The Art of War - Portraits of Soldiers

In August 1914 as armies across Europe mobilized for war, military commands gave little thought to the consequences of a prolonged conflict. Almost everyone believed that this war would last only a few weeks, certainly no more than a month of two. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife, Sophie by a half-dozen Bosnia-Serb terrorists on 28 June 1914 was a terrible tragedy, but it seemed unthinkable that diplomacy would fail and nations would be forced into war.

Yet only a month later hundreds of thousands of soldiers were engaged in ferocious combat across tremendous battlelines drawn across both western and eastern Europe. 

The empires of Germany and Austria-Hungary, as well as Russia and the Ottoman empires, were much larger in 1914 than these nations are in the 21st century. As Austria-Hungary embarked on a Serbian campaign on 28 July 1914, it triggered a complicated series of military agreements that compelled Russia and then Germany to deploy their armies, closely followed by Belgium, France, and Britain. In the first weeks of the war Germany took advantage of its military planning and completely overwhelmed the small Belgian army as German forces marched to attack France. Thousands of Belgian soldiers were taken prisoner.

On the Eastern Front at the Battle of Tannenberg, General Paul von Hindenburg's troops effectively destroyed the Russian 2nd Army in just seven days at the end of August 1914. The German victory resulted in the capture of 92,000 Russian soldiers, including 13 generals.

But for Germany, these early victories came at a cost. Tens of thousands of Belgian and Russian soldiers were captured. As the war stretched into September more French and British soldiers were taken too. As enemy soldiers, of course, they could not be released. So Germany was compelled to hurriedly construct camps to hold its prisoners of war. 

By February 1915 Germany had imprisoned 652,000 enemy soldiers and by August that number increased to 1,045,232. Hundreds of camps were established throughout Germany with separate facilities for officers and enlisted men. Later the camps were further divided by nationalities. In August 1916 the POW population in Germany had grown to 1,625,000 soldiers and it would expand to an astounding 2,415,000 prisoners by the end of the war in November 1918. Though there were German prisoners of war held in Russia, France, and Britain, it was the POW camps in Germany that confined the most soldiers from August 1914 to November 1918. 

The numbers of the Great War are staggering to understand, especially when combined with the horrible casualties and deaths incurred by all the armed forces. As each nation realized that this war would be horribly different, governments created new departments of propaganda. Germany was especially effective in using picture postcards, a popular medium of communication, to persuade its citizens that this war was a just and righteous struggle against ignoble and villainous foreign people.  

A few years ago I began collecting postcards that depicted captive soldiers from both sides of the war. These postcards are typically black and white photographs, sometimes colorized, of ranks of enemy troops usually marching through city streets or assembled for transport to confinement camps. Readers can see examples of these cards in my story The Color of War from November 2022.

But my collecting interest was also attracted to a very different kind of German postcard from the war that did not show captive soldiers as unsympathetic masses of enemy troops. These were sensitive portraits of individual soldiers  painted or sketched by accomplished artists and then published by respectable German publishing companies. Unlike other postcards of POWs these were not caricatures or cartoons that emphasized racist stereotypes or tried to incite bellicose hatred. These fine art portraits expressed an unusual respectful view of an individual soldier without any blatant bias. Many of the pictures are dated and sometimes identified their subjects or their military units. This collection represents the work of four different artists which I feature today..

My first artist is the one who painted the colorful soldier at the top of my story. This man is dressed in the colors of a French soldier's uniform with blue jacket and red pantaloons tucked into high cavalry boots. The artist's signature is A. Bitterlich.

The back of the card has a caption identifying the figure as an Afrikanischer Jäger zu Pferd (Wachtmeister) ~ African hunter (ranger) on horseback (sergeant). It is from a series of cards entitled: Studien aus den Gefangenen-Lagern ~ Studies from the prison camps, produced by the GMT printing company with militäramtlich genehmigt ~ officially approved by the military. 

The card was addressed to Madame & Monsieur Dupuis of Montmirey-le-Château a small commune in the Jura department of eastern France. In 1911 its population was 271. The card was dated 25 June 1917 and signed with a single name that I can't quite make out. 

