The dialogue between the front line and the home front

Faced with constant uncertainty and strain, everybody wanted to know how their beloved son, brother, father or husband at the front was or, conversely, that the family at home were all well. Communication by letter also served as a substitute for daily conversation that could not be maintained when those concerned were separated. Thus many wartime letters also contain descriptions of banalities such as eating, sleeping or the weather, daily activities, news of children, siblings, friends and acquaintances. It was a way of letting one’s partner participate in one’s own daily life, of creating a connection with the familiar world of family and friends, a link with shared experiences from life as it had been before the war.

The majority of letters that have survived from this time contain not only descriptions of contemporary everyday life at home and on the front but also reminiscences of a shared past and hopes for a shared future. Since a shared present was mostly a thing of impossibility, memories of the past were frequently evoked as encouragement as well as to mitigate the strains of everyday wartime life and assuage the pangs of separation. Many correspondents regularly wrote about their plans for the future, imagining a life together in health and happiness with their relatives and friends after the war.

As the historian Ulrike Jureit has pointed out, the daily writing of letters served ‘to maintain the emotional bonds that were frequently threatened by the war’. Even the very act of writing expressed attentiveness and concern. In this way people attempted to preserve constellations of family and relationships, to express their feelings, give voice to their longings and to create a certain degree of intimacy. In addition to letters families also sent parcels to their loved ones at the front, typically containing warm clothing and homemade cakes and biscuits.

Translation: Sophie Kidd