent scholarship (Kelly, Pasler, Wheeldon, Fauser) examining the discursive construction of the reputations of well-known Belle-Époque musicians, this article investigates the case of Gabriel Fauré and the ways in which his posthumous legacy was shaped throughout the 1920s in France. Drawing on wide-ranging journalistic and biographical sources, the article argues that the figure of Fauré was increasingly constructed around the concept of the ‘classic’ in the years immediately following his death in 1924. I suggest that the types of ‘classicism’ associated with Fauré in this context were, however, multivalent and largely contingent on the cultural and aesthetic mandates of those ‘reputational entrepreneurs’ that sought to advocate in favour of his posthumous legacy. This article thus examines the notion of Fauré ‘the classic’ as it was discursively constructed in three specific instances: by the French Republic in its State funeral for the composer; by the young post-war generation of composers (especially Georges Auric of the group Les Six), and by the composer, former student, and biographer of Fauré, Charles Koechlin. These cases reveal that Fauré's classicism was articulated in contrasting ways, ranging from a heroic classicism associated with the celebration of national ‘great men’, an aesthetic classicism linked to French musical traditions, or, finally, a classicism derived from the aesthetics and culture of Ancient Greece.

Abstract:

Allgemeines Das ist Militärgeschichte! Probleme - Projekte - Perspektiven. Hrsg. mit Unterstützung des MGFA von Christian Th. Müller und Matthias Rogg Dieter Langewiesche Lohn der Gewalt. Beutepraktiken von der Antike bis zur Neuzeit. Hrsg. von Horst Carl und Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg Birte Kundrus Piraterie von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. Hrsg. von Volker Grieb und Sabine Todt. Unter Mitarb. von Sünje Prühlen Martin Rink Robert C. Doyle, The Enemy in Our Hands. America's Treatment of Enemy Prisoners of War from the Revolution to the War on Terror Rüdiger Overmans Maritime Wirtschaft in Deutschland. Schifffahrt - Werften - Handel - Seemacht im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Hrsg. von Jürgen Elvert, Sigurd Hess und Heinrich Walle Dieter Hartwig Guntram Schulze-Wegener, Das Eiserne Kreuz in der deutschen Geschichte Harald Potempa Michael Peters, Geschichte Frankens. Von der Zeit Napoleons bis zur Gegenwart Helmut R. Hammerich Johannes Leicht, Heinrich Claß 1868-1953. Die politische Biographie eines Alldeutschen Michael Epkenhans Altertum und Mittelalter Anne Curry, Der Hundertjährige Krieg (1337-1453) Martin Clauss Das Elbinger Kriegsbuch (1383-1409). Rechnungen für städtische Aufgebote. Bearb. von Dieter Heckmann unter Mitarb. von Krzysztof Kwiatkowski Hiram Kümper Sascha Möbius, Das Gedächtnis der Reichsstadt. Unruhen und Kriege in der lübeckischen Chronistik und Erinnerungskultur des späten Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit Hiram Kümper Frühe Neuzeit Mark Hengerer, Kaiser Ferdinand III. (1608-1657). Eine Biographie Steffen Leins Christian Kunath, Kursachsen im Dreißigjährigen Krieg Marcus von Salisch Robert Winter, Friedrich August Graf von Rutowski. Ein Sohn Augusts des Starken geht seinen Weg Alexander Querengässer Die Schlacht bei Minden. Weltpolitik und Lokalgeschichte. Hrsg. von Martin Steffen Daniel Hohrath 1789-1870 Riccardo Papi, Eugène und Adam - Der Prinz und sein Maler. Der Leuchtenberg-Zyklus und die Napoleonischen Feldzüge 1809 und 1812 Alexander Querengässer Eckart Kleßmann, Die Verlorenen. Die Soldaten in Napoleons Rußlandfeldzug Daniel Furrer, Soldatenleben. Napoleons Russlandfeldzug 1812 Heinz Stübig Hans-Dieter Otto, Für Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit. Die deutschen Befreiungskriege gegen Napoleon 1806-1815 Heinz Stübig 1871-1918 Des Kaisers Knechte. Erinnerungen an die Rekrutenzeit im k.(u.)k. Heer 1868 bis 1914. Hrsg., bearb. und erl. von Christa Hämmerle Tamara Scheer Kaiser Friedrich III. Tagebücher 1866-1888. Hrsg. und bearb. von Winfried Baumgart Michael Epkenhans Tanja Bührer, Die Kaiserliche Schutztruppe für Deutsch-Ostafrika. Koloniale Sicherheitspolitik und transkulturelle Kriegführung 1885 bis 1918 Thomas Morlang Krisenwahrnehmungen in Deutschland um 1900. Zeitschriften als Foren der Umbruchszeit im wilhelminischen Reich = Perceptions de la crise en Allemagne au début du XXe siècle. Les périodiques et la mutation de la société allemande à l'époque wilhelmienne. Hrsg. von/ed. par Michel Grunewald und/et Uwe Puschner Bruno Thoß Peter Winzen, Im Schatten Wilhelms II. Bülows und Eulenburgs Poker um die Macht im Kaiserreich Michael Epkenhans Alexander Will, Kein Griff nach der Weltmacht. Geheime Dienste und Propaganda im deutsch-österreichisch-türkischen Bündnis 