This volume was planned as an academic and methodological exchange of views between historians and other scholars dealing with social history of World War I in East-Central Europe. Its main aim is an attempt to answer the question how the conflict affected intellectuals in certain clearly defined aspects (family, education, religion, gender, sexuality). Their wartime experi­ences were surely shaped by their whereabouts, everyday life matters, standard of living, and in the case of soldiers — the type of military service. We also took a closer look at members of the intelligentsia who fought in the trenches, those who worked in propaganda or those who held civil service posts in the belligerent countries. It still seems to be an important question whether the cooperation of intellectuals and scholars with the war apparatus was conscious, voluntary, whether it was a form of social mission carried out for the state or nation, or maybe an attempt by the governments and rulers to use the “naive clerks” ­instrumentally? Among many important issues there is also a reflection on the intellectuals’ stance towards militarism and the outbreak of war: their reactions, thoughts, predictions, and the way they interpreted the war events for society. That is why we also wanted to find out how the war was conceptualized by intellectuals, how it was commented upon and how the post-war reality was conceived.

 

Tomasz Pudłocki, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Institute of History, Jagiellonian University in Krakow (Poland). He specializes in the history of Galicia from the socio-cultural point of view, as well as the history of women and intellectual history. His latest book was published on Polish-British intellectual connections in the interwar period (Ambasadorzy idei. Wkład intelektualistów w promowanie pozytywnego wizerunku Polski w Wielkiej Brytanii w latach 1918-1939, Historia Iagellonica: Kraków 2015). Member of the Commission on History of Women (Polish Academy of Science in Warsaw), the Commission on History of Science (Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences in Krakow). The Kosciuszko Foundation Grantee (2012-2013, 2017-2018), Fulbright Scholar and Daemen College, Amherst, NY Visiting Professor (2015/2016), Grantee of the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education for young scholar (up to 35) (2013-2016).

 

Kamil Ruszala, Ph.D., studied history in Kraków (Jagiellonian University), Vienna (University of Vienna) and Prague (Charles University in Prague). He received his Ph.D. at the Faculty of History of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków (dissertation: Galician Refugees During the First World War in the Habsburg Empire, Kraków 2017). He specializes in East Central European History in the 19th and 20th centuries, especially in late Habsburg Empire, the First World War, refugees and internees, war remembrance, war graves and cemeteries, experiences of soldiers and societies during the war. He is an author and editor of books dealing with the First World War. His last book: Wielka Wojna w małym mieście. Gorlice w latach 1914-1918, Kraków 2015 (The Great War in a small town. Gorlice in the years 1914-1918); as editor: Bitwa pod Gorlicami. Studia z perspektywy stulecia, Gorlice 2015 (The battle of Gorlice. Centenary perspectives), Doświadczenia żołnierskie Wielkiej Wojny, Kraków 2017, (The Soldiers’ Experience of the First World War, together with Michał Baczkowski). Grant holder of the Ministry of Science and High Education for Ph.D. Students (MNiSW, 2016/2017), Foundation for Polish Science (FNP "Start" Grant, 2017/2018), Centre for Urban History in Lviv (2017) and University of Vienna (2017).

I. CHALLENGES OF GREAT WAR: GENERAL STUDIES

PIETER M. JUDSON, War and the Habsburg Monarchy: A Revisionist View
MACIEJ GÓRNY, First Write, Then Shoot: East Central European Intellectuals and the Great War
VIKTORIIA VOLOSHENKO, Intellectuals and (Anti)Military Propaganda in the Popular Literature for Ukrainian Peasantry Before World War I
LIUBOV ZHVANKO, Ukrainian Intelligentsia and the Refugees of World War I
BELINDA DAVIS, “Going All the Way” for the People? Reading Traugott v. Jagow’s Wartime Transformations
ESZTER BALÁZS, The Intellectual’s Body in War: Hungarian Writers’ Cases in World War I
STEVO ĐURAŠKOVIĆ, Croatian Intellectuals and World War I: Between Croatia as Bulwark of Mitteleuropa Towards the West and the Other Way Around
KAMIL RUSZAŁA, Intellectuals and the Galician Refugees During World War I in Austria-Hungary: Disparate Attitudes
MARKO VUKIČEVIĆ, Architects of Zagreb: Careers and the Great War

II. CASE STUDIES

ANDRZEJ SYNOWIEC, The Social Involvement of the Jagiellonian University Professor Stefan Jentys During World War I
NATALIA KOLB, The Great War in the Light of Documents and Correspondence of the Galician Greek Catholic Parish Priest Isydor Hlynskyi
Andrea Griffante, Between Pain and Care: Once More on Gabrielė Petkevičaitė War Experience
SUSANNE KORBEL, The Österreichische Reiterlied by Dr. Zuckermann: A Nearly Forgotten History of a Jewish Intellectual in the Great War
ROBERT BLOBAUM, Noah Prylucki: Jewish Nationalist or Polish Democrat?
ANDREW KIER WISE AND PENNY MESSINGEr, Anna and Boris Reinstein and the Socialist Response to World War I
TOMASZ PUDŁOCKI, “Stranger in the Night”? A Canadian on the Czech-Polish Borderland During World War I: The Case of William John Rose
KUMRU TOKTAMIS, Yashar Khanum: The Woman for Whom the War Never Ended

III. BEYOND THE WAR YEARS

MICHAEL JUNG, Professors of the Technische Hochschule Hannover and the Great War: Attitudes and Their Political Impact Until the 1930s
IRYNA ORLEVYCH, The Talerhof Tragedy in the Intellectual Thought of Galician Russophiles in the Interwar Period

List of Contributors