In Celluloidgewittern : die mediale Konstruktion von Wissenschaft und Technik als Paradigma des Ersten Weltkrieges

This paper is a critical discussion of the way present day historical TV documentaries portray the science and technology of the First World War. Their problematic central statement, i.e. that research and development in natural science and engineering lent to the First World War a completely new, modem dimension is carefully examined in the first part. It turns out that these documentaries actually represent only one aspect of the multi-faceted, normatively charged phenomenon of modernity, and that the authors employ a limited notion of modernity.