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Remains of the World War I: War against War by Ernst Friedrich and Two Approaches to Reading Archives.

Maliszewska, Natalia

Abstract

In this paper, I analyze two methods of reading archives: ‘against the grain’ and ‘along the grain’. First one focuses mainly on revealing what is marginalized and omitted in archive’s dominant narration. The other carefully studies the logic of an archive itself. As such, reading against the grain allows to reveal victims' forgotten stories, while reading along the grain helps to understand perpetrators’ perspective that may further lead to better recognition of the mechanisms of organized violence. I apply both approaches to the album War against War(1924) by Ernst Friedrich, which contains archival photographs from World War I.

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primer semestre enero • junio 2022 ISSN 0212-8365 e-ISSN 2253-900X primer semestre enero • junio 2022 ISSN 0212-8365 e-ISSN 2253-900X DOI: 10.12795/themata revistascientificas.us.es/index.php/themata https://editorial.us.es/es/revistas/themata-revista-de-filosofia 65 Thémata. Revista de Filosofía nace en el año 1983 con la intención de proporcionar a quienes investigan y producen en filosofía un cauce para publicar sus trabajos y fomentar un diálogo abierto sin condicionamientos ideológicos. En sus inicios participaron en el proyecto las Universidades de Murcia, Málaga y Sevilla, pero pronto quedaron como gestores de la revista un grupo de docentes de la Facultad de Filosofía de la Universidad de Sevilla. Una preocupación constante de sus realizadores ha sido fomentar los planteamientos interdisciplinares. 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Amedeo Avogadro JAPÓN Juan Masiá, Sophia University, Tokio MÉXICO Jaime Méndez Jiménez, Universidad Veracruzana Ana Laura Santamaría, Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey Héctor Zagal, Universidad Panamericana VENEZUELA Seny Hernández Ledezma, Universidad Central de Venezuela Comité Científico Asesor / Advisory Board Thémata. Revista de Filosofía agradece la labor realizada desde su inicio por sus anteriores directores: Jacinto Choza, Juan Arana y Jesús de Garay. Thémata. Revista de Filosofía • nº 64 • julio-diciembre (2021) ISSN: 0212-8365 • e-ISSN: 2253-900X • DOI: 10.12795/themata.2021.i64 LOS RESTOS DOCUMENTALES DEL PERPETRADOR: IMÁGENES Y TEXTOS_ MONOGRÁFICO [COORDS.: IRENE CÁRCEL EJARQUE, JUANJO MONSELL CORTS] 10 PRESENTACIÓN. Los restos documentales del perpetrador: imágenes y textos Irene Cárcel Ejarque, Juanjo Monsell Corts 36 PRESENTATION. The Documentary Remains of the Perpetrator: Images and Texts Irene Cárcel Ejarque, Juanjo Monsell Corts 61 La propaganda como imagen de perpetrador. Escorzos de la Guerra de Malvinas en 1982, de Lucas Gallo Natalia Taccetta, Mariano Veliz 81 Remains of the World War I: War against War by Ernst Friedrich and Two Approaches to Reading Archives Marta Maliszewska 104 ‘Nunca comprenderán que yo también tenía corazón’. Sobre el testimonio del victimario en el cine documental Lior Zylberman 133 El ‘silencio’ de los perpetradores. Una aproximación a la literatura alemana de los perpetradores del Tercer Reich Brigitte E. Jirku 158 Léon Degrelle. Del silencio a la negación del Holocausto José Luis Rodríguez Jiménez 181 Los “sacrificados” y la resignificación del Valle de los Caídos como símbolo de reconciliación (1958-1959) David Tormo Benavent 203 Memorias, genealogías femeninas y lugares de perpetración. Etnografía de las exhumaciones contemporáneas de fosas del franquismo en el cementerio de Paterna (Valencia) Isabel Gadea i Peiró, Mª José García-Hernandorena Índice. 07 ESTUDIOS_ARTÍCULOS DE INVESTIGACIÓN 227 Kafka, Roth y Buber: en torno a dos relatos (II) Gabriel Insausti Herrero-Velarde 248 El nuevo realismo: un análisis de las propuestas de Quentin Meillassoux, Graham Harman, Maurizio Ferraris y Markus Gabriel Andrés Vega Luque 271 Parricidio y ley en la obra de Derrida Pedro Tenner 291 La filosofía existencial como “vox clamantis in deserto”. La lectura shestoviana de la filosofía de Søren Kierkegaard Catalina Elena Dobre 317 La filosofía en tiempos de Covid-19 y pospandemia: hacia una nueva humanidad Sonia París Albert 340 Historia e identidad: reflexiones en torno a Ibn Jaldún y Hegel Alejandro Martín Navarro 361 “Nosotros en los otros”. La dialéctica de la autorrealización social e individual en la teoría del reconocimiento de G. H. Mead Carlos Emel Rendón 381 Situación actual de los estudios sobre Jesús Jacobo Negueruela Abellá 394 Praxis, daños e intención. Una aproximación al problema de daño sin víctima póstumo en sede aristotélica Jan María Podhorski TRADUCCIONES 412 Dominique Chateau: Étienne Souriau: una ontología de la singularidad Sergio González Araneda RESEÑAS BIBLIOGRÁFICAS 427 Ferrer, Anacleto. Facticidad y ficción. Ensayo sobre cinco secuencias fotográficas de perpetración de la Shoah, Valencia: Shangrila, 2020, 226 pp. Melania Torres Mariner 432 Sánchez Biosca, Vicente. La muerte en los ojos. Qué perpetran las imágenes de perpetrador. