Articoli di riviste sul tema "European war, 1914-1915"

The problem of the Dobrujan land frontier between the Bulgarian and Romanian national states, which officially came up after the San Stefano and Berlin (1878) peace treaties and was aggravated by the Peace of Bucharest (1913), dominated the bilateral relations for a few decades. The hereby study focuses on the period August 1914 – September 1915, when both South-Eastern European states were neutral towards the Great War. This context led to various proposals, projects and scenarios concerning the Romanian-Bulgarian relations and implicitly related to the fate of Dobruja. Our effort deals with three levels: the positions of the Great Powers, their relations with Bucharest and Sofia, and the direct relations between the two South-Eastern European states. Chronologically, this period is divided into several stages, marked by the Ottoman Empire’s entry in the war (1 November 1914), the deadlock of the negotiations between Bulgaria and the Entente (March 1915), Italy’s option to renounce neutrality (23 May 1915) and the onset of the final talks concerning Bulgaria’s option to join the Central Powers (July 1915). Among the most relevant sources, we need to mention the Romanian Military Archives from Piteşti and the works of synthesis written by the Bulgarian historians Georgi Markov, Ivan Ilčev and Žeko Popov, dealing with the period 1913-1919.

The article examines and analyzes the portrayal of Austro-Hungary by correspondents of the Russian daily newspaper, “Russian Invalid,” during 1914–1915. This was a period when the Russian Empire was actively engaged in military conflict with the states of the Triple (and later, Quadruple) Alliance on the European front, with Austro-Hungary emerging as one of its primary adversaries on the Eastern Front. Established in February 1813, the “Russian Invalid” was the official print publication of the Military Ministry of the Russian Empire and served as a pivotal source of information on the empire’s foreign policies. This state-run newspaper was financed by the budget of Russia’s Military Ministry. In the early stages of World War I (1914–1915), the “Russian Invalid” correspondents devoted significant attention to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Only Germany, Britain, and France received more coverage in this publication. The majority of the information about Austro-Hungary appeared under sections titled “Military Chronicle,” “Feuilleton,” “War,” “Telegram,” and “Articles.” The study concludes that during World War I, the “Russian Invalid,” the daily newspaper of the Military Ministry of the Russian Empire, played a pivotal role in shaping public opinion within the empire. It crafted diverse images of the states involved in the early 20th century’s major military conflict, designating them as either “enemy,” “neutral state,” or “ally.” The Austro-Hungarian Empire was depicted as a nation that had significantly exhausted its economic, military-technical, and human resources in the initial two years of the war. Such depletion was foreseen to not only incite widespread national unrest but also accelerate the empire’s eventual disintegration, an entity long referred to as a “prison of nations.”

At the beginning of the twentieth century, many sectors of Russian industry were dependent on imports from European countries, including Germany. After Russia's entry into the First World War, the army began to experience shortages of fuel, transport, ammunition and medicines. Based on archival documents and periodicals, the article analyses the involvement of staff and students of higher educational institutions in the activities to overcome the supply crisis. Two periods of their participation in the work for defense purposes are distinguished: at the first stage (1914–early 1915) the assistance was mainly limited to the creation of infirmaries and sanitary teams to serve the needs of wounded and sick soldiers; from the spring of 1915 the military department began to actively use the scientific, methodological, material and personnel potential of higher education institutions. The author concludes that the work of higher educational institutions contributed not only to the provision of the army, but also to the liberation of domestic industry from foreign dependence.

This article analyzes Paul Scheerbart’s (1863–1915) fantastic literature, particularly his novel Lesabéndio (1913) and the utopian work Glasarchitektur (1914), focusing on the changes in visual culture from the nineteenth century onwards. As an author, Scheerbart stands on a cultural threshold, since the First World War marked a clear transition in European societies. The way that the panoramic view, glass architecture, and other attributes of nineteenth-century visual culture are present in Scheerbart’s works is illustrative of his position between the two forms of modernity before and after the war. The article also examines various readings of Scheerbart’s works, most importantly the remarks of Walter Benjamin. With its panoramas, dioramas, and eventually photography, twentieth-century visual culture was characterized by the significance of technology—a quintessential aspect of modernity that was examined by Benjamin. Scheerbart’s works entail key themes foregrounded by Benjamin, who develops them further into core motifs and concepts of his cultural theory.

