Christmas of the enemy

The enemy is us. And our Christmas, or rather our Christmas postcards sent home from the Austro-Hungarian side of the Isonzo front, have just been presented from Advent to Twelfth Day on the Italian side of the same front, in the exhibition Auguri dal Fronte, “Greetings from the Front”, at the Palazzo Corner Mocenigo in Venice, by the Cats Museum of Cattaro/Kotor. As this Christmas is already passing the sign of field posts here at río Wang, let us, in its final hours, present the selection published from the exhibition by the Gazzetta di Cattaro, before it eventually disappears in the bottomless rumen of Facebook.

The Cattaro collection can be also supplemented by the Christmas selection of the Polish FB group Życie codzienne żołnierza piechoty Austro-Węgier (Everydays of the Austro-Hungarian soldiers). Perhaps not from the same front, but the same centrally printed postcards, in all the languages of the Monarchy.

The “Christmas of the enemy” evokes the story noted by Captain Imre Laky in his diary on Christmas 1914, during the siege of the fortress of Przemyśl by the Russians. The story, reminding us of the spontaneous Christmas fraternizations at the Western front, and quoted first by the Nagy Háború blog, then revived by the 444 portal for the centenary, tells about how besiegers and besieged gave Christmas gifts to each other.

“The Russians behaved quite gentleman-like. Despite our expectations, they did not let off a single shot throughout the Christmas holidays. What’s more, they sent Christmas greetings and gifts, as well. It so happened that, during the night, they hung up a great bag on the branch of a dry tree standing between the outposts.

The soldiers in the camp wondered with burning curiosity the entire day: what can be in the bag? As soon as night fell, an enterprising person went out for it. First he just walked around it, like a cat a hot meal or a mouse a mousetrap, but then he pulled it down with a pole. It did not explode. He lifted and dragged the heavy burden along to the camp. It was filled with freshly baked loaves, canned meat and fish, and it even included a German-language Christmas greeting in verse, in which the Russian artillery officers and soldiers confronting us wished us all the best.

At first we did not want to believe the sly-as-a-fox enemy, but when we saw that our stray dog, who joined the battalion, was eating the bread and the canned meat thrown to it as a test, we partook in the gift. And we decided to reciprocate the greetings for New Year.”

The Hungarian “nationalized” versions of the above postcards, from the article of 444, from the collection of Krisztina Babos (Nagy Háború blog)

So much humanity, so much mutual goodwill and respect, so much love of the family, friends, hearth and home. I just do not understand why the war was necessary for all that.

Christmas of officers on the Russian front, 1915. From the Nagy Háború blog

A secret message

The album amicorum, friends’ album, or memoriae causa, collection for the purpose of good memory, was an inevitable item in the meagre luggage of the students wandering from university to university in Europe between the 16th and 19th centuries. Upon setting out, their family members and friends, and in the various cities, their professors, fellow students or distinguished patrons, wrote in them some warm words of erudite aphorisms. The several thousand albums which have survived give a good opportunity for reconstructing the network of the early modern intelligentsia and the usual routes of their university studies.

The sites of the inscriptions in Ferenc Pápai Páriz’s album amicorum, published by us (1711-1726).

The alba amicorum from Hungary or with Hungarian content have been digitized and put in a publicly searchable database by the research group Inscriptiones Alborum Amicorum at the university of Szeged, directed by Miklós Latzkovits. We also work for the research group, especially when an iscription written in an unusual language or in a difficult-to-read hand comes to light. This is the case now, too.

The album of Paul Schirmer from Kronstadt/Brassó/Brașov, compiled between 1681 and 1685, is preserved in the university library of Kolozsvár/Cluj. The two-page inscription below was written by Jeremias Jeckell, likewise from Kronstadt, on 7 March 1683 in Leipzig. The first page displays a beautiful emblem. The hearts of the two friends, joined by a chain, are encircled by a crown similar to the coat of arms of their home town Kronstadt. Next to it, a sunflower looks forever at the sun. According to the convention of the period, this is the symbol of the true believer always looking at God, as the accompanying German poems and Latin biblical verses confirm:

Wahre Freundschaft, Treu und Glauben
Soll nichts denn der Todt uns rauben.