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2021, 301 pp. Rafael Rodríguez Tranche Thémata. Revista de Filosofía • nº 64 • julio-diciembre (2021) ISSN: 0212-8365 • e-ISSN: 2253-900X • DOI: 10.12795/themata.2021.i64 08 436 Benéitez Andrés, Rosa; Fusco, Virginia (eds). Hospitalidad: Lo otro y sus fronteras. Madrid: Dykinson, 2021, 147 pp. José Luis Panea 441 Federici, Silvia. Brujas, caza de brujas y mujeres. Traficante de sueños: Madrid, 2021, 144 pp. María Medina-Vicent 446 Markus, Gabriel. Neoexistencialismo: Concebir la mente humana tras el fracaso del naturalismo. Madrid: Pasado & Presente, 2019, 188 pp. Asier Arias Domínguez 451 Hernández-Pacheco Sanz, Javier. Hegel: Introducción e interpretación. Independently published, 2019, 268 pp. José Carlos Cortés Jiménez 454 Giombini, Lisa y Kvokačka, Adrián eds. Everydayness. Contemporary Aesthetics Approaches. Prešov/Roma: University of Prešov/Roma Tre- Press, 2021, 287 pp. Mª Jesús Godoy Domínguez 459 Mora, José Luis; Heredia, Antonio eds. Guía Comares de Historia de la Filosofía Española. Granada: Comares, 2022, 361 pp. Jéssica Sánchez Espillaque 465 Call for Papers Thémata 2022-2023 466 Política editorial. 469 Directrices para autores/as. Thémata. Revista de Filosofía • nº 64 • julio-diciembre (2021) ISSN: 0212-8365 • e-ISSN: 2253-900X • DOI: 10.12795/themata.2021.i64 09 Monográfico. ‘Los restos documentales del perpetrador: imágenes y textos’. Irene Cárcel Ejarque, Juanjo Monsell Corts (Coords.) 8787 MARTA MALISZEWSKA REMAINS OF THE WORLD WAR I: WAR AGAINST WAR BY ERNST FRIEDRICH AND TWO APPROACHES TO READING ARCHIVES Thémata. Revista de Filosofía • nº 65 • enero-junio (2022) pp. 81-103 • ISSN: 0212-8365 • e-ISSN: 2253-900X • DOI: 10.12795/themata.2022.i65.04 “How magnificent is the soldier’s life!” (Friedrich 2017: 125) In the case of the first publication of War against War (as, in fact, in many of its reprints) not only were the photographs of poor quality but so were the materials for the book too. Cheap paper and ink were used to make the publishing process as mass as possible. It was probably one of the factors contributing to the high number of distributed copies. The other was the international character of the book. In his declaration, Friedrich does not blame one nation or country for all war crimes. On the contrary – he emphasizes the supranational character of the causes of war and the responsibility of governments and bourgeois for war violence. His understanding of war is highly influenced by Marxists and socialist theoretics, especially by Rosa Luxemburg (even though he does not mention any names he was inspired by). Calling for the proletarian resistance against the bourgeois interests all around the world that in his understanding are causing military conflicts, he captions photographs in War against War with sentences in four languages: German, English, French and Dutch. Contemporary publications of the album often maintain this multilingual character, adding new translations to the original ones. Despite Friedrich’s belief that “no one comes and says: “O how frightful that such pictures should be shown!” (Friedrich 2017: 48) it turned out not to be true. There were many who praised the book. However, there were also those who criticized it fiercely. Some of them were former soldiers that 8888 MARTA MALISZEWSKA REMAINS OF THE WORLD WAR I: WAR AGAINST WAR BY ERNST FRIEDRICH AND TWO APPROACHES TO READING ARCHIVES Thémata. Revista de Filosofía • nº 65 • enero-junio (2022) pp. 81-103 • ISSN: 0212-8365 • e-ISSN: 2253-900X • DOI: 10.12795/themata.2022.i65.04 had fought in the war known to Friedrich only from secondhand reports 3 . In 1926, one of them, George Soldano, published the album Der Weltkrieg im Bild that celebrates war as a life-changing experience for men leading to the discovery of true friendships and fortitude. It was seen as a conservative response to War against War (Szymański 2018). However, more direct was the response by the Weimar Republic police, who destroyed a bookstore where Friedrich’s album was exhibited. This bare violence manifested by the authority against a few poor images may be read as a sign of their power to reshape the dominant discourse. “The shop-window of the publishing “The same shop-window after the house »Freie Jugend« with an exhibition violent removal of the pictures by the of pictures from the book »War against Berlin Police on 30 th of September 1924” war«” (Friedrich 2017: 266) (Friedrich 2017: 267) 3 • Reading War Archives Against the Grain Reading archives ‘against the grain’ – against their logic – is a methodology often used in examining documents left behind by authoritarian regimes, e.g., former colonial archives. Conceptual inspiration for this approach are Walter Benjamin’s ideas expressed in his essay Theses on Philosophy of History 3 Friedrich as a pacifist did not take part in the war but instead ended up in prison for desertion. 