The Messiness of Victory and Heroism: A Brief Response to Carl Schmitt

Abstract

The article focuses on a passage from Carl Schmitt’s Ex Captivitate Salus – a book famously written in a Nurnberg prison in 1946 – in which he draws, from memory, on a story derived from Serbian epic poetry, to justify his understanding of historiography, victory, and the figure of the hero. Analyzing the entire Serbian epic poem from which Schmitt extracts the vignette in question, we show how the text of the poem presents a significantly more complicated and messy picture of the figures of victor, victory, and hero, heroism. The anonymous Serbian poet, addressing himself to his contemporary audience, with which he is intimately familiar, really subverts simplistic expectations regarding the heroism and victory of the Serbian hero, Marko Kraljević. Finally, the article contrasts these complex and at times paradoxical figures of victory and the hero in the poem with their presentation in Carl Schmitt’s writing.