Ring of Steel

by Alexander Watson

  Even the earnest and patriotic German middle classes could stomach this dour intellectual diet for only a limited time; by the end of 1914, many of them had decided after all that laughter could be a virtue in coping with war’s hardship, and lighter fare began appearing again on theatre stages.31 For the working classes, who had always been hostile to the middle class’s seriousness campaign, and whose entertainments had been its primary targets, this brought only limited relief. ‘Trashy’ books, ‘cinematic smut’ and festivities like Fastnacht, the spring carnival beloved of south-western Germans, continued to attract disapproval from clergy and middle-class moralists.32 In Austria, some found ways to resist and subvert bourgeois patriotic earnestness. Drunk punters derived considerable amusement from repeatedly demanding that establishments play the imperial anthem. No one could demur without risking at best insult, or at worst a charge of lese-majesty. In one case that reached the courts, a guest who had risen from his chair four times as the anthem was played in quick succession, had enough on the fifth occasion and refused to stand. He was joyfully cursed by those present and then handed over to the police. Similar cases were still clogging up Habsburg military courts in 1916.33

  A less exalted but highly revealing aspect of ‘war culture’ was its commercial manifestations. Firms and manufacturers attuned to the Zeitgeist recognized that patriotism sold, used it to advance their interests but thereby also contributed to the mood of unity. Foreign-owned multinationals were gleefully castigated by competitors as corporations ‘founded with English money, working with English capital and managed mainly by native Englishmen’ whose ‘profit flows to England’.34 In Germany, with official encouragement, they dropped foreign words to emphasize the Germanness of their products. In the heated patriotic mood of 1914 and 1915, ‘Keks’ were sure to sell better than ‘cakes’ and an international ‘Cigarette’ could never be as satisfying as a more German-looking ‘Zigarette’.35 The goods themselves were adapted to meet wartime patriotic and militaristic tastes. Why buy an alarm clock when one could have a ‘War Alarm Clock’, complete with a mortar battery mounted on top, the faces of Kaisers Wilhelm and Franz Joseph painted on its dial, and a guarantee to make a ‘frightful noise’? Harmonicas were manufactured in the shape of famous navy vessels like the U9 or the Emden and found their way into soldiers’ gift parcels.36 Another effective sales strategy was to name products after the hero of the hour, Hindenburg; no fewer than 150 firms marketed a ‘Hindenburg Cigar’.37 The same strategy was tried in different parts of the Habsburg Empire, although the hero naturally varied; in Galicia, for example, it was Józef Piłsudski who appeared on chocolate wrappers.38 Toy firms excelled above all others in imaginatively adapting and promoting ‘war culture’. Steiff, the teddy-bear company, produced cuddly goose-stepping Prussian soldiers for those middle-class parents looking for something more exciting for their offspring than the ubiquitous sailor suits and tin soldiers. A very few lucky children with wealthy and loving fathers received the Steiff prisoner transport set, which came with French prisoners of war, German guards and a hospital. The toy firms, until prevented by material shortages, also proved quick at keeping up to date with wartime conditions. After food rationing was introduced, dolls came with a ration card accessory.39

  Wartime patriotic entertainments and kitsch were predominantly bourgeois expressions of a war culture with deeper, more universal values. Its core dogma was Burgfrieden solidarity, a virtue embraced even by workers: in 1915, despite the return of full employment, only 14,000 German workers downed tools, causing the loss of a mere 42,000 working days.40 Beyond general compliance, two forms of behaviour defined central European ‘war culture’. The first was sparing and saving. This was encouraged by government propaganda. Britain’s naval blockade, the public was warned, was intended to cause starvation but could be thwarted if food was treated carefully: ‘we have enough corn in the land to feed our population until the next harvest. Only nothing must be wasted.’ In order to encourage frugality, civilians were admonished to ‘think always on our soldiers in the field, who in forward positions would often be happy if they had the bread that you waste’.41 As a persuasive technique, this was highly effective. It not only played on the consciences of those at home, but also offered them an opportunity to show that they too could make sacrifices, even if these ranked far below the suffering and martyrdom of the soldiers. Anna Kohnstern offered a good illustration of this mentality. Writing to her son Albert to tell him about the price rises and growing food shortages in Hamburg at the beginning of 1915, she employed the rhetoric of steadfast but subordinate sacrifice. ‘Don’t worry about it, for we’re still not starved out,’ she reassured him. ‘We at home will certainly get through it, for we must, after all, stand worthily at your side. You and all of you who are in the field have much more to endure.’42

