[...]... scholarship had mostly ignored the study of myths.²⁵ This has changed in recent years; scholars have discovered the history of myth as a fruitful subject.²⁶ After 1945 the notion of myth was largely discredited in Germany The National Socialists’ powerful appropriation of older political myths during their rise to power and the aesthetics of their rule meant that myths were seen first and foremost as possessing... was, of course, the ‘Iron Chancellor’, and Hindenburg was often hailed as a ‘new Bismarck’ based on the two men’s visual and political associations.⁵² Hindenburg s image was also composed of different elements of other historical narratives His myth was closely entwined with the notion of German ‘innocence’ for the outbreak of war in 1914, the saviour theme, the ‘stab-in -the- back’ legend, and the ‘spirit... belief in their prowess and prospects of a swift victory Tannenberg thus proved to be a powerful tool in the battle for the hearts and minds of the German population—a promise of further victories to come The clever naming of the battle can equally help to explain why it grew to mythical proportions, rivalling Verdun as the most famous battle of the First World War in German memory The first semi -of cial... with a sense of their historic glory in the Kaiserreich’s history lessons that focused overwhelmingly on the role of ‘great men’.⁵⁰ Myths and mythical hero figures are rarely new inventions It is easier for them to gain potency if they correspond to the structure of a society’s imagination and build upon semantic and semiotic traditions.⁵¹ The dominant hero figure of the latter half of the nineteenth... of his name on the ballot enough to mesmerize a critical mass of voters? Admiring and trusting Hindenburg were, of course, not the only factors that motivated voters’ choices and dominated people’s concerns in the complex period of Weimar Nevertheless, the suddenness, intensity, longevity, striking political and social breadth, and the political deployment of Hindenburg s adulation, in short, the power. .. milestones in both the history of Hindenburg s mythical adulation and in showcasing the ‘people’s community’, a key element of Nazi propaganda Focusing exclusively on Hindenburg s image in the early years of the Nazi regime, however, entails the danger of buying into Nazi propaganda by reducing the hero worship of Hindenburg to a linear process, which was always going to result in Hitler coming to power when,... from other works on myth and memory in some important respects Myths surrounding political ideas, such as that of the ‘national community’, or heroes of a previous era, such as the myths of Bismarck or Hermann the Cherusker in the Weimar years, are confined to the realm of discourse and commemoration Thus, their capacity as projection screens for contemporary ideas and the influence exerted on them by... dubbed the ‘father of the modern study of myths’²⁹ who described myth as a potentially destructive force in his highly influential The Myth of the State published after the Second World War, had subscribed to a more positive understanding of the concept in the 1920s.³⁰ This 1920s consensus on myth as a constructive force may explain why Hindenburg s contemporaries frequently interpreted his mythical... 1925, the day after Paul von Hindenburg had won the first presidential elections of the Weimar Republic, the liberal weekly Welt am Montag offered a striking explanation for the victory of the retired Field Marshal of the First World War It had not been possible to persuade the ‘ignorant’ with compelling and irrefutable arguments against Hindenburg s candidacy, the leading article argued, O because for them... Weimar politics in the second half of the 1920s and, in particular, during the era of the so-called presidential cabinets between 1930 and 1933, means that his part in the political decision-making process has been analysed in the standard works on the history of this period.¹¹ The overwhelming majority of these works is concerned exclusively with political and military matters Hindenburg s talents . Goltz, Anna. Hindenburg: power, myth, and the rise of the Nazis / Anna von der Goltz. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–19–957032 –4 (acid-free paper) 1. Hindenburg, . financial support of a number of institutions. The Faculty of Modern History at the University of Oxford provided funds during the early years and the Arts and Humanities Research Council supported the project. defeat than the alluring appeal of what they termed the Hindenburg legend’ or the Hindenburg myth , which had supposedly drawn German voters to the polls the previous Sunday. In 1932, Hindenburg