The War Begins

Already during the war, when domestic strife and popular protests seemed to undermine the German war effort, the beginning of the war was turned into the myth of the Augusterlebnis, the experience of enthusiasm and national unity in the days following the mobilization on 1 August 1914. But in reality, the overwhelming majority of the German population did not react with unanimous zeal and patriotic fervour to the declaration of war. Enthusiastic crowds gathered on the streets of the big cities, and the capital in particular. But even in Berlin the initial responses to the war were mixed and ambivalent. Curiosity was mixed with anxiety, and no cheerful crowds gathered in proletarian neighbourhoods. In the countryside, a rather depressive mood prevailed. The mostly youthful war volunteers epitomized already for contemporary observers the extent of popular enthusiasm. But their motives were as varied as the popular responses to war. Among these motives, voluntary enlistment as a rite of passage to fully fledged masculinity played a crucial role. The gendered perceptions and reactions to the war are more generally an important and often neglected facet of the Augusterlebnis. Whatever expectations conscript soldiers and war volunteers might have had in the early days of August, not only the realities of machine warfare they faced at the front, but the harsh treatment they had already received in the military barracks often led to a swift disillusionment.

Germany – A Madhouse

Enthusiastic and patriotic crowds gathered on the streets of big cities in the days after the declaration of war. Their readiness to leap into action and to pursue suspicious persons endangered the public order. The chief constable in Stuttgart issued a decree to his force, cited in the BZ am Mittag on 9 August 1914:

Uniformed policemen! The townspeople are going mad! The streets are crowded with old women, both male and female, who take great pains to display disgraceful behaviour. Everyone mistakes the person next to him for a Russian or French spy and considers it his duty to give both the 'spy' and the policeman who is taking care of him a bloody nose. At the least, he draws a huge crowd when he delivers the person to the police. Clouds are taken to be aeroplanes, stars to be airships, the handlebar of a bicycle to be a bomb. There are rumours that telephone and telegraph lines in the city centre of Stuttgart have been cut, about spies who have been court-martialled and shot, about blasted bridges and poisoned waterpipes. It cannot be foreseen what will be happening when times get seriously difficult. It has been established that nothing has happened yet which gives even the slightest cause for concern. Nevertheless, it is like being in a madhouse, although everybody who is not a coward or a dangerous idler is supposed to be calm and do his duty since these times are serious enough. Policemen, just keep a cool head! Be men and not old women and do not let yourself be intimidated. Keep your eyes open as it is your duty! The chief constable.

Robert Gaupp, psychiatrist and vice-chancellor of the University of Tübingen, recalls the beginning of the war in a public lecture delivered in 1916:

And what was happening in August 1914 when the World War was descending on Europe? During those days of general tension and indignation we witnessed the most peculiar forms of mass suggestion, particularly in the large cities. [...] The spy fanatism did manifest itself in bizarre forms, false, deceptive memories and perceptions followed individual suggestions at a great and funny speed. Thermos flasks turned into bombs, the fear of famine caused a pointless propensity to hoard food, banks were stormed, salt was piled up without any sense, gold hidden in stockings. Enemy cars with the French gold treasures were seen speeding through cities and villages. I met a group of educated gentlemen and ladies on the Neckar bridge in Tübingen who were observing planets and fixed stars in the sky as enemy aeroplanes.

The Rheinisch-Westfälische Zeitung reports on 2 September 1914 in a rubric on 'war scenes in the capital city' on another facet of the excited mood:

This is a brand new pastime in Berlin: 'cheering on.' [Abschreien] 'Do you have any plans for tonight?' 'We go cheering on.' A crowd is gathering on busy squares and crossroads and as soon as the people spot a field grey uniform in a car or a suitcase they sound a many-voiced 'Hurrah'! That's how they bid farewell to the leaving soldiers. And the officers stand up and wave their hats. The crowd is waiting deep into the night. They would not go to bed unless they have 'cheered on' at least 25 lieutenants.

The psychiatrist Heinrich Resch from the mental hospital in Bayreuth in Upper Franconia explains the following in a lecture delivered in 1915:

Since the beginning of the war, a great number of articles about mental disorders during the war have been published, both in belletristic journals and in daily newspapers. In the latter case, all articles tend to inform and partly calm the readers down. And there is certainly a need for that. Let's just take the newspapers from the first days of mobilisation. There we read about many suicides and about mental breakdowns which have been supposedly caused by the fear for relatives sent to the front and for the enemy conquering German territory. [...] Does a war really have an impact on mental-health problems? This question is absolutely to be answered in the affirmative.

