Karin Kaltenbrunner

The Viennese Ernst Hortner fought in the First World War on the battlefields of the Balkans and the Italian Front. A well-read architecture student, he chose something special to accompany him in the years of his absence: a copy of Goethe’s “Faust” which was with him, in his own words, “on the winter campaigns throughout Serbia and into inland Montenegro, the mountains near Ipek, in the war years 1915/16”.

Franz Heinisch’s notes tell of his eventful life. The barber came from Znaim (today Znojmo/Czech Republic) and worked among other places in Dresden, Hamburg, Berlin and on a cruise ship before the outbreak of the First World War forced his return and duty in the eastern and southern theatres of war. A member of the Imperial-Royal Regiment No. 99, he was wounded several times and buried in an avalanche in the mountains of the Julian Alps in winter 1917 – an incident he was lucky to survive, since it cost so many soldiers their lives in the mountain war against Italy.