Inside World War One?

The First World War and its Witnesses

Edited by Richard Bessel and Dorothee Wierling

Studies of the German Historical Institute, London

Extends our understanding of the First World War geographically and culturally
Offers critical reading of fascinating self-testimonies (ego documents)
Presents new insights into the lives of people who lived through the First World War

Inside World War One?

The First World War and its Witnesses

Edited by Richard Bessel and Dorothee Wierling

Studies of the German Historical Institute, London

Description

With the centenary of the First World War, interest in the war has increased and research about the war has developed in new directions. This timely volume combines two of these new directions: an increased interest in ego documents from the Great War, and an increased interest in the First World War beyond the Western Front. The essays assembled here, written by an international team of scholars, analyse the testimonies of people who lived through that war.

While British and French perceptions of the First World War understandably focus largely on the western front and German perceptions, too, draw largely on the war in the west, increasing attention now is being paid to the fact that the Eastern Front involved as many soldiers, left behind as many dead, and had consequences at least as significant as what occurred in the west. Without ignoring the war in the west, this volume focuses particularly on what occurred in the east and the south: eastern Europe, the Balkans and the Baltic region, Italy, and the Ottoman Empire.

It offers a critical examination of the value of ego documents connected to the First World War, both as part of a broader belief in the 'authentic' access to historical events that they provide and in relation to their use to historians. At the same time, it extends our understanding of the war geographically and culturally. The volume is based on an appreciation that each ego document is representative, not in the statistical meaning of the term, but in that it contains elements of larger social patterns of experience. In this way, and by extending our gaze eastwards and southwards, this volume offers new and revealing perspectives on the history of the First World War.

Inside World War One?

The First World War and its Witnesses

Edited by Richard Bessel and Dorothee Wierling

Studies of the German Historical Institute, London

I. Introduction
1:Inside World War One? Ego Documents and the First World War, Richard Bessel and Dorothee Wierling
II. Invasion and Occupation
2:Registers of Everyday Life in Warsaw during the First World War: The Uses and Limitations of Ego Documents, Robert Blobaum
3:Measuring Lost Time. Civilians' Diaries under Military Occupation: Flemish and Francophone Diaries in German-Occupied Belgium, 1914-1918, Sophie De Schaepdrijver
4:Ego Documents from the Invasion of East Prussia, 1914-1915, Alexander Watson
III. Soldiers, Doctors, and Nurses
5:'It was more than madness': Perceptions of War among Slovenian Soldiers, 1914-1918, Pavlina Bobič
6:The Thin White Line: Remembering the Alpine Front in the First World War, Roberta Pergher
7:Counter-Narratives of the Great War? War Accounts of Nurses in Austro-Hungarian Service, Christa Hämmerle
8:Front Experience and Psychological Problems: The Voices of Doctors and Patients in Case Studies and Patient Files, Andrea G. von Hohenthal
IV. War beyond Europe
9:Inside the Ottoman Army: Two Armenian Officers Tell Their Story, Mustafa Aksakal
10:Uncovering the Colonial Cultures and Encounters of the British Empire during the First World War, Anna Maguire
V. Uses of Ego Documents
11:Publishing Ego Documents as War Propaganda, Gerd Krumeich
12:A Vita Nova: The Construction of a War-Life Experience in Italian First World War Autobiographical Writing, Marco Mondini
13:Alloying Dissent with Patriotism: Dragiša Vasić in Yugoslav Siberia, John Paul Newman
14:The Apotheosis of the Unknown Soldier: Officers, Soldiers, and the Writing of the Great War in Russia, Joshua Sanborn
15:'Emplotting the Witness': Henri Barbusse and Marc Bloch, Leonard V. Smith

Inside World War One?

The First World War and its Witnesses

Edited by Richard Bessel and Dorothee Wierling

Studies of the German Historical Institute, London

Author Information

Edited by Richard Bessel, Professor Emeritus of Twentieth Century History, University of York, and Dorothee Wierling, Professor Emerita, Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte, Universität Hamburg

Richard Bessel completed his doctoral research at Oxford University in 1980. He first taught at the University of Southampton, before moving to the Open University. In 1998 he was appointed to the Chair of Twentieth Century History at the University of York. He has held visiting fellowships and professorships at the universities of Bielefeld and Freiburg, and at the Max Planck Institute for History in Göttingen, the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich, and the Freiburg Institute of Advanced Studies.

Dorothee Wierling studied history and English literature at the University of Bochum. She received her Ph.D. in history in 1987 from the University of Essen and her Habilitation from the University of Potsdam in 2000. She has held several fellowships and visiting professorships in Germany, the USA, and Israel. Her work focuses on German social history, oral history, and the history of gender and generations in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Contributors:

Mustafa Aksakal, Georgetown University
Richard Bessel, University of York
Robert Blobaum, West Virginia University
Pavlina Bobič, formerly University of Birmingham
Christa Hämmerle, University of Vienna
Andrea G. von Hohenthal, University of Freiburg
Gerd Krumeich, University of Düsseldorf
Anna Maguire, Kings College London
Marco Mondini, Istituto Storico Italo-Germanico-FBK in Trento
John Paul Newman, National University of Ireland in Maynooth
Roberta Pergher, University of Indiana in Bloomington
Joshua Sanborn, Lafayette College
Sophie De Schaepdrijver, Pennsylvania State University
Leonard V. Smith, Oberlin College
Alexander Watson, Goldsmiths, University of London
Dorothee Wierling, Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte in Hamburg