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Abstract Marc von Lüpke-Schwarz
Soldiers of the First World War born between 1890 and 1900 are known as the "Young Front Generation". In this project research on this generation which is usually limited to the Weimar Republic and the so-called "youth research" will be extended in methodical and temporary terms: Selected representatives of the "Young Front Generation" and their progressive influence are to be examined by way of a group biography which will look at the construction of the "front experience" and its progressive generationalization in the different political, social and cultural contexts of the subsequent decades.
What was the use of a generationalization as the "Young Front Fighters"? The career officer and historian Dr. Hans Speidel (1897-1984) is at the centre of the subgroup to be examined here as a model for the dominant type of the professional officer corps which established itself in the democratic Federal Republic of Germany during the decade of 1950. It will be asked how the experience of two wars shaped the group specific self conception of the bourgeois elite and in what way this generational legacy changed under given social and political conditions? The decade of the 1950s will therefore be the chronological focus which will shed new light on the actions of the persons examined here in former and subsequent decades. In some respects this project will follow up Ulrich Herbert's analysis of Werner Best's career, who as highest ranking survivor of the SS can serve as a counter model for the first post-war generation and their post-war integration.