Kultureller Raum und Bewegungskrieg. Raumerfahrungen und Raumdeutungen zu Osteuropa in Selbstzeugnissen deutschsprachiger Kriegsteilnehmer der k.u.k. Armee

2014 ◽  
Vol 73 (2) ◽  
pp. 367-388
Author(s):  
Wolfram Dornik
Keyword(s):  
Local Population ◽  
Cultural Images ◽  
Eastern Front ◽  
The First World War ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
Kurt Lewin ◽  
Surrounding Space ◽  
War Experience ◽  
Trench Warfare ◽  
First World

Abstract Due to the permanent shift between mobile and trench warfare as well as conquest and occupation, the soldiers of the First World War in Eastern Europe were brought into more intense relationship to the surrounding space and the local population than on other theatres of war. This article focuses on cultural interpretation of space on the Eastern Front by German-speaking Austro-Hungarian soldiers. Using eleven diaries and unpublished memoirs of subaltern officers, non-commissioned officers and ordinary soldiers, it seeks to analyse the perceptions of cultural space, Kriegslandschaften (Kurt Lewin) and the image of the »East«. It is shown to what extent the specific war experience shaped the cultural images of the soldiers during the war, and which interpretations they offered in their writings.

scholarly journals Self-Determination along the Austrian Frontier, 1918-1920: Case Studies of German Bohemia, Vorarlberg, and Carinthia

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Matthew Vink
Keyword(s):  
Local Population ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Successful Resolution ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Paris Peace Conference ◽  
Czech Lands ◽  
First World

<p>The First World War led to the collapse of a number of prominent European empires, allowing for the spread of new ideas into Europe. US President Woodrow Wilson’s rhetoric of national self-determination attracted particular symbolic importance because it legitimised popular sovereignty through the use of plebiscites. German-Austrians, like other national groups within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, used self-determination to justify establishing independent successor states after the war. The German-Austrian Republic, founded in 1918, claimed all German-speaking regions of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire on the basis of self-determination. This thesis examines claims to self-determination in three different cases: German Bohemia, Vorarlberg, and Carinthia. Representatives from each region took their case to the Paris Peace Conference, appealing to the Allied delegations to grant international recognition. These representatives faced much opposition, both from local non-German populations and occasionally even from the German-Austrian government itself.  German-Austrian politicians in the Czech lands opposed the incorporation of German-majority lands into Czechoslovakia, and instead sought to establish an autonomous German Bohemian province as part of German-Austria. In Paris, Allied delegations supported the historic frontier of the Czech lands, and therefore opposed local German self-determination outright, refusing demands for a plebiscite in German Bohemia. Vorarlberg representatives sought Vorarlberg’s secession from German-Austria, hoping instead for union with Switzerland. Vorarlbergers held a plebiscite to join Switzerland on their own initiative, initially with some degree of international support, but ultimately the international community, fearful of the disintegration of Austria, refused to allow Vorarlbergers to realise their wishes. Carinthian German representatives opposed Yugoslav claims to sovereignty over the region, seeking to remain part of German-Austria. Disagreements between and within the Allied delegations over Carinthia resulted in a decision to hold a plebiscite, which showed a majority in favour of remaining part of Austria. The thesis suggests that the implementation of self-determination in the Carinthian case resulted in a more successful resolution of border disputes. Unlike in the other two cases, the new Carinthian border mostly reflected the desires of the local population. Despite idealistic rhetoric, the final Austrian frontier suggested that Allied delegations at the Paris Peace Conference routinely favoured strategic justifications over self-determination.</p>

Russian Romances: Emotionalism and Spirituality in the Writings of “Eastern Front” Nurses, 1914–1918

2009 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-128
Author(s):  
Christine Hallett
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Front Line ◽  
Field Hospital ◽  
Eastern Front ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Trench Warfare ◽  
First World ◽  
Moving Front ◽  
Russian Medical

The nursing work of the First World War is usually associated with the trench warfare of the Western Front. Nurses were based within fairly permanent casualty clearing stations and field hospitals, and patients were moved “down the line” to base hospitals, and then to convalescent hospitals “at home.” The nurses and volunteers who worked on the Eastern Front and offered their services to the letuchka or “flying columns” of the Russian medical services had a very different experience. They worked with highly mobile units, following a rapidly moving “front line.” The diaries of three British (one Anglo-Russian) nurses who worked alongside Russian nursing sisterhoods in three different flying columns—Violetta Thurstan (Field Hospital and Flying Column), Florence Farmborough (With the Armies of the Tsar) and Mary Britnieva (One Woman’s Story)—stand as an important corpus of nursing writing. Written in a highly romantic style, they take up similar themes around their work on the Eastern Front as a heroic journey through a dreamlike landscape. Each nurse offers a portrayal of the Russian character as fine and noble. The most important themes deal with the romance of nursing itself, in which nursing work is portrayed as both character-testing and a highly spiritual pursuit.

