Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Writers
- 1 Anglo-German Conflict in Popular Fiction, 1870–1914
- 2 Perversion and Pestilence: D. H. Lawrence and the Germans
- 3 “Und muß ich von Dante schweigen, zieht Italien gegen uns?”: Carl Sternheim's Opposition to the First World War
- 4 The Martians Are Coming! War, Peace, Love, and Reflection in H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds and Kurd Lasswitz's Auf zwei Planeten
- Thinkers
- Academics
- Works Cited
- Notes on the Contributors
- Index
2 - Perversion and Pestilence: D. H. Lawrence and the Germans
from Writers
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Writers
- 1 Anglo-German Conflict in Popular Fiction, 1870–1914
- 2 Perversion and Pestilence: D. H. Lawrence and the Germans
- 3 “Und muß ich von Dante schweigen, zieht Italien gegen uns?”: Carl Sternheim's Opposition to the First World War
- 4 The Martians Are Coming! War, Peace, Love, and Reflection in H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds and Kurd Lasswitz's Auf zwei Planeten
- Thinkers
- Academics
- Works Cited
- Notes on the Contributors
- Index
Summary
I Am mad with rage… I would like to kill a million Germans — two million.” D. H. Lawrence's somewhat negative view of our European neighbors is probably quite typical of the average Englishman during the years leading up to the First World War. However, what is perhaps not quite so typical is that he based his view on firsthand experience of German militarism rather than on mere stereotypes. This experience he gained from his 1912 visit to Metz with Frieda Weekley, with whom he was having a clandestine affair, and whose family still lived there. Their “just good friends” cover was (unsurprisingly) blown when Lawrence wrote to Weekley's husband, Professor Ernest Weekley, revealing all — and when he was almost arrested as an English spy:
Mrs Weekley and I were lying on the grass near some water — talking — and I was moving round an old emerald ring on her finger, when we heard a faint murmur in the rear — a German policeman. There was such a to-do. It needed all the fiery Baron von Richthofen's influence — and he is rather influential in Metz — to rescue me. They vow I am an English officer.
(TI, xxvi)- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The First World War as a Clash of Cultures , pp. 101 - 116Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2006