Ich hab auch noch was bey mir, gleich wie Ihr, zu seinen Ruhme,
Ich für mich verehr ihm hier eine schöne Sonnenblume,
Gleich wie diese Blume sich im/m/er nach der Sonnen neigt,
Neigt er sich stets nach dem, der die Blum und Menschen zeigt.

Meine Seele wündscht dabey,
Dass er stets Gottsfürchtig sey!
Auss reinem teutschen Sinn,
Als ich der deine bin,
Schrieb ich dir dieses hin.

Timor Domini est initium sapientiae (The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, Psalm 111,10.)

Coat of arms of Kronstadt/Brassó/Brașov

However, there is something more in the inscription, which we are not able to decypher, consisting of two short texts on the sides of the emblem, which cannot be read in any known language. We suspect it may be some kind of secret script. So again we turn to our seasoned readers. Are you able to tell what script and language were used to write these short lines, and what do they mean?

Mensaje secreto

El album amicorum –álbum de amigos–, o memoriae causa –receptáculo de buenas memorias–, era pertrecho obligado en el exiguo equipaje de los estudiantes que andaban de acá para allá por Europa, de universidad en universidad, entre los siglos XVI y XIX. En sus páginas, familiares y amigos próximos, pero sobre todo profesores, distinguidos compañeros o mecenas tratados en las diversas ciudades, escribían unas breves palabras cálidas en eruditos aforismos. Los pocos miles de álbumes que han sobrevivido ofrecen una excepcional oportunidad para la reconstrucción de la red de contactos de la intelligentsia a principios de la Edad Moderna y de las rutas habituales de los estudios universitarios.

Lugares con las anotaciones del album amicorum, que nosotros publicamos (1711-1726) de Ferenc Pápai Páriz

Los alba amicorum de Hungría, o con contenido relativo al país, los ha digitalizado y puesto al alcance del público el grupo de investigación Inscriptiones Alborum Amicorum de la Universidad de Szeged, dirigido por Miklós Latzkovits. También nosotros hemos colaborado con ellos, en especial cuando salen a luz notas en idiomas desacostumbrados o con partes difíciles de leer. Este es el caso de ahora


El álbum de Paul Schirmer de Kronstadt / Brassó / Braşov, compilado entre 1681 y 1685, se conserva en la biblioteca de la universidad de Kolozsvár / Cluj. La nota de dos páginas que veréis a continuación fue escrita por Jeremías Jeckell, también oriundo de Kronstadt, el siete de marzo de 1683 en Leipzig. La primera página muestra un hermoso emblema. Los corazones de los dos amigos, unidos por una cadena, están rodeados por una corona similar a la del escudo de armas de su ciudad natal de Kronstadt. Al lado izquierdo, un girasol mira siempre hacia un sol que brilla entre nubes. De acuerdo con las convenciones básicas de la época, es símbolo del verdadero creyente, que siempre está mirando a Dios. Así lo confirman los poemas alemanes y versículos bíblicos en latín que lo acompañan:

Wahre Freundschaft, Treu und Glauben
Soll nichts denn der Todt uns rauben.

Ich hab auch noch was bey mir, gleich wie Ihr, zu seinen Ruhme,
Ich für mich verehr ihm hier eine schöne Sonnenblume,
Gleich wie diese Blume sich im/m/er nach der Sonnen neigt,
Neigt er sich stets nach dem, der die Blum und Menschen zeigt.

Meine Seele wündscht dabey,
Dass er stets Gottsfürchtig sey!
Auss reinem teutschen Sinn,
Als ich der deine bin,
Schrieb ich dir dieses hin.

Timor Domini est initium sapientiae (El temor de Dios es el principio de la sabiduría, Salmo 111,10.)

Escudo de armas de Kronstadt/Brassó/Brașov

Sin embargo, hay algo más en la inscripción, que no somos capaces de descifrar. Son dos textos breves, a ambos lados de la pictura, que no logramos atribuir a ningún idioma conocido. Sospechamos que pudiera tratarse de algún tipo de escritura secreta. Así que de nuevo nos dirigimos a nuestros avisados lectores. ¿Sois capaces de averiguar qué clave o idioma utilizan estas breves líneas? ¿Y qué significan?