1914-1918 Rolf Steininger Maria Hermes, Krankheit: Krieg. Psychiatrische Deutungen des Ersten Weltkrieges Thomas Beddies Ross J. Wilson, Landscapes of the Western Front. Materiality during the Great War Bernd Jürgen Wendt Jonathan Boff, Winning and Losing on the Western Front. The British Third Army and the Defeat of Germany in 1918 Christian Stachelbeck Glenn E. Torrey, The Romanian Battlefront in World War I Gundula Gahlen Uwe Schulte-Varendorff, Krieg in Kamerun. Die deutsche Kolonie im Ersten Weltkrieg Thomas Morlang 1919-1945 »Und sie werden nicht mehr frei sein ihr ganzes Leben«. Funktion und Stellenwert der NSDAP, ihrer Gliederungen und angeschlossenen Verbände im »Dritten Reich«. Hrsg. von Stephanie Becker und Christoph Studt Armin Nolzen Robert Gerwarth, Reinhard Heydrich. Biographie Martin Moll Christian Adam, Lesen unter Hitler. Autoren, Bestseller, Leser im Dritten Reich Gabriele Bosch Alexander Vatlin, »Was für ein Teufelspack«. Die Deutsche Operation des NKWD in Moskau und im Moskauer Gebiet 1936 bis 1941 Helmut Müller-Enbergs Rolf-Dieter Müller, Hitlers Wehrmacht 1935 bis 1945 Armin Nolzen Felix Römer, Kameraden. Die Wehrmacht von innen Martin Moll Johann Christoph Allmayer-Beck, »Herr Oberleitnant, det lohnt doch nicht!« Kriegserinnerungen an die Jahre 1938 bis 1945 Othmar Hackl Stuart D. Goldman, Nomonhan, 1939. The Red Army's Victory that shaped World War II Gerhard Krebs Francis M. Carroll, Athenia torpedoed. The U-boat attack that ignited the Battle of the Atlantic Axel Niestlé Robin Higham, Unflinching zeal. The air battles over France and Britain, May-October 1940 Michael Peters Anna Reid, Blokada. Die Belagerung von Leningrad 1941-1944 Birgit Beck-Heppner Jack Radey and Charles Sharp, The Defense of Moscow. The Northern Flank Detlef Vogel Jochen Hellbeck, Die Stalingrad-Protokolle. Sowjetische Augenzeugen berichten aus der Schlacht Christian Streit Robert M. Citino, The Wehrmacht retreats. Fighting a lost war, 1943 Martin Moll Carlo Gentile, Wehrmacht und Waffen-SS im Partisanenkrieg: Italien 1943-1945 Kerstin von Lingen Tim Saunders, Commandos & Rangers. D-Day Operations Detlef Vogel Frederik Müllers, Elite des »Führers«? Mentalitäten im subalternen Führungspersonal von Waffen-SS und Fallschirmjägertruppe 1944/45 Sebastian Groß, Gefangen im Krieg. Frontsoldaten der Wehrmacht und ihre Weltsicht John Zimmermann Tobias Seidl, Führerpersönlichkeiten. 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Die sowjetische Kriegsgefangenschaft im Gedächtnis der Deutschen. Hrsg. von Elke Scherstjanoi Georg Wurzer Klaus Naumann, Generale in der Demokratie. Generationsgeschichtliche Studien zur Bundeswehrelite Rudolf J. Schlaffer John Zimmermann, Ulrich de Maizière. General der Bonner Republik 1912 bis 2006 Klaus Naumann Nils Aschenbeck, Agent wider Willen. Frank Lynder, Axel Springer und die Eichmann-Akten Rolf Steininger »Entrüstet Euch!«. Nuklearkrise, NATO-Doppelbeschluss und Friedensbewegung. Hrsg. von Christoph Becker-Schaum [u.a.] Winfried Heinemann Volker Koop, Besetzt. Sowjetische Besatzungspolitik in Deutschland Silke Satjukow, Besatzer. »Die Russen« in Deutschland 1945-1994 Heiner Bröckermann Marco Metzler, Nationale Volksarmee. Militärpolitik und politisches Militär in sozialistischer Verteidigungskoalition 1955/56 bis 1989/90 Klaus Storkmann Rüdiger Wenzke, Ab nach Schwedt! Die Geschichte des DDR-Militärstrafvollzugs Silke Satjukow Militärs der DDR im Auslandsstudium. Erlebnisberichte, Fakten und Dokumente. Hrsg. von Bernd Biedermann und Hans-Georg Löffler Rüdiger Wenzke Marianna Dudley, An Environmental History of the UK Defence Estate, 1945 to the Present Michael Peters

Abstract:

If iconophobia is defined as the suspicion and anxiety towards the power exerted by images, its history is an ancient one in all of its Platonic, Christian, and Judaic forms. At its most radical, iconophobia results in an act of iconoclasm, or the total destruction of the image. At the other end of the spectrum, contemporary iconophobia may be more subtle. Images are simply withdrawn from circulation with the aim of eliminating their visibility. In his book Images in Spite of All, French art historian Georges Didi-Huberman questions the tradition of suspicion and denigration governing visual representations of the Holocaust, arguing we have abdicated our ethical obligation to try to imagine. This essay will argue that disruptions to traditional modes of spectatorship shift the terms of viewing from suspicion to ethical participation. By building on Didi-Huberman’s discussion of images and the spectatorial gaze, this essay will consider Laura Waddington’s 2002 documentary film Border. Waddington spent six months hiding with asylum seekers in the area surrounding the Red Cross refugee camp at Sangatte in northern France. I will argue that