Front und Heimat: Ländliche Kriegserfahrungen im südlichen Bayern 1914-1923

Benjamin Ziemann explores the question of how peasants, farmhands and maids from southern Bavaria came to terms with the experience of the first "total" war. In his presentation of the history of mentality, he links historical contexts that are otherwise only treated separately from military, social, and agricultural history to form a complex reconstruction of rural worlds of experience in war and inflation. The study arrives at surprising results that refute or relativize common notions such as the alleged "enthusiasm for war" in August 1914 or the mythologically exaggerated "front comradeship." Concise quotations from contemporary self-testimonies vividly show the patterns of interpretation of the rural population and their contrast to the legends created by propaganda.