8989 MARTA MALISZEWSKA REMAINS OF THE WORLD WAR I: WAR AGAINST WAR BY ERNST FRIEDRICH AND TWO APPROACHES TO READING ARCHIVES Thémata. Revista de Filosofía • nº 65 • enero-junio (2022) pp. 81-103 • ISSN: 0212-8365 • e-ISSN: 2253-900X • DOI: 10.12795/themata.2022.i65.04 where he writes that the revolutionary fight is nourished by ‘the image of enslaved ancestors’ (Benjamin 1969: 260) and that ‘There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism’ (Benjamin 1969: 256). Due to that, one must look on the past events and their remains to uncover not what they explicitly say but to reveal perspectives of those ‘enslaved ancestors’ in an attempt to give justice to the dead ones (Benjamin 1969: 254). Those issues raised by Benjamin are highly related to the aesthetic theories of political nature. Writing about the relation between aesthetics and politics, Rancière notices that they are not two separate spheres, despite how they are often understood (Rancière 2004). Rather, aesthetics and politics are inseparable. It is so, since politics is based on deciding who and how is represented. A dominant discourse is created by reserving the right to speak only for a few and marginalizing others by presenting them as speechless animals, incapable of expressing their interests. Every piece supports this division or transgresses it – there is no third way as staying ‘apolitical’. If an image questions a dominant discourse by giving the voice back to those who are silenced, it ‘reconfigures the sensible’. The dominant discourse on war in Europe at the beginning of 20th century presented it in a romanticized manner. War was seen by many as an honorable and joyful event, a view illustrated best by pre-war enthusiasm expressed in spontaneous street celebrations in Berlin at the beginning of World War I (Eksteins 2000). This discourse was not significantly influenced by the tragic events of that war. Instead, some – as Soldano mentioned – who could not find themselves back in the post-war reality seemed to prize war even further after 1918. Those in power took advantage of these sentiments and used them to further support the military and nationalistic narration. To counter this image of war, Friedrich presents its other, hidden side. Yet what is even more significant to the fight against the dominant discourse, is an alternative perspective on the causes and aims of war that he proposes. Friedrich claims that wars do not start because they serve the whole nation (whatever this term is supposed to mean) but because they serve the economic interests of merely a few who are the real war perpetrators. By taking this materialistic and class approach, he reconfigures the image of war as grounded in virtues and ethical values. 9090 MARTA MALISZEWSKA REMAINS OF THE WORLD WAR I: WAR AGAINST WAR BY ERNST FRIEDRICH AND TWO APPROACHES TO READING ARCHIVES Thémata. Revista de Filosofía • nº 65 • enero-junio (2022) pp. 81-103 • ISSN: 0212-8365 • e-ISSN: 2253-900X • DOI: 10.12795/themata.2022.i65.04 To change the nationalistic understanding of war, Friedrich applies visual methods rooted in his strong belief in the power of images. However, to source the materials for the album he had to first read the military and medical archives against the grain. It is a broadly analyzed issue that archives are not a neutral storage of documents but rather sides of producing knowledge and discourse (Foucault 1972, Agamben 1999). The power over the accumulated materials belongs to an archive’s owner (Sekula 1983), the archont (Derrida 1998). Silence in archives does not result from the lack of alternative voices and perspectives. It comes from their active silencing by those who rule an archive (Carter 2006: 218). Overcoming this power to reveal the marginalized voices requires much work on the part of archivists. They need to examine archives closely, since the survival of alternative narrations often depends on them staying unnoticed by those who establish archives (Majewska 2018: 53). In the process of careful interpretation of the preserved documents, one can find gestures of micro-resistance and give the voice back to those, whose stories remained erased (Baer 2002, Tobing-Rony 