Waddington proposes a model of spectatorship that implicates the viewer into the ethical content of the film. By seeking to restore the dignity and humanity of the asylum seekers rather than viewing them with suspicion, Border is an acute reminder of our moral responsibility to bear witness to that which lies beyond the boundaries of conventional representations of asylum seekers.The economy managing the circulation of mainstream media images is a highly suspicious mechanism. After the initial process of image selection and distribution, what we are left with is an already hom*ogenised collection of predictable and recyclable media images. The result is an increasingly iconophobic media gaze as the actual content of the image is depleted. In her essay “Precarious Life,” Judith Butler describes this economy in terms of the “normative processes” of control exercised by the mainstream media, arguing that the structurally unbalanced media representations of the ‘other’ result in creating a progressively dehumanised effect (Butler 146). This process of disidentification completes the iconophobic circle as the spectator, unable to develop empathy, views the dehumanised subject with increasing suspicion. Written in the aftermath of 9/11 and the ensuing War on Terror, Butler’s insights are important as they alert us to the possibility of a breach or rupture in the image economy. It is against Butler’s normative processes that Didi-Huberman’s critique of Holocaust iconoclasm and Waddington’s Border propose a slippage in representation and spectatorship capable of disrupting the hom*ogeneity of the mass circulation of images.Most images that have come to represent the Holocaust in our collective memory were either recorded by the Nazis for propaganda or by the Allies on liberation in 1945. Virtually no photographs exist from inside the concentration camps. This is distinct from the endlessly recycled images of gaunt, emaciated survivors and bulldozers pushing aside corpses which have become critical in defining Holocaust iconography (Saxton 14). Familiar and recognisable, this visual record constitutes a “visual memory bank” that we readily draw upon when conjuring up images of the Holocaust. What occurs, however, when an image falls outside the familiar corpus of Holocaust representation? This was the question raised in a now infamous exhibition held in Paris in 2001 (Chéroux). The exhibition included four small photographs secretly taken by members of the Sonderkommando inside the Nazi extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in August 1944. The Sonderkommando were the group of prisoners who were delegated the task of the day-to-day running of the crematoria. The photographs were smuggled out of the camps in a tube of toothpaste, and eventually reached the Polish Resistance.By evading the surveillance of the SS the photographs present a breach in the economy of Holocaust iconography. They exist as an exception to the rule, mere fragments stolen from beneath the all-seeing eye of the SS Guards and their watch towers. Despite operating in an impossible situation, the inmate maintained the belief that these images could provide visual proof of the existence of the gas chambers. The images are testimony produced inside the camp itself, a direct challenge to the discourse emphasising the prohibition of representation of the Holocaust and in particular the gas chambers. Figure 1 The Auschwitz crematorium in operation, photograph by Sonderkommando prisoners August 1944 © www.auschwitz.org.plDidi-Huberman’s essay marks a point of departure from the iconophobia which has stressed the unimaginable (Lanzmann), unknowable (Lyotard), and ultimately unrepresentable (Levinas) nature of the Holocaust since the 1980s. Denigrated and derided, images have been treated suspiciously by this philosophical line of thought, emphasising the irretrievable gap between representation and the Holocaust. In a direct assault on the tradition of framing the Holocaust as unrepresentable, Didi-Huberman’s essay becomes a plea to the moral and ethical responsibility to bear witness. He writes of the obligation to these images, arguing that “it is a response we must offer, as a debt to the words and images that certain prisoners snatched, for us, from the harrowing Real of their experience” (3). The photographs are not simply archival documents, but a testament to the humanity of the members of the Sonderkommando the Nazis sought to erase.Suspicion towards the potential power exerted by images has been neutralised by models of spectatorship privileging the viewer’s mastery and control. In traditional theories of film spectatorship, the spectator is rendered in terms of a general omnipotence described by Christian Metz as “an all-powerful position which is of God himself...” (49). It