Resumen de "Spain is fighting for us": Representations of the Spanish Civil War by the German left in exile
In this article, the press coverage of the Spanish Civil War by four German exile papers will be studied, raising the questions why the German left in exile was so much concerned with the conflict and how they connected the events in Spain with their own situation. Using Hayden White's concept of narrative tropes, this article demonstrates how the representations of Spain shifted from a romantic narrative to a tragic narrative, thus rendering Spain, as an imagined space, from a symbol of hope to a symbol of warning and despair. The focus will be put on the exile press coverage of three events: the outbreak of the war, the bombing of Guernica and the failure of the non-intervention committee. Arguing that Spain, as a battleground of international ideologies, was always connected by the Germans in exile to their own circumstances, the article shows that the exile writers were not concerned with the events in Spain as such, nor with the international dimensions of the war. Instead, they defined the Spanish Civil War as an international arena to pursue their own goals: to beat National Socialism and return to Germany.