  The British ‘starvation war’ worried the German government sufficiently to prompt it to launch its first organized propaganda campaign. On 24 January 1915, Prussia’s Interior Minister announced that several hundred public speakers would be trained to ‘enlighten’ the people on ‘British starvation policy’. Not only teachers and clergy, the traditional community elites on whom the government relied, but also, reflecting the Burgfrieden, female and working-class union activists participated in the courses. These people were crucial in giving a credibility to the message that government lacked when communicating directly with the population, especially Socialist labourers.43 Not only admonishment but also practical advice on saving food and cooking with wartime ingredients was provided. Towns in Germany and Austria-Hungary ran cookery courses and set up nutritional advice bureaus.44 These efforts were supported by the National Women’s Service, whose personnel toured the Reich educating women in home economics. Considerable ingenuity was displayed in inventing new recipes to circumvent fat shortages, although some of the dishes were very strange indeed. The cookery classes held in the town of Thorn in March 1915 taught citizens to make ‘Quark Dumplings’, ‘Artificial Honey’ and ‘Fake Chocolate Soup’. Ominously, ‘Turnip Mash’ was also among the culinary innovations. As an aide-memoire and for those unable to attend the courses, war cookbooks were available; no fewer than sixty-nine different editions were published in Germany in 1915.45 Some of these made good use of recent advances in nutritional science; while experts did not yet understand the importance of vitamins and minerals, the energy requirements of the human body were known. The meal plans that the cookbooks suggested illustrate the modest, repetitive yet calorie-rich diet which middle-class activists and officials thought was still realistic in the first year of war:

  The First Day

  Morning: Gruel with skimmed milk and sugar

  Breakfast: For each, one slice of bread with butter or jam

  Midday: Barley broth with beef and potatoes

  Afternoon: For each, one slice of bread with butter or jam

  Evening: Coffee with milk and sugar, bread (for each two pieces) with sausage

  (9,665 calories [for four people, so 2,416.25 per adult])

  The Second Day

  Morning: Milk coffee with sugar, for each two pieces of bread with jam

  Breakfast: For each, one slice of bread with butter or jam

  Midday: Macaroni with dried fruit

  Afternoon: For each, one slice of bread with butter or jam

  Evening: Potato salad and smoked herring

  (10,227 calories [for four people, so 2,556.75 per adult])

  The Third Day – ‘Bread Saving Day’

  Morning: Porridge with milk and sugar

  Breakfast: For each, one slice of bread with butter or jam

  Midday: Potatoes with carrots and meat

  Afternoon: For each, one slice of bread with jam

  Evening: Potatoes boiled in their jackets, herring, butter and onions

  (9,920 calories [for four people, so 2,480 per adult])46

  The diet may not have looked particularly appetising, the advice on chewing longer and keepin
g heated food in insulated containers was sensible but mundane, yet the need to preserve food was framed as a sacred duty. Ten ‘War Commandments’ were formulated for German housewives, including such wisdom as ‘eat nothing more than necessary’, ‘regard bread as holy’, ‘eat a lot of vegetables and fruit’ and ‘collect all kitchen waste unsuitable for human consumption as cattle fodder’. With these means, German women were armed for the ‘rescue of our Fatherland’.47

  Collecting was the second behaviour at the heart of war culture. The gathering of food and warm clothing by civilians to send to troops was just one, albeit important, part of a much larger sphere of activity. The core values of ‘unity’ and ‘sacrifice’ meant also helping the war’s victims on the home front such as refugees or those whose economic livelihood had been destroyed by war. Collecting could be combined with other motifs of war culture in order to maximize its attraction. The most dramatic campaign to help the home front’s war victims was the ‘I Gave Gold for Iron’ appeal, launched in both Austria and Germany in 1914. The idea, which took its inspiration from a similar collection in the 1813 German Wars of Liberation, was that people should donate gold jewellery for the good of the war community, and in exchange receive a clasp or ring of iron. The campaign captured the public imagination. Already by September 1914, 90,000 Austrians had surrendered precious metal, often their wedding rings.48 In Germany too it was popular. The citizens of Frankfurt am Main alone donated silver, gold and platinum to the value of 303,403 marks in 1914. The success of the appeal was undoubtedly thanks in large part to the material proof of patriotism given to those who sacrificed. For many people, it was the act of giving (and being seen to give) that mattered; the cause itself was less important. Newspapers noted the ‘frequent uncertainty’ encountered among the public about what cause donations for the ‘Gold for Iron’ campaign actually supported. In Frankfurt, just under a tenth of the proceeds were used to cover the cost of the iron jewellery, 10,000 marks were given to the ‘Committee for Supporting Needy Artists’, around a third went to supplement the income of families already in receipt of the government’s ‘Family Help’, a war entitlement for soldiers’ dependants, and the remainder went to those who were in straitened circumstances and ineligible for official aid.49

