The Langemarck Myth

Starting in 1946, Red Baron attended a high school in Hamburg that had been founded in 1944 as the Langemarck School.

That is why I was particularly interested in a traveling exhibition of a joint remembrance-and-peace project by the Belgian municipality of Langemark, the In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres, and the University of Kent. The exhibition has been and will be shown in cities with streets named Langemarck.

Veterans wrote about their romanticized memories.

Early in the First World War, on November 10, 1914, German troops attacked the Allied front near Langemark* in Belgium. More than 2,000 young, inexperienced recruits lost their lives. From this military defeat emerged the "Langemarck Myth" as a symbol of the supposed willingness of German youth to make sacrifices.
*In German, an ungrammatical "c" was added to the original name

Commemorative ceremonies, publications, monuments, and street names emerged in the postwar period.

Following the French Campaign, the Daily Order for Langemarck Day 1940, signed
by the Commander-in-Chief of the German Army (OKH), Walther von Brauchitsch.

Young men willing to sacrifice themselves for their country were exactly what the Nazis needed for their Wehrmacht.

Der Führer visiting the Langemarck site in 1940

The regime permanently anchored the "Langemarck Myth" in the public sphere. 

Macabre: During World War II, young Flemish men were invited
to enlist in the Langemarck Assault Brigade of the Waffen-SS.

Across Germany, more than 30 streets are named after the small Belgian village of Langemarck.

An exhibition at the Freiburg city archives took the material from the traveling exhibition and expanded it to include information about the unique situation in Freiburg.

Admiral-Spee-Straße and Langemarckstraße in Freiburg's Heldenviertel

Initially, the Höllentalbahn, climbing the heights of the Black Forest, ran through the heart of the Wiehre district* at street level. As traffic increased, the required railroad crossings became increasingly problematic.

*Red Baron lives here

On the right, the four-lane Baslerstraße passes under the north-south
Rhine Valley Railway and, further up, the newly built Höllental line.
Note the undeveloped area between Basler Straße, the railroad bypass,
and Merzhauser Straße running through the photo diagonally.

Consequently, the Reichsbahn decided to reroute the Höllental line, featuring cuttings and bridges along the edge of the Wiehre district. Construction started in 1930, and trains began operating in 1934.

The zoning plan for the area west of Merzhauser Straße includes streets named after "heroes" and battle sites from World War I. Consequently, the Freiburges called this part of town Heldenviertel. 

 In 1996, a citizens' group drew attention to this fact.

      

In 1934, the streets in this neighborhood were named after battles, places, and soldiers from World War I. The names of the fallen, who were exploited for the ideological purposes of the Nazi regime, serve as a reminder of the importance of peace and international understanding.

Meet the heroes

Calls to rename the streets grew louder, but this is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the name is erased; on the other, residents are forced to change their addresses, which involves effort and expenses.

One additional argument for retaining the "warlike" street names in the Heldenviertel is that people and places are part of our (inglorious) German history that must not be forgotten.

In 2012, Freiburg's city council engaged a commission of experts to assess the names of Freiburg's streets in terms of persecution of minorities, dictatorship, antisemitism, militarism, nationalism, chauvinism, and colonialism. They cautiously proposed to rename a dozen streets. Among those was the Gallwitzstraße in the Heldenviertel.

Max von Gallwitz (1852–1937) was a general in the First World War. He strongly supported the Dolchstoßlegende (stab-in-the-back myth) and was a revisionist of the Treaty of Versailles, viewing it as a Schanddiktat (dictate of shame).

Did they overdo it? Who will read those two loaded explanatory signs?

After World War II, contested street signs were often supplemented with explanatory notes, as was the case in Bad Wildungen.

**