Many publications have already been published about the First World War, but an overview of artist soldiers was still lacking. A new book shows the effects of this war on the artists and their work. Most did not return and only live on in their war art.
Exactly one hundred years ago, the First World War ended. On November 11, 1918, the ceasefire went into effect at 11 a.m.:the last death occurred at 10:59 a.m. This trench warfare cost the lives of millions of soldiers, including many artists. Dannie ten Zweege, a Dutch scholar with a great interest in this war, has now written a book about them entitled Take my youth, who died today. Artists on the frontline of the First World War.
Optimistic war
Ten Zweege states in the preface that the book is a project that has gotten out of hand. The author wanted to make a database of artists who had fought during the war, because there was no overview. She visited military cemeteries and former battlefields, did literature research and read letters and diaries of the soldiers. Eventually she had so much material that the database became a book.
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The structure of the book betrays this background. Ten Zweege discusses more than a hundred artists in short pieces. We learn about most of them when and where they were born, what kind of childhood or education they had and which works they already had to their name. Not everyone died during the war and from the survivors we get to remember the rest of their lives and careers. In order to keep the book readable, the author has limited himself to the western front and even then this is only a small selection of the total number of artists who fought on the battlefields. How many there were in the end, however, remains unclear.
This may sound less exciting than it is. Ten Zweege knows very well how to interweave the course of the war, with all its horrors, with the pieces about the artists. The book is organized chronologically and in each chapter the author describes a war year. We follow the battles and trench warfare and at the same time get to know who they were fatal to and how they inspired the artists.
Inground
The acts of war do not play the leading role in the book, but the author does explain the broad outline in a clear manner. The book begins with the rising nationalism in Europe, the alliances between countries that divided the continent and a growing Germany that found itself surrounded by enemies. Germany wanted to attack France, but because of strong fortifications on the Franco-German border, the German army took a detour via Belgium.
The Germans invaded our southern neighbors on August 4, 1914, moving further inland, burning down towns and villages and killing thousands of inhabitants. The English allied with France and helped to stop the advance. That succeeded at the end of that year and both parties dug in, largely in northern France. Trench warfare ensued that is unparalleled in history. The most famous is probably the Battle of the Somme from July 1 to November 18, 1916, which killed more than a million soldiers and gained only a few kilometers of territory.
Broken button
The author takes us through the various battles in this war zone and tells about the artists who were present, whether they were German, French, English or American soldiers. The book is full of examples of paintings, drawings, poems and prose by artists. Ten Zweege leaves only a translation of the poems. That's a shame, because if your French or German in particular is not so good, you miss the essence of this book:the experiences of the soldiers, as they are expressed in their work.
Many of them were still young when they were called up for conscription, or volunteered out of a sense of duty. These talents died before their careers really took off. Broken in the bud, as the author describes it. The book is therefore partly an overview of what the world has lost in art due to the intervention of a bloody war.
It is therefore logical that most of the names of the artists do not mean much to me. But well-known names are also reviewed, such as J.R.R. Tolkien, who later became The Lord of the Rings would write. The trench fever saved him, for it sent him back to England. The Dutch dancer Mata Hari is one of the few women in the book. She was executed for double espionage. From the archive documents made public in 2017, the evidence for this is only paper thin. However, this independent woman had many lovers and her 'lewd' way of life was not tolerated at that time.
Propaganda
What I also found interesting to read was the epilogue on war artists. These artists were sent to the front for propaganda purposes and, especially at the beginning of the war, produced heroic paintings reminiscent of battles from the nineteenth century. This was only a far cry from modern trench warfare with heavy bombing raids, soldiers breaking into the barbed wire or dying from poison gas.
Artists who served as soldiers and painted and wrote in between the acts usually showed what it really was like. This was hard not only for them, but also for those who stayed at home. The futility of this trench warfare became more and more apparent. Despite all this misery, some artists continued to glorify the hopeless war. For God and country, honor and manhood, that sort of thing. That's how the generals liked it, because such men will continue to fight.
The majority, it seems from this book, no longer see the honor of a death as cannon fodder. If they survived, they used the destructive war theme a lot in their later works, traumatized as they were. Their works, which radiate gloom, stay with you the most. At least I do.