scholarly journals To be truly British we must be anti-German New Zealand, Enemy Aliens and the Great War experience, 1914-1919

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Loveridge
Keyword(s):  
Collective Identity ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
The First World War ◽  
War Effort ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
One Step ◽  
The Subject ◽  
War Experience ◽  
First World

'To be truly British we must be Anti-German' was a statement voiced by Mrs Ida Boeufve to the Women's Anti-German League at a 1916 rally in Napier.  The attitudes and social forces backing that declaration form the subject of Andrew Francis's recent book on the treatment of New Zealand's German-speaking settlers during the First World War.  Adapted from his PhD research, 'To Be Truly British We Must Be Anti-German' approaches the period not simply to catalogue wartime anti-Germanism in its own right, but to consider the extent to which larger developments - immigration patterns, conceptions of collective identity and citizenship - set the tone for wartime reaction.  This effort tocontextualize anti-alienism in New Zealand's war effort and larger history is taken one step further by considering the subject within a comparative context.  

scholarly journals Self-Determination along the Austrian Frontier, 1918-1920: Case Studies of German Bohemia, Vorarlberg, and Carinthia

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Matthew Vink
Keyword(s):  
Local Population ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Successful Resolution ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Paris Peace Conference ◽  
Czech Lands ◽  
First World

<p>The First World War led to the collapse of a number of prominent European empires, allowing for the spread of new ideas into Europe. US President Woodrow Wilson’s rhetoric of national self-determination attracted particular symbolic importance because it legitimised popular sovereignty through the use of plebiscites. German-Austrians, like other national groups within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, used self-determination to justify establishing independent successor states after the war. The German-Austrian Republic, founded in 1918, claimed all German-speaking regions of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire on the basis of self-determination. This thesis examines claims to self-determination in three different cases: German Bohemia, Vorarlberg, and Carinthia. Representatives from each region took their case to the Paris Peace Conference, appealing to the Allied delegations to grant international recognition. These representatives faced much opposition, both from local non-German populations and occasionally even from the German-Austrian government itself.  German-Austrian politicians in the Czech lands opposed the incorporation of German-majority lands into Czechoslovakia, and instead sought to establish an autonomous German Bohemian province as part of German-Austria. In Paris, Allied delegations supported the historic frontier of the Czech lands, and therefore opposed local German self-determination outright, refusing demands for a plebiscite in German Bohemia. Vorarlberg representatives sought Vorarlberg’s secession from German-Austria, hoping instead for union with Switzerland. Vorarlbergers held a plebiscite to join Switzerland on their own initiative, initially with some degree of international support, but ultimately the international community, fearful of the disintegration of Austria, refused to allow Vorarlbergers to realise their wishes. Carinthian German representatives opposed Yugoslav claims to sovereignty over the region, seeking to remain part of German-Austria. Disagreements between and within the Allied delegations over Carinthia resulted in a decision to hold a plebiscite, which showed a majority in favour of remaining part of Austria. The thesis suggests that the implementation of self-determination in the Carinthian case resulted in a more successful resolution of border disputes. Unlike in the other two cases, the new Carinthian border mostly reflected the desires of the local population. Despite idealistic rhetoric, the final Austrian frontier suggested that Allied delegations at the Paris Peace Conference routinely favoured strategic justifications over self-determination.</p>

The Return of Alsace to France, 1918-1939

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Carrol
Keyword(s):  
National Policy ◽  
Third Republic ◽  
French Society ◽  
German Empire ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
The First World War ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
A Site ◽  
First World

In 1918 the end of the First World War triggered the return of Alsace to France after almost fifty years of annexation into the German Empire. Enthusiastic crowds in Paris and Alsace celebrated the homecoming of the so-called lost province, but return proved far less straightforward than anticipated. The region’s German-speaking population demonstrated strong commitment to local cultures and institutions, as well as their own visions of return to France. As a result, the following two decades saw politicians, administrators, industrialists, cultural elites, and others grapple with the question of how to make Alsace French again. The answer did not prove straightforward; differences of opinion emerged both inside and outside the region, and reintegration became a fiercely contested process that remained incomplete when war broke out in 1939. The Return of Alsace to France examines this story. Drawing upon national, regional, and local archives, it follows the difficult process of Alsace’s reintegration into French society, culture, political and economic systems, and legislative and administrative institutions. It connects the microhistory of the region with the macro levels of national policy, international relations, and transnational networks, and with the cross-border flows of ideas, goods, people, and cultural products that shaped daily life in Alsace. Revealing Alsace to be a site of exchange between a range of interest groups with different visions of the region’s future, this book underlines the role of regional populations and cross-border interactions in forging the French Third Republic.

