Postcards from the Trenches: A German Soldier’s Testimony of the Great War

by Irene Guenther

Bloomsbury, £30.00

by Malcolm Forbes

When Irene Guenther was clearing out the contents of her parents’ home she came across two large envelopes tucked away in the tight space at the top of the floor-to-ceiling bookcases. In the first envelope were some of her father’s papers; in the second were dozens of 4” x 6” military-issued postcards – Feldpostkarten – sent by a German soldier on the Western Front to his sweetheart on the home front.

What was truly remarkable about these century-old cards was not their written message but their beautiful artwork. The sender, Otto Schubert, had filled each standard blank oblong with a striking hand-painted image of the people he encountered and the places he viewed while in service in France. Guenther was stunned by her discovery but also stumped as to why she, a cultural historian of modern Germany, had never heard of Schubert. She began to investigate, and after eight years of rigorous sleuthwork unearthed enough material for an important book about a forgotten artist.

Postcards from the Trenches: A German Soldier’s Testimony of the Great War comprises Guenther’s exhaustive research and Schubert’s extraordinary art. The opening chapters provide insightful background information about the uses of art in the First World War and renowned German artists whose work was forged from the conflict. We hear of the “cultural emissaries” who were tasked with supplying patriotic propaganda material to rally on troops and buoy up anxious loved ones; learn how billions of postcards were sent to and from the front (the postcard was the Twitter of its day, argues Guenther, “a pervasive and public form of social media”); and through fascinating profiles, discover how the likes of Otto Dix and Käthe Kollwitz felt compelled to assume the role of artist-witness and portray the brutal reality of war.

In Guenther’s third chapter, Schubert – “my elusive trench card artist” – is finally pushed into the spotlight. As she takes us through each stage of his life, we come to agree with her assertion that he was shaped by the convulsive events of the twentieth century. When war broke out he was twenty-two. Drafted into the German army, he was forced to abandon his art studies in Dresden and leave behind his girlfriend Irma Müller. Despite being badly wounded at Verdun, he defied the odds and survived the war and became a rising star in the post-war German art scene.

That success was snuffed out when the Nazis branded his art “degenerate” and brought him to financial ruin. Further tragedy and disappointment followed: during the next war he lost Irma, his home and his studio in Allied air raids; after it, he refused to embrace the art aesthetics of the East German regime and so was denied commissions and support. He died in 1970, a shadow of his former self in the East and practically unknown in the West.

Guenther’s book is a laudable attempt to rehabilitate Schubert. Looking at the book’s focal point, over a hundred pages of Schubert’s postcards, wartime sketches, woodcuts and lithographs, it becomes immediately clear that a full-scale revival and reappraisal is definitely overdue.

The ninety-two postcards are dated either 1915 or 1916. The early ones present carefree or smiling soldiers. A rare self-portrait from December 1915 comes with this scrawled comment for Irma: “I will now send you a series of cards that depict our daily life as vividly as possible.” And so we get a succession of images of soldiers washing, eating, smoking and reading in their dugouts.

Later postcards show beautiful French towns and landscapes, peasants and horses. But in among them are scenes and individuals marked by darker tones. Careful scrutiny of soldiers at rest reveals at least one recruit with his head in his hands, indicating boredom, worry, fatigue or despair. Weary prisoners-of-war shuffle along with bowed heads. There are destroyed buildings, makeshift graves, injured allies and fallen enemies. One picture of a colourful village carries a sombre note: “I’m really fed up with life!!!”

Only a few images depict combat. Those expecting real hardship and carnage should look to the rest of Schubert’s artwork collected here. The black-and-white lithographs he produced in 1917 after being discharged from military service capture the desperate savagery of hand-to-hand fighting and the bleak horror of corpse-strewn no-man’s-lands. The oil painting “Auschwitz Triptych” included at the end of the book, and created at the end of Schubert’s life, is a three-wing display of gut-churning inhumanity.

However, it is the postcards which predominate and, as such, demand our attention. Fortunately, they also merit our attention. A hundred years on from the Armistice, these intimate and exquisite mementoes stand as a testament to what Schubert saw and heard, experienced and endured. They showcase his talent, demonstrate his love, and enlarge our understanding of a war that was supposed to end all wars.