Elisabeth Steiger, M.A.:

"With the pen of a soldier - the Western Front in drawings: Landscapes,

quarters, trenches - everyday scenes from the war"

Hello, my name is Elisabeth Steiger and I come from the Speyer city archives.

Today I´ll give you a little overview over our archive and I´ll tell you also something about a little

estate from the First World War, which is in our custody today.

But first of all let me tell you something about the region I come from:

The city of Speyer is a historical and cultural significant city in the German state Rheinland-Pfalz with

about 50.000 inhabitants. She is one of the oldest cities in Germany and bases on roman roots.

As a free imperial city Speyer was one of the most important cities of the Holy Roman Empire of

German Nation in mediaeval times. In the cathedral of the city there were buried eight roman-

german emperors and kings from the 11th to the 14th century; among them both apical ancestors of

the house Habsburg: Rudolf and Albrecht from Austria.

The Imperial Chamber Court, the highest court of the old empire was also located in Speyer,

furthermore Speyer was the capital of administration of the west of the Rhine situated Bayern in the

19th/20th century. This also obtained during the First World War.

A famous landmark of the city is the already mentioned Speyer-Cathedral. It is the worldwide biggest

still retained Romanesque cathedral and a part of the UNESCO-World Cultural Heritage.

We as the Speyer city archives are very proud to be the remembrance of a city with such an

outstanding historical importance. The oldest charter from our inventory descends from the year

1182 and ranks among the oldest charters in our region.

Because we think, that old charters should find new paths into the public to reach as much users as

possible and to become known as much as possible, we lay our focus of activity beside the usual

work in an archive above all on the inclusion of the Web 2.0 and on digitization, shortly summarized:

On an “Open Archive”.

In the year 2011 there started a pilot experiment. In the course of this experiment we attempted the

integration of the new media. So lots of stocks have been digitized, which are available online and

our attendance on different Social Media platforms had been started. Meanwhile we sustain

accounts on Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, Slideshare, Pinterest and Youtube. We have a comprehensive

homepage and our own Wikipedia-page. In addition we conduct also six weblogs about different

topics.

What role plays now the First World War in our region?

A lot of months ago had begun the reprocessing of this issue in the south-west of Germany. They

collected material to the subject “First World War” all over the country, which fitted into the

particular region. In our region, the “Pfalz”, they collected to the topic “home front”.

From these collections there accrued a circulation exhibition in collaboration of several archives from

the surrounding area. Involved were among others Heidelberg, Worms and certainly we in Speyer.

Parallel to this the big museums in the surrounding area organized separate exhibitions to this topic

whereby you have to regret that there is often a lack of coordination because of the missing

agreement of the institutions. But this information is only at the edge.

Furthermore there are cross border-projects on this issue, so for example an exhibition of the

archives Colmar and Karlsruhe with the title: “Humans in the war 1914 til 1918 on the upper Rhine”.

In Strasburg there is actually an archaeological exhibition about the First World War.

Despite of all these activities of the surrounding archives the prosperity of resources unfortunately

shows not to advantage, how it was desirable, because the museums which exhaust the same issues

have much more and also other possibilities to advertise their inventory. The inventories of the

archives unfortunately perish a little in respect of this background.

Nevertheless we as archives use certainly all platforms which provide themselves to bring our

“treasures” to the public. As I mentioned, one of the focuses of our work lies in the contact with

social media.

1 ½ years ago we began to take selected presentations about the First World War on Flickr. In these

Flickr-presentations we delivered for example suggestions for the abovementioned exhibition “home

front”. The thereby used photos afford an overview above the situation in Speyer in this time. The

album went down well with the public; meanwhile it has more than 1.400 clicks!

In addition we present for the purposes of other projects on Flickr photos from the estate of Karl Lutz

for example, which descend from the Second World War indeed, but which are made by an archivist

who already documented the First World War as an officer. His photos from the 2 nd World War

descend above all from the east. There is also a special weblog existing for this topic. Summarizing,

the topic “First World War” will be held up to date and managed over different channels.