<p class="EW-abstract"><strong>Abstract:</strong> Ol'ha Kobylians'ka’s short stories about the First World War constitute a rare case of a Ukrainian woman writing on one of the greatest catastrophes in modern history, a subject neglected even in Ukraine. Drawing on recent scholarship on First World War literature, this research proves that Kobylians'ka’s war stories deserve a re-evaluation, not as long-ignored curiosities from the pen of Ukraine’s most sophisticated writer of the time, but as insightful psychological studies of Western Ukrainians and as valuable cultural documents that present an original perspective on the common European experience of 1914-1918. The article pays particular attention to Kobylians'ka’s creative assessment of the Austrian and Russian treatment of Western Ukrainians during different stages of the First World War, which exposes anew fatal political weaknesses in Europe’s old imperial order and facilitates a better understanding of why Ukrainians, like many other ethnic groups in Europe without a state of their own, began to pursue their national goals more aggressively as the war progressed. Alongside popular texts, such as “Na zustrich doli” (“To Meet Their Fate,” 1917), “Iuda” (“Judas,” 1917), and “Lyst zasudzhenoho voiaka do svoiei zhinky” (“A Letter from a Convicted Soldier to His Wife,” 1917), this article examines Kobylians'ka’s three little-known stories—“Lisova maty” (“The Forest Mother,” 1915), “Shchyra liubov” (“Sincere Love,” 1916), and “Vasylka” (“Vasylka,” 1922)—thus presenting the most complete analysis of Kobylians'ka’s war fiction in any language.</p><p class="EW-Keyword">Keywords: Modernist Literature, Literature of the First World War, Women Writings of the First World War, Ol'ha Kobylians'ka’s War Fiction</p>

While the horrors of the trench warfare on the Western Front in Belgium and France are part of the European cultural memory, to some degree the much more extensive and mobile Eastern Front of the 1914–1918 conflict has become the forgotten front (Die vergessene Front). Although for just over eleven months in 1914/15, the central part of a major front, some 1000 km long on which three million people died ran through the middle of what is now Poland, for a number of reasons the memory of this has there been all but erased from memory and from the cultural landscape. The reviewed three volumes are the result of a project that has attempted to address the poor state of historical memory of the momentous events and human drama that took place a century earlier on the segment of the front, 55 km west of Warsaw. Here, from mid-December 1914, the Russian Imperial army tried to hold back the eastward advance of the German troops on defences built along the Bzura and Rawka rivers. For the next seven months, the fighting here took the form of the same type of prolonged static trench warfare more familiar on the Western Front (the only place in the eastern sphere of war that this happened). The German army made every effort (including mining and several major gas attacks), to advance on Warsaw but failed to break through. It was only after the Great Retreat of the Russian army in the summer of 1915 that these defences were overrun and Warsaw fell.

