Anton Hanausek

A qualified electrician, Anton Hanausek was involved from 1916 on in active duty in the First World War with a telegraph battalion and promoted to the rank of platoon leader. In his memoirs he particularly singles out the hunger, illness and hygienic deficiencies forming the daily routine of the soldiers on the Eastern Front. Yet on leave from the front he repeatedly goes back to his home city of Vienna, where he experiences the situation on the home front – far removed from the initial war euphoria. Like many others Anton Hanausek tried to counter the catastrophic shortage of provisions during the last months of the war by “Hamsterfahrten” – scrounging expeditions – in the environs of Vienna; as a homecoming soldier after the end of the war he even saw himself forced to get involved in black marketing.