Comprising we can say, that we sustain some kind of “virtual shop window” in our inventory: Therein

we show, that we have a lot of written heritage, which partly has an impressive age, as mentioned in

the beginning. We have chosen this way of public relations work, because digital presentations offer

undisputed lots of advantages:

They are temporal unlimited

We can spread them very simple and share them on social media platforms like Flickr,

Pinterest or Facebook

Theoretical they are visible worldwide

Beyond that they present possibilities to for crowdsourcing by inclusion of local and trans-

regional users

For this reason we are also part of the german-french EU-Project “Archivum Rhenanum”: In the

course of it we showcase digital inventory transnational and make it hereby accessible for the public.

How is all of that associated with this special estate from the First World War mentioned at the

beginning?

There is an exhibition about the First World War at the university library of Heidelberg which has

been designed and realized by the city archives of Speyer.

It is in process since June 2014. It shows paintings which have been sketched by a soldier in the

trench during the war. The name of this officer was Wilhelm Weber.

Wilhelm Weber descended from Neustadt an der Weinstraße, not far away from Speyer. Before and

also after his time at the front he was a teacher in the region and finally he died in Speyer. His estate

is spread on three institutions: The federal archive Freiburg, the Bavarian war archives Munich and

the city archives Speyer. At the military archives Freiburg there are lots of field post letters from

Weber, at the war archives Munich his personal file as an officer.

Weber was not a famous artist; he is in no sense comparable with Otto Dix or other prestigious

performers of the First World War, which painted their drawings for the depiction of the war-related

events to the public. His paintings acted much more as an explanation in addition to the letters he

sent home from the front.

There are not too many drawings; we talk about an extent of barely 70 works, none of it bigger than

format A 4. Nevertheless they provide us an interesting insight into the life in the trenches and also

behind the line of battle. For that reason we decided to present this estate despite his quite little

extent in the university library of Heidelberg, because the topic is regional anchored, but at the same

time very extraordinary.

The difficulty in the conception of such an exhibition insists therein, that the “show window” affords

a view into the stock of the archives: The archive itself has to stay visible, it does not retire behind

the exhibit, like a museum, but it merchandises itself THROUGH the displayed inventory. On that

account we planned the exhibition I two steps:

Step 1 is a little, but for that very public exhibition in the university library of Heidelberg. Here we

have a student, but also a touristic center of attraction, which is passed unavoidable by thousands of

humans. The exhibition is here in tight contact with the visitor.

Step 2 is a bigger form of the exhibition in the Speyer city archives. The already available exhibition

will be supplemented with more exhibits and information. Here we have certainly another target

audience, because at our archive there is no “transit traffic” like in the university library, but rather

the visitor has to come in for some certain reason, as archives-user or especially for the exhibition.

These two steps are complemented with by a virtual presentation, which makes the exhibition

durable and which can be handled with simple technical tools. In our specific case we made four pin

boards on Pinterest which classify the exhibits in different categories: Landscapes, quarters, trenches

and field post letters.

Moreover we published a document on Slideshare with an extensive biography of Wilhelm Weber.

This virtual implementation was to ensure very easily, because the inventory had already been

digitized for the database findbuch.net, where you can recall it in the next time. Also the license-

question was no problem: All of our pictures are published under a Creative Commons-license.

An innovation toward our previous exhibitions was the integration of QR-Codes into the exposition:

We printed QR-Codes on our description-shields; they should encourage the viewer to look at the

other paintings from this category, which had not enough room in the showcases. The QR-Codes are

linked to Pinterest and Slideshare.

The ideal visit of the exhibition proceeds as follows:

Come

See

Scan

Inform yourself via our virtual presentations – virtually the extension of the presentation via

Smartphone

;-)

The exhibition stays in the university library of Heidelberg til September 2014; afterwards it comes,

like already mentioned in an extended version to the Speyer city archives.

Thank you very much for your attention!