Chapters

All the belligerent states made children and teenagers the target of intensive propaganda with the aim of integrating them into the conflict. Parents, schools and clubs as well as books, songs and games were the main vehicles of this mobilization. The aim of this ideologization was to convey the concept of a ‘just war’, to evoke enthusiasm in the children and to recruit them for activities that supported the war effort.

During the First World War, schools constituted a central plank in the campaign of mobilization. As early as the summer of 1914 the war was comprehensively integrated into the timetable as a subject of study, with droves of educational experts, schoolteachers and nursery school staff placing themselves at the service of war propaganda.

Propaganda was also used to recruit children as a labour force. Numerous appeals, proclamations and posters exhorted children to place their labour, time and energy at the disposal of the war effort and thus make their contribution to winning the war.

Mobilization of children for the war effort started as early as summer 1914. Boys and girls alike were expected to make a contribution to the ‘achievement of war aims’. In addition activities were also propagated that were specifically assigned to the female sex, such as the making of so-called Liebesgaben (lit.: gifts of love) and Kälteschutz (cold-weather protection) for soldiers at the front.

As the war increasingly made its presence felt in children’s everyday life, it also began to appear in the games they played. The general militarization of society also took hold in the nation’s nurseries. Role-play strengthened emotional ties with the aims of the war, while board and card games conveyed propaganda messages.

‘An important day in the history of the world is over. From close up it does not look that wonderful.’ (Entry in the diary of Arthur Schnitzler)

In the First Republic the strong polarization between the working class and the bourgeoisie as well as the deep political mistrust between the Social Democrat and Christian Socialist parties also found expression in a divided culture of memory and in divided attitudes towards the most important sites of memory in the political world of the First Republic.

One of the ways in which children were confronted with the events of the war was in the books written specifically for them during that time. These were intended to persuade children and their parents of a particular interpretation of the war. The heroic representation of their own nation and the alienized depiction of the enemy made it clear how children and adults alike were expected to perceive the war.

Although numerous measures were aimed at the uniform mobilization of children, they experienced the war in very different ways. As the war progressed they increasingly turned their backs on propaganda and developed their own views of events.

The proclamation of the republic meant that new symbols of state had to be found in order to distinguish it from the old order. The law passed on 19 April 1919 made 12 November the national holiday. However, the degree of identification with the new holiday varied, reflecting the differences between the political camps.

The law on the national holiday was followed shortly afterwards by one on a new coat of arms for the state, and in 1920 a melody by Wilhelm Kienzl, with words by Karl Renner, ‘Deutschösterreich du herrliches Land’ (‘German-Austria, thou splendid land’), was chosen as the national anthem. In particular the story of the origin of the anthem shows how difficult it was to find even symbols for the new state that its citizens could identify with.

It is significant that until the year 1928 there was no monument commemorating 12 November 1918. The monument to Dr. Karl Lueger erected by the bourgeois side in 1926 moved the Social Democrats to create their ‘own’ site of memory.

„L’Autriche c’est qu’il reste“, „L’Autriche se que reste“, „L’Autriche, c’est qui reste“, „L’Autriche c’est que reste“, „L’Autriche est ce qui reste“

In 1940 the Viennese historian Reinhold Lorenz published his book Der Staat wider Willen (The Reluctant State) on the time after the end of the monarchy. In his own words he wrote it ‘after the magnificent completion of union’ following a call to depict ‘the experience of almost unbelievable aberrations, which ‘fortunately’ had come to an end, as he had witnessed them himself.

The First World War witnessed the wholesale mobilization of the masses to an extent that had never been seen before. As in all the belligerent countries, targeted propaganda became an important element of warfare in the Habsburg Monarchy. Men and women, young and old, the front line and the hinterland, were to form a common ‘front of opinion’.

When the Republic was proclaimed the imperial house of Habsburg and all family members had all their privileges withdrawn, members of the bureaucracy and the military were released from their oath of loyalty to the emperor, and the imperial ministries were wound up. However, before he left Austria in March 1919, Emperor Karl still emphasized in a manifesto that for him the measures passed by the new government were ‘null and void’. The newly elected National Assembly reacted to this provocation by expelling the imperial family from the country and confiscating their property. At the same time a law was passed which forbade the use of aristocratic titles and made it a punishable offence.

The First World War saw the creation for the first time of dedicated institutions of propaganda intended to generate a perception of the war that was as uniform as possible. Britain and the United States of America took a pioneering role in the development of psychological warfare. The Central Powers at first underestimated the opportunities offered by propaganda and only started to organize propaganda measures centrally as the war progressed.

The propaganda produced by the warring states exhibited few distinctive national traits. It conveyed similar messages about the progress and aims of the war, images of the enemy and national identity, varying according to the country of origin.

It was not only the messages of inflammatory propaganda that exhibited similarities in all the countries involved in the war. The subjects and forms of representation of pictorial propaganda were also astonishingly similar.

Caricature was especially successful as a medium of propaganda since its subtle visual effects could have a substantial and far-reaching impact, ensuring the swift dissemination of emotions and values in reaction to current events.

The poster had been used as a medium of communication for commercial purposes well before the First World War, and advertising art had already become established as a separate branch of art production. With the advent of war the poster became a modern vehicle of political content.

In the summer of 1914 there was a temporary cessation of performances at the Burgtheater and the Court Opera in Vienna, in the latter case on the basis of the argument that music should be silent while there was the noise of weapons. Hans Gregor, the director of the Court Opera, tried to intervene against the closure of his theatre, expressing the opinion that it was precisely in such difficult times that the people needed some form of diversion. The two theatres opened again in mid-October 1914, the Court Opera with a performance of Lohengrin, traditionally the first performance of the season.

It was not until the second half of the war that airborne leafleting was recognized as an effective instrument of psychological warfare. Mostly printed on one side only, these publications were dropped over the front in hazardous actions in an attempt to demoralize enemy troops.

During the First World War, the mental mobilisation of the population reached an unprecedented level. Propagandist actions included the production and distribution of sound recordings broadcasting the encouraging words of the emperor and leading generals in the Imperial-Royal Army.

For it was ever so, when on the dial of fate
The hand to history’s great hour pointed,
That this people of dancers and of fiddlers stood
Like God’s angels before paradise.
(Anton Wildgans, ‘A Prayer for Austria’s People and Warriors’, August 1914)