is a model of spectatorship that promotes mastery over the image by privileging the unilateral gaze of the spectator. Alternatively, Didi-Huberman evokes a long counter tradition within French literature and philosophy of the “seer seen,” where the object of the spectator’s gaze is endowed with the ability to return the gaze resulting in various degrees of anxiety and paranoia. The image of the “seer seen” recurs throughout the writing of Baudelaire, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Lacan, and Barthes, negating the unilateral gaze of an omnipotent spectator (Didi-Huberman, Ce que nous voyons).Didi-Huberman explicitly draws upon Jacques Lacan’s thinking about the gaze in light of this tradition of the image looking back. In his 1964 seminars on vision in the Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, Lacan dedicates several chapters to demonstrate how the visual field is structured by the symbolic order, the real, symbolic and the imaginary. Following Lacan, Didi-Huberman introduces two terms, the veil-image and the tear-image, which are analogous with Lacan’s imaginary and the real. The imaginary, with its connotations of illusion and fantasy, provides the sense of wholeness in both ourselves and what we perceive. For Didi-Huberman, the imaginary corresponds with the veil-image. Within the canon of Holocaust photography, the veil-image is the image “where nobody really looks,” the screen or veil maintaining the spectator’s illusion of mastery (81). We might say that in the circulation of Holocaust atrocity images, the veil serves to anaesthetise and normalise the content of the image.Lacan’s writing on the gaze, however, undermines the spectator’s mastery over the image by placing the spectator not at the all-seeing apex of the visual field, but located firmly within the visual field of the image. Lacan writes, “in the scopic field, the gaze is outside, I am looked at, that is to say, I am the picture...I am photo-graphed” (Lacan 106). The spectator is ensnared in the gaze of the image as the gaze is reciprocated. For Didi-Huberman, the veil-image seeks to disarm the threat to the spectator being caught in the image-gaze. Lacan describes this neutralisation in terms of “the pacifying, Apollonian effect of painting. Something is given not so much to the gaze as to the eye, something that involves the abandonment, the laying down, of the gaze” (101). Further on, Lacan expresses this in terms of the dompte-regarde, or a taming of the gaze (109). The veil-image maintains the fiction of the spectator’s ascendency by subduing the threat of the image-gaze. In opposition to the veil-image is the tear-image, in which for Didi-Huberman “a fragment of the real escapes” (81). This represents a rupture in the visual field. The real is presented here in terms of the tuché, or missed encounter, resulting in the spectator’s anxiety and trauma. As the real cannot be represented, it is the point where representation collapses, rupturing the illusion of coherency maintained by the veil-image. Operating as an exception or disruption to the rule, the tear-image disrupts the image economy. No longer neutralised, the image returns the gaze, shattering the illusion of the all-seeing mastery of the spectator. Didi-Huberman describes this tearing exception to the rule, “where everyone suddenly feels looked at” (81).To treat the Sonderkommando photographs as tear-images, not veil-images, we are offered a departure from classic models of spectatorship. We are forced to align ourselves and identify with the “inhuman” gaze of the Sonderkommando. The obvious response is to recoil. The gaze here is not the paranoid Sartrean gaze, evoking shame in the spectator-as-voyeur. Nor are these photographs reassuring narcissistic veil-images, but will always remain the inimical gaze of the Other—tearing, ripping images, which nonetheless demand that we do not turn away. It is an ethical response we must offer. If the power of the tear-image resides in its ability to disrupt traditional modes of representation and spectatorship, I would like to discuss this in relation to Laura Waddington’s 2004 film Border. Waddington is a Brussels based filmmaker with a particular interest in documenting the movement of displaced peoples. Just as the Sonderkommando photographs were taken clandestinely from beneath the gaze of the SS, Waddington evaded the surveillance of the French police and helicopter patrols as she bore witness to the plight of asylum seekers trying to reach England. Border presents her stolen testimony, operating outside the familiar iconography of mainstream media’s representation of asylum seekers. If we were to consider the portrayal of asylum seekers by the Australian media in terms of the veil-image, we are left with a predictable body of