kuk war press headquarters

Seat of the Austro-Hungarian war press office in the Gasthaus Stelzer in Rodaun near Vienna (photo around 1900)

The Imperial and Royal War Press Quarters (KPQ) was founded at the beginning of the First World War on July 28, 1914 as a department of the Austro-Hungarian Army High Command . From the beginning of the war, the commandant of the KPQ was Major General (previously Colonel ) Maximilian Ritter von Hoen . From March 1917 until the end of the war, Colonel of the General Staff Wilhelm Eisner-Bubna was in command.

The task of the KPQ was to coordinate all press information and propaganda activities , including all mass media available at the time . A total of 550 artists and journalists were active as members of the Austro-Hungarian War Press Quarter during the war, including 280 war painters from the KPQ art group.

Concentration of forces

In 1914 the Kuk Telegraph Correspondence Bureau (today APA ) was incorporated.

In order to increase the artistic quality, a large number of well-known artists were won over to work. The following names are mentioned in connection with the KPQ: Albert Paris Gütersloh , Alfred Kubin , Egon Erwin Kisch , Robert Musil , Leo Perutz , Alice Schalk , Hugo von Hofmannsthal , Roda Roda , Rainer Maria Rilke , Alfred Polgar , Franz Karl Ginzkey , Franz Theodor Csokor , Felix Salten , Stefan Zweig , Ferenc Molnár , Robert Michel and Franz Werfel .

Many were staunch patriots and volunteered, some tried to avoid military service by participating in the KPQ (employees were released) and some were simply forcibly transferred.

Concentration of media

Soon after the outbreak of war, the importance of photography and film for effective public relations was recognized alongside writing and the fine arts .

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The journalists, among them the first officially licensed female war report writer in history, Alice Schalk , and writers wrote the press reports for the KPQ.

Art group of the war press room

Karl Friedrich Gsur : Defensive battle of an MG division , 1915/16 ( HGM ).

Alfred Basel : After the breakthrough on the Tagliamento , 1918 (HGM).

The members of the art group were under the direction of Colonel Wilhelm John from 1914 to 1916 , who from 1909 was also director of the Imperial and Royal Army Museum (today: Army History Museum ); and from 1916 to 1918 under that of Major Georg Sobicka. Countless products such as paintings , watercolors , drawings , posters , artist postcards, illustrations, sculptures and sculptures were created by the participating painters and sculptors on behalf of the KPQ. The artists were sent to the respective theaters of war for artistic reporting. Their task was "the propaganda effective for the present at home and abroad, in order to put the achievements of the Wehrmacht in the right light, but for the future the procurement of that material, its history and the subsequent glorification of military exploits through art urgently needed to supplement the written tradition " . The artists, some of whom were conscripted and some of whom worked voluntarily, recorded their reflections primarily on the respective fronts, less often in the safe hinterland. They were marked by black and yellow armbands with the imprint "Art" or "War press quarters" and were given appropriate legitimations.

The artists had to find "painterly effective and interesting motifs from the life of the war" . The commandos in question had to support them and see to it that they achieved militarily "useful things" . Landscape painters were "approached" to draw positions and battlefields . On the other hand, "figurative talents" who are suitable as battle painters should be given the opportunity to observe battle scenes if possible. The assignment here should preferably be made to the artillery in order to prevent personal danger. Portraitists were to be used to create colored, sometimes pencil sketches, "of the higher leaders, particularly distinguished officers and crew members" . According to the regulations of the KPQ, an approximate measure was that a sketch was to be submitted for each week assigned to the front, and a picture for each month of rest.

A great many artists applied for admission to the KPQ, highly qualified, serious men as well as less qualified, rather modest talents, and also those who tried to avoid military service with the weapon through the art group. However, the admission criteria were very strict and became more and more so as the war progressed, since no man even halfway fit was to be withdrawn from the front. When recording, emphasis was placed on a balance in terms of origin, so as many artists should come from the cisleithan as well as the transleithan half of the empire.

Military painters and sculptors who were drafted had to hand over some of the works created during their service to the command of the KPQ. From there, depending on their suitability, the works were assigned to the Imperial and Royal War Archives, the Imperial and Royal Army Museum or higher military authorities for permanent decoration of the official rooms.

In the KPQ, and above all in the art group, women were accepted, completely contrary to the military customs of the time. The eldest of them, Friederike ("Fritzi") Ulreich (1865–1936), herself an officer's daughter , who remained unknown as a painter , went to the south-eastern front in Belgrade in 1914 and painted the destroyed fortifications there , as well as military cemeteries and individual graves . Helene Arnau (1870–1958), daughter of a court actor who had studied sculpture at the Vienna Academy in his youth , painted on the Carinthian front from February to May 1917. The youngest, Stephanie Hollenstein (1886–1944) even disguised herself as a man so that she could go into battle with the Imperial and Royal Standschützen .

