ABSTRACT
When the War broke out in summer 1914, the majority of European nations welcomed it with overflowing enthusiasm. There was widespread belief that it would purge Europe, which was willing to make sacrifices for such a holy cause, and bring about a new ‘spring’.1
Enthusiasm did not last long, however, and by the end of the war, disillusionment, despair, misery, suffering and horror prevailed. Thus, the idea suggests itself that the very concept of sacrifice that had been so cherished in the theories of religious and classics scholars, amongst sociologists and anthropologists since the turn of the century, was now completely discredited. There was not the slightest probability that a sacrifice could bring about a utopian community. Nonetheless, some models elaborated before the outbreak of World War I were picked up again after it ended, although in a significantly changed way. This is particularly true of the concept of sacrifice which again played a prominent role. To a large extent, this is due to the necessity of coming to grips with the horrible fact that thousands and thousands of people – the masses – were victims of the war, and later revolution. Each nation insisted on the belief that it had sacrificed itself for the sake of a holy cause; that the dead should be commemorated as heroes and not be forgotten as part of an anonymous crowd. New kinds of memorial cult dedicated to the memory of national fallen heroes sprang up, keeping alive and praising their sacrifice.
