To My Peoples! The First World War 1914–1918

2014 sees the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War. Immediately after the outbreak of the war in 1914, the Austrian National Library‘s predecessor, the Imperial Court Library already began to collect testimonies of the war. In this way, around tens of thousands of photos, posters, notes and literary texts, as well as artistically designed field postcards, war diaries and other remarkable documents had been archived by 1918. They testify to the millions of deaths on the front and to the deprivations of life back home, and constitute a unique war collection that is to be given its first comprehensive presentation in the exhibition entitled “To My Peoples! The First World War 1914 – 1918“.

From the enthusiasm with which war was greeted in 1914 with countless patriotic poems and musical works, to the hunger and hardships of the last years of the war – the exhibition takes a close look at the everyday life of the civilian population. Everyone was expected to contribute to the hoped-for victory: Posters urged the people to collect maybugs to feed the cattle or nettles to make textile fibres. In the working world women replaced men for the first time. Nothing was said about the horrendous fatalities of the war, and the restrictive measures of the War Supervisory Office ensured that it was often only possible to guess the truth.

From the momentous assassination of Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand on 28 June 1914 to Emperor Karl‘s People‘s Manifesto of 16 October 1918, this exhibition brings to life the gradual collapse of the multinational state that was the Austro-Hungarian Empire.