The miracle tree

Rome, Termini Railway Station

Field postcards for Christmas

In the last pieces of the “Pink Postcards” series we have seen how much Károly worried, whether they would be ordered to the front before Christmas, and with what a joy he reported to his bride that, fortunately, they will stay at home for the feast. Others, however, were not so lucky. On the occasion of Christmas, we remember with a few seventy-year old field postcards from the collection of János Fellner those, who, not of their own choice, spent the feast thousands of miles away from their loved ones.

“A pleasant Christmas and a happy new year!”

On 13 December 1942, Buck Sergeant László Kovacsics greets his bride, Miss Lujzika Faust in Budapest, Zsigmond Street – now Frankel Leó Street – with a hand-drawn field postcard. The drawing was apparently multiplied with carbon paper by a skillful member of the battalion, who was compensated for his service with cigarettes, brandy, or replacement in the patrol. I remember this well, because in our battalion I was this skillful one. Accordingly, the female face does not depict the actual darling, but the contemporary ideal of beauty, most certainly modeled after Katalin Karády, whose song entitled “Somewhere in Russia” – as we have seen – was already the inspiration number one of the field postcards.



Katalin Karády: Somehwere in Russia (1942)

The Hungarian army also issued postcards with printed drawings, where the clumsy sincerity of the individual drawings are replaced by the patriarchal and patriotic pathos of the central ideology. The leitmotif may be a Karády song here, too: “Far away, in the Russian land whines the wind / a sentry is standing on his post, a brave Hungarian lad…” The postcard was released both with an urban and a rural family.

“[Wishing you] a happy Hungarian Christmas!”

And a version without families, for the unmarried soldiers, with a war correspondent fleeing a deer. The date is 1941: this was the first Christmas when the field post operated.

“Happy Christmas and New Year from the Russian land. Edition of the war correspondent battalion”

The field post did not close after the end of the war either. From 1946 it was possible to send letters via the Red Cross to those in Soviet captivity. The Communist Party, discovering the propaganda opportunity, issued bilingual, Hungarian-Russian Christmas postcards to be used only in this period, for which they guaranteed access to the addressee through their Soviet connections. You can imagine what the captives languishing in the camps might have thought when reading the slogan “Strengthen the Hungarian-Soviet friendship”. But it was all the same, if this was the price to obtain news of their loved ones.

“26 November 1947. My dear Józsi, my sweet little husband, if fate requires so that you cannot be here in your little house even for Christmas, I wish you a pleasant Christmas, feel well, and know that Babuska is yours forever. In spirit you will be with me here, at home. Kissing you a million times, your wife who is waiting for you even on Christmas Eve, Babuska”

Pink postcards 10

[23 December 1914]
Name of the sender: K. Timó, Budapest, 1st Infantry Regiment
Address of the sender: 3rd March Battalion, 4th Section

Address: To the honored Miss Antónia Zajác
3rd district, Kis-Korona Street 52
Budapest

Previous letters (gray dots): • Budapest, 21 December 1914 • Budapest, 11 December 1914 • Budapest, 2 December 1914 • Budapest, 28 November 1914 • Budapest, 27 November 1914 • Budapest, 18 November 1914 • Budapest, 27 October 1914 • Debrecen, 25 September 1914 • Szerencs, 28 August 1914

My dear son!
I wish a merry Christmas to you, your mother and sisters, hoping that next year at this time we can be together, not this much pulled apart. Now we are staying here for this year. But I do not think that there will be any leave, because even our lunch is brought up to the second floor.
Please come in the same way that we agreed last week. Today we go to confession. How are you? I feel as if I were in prison.
Greetings to your mother and sisters
Embraces and kisses
Károly

[We will never know whether in the conditions of full alert he succeeded in going home at least for an hour. Or whether he could at least say goodbye.

“Today we go to confession.” It’s a practical measure: in the firing-line there will be little time to deal with such things.

A Christmas spent in Budapest, even if it makes you feel like in a prison within the walls of the barracks, is a thousand times more peaceful than with the troops in the battlefield.

Courtyard of the barracks in peacetime

We would think that on the holy feast of Christmas, there is peace between the hostile parties at least for a short time. The two different calendars also give the possibility for that.

Looking at the current „Höfer report”, it says so little, that those at home could even imagine peaceful front conditions.

