The social degeneration of the Habsburg home front: “forbidden intercourse” and POWs during the First World War

Abstract

The belligerent states captured between eight and nine million soldiers during the First World War, among them the approximately two million men in the hands of the Austro-Hungarian Gewahrsamsstaat. This article discusses how POWs’ forced labor outside the camps brought them into close contact with Austrian civilians, especially women. These relationships were condemned as “forbidden intercourse.” I address the Austro-Hungarian administration of POWs and the “spaces of war” in which they were used for forced labor as well as whether prisoners can be classified as “military migrants” in Austria within the framework of their forced migration. This article examines women’s perspectives and their motives, as well as the stigmatization and instrumentalization of their bodies by the public, demonstrating how the concept(s) of the “Enemy” changed during the course of the war, thus helping to destabilize Austro-Hungarian spaces of war. It analyzes the varied processes of cultural transfers, fraternization, and integration of POWs, showing how this development affected military authorities and civilian administration and the measures that those in charge implemented in order to re-discipline and re-stabilize the Habsburg system.

Keywords:

• First World War
• Prisoners of War
• Austria-Hungary
• captivity
• forced labor
• forced migration
• military migrants
• encounters
• forbidden intercourse

Notes

1. Original: “Die Zivilbevölkerung achtet vielfach die Schranken nicht, die im Verkehr zwischen der einheimischen Bevölkerung und den kriegsgefangenen Soldaten unserer Feinde selbstverständlich und nicht durch patriotisches Pflichtgefühl, sondern insbesondere durch Sitte und Anstand geboten sind. Es haben sich mehrfach Fälle ereignet, dass Frauen und Mädchen Rücksichten auf Nationalität, Rasse und Familienehre im Verkehr mit Kriegsgefangenen vergessen haben. Es wird daher […] jeder Verkehr zwischen Zivilpersonen und Kriegsgefangenen, der nicht durch das Arbeitsverhältnis unbedingt notwendig ist, verboten. Insbesondere werden Frauen und Mädchen gewarnt, mit Kriegsgefangenen in ein Liebesverhältnis zu treten, beziehungsweise verbotenen Umgang zu pflegen.” Linzer Tagespost, 22.12.1915, no. 311, vol. 51, 3.

2. On women’s fraternizations with POWs in Great Britain during the Second World War, the governmental legislative framework trying to control and prohibit those contacts, and the morally charged debate on female relations with enemies see Moore, “Illicit Encounters,” 742–60.

3. In order to stabilize the mood and morale on the home front, Austro-Hungarian institutions such as the War Press Office (Kriegspressequartier), a sub-section of the Army High Command and assigned to influence public opinion, began to stimulate civilian morale by linking the civilian world in the hinterland to soldiers’ lives at the front in terms of activities that included war exhibitions and films beginning in 1915. See also Cornwall, Undermining of Austria-Hungary, 16–39.

4. On considerations regarding the significance of the category “space” in military history and a history of violence see Nübel, “Raum,” 285–307.

5. Running between 2014 and 2017, a research project (headed by Verena Moritz with Julia Walleczek-Fritz as research associate) funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and hosted by the Austrian State Archives in Vienna is studying POWs in Austria-Hungary (www.pows-ww1.at).

6. On mobility and migration of soldiers, see the introduction to Rass, “Militärische Migration,” 9–29. On military migration in early-modern times: Asche et al., Krieg, Militär und Migration. On the issue of migration in a broader perspective: Bade et al., Enzyklopädie, also Manning, Migration.

7. The forced mobility of POWs caused by their captivity does not automatically imply forced migration, but prisoners who were forced to work outside the camps in different locations could become military migrants as a result of their interactions with locals. The Dutch migration historian Leo Lucassen developed the term “military migrants,” a concept of cross-cultural migration, arguing that soldiers had to meet four criteria to be military migrants. First, they had to serve in a location geographically distant from their home country; second, they had to be away for an extended period; third, they had to socialize with local residents; and fourth, there has to have initially been a “cultural distance” between the soldier and the host society. Leo Lucassen gave a lecture on the concept of military migrants throughout time and wars, entitled “Fighting and Moving for a Living: Why Soldiers should be treated as a serious Category in Migration Studies” at the annual convention of the “Arbeitskreis für Militärgeschichte” (AKM) in Osnabrück, on 20 September 2012. For further remarks regarding the concept itself refer to Lucassen’s lecture. Towards a fruitful input of a migration-historical approach concerning the analyses of military services and its consequences on interactions between soldiers and civilians: Lucassen and Lucassen “European Migration History,” 58–60.

