Foreignness and Monarchic Rule in the First World War: A Crisis of Transnational Monarchy, 1914-1927

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Jörn Leonhard
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2018 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 410402546

• Final Report Year: 2025

Final Report Abstract

The research project examined the phenomenon of monarchs of foreign origin during the 19th century, the First World War, and the interwar period. Through a comparative analysis with a particular focus on Romania and Belgium, it explored the impact of rising nationalism on the identity, legitimacy, and international perception of foreign-born queens and kings. Despite the growing prominence of nationalist ideas in the 19th century—and the accompanying rejection of any form of foreign rule—the European state system of the 19th and early 20th centuries was shaped by the establishment of nationally legitimized states under foreign-born monarchs. The seemingly paradoxical practice of importing “foreign” princes— born and raised abroad—to rule newly founded nation-states evolved between the end of the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and the Paris Peace Treaties of 1918/19 into the dominant model of secessionist state formation. Furthermore, the traditional practice of transnational marriage among the European high nobility remained largely unaffected by the nationalization of monarchy. In its first part, the project analyzed the international background and national legitimation of these instances of monarchical foreignness, elucidating their relationship to contemporary nationalism. The second part focused on the First World War as a moment of crisis for the transnational monarchy. Faced with aggressive wartime nationalisms, foreign-born queens and kings were inevitably compelled to address questions of national belonging and loyalty. Employing a multi-perspective, comparative approach, the study revealed the effects of monarchs’ foreign origins on national and international debates during the war, as well as the impact of wartime developments on the political concept of foreign monarchy and its role in the European reordering of 1918/1919. To this end, it examined public perceptions within national contexts, the viewpoints of political leaders of the major powers involved in the war, and the ways in which the monarchs themselves navigated their problematic foreignness in wartime. In its final part, the project traced the long-term consequences of the First World War for transnational European monarchies and the phenomenon of monarchical foreignness in the interwar period. It analyzed both the reconstruction of transnational networks and the continued evolution of national strategies of legitimation. Through this structure, the project shed light on the processes of negotiating nationality and legitimacy in the 19th and 20th centuries, thereby contributing to a deeper understanding of the monarchy’s role in the age of nationalism.

Publications

• Of Traitors and Saints: Foreign Consorts between Accusations and Propaganda in the First World War. The Court Historian, 24(1), 1-16.
  Sorg, Moritz A.
  
• Vortrag. Fremdheit und monarchische Herrschaft: Der Erste Weltkrieg als Krise der transnationalen Monarchie, 1914-1927. 5. Workshop des Arbeitskreises für Historische Belgienforschung, Eupen 2019
  Moritz A. Sorg
  
• Vortrag. Remains of an old order? Monarchy, Internationality and the Legacies of the First World War. AISEE Congress, Bukarest 2019
  Moritz A. Sorg
  
• Vortrag. Strangers in the own Kingdom. The First World War as a Crisis of Transnational Monarchy. Global Royal Families Conference, DHI London 2020
  Moritz A. Sorg
  
• Reformfähige Monarchie – Verpasste Republik? Rumänien zwischen Niederlage und Sieg im Ersten Weltkrieg. Schriftenreihe der Stiftung Reichspräsident-Friedrich-Ebert-Gedenkstätte, 207-232. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
  Sorg, Moritz A.
  
• Vortrag. Fremdheit und monarchische Herrschaft im 19. Jahrhundert. Doktorandenkolloquium zum 19. Jahrhundert, Köln 2022
  Moritz A. Sorg
  
• Vortrag. Fremdheit und monarchische Herrschaft. Globale und außereuropäische Perspektiven der Fremdmonarchie. Kolloquium Lehrstuhl für Neuere und Neueste Geschichte, Universität Bonn 2022
  Moritz Sorg
  
• „Remnants of an Old Order? The Romanian Monarchy between Nationalisation and Transnationality after the First World War“, in: Revue des Études Sud-Est Européennes, LX, 1-4 (2022), S. 267-289
  Moritz A. Sorg
  
• Begegnungsraum Republik. Die Schweiz und die transnationale Monarchie im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert. Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte, 74(2).
  Sorg, Moritz Alexander
  
• Vortrag. „Einer von Uns. Die repräsentative Wende der europäischen Monarchie und das Jahrhundert der deskriptiven Repräsentation“, Tagung des Archivs für Sozialgeschichte Band 65: „Partizipation und Repräsentation – eine demokratische Liebesgeschichte?“, Bonn 2024
  Moritz Sorg
  
• „Royal Families at War: Transnational Monarchy and the First World War", in: Cindy McCreery, Robert Aldrich und Falko Schnicke (hrsg.), Global Royal Families. Cultures of Transnational Monarchy in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Oxford 2024, S. 249-270. (ISBN 9780198931744)
  Moritz A. Sorg