Von allen verlassen, ratlos im Feindesland. Raumkonstruktionen deutscher Kriegsgefangener und Flüchtlinge zwischen Spanien und Frankreich im Ersten Weltkrieg

The reports on escape and imprisonment during World War I contribute in a media-effective way to constructing a propagandistic idea of otherness and identity and fundamentally change the idea of space in terms of concepts such as homeland and nation. The space configuration is based on mental and social processes, so that the concrete place becomes a landscape of memory that disregards geographical and temporal boundaries and constructs an image of enemy or friend that is perceived through ideological filters. Three accounts of experiences (of a cleric, a war volunteer and a civilian) will be analysed, in which the foreign is geographically close (France and Spain) but is perceived as a new reality through the experience of war.