8. Prisoners’ experiences and perceptions, especially of former Russian prisoners in Austro-Hungarian captivity, or whether they felt like migrants, are difficult to answer owing to a lack of sources; more documents allow a “female view” regarding fraternization and integration between POWs and the local population. The (auto-)biographical collection “Documentation of life stories” (“Dokumentation lebensgeschichtlicher Aufzeichnungen”) at the University of Vienna holds some useful notes as well as the publications by Hämmerle, Kindheit im Ersten Weltkrieg and Forcher and Mertelseder, Gesichter der Geschichte, 126–39, which describe encounters between locals and prisoners in Austria-Hungary.

9. For general considerations on “War as a Journey” (“Der Krieg als Reise”) see: Autsch, Krieg als Reise. On POWs, forced labor, and forced migration see also: Stibbe, Captivity; concerning prisoners’ forced labor in Germany see, for example: Oltmer, “Zwangsarbeit,” 97–107.

10. Especially soldiers from the Tsarist Army who were sent to farms to work in agriculture – alone or in small groups – came into closest contact with civilians. Commonly referred to as the Russians, they were the largest group of POWs in the Monarchy.

11. For considerations on encounters between women and POWs in Austria-Hungary during the First World War see also Walleczek, “Hinter Stacheldraht,” 296–306. For the German case from more a gendered perspective see, for example, Todd, “Sexual Infidelities,” 257–78.

12. While regional differences in POWs’ experiences complicate generalizations, tendencies can be ascertained concerning fraternization, resistance to official orders and people’s indignation towards the close contacts, or military fears about destabilization of both the POW forced-labor system and the Monarchy’s political system.

13. Nachtigal, “Anzahl,” 358; Leidinger and Moritz, Der Erste Weltkrieg, 47.

14. Regarding the diverging figures: Österreich-Ungarns letzter Krieg 1914–1918, 45; Weiland and Kern, In Feindeshand, 214. An overview is given by: Moritz and Leidinger, Zwischen Nutzen und Bedrohung, 329.

15. Meurer, Haager Friedenskonferenz, 658–62; Hinz, Großer Krieg, 49–58.

16. Leidinger and Moritz, “Verwaltete Massen,” 38.

17. Salzburger Volksblatt, 30.1.1915, no. 24, vol. 45, 8; Linzer Tagespost, 1.4.1915, no. 83, vol. 51, 7.

18. On the issues of women, identities, and war see, for instance: Grayzel, Women’s Identities at War; Hagemann, “Venus and Mars;” Hagemann and Schüler-Springorum, Home/Front.

19. Linzer Tagespost, 1.4.1915, no. 83, vol. 51, 7; Linzer Tagespost, 22.12.1915, no. 311, vol. 51, 3; Salzburger Wacht, 21.12.1915, no. 289, vol. 16, 3; Salzburger Wacht, 29.12.1915, no. 295, vol. 16, 4.

20. Meurer, Haager Friedenskonferenz, 658–9.

21. Leidinger and Moritz, “Verwaltete Massen,” 48.

22. Moritz and Leidinger, Zwischen Nutzen und Bedrohung, 171.

23. Dienstbuch J-35, 51–61.

24. On the living and working conditions of POWs in the area of the Austro-Hungarian Southwestern Front see also: Walleczek-Fritz, “Im Dienste Österreich-Ungarns.”

25. Beistellung, 8–9.

26. Miribung, “Russische Kriegsgefangene im Gadertal,” 37.

27. Providing further POW manpower caused significant challenges for the Austro-Hungarian Army. The military administration did not have enough capacity to monitor every POW who was sent to work for a farmer. Members of veterans’ associations, invalid soldiers, and special commissions of political offices and sanitary authorities, in addition to the farmers themselves, were involved in monitoring and safeguarding the small groups or single prisoners assigned to farms, but many of the overseers were not particularly reliable. Beistellung, 2–4; 35–7.

