German Amateur Photographers in the First World War : A View from the Trenches on the Western Front

This book is an unprecedented view of the Western Front in World War I from the perspective of German amateur photographers. While fighting in the trenches tens of thousands of German soldiers had their cameras with them in their field packs and took shots of the surrounding reality of war. Largely forgotten since the 1920s, German amateur photographs show the trench war at the Western Front as the infantry man or the company officer captured it spontaneously with his camera. In this way an intimate, moving and authentic view of the Western Front evolved that allows the tragedy of trench war to be viewed from a very different angle than that of professional press and propaganda photographers. The rediscovery of German WWI amateur photography is a long overdue step towards the revival of a piece of men’s visualized war memory that has been neglected for decades.

This book is an unprecedented view of the Western Front in World War I from the perspective of German amateur photographers. While fighting in the trenches tens of thousands of German soldiers had their cameras with them in their field packs and took shots of the surrounding reality of war. Largely forgotten since the 1920s, German amateur photographs show the trench war at the Western Front as the infantry man or the company officer captured it spontaneously with his camera. In this way an intimate, moving and authentic view of the Western Front evolved that allows the tragedy of trench war to be viewed from a very different angle than that of professional press and propaganda photographers. The rediscovery of German WWI amateur photography is a long overdue step towards the revival of a piece of men’s visualized war memory that has been neglected for decades.