Page - 225 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

Official Announcements 225 one day after the city had been taken by the Russians, the Neue Freie Presse reported : ‘Lviv was probably still held yesterday.’ ‘German forays already near Paris.’ The next day : ‘The mortars of the Austro-Hungarian Army in the French campaigns.’ ‘Favourable situation of the allied armies, incipient collapse of the Russian offensive, uprisings and famine in the enemy’s rear and unity and confidence in the Monarchy and in Germany’. The basic principle of the Army High Command was to allow war correspondents on to the front only if they could report successes. Those fronts on which the Imperial and Royal armies were involved in costly fighting and were on the retreat were taboo for ‘strategic reasons’.538 However, journalists could comfort themselves with the fact that not even many of those at the headquarters of the Army High Command knew everything that was happening at the front. Assumptions and occasional observations had to serve as a substitute for concrete knowledge. The list of poets and writers assigned to the War Press Bureau intermittently read like a membership list of a renowned literary circle : Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Robert Musil, Leo Perutz, Franz Werfel, Alexander Roda Roda, Ferenc Molnár, Karl Hans Strobl and many others worked on reports and literary exaggerations of the war. To be found in the Literary Group they set up themselves were also Franz Theodor Csokor, Alfred Polgar, Franz Karl Ginzkey, Rainer Maria Rilke, Felix Salten and, temporarily, even Stefan Zweig. At least as important as the literary section was the Artists’ Group, to which painters and graphic artists such as Albin Egger-Lienz, Oskar Laske, Ferdi- nand Staeger, Luigi Kasimir, Fritz Schönpflug, Carl Leopold Hollitzer or Ludwig Hes- shaimer belonged, among others. Some time later, increased attention was also devoted to photography and film, and the latter was supervised by Lieutenant Count Alexander (‘Sascha’) Kolowrat-Krakowski. Finally, the War Press Bureau was expanded further to include the ‘Musical History Headquarters’, which dealt above all with the collection of soldiers’ songs.539 In Austria, Bernhard Paumgartner was entrusted with this, whilst in Hungary Béla Bartok and Zoltán Kodály did the collecting. The war propaganda used every resource available, at least initially. An endless num- ber of impressions assailed those waiting on the home front and many of these branded themselves indelibly on their memory. The first wounded returned home by their hun- dreds and thousands. The slightly wounded were generally upbeat, not because they had left the battlefield but because they hoped they would soon be well again. They were proud ‘to have been there’ and indulged in empty talk such as : ‘We really gave it to them’ : the Russians had thrown their weapons away ‘and put their hands in the air or walked away ; they didn’t put up a fight anywhere’.540 Then there were the droves of ref- ugees with whatever household effects they could carry. However, as the Adjutant Gen- eral of Archduke Friedrich, Count Herbert Herberstein, wrote : ‘All is well. Everything is going to plan, nothing is being rushed and there is not a trace of panic-like states.’541 In reality, however, virtually nothing was ‘going to plan’ any more.