A decade for reflection and rethinking
In 1910, Sigmund Freud and other psychoanalysts founded the International Psychoanalytic Association in Nuremberg. At its peak in 1911 Thomas Mann publishes his masterpiece "Death in Venice".
The Sarajevo assassination attempt on Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie triggers the July Crisis, which ultimately leads to the First World War. This dark period accompanies mankind from 1914 to 1918.
Albert Einstein gives his first public lecture at the Treptow Observatory on the general theory of relativity that he developed. In 1919, wireless broadcasting technology is used publicly for the first time. Until then, radio transmissions had been a privilege of the military.
An officer in the First World War
In peace, the Prussian lieutenant was considered a young god; in World War I, he was cannon fodder. No group in the German Army paid a greater blood toll.
Officers were troop leaders in the literal sense of the word. They had to lead and command soldiers in battle, which was a life-threatening business where ducking and crawling away were hardly possible.
The young officers were responsible for a good part of the daily bloody handiwork at the front and, moreover, coordinated the murderous game of back and forth of assault, defense, counterattack and self-defense.
Before the war, the life of an officer was glorious. The singing of officers, the so-called Offiziersgesang, enjoyed the highest social prestige and was reserved especially for the sons of elevated official and bourgeois families as well as the nobility.
Since August 1914, the world as it was known before was completely torn apart - Europe celebrated the outbreak of war and the euphoria at the beginning of the First World War was great. Hardly imaginable from a historical point of view and incomprehensible according to today's understanding.
