The Performance and Representation of Alsatian Folk Dress during World War I

By the turn of the century, the number of rural Alsatians who continued to wear their distinctive special occasion dress for weddings and church services was declining as fashionable dress replaced traditional dress. Rather than disappearing, however, these dress styles were transformed into a political symbol. World War I brought to a head the forty-year struggle between opposing national interests in Alsace, which had transferred from French to German control following the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 and would return to France in 1918. For Alsatians, the successive periods of rule by different forces was deeply disruptive; Alsatian loyalty was regarded as suspect by both French and German soldiers at the same time that it was heavily contested. In the years before the war, the wearing of Alsatian traditional dress was in many ways a symbol of Alsatian resistance to assimilation into either the French or German nation. During the war, however, French propaganda employed the image of an Alsatian woman in traditional dress to symbolize the underlying loyalty of Alsace to France. By the end of the war, Alsatians themselves increasingly wore the traditional dress for political rallies.

This paper examines the complicated interactions between dress as an image in artistic renderings, as an element in performance, and as a physical object by comparing its appearance and meaning in a variety of sources including propaganda posters, film, satirical illustrations, photographs of festivals and parades, as well by considering the objects themselves in museum collections. The ways traditional dress was worn and represented in Alsace during World War I provide a valuable lens for examining the construction of national and regional allegiance as well as the mobilization of public opinion.