War as the Worst-Possible Outcome of Human Interactions: Medieval and Early Modern Perspectives from the Nibelungenlied to Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel

Abstract

Despite a growing obsession with war, military technology, and even with mass-killing all over the world, we cannot help but condemn war as the worst form of human interaction, representing an utter collapse of communication and community, of fundamental ethics and morality. In fact, we would have to call it a complete failure of humanity, unless we assume a cynical position and glorify war as the ‘father of technological inventions and hence human progress.’ In reality, the human toll of wars is horrendous, as we have witnessed, e.g., in WWI and WWII, and observe it now (2025) in Ukraine and Gaza. The modern peace movement seemingly dates back to the late nineteenth century, but at a closer analysis, we can recognize the existence of an anti-war discourse already in the Middle Ages and the early modern age although the figure of the knight and his prowess were the idols and ideals of that time. This contradiction might be surprising considering how much pre-modern society was determined by military conflicts and the supreme role assumed by the warrior, and this all over the world. Nevertheless, some of the major literary works from that time contain, carefully studied, significant statements against war because the outcome can only be an Armageddon. This paper examines some medieval German texts and also considers poetic narratives in French from as late as the mid-sixteenth-century to reveal the true extent to which those poets had already voiced their horror about war which ultimately witnessed only victims, even among the winning side.

Keywords

• Anti-war discourse
• the horror of war
• Armageddon
• Nibelungenlied
• Kudrun
• Heinrich
• Wittenwiler
• Nicolette and Aucassin
• François Rabelais’s Gargantua

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