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Article published In: Anglo-German Discourse Crossings and Contrasts
Edited by Sylvia Jaworska and Torsten Leuschner
[Pragmatics and Society 9:1] 2018
► pp. 75–90

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The afterlife of an infamous gaffe

Wilhelm II’s ‘Hun speech’ of 1900 and the anti-German Hun stereotype during World War I in British and German popular memory

 | University of East Anglia
Published online: 26 March 2018
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.16026.mus
Abstract
Kaiser Wilhelm II’s speech to a German contingent of the international expedition corps, sent to quell the so-called ‘Boxer Rebellion’ in 1900, is today remembered chiefly as an example of his penchant for boastful, sabre-rattling rhetoric that included a strange comparison of his soldiers with the ‘Huns under Attila’. According to some accounts, this comparison was the source for the stigmatizing label Hun(s) for Germans in British and US war propaganda in WW1 and WW2, which has survived in popular memory and continues to be used, though mainly in ironical senses, by British and German media to this day. This paper charts the history of the Germans-as-Huns analogy and argues first, that the usage data render highly improbable any ‘model’ function of Wilhelm’s speech for post-1914 uses. Furthermore, present-day uses presuppose an awareness of the WW1 and WW2 meaning on the part of readers, which serves as a platform for echoic allusions. In the British media these allusions often lead to the ironical (including self-ironical) subversion of preceding uses, while in German public discourse they focus more on historical commemoration and comparison.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: Political Germanisms in English
  • 2.The Kaiser’s speech
  • 3.The decline and disappearance of an analogy
  • 4.The afterlife of a stereotype: Ironical uses and historicisation
  • References
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