  Children were the most numerous, enthusiastic and successful collectors. While a few hundred thousand women engaged in voluntary war activity, between six and seven million German schoolchildren were mobilized to help with the various appeals. The readiness of Austrian youths to do war work was no less impressive: those volunteering ‘substantially exceeded demand’, observed one official in Carinthia.50 The earliest ‘collecting’ to which children were put was agricultural: already in 1914, school pupils were taken from class to bring in the harvest. Soon they were sent on scavenging trips to the countryside to gather kindling, mushrooms, berries, and leaves for fruit tea. Later, as the blockade tightened, they collected kitchen waste, paper, metals, bottles and even human hair from cities for recycling for the war effort. The well-known ability of nagging offspring to squeeze money from their elders was also put to the use of the warring states. From the late autumn of 1914, German pupils were set to work bolstering the Reichsbank’s bullion reserves by persuading people to exchange 10- and 20-mark gold coins for paper notes.51 Austrian schools followed the example. The tactic won considerable praise, for over 150 million marks in specie were collected by schools across Germany alone in 1915. ‘Children are the best agitators for gold purchase,’ observed one trade official in the east of the country in 1918. They ‘won’t leave their parents in peace, and in cases where every advertisement and all publicity work is useless, children achieve what appears to be the impossible’.52

  The most crucial role that children performed was as collectors and agitators for the public War Loans on which both Germany and Austria-Hungary relied to fund much of their war efforts. This work quickly became highly organized to ensure that even the happily childless could not rest easy. Each school was allocated a collecting area. The children were marshalled, equipped with collection books and sent systematically around the block, until all households had been visited. Pupils’ enthusiasm for the task rested not solely on love of the Fatherland or Emperor. Anna Kohnstern’s daughter Julia – known in the family as ‘Lulu’ – informed her soldier brother Albert that each time she persuaded somebody to donate a gold item she received ten pfennigs from her school. Her older siblings were granted a day’s holiday for every fifty marks that they collected. Teachers promoted competition between classes, again with the promise of reward. The most diligent and successful collectors, as well as those from the wealthiest families, received medals, plaques, and even had their names published in the local press. So important was the role of children in attracting public subscriptions to the Third War Loan in the autumn of 1915 that the Kaiser himself decreed a school holiday in thanks.53

  Even if children’s strivings were far from wholly altruistic, boys and girls were most committed to the war effort. Admonitions to be ‘soldiers of the home front’ and help shorten the conflict resonated especially with those who had older brothers and fathers in combat. Girls obsessively knitted socks, gloves and scarves for Liebesgaben packets, not only in knitting classes but even in lunch breaks and at home. Hermine Gerstl, a twelve-year-old living in Lower Austria in 1915, recalled how ‘we girls were so enthusiastic about knitting for the poor soldiers that on school-free days we did without any games – each wanted to produce as much as possible’.54 Collecting, knitting and packing Liebesgaben could all help cope with anxiety about family members in the army. These activities also permitted children to feel part of a war community defining itself through love, unity and sacrifice.55 They themselves did much to strengthen that community. Younger children still in school acted as conduits through which official propaganda could reach unsuspecting parents. They were also employed very effectively to reinforce the connection between home and front. Their ‘gifts of love’ to soldiers were not dispatched anonymously; enclosed was also a postcard or letter from the boy or girl who had made the knitwear or packed the present. Particular emphasis was placed on ensuring that soldiers with no families of their own would receive such parcels.56 In this way, the nation or Empire itself became a substitute family for these men. A child’s letter could have a powerful emotional impact at the front; it was a moving reminder to combatants of the people they were defending, reinforcing their willingness to endure the risk and hardship of active service. Many children, to their pride and delight, received letters of gratitude, from which a regular correspondence sometimes developed. This encouraged the children further to invest emotionally in events on the battlefield. They worried for ‘their’ soldiers. Thirteen-year-old Piete Kuhr, for example, was ‘overcome with fear’ when she learned that ‘my gift parcel soldier Emil’, as she called him, had been stabbed in the chest at the front.57