This second watercolor by Bitterlich shows another French soldier, called an Infanterist or infantryman in the card's caption. This man is wounded with his left arm and hand bandaged and in a sling under his great coat. The colors of uniforms are, of course, absent in a black and white photo but here the artist gives us the accurate hues worn by French soldiers who began the war in gallant blue coats and cardinal red caps and trousers. However this brilliant fashion may have suited 19th century warfare but in early 1914 the French military command realized that the red and blue made their soldiers easy targets for the enemy. In July 1914 a new uniform was ordered in a blue-grey color known as "horizon-blue" as this tint was considered a better color to mask a soldier's outline against the sky.  However the war began before most mobilized units could receive the new uniforms. Therefore this soldier was clearly captured during the first weeks of the conflict.

The artist's full name was Albert Bitterlich who was a German painter and printmaker born in Bräunsdorf, Saxony, Germany in 1871. He studied at art schools in Dresden and in Munich which became his residence before the war. Some of his artwork is preserved in the State Painting Collection of Munich. Albert Bitterlich died in 1960 in Newuberg, Germany. 

This third image by Bitterlich is called simply Tartar and it shows a Russian soldier reclining on the ground. The man wears a blue peasant shirt and a tall fur hat that has no brim. He looks resigned to his fate. 

This card, like the previous two, was also addressed to Madame & Monsieur Dupuis of Montmirey-le-Château and  signed by the same soldier. This one is dated 15 May 1917 so I presume it was sent to France from a German POW camp. 

Some of Bitterlich's paintings can be seen at ArtNet. It's a small collection of a few bucolic landscapes and some charming flower arrangements, but I think these cards are far more interesting for both their subjects and his impressionist style.

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My second artist used a different technique to create quickly sketched portraits in shades of black and grey. I think the medium is charcoal or pastel crayons, but it may be a brushed ink. This postcard shows a Russian soldier with the artist's signature, Erich Lüdke, very clear in the lower corner. Also with the signature is Biała 1915, Belin in block letters and another line in cursive which is unclear. Biala was part of the twin cities now known as Bielsko-Biała in southern Poland near the borders of Slovakia and the Czech Republic. In 1914 it was within the crownland of Galicia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Several battles between the Russian and Austrian-Hungarian armies were fought in this area.

The back of this card has one of the most unusual handwriting styles I've ever encountered. I believe the long message is in German and written by a soldier, but the spiky penmanship is too dense to make out words. The only thing I can decipher is the date 24 III 17. 

Tracking down this artist was not easy, partly because the name is shared with Erich Lüdke (1882–1946) a German general who served in both WW1 and WW2. At first I wanted this career army officer to have a side talent as an artist because ironically at the end of WW2 he was captured by the Soviet Union and died in a  Russian prison in 1946. However I found other commercial artwork by a Erich Lüdke with the same signature that leads me to believe the artist was a different man. This next German poster has his block letter signature and it dates from 1924/25. I also found examples of illustrations for advertisement posters for cigarettes and coffee that date to the postwar years. 

2ter Deutscher Hanfa-Tag Poster
by Erich Lüdke, c1925
Source: Postermuseum

I could not find any other information about Erich Lüdke, but I suspect he was Austrian, either a soldier fighting in Galicia or an artist commissioned to draw pictures of Russian prisoners of war since all of his postcards were used by Austrian soldiers. 

I'm trying a new method to display a gallery of images on my blog. It's a Google Slideshow document which I hope will work for all viewers, but with all the privacy blockers around it may not display for everyone. Please leave a comment if you are unable to see this collection of 3 other soldiers' portraits by Erich Lüdke.

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My third artist also worked in charcoal pencil to sketch many portraits of captured soldiers. This example shows a proud Russian in a heavy coat, fur cap and with a very insulating beard. A printed caption identifies him simply as a Sibirier ~ Siberian with his full name, Lesow Kaluga. The third photo at the beginning of my story is by the same artist and has a similar caption and name: Buddist ~ Buddhist Jwan Leiduhoff, Sib. Inf._Reg. No. 26.  

The artist signed the pictures as M. Tilke  and added a date underneath of Dec.14 for the Siberian Kaluga, and Jan. 15 for the Buddhist Leiduhoff, the numeral standing as the year. Tilke also added a written note of Nach dem Leben gezeichnet ~ Drawn from life. So I think these were soldiers that he met personally and who sat for him as he made his sketch. 

The first Tilke card was never mailed, but this second one was sent using the German civil postal service but the postmark is smudged. However the writer properly dated it 16. 8. 15. 