The article analyzes the representations of the Russian socio-political discourse of 1914–1916, dedicated to the justification of the First World War as a just war on the part of Russia and its Allies. It considers the role of the factors that shaped the image of a just war in the minds of the European political and intellectual elite and the younger generation, as well as the emergence of the idea of “spirituality” of war as the basis for its legitimation. The author stresses the influence of the international conventions on the laws and customs of war on the image of a just war in Russia as well as the specifics of the socio-cultural situation at the turn of the 20th century, which made it difficult to conduct ideological and psychological preparation for world clash that could affect the mass consciousness. The image of a just war began to take shape in Russia after the country entered the conflict and was based on the idea of a defensive war against an external aggressor. The fact that Germany was the first to declare war on Russia, the realities of bloody confrontation contributed to the formation and broadcast the ideas about the “Second Patriotic War”. The concept of the “Second Patriotic War”, which appealed to historical memory, became the embodiment of the idea of a just war in the 1914–1915 Russian socio-political discourse. An important component of the image of a just war in Russia was the notions of the spiritual and religious sense of confrontation. They were embodied in ideas about the implementation of the sacred mission of liberating Europe and the world from “Germanism”, the protection of the Slavs, the “struggle for truth”, the affirmation of the renewed ideal of “Holy Russia”. The ideas of a “holy war against Germanism” got embedded in the discourse of the press into the system of ideas about the fairness of the goals and objectives of the Allies. Another basis for the legitimacy of war was the concept embodied in the slogan “the war to end all wars”. The influential concept of Entente propaganda received a wide response in the Russian liberal and democratic press, which interpreted the meaning of the world conflict in a political and legal terms. The war was seen as a way to establish a new system of international relations based on the rule of the “force of law” as opposed to the “law of force” personified by Germany. Illusions about the possibility of establishing “eternal peace” after the war were widely broadcast in the press, becoming an element of ideas about a just struggle for a better future of mankind. The notions about “German atrocities” widely broadcast by propaganda in the Entente countries were important element of the justification of violence against the enemy and legitimization of the war. In Russia, despite the enemy’s violation of international conventions governing conducting the war and the presence of this topic in the press, the image of “German atrocities” did not play the significant role in socio-political discourse in comparison with the Entente countries.

Introduction. The First World War is a forgotten and completely unhonored page in the history of Ukraine. Instead, events and facts related to it are actively investigated in many European countries. In journalism and journalism studies, the topic of activity of specialized newspaper and magazine editions of medical topics was not investigated in that period, therefore, a picture of the emergence, formation, and development of such a press was not created, and its systematization was not carried out. Relevance and goal. The goal of the research is to analyze the problem-thematic components of specialized medical periodicals and continuing publications of the First World War period (1914–1918), to find out the peculiarities of their emergence and activity, and to introduce the specified press into scientific circulation. The relevance is formed by the lack of a comprehensive study of the activities of the specialized newspaper and magazine medical press of the specified period, its systematization, and problem-thematic priorities. Methodology. Descriptive methods are used as a basis during the research, which allows us to penetrate the causes of this or that phenomenon, find out the main stages of its development, the influence of a specific situation on the nature of events and phenomena; and compare local phenomena with general historical processes. Based on the periodization of the history of the development of the Ukrainian press proposed by the Research Institute of Press Studies, the study focuses on the fifth period – Ukrainian periodicals of the First World War 1914–1917. Results. The beginning of the First World War led to the closure of many publications. This was caused by increased censorship and financial problems of publishers. However, new periodicals also appeared during this period. In particular, 6 editions of military-medical topics were published: «Voenno-sanitarnii obzor» (1917), «Vrachebno-sanitarnie izvestiya Upravleniya Glavnoupolnomochennogo Krasnogo Kresta Yugo-Zapadnogo fronta» (1916–1918), «Izvestiya Kievskoi rentgenovskoi komissii» (1915–1917), «Nash zhurnal» (1917), «Nashe slovo» (1917), «Pomoshch ranenim» (1914). The thematically mentioned editions focused primarily on essential problems that arose in society with the development of military operations. The authors focused on the treatment of injuries from new ballistic weapons, rapid-fire machine guns, gas gangrene, damage by mustard gas and chlorine, the spread of epidemic diseases on the fronts, etc. Conclusions. The research gives reasons to state that during this period, 6 editions were published, which, based on typological characteristics, we include in the military-medical press. Their pages were dominated by messages related to the struggle for the lives of the wounded and the organization of military medical aid. These publications played one of the leading roles in the representation of military reality.