  The most dramatic and symbolic expression of war culture, revealing all its tropes and virtues, were the ‘nail figures’ erected across central Europe in 1915–16. These were statues or shields, usually carved in soft lime wood and set up in public places. People paid to hammer nails into them. The proceeds from the nails’ sale, as well as from spin-off merchandise like postcards and albums, went to support the families of fallen soldiers, and the figures gradually became coated in an iron ‘armour’, making them symbols of and shrines to the unity, sacrifice and steadfastness of communities. The trend began in Vienna, inspired by local tradition: the imperial capital was home to the medieval ‘stave of iron’ (Stock im Eisen), a tree trunk studded with centuries-old nails which, legend had it, itinerant craftsmen had hammered in to banish the devil. In 1915, Vienna’s Central Committee for the ‘Widow and Orphan Aid Fund’ decided to mobilize the custom for the fight against new evils. On 6 March, at a ceremony attended by members of the imperial house as well as the Austrian Minister President, Count Stürgkh, his entire cabinet, Vienna’s mayor, and the German and Ottoman ambas
sadors, it unveiled the war’s first nail figure: the ‘Warrior in Iron’ (Wehrmann in Eisen). A knight in armour, standing a man and a half tall, it gripped a drawn sword and gazed resolutely ahead. The mayor opened the nailing ceremony with a speech stressing that from the unity of the people came the will for victory. The first nail, a golden one, was then hammered in, in the name of Emperor Franz Joseph; the second and third were knocked in by the German and Ottoman ambassadors representing their monarchs. When the worthies had finished, the figure was opened to the capital’s inhabitants. By the war’s end, they had coated it with half a million nails.58

  The ‘Warrior in Iron’ aroused widespread admiration and inspired imitation by German communities across the Habsburg Empire, as far east as Sibiu, Transylvania. Reich Germans also enthusiastically adopted the idea. They took the form to its extreme in their capital, where a 12-metre tall ‘Iron Hindenburg’ was erected directly under the Siegessäule, Berlin’s monument to the victory of 1870–71, and opened on 4 September 1915. Art critics castigated the huge statue as ‘distasteful’ and ‘barbaric’, but it proved a hit with the public. On the first day alone, 20,000 people climbed the gantry surrounding it to hammer in nails. The figure was too large, even for a city as populous as Berlin, to be completely covered – like other German endeavours, ambition proved greater than available reserves of material or, in this case, resolution – but the response was nonetheless impressive; ultimately, around thirty tons of nails were bashed into the sculpture, more than doubling its weight.59 Moreover, it was only the largest of more than 700 nail figures set up across the Reich, which together raised over 10 million marks for war widows and their children. These were powerful reflections of local communities’ importance to and investment in the national war effort. While a central committee within the ‘National Foundation for the Surviving Dependants of Fallen Soldiers’ advertised and offered advice on the erection of nail figures, the decision on whether to commission one and the form that it should take belonged to communal authorities. Patriotic symbols such as the Iron Cross were popular, as were knights, soldiers and German mythological heroes. Some cities, like Dresden and Zwickau, followed Berlin in dedicating their nail figures to the new saviour Hindenburg. Very often, however, the imagery chosen was resonant of an explicitly local pride and identity. Düsseldorf, seat of the Grand Duke of Berg, was inspired by the Duchy’s heraldic arms to erect a wooden lion. Altona’s ‘Isern Hinnerk’ commemorated the warrior count who in the fourteenth century had ruled the surrounding region of Holstein. In the industrial Ruhr region, figures frequently reflected the connection of towns with the coal or metal industries. Recklinghausen boasted a ‘Miner’s Column’, Essen, Hagen and Bochum all put up ‘Iron Blacksmiths’, and several other towns in the area chose ‘Iron Swords’.60 Local craftsmen were generally commissioned to design the figures and, against the central committee’s wishes, the revenues from the nailing were not pooled nationally but went to communities’ own bereaved families.61