The Wehrmann in Eisen

A Measure of Wartime Support on the Habsburg Home Front

Abstract

During the First World War, large nailed monuments were unveiled across Austria-Hungary beginning in early 1915. These objects took various forms, but the most common were medieval knights or shields. I analyze these monuments as a Habsburg-wide phenomenon to argue that they served an important function in the Habsburg wartime project promoting patriotism and upholding traditional gendered social order. Analysis of these monuments’ forms and their functions—rallying wartime patriotism, raising war funds, encouraging loyalty to the emperor, and memorializing the war dead—demonstrates how imperial and local officials employed these masculine-formed objects in efforts to generate patriotism and loyalty to the Monarchy. The monuments and the celebrations connected to them exemplify Habsburg and local authorities’ wartime efforts to maintain traditional gendered social order through the symbol of the male warrior and notions of chivalry and sacrifice.