28. POWs could lose their individuality as part of large contingents of up to 1000 men who were cultivating and harvesting crops for the Field Army, or they continued being individuals while they worked on farms – alone or in small groups.

29. Sedlmayr, “Verwendung,” 4.

30. Moritz and Leidinger, Zwischen Nutzen und Bedrohung, 122.

31. Oltmer, Globale Migration, 29.

32. The feeling of superiority towards the East dominated Austro-Hungarian official war propaganda. A “discourse of hygiene” equating those nations with mess, dirt, squalidness, and bugs cemented prejudices. See Leidinger and Moritz, Der Erste Weltkrieg, 50. Regarding propaganda against Russia and Serbia see also Cornwall, Undermining of Austria-Hungary, 40–73.

33. Moore, “Illicit Encounters,” 758.

34. ÖStA/KA/MKSM 1917: 69-9/2 v. 7.1.1917. See also relevant archival material in box KM 1917, Abt. 10: 10/66/126–10/72/9, box 1583.

35. Moritz and Leidinger, Zwischen Nutzen und Bedrohung, 141–3.

36. ÖStA/KA/KM/10/Kgf. Abt. 1918: 10-9/324 v. 13.9.1918.

37. ÖStA/KA/KM/10/Kgf. Abt. 1918: 10-69/141 v. 2.10.1918.

38. ÖStA/KA/KM/10.A. 1916: 10/66/18/71–10/69/40, box 1382. At the same time the Austro-Hungarian Ministry of War was concerned with the handling of former Austro-Hungarian POWs in Russia who married Russian women and now intended to return to Austria with their new families. ÖStA/KA/KM/10/Kgf. Abt. 1918: 10-69/131 v. 4.10.1918.

39. Brixner Diözesanblatt, no. 8, 1917, 112.

40. ÖStA/KA/KM/10/Kgf. Abt. 1917: 10-69/53 v. 3.3.1917.

41. The military edicts K.M. Erl. Abt. 10./Kgf. Nr. 8888/18 and K.M. Erl. Abt. 10./Kgf. Nr. 60000/18 organized the procedure of POWs who wished to remain in Deutschösterreich. ÖStA/KA/KM/10/Kgf. Abt. 1917: 10-69/67 v. 7.1.1918; ÖStA/KA/KM/10/Kgf. Abt. 1918: 10-69/67 v. 25.5.1918; ÖStA/KA/KM/10/Kgf. Abt. 1918: 10-69/67,2 v. 30.10.1918.

42. Benjamin Ziemann has argued that more female servants than peasant women had relationships with prisoners. Ziemann, Front und Heimat, 305.

43. Forcher and Mertelseder, Gesichter der Geschichte, 134–9.

44. Moritz and Leidinger, Zwischen Nutzen und Bedrohung, 164.

45. The research on the commemoration of the First World War “Russenkinder” still remains a desideratum because it has been dominated by a discussion on “children born of war,” a more neutral definition introduced in 2006, that refers especially to the Second World War and Occupation. However, more than a century after the outbreak of the First World War families whose relatives were former POWs started talking about their family history, not fearing any further stigmatization. This is corroborated by family stories that more and more became public in the course of the First World War centenaries. Regarding “children born of war” in the twentieth century, however neglecting the First World War, see Lee and Mochmann, “Kinder des Krieges,” 15–38. On the term “children born of war,” see also Carpenter, Born of War and Mochmann, “Children Born of War,” 32–9.

46. For the theory of fraternization as a measure of coping with war in the hinterland and female “Widerständigkeit”: Daniel, “Zweierlei Heimatfronten,” 391–409.

47. Ziemann, Front und Heimat, 300; Daniel, “Der Krieg der Frauen,” 139.

48. On the issue of citizenship, “anti-citizens,” and nation in Second World War Britain see Rose, “Sex, Citizenship and the Nation,” 1147–76. Regarding a debate on erotic fraternization in post-Second World War Germany see also zur Nieden, “Erotic Fraternization,” 297–310.