1996). This type of interpretation is also the methodology applied to archives in the part of War against War called The Visage of War. It is a collection of 24 photographs stolen from medical documentations, presenting veterans with disfigured faces. These were the people who, due to their injuries, did not return home after the end of the war. Rather, they chose to pretend to be dead in the eyes of their relatives, to save them the emotional distress. On some level they were indeed dead – buried alive in veteran centers outside cities and lacking contact with anyone except medical staff 4 . Many of them suffered from PTSD, depression, or other mental illnesses. They were used up by the system and could not be useful to it anymore, so they just got disposed of as ‘human waste’ (Bauman 1969). Paradoxically, some of them could potentially get back to their work and family life – not all of their conditions required constant medical care. Nonetheless, their face disfigurements were a ‘visual afront’ to the army and to the discourse parsing war (Feo 2007). 4 The model example of veteran centers was Invalidenhause in the center of Berlin. However, it was a home for only a few veterans, ‘the chosen ones’ (Cohen 2001). Those were ex-soldiers who still could be useful for the military propaganda. Others, who do not fit the image of ‘a national hero’ were located out of sight. 9191 MARTA MALISZEWSKA REMAINS OF THE WORLD WAR I: WAR AGAINST WAR BY ERNST FRIEDRICH AND TWO APPROACHES TO READING ARCHIVES Thémata. Revista de Filosofía • nº 65 • enero-junio (2022) pp. 81-103 • ISSN: 0212-8365 • e-ISSN: 2253-900X • DOI: 10.12795/themata.2022.i65.04 Worrying about ‘public morals’, military commanders decided to separate them from the rest of society. Photographs like those published by Friedrich could not be seen anywhere else – maybe except for some medical journals. Unlike in the case of veterans after amputations – who were praised in the press after World War I as real heroes (Biernoff 2011) – portraits of veterans with disfigured faces, as well as their stories, were meant to be forgotten. Friedrich’s gesture preserves them by giving the voice back to the portraited ex-soldiers. In this section of the album, he quits his ironic style. Instead, every photograph is captioned with a short story of a photographed person – his name, age, former profession, sometimes the type of injuries and medical procedures he had gone through. Many of these bios are incomplete, since Friedrich did not have access to all required data. Despite that, the stories and experiences of these war victims at least partly survived. The case of The Visages of War illustrates what can be gained by reading archives against the grain. However, what is even more crucial for analyzing the mechanisms of violence, is the question what reading them along reveals. “The Visage of the War” (Friedrich 2017: 223) “After the steel bath: To the present day are lying in the hospitals gruesomely disfigured soldiers on whom operations are still being performed. Many of these unhappy war victims have undergone thirty, thirty-five and in some cases more than forty operations. In the case of thousands, the medical treatment has not yet been ended. Very many have to be fed artificially” (Friedrich 2017: 225-226) 9292 MARTA MALISZEWSKA REMAINS OF THE WORLD WAR I: WAR AGAINST WAR BY ERNST FRIEDRICH AND TWO APPROACHES TO READING ARCHIVES Thémata. Revista de Filosofía • nº 65 • enero-junio (2022) pp. 81-103 • ISSN: 0212-8365 • e-ISSN: 2253-900X • DOI: 10.12795/themata.2022.i65.04 4 • Reading War Archives Along the Grain Another method of approaching archives critically – popularized by Ann Laura Stoler – is reading ‘along the grain’. Stoler writes: “We need to read for its [archive’s] regularities, for its logic of recall, for its destinies and distributions, for its consistencies of misinformation, omission, and mistake – along the archival grain” (Stoler 2002: 100). Differently than reading against the grain, reading along focuses primarily not on questioning an archive’s discourse but rather on its careful analysis. On examining what is presented and how – narration’s structure, dominant motifs, categories it uses and what it lacks 5 . 