Christine (Elizabeth von Arnim novel)

Christine is an epistolary novel published by Elizabeth von Arnim in 1917 in the guise of "Alice Cholmondeley". It is the only novel Arnim wrote under that name. Initially marketed as non-fiction, it is made up of letters supposedly written by Christine Cholmondeley, an English girl studying in Germany, to her mother Alice. It covers the period from May to August 1914 and depicts the mood in Germany leading up to World War I. As war looms, Christine attempts to rejoin her mother, fleeing towards neutral Switzerland, but dies of pneumonia in Stuttgart before they can be reunited.

The novel as propaganda

Arnim's first marriage to a German aristocrat (the "Man of Wrath") quickly turned sour and she never felt entirely at home in Germany. Nevertheless she did eventually master the language and appears to have felt no particular antipathy towards the nation: her early books feature only "sporadic and good-humoured teasing at the expense of German nationals", and she "treated Germans no less than English according to their individual merits". With better knowledge and a more nuanced understanding than most of her compatriots, she responded to the outpouring of anti-German feeling in the early stages of World War I "with many reservations".

Christine, which paints a consistently unsympathetic picture of the Germans, is therefore something of a departure. It was quickly co-opted as anti-German propaganda in the service of Britain's war effort. Isobel Maddison argues that Christine should be seen in the "context" of the literary activities sponsored by the British government's wartime propaganda bureau based at Wellington House in London, without producing any evidence that Arnim was linked to this operation, or even knew of its existence.