When the Music Stopped: Reactions to the Outbreak of World War I in an Austrian Province

The article analyzes reactions to the outbreak of World War I in the Habsburg Crownland of Salzburg. Based on a detailed examination of local sources, such as diaries, memoirs, church and gendarmerie chronicles, regional newspapers, and administrative records, the study sheds light on the complexity of responses and emotions elicited during the summer of 1914. Engaging with recent historiography on the question of “war enthusiasm” and the “August experience,” the ensuing analysis allows for profound insights into how the local population reacted to the news of the Sarajevo assassinations, Austria-Hungary's ultimatum to Serbia, and the subsequent declaration of war, mobilization, and the first weeks of the conflict. The article highlights the role of the press, governmental policies, and repression as key factors in creating an agitated atmosphere to which people responded in different ways, depending on age, class, gender, and the urban–rural divide. At times, frenzied patriotic mobilization occurred alongside not only a widespread acceptance of the obligation to do one's duty, but also—and equally—great uncertainty and anxiety. This highlights the complexities of public reactions in the summer of 1914, thereby challenging from a regional historical perspective the notion of an “enthusiastic” welcoming of the war.

Gendered War Mobilization, Culture, and Music in the Age of World Wars

In the age of world wars, with the increasing spread of media technologies, music and the other audiovisual arts served as tools for propaganda, as means of commemoration, and as escapist entertainment. This chapter explores how art was instrumentalized in propaganda efforts, how gender intersected with musical composition and performance in both wars, how music’s semantic slipperiness made it a fascinating tool for transnational reinterpretation as notions of gender shifted in the interwar years, and how music intersected with technologies such as radio and film to construct gender roles considered appropriate by governments in the 1930s and during World War II, especially in the hands of the state apparatus.

War Mobilization, Gender, and Military Culture in Nineteenth-Century Western Societies

Gender served as an important structural and organizing principle for the mobilization of peoples for war and nation in Europe and the United States during the nineteenth century. This chapter explores, from a gender perspective, how military and civilian cultures became more intimately conjoined and societies were militarized. Men experienced induction in mass conscription armies as a rite of passage to manhood and citizenship and prolonged their military identities in veteran’s organizations. Women participated in voluntary and nursing organizations that supported military and combat activities throughout the century and figured as national symbols and in the commemoration of civilian and military suffering. Popular culture, art, music, and military display made use of deeply gendered images linking military culture to nationalist themes.

The Oxford Handbook of Gender, War, and the Western World since 1600

The handbook is a reference work of thirty-two essays jointly written by specialists in the history of military and war and experts in gender and women’s history. The collection, covering four centuries from the Thirty Years’ War to the present Wars of Globalization, investigates how gender contributed to the shaping of warfare and the military and was at the same time transformed by them. The essays explore this question by focusing on themes such as the cultural representations of military and war; war mobilization of and war support by society; war experiences on the home fronts and battlefronts; gendered war violence; military service and citizenship; war demobilization, postwar societies, and memories; and attempts to regulate and tame warfare and prevent new wars. The volume covers chronologically the major periods in the development of warfare since the seventeenth century. Its content reflects the state of research on the history of gender and war. Therefore, the main geographical focus of the handbook in several chapters is on the best explored regions of eastern and western Europe, the Americas and Australia. But it also systematically covers the long-term processes of colonization and empire-building originating in early modern Europe and their aftermath in the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Australia, which are more recent fields of research. Thus, the handbook allows for both temporal comparisons that explore continuities and changes in a long-term perspective and regional comparisons, as well as an assessment of transnational influences on the entangled relationships between and among gender, warfare, and military culture. All essays are thematic, comparative or transnational.

Faith, Tsar and Fatherland: Division and War Mobilization During the First World War

Faith, Tsar and Fatherland is an exploration of how religious, political, and ethnic differences influenced war mobilization in Russia prior to, and during, the First World War. Through the narrative of a sacred union, the Russian Imperial government unified an otherwise divided country into one cohesive whole, fighting to protect the Fatherland. In the name of patriotism, historically marginalized groups such as Russo-German settlers and Russian Muslims set aside political, religious, and cultural differences to fight alongside ethnic Russians in one unified effort to defeat the Central Powers.