“Neider überall zwingen uns zu gerechter Verteidigung” – Legitimisation and De-Legitimisation of World War I in German Dramatic Literature.

This thesis explores German WWI plays and playwrights and thereby manages to bridge a gap in the academic engagement with German WWI literature. It contains a large number of forgotten plays that had not yet been studied and provides an analysis of the most important discourses established within these texts. By comparing them with well-known plays from the 1920s and 1930s, this thesis manages to demonstrate their significance for the literary and cultural historic representation of WWI in Germany and thereby contributes ground-breaking work enabling further research into a variety of aspects related to German WWI literature.