The Viennese tailor Maximilian Hauswirth fought among other places on the southern battlefields of the First World War. Numerous photographs compiled into an album for “her Max” by his second wife Hermine Hauswirth (née Hauptmann) reveal not only the special difficulties of the mountain war against Italy, but also testify to a profoundly patriotic mindset.
Carl Fanta was born in Pilsen, today Plzeň/Czech Republic and spent his youth among other places in Krems, Vienna and Zagreb, where his father was commander of the Varazdin (Warasdin) Infantry Regiment No. 16. In a total of four volumes he describes his experiences as an officer in the Imperial-Royal Army in the campaign against Serbia and on the Eastern and Southern Fronts, so that his children, to quote his words, “would be given a true, unvarnished version of their father’s war experiences.”
Josef Winter was stationed during the First World War in the fortress of Franzensfeste near Brixen/Bressanone and fought on the southern battlefields as a member of the Imperial-Royal Bicycle Units, which had already been inaugurated around 1900. Furthermore, as a qualified baker he performed an important function in provisioning for his company. After the end of the war, Josef Winter continued working as a baker in his home town of Schlierbach.
The master saddler Alois Divinzenz from Blindenmarkt fought on the Eastern Front during the First World War. He wrote numerous letters and forces postcards to his uncle Franz Gotzmy describing his experiences as a soldier with the Imperial-Royal Infantry Regiment No. 49, with especial mention of the increasingly serious shortage of provisions and hygienic difficulties on the front. At the same time Alois Divinenz casts an ironic eye on the military operations against the Russian Army and finds ways in his letters of circumventing the censorship of the Habsburg Monarchy.
