Part 5 of the exhibition series “The Great War” about the First World War After years of exhausting warfare, in 1918 the armies of those involved in the war, especially the Habsburg monarchy, were about to collapse. Collapse, resistance and desertions are commonplace, misery and scarcity omnipresent. The supply shortage in the population is taking on unimaginable dimensions, resulting in hunger strikes and a thriving black market. In autumn 1918, the multi-ethnic state of the Habsburgs broke up under the aspirations of individual nationalities. Austria-Hungary signs the long-awaited cease-fire on 3 November, and the Republic of German-Austria is proclaimed in Vienna on 12 November. Two years later, after the peace negotiations, there remains a greatly reduced state of Austria, which only with difficulty finds its way into an independent existence.

The manifold exhibits of the exhibition are accompanied by the words of the founder of the museum: In the years of the war Johann Krahuletz recorded his experiences and memories of this “not only flesh and fatless, but also headless” time in a diary – now he takes in one Listening station for the first time even the word for the Great War and its end.

from Friday, June 8, 2018