The artist's full name was Max Karl Tilke (1869–1942), and he was born in 1869 in Breslau which was then in Prussian Silesia but is now known as  Wrocław, Poland. He was only age 17 when he entered the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin and traveled to France and Italy as a young man. In 1901 Tilke opened the first cabaret in Berlin called "The Hungry Pegasus" ~ "Zum hungrigen Pegasus" where he acted as the Conferencier  or master of ceremonies. 

Tilke had a wide range of artistic interests and earned a reputation for his knowledge of historical and oriental costume. In 1912 at the invitation of the Tsar, he traveled to Tbilisi, Georgia to work at the Caucasus Museum painting the costumes in the museum's collections and undertaking expedition to find more ethnic folk costumes. But the onset of the war in August  1914 prevented him from ever completing his research. On his return to Germany Tilke worked for the publishing union, Deutsche Verlag Union, in Stuttgart and produced other paintings on themes of the war. In the 1920s he returned to his study of Oriental and folk costumes and published several works on this topic. 

Max Tilke produced several postcard series of prisoner of war portraits. Almost all with individual names, dates, and sometimes units. It is easy to see how his interest in folk costumes influenced his choice of subjects. I imagine his sketchbooks were filled with hundreds of soldiers from across Eastern Europe and the Russian Empire. Here is a second slideshow of six more of Tilke's portraits.

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My fourth artist used both charcoal pencil and watercolors and is arguably the most prolific of this quartet of wartime artists. In this sketch we see a bearded French soldier in profile. A caption identifies him as a Französ. Landsturm ~ French militia (reserve) in the 45th regt. of infantry from his collar badge. The artist has signed it: Günkel 1914. 

His previous work at the top of my story was in color and shows a Belgian cavalryman of the 1st regiment of Guides in Brussels. That portrait has a signature of E. Gunkel.

The French soldier's card was sent by a German soldier using the military post on 2 October 1915 from Arlon, Belgium in the southern region just next to Luxemburg.  

The artist's full name was Ernst Günkel (1876–1925). His German Wikipedia entry offers very little except to say he was a German painter "who was best known for his colored portrait drawings, which were published as war souvenir cards by Dr. Trenkler & Co., Leipzig." By a strange coincidence the only image file included on his Wikipedia page is a slightly different version of this same French soldier.

 

Artwork of Ernst Günkel (1876–1925)
Source: de.wikipedia.org

Ernst Günkel's prisoner of war portraits were evidently very popular during the war years as I have found many of his postcards. Like Bitterlich, Lüdke, and Tilke, Günkel painted numerous portraits of Russian soldiers but he was also attracted to the various French-African colonial soldiers who were brought to work and fight on the Western Front. His depiction of Black Africans from Sudan and Sengal as well as swarthy "Turkos" from Algeria and Morocco took a very sympathetic, even fraternal, approach to men whose race was considered exotic to most Germans. 

Printed om the back of many of the cards is a title: Kriegs-Erinnerungs-Karte ~ War memorial card. Some were distributed in aid of the German Red Cross. In several portraits the prisoner of war camp is also identified with the soldier. Günkel's signature on the charcoal sketches almost always has the year 1914, so I believe these soldiers were among the first taken prisoner in the war. Based on some of the postmarks, these cards were published throughout the war years, a testimony to the popularity of Günkel's artwork. 

This last slideshow shows twenty of Günkel's portraits in my collection. 

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A century later it is difficult to interpret how these portraits of enemy soldiers were perceived by Germans during the war. No doubt many Germans found the unusual uniforms, hats, and complexions a novel curiosity. Perhaps the postcard publisher's intent was to humanize the enemy as a subtle way to check anti-war sentiments in the German public and encourage benevolent feelings toward enemy peoples. But only so long as they were pictures of vanquished soldiers who were incarcerated in prison camps. 

What most intrigues me is that Günkel, Tilke, Lüdke, and Bitterlich used their artistic talent in a way that transcends any fake disinformation or jingoistic bluster. These were artists who painted what they saw: real men whose faces reveal pride, anxiety, and even suffering. These were soldiers removed from the horrors of battle but now confined indefinitely to a prison camp. It was a fate that in 1914-15 seemed to have no end.  

 

There is one more question about these portraits that may never be answered. Did these soldiers ever receive a postcard of their sketch or painting that they could send to the folks back in their homeland? I'd like to believe the artists found a way to give each of the men a personally signed picture.

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where great grandpa is always watching what you do.