Background. The article deals with the reflection of the First World War of 1914–1918 in the monumental art of Poland. Therefore, memorial buildings and monuments are not only the realization of the creative plan of artists, i.e. their authors, but also a re-flection of a political course of the state, the experience gained, hopes, expectations, losses of people. That is why they allow us to understand the memory of the First World War in Poland. Purpose. The aim of the article is to study how the events of the First World War are reflected in the monumental art of Poland, and on this basis to consider the for-mation of historical memory, past and present practices of commemoration of the tragic events of 1914–1918. Results. The heroes and the memory of the victims of the First World War are re-spected in Poland, which in particular can be observed in the improvement of memorial complexes, memorials and other similar constructions. At the same time, the memory of the global military conflict is identified primarily with the restoration of independence. For most Poles, November 11, 1918 is associated not so much with the end of the Great War of 1914–1918 as with the birth of the Second Polish Republic of 1918–1939. Thus, the heroes of the military conflict are seen as the fighters for independence. On the other hand, the monumental buildings reflect the difficult path to independence, i.e. the division of Polish lands on the eve of the First World War and the difficulties in the establishing borders after its end. The First World War of 1914–1918 remains an important period in history. Commemorative practices, in general, coincide with those conducted in Western European countries, and, at the same time, they are mostly visible in the above position. Key words: the First World War, monumental art, Poland, memory, places of memory, commemoration. 1915: War, Province, Man: Ukrainian-Polish Accents, 2016. 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This paper presents an article by Rabbi Dr. S. Levi published in 1921 in Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums about French Jewish army rabbis and Jewish praying books from World War One distributed among Jewish soldiers in French Army. Levi served himself as an Army Rabbi in German army. He used his own experience to highlight the most interesting and significant features of French approach toward Jewish military service in time of war. This article of Rabbi Levi serves as an example of continuation of the pre-war GermanJewish self-identification as both culturally German and religiously Jewish. However, it also presented an interesting depiction of the technical details about French Army praying book. In contrast to German Jewry, their French counterparts published praying book under the auspices of the Chief Rabbi of France and distributed in with the help of his office. Levi pointed out that these praying books reflect in their content the original war time religiosity, which was still important to reconstruct and to reflect about in the after war epoch. The Great Rabbi of France gave his sanctions for the publishing the Prayer for the War Time and Prayer for France, both prayers bore his name and originated in the years 1914-1915. Dr. Levi justly saw in the figure of the Great Rabbi a central authority for the Jews in the French uniform. The French praying book was designated not only for the French Jews of European origin who mostly had had Alsace and Lorraine roots, but also for the Sephardic Jews from the French colonies in North Africa (Morocco and Algiers). Because of this fact, this praying book was different in its content from both German Jewish praying books. It provided two versions of the Hebrew texts in accordance to Ashkenazi and Sephardic rites. Both versions, the Ashkenazi (and the German one as Dr. Levi called it) and the Sephardic were printed together. Dr. Levi thought that it was necessary to highlight the differences between these two Jewish rites. He found that there elements in general were of great importance whereas his Ashkenazi German readers would find it confusing to differentiate between ritual nuances with their Sephardic co-religionists, namely in the conducting the death-, burial- and mourning praying ceremonies. In accordance to the articles published in the Monatsschrift Jewish experiences during the First World War were positively evaluated by their German co-religionists.

