War Memoir as Entertainment: Walter Bloem’s Vormarsch (1916)

Abstract

Walter Bloem’s World War I memoir Vormarsch (The Advance from Mons 1914: The Experiences of a German Infantry Officer), published in 1916, was counted among the most popular German war narratives until the 1940s. Its author, born in 1868, took Germany’s literary market by storm in 1910, when he published the first part of his monumental novel trilogy commemorating Prussia’s victory over France in 1870-1871 and continued with his career as author of Unterhaltungsromane, quality entertainment novels in the years of the Weimar Republic.¹ Between 1911 and 1922, Bloem was Germany’s bestselling author, loved by his readers and respected by officials (among them Kaiser Wilhelm II). Despite Bloem’s literary successes, his Great War memoirs escaped closer attention so far, as his writing was overshadowed by the author’s later support of the Third Reich and his professional involvement in the regime’s writers’ associations.² Today, Bloem’s work is almost completely forgotten, as he is perceived as “Nazi apologist”³ and “Nazi fellow traveler”⁴ and there are no re-editions of his works.