Subordinate to the art group was the picture collection point, which was housed in the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna from spring 1916 . There the pictures were deposited, managed and registered and framed for the various war picture presentations. By the end of the war, 33 presentations with over 9,000 works had been made in Germany and in neutral or allied countries. The most famous war painters in the art group of the war press quarter or in the vicinity of the KPQ were: Albin Egger-Lienz , Anton Faistauer , Anton Kolig , Ferdinand Andri , Alexander Demetrius Goltz , Oskar Laske , Karl Friedrich Gsur , Ludwig Heinrich Jungnickel , Alexander Pock , Victor von Eckhardt and Oskar Kokoschka . In the permanent exhibition of the Vienna Army History Museum there is a considerable number of paintings by numerous painters from the war press quarter.

photography

Description: M.-Sziget SKHErzh.Albrecht with Rittm.Graf Thun (Alben war press quarter 1914-1918)

More than 33,000 photographs commissioned by KPQ are now in the picture archive of the Austrian National Library . Hugo Eywo was one of the photographers employed by the war press headquarters .

Film exposure

In 1915, Sascha Kolowrat-Krakowsky , the founder of the Sascha-Film -Fabrik, was appointed director of the KPQ's film exhibition. This gave the film its propaganda significance. Kolowrat-Krakowsky was able to save numerous filmmakers from the war slaughter by assigning them to film production.

The war or propaganda film production was initially under the war archive. These agendas were assigned to the war press office on June 1, 1917.

literature

Walter Reichel: "Press work is propaganda work" - Media Administration 1914-1918: The War Press Quarter (KPQ) . Communications from the Austrian State Archives (MÖStA), special volume 13, Studienverlag , Vienna 2016, ISBN 978-3-7065-5582-1 .

Walter F. Kalina: Austro-Hungarian propaganda in the First World War. The kuk war press quarter 1914-1918 , in: Republic of Austria / Federal Ministry for National Defense and Sport (ed.): Viribus Unitis. Annual report 2015 of the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum , Vienna 2016, ISBN 978-3-902551-66-5 , pp. 9-23.

Walter F. Kalina: Alexander Pock . In: Viribus Unitis , Annual Report 2010 of the Army History Museum. Vienna 2011, pp. 125–149, ISBN 978-3-902551-19-1 .

Ilse Krumpöck: Anton Faistauer's military uselessness , in: Series of publications on Anton Faistauer and his time. Published by the Anton Faistauer Forum, Maishofen, 2007, pp. 15–23.

Adalbert Stifter Verein (ed.): Muses to the front! Writer and artist in the service of the Austro-Hungarian war propaganda 1914–1918 . Exhibition catalog (2 volumes), Munich, 2003.

Liselotte Popelka / Heeresgeschichtliches Museum (Ed.): From "Hurray" to the corpse field. Paintings from the war painting exhibition 1914–1918 , exhibition catalog, Vienna 1981.

Hildegund Schmölzer : The propaganda of the war press quarters in the First World War 1914-1918 , dissertation, University of Vienna, 1965.

Klaus Mayer: The organization of the war press headquarters at the Austro-Hungarian Army High Command in the First World War 1914–1918 . Dissertation, University of Vienna, 1963.

Paul Stefan : The fine arts in the war press quarter , enclosed in the catalog war pictures exhibition of the kuk war press quarter, Künstlerhaus, Vienna 1918.

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b Ilse Krumpöck: Anton Faistauer's military uselessness , in: Series of publications on Anton Faistauer and his time. Published by the Anton Faistauer Forum, Maishofen, 2007, p. 15.
^ Austrian State Archives - War Archives , Army High Command, War Press Quarters, the presence of the members of the War Press Quarters, 1914/1918
↑ quoted from the regulation for pictorial reporting in war. Vienna, War Archives, Army High Command E. No. 4992, No. 17.
↑ ^a ^b ^c Adalbert Stifter Verein (ed.): Muses to the Front! Writer and artist in the service of the Austro-Hungarian war propaganda 1914-1918 . Exhibition catalog, Munich, 2003, volume 2, p. 10.
↑ ^a ^b Adalbert Stifter Verein (ed.): Muses to the Front! Writer and artist in the service of the Austro-Hungarian war propaganda 1914-1918 . Exhibition catalog, Munich, 2003, volume 1, p. 64 f.
↑ See Manfried Rauchsteiner , Manfred Litscher (Ed.): The Army History Museum in Vienna. Graz, Vienna 2000 p. 32.
^ Sylvia Winkelmeyer: The Austrian cartoon in the silent film era. Diploma thesis, University of Vienna, 2004, p. 127.