5 Although there is certainly some great value in reading along the grain as a form of “Agricultural worker, 36 years of age. Wounded 1917. Nose and left cheek restored with flesh from head, breast and arm. (20 operations.)” (Friedrich 2017: 229) “Some war cripples refused information, other wounded, particularly those gruesomely mutilated, did not allow themselves to be photographed, as they feared that their relatives who had not seen them again, would either collapse at the sight of their misery, or would turn away forever from them in horror and disgust” (Friedrich 2017: 230) 9393 MARTA MALISZEWSKA REMAINS OF THE WORLD WAR I: WAR AGAINST WAR BY ERNST FRIEDRICH AND TWO APPROACHES TO READING ARCHIVES Thémata. Revista de Filosofía • nº 65 • enero-junio (2022) pp. 81-103 • ISSN: 0212-8365 • e-ISSN: 2253-900X • DOI: 10.12795/themata.2022.i65.04 It is important to emphasize that reading along the grain does not ignore the issues of violence in archives mentioned in the previous section. The premises of this approach are mainly similar to those shared by theoretics who read against the grain. However, while the latter regard it as the grounds for rejecting an archive’s dominant discourse, the former see it as an opportunity to better understand the mechanisms of creating perpetrators’ narration. Reading along the grain enables one to analyze these violent and abusive structures. Stoler notices that archives are not only systems of exclusion but also ‘stories that states tell themselves’: “They [archives] told moral stories, they created precedent in the pursuit of evidence, and not least they create carefully tended histories” (Stoler 2002: 103). Studying these stories leads to recognizing the nature of a discourse that not only morally justifies but even creates basis for bare violence. Another gain of this method is that it allows to notice not only what a narration consist of but what is repressed from it as well. Compulsive repetitions in an archive may be a sign of a reality that it tries to cover. Hence, reading along the grain requires looking not only for what is in documents but for the omissions and mistakes in them as well. It may seem that reading against the grain and reading along it are antithetical. However, it could not be further from the truth. Those two approaches correspond with each other and supplement one another. To oppose a discourse and give the voice and justice back to the dead, one must start with understanding what this discourse is composed of and how it is structured. On the other hand, to understand this, it is crucial to realize what perspectives are lacking. Thus, to read archives critically means to read them against and along the grain simultaneously. Those two perspectives are not separate approaches, rather they focus on slightly different aspects of the analyzed documents. Nonetheless, in practice they interpenetrate, morphing smoothly from one into the other. Adding this second approach to the interpretation of War against War requires reading it as an analysis of the prowar discourse during World War I and further of what this discourse tried to cover. visiting a physically archive, I do believe that this perspective as presented by Stoler can be also applied to analyzing an archive understood as a mechanism of creating a dominant discourse, and therefore I use it to describe Friedrich’s work. 9494 MARTA MALISZEWSKA REMAINS OF THE WORLD WAR I: WAR AGAINST WAR BY ERNST FRIEDRICH AND TWO APPROACHES TO READING ARCHIVES Thémata. Revista de Filosofía • nº 65 • enero-junio (2022) pp. 81-103 • ISSN: 0212-8365 • e-ISSN: 2253-900X • DOI: 10.12795/themata.2022.i65.04 4.1. Archives as Transcripts of Dominant Discourses In his manifesto, Friedrich declares: “At last, at last the mask has been torn away from this »field of honor«, from this lie of a »heroic death«, and from all the other beautiful phrases, from all this international swindle the mask has at last, yea, at last, be torn away!” (Friedrich 2017: 48). However, to tear these masks he starts with a careful analysis of what they are made of. Especially in the first part of War against War, he publishes photographs of pre-war enthusiasm – young men marching in military parades, soldiers smiling in photographs taken before their departure to battlefields, officers inspecting armies and honoring subordinates. Characteristic for many of those photographs are pathos and glory of captured scenes. Photographed people are proud to be a part of the military machine. They are also proud that somebody is taking pictures of them – they look confident and straighten up for the camera. Their bodies are stiff and tight. They are ready for a command, for a fight. “The first German reserves start for “The Hohenzollern distributes murder the front” (Friedrich 2017: 80) decorations behind the front” (Friedrich 2017: 86) These men’s fantasies about war were shaped by tales about chivalry and conservative masculinity, repeated to them over and over since they were little boys. Friedrich emphasizes the military character of children’s stories and plays at the beginning of the book. He shows illustrations of tin 9595 MARTA MALISZEWSKA REMAINS OF THE WORLD WAR I: WAR AGAINST WAR BY ERNST FRIEDRICH AND TWO