National Civil Religion in the German Empire (1871-1918)
Abstract
The article draws on the argument presented by Carolyn Marvin and David Ingle (1996), and specifically on the thesis that nationalism can be also approached as a religious phenomenon- with its distinctive mythology, dogmas, “saints,” and ritual behavior; they term such ideological-ritual complex “national civil religion.” Using this heuristic tool, I analyze the quasi-religious content of German national ideology dominant in the Kaiserreich (1871-1918) by discussing three layers of imagery that can be distinguished in this ideological system: appropriated history as vell as Christian-Biblical and mythological-folkloric components.
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