Department of Special Collections
976 Memorial Library
728 State Street
August 11 – December 30, 2014
A documentary exhibit about World War I, especially on the Western Front, commemorates the centennial of its outbreak. Guest exhibit co-curators Skye Doney and Eric O’Connor draw upon strong holdings of books, printed ephemera, letters, postcards, and other unpublished materials in campus libraries and archives to illustrate the months leading up to the beginning of war in Europe in 1914; prosecution of the war itself; life on the home front; creative works inspired by the war; and the eventual entry of the United States into the “war to end all wars.” Read more about this exhibit on the Special Collections website.
Shortly before this scene was photographed, a bomb was thrown at the open touring car in which Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were riding as their motorcade entered Sarajevo.These cards were printed to counter propaganda which portrayed the Germans as savage barbarians. This shows a German soldier falling behind his comrades to share his canteen with a thirsty wounded Frenchman.“God protect Germany!” reads the inscription above the German flag, oak leaves, and imperial crown.Imperial Chancellor Theobold Von Bethmann-Hollweg’s words are defended by a towering vision of Germania drawing her sword to protect the German farmer against those who would threaten his land.As the tower-clock strikes midnight, smiling soldiers toast “Hearty New Year’s Greetings!”The war was supposed to be over by Christmas, or so the Germans thought as they had marched off to the front. Few recruits would have imagined that they would be sending the Christmas and New Year’s greetings pictured here.Humor at the enemy’s expense has always bolstered a soldier’s morale. And that a soldier’s fears seem always to lighten with laughter is affirmed by the sheer quantity — and variety — of postcards which ridicule and caricature the enemy. “My God! Where are you going with our Eiffel Tower” asks the diminutive French soldier on Card 90.The German soldier, Eiffel Tower in hand, replies with a smile, “I want to plant it at the Brandenburg Gate!”Photo-postcard of comrades-in-arms.The German siege of Verdun, one of the bitterest and most infamous battlefields of World War I, is pictured here. Verdun remains today a symbol of French resistance and national defense; it remains also a symbol of the destructive force of war and the death of a generation in WWI