In the introduction to their excellent survey of the First World War in Central Europe, Our War (Nasza wojna), Polish historians Włodzimierz Borodziej and Maciej Górny begin by wondering why the name of Przasnysz, a small Polish town north of Warsaw, carries today no connotations of misery or horror. In late 1914 and early 1915, they note, the Germans and Russians fought several ferocious battles in its vicinity, battles that ultimately claimed hundreds of thousands of casualties. And yet its name never became a part of the shared historical memory of the First World War. Przasnysz and its battles are long forgotten, not only, as might be expected, in Belgium, France and Great Britain, but also in Germany, Russia and the rest of Poland. This, Borodziej and Górny note, is symptomatic of the hold that the war's Western Front has exercised for generations on the imaginations of scholars and the wider public alike – even within the states that now occupy the territory on which the titanic clashes of the Russian, Austrian and German empires claimed millions of lives. To schoolchildren in Warsaw no less than to scholars in Great Britain and the United States, the First World War is synonymous with the trenches of Belgium and France, and with the haunted names of Ypres, Passchendaele and Verdun. But the evidence of Nasza wojna and the other three books under review here suggests that the Eastern Front is finally emerging as a subject of scholarly and popular interest. Moreover, these books illustrate that careful study of that Front has the potential to deepen our understanding of the war's complex dynamics and their impact on the states and societies that grappled with them. The sweeping conquests and extended occupations of ethnically, linguistically and religiously diverse populations; the migration of ethnic hostilities from the front lines to the home fronts of multinational states; the profound divide between urban and rural experiences of the war; the ways in which military institutions adapted to the industrialised brutality of modern warfare and the ways that venerable but sprawling imperial state systems tried to come to grips with the war's demands are just a few of the themes addressed by the books under review here. The history of the period, and of modern European history in general, stands to be greatly enriched by a renewed interest in ‘the forgotten Great War’.

The 1915 Chilembwe Rising in Nyasaland had important political repercussions in the neighbouring colonial territory of Northern Rhodesia, where fears were raised among the Administration about the activities of African school teachers attached to the thirteen mission denominations then operating in the territory. These anxieties were heightened for the understaffed and poorly-financed British South Africa Company administration by the impact of the war-time conscription of Africans and the additional demands made by war-time conditions upon the resources of the Company. Reports of anti-war activities by African teachers attached to the Dutch Reformed Church in the East Luangwa District convinced both the Northern Rhodesian and the imperial authorities of the imperative need to strictly regulate the activities of its black mission-educated elite. Suspected dissident teachers were arrested, while others were diverted into military service where their activities could be more closely supervised. With the 1918 Native Schools Proclamation, the Administration laid down strict regulations for the appointment and employment of African mission teachers. The proclamation aroused the vehement opposition of the mission societies who, confronted by war-time European staff shortages, had come to rely heavily upon their African teachers to maintain their educational work. The emergence in late 1918 of the patently anti-colonial Watch Tower movement, which incorporated many African mission employees within its leadership, weakened the opposition of the missions, and served to consolidate the administration's perception of the African teachers as a dangerous subversive force. Strong measures were implemented by the administration soon after the end of the war, with large numbers of Watch Tower adherents being arrested and detained.

The article is devoted to the study of the image of the Crusades in the works of Arabic visual art of 1914–1948, in which the action takes place during the Third (1189–1192) and Seventh (1248–1254) Crusades. Analysis of the plays «Abṭāl al-manṣūra» («Heroes of Mansura», 1915) and «Ṣalāḥ al-dīn al-ayyūbī munqiḏ falisṭīn» («Salah ad-Din al-Ayyubi, Savior of Palestine», 1948), as well as the films «Šajarat al-durr» («Shajarat ad-Durr», 1935) and «Ṣalāḥ al-dīn al-ayyūbī» («Salah ad-Din al-Ayyubi», 1941) showed that if in plays created before the First World War, Arab authors only praised the commanders of the past who defeated the Crusaders, then starting from this global military conflict, the theme of the Crusades began to be used also in order to liken modern Europeans to the Crusaders and draw analogies between the Crusades and the colonial presence in the Middle East. At the same time, the film industry continued to reproduce the romanticized image of the Crusades that emerged in the 19th century. In the analyzed works, the trend towards the Arabization of the past, which developed within the framework of the Arab Revival, also continued: non-Arab heroes, primarily Salah ad-Din, are most often referred to in the works as «Arab leaders».

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.