Walter Fuchs, a senior medical officer, coined the term 'mobilization psychosis' for various forms of 'excitement' among soldiers during the early days of the war:

At the beginning of August 1914, they were filling up the hospitals at an alarming speed, even before the first battles had started. Since the roads in Alsace were closed for a longer period of time, the institutions in Baden had to provide neighbourly assistance and had to take over the care for the patients coming in with mass transports. Among them were cases of the most varying origins, from delirious alcoholics to detected paralytics; but for the overwhelming majority the mental excitement and the emotions of these times were unmistakably the trigger of their problems. [...] The prevailing mood during the days of mobilisation [...] was dominated by worry, fear and anxiety. [...] The old practitioner Colonel Pfülf says that in every unit there are some men who know no fear or danger, some others who are able to overcome the impulse of their fear due to the inhibition caused by their military training and their well developed strength of nerves and will, whereas a huge number of men is helplessly fainthearted or only to be forced to withstand when they know they are observed. This correct classification is presumed to apply to the entire population.

A Protestant parish pastor from Berlin notes in his diary on 22 August 1914:

At night, we went to the 'Café Vaterland' (formerly 'Picadilly') at Potsdamer Platz where we happened to meet the Thimms. Just like us, they had come here because they had hoped to hear some possibly incoming dispatches. But our expectations were not fulfilled. The evening newspapers merely reported the pursuit of the French and the success of the Austrians at Lemberg. – The whole hustle and bustle in the Café Vaterland was remarkable. Huge German flags were hanging from the railing all around showing a golden 'W. II' [for Emperor Wilhelm II] in the centre, surrounded by a laurel wreath. In the middle, there was an Austrian flag attached right in front of the band. The most popular songs from the last operettas which used to dominate the concerts have almost vanished completely. Instead, the orchestra is playing some patriotic tunes and old folk songs, and the audience is singing along and clapping vividly. It is noticeable that public life has become more serious in character. But who knows how long this will last? – The hatred against England runs deeply in the blood of our people. Here is just a small example to demonstrate this which I observed this afternoon at the tram stop. Several ladies were standing there, and one of them was reading from a newspaper she had just bought that the English had difficulties mobilizing huge numbers of soldiers because the English workers did not want to join in. Instead of 50,000 as expected they had merely mobilized 2,000 men. How this information made the ladies' faces shine! Laughing happily they said: 'That's good, that's brilliant!' Hence, even our womankind is steeped in deep anger against the 'Christian Albion'.

Enthusiasm?

A newspaper published in Munich reports on 4 August 1914: We big-city dwellers have already lost our sense of proportion amidst the fanatic goings-on, since we have known the [Bavarian] capital only under the impact of alarming news for 14 days. One only notices the stark difference when coming from the quietness of the countryside. A deep peace prevails out there, for nobody notices anything of the precautions keeping thousands of people in the capital in suspense. Many of our peasant families are weighed down with great sorrow, though, for very often fathers of families with many children have to go, sons, horses and carriages are requisitioned by the military authorities, and out there in the fields is the crop to be harvested.

From the memoirs of a farmer from Lower Franconia:

We had the son of a local farmer as a stable boy who had just finished his military service the previous autumn. Around lunchtime, my sister suddenly came to us, crying. She was looking after the household since my mother had died. First we thought something terrible had happened. Agitated she said: 'Josef has to go home immediately and get on the 12 o'clock train. It's war!' Naturally, everyone working afield was confused and did not feel like going on with the work.

The journalist Siegfried Jacobsohn (1881–1926) was the founder and editor of the journal Schaubühne, entitled Weltbühne from 1918, one of the most important intellectual journals of the 1920s. During the summer of 1914, he was holidaying on one of the small islands in the North Sea. Hearing about the outbreak of war, he decided to travel back to Berlin:

Saturday, 1 August [Jacobsohn is still at the holiday resort] [...] If it is time, we will not only mobilize men but also higher feelings and we will bash everybody's hat who does not appear to have got plenty of those according to regulations.

Tuesday, 4 August. [...] But are those in the capital city really enthusiastic? I'm thinking of Fontane [a famous late nineteenth-century novelist]. He had a good heart like everyone else from the Mark Brandenburg [a rural region around Berlin], could smell gunpowder, had been prisoner of war, had composed Prussian ballads and – and he did not lose his skill to look behind the mere appearance of things and to listen. Therefore, he did not hesitate to interpret the cheers being shouted when soldiers stormed against batteries in unheroic terms, as 'exultation and angst'. Could this not also be the formula for the frenzy of the people in Berlin? [...]

