Children and mourning: A German and an American memorial compared...
The 4th division memorial at Ft. Hood, Texas, is a new addition to the site. It has a touching statue of a mourning soldier and a small child. 
The themes of children and mourning are also present in this memorial in Hamburg, Germany. The use of the motifs of children and mourning in these two memorials could harldy be more different, however. The German memorial is devoid of text and clearly an anti-war message. The weeping child kneels among debris strongly suggesting mass death in battle (bullet-hole-ridden helmuts) at the feet of an older statue glorifying war. The adult figure wages war, the child despises it; the child is a victim.
In the American memorial, on the other hand, the soldier might be having his doubts. His face is covered as he weeps and his thoughts are not of greater purposes. He is not in a heroic pose, but prostrate and sad. The child, however, remains uprite, unbowed, and almost moving forward. She does not weep, but brings flowers to the grave and comfort to the living - comfort to pick up and continue.
Interestingly, she is not quite touching the man's shoulder, however, suggesting perhaps a kind of blessing, much as a pastor blesses a couple at their wedding or a departing congregation with raised hands. Since the soldier is in combat uniform and the memorial he kneels before is an improvised field memorial, the child shouldn't really be there at all. Perhaps she is only in his memory or on his mind, something the not-quite-touching hand might also be meant to suggest: She is not "really" there at all. Is it the soldier's daughter or the daughter of the dead man who consoles him?
While the American child's posture and gestures might be interpreted as encouraging the mission, she is probably interpreted by most viewers and visitors as an unambiguous symbol of mourning, at least on a consious level. But while she suggests hope at the very least, the German child is clearly a symbol of dispair and hopelessness.
While the German child weeps, "Why are you killing, Daddy?" or "Why is my daddy dead?", the American child suggests, "Don't cry, Daddy, it'll be okay."
The text excerpt from the speech placed directly in front of the weeping soldier in the American memorial removes the ambiguity, however, combining themes of family and mourning with a clear justification of the sacrifice and suggesting a national consensus backing the war.
The themes of children and mourning are also present in this memorial in Hamburg, Germany. The use of the motifs of children and mourning in these two memorials could harldy be more different, however. The German memorial is devoid of text and clearly an anti-war message. The weeping child kneels among debris strongly suggesting mass death in battle (bullet-hole-ridden helmuts) at the feet of an older statue glorifying war. The adult figure wages war, the child despises it; the child is a victim.
In the American memorial, on the other hand, the soldier might be having his doubts. His face is covered as he weeps and his thoughts are not of greater purposes. He is not in a heroic pose, but prostrate and sad. The child, however, remains uprite, unbowed, and almost moving forward. She does not weep, but brings flowers to the grave and comfort to the living - comfort to pick up and continue.
Interestingly, she is not quite touching the man's shoulder, however, suggesting perhaps a kind of blessing, much as a pastor blesses a couple at their wedding or a departing congregation with raised hands. Since the soldier is in combat uniform and the memorial he kneels before is an improvised field memorial, the child shouldn't really be there at all. Perhaps she is only in his memory or on his mind, something the not-quite-touching hand might also be meant to suggest: She is not "really" there at all. Is it the soldier's daughter or the daughter of the dead man who consoles him?
While the American child's posture and gestures might be interpreted as encouraging the mission, she is probably interpreted by most viewers and visitors as an unambiguous symbol of mourning, at least on a consious level. But while she suggests hope at the very least, the German child is clearly a symbol of dispair and hopelessness.
While the German child weeps, "Why are you killing, Daddy?" or "Why is my daddy dead?", the American child suggests, "Don't cry, Daddy, it'll be okay."
The text excerpt from the speech placed directly in front of the weeping soldier in the American memorial removes the ambiguity, however, combining themes of family and mourning with a clear justification of the sacrifice and suggesting a national consensus backing the war.
mhatlie - Mon Apr 21, 23:14 Topic: U.S. memorial culture
mort pour ...?
France expresses her loss in mourning; she relieves her emotions in
visible grief. Italy does this also; but her losses have been smaller than
the French losses and Italy’s sorrow is less in evidence than is the woe
of France. But England’s master passion in this war is pride. ‘In proud
and loving memory’ is a phrase that one sees a hundred times every
day in the obituary notices of those who have died for England.”
The English view White describes is today generally thought of as anachronistic. In our own age we tend to dismiss what we think of as the naïve and unquestioning nature of such convictions, seeing them as all too bound up by the blind fervor of patriotism and war fever. We see ourselves as more enlightened than that, not so easily duped by moralisms and appeals to national feeling.
But are we really more clear-eyed than our forebears about the costs of war? Or have we merely grown cynical about the causes which compel us to make war? Have we grown too accustomed to an unyielding individualism that insists upon the comforts attendant upon its unquestioned primacy? Do we suffer from a blindness of our own: an unwillingness to acknowledge the occasional necessity of sacrifice?
One memorial here, it seems, emphasizes the bottomless tragedy of sacrifice – the pointlessness of loss and the pitilessness of darker human forces set against purest innocence. The other recognizes that loss, but points implicitly to something beyond grief, to something larger than the individual, to something past immediate wants, to an innocence regained through the pursuit of something beyond the self while remaining knowledgeable of the moral ambiguity of human action.
As with so much else in German vs. Anglo-American memorial culture, the one depicts an empty hopelessness and despair while the other offers a glimpse of future hope. Mankind, fully aware of its humanity, inevitably embraces hope and rejects hopelessness.