The First World War in the Literacy-Focused Classroom: Teaching German through Cultural Themes Jennifer Redmann & Kathryn Sederberg Franklin & Marshall College/Texas Christian University The centenary of the First World War has inspired renewed interest in the history of the “Great War” (1914-1918), arguably the Urkatastrophe of the 20 th century. A wealth of recent World War I-themed publications, exhibitions, conferences, and commemorative events bear witness to the importance of the war in the cultural memory of many of the combatant nations. The scope of these events seems appropriate when one considers the impact of the First World War on world history. During the war, 65 million mobilized soldiers from around the globe confronted new technologies and forms of warfare that left over 18 million dead and millions more wounded. A new concept of “home front” transformed the lives of civilians, especially women and children, all of whom were expected to contribute to the ongoing war efforts. At the war’s end, four empires had unraveled, numerous national boundaries were redrawn, and new world powers emerged, raising questions about the ethics of war, the dangers of nation- alism, and the politics of international security. Although the end of the First World War marked the beginning of the United States’ ascen- dancy as the foremost global power, in the American cultural imagination the memory of World War I is largely overshadowed by World War II. The same holds true for Germany, as historian Gerd Krumeich stated in a radio interview: “Bei uns ist der Erste Weltkrieg ganz eindeutig durch den Zweiten Weltkrieg erstickt worden, der sich in Deutschland abgespielt hat. Das ist ein ganz entscheidender Unterschied vor allem zu Belgien und Frankreich, wo man die Spuren heute noch sieht” (Raith, 2014). While other countries, such as Britain and France, annually mark the end of World War I on November 11, 1918 with a day of remembrance, in Germany it is the history of the Second World War that dominates discussions of war guilt and collective memory. With the centenary of World War I, however, Germans have turned with new interest to the history and legacy of the war. The German translation of historian Christopher Clark’s (2013) The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, a book revising the long-held view that Germany alone was responsible for the war’s outbreak, topped German bestseller lists for weeks after its release in 2013, reviving old historiographical debates. 1 Beyond a wave of new publications, political and cultural events have demonstrated that the memory of the war con- tinues to be symbolically important, if not still contentious. In October 2014, Angela Merkel spoke at a commemorative event in Ypres, Belgium, where she noted that “nach dem Leid, das Deutsche in zwei Weltkriegen über Belgien gebracht haben und das 1914 mit dem Überfall 45 1 Clark’s reading of 1914 as a “vereinter Amoklauf Europas” was not uncontroversial in Germany, recalling to a certain extent the Fischer controversy of the 1960s and 70s. Historian Heinrich August Winkler warned that the overwhelming popularity of Clark’s thesis in Germany reveals a conservative stance of the Bildungsbürgertum, eager to shake the “Selbstdemütigung” which has prevailed with the thesis of German guilt and responsibility (Winkler, 2014).