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Description
The author evaluates the source genre of field post letters, which has received too little attention so far. Like no other medium, these letters - exchanged between front-line soldiers and their loved ones back home - provide insights into the world of thought of a group of people that has otherwise hardly found expression in historical sources. They reflect intimate feelings and assessments and reveal social moods and supra-personal patterns of perception.
The author shows how the brutal material battles and endless crater landscapes changed the contemporaries' view of death and their own mortality and how this was reflected in the language of writing. She analyses the dissonances that resulted from the different worlds of experience at the front and at home, and the role field post played in bridging them. In the process, she is able to demonstrate numerous linguistic coping mechanisms and evocative speech acts - apparently a distancing from the reality of war. This often manifests itself in trivialisations and a strong concentration on everyday, non-political topics. An important finding is that the language in the field letters changed between 1914 and 1918. In this way, the author also succeeds in making visible general developments in the history of mentality. It is increasingly difficult to imagine the inhumane conditions under which soldiers fought on the various fronts during the First World War, as the historical sources, such as newspaper articles, front reports and the like, provide a distorted picture of the situation at the front in many respects. For one thing, the descriptions were usually written by people who had insufficient knowledge of the horrors of trench warfare. Secondly, there was strict censorship during the war with the aim of maintaining the fighting morale of the population. The reproduction of the mood in the troops was therefore glossed over in an almost systematic way. But how did the ordinary soldiers actually feel? How did the mood develop in the course of the war years? What did people at the front think about the decisions of the government and the general staff? Did the initial war euphoria last or did disillusionment set in as the horror continued? These and many other questions are of burning interest not only to historians. Rather, answering these questions could shed new light on the First World War.
The author shows how the brutal material battles and endless crater landscapes changed the contemporaries' view of death and their own mortality and how this was reflected in the language of writing. She analyses the dissonances that resulted from the different worlds of experience at the front and at home, and the role field post played in bridging them. In the process, she is able to demonstrate numerous linguistic coping mechanisms and evocative speech acts - apparently a distancing from the reality of war. This often manifests itself in trivialisations and a strong concentration on everyday, non-political topics. An important finding is that the language in the field letters changed between 1914 and 1918. In this way, the author also succeeds in making visible general developments in the history of mentality. It is increasingly difficult to imagine the inhumane conditions under which soldiers fought on the various fronts during the First World War, as the historical sources, such as newspaper articles, front reports and the like, provide a distorted picture of the situation at the front in many respects. For one thing, the descriptions were usually written by people who had insufficient knowledge of the horrors of trench warfare. Secondly, there was strict censorship during the war with the aim of maintaining the fighting morale of the population. The reproduction of the mood in the troops was therefore glossed over in an almost systematic way. But how did the ordinary soldiers actually feel? How did the mood develop in the course of the war years? What did people at the front think about the decisions of the government and the general staff? Did the initial war euphoria last or did disillusionment set in as the horror continued? These and many other questions are of burning interest not only to historians. Rather, answering these questions could shed new light on the First World War.
- Group
- Books (first-hand)
- Author
- Fett, Ann-Katrin
- Title
- Briefe aus dem Krieg. Die Feldpost als Quelle von 1914 bis 1918
- Details
- Paperback, 23 ill. 195 pp.
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