A typical höfer. The field reports signed by Lieutenant-General Höfer, Deputy Chief of the General Staff, became a synonym for balanced and retouched war correspondence

These posts usually avoid wisdom that comes from subsequent knowledge, since the actors in the war themselves did not know what the future, even the next day, would bring for them. (And if they knew it, what would have they done? An interesting question, but a side-issue now.)

On this occasion, however, it is worthwhile to open the chronicle of the regiment published after the war, although it also includes quite a number of höfers. The regiment of Károly, wrestling with the Russians on the crest of the Carpathians, was almost totally destroyed by this time. The chronicle, albeit in a polished form, and generously concealing the details, reports about terrible losses, caused by the ever-wilder Russian attacks instead of the hoped-for smoothing of the struggle before Christmas Eve.

“Under the pressure of this situation, on the 22nd at 3 a.m. the regiment began the retreat through Korcina to the northwest exit of Krosno. In the complete darkness they succeeded to detach themselves from the enemy, and, after marching with bowed heads in the deep mud, they occupied rear-guard positions on the altitudes before Krosno, where already in the afternoon they fought heavy fights with the advancing Russian forces. Then they retreated through Krosno to Suchodel, where, having occupied the altitudes, they covered the retreat of the rest of the division until two in the morning.
On 23 December 3 a.m., after drawing tinned food and bread, the regiment marched through Suchodow, Miesto, Piastówe, Royi and Rowno, and in the northern foothills of Zboiska, they occupied new rear-guard positions. At 3 p.m. a strong fire fight developed between us and the enemy artillery and infantry, which went on during the night. On this day, only coffee and bread were distributed for meal.
On 24 December the artillery fire was so intense already in the morning, that it could be compared only to the later drum-fire of Isonzo…”]

Blessed and peaceful Christmas to all readers!

Next postcard: 31 December 1914

Come with us to Rome!

“You can visit the monuments, but you cannot get to know Rome”, my landlord warned me when, twenty years ago, for the first time I rented an apartment for a year in Rome. As an art historian, Italianist, interpreter and traveler I have regularly gone back, and even if I cannot assert I have got to know her – who can assert this? –, it is sure that I came and went, saw, ate, drank and read there, and I acquainted myself with many of its inhabitants and secluded nooks. This is what I would like to pass along, in concentrated form, to all those who come with me on a five-day tour of Rome in late February and early March, so often heralded in our trips of this year.

The date are the last two weekends before the tourist season, when the city is not yet filled with visitors, the prices of hotels and restaurants do not yet rise to the sky, yet the weather is already pleasant – around twenty degrees Celsius, although rain is still to be expected –, the almonds are blossoming, and oranges bearing fruit. So many people have already indicated their willingness to come, that I have conditionally fixed two weekends in the hotel next to the Spanish Steps and Trevi Fountain, so we can roam the city with two smaller companies rather than with a big one. Both periods last from Wednesday to Sunday, the first from 25 February to 1 March, the second from 4 to 8 March. If you would like to come, register until next Friday, 26 December – because hotel rooms and cheap flight tickets run out quickly – at wang@studiolum.com, also specifying, which date you prefer, or which one is definitely not good for you. The participation fee is 280 euro, which includes the three-star hotel (one bed in a two-bed room; one-bed-room supplement 80 euro) with continental breakfast (a rarity in Rome), metro and bus ticket for five days, and the guide. In addition, you should buy your own flight/train ticket to Rome and back.

During the five days we will see in the city as much as we can, of course giving its due to the cafés, the trattorie, sitting on church steps during siesta time, without which one surely cannot get to know Rome. We will ramble in the Renaissance and Baroque city center on the Tiber bend, visit the most important churches, palaces, squares and inner courtyards, have an overview of the structure and remaining relics of ancient Rome, and how the imperial concept of Fascism shaped them, go to see the two-thousand-year old ghetto, particularly exploring its hidden corners untouched by modern city planning, make an excursion to the campagna, follow the medieval pilgrim routes, get to know the urban visions of the great Renaissance and Baroque popes following each other, which gradually developed the present-day face of Rome. I also enclose maps and literature for the individual tours, so that after the five days everyone can continue the travel on their own, from their armchair, or by returning to the Eternal City.