hom*ogenised and neutralised stock media images. The myth of Australia being overrun by boat people is reinforced by the visual iconography of the news media. Much like the iconography of the Holocaust, these types of images have come to define the representations of asylum seekers. Traceable back to the 2001 Tampa affair images tend to be highly militarised, frequently with Australian Navy patrol boats in the background. The images reinforce the ‘stop the boats’ rhetoric exhibited on both sides of politics, paradoxically often working against the grain of the article’s editorial content. Figure 2 Thursday 16 Apr 2009 there was an explosion on board a suspected illegal entry vessel (SIEV) 36 in the vicinity of Ashmore Reef. © Commonwealth of Australia 2011Figure 3 The crew of HMAS Albany, Attack One, board suspected illegal entry vessel (SIEV) 38 © Commonwealth of Australia 2011 The media gaze is structurally unbalanced against the suffering of asylum seekers. In Australia asylum seekers are detained in mandatory detention, in remote sites such as Christmas Island and Woomera. Worryingly, the Department of Immigration maintains strict control over media representations of the conditions inside the camps, resulting in a further abstraction of representation. Geographical isolation coupled with a lack of transparent media access contributes to the ongoing process of dehumanisation of the asylum seekers. Judith Butler describes this as “The erasure of that suffering through the prohibition of images and representations” (146). In the endless recycling of images of leaky fishing boats and the perimeters of detention centres, our critical capacity to engage becomes progressively eroded. These images fulfil the function of the veil-image, where nobody really looks as there is nothing left to see. Figure 4 Asylum seekers arrive by boat on Christmas Island, Friday, July 8, 2011. AAP Image/JOSH JERGA Figure 5 Woomera Detention Centre. AAP Image/ROB HUTCHISON By reading Laura Waddington’s Border against an iconophobic media gaze, we are afforded the opportunity to reconsider this image economy and the suspicious gaze of the spectator it seeks to solicit. Border reminds us of the paradoxical function of the news image—it shows us everything, but nothing at all. In a subtle interrogation of our indifference to the existence of asylum seekers and their suffering, Border is a record of the six months Waddington spent hidden in the fields surrounding the French Red Cross camp at Sangatte in 2002. Sangatte is a small town in northern France, just south of Calais and only one and a half hours’ drive from Paris. The asylum seekers are predominantly Afghan and Iraqi. Border is a record of the last stop in their long desperate journey to reach England, which then had comparatively humane asylum seeking policies. The men are attempting to cross the channel tunnel, hidden in trucks and on freight trains. Many are killed or violently injured in their attempts to evade capture by the French police. Nevertheless they are sustained by the hope that England will offer them “a better life.” Figure 6 Still from Border showing asylum seekers in the fields of Sangatte ©Laura Waddington 2002Waddington dedicates the film, “for those I met.” It is an attempt to restore the humanity and dignity of the people who are denied individual identities. Waddington refuses to let “those who I met” remain nameless. She names them—Omar, Muhammad, Abdulla—and narrates their individual stories. Border is Waddington’s attempt to return a voice to those who have been systematically dehumanised, by-products of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In his classic account of documentary, Bill Nichols describes six modes of documentary representation (99–138). In Border, Waddington is working in the participatory mode, going into the field and participating in the lives of others (115). It is via this mode of representation that Waddington is able to heighten the ethical encounter with the asylum seekers. Waddington was afforded no special status as a filmmaker, but lived as a refugee among the asylum seekers during the six months of filming. At no point are we granted visible access to Waddington, yet we are acutely aware of her presence. She is physically participating in the drama unfolding before her. At times, we become alert to her immediate physical danger, as she too runs through the fields away from the police and their dogs.The suspicious gaze is predicated on maintaining a controlled distance between the spectator and the subject. Michele Aaron (82–123) has recently argued for a model of spectatorship as an intrinsically ethical encounter. Aaron demonstrates that spectatorship is not neutral but always complicit—it is a contract between the spectator and the film. Particularly