49. Original: “Während wir hier glauben, dort zuhause Noth wenn nicht gar Elend herrschen werden, schreibt man uns von ihnen Dinge, besonders wo sich Gefangene befinden, die sich mit der Ehre einer Österreicherin ganz und gar nicht vertragen. Du wirst mich wohl verstehen! Von meiner engeren Heimath weiß ich wohl nichts, möchte aber wissen, ob sich dort Gefangene befinden, daß kannst Du mir vielleicht schreiben. […] Dir will ich in Deinem eigenen Interesse ans Herz legen, nie zu vergessen, daß Du das Mädchen eines Österreichers und Deutschen bist, der im Felde dem Feind mit der Waffe in der Hand gegenüberstand und den ein böses Schicksal zu dem machte, was er jetzt ist […]. Daß Du mir bei einem etwaigen Wiedersehen ruhig und stolz in die Augen sehen kannst, wie früher.” ÖStA/KA/AOK/Evidenzbüro, E. 5095 v. 20.5.1916.

50. Original: “[…] die Beobachtungen sich in letzer Zeit ins Immense steigernden Klagen unserer kgf. Kameraden in Russland und Italien bekanntzugeben, da dieser Punkt sich mit der Zeit zu einer moralzerstörenden, legalitätsangreifenden und menschenzersetzenden Tatsache herausbildet. Offen wird in den Schreiben Mord und Totschlag als Revancherecht für Ehebruch und angetane Beleidigung der Mannesehre den Frauen angedroht. Auch geht aus den Briefschaften hervor, dass sich die Kriegsgefangenen in den Lagern zum Zwecke der Wiedervergeltung bereits organisieren.” ÖStA/KA/AOK/Evidenzbüro, E. 5095 v. 20.5.1916.

51. We know little about the de facto penalty and what happened to these men after court or in jail until we analyze diaries or memoirs of POWs.

52. ÖStA/KA/Mil. Kdo. Innsbruck, Praes. 1917: 16-2A/5.

53. See for example files in the holding of 10/Kgf. Department of the Ministry of War in the Austrian State Archives/War Archive, box: KM 1917, Abt. 10, 10/145/291–10/152/450, box 1598.

54. Exemplary see: ÖStA/KA/Militärgerichtsarchiv (MGA)/Mil. Kdo. Innsbruck 1917, K 542/17; ÖStA/KA/MGA/Mil. Kdo. Innsbruck 1916, K 4786/16; ÖStA/KA/MGA/Mil. Kdo. Graz 1916, K 4/16; ÖStA/KA/MGA/X. Armeekmdo. Klagenfurt 1916, K 232/16.

55. Die Neue Zeitung, 6.5.1916, no. 125, vol. 9, 6.

56. Deutsche Presse, 4.11.1916, no. 253, vol. 3, 3.

57. Hirschfeld and Gaspar, Sittengeschichte, 115–16. See also Beck, Die Frau und die Kriegsgefangenen.

58. See also the unpublished autobiographical documents of the collection “Dokumentation lebensgeschichtlicher Aufzeichnungen” and Hämmerle, Kindheit im Ersten Weltkrieg.

59. On rape in wartime see also Branche and Virgili, “Rape.”

60. Hämmerle, “Von den Geschlechtern,” 259–61.

61. Diözesanarchiv Gurk-Klagenfurt (ADG)/PA St. Gandolf/MS 56, 48.

62. Original: “Bezüglich des unerlaubten Verkehrs mit den Russen wurde der Pfarrer von allen Seiten im Stich gelassen. Es hat deshalb keinen Wert, darüber ein weiteres Wort zu verlieren.” Archiv der Erzdiözese Salzburg (AES)/Alte Bestände/Fasz. 10/26/Fasz. 136, no. 41, Seelsorgebericht Pfarre Faistenau 1918 v. 11.2.1919.

63. ÖStA/KA/KM/10/Kgf. Abt. 1917: 10-11/5091 v. 2.1.1918.

64. This movement in the interior of the exhausted Habsburg Monarchy increasingly reflected “enemy propaganda” by 1918, as Mark Cornwall has argued. The “Feindespropaganda-Abwehrstelle,” boosting discipline and morale among Austro-Hungarian people, was trying to push those ideas back by monitoring and supervising, for example, those Austro-Hungarian soldiers who returned home from Russian captivity. While forcing them to join lessons of patriotic instructions (Vaterländischer Unterricht), Austria-Hungary wanted to ensure that those men had not been manipulated by Bolshevism. Hansak, “Kriegsgefangenenwesen,” 120; see also Cornwall, Undermining of Austria-Hungary, 268–87.