“Church service at the Bismarck Monument in Berlin on 2 August 1914”, photo

Immediately after the outbreak of the First World War, widespread sections of the Austrian-Hungarian population were gripped by nothing less than a war craze, scarcely conceivable from today’s perspective and knowing how many millions were killed through the war.

Patent enthusiasm at the outbreak of the war was manifest particularly in intellectual circles, writers, artists, academics, philosophers, scientists, etc. They saw armed engagement as a catharsis, as a cleansing force, as a chance to escape from a pre-war world that had become fatigued and futile.