APPROACHES TO READING ARCHIVES Thémata. Revista de Filosofía • nº 65 • enero-junio (2022) pp. 81-103 • ISSN: 0212-8365 • e-ISSN: 2253-900X • DOI: 10.12795/themata.2022.i65.04 and cardboard soldiers and claims that war is prepared long before the army sets off for a battlefield. And even before public institutions start to shape children’s imagination, it is already influenced by myths of ‘field of honor’ and ‘heroic death’ told to them at home. Another tool of military propaganda is, according to Friedrich, the press. At the early stages of World War I, all armies taking part in the conflict censored strictly what kind of photographs could be published. Yet, after a while, they realized that the secret to a successful propaganda is not minimizing the number of photographs but rather creating their own images of the battlefield. In the second phase of the war, many photographs showing a propaganda image of the war were published in newspapers every day (Roberts 2014). This strategy shows that a dominant discourse is mainly shaped not by regulating the counter representations but by overproducing the dominant ones. Recognizing the role of the press in encouraging public support for war leads Friedrich to demanding drastic consequences for journalists. In the manifesto he writes: “And ten newspaper writers that agitate for war, shall be detained as hostages for the life of each single warrior!” (Friedrich 2017: 50). Even though he himself probably knows that the numbers would be enormous and impossible to enforce, this is a demand expressing a wish that actual war perpetrators – those profiting from war – should finally take responsibility for their actions. The significance of press photography turns out to be even greater if one considers the role of visuality and aesthetics in the forming of authoritarian regimes. Military spectacles, like parades or commanders’ speeches, lure their audience and promise it dreams about greatness. Referring to the war enthusiasm at the beginning of 20th century, Benjamin writes: “Its [mankind] self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order. This is the situation of politics which Fascism is rendering aesthetic” (Benjamin 1969: 242). The mechanisms of the anesthetization of politics and its work in favor of financial and military elites is what Friedrich reveals in his album. One of the most memorable photographs from the first part of War against War is the one showing a military parade in a city. A few men look into the camera, saluting to the photographer. They have helmets on their heads and carry rifles. One even has a bouquet of flowers; he proudly waves it in 9696 MARTA MALISZEWSKA REMAINS OF THE WORLD WAR I: WAR AGAINST WAR BY ERNST FRIEDRICH AND TWO APPROACHES TO READING ARCHIVES Thémata. Revista de Filosofía • nº 65 • enero-junio (2022) pp. 81-103 • ISSN: 0212-8365 • e-ISSN: 2253-900X • DOI: 10.12795/themata.2022.i65.04 front of the camera. Probably he got it as a thank you for the service for his country. On the left side of the photograph another man catches the viewer’s eye – he grins from ear to ear under his impressive moustache. Between those two men marches an adolescent, noticeably younger than them. He is probably around 20. He does not have any helmet and one can see his wavy, light hair. But what stands out the most is his face expression. He does not smile, looks serious and focused. I imagine that the emotions on his face – or rather their lack – come from his deep concern with his mission. He is ready to die for his country, even ready to kill for it (even if he is a little bite afraid of both). But he is ready to die like all these knights in his goodnight tales – in the full sun, as he is marching now, with his head up and eyes fixed at the killer. That is the only war he knows up until it is too late. “From the August days of 1914 – “… for the »field of honor«” Enthusiastic… for what?...” (Friedrich 2017: 79) (Friedrich 2017: 78) Another outstanding photograph from this part of the book is the one showing a middle-aged man posing in an orchard. It is captioned: “Papa as a »hero« in the enemy’s country (Picture for the illustrated Family Journal)” (Friedrich 2017: 82). The man is smiling proudly (again under his mustache) in his military outfit. He holds some object in one hand, it could be a flask. All around him trees blossom in a bright spring sun. This idyllic scenery together with the man’s expression make the photograph look more like a holiday souvenir than a war document. The footnote about a Family Journal 103103 MARTA MALISZEWSKA REMAINS OF THE WORLD WAR I: WAR AGAINST WAR BY ERNST FRIEDRICH AND TWO APPROACHES TO READING ARCHIVES Thémata. 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