relevant to the purposes of this essay is her argument concerning the “merging gaze,” where the gaze of the filmmaker and spectator are collapsed. This has the effect of folding the spectator into the film’s narrative (93). Waddington exploits the documentary medium to implicate the spectator into the structure of the film. It is in Waddington’s full participatory immersion into the documentary itself that undermines the conventional distance maintained by the spectator. The spectator can no longer remain neutral as the lines of demarcation between filmmaker and spectator collapse.Waddington was shooting alone with a small video camera at night in extremely low-light conditions. The opening scene is dark and grainy, refusing immediate entry into the film. As our eyes gradually adjust to the light, we realise we are looking at a young man, concealed in the bushes from the menacing glare of the lights of oncoming traffic. Waddington does not afford us the all-perceiving spectatorial mastery over the image. Rather, we are crouching with her as she records the furtive movements of the man. The background sound, a subtle and persistent hum, adds to a growing disquiet, a looming sense of apprehension concerning the fate of these asylum seekers. Figure 7 Grainy still showing the Red Cross camp in Border ©Laura Waddington 2002Waddington’s commentary has been deliberately pared back and her voice over is minimal with extended periods of silence. The camera alternates from meditative, lingering shots taken from the safety offered by the Red Cross camp, to the fields where the shots are truncated and chaotically framed. The actions of the asylum seekers jerk and shudder, producing an image akin to the flicker effect of early silent cinema because the film is not running at the full rate of 24 frames per second. Here the images become blurred to the point of unintelligibility. Like the Sonderkommando photographs, the asylum seekers exist as image-fragments, shards stolen by Waddington’s camera as she too works hard to evade capture. Tension gradually increases throughout the film, cumulating in a riot scene after a decision to close the camp down. The sweeping search lights of the police helicopter remind us of the increased surveillance undertaken by the border patrols. Without the safety of the Red Cross camp, the asylum seekers are offered no protection from the increasing police brutality. With nowhere else to go, the asylum seekers are forced into the town of Sangatte itself, to sleep in the streets. They are huddled together, and there is a faintly discernible chant repeating in the background, calling to the UN for help. At points during the riot scene, Waddington completely cuts the sound, enveloping the film in a haunting silence. We are left with a mute montage of distressing still images recording the clash between the asylum seekers and police. Again, we are reminded of Waddington’s lack of immunity to the violence, as the camera is deliberately knocked from her hand by a police officer. Figure 8 Clash between asylum seekers and police in Border ©Laura Waddington 2002It is via the merged gaze of the camera and the asylum seekers that Waddington exposes the fictional mastery of the spectator’s gaze. The fury of the tear-image is unleashed as the image-gaze absorbs the spectator into its visual field. No longer pacified by the veil, the spectator is unable to retreat to familiar modes of spectatorship to neutralise and disarm the image. With no possible recourse to desire and fantasy, the encounter becomes intrinsically ethical. Refusing to be neutralised by the Lacanian veil, the tear-image resists the anaesthetising effects of recycled and predictable images of asylum seekers.This essay has argued that a suspicious spectator is the product of an iconophobic media gaze. In the endless process of recycling, the critical capacity of the image to engage the viewer becomes progressively disarmed. Didi-Huberman’s reworking of the Lacanian gaze proposes a model of spectatorship designed to disrupt this iconophobic image economy. The veil-image asks little from us as spectators beyond our complicity. Protected by the gaze of the image, the fiction of the all—perceiving spectator is maintained. By abandoning this model of spectatorship as Didi-Huberman and Waddington are asking us to do, the unidirectional relationship between the viewer and the image is undermined. The terms of spectatorship may be relocated from suspicion to an ethical, participatory mode of engagement. We are laying down our weapons to receive the gaze of the Other. ReferencesAaron, Michele. Spectatorship: The Power of Looking On. London: Wallflower, 2007.Border. Waddington, Laura. Love Stream Productions, 2004.Butler, Judith. 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