German Students' War Letters
German Students' War Letters
Edited by Philipp Witkop
Translated by A. F. Wedd
Foreword by Jay Winter
Series: Pine Street Books
Copyright Date: 1929
Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press,
Pages: 408
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt3fj1v1
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Book Info
German Students' War Letters
Book Description:

Originally appearing at the same time as the pacifist novel All Quiet on the Western Front, this powerful collection provides a glimpse into the hearts and minds of an enemy that had been thoroughly demonized by the Allied press. Composed by German students who had left their university studies in order to participate in World War I, these letters reveal the struggles and hardships that all soldiers face. The stark brutality and surrealism of war are revealed as young men from Germany describe their bitter combat and occasional camaraderie with soldiers from many nations, including France, Great Britain, and Russia. Like its companion volume, War Letters of Fallen Englishmen, these letters were carefully selected for their depth of perception, the intensity of their descriptions, and their messages to future generations. "Should these letters help towards the establishment of justice and better understanding between nations," the editor reflects in his introduction, "their deaths will not have been in vain." This edition contains a new foreword by the distinguished World War I historian Jay Winter.

eISBN: 978-0-8122-0878-8
Subjects: Language & Literature
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  1. Front Matter
    Front Matter (pp. i-iv)
  2. FOREWORD Philipp Witkop and the German “Soldiers’ Tale”
    FOREWORD Philipp Witkop and the German “Soldiers’ Tale” (pp. v-xxiv)
    Jay Winter

    There has been a burst of interest in recent years in “war literature,” understood as a genre of writing in which soldiers display the authority of direct experience in telling their “truth” about war and combat. In the process, they offer reflections on much else besides—on comradeship and masculinity, on the image of the enemy; on national sentiment, on the burden of survival when so many others failed to come back, and on the “lies” that those who weren’t there told about those who were.

    Much of this discussion centers on memoirs written long after the Armistice of 1918,...

  3. INTRODUCTION
    INTRODUCTION (pp. xxv-xxviii)
    A. F. WEDD

    The Letters contained in this volume have been selected from a larger collection published early in the present year by Professor Philipp Witkop of Freiburg-in-Baden, who had himself a choice of about 20,000 placed at his disposal by relatives and friends of the fallen, through the German Ministry of Education.

    In his Foreword to the German edition Professor Witkop points out that already, only ten years after the end of the World War, the remembrance of those who made the Supreme Sacrifice is in danger of growing dim and of being soon confined to mere memorials in bronze and stone....

  4. GERMAN STUDENTS’ WAR LETTERS
    GERMAN STUDENTS’ WAR LETTERS (pp. 1-376)