The Short Career of the Indian Labour Corps in France, 1917–1919

2015 ◽  
Vol 87 ◽  
pp. 27-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Radhika Singha
Keyword(s):  
Military Personnel ◽  
First World War ◽  
Newspaper Coverage ◽  
One Dimension ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Status ◽  
War Experience ◽  
Social Agendas ◽  
First World

AbstractThis essay adds the story of the Indian Labour Corps (ILC) to the narratives of the various “coloured” units brought in to France to deal with the manpower crisis that had overtaken that theater of the First World War in 1916. The label “coloured” or “native labour” justified inferior care and a harsher work and disciplinary regime than that experienced by white labor. However, official reports and newspaper coverage also expose a dense play of ethnographic comparison between the different colored corps. The notion was that to “work” natives properly, the managerial regimes peculiar to them also had to be imported into the metropolis. The register of comparison was also shaped by specific political and social agendas which gave some colored units more room than others to negotiate acknowledgement of their services. One dimension of the war experience for Indian laborers was their engagement with institutional and ethnic categorizations. The other dimension was the process of being made over into military property and the workers own efforts to reframe the environments, object worlds, and orders of time within which they were positioned. By creating suggestive equivalences between themselves and other military personnel, they sought to lift themselves from the status of coolies to that of participants in a common project of war service. At the same time, they indicated that they had not put their persons at the disposal of the state in exactly the same way as the sepoy.

scholarly journals Service of the Orthodox military clergy in the occupied territory of Galicia during the First World War

2021 ◽  
pp. 39-47
Author(s):  
Eleonora V. Starostenko
Keyword(s):  
Local Population ◽  
Great Influence ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Occupied Territory ◽  
Russian Army ◽  
Fighting Spirit ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Military ◽  
First World

The activity of the Orthodox military clergy in the Russian army on the territory of Galicia during the First World War is considered. It was established that the religious situation in Galicia and the conduct of hostilities on the enemy’s territory had a great influence on the activities of military priests. The attitude of the protopresbyter of the military and naval clergy to the uniate question, the specificity of the interaction of military priests with the local population are shown. The features of the organisation and implementation of services are analysed. The work of priests to maintain a fighting spirit is considered. Cases of both conscientious and unacceptable attitude to the service was established.

scholarly journals Podatek od zysków wojennych w polskim systemie danin jako źródło finansowania kosztów wojny polsko-bolszewickiej

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 395-406
Author(s):  
Dobrosława Antonów
Keyword(s):  
Social Function ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Additional Burden ◽  
History Of ◽  
War Experience ◽  
First World

The paper draws attention to one of the emergency taxes in the history of the Polish Treasury, i.e. a tax on war profits. It was levied under the Decree of 5 February 1919 on the Establishment of a Tax on War Profits. This levy introduced a concept which was developed in Europe and built on the First World War experience. In the reborn Poland, the tax was supposed to have two functions: fiscal — as a source of financing the extraordinary expenditure arising from the war against the Soviets and a social function — as an additional burden on those taxpayers who were able to accumulate wealth and earn substantial profits as a result of the First World War.

scholarly journals The forgotten Eastern Front: dealing with the social and archaeological legacies of the Battle of the Rawka and Bzura Rivers (1914–1915), central Poland

Antiquity ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Anna I. Zalewska ◽  
Grzegorz Kiarszys
Keyword(s):  
Historical Consciousness ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Central Poland ◽  
Eastern Front ◽  
The Social ◽  
Trench Warfare ◽  
Heritage Policy ◽  
Second World ◽  
First World

While the Western Front of the Great (or First World) War is deeply engrained in the European historical consciousness, memories of the Eastern Front are less prominent. Here, events have been repressed, obscured by the subsequent experience of the Second World War and by heritage policy in the region. The authors present the results of archaeological investigations of a battlefield in central Poland, where static trench warfare was fought between December 1914 and July 1915. A unique landscape palimpsest was formed, the present neglected state of which is a material expression of contemporary attitudes to the legacy of the forgotten Eastern Front. The study illustrates the wider intersection of warfare, identity and memory.

scholarly journals ‘Weeping tears of blood’: exploring Italian soldiers' emotions in the First World War

Modern Italy ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vanda Wilcox
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
World War ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
War Experience ◽  
First World

Emotion plays a vital role in any rounded history of warfare, both as an element in morale and as component in understanding the soldier's experience. Theories on the functioning of emotions vary, but an exploration of Italian soldiers' emotions during the First World War highlights both cognitive and cultural elements in the ways emotions were experienced and expressed. Although Italian stereotypes of passivity and resignation dominated contemporary discourse concerning the feelings and reactions of peasant conscripts, letters reveal that Italian soldiers vividly expressed a wide range of intense emotions. Focusing on fear, horror and grief as recurrent themes, this article finds that these emotions were processed and expressed in ways which show similarities to the combatants of other nations but which also display distinctly Italian features. The language and imagery commonly deployed offer insights into the ways in which Italian socio-cultural norms shaped expressions of personal war experience. In letters that drew on both religious imagery and the traditional peasant concerns of land, terrain and basic survival, soldiers expressed their fears of death, isolation, suffering and killing in surprisingly vigorous terms.

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