Just bring the enthusiastic people from Berlin over here, among our fifteen farm houses, and they will fall silent. I walk around among the Sörensen, Sönksen, Hartwigsen, Christiansen, Bleiken, Callesen, Seiher and Jepsen families. In spite of their names, they are not less German, more stupid, more fainthearted, weaker than the majority of the 68 millions, to the contrary. But they do not feel the need to cheer in a situation when they might lose their life or fathers, sons, brothers, grandsons and their smaller or larger property. [...]

Wednesday, 5 August. [...] I cannot stop feeling ashamed about my behaviour this morning after I had heard the news about England's declaration of war. For half an hour, I acted like a bloodthirsty predator. Who knows how the raging city of Berlin would change me right now! [...]

Sunday, 9 August. [Jacobsohn is on the train to Berlin] [...] Families are bidding farewell to their dear ones. 'Good bye, Korl', cousin Michel shouts somewhere close to Wittenberge, 'See you again in the mass grave!' The man shouting is so droll that not even this harsh sentence sounds offensive. The humorous characters from Berlin are flourishing as well. Two lads, 17 years of age, equipped with an identification card as war volunteers describe how they have been crisscrossing from regiment to regiment and travelling through the whole Imperial Germany. On their way, they were lavished with gift parcels and sometimes even with cash. Their description is so graphic that it partly takes away the edge of the embarrassing character of the whole event.

From the war diary by Georg Schenk, a carpenter journeyman from Nuremberg, born in 1888:

It was 1 August. The whole German population was tense, as people were waiting for the mobilisation of the German army, after the state of siege had already been declared on 31 July. I went home from Nuremberg to say farewell to my parents. Finally, on 1 August at 6 p.m. it was announced that the general mobilisation was declared, and now everything was reaching a climax. Many a tear was flowing and many eyes that had been dry for ten years became wet. Particularly women and girls were crying, for many men and young lads had to leave the Heimat to fight for their fatherland that was threatened by Russia and France. Only few slept well during the first night, since the anxiety for the husband, the wife, the groom, and the bride was more severe than ever, as people knew that a very grave war was imminent.

Becoming a Man

From the autobiography of the novelist Carl Zuckmayer (1896–1977), who volunteered in 1914:

Becoming a soldier, serving my year, had always been a threatening and embarrassing idea during my days at the Gymnasium [grammar school]. [...] Now it meant the exact opposite: liberation! Liberation from middle-class narrowness and fussiness, from the necessity to go to school and to swot, from the doubts about choosing a profession and from all the things we perceived – consciously or unconsciously – as the saturation, closeness and rigidity of our world. We had already revolted against these things as members of the Wandervogel ['hiking bird', a middle-class youth organization]. Now this feeling was not any longer restricted to the weekends and the holiday sport activities. It had become serious, dead serious, holy serious, and at the same time a huge exhilarating adventure, for which we happily accepted a little discipline and armed forces stuff. We shouted out 'freedom' while we were jumping into the straight-jacket of the Prussian uniform. It sounds absurd. But we had become men with a single blow.

Attempts were made to facilitate the Abitur, or school leaving exam, for those secondary school students who had volunteered for the army. From an article with the title 'battle bravery and exam fear' published in early 1915:

Carried unanimously, [...] the Prussian diet has expressed its sympathy towards those final year students who will leave school during the war. After all, it means quite something when all the university professors who are members of the diet signed a request suggesting that students from institutions of higher education who have left school during the penultimate year at school and have joined the army, [...] are not only supposed to achieve their leaving exam in a more simple manner, but should be able in certain cases to receive it from the provincial exam boards even without any exam. [...]

The regular final examination is supposed to be resat after the war. Special courses, tailor-made to the situation of these young people, are planned to prepare them for the exams. All their equitable wishes can expect to receive a warm-hearted consideration. [...]

May the final year students out there in the trenches get the comforting conviction in view of the proceedings of the Prussian diet that the imminent exam distress at home is not as dangerous as it may seem to some of them during dark hours of brooding, at least not more dangerous than the shrapnells and the poisonous gas that is threatening them.

War Volunteers

War memoirs by the high-school student Paul Wittenburg, who volunteered in August 1914:

We were then travelling home on a stopping train, via Ribnitz and Stralsund [harbour towns on the Baltic Sea]. At the calling points en-route many reservists entered the train. Very often a good-bye full of tears took place. One of them tried to console his wife or bride: 'Not every bullet is a hit'. In Neubrandenburg I heard from Putz Raspe [a friend from school] that his father was about to contact the headmaster of his school concerning an emergency graduation. The idea of getting easily through the exams without much effort by having an emergency graduation was exceedingly attractive to me. With regard to graduation, my chances were not yet very good. But in order to be admitted, we had to prove to be fit for field service. [...]