« Aus dem Wartezimmer des Krieges »: The Non-Experience of World War One in Luxembourg

This article aims to contribute to the reconstruction of Luxembourg’s war experience and to analyse Weber’s literary and theoretical renditions of these events. It will investigate Weber’s experience of non-experience and highlight the ways in which he sought to describe and overcome the sense of ineffectuality and uselessness that came with being ‘put on hold’ by the war as a nation and as a human being. Weber’s reflections mix physical, mental, and intellectual pain, creating a sense of absurdist, non-productive suffering, which he, with wavering conviction, seeks to counteract by drawing on the physicality of the personal and collective body.