Abstract
Rückert praises his mother for her role in his healing. He is happy that the war brought unity to Germany but laments the poor treatment of veterans and the failure of German leaders to create a democracy. The war made him a pacifist, and he ends with a plea for a united peaceful Europe.
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Notes
- 1.
The three battles were Borny-Colombey ; Vionville/Mars-la-Tour; and Gravelotte-St. Privat.
- 2.
The reader will recall that Rückert had been visiting the Wilhelmshöhe near Kassel when the war had broken out.
- 3.
The German Empire was proclaimed in the Hall of Mirrors of Versailles on January 18, 1871.
- 4.
The treaty officially ending the war was signed in Frankfurt on May 10, 1871.
- 5.
Recall that Rückert had been hit by a bullet in the left leg, and that his right leg had been amputated above the knee because of the terrible shell fragment wound in the knee. In the early1870s, German-manufactured goods were widely considered inferior to their English counterparts. Only later did “Made in Germany” come to stand for high quality.
- 6.
Here he voices a common complaint among 1870 veterans.
- 7.
International comparisons of war pensions are tricky, but Rückert is probably right that, overall, the American benefits were more liberal. Even within Germany, generalizations about pension rates are difficult because they varied by individual and over time, as did prices, spending habits, and what was considered a necessity. In any case, as an enlisted man and an amputee, Rückert might have been eligible for an invalid’s pension of as much as 192 Thaler a year, perhaps a bit more if he got classified as incapacitated. That works out to about 11 marks a week, roughly what an unskilled or semi-skilled worker would have made by 1900. Part of the bitterness was due to the far greater pensions given to officers, on the grounds that they were braver and more honorable. France agreed to pay 5 billion francs (about 4 billion marks or one billion dollars) to Germany as a war indemnity, though only a small fraction of that money went for pensions. On this whole issue, see Alfred Kelly, “Whose War? Whose Nation? Tensions in the Memory of the Franco-German War of 1870–1871,” in Anticipating Total War: The German and American Experiences, 1871–1914, ed. Manfred F. Boemeke, et al. (Cambridge and New York, 1999), esp. pp. 298–303.
- 8.
Men with business losses got modest low-interest loans; wage earners got nothing. Again, this was a great source of bitterness, especially since some generals and high officials got huge dotations from the state.
- 9.
Roughly 5 percent of the men who went on the campaign got the second-class iron cross, but as the ditty above suggests, the well-connected got more than their share.
- 10.
The second chancellor, Bismarck’s successor, was Leo von Caprivi (1890–1894), who had been the chief of staff of the Tenth Army Corps. He was decorated for his actions at Mars-la-Tour and elsewhere in the war.
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Kelly, A. (2019). Afterword. In: Carl Rückert's Memoirs of the Franco-Prussian War. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95804-0_7
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