Jason Crouthamel. An Intimate History of the Front

Between October 1914 and December 1918, the schoolteacher Felix F. wrote daily letters to his wife Maria and described in detail the miserable life of a lieutenant fighting at the front. The hour that he spent each day dreaming of their cozy home life was his only respite, his only joy, and the only time he could tell the truth to himself. The rest of his life unfolded as a kind of nightmare; sometimes, he would cry himself to sleep while standing in his trench. Jason Crouthamel presents an impressive analysis of this and many other powerful stories in An Intimate History of the Front: Masculinity, Sexuality, and German Soldiers in the First World War. He provides a new chapter in the history of emotions and a new perspective on the experience of front-line warfare during World War I. Too often in investigations of men and constructions of masculinity women disappear, but as suggested by the story of Felix F., this analysis explicitly incorporates the roles and experiences of women. By using this approach, Crouthamel is able to uncover new aspects of the war experience. For at least some soldiers, the Feldpostbriefe (war letters) demonstrate the importance of wives and girlfriends in providing emotional connection and love. In these letters, men described how words from home sustained them, and examples in the book even depict relationships in which some men seemed to escape into a fantasy world through their letters that defied the violence that surrounded them on the front.

Art · Fantasy · Front (military) · Front line · German · Human sexuality · Literature · Masculinity · Political science · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Wife · World War II · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Gender Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Psychology · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies