Contesting the Russian Borderlands:

The German Military Administration of Occupied ,

1915-1918

By Christopher Alan Barthel

B.A., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2004

A.M., Brown University, 2005

A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the

Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

in the Department of History at Brown University

Providence, Rhode Island

May 2011

© Copyright 2010 by Christopher Alan Barthel

This dissertation by Christopher Alan Barthel is accepted in its present form by the Department of History as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Date ______Omer Bartov, Advisor

Recommended to the Graduate Council

Date ______Deborah Cohen, Reader

Date ______Maud Mandel, Reader

Approved by the Graduate Council

Date ______Peter M. Weber, Dean of the Graduate School

iii

Curriculum Vitae

Christopher Alan Barthel completed a B.A. in History at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana in May 2004 and received an A.M. in History from Brown

History in May 2005. At Brown he specialized in the social and cultural history of modern Europe with an emphasis on , France, and .

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am profoundly grateful to the many people who provided the support and guidance that helped me complete this project. Omer Bartov has been an insightful and supportive advisor whose advice and encouragement were indispensible. His example as a teacher, scholar, and mentor has directed my intellectual development throughout graduate school. I was fortunate to have

Maud Mandel serve as the director of a field and as a reader for my dissertation.

Her encouragement and trenchant observations have made a world of difference.

Deborah Cohen likewise offered crucial analytical insights that strengthened my work and suggested new avenues of research. Other members of the Brown

University History Department whose help and input I greatly appreciate include

Joan Richards, Mary Gluck, Tom Gleason, Ethan Pollack, and Ken Sacks. Volker

Berghahn generously assisted me during my time as an Exchange Scholar at

Columbia University. Julissa Bautista, Mary Beth Bryson, and Cherrie Guerzon all helped me clear innumerable hurdles along the way.

I could not have completed my research without the assistance of archivists and the use of collections at the Geheimes Staatsarchiv preussischer

Kulturbesitz, Staatsbibliothek zu , Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, the

Lithuanian State Historical Archive, and the Manuscript Department of the

Lithuanian Academy of Sciences. I am thankful to the archivists at the Lithuanian

v institutions in particular for their endless patience negotiating occasionally difficult linguistic obstacles.

I am indebted to the friends and colleagues whose intellectual and emotional support has helped me throughout the development of my project.

Oded Rabinovitch, Derek Seidman, Adam Webster, Michael Furman, Leonidas

Stefanos, and Robert Sparacino have all provided absolutely essential encouragement and input. Mo Moulton, Farid Azfar, Fatema Dalal, Joyce Liang,

Gill Frank, Aaron Hermann, Stephen Downey, Alex Kunst, and Adam Sacks have all contributed a great deal.

I could never have undertaken this project without the limitless support, encouragement, understanding, and patience of my family. My parents, Marlene and Randall Barthel, and my brother and sister-in-law, Brandon and Deanna

Barthel, never shied away from helping me address the inevitable difficulties of graduate school. My grandparents, Vivian and Adolf Porak, and Mildred and

Richard Barthel, contributed in manifold ways. Eliane Sandler and Gisela

Adamski have both provided illuminating perspectives on history as well as warm and welcoming homes away from home.

Shiri Sandler experienced the vicissitudes of graduate school with me every step of the way. I relied upon her emotional support and intellectual contributions throughout and I am endlessly grateful for them. I could not have had a better partner to accompany me throughout the process.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction: German Rule in Occupied Lithuania, 1915-1918 1

Chapter 1: The Initial Encounter: The Invasion of Russia in 27 Diaries and Memoirs, 1914-15

Chapter 2: Instituting German Rule in the Occupied Borderlands 80

Chapter 3: The German Administration Press and the 131 Cultivation of Deutschtum

Chapter 4: Heer, Heimat, Bevölkerung: The Intersection of 191 Culture, Politics, and Policy

Chapter 5: Ethnicity and Social Change in the Borderlands, 254 1917-1918

Conclusion: Enduring German Visions of the East 323

Bibliography 328

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Introduction: German Rule in Occupied Lithuania, 19151918

Vast tracts of Russia’s western provinces came under the purview of the German military after its overwhelming victories on the Eastern Front in 1915. Two to three million soldiers and thousands of administrators served in the East between 1915 and

1918, the majority encountering the ’s neighboring lands for the first time. Personally experiencing the Russian Empire profoundly affected them. They felt they had entered a fundamentally different land. Great differences in agriculture, industry, and infrastructure were seen as manifestations of eastern backwardness and interpreted in an overwhelmingly negative light. Dilapidated homes, poor roads, and cities plagued by infectious disease were examples that highlighted Russia’s apparent inferiority to Germany in all regards. 1 Although an insignificant percentage of the region’s native residents were ethnically Russian, they were nonetheless all thought to be as backward as the lands they inhabited. Notwithstanding incipient national movements among Lithuanians and Latvians, and the longstanding national aspirations of Poles, the

German conquerors did not regard local civilians as capable of taking care of their own affairs. The logical response appeared to be the permanent extension of German influence to the borderlands in order to provide the region a promising future. The scope of this first massscale experience of the Russian Empire during the First World War was indeed quite novel and impactful, but it also entailed the continuation of longer trends in the history of the German and Russian relationship.

1 Emphasis on Russia’s inferiority was part of a general European tendency to view “the East” or “Eastern Europe” as fundamentally different, backward, and Oriental. See Hans Lemberg, “Zur Entstehung des Osteuropabegriffs im 19. Jahrhundert. Vom ‘Norden’ zum ‘Osten’ Europas,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 33 (1985): 4891; Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994). 1

The German military administration of conquered Russian territory (abbreviated

“” from the “Supreme Commander of the East”, the Oberbefehlshaber Ost ) must be viewed as an episode of Germany’s imperial history, one influenced both by the exigencies of the first total war and also by the ’s previous efforts to create a homogeneous national whole from ethnically distinct populations. The German attempt to impose a new vision of order in the imperial borderlands is not merely the story of occupation policy; it is also the lived experience of expanding the empire’s power abroad. Soldiers and administrators who implemented German policy were highly conscious of the attempt to substitute German rule for Russian in the imperial borderlands, influenced both by the firsthand experiences of their travels and duties and by the officially promoted image of the East as depicted in Ober Ost policies and propaganda. The interplay of official directives and personal experience – both of which were influenced by imperial Germany’s past attempts to achieve ethnic homogeneity – together shaped perspectives on the project of extending German order to the eastern borderlands.

These issues were inextricably linked to Russia’s ethnic composition; both

Germany and Russia struggled to safely channel nationalist movements within their multiethnic empires. , Germany’s politically and industrially dominant state, included considerable numbers of ethnic Poles who became subjects when Prussia,

Russia and partitioned at the end of the eighteenth century. All three empires dealt with the consequences over the next century; in Germany, for example, the desire to quell Polish nationalism and to ethnically homogenize the empire factored into

2 the Kulturkampf and fueled debates on labor and immigration policy. 2 Germany’s ethnic

conflicts did not begin and end with Poles, but Russia’s much larger empire certainly

entailed a far greater degree of ethnic heterogeneity. Russia’s alone

included substantial minority populations of ethnic Latvians, Lithuanians, Germans,

Belarusians, Poles, and Ukrainians. When the borderlands came under German

administration during the First World War, German administrators were challenged by

the ethnic mix that confronted them. They lacked deep knowledge about political and

social conditions in the borderlands, but they relied on a long tradition of antiRussian

stereotypes to make sense of their position. Clearly distinct from their ethnic Russian

rulers, the minority populations of the borderlands were nevertheless understood in the

context of the clash of the Russian and German Empires.

As Winston Churchill stated in the title of his 1931 history, the events of the

Eastern Front during comprised an “unknown war” that received a fraction of the attention devoted to the Western Front. 3 Churchill’s characterization held true until

scholars began to redress this imbalance over the past two decades. Indeed, the most

notable characteristic of the Eastern Front’s history after 1918 was how quickly this

enormous aspect of the Great War seems to have been forgotten. The vast consequences

of the and the caesura of the Bolshevik Revolution help explain why

2 Richard Blanke, Prussian Poland in the German Empire (1871-1900) (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1981), 24; Werner Conze, Polnische Nation und deutsche Politik (: BöhlauVerlag, 1958), 2930; Ulrich Herbert, A History of Foreign Labor in Germany, 1880-1980: Seasonal Workers, Forced Laborers, Guest Workers (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990), 985; Knuth Dohse, Ausländischer Arbeiter und bürgerlicher Staat. Genese und Funktion von staatlicher Ausländerpolitik und Ausländerrecht. Vom Kaiserreich bis zur Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Berlin: Express Edition, 1985); Volker Zimmermann, “Der 'Einfluß des slavischen Elements'. Zeitgenössische Erklärungen für die Kriminalität im Osten des Deutschen Kaiserreiches,” in Die Deutschen und das östliche Europa. Aspekte einer vielfältigen Beziehungsgeschichte , ed. Dietmar Neutatz and Volker Zimmermann (Essen: Klartext, 2006), 131147. 3 Winston Churchill, The Unknown War: The Eastern Front (: C. Scribner's Sons, 1931). 3 it received relatively little attention in Germany during the immediate postwar years, but it is more difficult to explain why a historiography so fixated on the question of German imperialism has paid little attention to a war waged by three multiethnic empires in East

Central Europe’s contested borderlands.

Occupation policy in Lithuania is particularly well suited to historical research, not least because its documentation has survived disproportionately. Lithuania figured prominently in German plans both because of its geographical location – the German armies marched immediately into Lithuania after expelling the defeated from

East Prussia in 1915 and the area was one of the Russian Empire’s crucial lines of defense – and because of the land’s unique cultural and political mix. The German occupiers knew little about Lithuanian culture, but they assumed that the small and apparently “backward” people could be easily subordinated to German interests. By 1914

Lithuanian nationalism was on the rise, yet it was not as widespread as nationalist sentiment in neighboring Poland. 4 Lithuania did not appear to German political and military leaders as a significant political threat, and administrative policy reflected this evaluation. The politically threatening Poles came under civilian administration in much the same manner as the Belgians in the West, while the other occupied areas in the East, including Lithuania, remained under military rule. Military administration tied the land’s future to the outcome of the war, seeking to delay any longterm political decisions until the German military had gained the upper hand. Behind the scenes, politicians, military officers, and nationalist pressure groups made preliminary preparations to ensure that

4 On the history of Lithuanian nationalism, see Zigmas Zinkevicius, The History of the (: Mokslo ir enciklopediju leidybos institutas, 1996); Zigmantas Kiaupa, The History of Lithuania (Vilnius: Baltos Laukos, 2005); Tomas Balkelis, The Making of Modern Lithuania (: Routledge, 2009). 4

Lithuania would be annexed or otherwise subordinated to the German Empire. These plans were never implemented, but Lithuania remains an ideal site for studying the role played by the military administration in the expansion of German power abroad.

Advocates of imperialism were well aware of the opportunities for expansion offered by Germany’s military success on the Eastern Front in 1915. Indeed, historiographical debate over Germany’s imperialist ambitions has largely focused on the political realm, whether purely restricted to foreign policy or also concerned with the interplay between foreign and domestic policy. Fritz Fischer’s suggestion of direct continuities between the imperial ambitions of the Kaiserreich and the Third Reich unleashed heated debate and spawned a number of attempts to further investigate the connections between Wilhelmine and Nazi imperialism. 5 Political leaders’ ambitions for

conquered Russian territory in the First World War have been extensively documented,

showing a clear desire to expand German power in the eastern borderlands that was cut

short only by the military’s failure to emerge victorious on the Western Front. 6

Wilhelmine policymakers tended to view gains in the East as a precondition for the

Empire’s border security, and therefore it was particularly well suited to either

annexation or some other form of dependent relationship. AntiRussian stereotypes and

domestic social conflicts together conditioned these attitudes; the Russian borderlands

5 Fritz Fischer, Germany's Aims in the First World War (New York: W. W. Norton, 1967); Fritz Fischer, War of Illusions: German Policies from 1911 to 1914 (New York: Norton, 1975); Woodruff D. Smith, The Ideological Origins of Nazi Imperialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). 6 Imanuel Geiss, Der Polnische Grenzstreifen, 1914-1918: Ein Beitrag zur Deutschen Kriegszielpolitik im Ersten Weltkrieg (Lübeck: Matthiesen, 1960); Wolfgang J Mommsen, Der Erste Weltkrieg: Anfang vom Ende des Bürgerlichen Zeitalters ( am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch, 2004); Werner Basler, Deutschlands Annexionpolitik in Polen und im Baltikum, 1914-1918 (Berlin: Rütten & Loening, 1962); Gerd Linde, Die Deutsche Politik in Litauen im Ersten Weltkrieg (Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1965); Egmont Zechlin, Die deutsche Politik und die Juden im Ersten Weltkrieg (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck u. Ruprecht, 1969) ; Volker Ullrich, “Die polnische Frage und die deutschen pläne im Herbst 1915,” Historisches Jahrbuch 104 (1984): 348371. 5 appeared to be politically undeveloped and therefore susceptible to German domination, and they offered settlement land that could relieve social and economic pressures. The overarching political issues are well understood, but the history of daytoday administration has received considerably less attention.

Just as the attempt to situate the Third Reich’s imperial ambitions into the history of modern Germany has influenced the study of war aims in the First World War, so too have questions regarding Germany’s war on the Eastern Front in the Second World War inspired studies of the occupation during the First World War. 7 The small, but steadily growing body of scholarship has so far been shaped by attempts to determine how the

German policies and experiences in the East from 1915 to 1918 influenced or compared to Germany’s war in the East two decades later. Extrapolating the experience of the First

World War for the purposes of comparison to those of the Second World War has proven a useful means of addressing major questions of continuity between the two wars even if

Ober Ost’s exploitive policies fell far short of ’s genocidal occupation of

Soviet lands. In his groundbreaking occupation in Lithuania, Vejas

Gabriel Liulevicius argues that “most durable product” of the administration was “the

7 The three principal historians to deal with the subject are Vejas G. Liulevicius, Jürgen Matthäus and Aba Strazhas and their work address the issue in different ways: Liulevicius from the perspective of cultural historical attitudes, or “mindscapes” learned in the east; Matthäus with German policy toward Eastern European Jews; Strazhas with German policy toward Jews and toward the combating of banditry. See Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity and German Occupation in World War I (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Jürgen Matthäus, “German Judenpolitik in Lithuania During the First World War,” in Leo Baeck Institute Year Book , vol. 43 (London: Secker and Warburg, 1998), 15574; A. Strazhas, Deutsche Ostpolitik im Ersten Weltkrieg: Der Fall Ober Ost 1915-1917 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1993); Aba Strazhas, “Die Tätigkeit des Dezernats für jüdische Angelegenheiten in der “deutschen Miltärverwaltung Ober Ost”,” in Die Baltischen Provinzen Russlands zwischen den Revolutionen von 1905 und 1917 , ed. Andrew Ezergailis and Gert von Pistohlkors (Köln: Böhlau, 1982), 315330. More recent and generally brief examinations of Ober Ost are also available. See Bruno Thoss and Hans Erich Volkmann, eds., Erster Weltkrieg, Zweiter Weltkrieg: Ein Vergleich: Krieg, Kriegserlebnis, Kriegserfahrung in Deutschland (Paderborn: F. Schöningh, 2002); Gerhard Paul Gross, ed., Die Vergessene Front--Der Osten 1914/15: Ereignis, Wirkung, Nachwirkung (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2006) 6 transformation which took place within individual soldiers, creating a specific way of viewing and treating the lands and peoples of the East.” 8 These views “ultimately …

were harnessed and radicalized by the Nazis for their new order in Europe.” 9

Documentary evidence attests to the impressions that the experience left on soldiers and administrators who served in the East, yet it has proven difficult to identify direct continuities between the occupations of the First and Second World Wars or to establish that the experience constituted a precondition for ; the perpetrators of the

Holocaust do not seem to have been particularly interested in the lessons of Ober Ost administration.

Mental legacies remain the best locus for comparing the two events, but this approach also has weaknesses. The lack of interwar references to the experience renders the comparison dubious. Notwithstanding the radicalized antiBolshevism and that nationalistic Freikorps volunteers brought back to Germany after the war had ended, the event did not involve the participation of the vast number of the administrators and soldiers who had worked in the borderlands under Wilhelmine auspices during the war; the Freikorps volunteers were not the sole heirs to the German military’s wartime administrative policies and it is not clear that the Ober Ost institutional framework was essential to their perspective. 10 Speculation on the experiential legacies of the First World War addresses a fascinating set of questions at the risk of reading history backwards. German rule of Russian territory during the First

World War must be analyzed with reference to the political, military, and cultural institutions of Wilhelmine Germany. It is an open question whether the army’s policies

8 Liulevicius, War Land , 47. 9 Ibid., 1. 10 Ibid., 227246. 7 for the peoples of the Russian Empire created and disseminated a novel and uniquely influential view of the East or rather “developed within existing matrices and paradigms.” 11 It would seem, however, that the precedents for and influences on the

German experience and administration of the borderlands are more telling than the

consequences for subsequent generations.

It can be more firmly established that the occupiers drew from a history of

administering and effecting change in the German imperial borderlands in the preceding

three decades. Wilhelmine Germany was not a homogeneous nationstate, and it was preoccupied with perceived national challenges from its eastern provinces and eastern neighbors since unification in 1871. 12 Germany’s domestic social and religious conflicts

are well known; the nationality conflicts within the borders of the Kaiserreich have

received less attention despite the fact that ethnic Poles in Prussia’s eastern provinces

were a source of great consternation among Prussian politicians and officials. 13 By providing for gradual Germanization through the purchase of failing Polish estates and

redistribution to ethnically German farmers, the 1886 Settlement Law radicalized

Prussia’s attempts to ensure the loyalty of its ethnically Polish subjects. Legislation in

1908 expanded the policy by providing for the forced expropriation of Polish land to

augment the provinces’ diminishing ethnic German populations. The Germanization

efforts were informed by antiPolish prejudice that was one aspect of the general view of

11 See Dennis E. Showalter, “"The East Gives Nothing Back": The Great War and the German Army in Russia,” The Journal of the Historical Society II (2002): 16. Also Rüdiger Bergien, “Vorspiel des 'Vernichtungskrieges'? Die Ostfront des Ersten Weltkriegs und das Kontinuitätsproblem,” in Die vergessene Front. Der Osten 1914/15 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2006), 393408. 12 On the framing of Wilhelmine Germany as an east central European multiethnic Empire, see Philipp Ther, “Imperial instead of National History. Positioning Modern German History on the Map of European Empires,” in Imperial Rule , ed. Alexei Miller and Alfred J. Rieber (New York: Central European University Press, 2004), 4766. 13 William W. Hagen, Germans, Poles, and Jews: The Nationality Conflict in the Prussian East, 1772-1914 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). 8 the East as a region backward in social, cultural, and technological terms. 14 Debates over

Polish migrant workers from the Russian and AustroHungarian Empires reinforced this view and added to social tensions regarding the prioritization of industry, agriculture, and ethnic Germanness. 15 The German view of the empire’s eastern neighbors was heavily influenced by negative stereotypes of uneducated Polish workers, unhygienic Jewish emigrants, and despotic tsarist rule. The push eastward in the First World War was accompanied by the longstanding conceit that Germany was superior in every way to its backward and threatening eastern neighbors.

AntiPolish policy combined with antiSlavic sentiment to shape the broader constellation of derogatory views of Russia and the East. “Slavs” and “Slavic” served as collective terms to project this negative view of Russia and its subject peoples, effacing finer distinctions in the process. 16 The Poles quite obviously resented Russian rule and

14 There is substantial literature on German perception of Russia. See Rainer Fuhrmann, Die Orientalische Frage, das "Panslawistisch-Chauvinistische Lager" und das Zuwarten auf Krieg und Revolution: Die Osteuropaberichterstattung und -Vorstellungen der "Deutschen Rundschau" 1874-1918 (Bern: Herbert Lang, 1975); Mechthild Keller, ed., Russen und Russland aus deutscher Sicht: 19./20. Jahrhundert: Von der Bismarckzeit bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg (München: W. Fink, 2000); Karl Eimermacher and Astrid Volpert, eds., Verführungen der Gewalt: Russen und Deutsche im Ersten und Zweiten Weltkrieg , (München: Fink, 2005); Gregor Thum, ed., Traumland Osten: Deutsche Bilder vom östlichen Europa im 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006). 15 Herbert, A History of Foreign Labor in Germany, 1880-1980 , 985. 16 Peter Hoeres, “Die Slawen. Perzeptionen des Kreigsgegners bei den Mittelmächten. Selbst und Feindbild,” in Die vergessene Front. Der Osten 1914/15 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2006), 181. Prewar depictions also conceived of a “protective wall against Slawentum ” and this idea channeled the rhetoric of leading policymakers like Bismarck, who argued that his policies defended against the Slavs “wiping out” the Germans. Regarding the protective wall, see Hoeres, “Die Slawen. Perzeptionen des Kreigsgegners bei den Mittelmächten. Selbst und Feindbild,” 186; Conze, Polnische Nation und deutsche Politik , 31. Uwe Puschner argues that völkisch concept of the enemy prior to the war gave special priority to the Slavs as the greatest threat. Uwe Puschner, Die völkische Bewegung im wilhelminische Kaiserreich: Sprache – Rasse – Religion (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2001), 102. See also Robert L. Nelson, “German Comrades – Slavic Whores: Gender Images in the German Soldier Newspapers of the First World War,” in Home/Front. The Military, War and Gender in Twentieth-Century Germany , ed. Karen Hagemann and Stefanie SchülerSpringorum (New York: Berg, 2002); Thomas F. Schneider, “Winzige schwarze Punkte. Bemerkungen zur Darstellung "des Russen" in der deutschen Prosa zum Ersten Weltkrieg (19141933),” in Verführungen der Gewalt: Russen und Deutsche im Ersten und Zweiten Weltkrieg , ed. Karl Eimermacher and Astrid Volpert (München: Fink, 2005); David Blackbourn, “‘The Garden of our Hearts’: Landscape, Nature, and Local Identity in the German East,” in Localism, Landscape, and the Ambiguities of Place: German-Speaking Central Europe, 1860-1930 , ed. David 9 the Lithuanians and Latvians were not Slavs, but they were all nevertheless intimately associated with the backward Russian Empire. Slavs appeared to manifest a “lower level of culture” that marked their inferiority to Germany. The notion of a cultural gradient running west to east provided the means of viewing the entire Russian Empire as hopelessly deficient in all regards. Charges of Russian barbarism and “culturelessness” were well established prior to the First World War, resting on depictions of “an autocratic ruler, an inefficient and often corrupt bureaucracy, and the poor material conditions inside Russia, which included a relatively backward economy, widespread illiteracy, and poverty as well as periodic famines.” 17 This perspective was likely current even among

Germans who knew little about the particulars of life in the Russian borderlands. Troy

Paddock’s analysis of Wilhelmine era history and geography textbooks offers particularly important insight into the German view of Russia; Russia was depicted as “culturally backward and incapable of selfimprovement.” 18 Moreover, Russia appeared to be so far inferior to and so fundamentally different from Germany that it was viewed as part of the disconcertingly foreign Orient rather than Europe. This unsettling foreignness and the

Blackbourn and James N. Retallack (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), 149164; Helmut Smith, German Nationalism and Religious Conflict: Culture, Ideology, Politics, 1870-1914 (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1995), 174. 17 Troy Paddock, Creating the Russian Peril: Education, the Public Sphere, and National Identity in Imperial Germany, 1890-1914 (Rochester, N.Y: Camden House, 2010), 3. There is substantial literature on German perception of Russia. See Gerd Koenen and Lev Kopelev, eds., Deutschland und die Russische Revolution, 1917-1924 (München: W. Fink Verlag, 1998); Keller, Russen und Russland aus deutscher Sicht: 19./20. Jahrhundert: Von der Bismarckzeit bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg ; Eimermacher and Volpert, Verführungen der Gewalt ; Thum, Traumland Osten ; Charles W. Ingrao and Franz A. J. Szabo, eds., The Germans and the East (West Lafayette, Ind: Purdue University Press, 2008); Gerd Koenen, Der Russland- Komplex: Die Deutschen und der Osten, 1900-1945 (München: Beck, 2005); Martin E. Malia, Russia Under Western Eyes: From the Bronze Horseman to the Lenin Mausoleum (Cambridge, Mass: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999). 18 Paddock, Creating the Russian Peril , 2829. See also Troy Paddock, “Land Makes the Man: Topography and National Character in German Schoolbooks,” in Lived Topographies and their Mediational Forces , ed. Gary Backhaus and John Murungi (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005); Troy Paddock, “Creating an Oriental Feindbild,” Central European History 39 (2006): 214243; Claudia Pawlik, “'Ein Volk von Kindern' Rußland und Russen in den Geographielehrbüchern der Kaiserzeit,” in Russen und Russland aus deutscher Sicht: 19./20. Jahrhundert: von der Bismarckzeit bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg . 10 vast size of the Russian Empire together rendered it a threatening foe in spite of its alleged inferiority.

These views of the East proved remarkably durable as Germans carried them eastward and projected them onto the concrete realities of the Russian Empire. They resonated with the occupiers precisely because they were so imperfectly defined and therefore malleable; verisimilitude served as the basis of this flexible accommodation.

Most Germans were not familiar with the characteristics of Lithuanians or Belarusians, for example, but they were nevertheless able to fit their experiences in the Russian borderlands into the dichotomy of East and West that accompanied them to Russia.

Indeed, Germans knew little about the particulars of conditions in the Russian Empire and their first impressions testify to their ignorance of what confronted them. The multiplicity of ethnic groups and the underdeveloped conditions in which they lived were frequently an affront to the soldiers’ sensibilities, however, immediately undergirding vaguely defined antiRussian biases. The East appeared shoddy and disordered, apparently manifesting the superiority of German culture.

Though frequently caricatures and outright fictions, German stereotypes of Russia endured because the Russian borderlands were objectively different and relatively undeveloped in comparison to Germany. 19 Germany’s cutting edge industrial might was a source of Russian envy and Russia’s western provinces lacked anything like Germany’s

RhineRuhr industrial powerhouse. Administrators in Lithuania observed that the region was far more similar to Germany’s own largely agricultural eastern provinces, and it appeared in even worse shape than , the less developed German province that

19 Piotr S. Wandycz, A History of East Central Europe: The Lands of Partitioned Poland, 1795-1918 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974), 242. 11 bordered the Russian Empire. These observations and the perceived consequences of industrialization further reinforced the notion of a cultural gradient. Education paled in comparison to German standards: nearly 50 percent of the Lithuanian population could not read and the middle class was correspondingly small. 20 Farm fields lacked efficient

German drainage and irrigation methods that could increase yields. The administration’s importation of mechanized agricultural equipment aroused the attentive interest of local residents. Of course the occupiers also encountered wealthy innovators and educated middle class Lithuanians, but such individuals were exceptional. The border separating

Germany from Russia was seen as a stark divide between two empires affected by divergent political, social, and industrial factors.

Ubiquitous traces of Russian rule remained and decisively shaped the experiences of both the typical German soldier and administrator. The German administration quickly filled the vacuum created by the Russian withdrawal and the conquerors made observations that recognized these influences both explicitly and implicitly. Although the majority of Lithuania’s remaining residents were not ethnic Russians, German interaction with them necessarily addressed the legacies of Russian rule. Local community officials who had served under the Russians were in certain cases retained due to a lack of suitable replacements. Moreover, administrators were interested in simply adopting those Russian measures they deemed effective. Local nonRussian ethnic groups, meanwhile, were evaluated with reference to their level of satisfaction or discontent with Russian rule.

Because the locals initially appeared to be grateful for or at least indifferent to the removal of the Russians, German propaganda argued and individuals perceived that the

20 Tomas Balkelis describes Tsarist Lithuania as an “economic backwater.” Tsarist investment in the region centered on military defenses. Lithuania lacked the industry of other cities in the western Russian provinces like , Warsaw, Lodz, and Bialystok. Balkelis, The Making of Modern Lithuania , 12. 12 civilians had been liberated from Russian misrule. Legacies like poor infrastructure and insufficiently cultivated farm fields also spelled Russian deficiencies. The Russians were gone, but the detrimental influence remained.

Germans remarked on the various manifestations of Russian inferiority, from the quantity of railroads, the lack of industry, and the poor construction techniques, but perhaps the most revolting symbol of Russian conditions was the area’s insufficient sanitary measures. In so far as the German Empire had indeed instituted hygienic policies in the preceding decades that reduced the spread of infectious disease, the observation was not inaccurate. Outbreaks of typhus in the 1870s and 1880s had created great unease that was channeled into fears that migrant workers and tramps from the East brought the contagion with them into the German Empire. Improved sanitary measures sharply reduced the rate of typhus infections in the decade leading up to the First World War. It had all but disappeared from the Prussian army by 1894, and in 1901 a single case was reported in all of Germany. 21 Just prior to the outbreak of the First World War, German

scientists finally discovered that the louse transmitted the typhuscausing pathogen. In

1914, soldiers and administrators crossed the border into an empire that they were preconditioned to view as liceridden and diseased. The dirty and disheveled conditions

confronting them appeared to confirm the need to wage all out war against the threat of

diseases like typhus, typhoid, and dysentery. The Russian Empire’s dirt and disease

appeared to be endemic and a result of insufficient sanitary measures rather than a

function of wartime disruptions. Poor wells, latrines, and sewers all testified to the threat.

Some parts of the German Empire, like neighboring East Prussia, had received modern

21 The rate of typhus infection in German was also extraordinarily low in comparison to Britain, for example. Paul Weindling, Epidemics and Genocide in Eastern Europe, 1890-1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 1214. 13 improvements only in the fifteen years preceding the war, but the difference appeared vast, and the identification of the louse as a combatable transmitter gave new impetus to the drive to reduce Russia’s hygienic threat. 22

Notwithstanding the threatening sanitary conditions and industrial inferiority, the

occupied borderlands presented an unmistakable opportunity for the German military to

alleviate the material woes imposed by the allied naval blockade. Driven by the material

demands of industrial warfare, the administration’s bearing toward the occupied lands

was harsh and exploitive. Official orders frequently reminded administrators that their

main goal was to provide for the army and the homeland, a principle expressed in the pithy and alliterative slogan “ Heer und Heimat .” The implication was clear enough, but orders also explicitly stated that German needs should come before those of the occupied civilians. Although Ober Ost at least ostensibly adhered to the Hague Conventions on

Land Warfare, administrators’ activity was guided by little beyond the bald interests of the German military and economy. Local civilians were called up into civilian work , deserted estates were seized and operated by German economic officers, the

stocks of Tsarist forests were consumed, agricultural produce was strictly controlled;

German regulations controlled almost every aspect of the locals’ lives. Here, too, the

legacies of Russian rule were crucial. Although the Russians were not held responsible

for all of the borderlands residents’ deficiencies, administrators tended to assume that

civilians had become habituated to Russian practices over the past century. The grain producing peasants of Lithuania did not, for example, possess the education or political

awareness of German farmers and this was a function of the broad differences separating

22 On sanitary and other urban improvements in East Prussia, see Andreas Kossert, Ostpreussen: Geschichte und Mythos (München: Siedler, 2005), 153. 14 the two empires. Local farmers were depicted as being interested in merely maintaining their lowly standard of living. A century of inefficient Russian practices would need to be overcome through strict German regulation of agriculture and industry. Because civilians reputedly had such narrow horizons, severe punishments issued for violations of German policy were regarded as the only means of ensuring that they would do their part in maximizing agricultural output and improving infrastructure. Moreover, they were already thought to be instinctively habituated to this system and thus would accept it without complaint in spite of its onerous burdens.

Propagandistic depictions of local civilians were ostensibly more positive but in fact they buttressed a largely negative point of view. The defining feature of Ober Ost newspaper propaganda was a paternalism that portrayed local civilians as dependent on

German guidance. The military administration established an extensive newspaper network in the occupied lands. Most of these papers were published in German in spite of locals’ unfamiliarity with the language and the even more acute problem of widespread illiteracy. Wishing to maintain a politically neutral tone in light of the unresolved military outcome, cultural reporting on the local ethnic groups’ characteristics blossomed in the place of political appeals. A not uncomplimentary view of Lithuanians as a Bauernvolk

(“nation of farmers”) was disseminated with analysis of rural customs, culture, and

agriculture. The slogan of Heer und Heimat received an addition in propaganda – the

administration was to serve the army, the homeland, and also the local population. By the

time the time Ober Ost newspapers began engaging politics more explicitly in 1917,

however, they had already reinforced the picture of local civilians as apolitical and

helpless, useful mostly as an important source of labor for the German war effort.

15

Newspapers’ frequent chiding reminders on the many ways that locals failed to follow basic German regulations for hygiene, agriculture, and even aesthetics emphasized the severity of German measures and the locals’ deficiencies. Newspapers particularly emphasized that the ethnic groups most prominently represented in agriculture, namely

Lithuanians, Latvians and Belarusians, were in the greatest need of improvement.

The views popularized in Ober Ost newspapers fit seamlessly into the administrative framework because they emphasized the inferiority of local conditions and the need to impose German order. Official evaluations of local ethnic groups in administrative reports also emphasized the incontestability of German power and the paramount importance of German interests. When administrators began to more overtly address political issues after the Bolshevik Revolution in November, 1917 and the Treaty of BrestLitovsk in March, 1918, Poles and Lithuanians were the two primary groups to figure into German evaluations of Lithuania’s political future; ethnic Lithuanians comprised the majority of the region’s population while Poles were associated with the history of the longsuppressed Polish national movement. 23 The logical consequence of perceiving Lithuanians to be politically passive was the view that only their economic

wellbeing must be taken into consideration. Noble Polish estate owners, by contrast,

were regarded as politically conscious, and necessarily advocates of a reformed

independent Polish nationstate inclusive of Lithuanian territory. Lithuanian nationalists

were undesirable but manipulable; Poles were a political competitor.

Lithuania’s Jews received a fraction of the attention for reasons that must be

explained with reference to their social and political status in the borderlands and their

23 See Eberhard Demm, Ostpolitik und Propaganda im Ersten Weltkrieg (Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang, 2002). 16 special place in German perception. The consequences of antisemitic Russian policy were inscribed in the ethnic breakdown of Lithuanian society. Jews primarily lived in cities where they worked in the commercial and industrial fields circumscribed by Russian law.

Merchants of all ethnicities conflicted with the administration’s preference to strictly and directly control all commercial activity. Jews disproportionately suffered the consequences of this policy due to their social standing, yet they were also the target of more insidious assertions and policies that impugned Jewish merchants’ useful, productive, and honest contributions to Lithuanian society. 24 Antisemitic charges of

Jewish commercial dishonesty and ethnic solidarity at the expense of nonJews riddled

the reports of high level Ober Ost administrators like Verwaltungschef (Chief

Administrator) Prince Franz Josef zu IsenburgBirstein. These views were manifested as

an antiJewish (and, by consequence, proLithuanian) commercial policy. It is doubtful

that antisemitism was the primary motive of the administration’s restrictive commercial policies and by no means did the administration universally discriminate against Jews. 25

Some administrators, however, and a considerable portion of the higher level administrators whose files have survived, did express racist prejudices that had adverse consequences for local Jews.

24 On negative perceptions of Eastern European Jews prior to and during the First World War, see Jack Wertheimer, Unwelcome Strangers: East European Jews in Imperial Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); Steven E. Aschheim, Brothers and Strangers: The East European Jew in German and German Jewish Consciousness, 1800-1923 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999). 25 Jews also had positive experiences under German occupation. See Yaffa Eliach, There Once Was a World: A nine-hundred-year Chronicle of the Shtetl of Eishyshok (New York: Little, Brown and , 1998). 17

German attitudes toward Jews were exceptional but they were not the unambiguous predecessor of the Nazis’ biological racism. 26 Jews were not held to be a

considerable factor amid the political developments of 1917 and 1918, but this was

largely due to Germany’s parochial and antidemocratic nationality policy that focused on

the proportionately dominant Lithuanians and historically dominant Poles (with

Lithuanians providing the best means of defeating Polish nationalism, the German

Empire’s traditional foe in the borderlands). In spite of the perceived differences

separating Jews and Lithuanians, the two ethnic groups were both believed to be backward in certain regards and more concerned with their economic wellbeing than the

ideals of abstract nationalistic ideology.

The process of extending German rule to Russia’s western provinces intensified

as the prospects for military victory in the west waned. Victory in the East had been won

and administrators and politicians continued to work toward the integration of the

conquered lands into the sphere of German influence. Administrators did not yet know

that the project was doomed to failure, and they therefore sought to take advantage of

new opportunities to bolster Germany’s political claim to eastern territory and the

territory’s German cultural character. From inception, Ober Ost newspapers had

endlessly praised the advantages of an abstract form of Germanness as the best means of

improving the occupied lands. This concept of Deutschtum comprised a set of superior

characteristics that could serve as a model for the borderlands’ future development.

According to this conception, administrative activity spread Deutschtum to the Russian borderlands. Deutschtum stressed practices and methods that were not alleged to derive

26 For details on the administration’s effort to provide special consideration for the interests of occupied Jews, see Aba Strazhas, “Die Tätigkeit des Dezernats für jüdische Angelegenheiten in der “deutschen Miltärverwaltung Ober Ost.”” 18 exclusively from ethnic Germans, but ethnic Germans were always depicted as the progenitors of historical improvements in the East. In 1917 and 1918 this emphasis on

Germanness was expressed more concretely as preferential treatment for the borderlands’ ethnic German population. Financial support for destitute Germans followed from the desire to have these future German possessions populated with ethnically German – and therefore presumably loyal, productive, and fastidious – settlers. Administrators assembled lists of German subjects who were interested in the possibility of purchasing agricultural estates. This stillborn reprisal of inner colonization in Prussian Poland evidences strong continuities in the prewar imperialist and colonialist mentalities and policies. 27 German imperialism continued to operate on this model even after Wilhelmine imperialism’s traditional eastern opponent ceased to exist; Bolshevism supplanted

Tsarism but the guiding assumptions about and stereotypes of the East remained largely intact. 28

Despite the overwhelmingly negative view of the lands and peoples of the East, tensions regarding the borderlands’ ethnic composition remained within the limits of

Wilhelmine imperialism. A number of scholars have in recent years applied a colonialist framework to the Nazi occupation of Russia. 29 Wilhelmine administrators and soldiers had no doubt about Russia’s inferiority, and many arguably viewed the borderlands with

27 Robert L. Nelson, “The Archive for Inner Colonization, the German East, and World War I,” in Germans, Poland, and Colonial Expansion to the East, ed. Robert L. Nelson (New York: Pargrave Macmillan, 2009). 28 Koenen and Kopelev, Deutschland und die Russische Revolution . 29 David Furber, “Near as Far in the Colonies. The Nazi Occupation of Poland,” International History Review 26, no. 3 (2004): 541579; Wendy Lower, Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2005); Jürgen Zimmerer, “The Birth of the Ostland out of the Spirit of Colonialism. A Postcolonial Perspective on the Nazi Policy of Conquest and Extermination,” Patterns of Prejudice 39, no. 2 (2005): 197219; Kristin Kopp, “Constructing Racial Difference in Colonial Poland,” in Germany's Colonial Pasts , ed. Eric Ames, Marcia Klotz, and Lora Wildenthal (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005), 7696. 19 a “colonial gaze” fixated on the potential to make great improvements. 30 They were not directed, however, by an ideology that created impermeable racial barriers between

Germans and occupied civilians. The motives for settling ethnic Germans in the Russian borderlands channeled a number of different strands of Wilhelmine era imperialism, including migrationist colonialism, völkisch nationalism, and statedirected inner colonization. These varying motives remained within traditional policy frameworks by focusing on securing the empire’s borders, suppressing the politically threatening national movements of nonGerman ethnic minorities, and providing “domestic” agricultural opportunities for a class of economically struggling German farmers that might otherwise emigrate. A paternalistic racism characterized the directors of the project in the First World War as it did those of prewar inner colonization within the empire’s borders, but racism was never institutionalized as the basis of the German prerogative to direct the lands’ future. 31 The ongoing war restricted German efforts by precluding the development of a singleminded motive or plan. As a result, German views and plans were often contradictory.

30 Robert L. Nelson, ed., Germans, Poland, and Colonial Expansion to the East (New York: Pargrave Macmillan, 2009). 31 Inner colonization need not be based on a feeling of cultural superiority, an element that was notably lacking in the Russian attitude toward its Polish borderlands, for example. See Ther, “Imperial instead of National History. Positioning Modern German History on the Map of European Empires,” 54. For background on German völkisch nationalism, see Puschner, Die völkische Bewegung im wilhelminische Kaiserreich: Sprache – Rasse – Religion . 20

Organization

Chapter 1 explores soldiers’ first impressions of the Russian Empire as the

German army invaded Russia in 1914 and 1915. Soldiers hewed to prewar stereotypes depicting Russia as a backward and barbaric land. The brief but destructive Russian occupation of East Prussia in the fall of 1914 was sensationally reported in German newspapers during war’s first few months, confirming views of Russian barbarism even before the soldiers had left the borders of the German Empire. 32 This chapter examines soldiers’ experiences on both sides of the GermanRussian border by analyzing soldiers’ diaries, memoirs, and regimental histories. Archival documents and underutilized published sources testify to the importance of this initial encounter with the Russian

Empire. The conquerors became acquainted with ethnic minorities whose distinctiveness challenged the idea of a monolithic empire, but whose “backwardness” was fully in line with dominant stereotypes. Soldiers occasionally encountered impoverished Lithuanian farmers living in conditions fully in line with the prevailing stereotypes of Russian dirt and disease, and the convenient way to decouple them from that complex of negative views was to emphasize their liberation and ethnic distinctiveness from the Russian

Empire. The presence of ethnic Russians was not a precondition for Germans to view

Lithuania within the context of Russian legacies.

The history of invading German soldiers leads into an investigation of the German military administration and its newly minted administrative officials in Chapter 2. This chapter relies on the earliest available documents from the German Administration in

Lithuania and the focus turns to an examination of the assumptions and policies that established German order in occupied Lithuania. Official documentation from

32 Paddock, Creating the Russian Peril , 46. 21

Verwaltungschef Isenburg and his staff of military administrators is analyzed with

reference to the influence of prewar German stereotypes and the confrontation with the

legacies of Russian rule. Administrators viewed Lithuania as contested territory that

needed to be reshaped – and, in the process, claimed – by the German Empire.

Propagandistic emphasis on the inferiority of the East reinforced this perspective by

emphasizing alleged deficiencies of Russian practices. New regulations attempted to

remove all Russian influences, but the process served to heighten administrators’

consciousness of them. Military conventions obligated the occupiers to leave Russian

civil law in place and the presence of ethnic Russian colonies provided stark reminders

that the former ruler had also worked to solidify its claim to borderlands territory. The

German administration worked toward the primary goal of maximizing economic output by installing productive German methods.

The military administration published newspapers in the major cities of the occupied territory that complemented and promoted administrative goals and policies.

Chapter 3 explores the daily Kownoer Zeitung that served as the

official organ of the German Administration for Lithuania during much of the

occupation. The paper provided Germans and local civilians with an idealized depiction

of German administration. Like the invading German soldiers and new administrators,

Kownoer Zeitung dwelled on the great advantages of erasing the legacies of the harmful

Russian rule. One means of doing so was to explore the particular characteristics of the

occupied civilians. The paper recognized their ethnic distinctiveness as a means of

separating them from the Russian Empire. Another tack measured German virtues against

the foil of Russian rule. Few ethnic Germans resided in Lithuania in 1914, yet the region

22 was depicted as the site of historical German accomplishments that had been effaced by

Russian barbarism. The history of ethnic Germans in the East was presented as evidence for a historical mission to improve eastern lands. 33 Kownoer Zeitung prompted the

German soldiers and administrators of the First World War to imagine themselves as the

most recent stage of this culturepromoting history. Depictions of nonGerman local

civilians neatly corresponded to this conception by implicitly arguing that their ethnic

distinctiveness justified their “liberation” from the Russian Empire but still they were far

too primitive to survive without an infusion of German methods. The Ober Ost press thus

encouraged an imperialist mindset while generally avoiding explicit coverage of political

issues.

Chapter 4 addresses the details of occupation policy, particularly after

administration policy had coalesced between the fall of 1915 and summer of 1916. The

administrators responsible for directing policy at the local level were the district captains

subordinate to Verwaltungschef Isenburg. In accordance with Ober Ost regulations and in consultation with Isenburg, district captains instituted a harshly punitive system of rule.

Because the material and political needs of Heer und Heimat were emphasized above all

else, district captains’ chief responsibility was to secure maximal economic gains for the

German Empire. In doing so, administrators, economic officers, gendarmes, and foresters

forced local civilians to contribute to the German war effort while depriving them of the

rights that German subjects possessed. Perception of the locals’ debased political potential made the occupiers insensitive to civilian needs. Civilians’ alleged

33 On Germany’s historical activities in neighboring eastern lands and the development of prejudices and stereotypes, see Wolfgang Wippermann, Der 'deutsche ': Ideologie und Wirklichkeit eines politischen Schlagwortes (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1981); Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, The German Myth of the East (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 23 backwardness and political ignorance were justifications for the type of oppressive measures that had been employed by the former Russian rulers in Lithuania. German regulations that were alleged to entail longterm benefits were inculcated in the supposedly unknowing, intractable locals through harsh punishment. Indeed, these longerterm virtues of German policy were considered the major distinction between

German and Russian rule in Lithuania: both regimes were harsh and exploitive, but

German practices instituted advanced methods that would secure a brighter future.

Although some district captains noticed that administrative measures were in certain cases senselessly oppressive, policy remained within an exploitive framework. The refusal to make greater concessions to local needs eventually cost the administration the support of the occupied civilians.

The final year and a half of the war on the Eastern Front was marked by dramatic political and military changes in Russia. Chapter 5 examines German administrators’ positions on Lithuania’s political and ethnic composition with reference to this tumultuous final period of German occupation. Revolution in Russia created opportunities that the German military took advantage of by seizing Riga in September,

1917, and subsequently by invading Ukraine in order to force an inordinately advantageous peace settlement with the at BrestLitovsk. 34 Though German

administrative documents from this final period have not survived in great numbers, the

extant sources indicate an unhesitating push to secure the territorial gains in the borderlands. One means of doing so was to provide financial support to ethnic Germans.

34 Frank Grelka, Die ukrainische Nationalbewegung unter deutscher Besatzungsherrschaft 1918 und 1941/42 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2005); Mark Von Hagen, War in a European Borderland: Occupations and Occupation Plans in Galicia and Ukraine, 1914-1918 (Seattle: Herbert J. Ellison Center for Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies, University of Washington, 2007). 24

The 1913 citizenship law provided an opening for ethnic Germans abroad

(Auslandsdeutschen ) to be easily repatriated on the basis of jus sanguinis .35 Supporting

ethnic Germans in occupied Lithuania assisted a group who were presumed to desire

German influence in the region. In the summer of 1918 Ober Ost looked ahead to the permanent possession of Lithuania by collecting lists of German subjects interested in

settlement. Lithuanian and Polish nationalists, meanwhile, were played against one

another in the hope of weakening both movements. The increasingly strident pronouncements of Lithuanian politicians did little to stem administrators’ certainty that

the German Empire must permanently extend its influence to the region. Perception of

Lithuanians, Poles, and Jews remained largely negative and continued to be evaluated

with reference to Russia. From the German perspective, the region must remain in thrall

to one of its two powerful neighbors. Bolshevism replaced Tsarism, rendering the prospect of Russian rule even less attractive. District captains concluded that most but not

all Lithuanian civilians favored German rule over Russian in spite of its brutal economic policies.

Ober Ost policy and the attitudes of its administrators were the culmination of the

regulations and perspectives that had defined the German occupation from its inception in

1915. A paternalistic sense of cultural superiority was reinforced but not drastically

altered by the manifestation of Bolshevik “chaos” in Russia. Germans had long been

conditioned to view their eastern neighbors as threateningly different, and the experience

35 Gerhard Weidenfeller, VDA, Verein für das Deutschtum im Ausland, Allgemeiner Deutscher Schulverein (1881-1918): Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des deutschen Nationalismus und Imperialismus im Kaiserreich (Bern: H. Lang, 1976); Walter von Goldendach and HansRüdiger Minow, Deutschtum erwache!: Aus dem Innenleben des staatlichen Pangermanismus (Berlin: Dietz, 1994); Howard Sargent, “Diasporic Citizens: Germans Abroad in the Framing of German Citizenship Law,” in The Heimat Abroad: The Boundaries of Germanness , ed. Krista O'Donnell, Renate Bridenthal, and Nancy R. Reagin (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), 1739; James Casteel, “The Russian Germans in the Interwar German National Imaginary,” Central European History 40 (2007): 429466. 25 of occupation – bracketed by the Ober Ost framework and these prewar views of eastern inferiority – provided firsthand evidence to millions of German soldiers.

26

Chapter 1: The Initial Encounter: The Invasion of Russia in Diaries and Memoirs, 191415

During the first year of the war on the Eastern Front, German soldiers faced remarkably dynamic circumstances as the German army expelled the Russian army from

East Prussia before marching deep into the Russian Empire. The thrust into Russian territory provoked strong reactions from soldiers who were compelled to reassess their knowledge of both the German and Russian Empires as they encountered the hitherto unknown conditions of life in the Russian borderlands. The vast majority of Germans knew little of Russia beyond prevalent stereotypes that depicted Russia as a backward but powerful and threatening land. 1 Firsthand exposure to the conditions within the Russian

Empire alternately confirmed and challenged the informally acquired notions that

German soldiers brought to the East. Although German annexationists’ desire to

subordinate the western Russian borderlands to Imperial German control was far

removed from the average German soldier, the latter witnessed this clash of empires

firsthand and the encounter shaped their understanding of Germany’s relationship to its

neighboring eastern borderlands. The political ramifications of military success in the

East remained the province of politicians and generals; members of the German military

experienced the clash of empires as a cultural encounter in which their own Germanness

was pitted against what they perceived as the Russian Empire’s multifaceted, disorienting

chaos.

1 Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, The German Myth of the East (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 99 124; Troy Paddock, Creating the Russian Peril: Education, the Public Sphere, and National Identity in Imperial Germany, 1890-1914 (Rochester, N.Y: Camden House, 2010). 27

Analyzing German responses to the initial confrontation with Russian lands helps sketch the longer lasting contours of the German experience in occupied Russia. While a focus on the early invasion period cannot capture the full dimensions of Germany’s engagement with the East, it does reveal the assumptions and stereotypes that Germans brought with them and which were subsequently weighed against realworld experiences.

Vague but widely held stereotypes about life in the Russian Empire were supplanted by firm ideas based on firsthand evidence, and these impressions largely agreed with prewar stereotypes that demonized Russia as a barbarian and backward land. From architecture to agriculture, the contrast with Germany was written into every aspect of the land’s appearance. The lands not only lacked Germany’s technological and industrial strength, they also seemed irresponsibly governed and only loosely regulated. Wartime disruptions further emphasized disorder as the defining characteristic of Russian commercial and social conditions. Indeed, Russia’s objectively lower level of industrial development in comparison to Germany – and all of its attendant social consequences – was the primary factor molding German views. Perception of Russian rule and borderlands ethnic groups cannot be removed from this context.

As German soldiers grappled with the many foreign practices they witnessed in the East, they formed an image of the Russian Empire as, one the one hand, primitive and disorienting, while on the other as requiring the imposition of foreign rule. Soldiers were frequently reminded by propaganda that Germany had liberated the borderlands’ minority ethnic groups, but even without such messaging they would have seen few indications that the lands’ native residents desired the return of Russian rule. Soldiers slowly began to discern finer regional and cultural distinctions in the conquered lands, distinguishing

28 between Lithuanians, Poles, Latvians, Belarusians and Jews, and yet none of these groups seemed particularly well suited to governing its own affairs. The borderlands were by no means regarded as vacant, but Germany did appear justified in supplanting Russian rule with what German soldiers regarded as more just and beneficial policies. Initial perception of the borderlands was not entirely uniform, but the conquerors generally

accepted the need for Germany to fill the gaping hole left by the removal of the Russians.

Accounts documenting the firsthand experiences of Germans on the Eastern Front

during the First World War are relatively sparse and disproportionately centered on the

initial year of the war. The reasons for this are twofold. Firstly, far fewer Germans served

in the East from 19141918 than served in the West. Germany’s manpower requirements

in the West dwarfed those of the Eastern Front. AustroHungarian armies controlled large parts of the front, and the bulk of German soldiers serving in the East were sent westward

when revolution crippled Russia’s military capability in 1917. The second explanation is

not independent of the first but likely has much to do with the particular circumstances of

the first year of war on the Eastern Front: the invasion of Russian territory was a profoundly disorienting experience in ways that the march through Belgium into France

was not. Whereas the German army moved through western territory that was highly

developed industrially and relatively homogeneous nationally – characteristics that were

similar to those German soldiers were accustomed to at home – soldiers in the East could

not avoid confronting “backward” conditions and ethnic and national diversity. The

import of these differences was magnified by the speed of the German advance. Soon

after the outbreak of war, Russia had invaded the German Empire’s easternmost province; one year later the German army had inflicted crushing defeats on the Russian

29 army and occupied tens of thousands of square miles of enemy territory. As the Western

Front settled into , the German army continued to march triumphantly into

Russian territory. These momentous developments were duly recorded by German soldiers in diaries and letters, and subsequently in memoirs and regimental histories.

Eyewitness accounts are the most direct means of analyzing how soldiers experienced Germany’s march into Russian territory. These sources reveal how soldiers perceived the lands and people of the Russian Empire and how initial interactions compelled soldiers to consider their own Germanness. Diaries in particular are a much needed addition to a historiography that has with few exceptions focused on published accounts and novels. Individuals’ postwar literary accounts have many insights to offer, yet they were created by a selfselected group of writers and intellectuals uniquely positioned to present their perspectives to a mass audience. Diaries from the German archives provide not only a broader sample of German society, but also offer German views unmediated by months or years separating the lived experience from writing and publication. The surviving firsthand accounts have their weaknesses; they present only a tiny sample of the men who fought in the war and are almost exclusively from the perspective of officers. Many exclude bibliographic details, giving only the author’s name, rank and unit. Faults notwithstanding, they comprise an indispensable source.

Fourteen such accounts document German soldiers’ responses to the early stages of war on the Eastern Front. Mirroring the overwhelming concentration of Prussian army units on the Eastern Front, almost all of the accounts were written by Prussians. The authors’ social standing cannot in most cases be determined with anything near precision, but biographical details and contextual information strongly suggest that they were

30 largely middle to uppermiddle class Germans. The officers’ accounts were mostly written by reserve lieutenants, some of whom earned their officer promotion during the course of the war. These men were not the aristocratic Prussian officers who comprised the traditional backbone of the Prussian Army, but they were nevertheless socially privileged and patriotic. 2 Some volunteered for service upon the outbreak of war and

others had served as officers for some time prior. In any case, the surviving memoirs present the views of a relatively homogeneous and educated group of soldiers. Postwar regimental histories written between 1921 and 1934 by a group of similar professional and social dimensions augment the diaries and provide additional details about the initial encounters in the East, giving voice to a wider segment of German soldiers.

Into the Russian Empire

That the march into Russian territory in 1914 and 1915 deeply affected many

German soldiers is indicated by the high proportion of Eastern Front accounts that document the event. The Prussian Army’s historic ties to the Russian Empire stretched back to the allied response to the Napoleonic Wars and continued to be honored in diplomatic agreements, but they did not inspire in its officers deep knowledge of the neighboring empire. 3 Fear and anticipation accompanied the border crossing and both

2 In 1865, 51% of all Prussian officers were nobles. Imperial Germany’s exploding population in the intervening years stretched the army’s demand for officers even further beyond the ability of the aristocracy to provide them; by 1913, 70% of the officer corps were bourgeois. This change extended even to the highest ranks, reducing the percentage of noble born generals and colonels from 80% in 1865 to 52% in 1913. Gordon Alexander Craig, The Politics of the Prussian Army 1640-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956), 235. On the considerable social prestige of service as a Prussian reserve officer, see Ute Frevert, A Nation in Barracks: Modern Germany, Military Conscription, and Civil Society (Oxford: Berg, 2004). 3 This special relationship had been embodied in the exchange of “personal adjutants” by the Prussian king and Russian Empire. Craig, The Politics of the Prussian Army 1640-1945 , 261. On Germans’ general lack of knowledge about the Russian Empire, see Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front: 31 feelings had to do with the gravity of the war and with a great sense of the unknown. A

Prussian artillery officer, Major Koebke, noted: “although I had spent my entire life near the eastern border of our fatherland, I had never once crossed it.” 4 This observation is

unusual only in that most German soldiers did not live anywhere near the border and

therefore had even less exposure than Major Koebke. Koebke’s preconceived notions of

Russian lands were typically vague, featuring “expanses of featureless wastes, deep

snowfields, immeasurable cold, no quarters, roads without firm foundations, loads of dirt

and vermin, [and] wild hordes of warriors.” 5 He described the mood among the prior to the crossing on 26 November 1914 as the “most timid and hopeless” he

experienced in the entire war and this feeling was clearly linked to the sense that the

Russian Empire was fundamentally different from Germany.

The Russian invasion of German lands suggested that military setbacks would

result in Russia’s inveterate disorder spilling over into its neighbor’s territory. In East

Prussia, soldiers were confronted with the brutal results of Russia’s brief occupation of

German territory. Rumors of Cossack atrocities prevailed and the visible destruction of

German property and infrastructure were ominous signs. 6 The depiction of Russia as an

alien and inferior land was a common theme in commentary on the Russian Empire in the

years leading up to the war and these first experiences reinforced such notions before

Culture, National Identity and German Occupation in World War I (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 25. 4 BAMA (Bundesarchiv Militärarchiv, FreiburginBreisgau, Germany) MSG 2/2362, Koebke, 178. 5 BAMA MSG 2/2362, Koebke, 178. 6 The figures documenting the Russian crimes collected by the Oberpräsident of East Prussia, Adolf von BatockiFriebe, included 10,000 buildings burned down, 80,000 homes plundered, and thousands of Germans deported or killed. Peter Hoeres, “Die Slawen. Perzeptionen des Kreigsgegners bei den Mittelmächten. Selbst und Feindbild,” in Die vergessene Front. Der Osten 1914/15 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2006), 190. See also Andreas Kossert, Ostpreussen: Geschichte und Mythos (München: Siedler, 2005), 202. 32 soldiers had even crossed the border into Russia. 7 Hugo Schmidt, twentyfour years old at

the time of the invasion, arrived in the Prussian border town Illowo on 13 August 1914 to

find it “entirely devastated, the stores ransacked, their contents strewn about the streets,

the houses and especially the public buildings burned down.” 8 Schmidt interpreted the

destruction not as an unfortunate sideeffect of war, but rather as troubling insight into

Russian character and culture: “telegraph wires were cut, the poles toppled, and the thin,

newly planted trees were cut down by the mounted Cossacks in a destructive frenzy, probably because they couldn’t find anything else at a man’s height to cut as they rode by.” 9 “Culture envy” was identified as the root cause of this rampant and bloodthirsty

destructiveness; resentful of the Germans’ greater culture and higher level of prosperity,

the Russians entered into an irrational frenzy. Of course Germans regarded “culture

envy” as a poor excuse and they honed in on the senselessness – which is to say barbarism – of the Russian actions. The Cossacks were credited with nothing more than

acting on animalistic compulsions. An account of the invasion from the history of a

Bavarian provides similar impressions from a group that made up a

small minority of the German forces in the East. was even more geographically

removed from Russia and the soldiers quickly learned that they were entering new and

unknown territory. The beginning of spring was in the air near the Mosel as their train progressed toward Russia, and when they arrived at the border in the East Prussian town

7 See Maria Lammich, “Vom 'Barbarenland' zum 'Weltstaat' – Rußland im Spiegel liberaler und konservativer Zeitschriften,” in Russen und Russland aus deutsher Sicht: 19./20. Jahrhundert: von der Bismarckzeit bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg , ed. Mechthild Keller (Munich: W. Fink, 2000); Paddock, Creating the Russian Peril . 8 BAMA MSG 2/5590, Hugo Schmidt, 9. 9 BAMA MSG 2/5590, Hugo Schmidt, 9. 33

Eydtkuhnen it was winter once again. 10 They regarded the Russian destruction in East

Prussia with horror: “Many burned down sites marked the places of once blooming

estates. Where the Russian didn’t burn everything down, he at the very least dirtied

everything up and left it in a dilapidated state.” 11 This soldier thankfully remarked that at

least the Bavarian homeland had been spared from Russian atrocities. Witnessing the

destruction of German lands formed the soldiers’ first encounters with the Russian enemy

and conditioned their expectations for what came next.

The boundary separating the empires frequently appeared to German soldiers as a

demarcation of two different worlds. Vague notions of the differences between them began to take on concrete certainty even as Russia remained immeasurably large and

multifarious. That the border was merely a political boundary with no geographical

significance made the experience all the more conspicuous: the natural conditions prevailing on each side of the border were the same, but the two empires’ vastly different

use of them made for striking contrasts. Hugo Schmidt remarked that the difference was

“conspicuous even though we had come from the completely devastated Illowo … At the border, the paved road with curbs suddenly disappeared.” 12 Germans perceived the

Russian Empire as a more primitive, backward land lacking in the kind of order and rules

that prevailed in their homeland; Schmidt made clear that Russia’s lower level of

development was conspicuous even in comparison to an “entirely devastated” Prussian border town. In fact, Russia’s western provinces were not as advanced industrially or

economically as Germany, even in comparison to one of Germany’s most agriculturally

10 Otto Freiherr von Waldenfels, ed., Geschichte des Kgl. Bayr. 6. Chevaulegers-Regiements „Kress“ im Kriege 1914-1919 (Bayreuth: Verlag der Vereinigung ehem. Angehöriger des 6. Chevaulegers, 1921), 36. 11 Ibid., 37. 12 BAMA MSG 2/5590, Hugo Schmidt, 9. 34 based provinces, the easternmost East Prussia. 13 One recollection in the divisional history of a cavalry regiment describes Russian infrastructure: “The most astonishing thing was the roads, most of which lacked a firm roadway and which were limitlessly wide.

Vehicles often sank up to their axels in the sand and mud. Those that became mired in the middle would then create a new lane off to the side of the road.” 14 The Russian Empire

still had not yet sufficiently mastered nature in order to provide a reliable means of

transportation, and construction of all varieties was held to be inferior. Soldiers often

commented on the marked difference between the buildings as they crossed the border.

Günther Popp, a young volunteer from Kiel, crossed the border near Proskau on 16

February 1915 and observed that on the German side there were “almost entirely multi

level homes and businesses, arrayed in an orderly fashion,” while the Russian side

contained “small, filthy wooden houses.” 15 Wilhelm Sains arrived in Russia in

and at the first sight of a Russian farmhouse he noted that he “could not have imagined

how shabby they were. There are no such homes in all of Germany.” 16 Soldiers quickly judged what they believed to be an essential and ubiquitous feature of the new landscape: unhygienic, dirty conditions seemed to know no bounds in the strange new lands.

Friedrich Renner described his “first look at a Russian place” in August 1915: “There were small, dirty houses and dirty streets. The only pretty building was the church.” 17

13 Common German critiques of infrastructural and agricultural deficiencies in Russia addressed technological changes and improvements like improved sanitation, agricultural drainage, road pavement, and gas lighting that were introduced to East Prussia only in the ten to fifteen years preceding the war. Kossert, Ostpreussen , 153. 14 Georg Bahls, Das 3. badische Dragoner-Regiment Prinz Karl Nr 22 , Deutsche Tat im Weltkrieg 1914/1918 (Berlin: Bernard & Graefe, 1934), 302. 15 BAMA MSG 2/4436, Günther Popp, 29. 16 BAMA MSG 2/5434, Wilhelm Sains. 17 BAMA MSG 2/4749, Friedrich Renner, 2. 35

Soldiers remembered Russia as a “land of countless lice”, 18 home to “heretofore unknown massive dirtiness.” 19 Such observations proved enduring; the theme of Russian

disorder recurred repeatedly in such accounts throughout the war.

As shocked as Germans were by the condition of Russian infrastructure, the

encounter with the empire’s subjects disoriented them further yet. Soldiers who knew

little of Russia found themselves confronted the empire’s various ethnic minority groups,

usually Poles and Jews during the first few months of the German invasion. At the start

of the war in the East, soldiers had no choice but to disembark from the easternmost

stations within the German rail network, quite often Eydtkuhnen in East Prussia. Crossing

the border on foot, Germans stepped onto Russian soil where ethnic Poles or Lithuanians

comprised the overwhelming majority of the population. Though they occasionally

distinguished between Russia, Poland, and Lithuania when commenting on the local

conditions, observers initially made broad generalizations on life in Russia. With time,

however, German soldiers learned more about the empire’s ethnic diversity – quite

different from Germany’s more homogeneous population – and began to make finer

distinctions. Soldiers’ experiences with Russian subjects ran the gamut: they were

alternately greeted as liberators or as conquerors, bequeathed gifts or swindled of

valuable commodities and supplies, and provided revoltingly dirty quarters or put up in

fantastically glamorous estates. The war’s first year challenged them to fit these

experiences into their preconceived understanding of Russia and their images of their

own homeland. In assessing the various ethnic groups and their ways of life in the

18 Eugen von Frauenholz and Bayerisches Kriegsarchiv in München, K.B.2. Kürassier- und schwere Reiter- Regiment: Ergänzungsband: Mit 36 Illustrationen davon 32 Feldaufnahmen , vol. 2 (Munich: Verlag des Bayerischen Kriegsarchivs, 1922), 87. 19 Ibid., 2:96. 36

Russian Empire by comparing the conditions to those they knew at home, German soldiers instinctively looked down upon everything that seemed to be succumbing to detrimental Russian influence.

The march eastward quickly acquainted Germans with the variety of ethnic groups in Russia. They had crossed the border into a land where “everything reminiscent of prosperity, order and cleanliness disappeared,” and they found Russia’s subjects to be

“miserable, dirty and filthy.” 20 A sense of cultural superiority over Slavs accompanied the

German soldiers across the border; Prussia had long sought to Germanize its ethnically

Polish eastern provinces and these policies both reflected and reinforced widespread

disdain for Slavs. 21 With few exceptions, the soldiers categorized the local civilians as either “ Panje ” – a form of the Polish word Pan , meaning gentleman – or Jews. “ Panje ” came to represent virtually all nonJewish ethnicities in the East, whether Polish,

Lithuanian, Latvian, Russian or Belarusian. Although the term could be applied to all nonJewish ethnicities of occupied Russia, it was most often used to designate the poor and uneducated. Two inseparable uses of “ Panje ” implicitly emphasized the inferiority of those it described: Panjewagen (horsedrawn wagons used for transportation and

agricultural work) and Panjepferd (the small, sturdy horses found in Poland and

Lithuania used for farm labor). The occupiers often used the ubiquitous local wagons and

horses even though they were seen as inferior to those to which Germans were

accustomed. Both the carts and horses served as symbols of the connotations conveyed by the word Panje : the people of the East were primitive and lacked Germany’s civilized

20 Ludwig Freiherr von Gebsattel, ed., Das K.B.1. Ulanen-Regiment (Augsburg: Verlag der Buch und Kunstdruckerei J.P. Himmer, 1924), 91. 21 See William W. Hagen, Germans, Poles, and Jews: The Nationality Conflict in the Prussian East, 1772- 1914 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); Richard Blanke, Prussian Poland in the German Empire (1871-1900) (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1981). 37 living conditions. These impressions were often formed quickly upon entering Russian lands. 22 Friedrich Renner described the scene which greeted him after debarking in

Poland in August 1915: “[Jewish women and children] offered us coffee and cakes. I didn’t take anything because it all seemed somewhat unappetizing. The women were dirty and barefoot, they seemed to have lice.” 23 The image of barefoot locals – particularly women – commonly appears in diaries, testifying to German curiosity and

disgust at a practice unheard of back home. More often than not, both Jews and Panjes were cast in a negative light either for underhanded or inscrutable behavior or for their repulsive customs and lifestyles.

German interaction with the local population during the invasion was heavily conditioned by perceptions of the Russian army and its relationship to the people of the borderlands. Soldiers considered this relationship as the front crept eastward and they moved further into Russia. During the invasion of Belgium and France in 1914, German paranoia about the local Belgian and French civilians engaging in a guerrilla campaign as francs tireurs led to repressive acts of brutal violence and criminality. Such fears had become ingrained in German military culture during the FrancoPrussian War when irregular civilian combatants menaced the occupying German army. By the time of the

First World War, institutional memory of the francs tireurs bred the fear that the inability

to draw a clear line between combatants and noncombatants would impede the army’s

ability to wage war. Ultimately, these fears inspired the summary execution of civilians

22 Interestingly enough, Germans seem to have begun using the term Panje from the early days of the invasion. It is unclear how the term became current amongst soldiers so quickly. Higher level officers’ and administrators’ use of the term in official communications of all varieties suggests that it may have been unofficially encouraged within army command. 23 BAMA MSG 2/4749, Friedrich Renner, 2. See also BAMA MSG 2/5434, William Sains. 38 and the rampant destruction of prominent symbols of Belgian culture. 24 During the

invasion of Russia in 1914, the German army singled out Cossacks using analogous justifications of wartime necessity. The policy was not driven by an institutionalized bias

against them, but instead relied on the general prewar view of the Russian Empire as an

unnatural, chaotic mix of barbaric and backward cultures. Having been accused or

wreaking havoc in occupied East Prussia, Cossacks figured prominently in antiRussian propaganda in 1914. 25 In April 1915, a transportation column was attacked by marauding

Cossacks near the Lithuanian town Lukniki and the Germans were allegedly murdered to

a man. An order issued by General von Morgen to his corps on 20 April 1915 ordered

that “Cossacks are no longer to be considered soldiers in the service of a wartime power,

rather they are to be considered francs tireurs according to German military law.” 26 Just as the French and Belgian irregular citizen soldiers were declared criminal due to the perception that they operated outside the agreedupon rules of war, Russia’s Cossacks were declared to be an illegal force. Like the francs tireurs in Belgium, Cossacks were

targeted because they were regarded as fierce opponents whose fanaticism drove them to

operate outside the bounds of acceptable warfare; the Cossacks, however, were regarded

as a threatening manifestation of the disorienting Russian Empire rather than committed

national partisans.

Ethnic division within the Russian Empire’s borderlands encouraged Germans to

look upon nonRussians as peoples liberated from Russian oppression. Official

24 See John N Horne, German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001). 25 Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, “Der Osten als apokalyptischer Raum. Deutsche Fronterfahrungen im und nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg,” in Traumland Osten: Deutsche Bilder vom östlichen Europa im 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006), 59. 26 BAMA MSG 2/618, Alfred Schwanitz, 359. 39 propaganda encouraged this view and it was directed at both German soldiers and

Russian subjects. 27 Obvious benefits accrued to Germany if the civilian population

would, by and large, refrain from reflexive agitation against German control in favor of

deposed Russian rule. At the same time, Germans felt that what they perceived to be their

more rational, advanced, and benevolent form of rule obligated the Russian subjects to

assist their conqueror as a matter of course. Moreover, perceiving the borderlands population to be made up of nationless peoples dovetailed with the German tendency to

view the indigent people of the borderlands as primitive, “cultureless” and in need of

more advanced knowledge. The perception of great differences between the German and

Russian Empires is illustrated in a story related by a German cavalry regiment that

arrived in Russia in April 1915. Just inside enemy territory, the cavalrymen encountered

a Jew who explained to them that during the initial Russian invasion, Cossacks had

mistaken the Russian border town Kibarty for the East Prussian border town Eydtkuhnen.

The Cossacks carried out horrible acts, hanging the mayor and several other civilians.

The soldier who subsequently related this story took it as a reasonable explanation for the

greater extent of destruction in Kibarty. 28 That the German military would ever perpetrate

such an act against its own subjects seemed impossible. In the borderlands, however, the

haphazard and confounding mix of ethnic groups did not have the same relationship to

the Russian state that Germans were accustomed to back home. Within the context of

27 In August 1914, for example, German aircraft dropped leaflets into border areas encouraging Poles to rise up for their “liberation from the yoke of Moscow” so that they might achieve “freedom and independence”. On a different level, fliers also promised that German rule would bring victory of the “Asiatic hordes” and the entry of “Western civilization.” See Egmont Zechlin, Die deutsche Politik und die Juden im Ersten Weltkrieg (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck u. Ruprecht, 1969), 121. 28 Frauenholz and Bayerisches Kriegsarchiv in München, K.B.2. Kürassier- und schwere Reiter-Regiment , 2:96. 40

Russia’s vast multiethnic empire, the Cossacks seemed to be a foreign group in the service of an unnatural ruler.

The Germans’ first encounters with Russian subjects helped reinforce soldiers’ perceptions that they were the liberators of the oppressed peoples of the East even though civilian reactions were not uniform: “Some fled screaming into the forest, others – when the first option was no longer possible – ran up to us to kiss our boots, coat hems and stirrups, and this behavior was revolting to our sensibilities.” 29 Such reactions reiterated

the complexity of the invading army’s relationship to the conquered peoples and German perception of Russian rule. Russian subjects in the borderlands appeared to be helpless

and with no strong loyalties to any state. The diary of Lieutenant Julius Kirchhoff

indicates a struggle to understand the seemingly nonsensical position of the Russian state

visàvis its population. On 15 April 1915 he recorded the following in Russian Poland:

“At this position stood about a dozen homes that had been set on fire. Red columns of

flame struck into the sky, thick smoke spread through the whole valley. Why did they do

this now? The poor residents had to leave their huts in this cold, here in their homeland,

in which they had lived and loved, in which they’d been happy.” 30 During the march

through Lithuania, Lieutenant Karl Hennicke encountered local people who overcame the

fear of Germans that had been instilled in them. Buying food and cooking it in a “ Panje

house” inhabited by friendly locals, Hennicke described the scene in May 1915:

At first [the locals] didn’t trust us, but they came to help us reach our needs as they realized that we were not inhuman brutes. When on 19 May Russian artillery fire opened up, they disappeared into the forest and built shelters. They were too frightened. They also slept there. On the next day they came back and happily

29 Ibid., 2:97. 30 BAMA MSG 2/5561, Julius Kirchhoff. 41

received our news that the Russians were gone and would not be back for the foreseeable future. 31

Diaries and memoirs reflect a widely shared understanding that the Russian Empire had treated its subjects badly, instilling in the soldiers the sense that the “border peoples” were simply pawns to be manipulated by a foreign ruling power. As such, Germans were rarely suspicious of the locals who did not seem to be tormented by divided loyalties.

As the invading troops moved increasingly further from the East Prussian railheads they began to rely heavily on food and shelter provided by locals. Soldiers often walked a fine line between reprising the role of exploitive foreign power so familiar to the locals (as well as to the Germans who reviled Russian atrocities) and establishing friendships based on mutual trust and needs. These encounters could be fleeting moments of generosity like Karl Hennicke experienced when travelling past a farm house. The owners singled him out among his fellow soldiers and gave him a piece of bread with butter and cheese. Hennicke and the accompanying soldiers were confused why he alone

had received the food but they reasoned that the farmers may have had a son in the

Russian army whom they hoped would be treated kindly as well. 32 Though he was in

Lithuania at the time, Hennicke did not comment on the farmers’ political allegiances or ethnic characteristics; in fact, he simply referred to the farmers as Russian though they were almost certainly Lithuanians or Poles. Army veterinarian Alfred Schwanitz had considerably lengthier contact with locals while quartered in Lithuania. Schwanitz arrived shortly after a battle had concluded nearby and at first the owners of the home he stayed in were frightened and shy. They quickly became “friendly and helpful in every

31 BAMA MSG 2/2810, Karl Hennicke, 49. 32 BAMA MSG 2/2810, Karl Hennicke, 64. 42 respect.” 33 The soldiers spent evenings with the locals sitting around the oven singing

songs from their respective cultures. Schwanitz admired the Lithuanian songs that were

“drawn out and somewhat sad” but nevertheless pretty. 34 Soldiers posted in one area for substantial periods occasionally became acquainted with friendly civilians who helped with all of their tasks, including the washing and folding of laundry. 35 Both Günther Popp

and Julius Kirchhoff quartered with families long enough to form relationships of mutual

assistance and even respect. Both shared cooking and other household duties with their

forced hosts. Kirchhoff regularly received fresh milk and hot potato pancakes. The Poles

quartering Kirchhoff had told him how their many horses, cows, and sheep had fallen

victim to the war, leaving them the single milkproviding cow and one hen. When a

German mess soldier came by and attempted to take the sole remaining cow, Kirchhoff

stepped in to prevent it: “since he had no certificate and no justification at all, he left. The

cow, which he’d already tied to a rope, was brought back into its stall.” 36 The cow had provided fresh milk to Kirchhoff and he therefore had a selfinterested motivation for preventing the requisitioning. Kirchhoff’s diary nevertheless testifies to a pleasantly

harmonious relationship and even personal affection for the humble but goodnatured

Poles. These types of interactions were fairly common during the invasion of Russian

territory as both invaders and local civilians attempted to establish positive relationships.

As the example of cow requisitioning suggests, military demands put inevitable

stresses on the German relationship with the people of the borderlands that would

foreshadow the occupation’s longerterm difficulties satisfying the needs of the people

33 BAMA MSG 2/618, Alfred Schwanitz, 338. 34 BAMA MSG 2/618, Alfred Schwanitz, 338. 35 BAMA MSG 2/618, Alfred Schwanitz, 342. 36 BAMA MSG 2/5561, Julius Kirchhoff. 43 while fulfilling its military and political imperatives. Just as happened during the march into Belgium and France in 1914, the lead elements of the German invasion in 1915 outpaced supply columns and relied on requisitioning from enemy noncombatants for replenishment. Paul Wittenberg recalled that his unit would have gone hungry if not for the supplies they requisitioned from Russian subjects. As the army pushed deeper into

Lithuania in 1915, his artillery unit resorted to threatening locals for food. One noncommissioned officer made a habit of conspicuously brandishing his bayonet when demanding that locals surrender food. Wittenberg recalled that this method yielded plenty of bread for each squad in his unit, usually in the form of dark, circular brown loaves forty centimeters in diameter. 37 The first few months of the invasion were marked by similar experiences of armed German soldiers requisitioning at will. Germans were aware that the retreating Russians’ brought back all worthy livestock with them, but the invasion advanced at such a pace that the considerable agricultural stores of Poland and

Lithuania were not yet depleted. The soldiers often chose to requisition the scarcer and more valuable supplies, particularly poultry and livestock. When Karl Hennicke’s unit ran low on supplies as it moved further into Lithuania in May 1915, a group of three men armed with guns, clubs and rope visited the nearest village to buy a sheep, though it is unclear whether they paid cash or instead exchanged military requisition certificates

(Requisitionsscheine ). 38 Hennicke’s unit had not run out of food, it was simply

replenishing its supply of meat. Unfortunately for borderlands residents, German

requisitioning often fell out of bounds of the army’s system of acquiring by force only the

most necessary of items.

37 BAMA MSG 2/2640, Paul Wittenberg, 356. 38 BAMA MSG 2/2810, Karl Hennicke, 49. 44

Soldiers’ interaction with the foreign and ostensibly inferior peoples of the

Russian Empire often involved demands beyond the army’s most essential needs and were sometimes confrontational and criminal. Locals were understandably reluctant to surrender food to the invading German army, especially given the war’s destruction of crops and the largescale requisitioning of livestock. Additionally, the locals appear to have been conditioned to expect the worst from German rule. German impositions and the civilians’ responses created illwill on both sides, arousing mutual suspicion with longterm consequences. One officer opined that the people of the Russian borderlands should be subjected to the same treatment that the Russian army had enforced during its brief time in East Prussia: “In Allenstein the people had to provide for the Russians. Why can’t the people here work for us? They loaf around, stare at us, and when something is asked of them they say they have nothing.” 39 His sense of injustice had to do with his personal experiences attempting to requisition supplies from the local population. This officer and the other Germans he was quartered with told the “witch” housing them that she needed to surrender all of her stores of food, to which she replied that she had absolutely nothing. Even when they told her she would not receive any money for any supplies they might find through a forced search of her home, she did not relent. The soldiers acted on their threat and discovered schnapps, petroleum, eggs, milk, sausage and ham. The woman was allowed to keep a single goose. 40 As this example shows, locals’ needs could account for very little when weighed against soldiers’ desires.

Soldiers also sometimes went against their army’s own regulations when seeking out food in the occupied Russia. Once the front had stabilized and lines of supply caught up

39 BAMA MSG 2/2975, Anonymous, 69. 40 BAMA MSG 2/2975, Anonymous, 69. 45 with the forward troops, the soldiers no longer suffered an immediate lack of supplies and army policy officially prohibited requisitioning from locals. Paul Wittenberg’s unit violated that policy by stealing chickens outright from farmers’ fields. He regretted that the chickens had been allowed to run free in the fields where they were difficult to catch, but otherwise did not seem troubled by such practices: “In general we didn’t plunder but here we made an exception.” 41 Disregard for the locals’ needs could easily extend to suspicion and further complicate each side’s struggle for food stores and good relations.

Complaining that the locals had little to provide to soldiers, Wittenberg’s unit once suspected the local “ Panjes ” of having buried potatoes in a cemetery grave rather than a corpse. The soldiers received approval to exhume the casket, whereupon they learned that their suspicions had been erroneous. 42 Such impositions created incipient resentment of

the new occupiers.

The occupiers generally viewed the locals as politically quiescent on the basis of

their simplicity and lack of education, and not particularly loyal to the Russian Empire on

the basis of their discontent with Russian oppression. Military urgency during the army’s

advance nonetheless combined with the communication difficulties to create moments of

tense conflict. The liberation narrative reached the limit of its usefulness as each side

struggled to assess the other’s true intentions. German soldiers generally believed that the

locals’ desire to help the Russians had disappeared along with the retreating Russian

army’s ability to compel it, but suspicions remained. 43 Hans Risch’s artillery unit accused

the civilian population of signaling the German positions to the Russians in the absence

of an alternative explanation for the enemy’s startlingly accurate artillery fire. The

41 BAMA MSG 2/2640, Paul Wittenberg, 456. 42 BAMA MSG 2/2640, Paul Wittenberg, 389. 43 BAMA MSG 2/5451, Hans Risch, 56. 46

German artillery positions seemed to be taking heavy fire while the houses surrounding them remained undisturbed: “We took care of it ourselves very simply by beating up and detaining any suspicious individual who hung around our displacement too long.” 44 The

invading German troops’ arbitrary and ruthless use of force against the local population

was fueled by uncertainty over civilians’ intentions and capabilities. In April 1915 the

Second Royal Bavarian Heavy Cavalry Regiment forded the Dubissa River in Lithuania

and entered a small village. The regiment surrounded the village in order to prevent any

transmission of information from the locals to the Russians. The supposedly typical scene

testified to the panic that could accompany the German arrival in a newly occupied area:

Tremendous nervous excitement in the village and then astonishment that we did not immediately hang some of them. With great trouble I used a dictionary to help me make clear to the mayor that he had to stay with me overnight as a hostage [as a disincentive for attacks on the Germans]: he couldn’t get past the idea that we weren’t going to hang him. 45

As far as the surviving documentation attests, such encounters did not turn out to be the worstcase scenarios that locals often feared. The taking of hostages could serve as the start of mutually beneficial communication through which the Germans received information on Russian movements and the locals gradually learned that cooperation need not be accompanied by unnecessary violence. 46 Nevertheless, tensions on both sides

remained high and the German soldiers continued to feel that the safest policy was to prevent the locals from possible betrayal. German cavalry units feared the locals providing information on their movements – whether by coercion or voluntarily given –

44 BAMA MSG 2/5451, Hans Risch, 46. 45 Frauenholz and Bayerisches Kriegsarchiv in München, K.B.2. Kürassier- und schwere Reiter-Regiment , 2:101. 46 Ibid., 2:110. 47 and preferred to advance through the forest in order to mask themselves from the locals. 47

Of course, this fear was partly instilled by certain locals’ willingness to provide information on the enemy. Determining the true loyalties of the population for the purpose of direct military action continuously challenged German soldiers.

The Dirty, Diseased Russian Empire

Just like the difficulty of establishing effective communication and determining local civilians’ loyalties, German preoccupation with the sanitary conditions in the

Russian Empire began immediately upon crossing the border and remained a central concern throughout the occupation. Nearly everything the invading soldiers encountered served as a symbol of Russia’s dirty, disorganized nature: “The main roads were poor, good side streets and connections did not exist, the fields were primitive and slovenly planted, the woods not at all maintained; there were no pretty stone houses with red roofs and litup windows, only poor wooden huts with short, rotting straw roofs, everything was covered in filth.” 48 From sloppily plowed fields to liceridden homes, the subjects of the Russian Empire were starkly set apart from their culturally superior conquerors. The relatively underdeveloped characteristics of Russian lands were inextricably linked in

German perception to the appalling dirty and unsanitary conditions. German assumptions regarding living conditions and infrastructure did not seem to apply in a land where filth knew no bounds. A Saxon cavalry unit remembered the great disconnect between

German assumptions and the fact of life in Russia: “The miserable Russian nest Mielniki, proudly designated as a village on the map, consisted of five pathetic Panje woodenhuts,

47 Ibid., 2:121. 48 Gebsattel, Das K.B.1. Ulanen-Regiment , 91. 48 full of dirt and lice.” 49 Russian conditions were not just inconveniently backward, but also entirely at odds with German standards. A Russian village comprised a few ramshackle huts full of dirt and lice – hardly the mark of culture, let alone civilization.

German views of Russia’s filthy backwardness channeled a tradition of stereotypes in order to create rigid boundaries between soldiers and the local civilians.

Bacteriologists and politicians alike had promoted a view of the Russian Empire as diseaseridden. Soldiers’ impressions in 1914 and 1915 corresponded with the stereotypes of prewar Russian subjects who provided Germany with unskilled labor and supposedly brought disease with them; 50 soldiers viewed Russia as an empire of dirt and disease inhabited by “primitive” people who unknowingly perpetuated an anachronistic lifestyle. Germans often found their billets to be appalling unhygienic, leaving them to choose between a bed of straw and a civilian’s dirty mattress. 51 The threat of liceborne typhus mobilized the military to take imposing preventive measures. Delousing facilities were eventually constructed throughout the area and soldiers were not allowed to cross the border back into Germany without a certificate vouching for their compliance.

Whereas Germans feared typhus and did everything to avoid exposure to lice, the locals seemed positively immersed in them. A soldier recalled that “most men and women wore their fraying, liceridden fur hats even in the summer.” In the case of the Russian

“village” of Mielniki that comprised five shabby wooden huts, the Saxon cavalrymen chose to sleep outside with their horses rather than in the liceridden houses. A saying

49 Karl Edler von der Planitz, 3. Kgl. sächs. Husaren-Regiment Nr. 20 , Erinnerungsbläter deutscher Regimenter 67 (Dresden: Verlag der Buchdruckerei der Wilhelm und Bertha v. Baensch Stiftung, 1932), 167. 50 Paul Weindling, Epidemics and Genocide in Eastern Europe, 1890-1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 1314. For the connection between disease and Jews in particular, see Jack Wertheimer, Unwelcome Strangers: East European Jews in Imperial Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 25. 51 BAMA MSG 2/2975, Anonymous, 128. 49

(which in German rhymes) encapsulated the soldiers’ attitudes toward the civilians’ level of hygiene: “The father has lice, the child has lice, the head of the household has lice, and also the servants. I sit in their midst as a quartered guest; first I take a look around, and then I have lice together with them.” 52 The area’s endemic dirtiness seemed to seep into all aspects of its inhabitants’ lives, forcing the German outsiders to take measures in order to prevent succumbing to it.

Given the occupiers’ adherence to stringent standards of hygiene, German efforts to rid the foreign lands of filth are perhaps unsurprising. In fact, the cleaning of Russian buildings and areas was also a means of metaphorically sweeping Russian influence out

and ushering in German order and methods. Almost without exception, Germans entered

their quarters and administrative buildings in the East and sought first to cleanse them of

remnant filth. Dilapidated conditions naturally resulted from the devastation of war, but

the Russian Empire appeared to be defined by such dirtiness. If unsanitary conditions

were endemic to Russia, cleanliness was thought to be a product of German culture that

the invaders exported to the occupied lands. The following scene was typical of the

attitudes accompanying the introduction of German order to Russia: “In our building

ruled strong ‘ russische Wirtschaft .’ … First, order needed to be established through

sweeping, dusting and scrubbing. The owner … and an old aunt stand by and marvel at

how I have a room [cleaned]. In an hour everything is done and has received a German

look about it.” 53 Russian subjects ignorant in the ways of true cleaning frequently appear

in German descriptions. The connection between Russian backwardness and unsanitary

conditions manifested itself in the German practice of dragging in the locals to do the

52 “Hier Laust sich das Vater, hier laust sich das Kind, hier laust sich der Hausherr, und auch das Gesind. Ich sitz als Quartiergast in ihrere Mitt‘; Erst schaue ich zu, dann laus ich mich mit.“ Planitz, 167. 53 BAMA MSG 2/2975, Anonymous, 60. 50 hard cleaning work which entailed the added benefit of educating the locals in German cleaning methods. Russian manual labor and German methods merged to further the goal of creating a space suitable to the more advanced Germans and toward instituting

German methods in the East.

Implementing German standards of cleanliness could entail both the more abstract notion of bringing in a minimum level of German culture and also the concrete idea of extending German influence to the area. The occupiers intended to carry out a

“fundamental” cleaning that would erase years of pernicious Russian influence. Accounts of cleaning activities explicitly referenced political change:

In order to occupy myself I set myself up as the commander of the village and order that a Royal Prussian village be made out of the Russian pig sty. It begins with a great cleansing. Manure piles are taken away, stumps and piles of stone are removed. Latrines are erected at various points outside the village and are moved from time to time. Then I have the village street paved. On both sides of the street … the most beautiful shelters are put up, with clever adages and gardens. 54

The process of making a location German necessarily began with hygienic improvements. These most basic of fixes often included other essential changes, such as the creation of latrines. Soldiers sometimes wished to erect entirely new buildings rather than live in the insufficient structures surviving. After the most basic of improvements like waste removal and the creation of latrines, Germans might finish the process by renaming the newly improved infrastructure. The newly paved village road in the above passage was christened after Bismarck, replete with a small monument to its namesake, thus emphasizing the place’s new German character.

Even in the earliest stages of the German occupation of Russia when largely provisional measures were needed to improve the backward and wartorn land, the

54 BAMA MSG 2/2975, Anonymous, 1889. 51 practice of using local civilian labor in the service of sanitary measures emphasized civilians’ backwardness. The locals were to some extent regarded simply as a convenient means of reducing the soldiers’ own need to clean up the mess that confronted them.

Fighting in the East in 1914 and 1915 pushed the front east to west and back again over hotly contested ground. Some cities were nearly destroyed and the burnedout rubble comprised an imposing cleanup task. German soldiers directed Russian subjects not just in the rebuilding of such areas, but also in the improvement of conditions that had apparently never attained the level of cleanliness that Germans expected and envisioned.

Locals were educated in German methods in order to ensure their longerterm implementation. As a German soldier wrote in his diary in 1917, these local helpers might sometimes be in such need of cleaning themselves that they required bathing prior to helping clean up. 55 One soldier billeted with a friendly Polish family either assumed or was told by his hosts that they washed themselves in order to “honor” their German guests. 56 The locals’ lack of knowledge and habitual cleaning made a difficult task of the

German attempt to instill their values and put the locals to work. Complaining about the

difficulty of teaching the locals proper sanitary measures, Julius Kirchhoff noted that an

outbreak of scarlet fever necessitated his changing quarters: “The women let the kids sit

in their own filth and our doctors have to emphatically explain to them, until they

understand, that kids have to be kept clean first and foremost.” 57 Germans had to explain even the most rudimentary of tasks in order to see their cleaning regimen successfully implemented. This apparent backwardness again emphasized the locals servility;

55 BAMA MSG 2/5607, Kurt Schmidt, 180. 56 BAMA MSG 2/5561, Julius Kirchhoff. 57 BAMA MSG 2/5561, Julius Kirchhoff. 52

“panjes ” and “ panjenkas ” simply had to be forced to carry out the proper measures in

spite of their natural unsuitability to the task.

German notions of the locals’ dirtiness were not entirely universal. Contingent not just upon individuals but also upon social class and ethnicity, the Eastern Front’s prevailing picture of unhygienic conditions was interspersed with exceptions and more nuanced stereotypes. In stark contrast to the dirty hovels of the borderlands’ poorest farmers, soldiers also came into contact with rich nobles and their luxurious estates.

Some estates had already been abandoned by owners fleeing the destruction of war.

Others continued to be run by their wealthy owners and they entertained Germans passing through, presumably with the assumption that a warm welcome would be the best

means of securing the occupiers’ goodwill. The stark difference between the farmers’

diseaseridden hovels and the nobles’ gilded estates emphasized the great contrast and

contradiction in Russian life. Wealthy agrarian elites certainly still existed in Germany, but the scale of Russian wealth surprised and impressed the invading soldiers. Alfred

Schwanitz described the time that his unit was finally given a welcoming stay at one of

the rich estates they had previously seen only in passing. 58 Moving into Lithuania,

Schwanitz’s unit arrived at a Baron Gorski’s estate and were personally welcomed and directed to the restrooms by the “small, hunchbacked, and yet very elegant man.” 59 The

soldiers were astounded by the extent of the estate’s luxury, taking in the expensive

furniture, mirrors, artwork, and parquet floors. Unlike the poor farmers who could only

communicate with the Germans via gestures, the nobles seemed to be at least somewhat

within the realm of German cultural norms. Baron Gorski spoke broken German with a

58 BAMA MSG 2/618, Alfred Schwanitz, 318. 59 BAMA MSG 2/618, Alfred Schwanitz, 319. 53 heavy “Hungarian accent”, yet he knew Berlin well and had visited a spa in Wiesbaden to take a cure. To be sure, the level of wealth on display at such estates was far outside the realm of most soldiers’ experiences – Schwanitz marveled at Gorski’s ownership of

14,000 Morgen of land (approximately 8,700 acres), which was not a large Russian estate when compared to a neighbor’s 55,000 Morgen (ca 34,000 acres) – but nobles like Baron

Gorski were familiar with a high standard of living and were knowledgeable and experienced in ways that seemed to distance them from Russia’s backwardness.

The great variety of available billets and provided German soldiers insight into

Russia’s unusual social and ethnic makeup. The occupiers did begin to make finer social distinctions as they observed different types of lifestyles and consequent class conflicts.

Alfred Schwanitz’s unit moved on from Baron Gorski’s beautiful estate and sought quarter deeper in Russian Lithuania. Schwanitz passed through Lukniki, a “genuine old

Judenstadt ” (literally “Jewish city”, here certainly pejorative) inhabited by Jews conspicuously attired in traditional orthodox garb, and was thankful to find another luxurious estate at Dyrwiany. Having avoided the unappealing Lukniki, Schwanitz and his fellow soldiers lived in Dyrwiany “like princes” for five days. 60 The experience brought the soldiers into contact with the local nonJewish rural population whom the

Germans suspected of having stolen much of the estate’s property with the idea of later blaming it on the German occupiers. Schwanitz claimed that this assumption was proven true through various observations of the local residents. The estate’s opulence still impressed the occupying soldiers – prized items included an oven larger than anything

Schwanitz had seen in Germany except at a large hotel, much fine silverware and artwork

– but the locals’ theft undermined the overly simplistic German narrative of liberation

60 BAMA MSG 2/618, Alfred Schwanitz, 321. 54 and revealed class tensions within the Russian Empire. The estate was missing its owner who had died years prior and whose widow lived almost exclusively in Warsaw. The owner was ostensibly Polish and was a “rich, noble doctor from Riga.” Schwanitz continued to marvel at the rich goods remaining the manor house, but the locals’ theft suggested a more complicated understanding than he had previously. German interaction with Poles and Lithuanians clearly ran the whole gamut from obstinate and unruly farmers who resented the invasion of their seemingly unhygienic homes to opulent estates run by absentee landlords where Germans lived like princes. The everconspicuous Jews of the Russian Empire provided an equally varying picture.

The Encounter with Russian Jewry

German interaction with Russia’s Jewish population cannot be regarded as simply the sum of stereotypes that the soldiers brought with them from Germany. For the vast majority of German soldiers, the march eastward occasioned their first direct contact with

Russian society in general and Russian Jews in particular. The context heavily conditioned attitudes toward Jews even if impressions were strongly influenced by familiar stereotypes and antisemitism. Perception of Jews’ seemingly illdefined position in Russian society had much to with the shaping of GermanJewish encounters. Soldiers met wealthy bourgeois Jews who provided appealing billets and generously shared goods with invading soldiers. They also encountered destitute Jews who lived in urban slums and engaged in the type of morally questionable activities that corresponded to life in an impoverished, warravaged city. The prevailing impressions, however, tended to dwell upon the negative even if they acknowledged the positive. Evidenced in subsequent

55 reports and policy, these viewpoints had a strong effect upon the German occupation and upon the longterm German views of its neighboring eastern lands and upon Jews in general.

The type of middleclass soldiers whose accounts have survived likely had some indirect and nebulous knowledge of Russian Jews prior to the war. Fueled by persecution and social tension, Russian Jewish emigration increased markedly beginning in the early

1880s. Between 1880 and 1914 roughly 2,750,000 Eastern European Jews passed through

Germany on their way to overseas destinations. 61 An additional 700,000 Eastern Jews

migrated through Germany between 1905 and the start of the war. 62 Though largely

transitory, the influx contributed to renewed debate over the position of Jews in German

society and culture. The inclusive tolerance of German liberalism was challenged when

eminent professor Heinrich von Treitschke published an attack on the influence of Jews

in Germany in 1881. 63 He claimed that Germany was “invaded year after year by multitudes of insidious, pantsselling youths from the inexhaustible cradle of Poland, whose children and grandchildren are to be the future rulers of Germany’s exchanges and Germany’s press.” Treitschke’s formulation replaced the promise of emancipation with a virulent new form of antisemitism that focused on Eastern Jews as “incomparably more alien to the European, and especially to the German national character.” 64 This

terms of this debate, which also maligned acculturated German Jews in the process,

61 Steven E. Aschheim, Brothers and Strangers: The East European Jew in German and German Jewish Consciousness, 1800-1923 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999), 37. 62 Ibid.. 63 See Marcel Stoetzler, The State, the Nation, and the Jews: Liberalism and the Antisemitism Dispute in Bismarck's Germany (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008). 64 Treitschke Heinrich von, “A Word About Our Jewry,” in The Jews in the Modern World , ed. Jehuda Reinharz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 281. 56 conditioned soldiers heading eastward in 1914 to view Eastern European Jews in a negative light. 65

German soldiers’ perception that Jews occupied a special, instrumental place in the East took root from the very start and was connected to views of the multiethnic, expansive Russian Empire. Jews held perhaps the most illdefined political position of any of the Russian Empire’s ethnic groups. A soldier’s comment on a city in Lithuania testifies to the distinct form this took in German perception: “The population is mostly

Jewish and therefore especially friendly to us.” 66 Unlike other ethnicities in the East with

a history of sovereign states, like Poles and Lithuanians, Jews seemed to be out of place politically. 67 Sympathy to the German occupiers was not the sole basis for the

assessment; the occupiers understood that Russian rule had abridged the rights of all non

Russian ethnic groups. Unlike Lithuanians who – alleged backwardness notwithstanding

– appeared to possess a foundation for statehood on the basis of ethnic majority, Jews’ political future was unclear.

The occupiers understood that Russian social conditions had contributed to Jews’

apparently exceptional position. Russian Jews were traditionally restricted from acquiring

land and living anywhere but in the cities of the Pale of Settlement; this marginal and

cultural position defined them in German perception. They seemed in some sense to be

simultaneously everywhere and nowhere, familiar and exotic. They accounted for high percentages of the population in Russian cities and shtetls but were almost entirely absent

from farms. They were occasionally similar in custom and appearance to German Jews,

65 Shulamit Volkov, Germans, Jews, and Antisemites: Trials in Emancipation (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 66 BAMA MSG 2/2975, Anonymous, 211. 67 On the social and political conditions of Jews in the Russian Empire, see Benjamin Nathans, Beyond the Pale: the Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002). 57 but sometimes markedly and repellently different. Germans struggled to create a definition with any precision or uniformity. On the one hand, Jews were regarded as the most obvious friend to the invading Germans. The ability to cobble together a strained but mutually intelligible dialogue between speaking Jews and the German invaders provided Germans with the clearest linguistic link to the local population. Noble

Poles or Lithuanians sometimes had basic German skills as well, but Germans had relatively little contact with them in comparison to the more widespread and concentrated

Jewish population. Jews lived in every major city in the East, often comprising fifty percent or more of urban populations. Moreover, Jews made up a large percentage of

Russia’s commercial class, working in every imaginable trade. Jewishrun Teestuben , or tearooms, were frequently visited by German soldiers seeking refreshments. Orthodox

Jews living in the customary, religious fashion were set off from the other ethnicities of the East by their dress and appearance. Soldiers clearly perceived them as a distinct group yet there was a frustrating lack of uniformity. Germans channeled familiar stereotypes to place them in a new context; one soldier described a Judenstadt in which the residents

“squatted at the doors of their miserable wooden houses wearing long caftans and round

kepis, standing next to their black haired, hook nosed women.” 68 German soldiers in the

East inevitably interacted with Jews and these experiences likely played a role in the formation of longerlasting stereotypes of Jews and life within the Russian Empire.

Given the area’s poverty – particularly in overcrowded but industrially deficient cities – it is not surprising that German observers associated Russian Jews with the dinginess of urban conditions and Jews’ apparently exceptional (if not exotic) foreign character. Germans nevertheless occasionally felt that the gulf separating them from the

68 BAMA MSG 2/618, Alfred Schwanitz, 3201. 58 foreign cultures of the East could be bridged by similar social standing and the same applied to Jews. Soldiers clearly held the luxurious estates of Polish and Lithuanian nobles in higher regard than they held Polish or Lithuanian farmers’ hovels, even if the extent of the former’s wealth was far outside the personal means of the vast majority of

Germans. Nobles like Baron Gorski might, after all, have travelled to Germany and might have some understanding of notions of hygiene and culture which more closely corresponded with those of the invading soldiers. The modest but comfortable urban lifestyles of Russia’s bourgeois Jews could seem most similar socially to conditions in

Germany, especially to middleclass German officers who led comfortable though not extravagant lives back home. Alfred Schwanitz found his first billet with a Jewish family to be quite pleasant: “In the home of a Jewish family I slept in a freshly made and entirely clean bed, after I had drunk a large number of glasses of excellent tea and smoked a huge number of Russian cigarettes.” 69 Although Schwanitz did not explicitly comment on the social standing or religiosity of his host family, it would seem that the Jewish family’s higher standard of living went a long way toward facilitating his acceptance of them as respectable. Günther Popp had a similar experience when quartered with a Jewish family yet he evidenced German soldiers’ more common tendency to be suspicious of Jews: “In

Rossienie we found quarter with a Jewish merchant. The family was extremely charming but nevertheless we didn’t trust them because everything seemed so [put on].” 70

Lingering German discomfort with even the most generous and welcoming of Russian

Jews stemmed in part from the difficulty of interacting with the foreign subjects of occupied enemy territory, and partly from antisemitic stereotypes Germans brought with

69 BAMA MSG 2/618, Alfred Schwanitz, 317. 70 BAMA MSG 2/4436, Günther Popp, 54. 59 them to Russia. Julius Kirchhoff’s experience being quartered by Jews from Wilna corresponded to Popp’s: “Quartered with Jews from Wilna. Tee from the hissing samovar. ‘How much [does it cost]?’ ‘Nothing, to your health!’ Bloated but decent old man. Nice daughters with pretty faces and beautiful eyes.” 71 The pleasant distraction provided by the young women and the generous offer of tea were not enough to overcome German perception of the Jews as foreign and offputting, highlighting the strength of the stereotypes Germans brought with them to that were both tenacious and sometimes further reinforced through experience.

Distrust and genial admiration could influence relationships between Germans and Russian subjects of any ethnicity or religion. One key difference in the case of Jews, however, was that Germans could count on at least making themselves understood even in the face of lingering distrust. Germans and Jews could communicate through a combination of German and Yiddish, allowing Jews to function as translators, spreading the dictates of the German occupation to the occupied population at large – Jewish and

Christian. Invading German soldiers often drafted Jews against their will to help with translation. One regimental history remembers such an instance; German soldiers releasing a Jewish translator from his duties inferred from his thankfulness that he had assumed they would continue to take him with them past the agreedupon point. 72 As the

example indicates, the ability to communicate did not alleviate all anxiety and distrust.

Jews’ exceptional political and cultural position in German perception had much to do with their communication ability intersecting with allegations of Russian atrocities.

When Germans crossed the border into Russian Poland or Russian Lithuania, it was the

71 BAMA MSG 2/5561, Julius Kirchhoff. 72 Frauenholz and Bayerisches Kriegsarchiv in München, K.B.2. Kürassier- und schwere Reiter-Regiment , 2:98. 60

Yiddish or Germanspeaking Jews who related the stories of Russian crimes. In this manner, invading soldiers learned details about Russia deporting ethnic minorities from the borderlands and about the brutal destruction of territory by Cossacks as the Russian army retreated. 73 Alfred Schwanitz, for example, was aware that the residents of

Poniewiez were almost entirely absent because they had either been deported to the interior of Russia or had simply fled the ravages of war. 74 It appeared that taking shelter in the forest had been the only means of escaping Russian oppression. Due to stories like these, Jews came to be seen as a group free from any deep seated loyal to its ruler. In fact,

Russian wartime policies toward Jews were remarkably harsh. Ad hoc military deportations resulted in the displacement of between 500,000 and 1,000,000 Jews in borderland areas. 75 As the German Army pushed further eastward, Russian military leaders made progressively expansive demands on the amount of territory that needed to be cleared of Jewish subjects. The comprehensive policy formalized on 30 June 1915 conferred military leaders with the discretion to export any Jews they wished. This policy had already resulted in instances of mass deportation; 150,000 Jews were deported from the Kowno province during a two week period in May 1915, for example. 76 Hostage

taking occasionally took the place of deportation, but in any case the situation intensified

as the German army approached. In Schadow, a Lithuanian city of approximately 5,000

mostly Jewish and Polish residents, Cossacks and other Russian soldiers incited a violent pogrom upon recapturing the town in early May 1915. The Jews of Schadow endured

73 GSTA PK I HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr 14 Adhibendum 2, Isenburg October 1915, 7. 74 BAMA MSG 2/618, Alfred Schwanitz, 372. 75 Eric Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire: The Campaign Against Enemy Aliens During World War I (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2003), 138. See also Peter Gatrell, A Whole Empire Walking: Refugees in Russia During World War I (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999). 76 Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire , 140. 61 looting, extortion, torture and rape. Dozens of towns experienced much the same during

April and May and Jewish communities throughout the borderlands continued to suffer in this manner as long as the German advance continued. 77 Jews’ obvious cultural

distinctiveness and the oppression they had experienced suggested to the Germans that

local Jews had little reason to hope for the return of Russian control. Some Jews’

readiness to facilitate the Germans commercial needs further reinforced the sense that

Jews did not constitute an integrated or welcome group within the Russian Empire. In

addition to describing Cossack atrocities, Jews also sometimes provided information on

the movements of the Russian army, again emphasizing their importance to the German

military effort.

Communication with the Germans and the resulting contact via commercial

transactions could be a doubleedged sword. Soldiers appreciated that they could speak

with Jews, certainly preferable to the usual case of not being able to do so with Poles or

Lithuanians, but that is not to suggest that they generally found much appealing in Jewish

life. Yiddish, with its twist on German pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary, was seen

as a bizarre and inferior form of German. Basic communication was always possible and

yet soldiers complained of the strange sound and foreign words that were beyond their

grasp. When Germans interacted with members of the prominent Jewish commercial

class, the ability to communicate often did not help to salve these differences. To make

sense of these commercial interactions, soldiers drew upon traditional stereotypes of Jews

of the East. A staff physician described the scene in Suwalki in early 1915:

We entered the government city, passing through miserable huts…. We entered a store in a hut where the Jews immediately provided us tea from the samovar and goose schmaltz. The population seemed to be exclusively Jewish and their

77 Ibid., 1467. 62

businesses along the main street were quickly stormed by soldiers. Since they demanded shamefully high prices in German currency and since the transactions often too took long, some items went unpaid for. In general, though, especially in the sausage and cigarette stores, the soldiers paid. 78

To German eyes Jews reprised the role of exploitive merchants even though they provided welcome services and sought after goods. That German soldiers stole or demanded lower prices from Jewish merchants is not necessarily a sign of antisemitism given the soldiers’ propensity to take whatever grain and livestock needed from non

Jewish farmers, but antisemitism nevertheless appears to have shaped German perception and likely some of their actions.

Soldiers viewed Jewish merchants as prototypical Händler , a word that means trader or merchant but possessed connotations not conveyed by the English translation.

Germany’s greatest enemy in the First World War, England, was derided in nationalistic screeds as “a nation of Händler .” 79 This description fit comfortably within the propagandistic dichotomy of Kultur and Zivilisation , the supposed difference between

Germans and its western foes that presented Kultur as a more meaningful national

characteristic. 80 The sun may never set on the , but the English Händler knew only lust for material gain and could not contribute to the type of collectively glorious culture found in Germany. Jewish merchants likewise seemed to exist only to ply wares and seek wealth. A German soldier in a Lithuanian city recalled the area’s most prominent characteristic: “In the city itself lived mostly Jews, each of whom operated a

78 BAMA W10/51383, Mangold, 1112. 79 Most well known is the 1915 publication of famed sociologist Werner Sombart. See Werner Sombart, Händler und Helden. Patriotische Besinnungen (Munich: Duncker & Humboldt, 1915). See also Liulevicius, War Land , 29. 80 Oswald Spengler and others drew this distinction as a means of highlighting praiseworthy and allegedly essential German qualities. Gunther Mai, Das Ende des Kaiserreichs: Politik und Kriegführung im Ersten Weltkrieg (München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1987). 63 small shop.” 81 Given this apparent propensity toward the pursuit of wealth, it seemed

natural to soldiers that Jews should practice their trade dishonestly. Jewish merchants

were generally ascribed the characteristics of being dishonest, disloyal, clannish and

singularly focused on money. Of course some soldiers made exceptions if they took the

time to become familiar with individuals – a typical result when soldiers and Jews came

into regular contact, and mostly true in cases of similar social standing – but by and large

such notions were a serious impediment to mutual understanding, particularly during the

initial period of the invasion. Many soldiers who took part in the initial invasion and

moved to the Western Front not long thereafter took these briefly formed but deeply held perceptions back with them to Germany.

As was the case with nonJewish Russian subjects, the material facts of the

foreign lands conditioned interactions. German disgust with the dirtiness and dinginess of

life in Russia had much to do with their assessment of Jewish merchants. The scene that became associated with urban Jewish life is typified by one officer’s description of

visiting a Lithuanian city: “My word, what a nest of Jews ( Judennest ), covered in filth.

Twisty alleys, cheap houses, boards constituting the sidewalk, no pavement, and what

noise!” 82 Soldiers at times dehumanized Jews living in such filthy conditions; they certainly were much more aware of the cultural gap and more suspicious of the Jews’ motives and character. The officer who wrote the above passage described the

81 Frauenholz and Bayerisches Kriegsarchiv in München, K.B.2. Kürassier- und schwere Reiter-Regiment , 2:141. What most soldiers failed to comment upon, but which they could have been informed of through articles in occupation publications like the Kownoer Zeitung , was that Jewish run Teestuben , or tea houses, had not existed to the same extent prior to the war. Such businesses flourished during the war to serve the immediate needs of the thousands of soldiers in the area and helped make up for revenues lost due to wartime dislocations and prohibitions on trade. 82 BAMA 2/2975, Anonymous, 61. 64 borderlands population in general as “dull, listless, anxious and savage.” 83 Russian Jews, however, seemed very much engaged and purposeful, which is to say actively deceitful and malevolent. Many Russian Jews struggled to make ends meet but the invading soldiers seldom took account of Jewish poverty as they labeled Jews exploitive. Paul

Wittenberg described an incident he witnessed in the early months of the invasion:

A Jew with a small Panjewagen and two small, shaggy horses came to the village where we were stationed … to sell us goods. He mostly had chocolate, cookies and schnapps. Our soldiers came and instead of buying things they plundered his wagon. His wagon was tipped over and he thought they were helping him fix it, saying, ‘German soldier, good German soldier,’ until he noticed they were taking his things and he changed his mind. ‘German soldier, robber and murderer.’ It didn’t help him. His wares, especially the schnapps, were stolen. 84

Such was the callousness that could accompany the mistreatment of Jews. The

understanding and sympathy soldiers might have for a Lithuanian or Polish family down

to its last milkproducing cow was in short supply in regard to urban Jewish merchants.

Even poor farmers seem to have been praised for their selfsufficient bucolic lifestyles

more frequently than urban Jews plying commercial trades. The combination of

stereotypes and Jews’ often destitute lifestyles in the East rendered German identification

with eastern Jews rare.

Russian social conditions also contributed to German perceptions of Jews’ professional and physical characteristics. In spite of the fact that Russian Jews occupied

most rungs of the social spectrum, their absence in agriculture and prominence in

commercial activities proved decisive; Germans perceived that Jews were fully

unaccustomed to the type of physical labor that the new administration demanded of the

occupied civilians. This typical complaint complemented Jews’ perceived clannishness

83 BAMA 2/2975, Anonymous, 60. 84 BAMA 2/2640, Paul Wittenberg, 2829. 65 and dishonesty; Germans could hardly trust that they were even genuinely attempting the assigned tasks given their supposed tendency to lie and evade undesired work. Arthur

BoehmTettelbach served in the German surveying corps and was stationed in Lida

(present day but historically linked to Lithuania) in 1915 when local Jews were pressed into labor:

The residents … were called to what was to them a fully unknown type of work: street cleaning. You really can’t imagine the scenes. One sees strange images: men, dressed elegantly above (hats etc), raggedly below, sweep manure; women, in the most beautiful furs but without shoes carries dirt away; all of this with laughably improvised tools. An old Jew pretends to be busy in front of the workers; he sits on the side of the street and smoothes out the embankment with his hand. 85

To the German eye, Jews seemed to fit as proprietors of tea rooms and stores. Their unsuitability to physical labor and their apparent lack of knowledge of street cleaning reinforced the notion that they were at home in the dirty, crowded conditions of urban life and all of the destitute commercial endeavors that came along with it. Prussian officers accustomed to a comfortable middleclass or even aristocratic milieu back in Germany were understandably appalled by scenes of dirt and dilapidation.

Along with the other strongly negative stereotypes Germans had of Jews including dishonesty, disloyalty and clannishness, they also associated Jews with immorality. Here, too, the social consequences of antisemitic Russian policy played a crucial role. Soldiers focused on Jews’ direst attempts to make a living and overlaid their own middleclass values on destitute Jews. This, too, was to some extent a function of urban life which frequently involved crushing poverty. Paul Wittenberg described the scene greeting his unit just across the border in Lithuania:

85 BAMA MSG 1/317, Arthur BoehmTettelbach, 134. 66

The population of the borderlands consisted to a great extent of Jews who ran small shops and tea rooms. They offered their daughters for low prices. ‘Come in, pay a rubel, make Schweinerei the whole night with my daughter.’ They also sell chocolate and Leibnitz Kekse . I was really horrified a person could offer up his daughter for something like that. The need didn’t seem so great, and could there ever be a need so great that forced one to take such an action? 86

Thus the view of Jews as the proprietors of the Russian commercial realm conflated commerce and immorality. The connection could be passed over without further comment, as in one recollection which otherwise was not particularly notable for a strongly antisemitic position: “Half of [the borderlands population] consisted of poor

Jews who spoke German almost without exception and who were ready to provide any service for money.” 87 Although this conception of Jewish characteristics asserts only

amoral rather than immoral behavior, Paul Wittenberg’s experience with the father

offering his daughter up for prostitution evidences the tendency to assume the worst. The

charge that Jews were willing to perform any service in exchange for money was unique

in the sense that it referenced the Jews’ poverty as a justification. Though it was not

given as a causal explanation for their behavior, this was implied and the context

suggested that the problem was based at least to some extent on the inveterate disordered

and backward conditions of the Russian borderlands. The linking of Eastern European

Jews with immorality and cultural backwardness had a clear precedent in debate over the

Jewish immigrants traveling through Germany in the late nineteenth and early twentieth

century. 88

86 BAMA MSG 2/2640, Paul Wittenberg, 28. 87 Gebsattel, Das K.B.1. Ulanen-Regiment , 89. 88 Aschheim, Brothers and Strangers , 3. Aschheim argues that “for the average German soldier, the confrontation with the Jews of the ghettoes only confirmed and deepened an existing stereotype.” See Ibid., 150. 67

Russia, Poland, and Lithuania’s Natural Beauty

The earliest stage of German interaction with the Russian borderlands evidences both an attempt to better define the area’s various lands and peoples as well as the assessment of Russia’s role in defining the lands’ character. If the borderlands population was “dull, listless, anxious and savage,” it was at least partly the result of the

“compulsion and pressure that wore so heavily upon them.” 89 Even soldiers who were more often horrified and disgusted by the Russian Empire than they were sympathetic to the plight of its subjects could sometimes acknowledge that the conditions were truly piteous and beyond the control of the local civilians. While this dynamic characterized the general outlines of German views of occupied Russian territory, finer distinctions shaped German perspectives on the area and its people. Notwithstanding the ambiguity inherent in many German views of the Russian Empire, the view of Germany as a more advanced cultural and industrial nation was essentially unchallenged. But this, too, was expressed in manifold ways.

The German invasion of Lithuania displays soldiers’ multifaceted perception of the different areas under occupation. Many soldiers’ opinions of Lithuania were influenced by the march through Poland. Of course Lithuania and Poland were both

Russian provinces and therefore quite similar politically; neither were they entirely distinct ethnically. Divisions between the broad masses of the areas’ respective rural populations, however, created loosely defined boundaries between the two linguistic realms. (In spite of a shared political history, the Polish and Lithuanian languages stem from distinct language groups and are not mutually intelligible.) Although Polish

89 BAMA MSG 2/2975, Anonymous, 60. 68 speaking nobles often made up the aristocratic element of Lithuanian society, an expansive Lithuanian peasantry made up the majority of Lithuania’s agrarian class.

Repeated German references to the differences between Poland and Lithuania attest to a preference for the latter. Germans admired Lithuania’s relatively higher level of development yet this view of the lands nevertheless fit comfortably into the idealized notion of Russia’s backward, primitive subjects. German perception of the differences in the two areas could be the difference between night and day. German knowledge of and interaction with Poles prior to the war certainly outweighed knowledge of Lithuania and opinions of Poles tended to be strongly negative. 90 Alfred Schwanitz described his unit’s

emergence from “Poland’s darkness,” emphasizing the latter’s dirtiness and dinginess. 91

This frequently remarked upon difference entailed its own tensions, however, as Hans

Risch’s description made clear: “The area we just came to was better and more prosperous than Poland and the area we just traveled through. The houses were better, with tiled roofs and pretty vegetable gardens. The population looked a little cleaner.” 92

The difference to Hans Risch’s eyes primarily had to do with the heightened well being.

Soldiers noticed this as a “certain prosperity” in which the “houses and streets were better

than those of Poland but by no means magnificent.” 93 The soldiers noticed conspicuous improvements of the type they had found so objectionable just after crossing the border into the Russian Empire. Soldiers frequently commented upon the prevalence of straw roofs and corresponding lack of tiled roofs (Ziegeldächer ), which were implicitly

90 See Dirk Herweg, “Von der 'Polnischen Wirtschaft' zur UnNation. Das Polenbild der Nationalsozialisten,” in Feindbilder in der deutschen Geschichte , ed. Christoph Jahr, Uwe Mai, and Kathrin Roller (Berlin: Metropol, 1994). 91 BAMA MSG 2/618, Alfred Schwanitz, 319. 92 BAMA MSG 2/5451, Hans Risch, 56. 93 BAMA MSG 2/2975, Anonymous, 211. 69 understood to be a more advanced, German style material. Together, these superficial improvements made a “more cultivated impression” on the Germans, giving the lands an appearance more familiar to that of the German homeland. In spite of the improved look of the tiled roofs and better roads which made Lithuania more appealing, limits on

German willingness to consider the locals anything but primitive peoples remained. Hans

Risch observed that the changes were only superficial: “Admittedly it was preferable to bivouac rather than spend the night in the homes where one could easily get vermin

(Ungeziefer ).” 94 Even if Lithuanian Jews were “not as dirty” as Polish Jews, all in all these superficial differences did not presage a fundamental change in the Russian

Empire’s essential character as a dirty, and at times threatening place.

German soldiers marching into Lithuania were pleased with more than just the improvements in infrastructure. Eyewitness accounts demonstrate soldiers’ admiration for Lithuania’s natural landscape. It is unclear whether this had to do with Poland being more wartorn than the areas of Lithuania mentioned in diaries or that soldiers simply encountered more variety of natural beauty in Lithuania. In any case, it was in Lithuania that some soldiers first developed a perceptible, if hardly universal, appreciation for the occupied territories’ natural beauty. Of course this view was not independent of soldiers’ frequently negative views of many other aspects of life in the East. Even highly positive portrayals of Lithuania’s beauty were laden with judgments on the local residents and the general picture of social organization. In Lithuania, German views of the natural world became a prism through which they developed their broader view of life in the East.

94 BAMA MSG 2/5451, Hans Risch, 56. Medical professionals identified lice as the carriers of typhus just prior to the outbreak of the First World War and soldiers on the Eastern Front were well aware that contact with unhygienic conditions and people would increase the likelihood of infection. Weindling, Epidemics and Genocide in Eastern Europe, 1890-1945 , 75. 70

Just as improvements in infrastructure in Lithuania might influence soldiers to think of themselves as having emerged from “Poland’s darkness”, so too did the accompanying natural beauty improve their views of the foreign lands. Alfred

Schwanitz’s compliments of Lithuanian beauty knew no bounds. Romanticizing bucolic

Lithuania, Schwanitz unreservedly admired what he saw:

From then on it was almost as if we were in a wonderland! Even as we covered huge distances with sunburn and dust during daily forced marches to the front, the lovely landscapecharacter of this beautiful piece of earth we marched through in the marvelous May days made up for all of it. How much more beautiful it was here in the forested hilly landscape of Lithuania than in the miserable Polacktei we’d come to know. Over distances, through valleys, through magnificent high forests, over broad meadows with many deep blue lakes, and quiet, clean villages, through nice small cities with beautifully built homes and wooden churches rising up, inhabited with friendly locals, the forward march went well. 95

Although the extent of Schwanitz’s unqualified, lavish praise is exceptional, his perspective does find echo in other soldiers’ accounts. The trip through Lithuania in the

comfortable weather of May, 1915 could temper soldiers’ generally negative views of

Russia’s glaring differences. A beautiful landscape with charming villages appealed to

the aesthetic sensibilities of an educated urbanite like Schwanitz. German soldiers were

generally appalled by the backward conditions in occupied Russia yet an appreciation of

the lands’ natural beauty was at the time and long afterwards considered one of the

redeeming qualities of service on the Eastern Front. 96 Arthur BoehmTettelbach’s

retelling of a day enjoying natural beauty indicates the direction in which such tendencies

would lead: “Part of the area surrounding Lida is pretty, especially the meadowland

through which the Lidjeia winds. … One time I was able to sneak up on a cuckoo and

95 BAMA MSG 2/618, Alfred Schwanitz, 3178. 96 Major Koebke declared his time in Russian Poland and Galicia to be one of his “most pleasant memories of the war.” (BAMA MSG 2/2362, Major Koebke, 307). Celebrations of natural beauty amidst unpleasant wartime conditions commonly accompanied the glorifications of camaraderie. 71 photograph it. A few girls in colorful skirts make wreaths and dance; they fit wonderfully in the landscape.” 97 When read in isolation, BoehmTettelbach’s description might have just as easily described a scene in Germany. The context, however, was decisive in

shaping German views. The locals seemed to fit almost too perfectly into these picturesque nature scenes.

Praise of natural beauty seamlessly melded with much more negative views on

Russia’s backwardness. Opinions on the rural eastern people’s character formed at the

intersection of these strongly negative views on Russia’s industrial, technological, and

educational backwardness, and the positive celebration of the area’s natural beauty.

Germans held contradictory views on the relationships between nature and industry,

simultaneously finding virtue in unspoiled natural landscapes and praising German’s

“special” ability to cultivate and control nature. 98 The resulting view of the locals presented them as pleasantly simple people who lived in greater harmony with nature, perhaps lacking the German ability to shape natural processes to a significant degree. An

excerpt of Arthur BoehmTettelbach’s memories testifies to the way this dynamic worked

in German perception:

Today, Sunday, the streets are full of country people. The women wear white headscarves. They have very nice, goodnatured round faces … They first put their shoes on when they’ve entered the city; on the way out they stop near the last house (to take off their shoes). I saw dozens sitting there in the sand, packing their shoes in their hand baskets with a feeling of relief. I don’t know why but Lithuanian women always remind me of hens, good, fat laying hens. … On Sundays, the men who normally wear their dirty pelts instead wear rough jackets

97 BAMA MSG 1/317, Arthur BoehmTettelbach, 154. 98 David Blackbourn, “‘The Garden of our Hearts’: Landscape, Nature, and Local Identity in the German East,” in Localism, Landscape, and the Ambiguities of Place: German-Speaking Central Europe, 1860- 1930 , ed. David Blackbourn and James N. Retallack (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), 149 164. 72

and blue hats. They tie sheep leather around their legs. They greet all politely. There is always great commotion in front of the church. 99

Locals were not just physically closer to nature by virtue of the lower level of

development in Russian lands. Their lives seemed almost inextricably intertwined with

nature and German soldiers repeatedly observed how this connection emphasized their primitiveness. To BoehmTettelbach, Lithuanian women chafed against the social

necessity of wearing shoes in the city (which, to BoehmTettelbach, was hardly a city by

German standards). The men clothed themselves in either pitiful approximations of bourgeois clothes or, more often, in the most basic of animal products like sheep leather

and fur pelts. The locals were seen to be at home in nature and the dividing line between

civilization and the natural world was ambiguous. On a subsequent market day in Lida,

BoehmTettelbach’s observations reinforced this connection: “I buy a few of the beautiful scarves that the female farmers weave themselves and wear on their heads and

shoulders. When the scarves become old and nondescript, the horses are decorated with

them.” 100 The distance separating locals from their animals was thought to be slim

indeed.

The apparently great divide separating primitive Russian subject from cultured

German soldier was emphasized by the lack of a mutually intelligible language. Just as

Russian Jews’ ability to communicate with the occupiers in Yiddish or German

influenced those groups’ interactions, so too was the occupying soldier’s inability to

communicate with Lithuanians and Poles consequential to the formation of stereotypes.

Linguistic difficulties were viewed to be part and parcel of the problems plaguing life in

the Russian Empire. That the locals could not speak German might be excused, but many

99 BAMA MSG 1/317, Arthur BoehmTettelbach, 134. 100 BAMA MSG 1/317, Arthur BoehmTettelbach, 152. 73

Lithuanians’ inability to speak anything other than Lithuanian – perceived to be an obscure language by the foreign invaders – caused frustration. 101 Descriptions of

communication with the civilian population during the invasion portray them as

“howling” in fear, crying pitifully, and muttering, in the case of Poles, “ tak, tak ” or

“dobsche, dobsche .” This linguistic barrier created a widespread view of Russian

civilians as stumpfsinnig or schwachsinnig , words emphasizing a purported lack of

intelligence and indifference to any kind of intellectual, cultured thinking. The simplest,

most immediate tasks – such as the German taking of civilian hostages during the initial

invasion as a deterrent against any possible civilian hostility – were accompanied by pathetic whining amongst the people who could not understand that they would not be

executed. Of course these tensions were built in to the initial encounter, a period when

the military situation was anything but certain. Soldiers’ records indicate some quite

understandable uneasiness even among Jewish hostages in spite of the fact that Germans

could clearly explain that they would be released. In the case of nonJews who could not

communicate with German soldiers, however, the inability to communicate solidified

deep seated German stereotypes.

The linguistic barrier and German perception of the Russian Empire’s backward

conditions together resulted in a view of the civilian Lithuanian and Polish population

which emphasized simplicity and submissiveness as their defining qualities. In contrast to

Jews who could be surprisingly well educated or to nobles who commanded several

languages and may have had contacts with Germany prior to the outbreak of the war, the broad mass of nonJewish rural civilians – Panjes – appeared to Germans as essentially

oblivious to any matters which extended beyond the confines of their personal

101 BAMA MSG 2/2975, Anonymous, 59. 74 economies. Soldiers were capable of assigning the blame for this condition on oppressive

Russian rule but immediate responses centered on disgust and disbelief at the low

“Kulturstufe ” (“level of culture”, suggesting a hierarchical gradient) of the locals. Clay homes made a “hopeless impression”. 102 The poor of the East could be “almost touching

in their simplicity and submission”, especially when “wrapped in rags, dirty, sick and full

of Ungeziefer ”. 103 The locals’ purportedly unbreakable connection to the land was

encapsulated in the idea of their prosperity being measured by the number of animals

owned. 104 The produce of these animals – such as eggs and milk – appeared to be the locals’ most valuable commodity as they were apparently used to solicit favors amongst the German occupiers. One soldier wrote about fire prevention measures in Russia: “It is considered good form for every village to burn down once every twenty years.” 105 The same writer observed a fire in a village and noted that the villages began removing their belongings from their homes rather than attempting to put the fire out by dousing the flames. Even more disturbing was the following scene: “A woman whose house had burned down howled loudly at her returning cow, asking for forgiveness because its stall had burned down. But I gave her a mark and she soon calmed down.” 106 A translator at the scene suggested to the soldier that the woman’s behavior was calculated and that it had achieved the desired result, but the incident shows the extent to which soldiers viewed local civilians as backward, cultureless people. Whether dealing with locals who did not know how to properly clean themselves or villages which did not implement even the most basic of fire prevention measures, the occupied peoples appeared incapable of

102 BAMA MSG 2/2362, Major Koebke, 238. 103 BAMA MSG 1/317, Arthuer BoehmTettelbach, 172. 104 Planitz, 3. Kgl. sächs. Husaren-Regiment Nr. 20 , 168. 105 Ibid., 169. 106 Ibid., 169. 75 taking care of themselves. The war caused a great many disruptions in civilian life and the occupiers’ assumption of authority naturally put them in a position to take care of the locals’ immediate needs. This too reinforced the notion of the locals’ helplessness as soldiers encountered the civilians’ “slavish obsequiousness.”107

Conclusion

The Russian Empire – mysterious and distant to most Germans prior to the First

World War – took on new definition as the invasion progressed. It became a foil against

which soldiers better understood their own Germanness. Russia’s expansive geography,

appallingly backward material conditions and multifarious ethnicities disoriented German

soldiers. Unfamiliar geography necessitated attempts to understand precise locations in

relative terms, as Alfred Schwanitz struggled to do by computing that “it was closer from

Berlin to the Carpathians than from Berlin to Libau or Riga, and also that here we were at

the latitude of Edinburgh and further north than Copenhagen.” 108 The foreign people’s ways of life were just as difficult to explain. Russia’s subjects lived in a manner radically different from what Germans knew. Soldiers found it “unbelievable how low a level of culture” the people lived at, and yet they were “fit as a fiddle and feel great.” 109

Communication between Germans and Russians subjects was often strained, but this did

not stand in the way of Germans assuming that the locals were adapted to life in Russia in

ways that Germans could not comprehend; watching “ Panje women” bathe naked outdoors in Russia’s January cold was a simple curiosity on the one hand and an inexplicable oddity on the other. 110 Such basic perceptions combined as the foundation of

107 BAMA MSG 2/4436, Günther Popp, 66. 108 BAMA MSG 2/618, Alfred Schwanitz, 342. 109 BAMA MSG 2/2362, Koebke, 238. 110 BAMA MSG 2/5607, Kurt Schmidt, 101. 76 a multilayered German understanding of Russian lands and peoples. The effort to make sense of the occupied lands met Russia’s ethnic groups head on but did not always find resolution: invaders observed, for example, “children of the German type but in Russian national dress” 111 and a “dainty Polish woman” who might also be “halfJewish” in spite

of her blonde hair. 112 Such questions were not easily resolved by those for whom categorization was a necessary means of understanding new surroundings.

Conclusion

The march through Russia’s western provinces in 1915 progressed with remarkable speed and by the end of the year pushed the Eastern Front nearly 150 miles beyond the German Empire’s eastern border. The campaign’s political contours strongly influenced soldiers’ perceptions of the Russian Empire. Ethnic Russians were notable in their absence; the most frequently encountered ethnic Russians were, of course, the enemy soldiers resisting the German army and the many thousands who were captured as prisoners of war. Although the occupied territory was largely free of Russians and in fact home to a host of ethnically distinct peoples – some of whom German soldiers

“discovered” upon entering Russia – the legacy of Russian rule nevertheless strongly influenced German perception. Areas became, over time, Lithuanian, Polish, Latvian,

Belarusian and Estonian, respectively, but they were at first known only as Russian .

Soldiers saw traces of Russian rule everywhere, from Russian flags still hanging from government buildings to Russian commercial products and signs adorning local businesses.

111 BAMA MSG 1/317, Alfred BoehmTettelbach, 132. 112 BAMA MSG 1/317, Alfred BoehmTettelbach, 152. 77

More abstract confrontations hinged on the widespread view that Germany

liberated Russia’s subject peoples from a barbaric and onerous foreign ruler. Taken at

face value, the liberation narrative seemed to imply that the Russian Empire’s minority populations would become independent as a result of Germany’s intervention. To the

soldiers whose military victories over the enemy made this a real possibility, the idea of

liberation instead emphasized the role that Germany would play in the future of the

occupied lands and peoples. From local civilians claiming that they would prefer German

over Russian military and regimen to the invaders’ own assessment that their benevolent

and ordered rule would help clean up the Russian mess, the importance of German

influence to the improvement of the area appeared to be an incontestable fact. The

introduction of German order and methods seemed the ideal means of helping the backward Panjes achieve a modern way of life. Oppressed by the Russian Empire both politically and in the concrete realities of daily life – from outdated agricultural practices

to a laughably inefficient infrastructure – the occupied lands were to be guided in the

right direction by a benevolent German administrator. The Russian Empire struck the

invaders as fundamentally different from their homeland.

The German invasion of the Russian Empire in 1914 and 1915 entailed the first

massscale encounter between Germans and Russian lands and the event formed soldiers’

and administrators’ views of the eastern lands for years to come. The seemingly

immeasurable expanses in the western Russian Empire certainly disoriented the

conquering soldiers who searched for a stable and universally valid reference point for

the occupied lands. The borderlands’ confusing mix of ethnicities prompted the occupiers

to wonder just who the lands belonged to. All of these tasks – placing the lands

78 geographically, assessing the locals’ political relationship to both the victorious and defeated states, and making sense of the apparent primitiveness of the occupied peoples – were carried out with reference to that which the invaders could learn of the Russian

Empire and its history as an imperial power in its western provinces. From the medieval ruins of the Teutonic Knights to the lavish estates of , signs from the past and present suggested to the conquerors that the future could look quite different. The contest between efficient German order and the disturbing primitiveness of occupied

Russia determined the encounter’s contours. Membership in an annexationist political group was not a prerequisite for an understanding of the occupied lands as the disputed territory of two competing empires.

79

Chapter 2: Instituting German Rule in the Occupied Borderlands

The uncertainty that defined the experiences of invading German soldiers in

Russia in 1914 and 1915 abated only gradually over the course of the occupation.

Occupied areas came under the administration of Prussian officers who were of much the same social standing as those officers whose memoirs and diaries attest to a disorienting first encounter with Russian territory and its inhabitants. These administrators ultimately spent years spearheading efforts to create a working German order in the occupied lands and their tasks and challenges diverged sharply from those of the conquering cavalry or officer. Nevertheless, clear similarities emerge in a comparison of the two groups’ confrontation with the Russian Empire. Just as the invading soldiers relied on vague prewar stereotypes of Russia and saw the invasion as a clash of empires, so too did the soldierscumadministrators take stock of the occupied Russian territory as a borderland defined by its marginal position. Superiors directed administrators to begin taking full advantage of Lithuania’s material and human resources. In doing so, administrators reflexively viewed the lands as backward and underdeveloped. The view of occupied Lithuania as materially rich but industrially and agriculturally backward fostered the view of occupied Lithuania as contested territory that needed to be conquered and improved, ultimately to be remade into imperial German territory.

Germans’ reflexive disdain for the borderlands’ industrial, agricultural, and social inferiority was written into the concrete administrative framework. As Vejas Gabriel

Liulevicius has noted, Germans perceived the borderlands’ backwardness as a kind of

80 emptiness or absence – a lack of culture, industry, modernity, and population density. 1

Administrators did indeed focus on the great potential of German methods, yet these perspectives on the area’s future were inextricably tied to an understanding of its past and

future relationship to the Russian Empire. In attempting to bring order to the warravaged

land, administrators necessarily dealt with the legacies of Russian rule even more directly

than had invading soldiers who saw ubiquitous traces of the former imperial ruler.

Germany’s supplanting of Russian rule meant that the administration simultaneously

worked to remove all traces of Russian presence and to coopt appropriate measures.

Notwithstanding frequent references to Germany’s “liberation” of Lithuania in propaganda, the administration exploitively sought all possible benefits from the lands.

Political and military change in the borderlands entailed a zerosum contest between

empires; German administrators attempted to solidify the longerterm German claim to

the land while they extracted precious resources for the war effort.

Order in the Occupied Lands

The Supreme Commander of the Eastern Front, the Oberbefehlshaber Ost , ruled over his territory, commonly abbreviated as Ober Ost (also Ob. Ost), with little interference. 2 Field Marshal and his deputy, LieutenantGeneral

Erich Ludendorff, had achieved unrivaled fame among German military leadership by

way of their stunning success on the Eastern Front in 1914 and 1915. Their prominence

conferred immense authority upon them long after the fighting in the West had settled

into a relentlessly bloody and futile affair. War against Russia in the East comprised a

1 See Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity and German Occupation in World War I (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 2 Ibid., 21. 81 secondary military priority to the ever important Western Front, but the generals’ unrivaled fame contributed to widespread public interest. With complete control of the

Eastern Front, Hindenburg and Ludendorff were subordinate to the Supreme Army

Command, which in 1915 resided in the West under General , but were otherwise free to pursue whatever policies they deemed most expedient.

The vast gains of the invasion of 1915 opened up thousands of square miles to

German occupation and the new conquerors were beset with questions of momentous importance. 3 The Eastern Front began to more closely resemble the Western Front’s form of trench warfare after the German offensive reached its fullest advance by the end of

September 1915, but the military situation remained unsettled and was never as deadlocked as war in the West. 4 The German Army’s victorious march had shorn Poland away from the Russian Empire and the event entailed unmistakable political complications. The German, Austrian and Russian Empires had all taken part in the division of Poland at the end of the eighteenth century and none of them wished to see a newly reconstituted Poland rise from the morass of the Eastern Front as an independent nationstate. Annexationists, including interest groups like the PanGerman League or the

German Eastern Marches Society, as well as prominent members of the General Staff, immediately considered the possibility of permanent acquisition of the new gains. 5

Representing the most extreme annexationist position, the PanGerman League

3 The area under military administration alone (i.e. excluding the General Government Warsaw under civilian leadership) comprised 42,503 square miles. Ibid.. 4 Combat in East Prussian and Poland in 1914 and 1915 was in fact far more deadly than even the better known battles of attrition in 1916 with 476 wounded per 1,000 men for the former and 182183 wounded per 1,000 men for the latter. Alexander Watson, Enduring the Great War: Combat, Morale and Collapse in the German and British Armies, 1914-1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 25. 5 As Woodruff D. Smith notes, the PanGerman League did not officially call for the annexation of territory until the First World War began, but the subject had become an increasingly important element of discussion in the years leading up to the war. Woodruff D. Smith, The Ideological Origins of Nazi Imperialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 108. 82 envisioned the “resettlement” or “evacuation” of all nonGerman ethnicities in the new

German territory. 6 Even the more moderate Chancellor BethmannHollweg entertained

thoughts of simply annexing Poland or dividing the territory between the German and

AustroHungarian Empires. German policy on the Polish question remained contingent

due to the military situation, but German planners pursued an outcome that would make

Poland a dependency of the German Empire. Whereas all three imperial powers were

intimately aware of the threat presented by the ever expanding Polish national movement

and the difficulties of annexing Polish lands, other occupied areas, including Kurland and

Lithuania, appeared to be less encumbered with sensitive political issues.

As had happened in Belgium, the occupied areas geographically removed from

the front line came under civilian administration. The captured territory of Russian

Poland constituted the General Government Warsaw and was subject to civilian

leadership for the duration of the war. In contrast, Lithuania and Kurland remained

entirely the province of the German military. To be sure, the easternmost border of

occupied Lithuania abutted the front itself and so the argument could be made for the

military necessity of keeping Lithuania under martial law. Still, German perception of

undeveloped Lithuanian nationalism likely played an important role in the decision to

subject Lithuania to military rule. Lithuania was not without its own budding nationalist

movement, yet it did not have nearly so immediate a history as that of neighboring

6 Imanuel Geiss, Der Polnische Grenzstreifen, 1914-1918: Ein Beitrag zur Deutschen Kriegszielpolitik im Ersten Weltkrieg (Lübeck: Matthiesen, 1960), 42. See also Volker Ullrich, “Die polnische Frage und die deutschen Mitteleuropapläne im Herbst 1915,” Historisches Jahrbuch 104 (1984): 348371; KarlHeinz Janssen, “Die Baltische Okkupationspolitik des deutschen Reiches,” in Von den baltischen Provinzen zu den baltischen Staaten: Beiträge zur Entstehungsgeschichte der Republiken Estland und Lettland 1918- 1920 , ed. Jürgen von Hehn (Marburg/Lahn: J.G.HerderInstitut, 1977). 83

Poland. 7 Those pushing for the annexation of eastern territory almost always demanded the inclusion of Lithuania and Kurland. 8 Alternately emphasizing the arbitrariness, opportunism, ignorance, and volatility that defined the occupier’s political ambitions, the borders and names of the separate occupied military areas changed multiple times over the course of the war. The only consistent principle guiding the administration was that

Germany should benefit materially and politically from the newly acquired territory and, to this end, that it should operate with the fewest possible restrictions on its behavior.

Though the entire administrative structure was manned with soldiers and based on military regulations, overlapping institutions and commands made for complicated decisionmaking and implementation. At the top of the whole system stood the Supreme

Commander of the East, Field Marshal Hindenburg, whose staff set the boundaries for the administrative areas and issued comprehensive regulations on how the land was to be administered and utilized. Subordinated to his command were divisions separated by an unclear hierarchy of precedence and prerogative. 9 The front lines were under purely

7 It is worth mentioning that Hindenburg and Ludendorff were disappointed to have even Poland removed from under their military leadership, with Ludendorff writing to Undersecretary Zimmermann, “Since Poland has been taken away from me, I’ll need to found another kingdom in Lithuania and Kurland.” Quoted in Werner Conze, Polnische Nation und deutsche Politik (Cologne: BöhlauVerlag, 1958), 87. The future “Silent Dictatorship” ruled in Lithuania as the vociferous and unabashed proponents of a purely military government, bent on extracting every possible resource from the region in the short term and ultimately extending German influence to the lands in a fundamental way. Paul Rohrbach, the well known German commentator on imperial policy from Kurland who influenced German eastern policy during the First World War, favored expansion in the east but feared that the acquisition of more Polish territory would threaten the political stability of the German Empire. Gerd Linde, Die Deutsche Politik in Litauen im Ersten Weltkrieg (Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1965), 21. 8 Ibid., 24. The case for Kurland was even stronger than that for Lithuania, given that the overwhelming majority of the approximately 500 large estates were owned by ethnic Germans and they accounted for 48.3 percent of the total land in Kurland. Though ethnic Germans comprised only 8.9 percent of the population, this number was drastically higher than in other Russian areas and the Baltic Germans remained highly influential socially and politically. Werner Basler, Deutschlands Annexionpolitik in Polen und im Baltikum, 1914-1918 (Berlin: Rütten & Loening, 1962), 240. 9 Geheimes Staatsarchiv Stiftung preussischer Kultur (subsequently GSTA PK) I HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr 14 Adhibendum 2. A report from the Kreisamtmann in Wystitien on 19 July 1915 noted that the implementation of the new administration was made exceptionally difficult by the numerous overlapping jurisdictions. His district lay in two Etappe and one part even remained in the areas of military operations. 84 military control but individual armies also extended their areas of operation miles beyond the front lines, creating the Etappe, the rear area essential to supplying the front line army in the forward zone of combat. Etappe captains used the guidelines of the Supreme

Commander of the East as the basis for their use of the lands and interaction with the local civilians, but they were also subordinate to individual army chains of command (the

High Command of the Eighth Army, for example) and often had to take the initiative when working out details. The administrative units responsible for the operation of all nonurgent military affairs were established by the Ober Ost as the separate administrative regions of Lithuania, Kurland, Wilna, Suwalki, Bialystok, and .

The borders of these regions expanded, contracted, and most were eliminated when they were finally rolled into the Lithuania region. The German Administration for Lithuania

(Deutsche Verwaltung für Litauen ) is particularly suited to historical research because it was in many ways the centerpiece of German plans for the occupied East and because its official documents have disproportionately survived.

The occupied lands needed to be organized in the manner most efficient to the conduct of war at the front, the maintenance of a quiescent civilian population, and the supply of the army and home front with much needed produce and raw materials. The original formation of the Lithuanian administrative region placed the headquarters in

Kowno and shunted Wilna, the traditional Lithuanian capital, to the neighboring Wilna

Suwalki region. As the largest city remaining within the borders of the German

Administration for Lithuania, Kowno became the de facto capital of the region and the official German headquarters. The city of Kowno itself formed one administrative district, or Kreis , and the region’s remaining territory was divided into thirteen additional

85 districts, each led by a German district captain ( Kreishauptmann ) stationed in the district’s principal town. These districts were in turn divided into a number of smaller

Amtsbezirke , local offices led by a German soldier or a local civilian if a suitable German was not available.

Policy implementation took place most importantly at the level of the district

(Kreis ). The leaders of the German districts prepared reports every 30 to 90 days documenting the conditions in their areas of responsibility. As the only regularly appearing official source on the conditions in the districts, the reports provide an unparalleled look into the workings of the administration at the local level. The main administrative office for each district was normally situated in the area’s most populous city. In some cases, as was true of the district named after its largest city Birsche, the city might have fewer than 2,000 residents and fall short of the official definition of a city.

Some cities – most notably Kowno and Wilna – were populous enough to comprise their own districts. In either case, administrators were required to acquaint themselves intimately with their districts’ political, economic, and social issues in order to ensure effective government of the people and use of the land.

The Initial Assessment of Occupied Russia

The conditions discovered by the newly minted administrators in Lithuania often bore signs of the fierce battles that had raged through the lands in the spring and summer of 1915. The city of Schaulen in northwestern Lithuania, for instance, was captured by the invading Germans in July 1915 after it had been apparently set aflame by the retreating Russian army and shelled by the Germans.10 The destruction in such hotly contested areas could be severe. Whether or not the fires were set by the retreating

10 Zigmantas Kiaupa, The History of Lithuania (Vilnius: Baltos Laukos, 2005), 227. 86

Russians as the Germans later claimed, most of Lithuania’s third largest city was burned to the ground. 11 Wobolniki lost roughly 90 percent of its prewar population of over 6,000

and only one quarter of the city escaped the fires resulting from battle. 12 Damage sustained in rural areas was not necessarily as obvious as that of a city like Schaulen, but the consequences of the collective losses were perhaps even more severe than the destruction of urban infrastructure; Lithuania’s normally abundant agricultural stores were depleted by both armies. Retreating Russians did not hesitate to take whatever supplies they could carry and to destroy whatever they could not.

The dislocations suffered by Russian Lithuania’s subjects are even more difficult to quantify. The outbreak of hostilities provided the necessary justification for the

Russian Empire to act decisively against its politically suspect borderlands population and the swift German advance added fuel to the fire. The two borderlands populations most targeted by the Russian state were the empire’s German and Jewish subjects. 13

Although aristocratic Baltic Germans had long served the Russian Empire in prominent

roles and German colonists had dutifully and productively worked in the Russian Empire

for centuries, the deteriorating relations between the German and Russian Empires had

eroded the latter’s trust in the loyalties of its Germanspeaking subjects. Measures taken

against Germans included a prohibition against the German language, the banning of

11 Eyewitness accounts note the conspicuously surviving church tower amidst the “genuine ruins” which comprised that which remained Schaulen “in name only.” See Paul Michaelis, Kurland und Litauen in deutscher Hand (BerlinSteglitz: Verlag von Fritz Würtz, 1917), 27; Bilder aus Litauen , 2nd ed. (Kowno: Kownoer Zeitung, 1917), 31; W. Pollitt, Auf Hindenburgs Spuren nach Russland hinein (Vaterländische Verlags und Kunstanstalt, 1916), 166. 12 Lithuanian State Historical Archives (subsequently LSHA) 641152, Kreishauptmann (subsequently KH) in Birsche, Verwaltungsbericht (subsequently VB), for March 1916, fol. 8. 13 Eric Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire: The Campaign Against Enemy Aliens During World War I (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2003), 129. 87 public gatherings, the dismissal of civil servants, and the suspension of the German press. 14

The long history of antisemitic Russian policies and the consequent exodus of

Russian Jewish emigrants around the turn of the century together provide the background behind the Empire’s deportation of thousands of Jews to interior Russian territory in

1915. Marginalized legally, religiously and geographically, Lithuania’s Jews suffered greatly as a result of these discriminatory wartime policies. Roughly onethird of

Lithuania’s approximate prewar population of 1.5 million remained in the spring of 1915, and the Jewish population had been reduced by as much as forty percent. 15 In addition to the deportation of Jews, nearly 300,000 Lithuanians were displaced to the interior of the

Russian Empire. 16 Newly arriving German administrators did not see the Lithuania that had existed prior to the outbreak of hostilities, but rather a land forcibly deprived of a large part of its material and human wealth.

The dislocations of war had, however, altered the region’s demographic composition without entirely removing any of the Russian Empire’s ethnic or religious groups from the mix. The German taxonomy of the conquered lands was in some cases confused and arbitrary, but for the most part it reflected future political aspirations. The lands assigned to the General Government Warsaw comprised a minimally inclusive definition of the conquered Polish territory while the creation of the administrative regions Lithuania and Kurland reflected an attempt to distance both areas from Russia

14 Peter Gatrell, A Whole Empire Walking: Refugees in Russia During World War I (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 23. 15 Ober Ost census figures for the entire administrative area (i.e. not simply Lithuania) indicate that the prewar population of 540,000 had dropped to roughly 332,000 by 1916. Aba Strazhas, “Die Tätigkeit des Dezernats für jüdische Angelegenheiten in der 'deutschen Miltärverwaltung Ober Ost',” in Die Baltischen Provinzen Russlands zwischen den Revolutionen von 1905 und 1917 , ed. Andrew Ezergailis and Gert von Pistohlkors (Köln: Böhlau, 1982), 332. 16 Kiaupa, The History of Lithuania , 227228. 88 and the former also from Poland. To be sure, the names Lithuania, Poland and Kurland made some sense historically, but any attempt to imagine easily distinguishable nation states out of Russia’s western provinces were beset with the competing claims of heterogeneous populations. The rural population of occupied Lithuania was mostly ethnically Lithuanian, but large, visible segments were not. A nebulous Lithuanian middle class was not substantial enough to attract a great deal of German attention. The culturally and politically dominant Polish nobility was dispersed in the countryside and in major cities like Wilna. A Jewish commercial class sometimes made up over half of urban Lithuania. Smaller numbers of Latvians and Belarusians – a group whose existence the Germans had unexpectedly discovered – also worked in agriculture.

The confrontation with the lands’ relative backwardness was a central element of the German experience. The level of industrial, agricultural, political and cultural development of Russia’s Western provinces certainly seemed backward to the German occupiers and this was only further emphasized by the devastation in some areas of

Lithuania. A considerable portion of territory emerged scotfree and these areas, too, appeared developmentally stunted. Apart from some minimal industrial facilities like watermills, windmills, or sawmills, the lands generally lacked notable industry. 17

Lithuania’s shortage of industrial advancements was accompanied by the practice of outdated agricultural methods that made poor use of the land. Germans were surprised to occasionally see the continuation of the traditional threefield system, and more universally ignorance of the positive effects of proper drainage and flood protection. The

17 The industrial facilities counted by German administrators over the course of the first year included the following: 200 watermills, 400 windmills, 60 lumber mills, and 89 steam mills. The area lacked any substantial presence of the type of modern industrial facilities found in Germany. GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, 1 July to 1 October 1916, 19. 89 lack of industrial or agricultural development comparable to Germany’s cutting edge techniques back home gave the occupiers the impression that the lands’ development was hopelessly retarded. Indeed, this response was an inevitable and central component of the

German experience.

From the German perspective, the lands remained in a simple, more natural state.

The course of modern history, however, seemed to suggest that must be improved through the implementation of modern advances. Nearly everything the Germans saw, from underdeveloped meadows and pastures to the shoddy construction and upkeep of

Russian roads, convinced them that the lands needed great improvement. In an era of considerable optimism in the salutary effects of technological progress, the proper course was clear. The administrators’ perspective was, at least in this regard, similar to that of a colonial overseer, both with reference to the lands’ level of development and to the debased political value of the local populations. 18 The largely illiterate Lithuanian agricultural population was depicted as lacking the means of raising itself to the level necessary in order to use their native lands to their greatest potential. With the introduction of proven German leadership and methods, however, success was certainly soon to follow.

The initial set of prescriptions ( Befehle and Verordnungen ) for the Ober Ost area were issued in a piecemeal fashion during the German army’s swift advance throughout the spring and summer of 1915. These earliest rules mostly concerned the immediate military necessity of the invading army, but they also set the tone for and were consistent with the rules that were to come. The Supreme Command of the East became more

18 Robert L. Nelson argues that German views of the East were marked by a colonial gaze focused on inferiority and the potential for German improvement. Robert L. Nelson, ed., Germans, Poland, and Colonial Expansion to the East (New York: Pargrave Macmillan, 2009). 90 confident of longterm German gains soon after the offensive began on 2 May 1915 and it started imposing regulations to ensure continued military success and to lay the groundwork for the administration of the lands. One of the first regulations required that anyone in the occupied areas who was not a member of the German military must surrender all weapons, ammunition and explosives. Perhaps influenced by the type of paranoia that fueled German aggression toward Belgian civilians on the Western Front in

1915, the regulation clearly addressed the concern of irregular military resistance. 19

Nevertheless, the order also effectively demanded that the largely agricultural population present all weapons to German officials regardless of their obvious utility to the rural population. 20 Other regulations addressed military concerns indirectly, such as that of 22

June 1915 which required prostitutes to register with police authorities and to be punished with two to twelve months in prison if they knowingly risked infecting a soldier with a venereal disease. 21 On 28 July the administration addressed political and further hygienic threats respectively by banning all public and private gatherings, with the exception of religious services, and by requiring the registration of any cases or suspected cases of cholera, smallpox, typhus, dysentery, contagious stiffness of the neck, scarlet

19 Befehls und Verordnungsblatt des Oberbefehlshaber Ost, “Anhang. Wiederholung älterer Verordungen. Ziffer 1, Verordnung betreffend den Besitz von Waffen, Munitionsgegenständen und Sprengstoffen,” Befehls und Verordnungsblatt des Oberbefehlshabers Ost 1 (1 December 1915), 45. The citation refers to the complete published collection of Ober Ost orders, now available in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin and the BundesarchivMilitärarchiv in FreiburginBreisgau. These orders appear henceforth as BUV. 20 The district captain of Birsche remarked with reference to the hunting of game that “every Panje used to own a shotgun which he used to hunt whenever he wanted.” LSHA 641152, KH in Birsche, VB for March 1916, fol. 567. With one obstacle out of the way, namely competition from local hunters who no longer were allowed to possess weapons, the captain hoped that a recently introduced tax on dog ownership would help improve the stocks of game. The ban on weapons not only removed from Lithuanian farmers one means of acquiring food, but also rendered them defenseless in the face of the marauding bandits which began to increase in strength throughout 1916. The Kownoer Zeitung admitted as much in 1916. “Säuberung der Räuberbände,” Kownoer Zeitung , March 20, 1916. See LSHA 6411306, KH in Kielmy, VB for December 1915, fol. 20. The district captain mentions that the people are defenseless against robbers and thieves without guns. He suggests reducing dog tax for them or doing away with it altogether. 21 BUV, “Ziffer 20. Verordnung zur Verhütung der weiteren Verbreitung von Geschlechtskranken im Ostheere,” Befehls und Verordnungsblatt des Oberbefehlshabers Ost 3 (20 December 1915), 267. 91 fever and diphtheria. 22 These early regulations began the process of creating strict

distinctions between occupier and occupied, a crucial development in the process of bringing German order to the Russian borderlands.

Making occupied Lithuania more German concerned a number of different tasks.

The retreat of the Russian Army had removed all effective government from the region

and the Germans needed to fill that role for the purpose of establishing order. Some of

these tasks involved giving the lands a distinctively German characteristic, further bringing them under German imperial influence. The “introduction of the Gregorian calendar and the central European (German) as well as the lifting of the so called ‘Gala days’”, as occurred on 25 May 1915, served to create uniform, efficient conditions in all German areas of operation. 23 The creation of a single time zone

simplified military undertakings and the removal of Russian holiday regulations likewise

had an obvious justification in the immediate wartime needs. Additionally, however, the

regulation removed elements of Russian rule and signaled a change in the lands’ political

and cultural orientation. The main intent of these changes at the time of their

implementation was doubtless military expediency, yet the further significance was more

than an afterthought and was soon followed up with more concrete measures to remove

traces of Russian rule.

When Russia’s western provinces fell to Germany, the new occupier quite

naturally came to look upon them as the spoils of war. Of course the lands had not in any

22 BUV, “Ziffer 17. Verordnung betreffend Versammlungen und Vereinsrecht in den besetzten Gebietsstellen Rußlands rechts der Weichsel,” Befehls und Verordnungsblatt des Oberbefehlshabers Ost 3 (20 December 1915), 234; BUV, “Ziffer 18. Verordnung betreffend Anzeigepflicht bei ansteckender Krankheiten in den besetzten Gebietsteilen Rußlands rechts der Weichsel,” Ibid., 245. 23 BUV, “Ziffer 14. Verordnung für das unter deutscher Verwaltung stehende Gebiet von RussischPolen rechts der Weichsel betreffend Einführung des Gregorianischen Kalendars und der mitteleuropäischen (deutschen) Zeit sowie Aufhebung der sogenannten Galatage,” Befehls und Verordnungsblatt des Oberbefehlshabers Ost 3 (20 December 1915), 21. 92 meaningful legal sense become part of the German Empire, but the Hague Convention of

1907 did allow for a conqueror to reap economic advantage. 24 On 28 July 1915 an Ober

Ost command prohibited anyone in the “Russian areas under German administration” to be a party to financial transactions with any of Germany’s enemies, including Britain,

Ireland, France and Russia. 25 The order served to ensure that Germany alone would attain

all of the area’s financial resources and perhaps most notably formalized the lands’

excision from the Russian Empire. Additional measures were soon to follow that

concretized Germany’s economic control. A measure promulgated on 23 November 1915 prohibited “any legal measures concerning the transfer of property and any rights relating

to plots of land or sections of plots of land owned by the living”. 26 It is impossible to determine the exact motive for this measure, but it certainly had to do with the desire to use the territory to its utmost potential without any interference. This meant anchoring farmers to their traditional plots, prohibiting land speculation among the population, and exploiting the Russian Empire’s rich, stateowned resources. An even more forceful command asserting German property rights was issued on 15 December 1915 and it conferred the administrative region heads (for example, the Chief of the German

Administration for Lithuania) with the power to seize control of properties that they deemed subject to untrustworthy ownership. The administration could seize property

24 The Hague Convention of 1907 contained nuanced provisions on the use of occupied private property but allows for substantial use of enemy state property. “Laws and Customs of War on Land (Hague IV),” 1907, accessed 7 October 2009, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hague04.asp. 25 BUV, “Ziffer 15. Verordnung betreffend das Verbot von Zahlungen nach feindlichen Staaten in den besetzten Gebietsteilen Rußlands rechts der Weichsel,” Befehls und Verordnungsblatt des Oberbefehlshabers Ost 3 (20 December 1915), 22. 26 BUV, “Ziffer 2. Vorläufige Regelung,” Befehls und Verordnungsblatt des Oberbefehlshabers Ost 1 (1 December 1915), 12. Reinforcing this provision, Isenburg commented in a report in January, 1916 that “a precondition for a healthy Ansiedlungspolitik is the greatest possible restriction of Grundstücksspekulation .” GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, January 1916, 13. 93 controlled from enemy territory, financed by capital with one third or more of its parties situated in enemy territory, and those “to which the public interest of the German Empire or for the German troops of the occupied territory the maintenance of the property or the resumption of the operations” was necessary. 27 This legal formulation provided German administrators with the power to take any properties that they saw fit under the justification of wartime necessity. This rationale would only become further pronounced as Germany struggled to remain economically and industrially selfsufficient in the face of the allied blockade.

So began the prying away of the occupied East from the Russian Empire. At the local level, the administrative chiefs and district captains first had to assess the particular characteristics of their apportioned regions in order to impose appropriate policies. The general tone for the occupation policy had been set by the Ober Ost orders concerning the basic rules affecting legal, economic, political and financial matters. The first was issued six days after the start of the offensive on 2 May 1915 and a steady stream would continue to add to and modify the rules through 1918. The district chiefs needed to be cognizant of and responsive to a number of different levels of administrative policy. Ober

Ost commands reigned supreme but they were supplemented by reports from the German

Administration for Lithuania. The latter could not directly contradict Ober Ost orders, rather they complemented them by addressing ambiguities, unforeseen circumstances, and the whims of Verwaltungschef Isenburg. District chiefs were required to work within this framework as they implemented policy at the local level. Taken together, the Ober

27 BUV, “Ziffer 6. Verordnung betreffend Zwangsverwaltung,” Befehls und Verordnungsblatt des Oberbefehlshabers Ost 2 (15 December 1915), 13. 94

Ost commands provided the framework enabling the German administration to reap all possible economic benefit from the newly occupied territory.

The unforeseen gains achieved in the 1915 offensive opened up possibilities of longterm German influence. Wilhelm Freiherr von Gayl served as Director of the

Political Department of the Ober Ost Staff from 1916 to the end of the war but he served in the capacity of political advisor from 1915. Hailing from East Prussia, Gayl had put his legal training to use by working on settlement and agricultural issues in East Prussia prior to the war, promoting “inner colonization” with ethnic Germans as head of the East

Prussian Settlement Society. 28 He brought his experience eastward during the German offensive when he served as an evaluator of the new lands for the Supreme Commander of the East. In a report submitted on 30 December 1915, Gayl reported to the Supreme

Commander that Lithuania could become a “pantry providing all manner of agricultural produce for the German domestic market.” 29 Lithuania was not yet in a position to do so; rather, it would begin to achieve the utmost gains only after its potential had been unleashed by German methods. Gayl’s evaluation is entirely consistent with the occupiers’ early emphasis on improving agriculture to Germany’s benefit. It is also typical in its assignment of blame to the Russians for the area’s poor economic conditions, asserting that “the Russian government’s artificially maintained lack of knowledge ( Unwissenheit ) among the Lithuanians has prevented economic upturn.” 30

Gayl himself did not indicate his own awareness of the irony, but he implicitly argued that artificial Russian interference had provided the Germans an opportunity to fundamentally influence the lands through an infusion of their more advanced methods.

28 Liulevicius, War Land , 61. 29 BAMA PH 30 III/7, 30 December 1915. 30 BAMA PH 30 III/7 30 December 1915. 95

Major Alfred von Gossler, a highly placed administrator like Gayl and also an active figure in conservative Prussian politics, observed in reports written in July 1915 – a mere two months after the start of the offensive – that the occupied lands were expected to provide a windfall to fuel the German war effort. Gossler was similarly focused on the supposedly undemanding, simple nature of the Lithuanians as he considered the necessary measures to install German government. 31 He perceived Lithuanians to be a

diffident people with few needs or interests, and their almost wholly agricultural land

would provide ample grain for export. Gossler saw no reason why the farmers could not be induced to surrender their excess stores in exchange for payments in gold.

“Noteworthy industry [was] nonexistent” in agricultural Lithuania, but German observers instantly noted that if only the 1915 harvest could be brought in it would yield a “not insignificant surplus.” 32 The large forests provided a “particularly important” opportunity

for surplus raw materials. A sense of the openness and richness of the occupied lands

extended even to East Prussians living along the border of Lithuania who wished to cross

over the border to seize “grass, hay, wood and such items from the abandoned Russian border areas.” 33 Gossler recognized the potential problems with the total prohibition of

such activity, highlighting the questions that animated the earliest implementation of policy in the occupied lands.

Russian Institutional Legacies

Administrators realized that they had no choice but to rely upon institutional

legacies of their Russian predecessors as they prepared longerterm German policies,

31 BAMA PH 30 III/4, 31 July 1915. 32 BAMA PH 30 III/7 30 December 1915. 33 BAMA PH 30 III/4, 31 July 1915. 96 methods and institutions for occupied Lithuania. The earliest surviving administrative reports were written in July and August of 1915, months before the mobile warfare on the

Eastern Front stabilized at the line of final German advance. Administrators were not yet certain of their status, tentatively referring to the “Civilian Administration for Lithuania” that would soon firmly settle on its unmistakable military character. Combat at the front continued to take precedence over all other matters and administrators had to make do with the sparse human and material resources available to them as the administrative offices came into being. As the Russian army retreated, all of the Russian officials and bureaucrats fled with it. This situation was further complicated by the fact that the residents of Lithuania had held only the most minimal and lowliest administrative positions. In many cases, the only possible solution nonetheless involved the utilization of available locals to fill positions. Prince Franz Josef zu IsenburgBirstein, who became the Chief ( Verwaltungschef ) of the German Administration for Lithuania, was fully aware

of the Russian means of governing the occupied lands as he worked to find a solution for

German control. Isenburg knew the boundaries of the administrative districts under

Russian rule and noted that the borders of his administrative region roughly corresponded

with those of the earlier Russian Gouvernement Kowno. 34 Though he elected to increase

the number of districts by reducing their average size, some of his district seats naturally

remained centers of government under the new administration. More significantly,

Isenburg was familiar with the former Russian titles for the positions of district chief

(ispravnik ), police lieutenant ( pristav ), community elder (s tarshina ) and other positions and recognized the necessity of retaining some of these individuals.35 Germans would fill

34 GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, January 1916, 5. 35 BAMA PH 30 III/4, 15 July to 20 August 1915, 4. 97 all possible leadership positions in the cities but the local village elders would continue to officiate in agricultural areas beyond the reach of German administrators.

District captains’ reports from the early period of the occupation attest to the crucial importance of retaining or employing local civilians in administrative positions.

The practice testifies to concrete differences in the way the Germans regarded the political sensibilities of the occupied peoples in the East as opposed to those of occupied

Belgium and France. Residents of Lithuania were not, by and large, prone to resenting the conquerors for having removed Russian presence from their lands. During this early period of occupation, German administrators had little reason to question the heavily promoted liberation narrative which presented the German military as a benevolent force that would be happily accepted by local civilians as a matter of course. Indeed, administrators found the local civilians well disposed to German rule in 1915 and expected that the maintenance of peaceful, ordered conditions would secure their cooperation. 36 Additionally, German administrators blamed Russia for having “robbed”

Lithuania of its meager intelligentsia. 37 Finding suitable personnel to secure efficient

government presented a serious challenge.

Personnel issues plagued the German administration long after it had installed the

most basic levels of administration necessary to ostensibly bring the new lands under its

control. As Verwaltungschef , Isenburg relied on his fourteen district captains to

implement the policies from his office and from the Supreme Commander of the East.

The district captains divided their districts into smaller offices, Amtsbezirke , each of

which required an official in order for policies to be set in place and for any kind of

36 See, for example, the concerns of the Kreishauptmann of Wystitien in July 1915. GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77, Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2. 37 GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, January 1916, 8. 98 information to flow between district headquarters and remote areas. The urgency of the first months of occupation demanded that district captains leave existing officials in place. The captain of the district Wystitien newly confirmed the town mayors in July

1915, apparently establishing German approval. The immediate need of these officials is evidenced by the German captain’s reservations about approving some for their posts; instead of being turned out of office, those who were suspected of Russian sympathies or could not speak German were simply assigned a German assistant to oversee their work.

Foreshadowing the district captains’ total dependence on their German gendarmes and police officers for collecting information, the captain of Wystitien stated that he was reliant on his police officers for making the proper decisions. The captain displayed another widely shared and enduring preference of German administrators by seizing upon the opportunity to fill official positions with ethnic Germans – in this case a tenant farmer and horse trader whose knowledge of the area and ability to speak German were judged to be of greater importance than his lowly social standing. 38 Lithuania did not afford many such opportunities due to the minimal percentage of the population that was ethnically German. Russian statistics from 1913 for the province Kowno (roughly equivalent to the German administrative area of Lithuania) counted 30,000 ethnic

Germans who comprised approximately one and a half percent of the population of

1,800,000. 39 The geographically smaller German Administration for Lithuania identified

only 7,985 Germans among the total 1,066,104 residents accounted for in the census of

January 1916. 40 The overwhelming task of setting up wholly new and yet rational

38 GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77, Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, Wystitien. The Wystitien district was not yet a part of the German Administration for Lithuania but in this case the distinction is immaterial. 39 GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, January 1916, 5. 40 GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, 1 July to 1 October 1916, 10. 99

government in the lands demanded the use of experienced locals of different backgrounds.

Ideally, the positions would have been filled with knowledgeable Germans, but

this was not a viable option for a considerable time; the full implementation of German

rule was unattainable in the short term. In January 1916, Isenburg reported that a new

group of German officials was needed to facilitate the relationships between local town

or community representatives and the German district captains. 41 He presented the

situation in a rosier light than did some of his subordinates. The district captain of

Birsche, for example, reported in March 1916 that the Russian local officials should be

allowed to continue functioning in their prior roles. In fact, he intended to learn how to best use his own authority by means of investigating the Russian government’s former practices. Through “laborious questioning” of the former community officials he was

able to do so. 42 Although he felt that the larger Russian administrative units should be broken down into smaller, more manageable divisions, this too depended on a new infusion of German personnel and as a result must be put off to a later date. Even after sufficient personnel arrived to place Germans as the mayors of all cities and large towns, the previous local mayors were often kept on in an advisory role as “mayoral assistants.” 43 Administrators’ early efforts focused on determining how things had previously worked in Lithuania so that the most effective arrangements could be left in place.

The desire to learn how the Russians had governed arguably resulted from the acute shortage of German personnel aligning with the administrators’ reflexive disdain of

41 GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, January 1916, 7. 42 LSHA 641152, KH in Birsche, VB for February 1916, fol. 4. 43 GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, May 1916, 9. 100

the native population. Due to the departure of all Russian government officials, the

administrators had no choice but to rely on the only segment of the population that had played any meaningful role in the government of Lithuania under Russian rule, namely

the lowest levels of local selfgovernment instituted by the Russians. Lithuanians, Jews,

Poles, Latvians and Belarusians had all been mere subject populations under the

Russians, and distrusted subjects at that. Their political and administrative abilities

garnered hardly any more respect under German rule than they had under the Russians, as

evidenced by Isenburg’s insistent pleas to the Supreme Commander of the East that he be

supplied with additional German personnel as quickly as possible. Isenburg reflected the

clamoring of his district captains for additional personnel by insisting in a January 1916

report that additional Germans were absolutely crucial if the many new administrative

decrees were to properly implemented and enforced. Locals were retained or enlisted for

all questions of local government by serving as mayors of small cities and towns or

appearing on advisory committees made up of local civilians to assist the German district

captains. Isenburg complained that the experience of relying upon these people has

“warned against their extensive use” in spite of his assessment that they were in general

“willing and eager to follow orders.” 44 The stated reason for his dissatisfaction was that local officials lacked the necessary high standing visàvis the local population. 45 More telling, however, is his observation that their activities, and in particular their interaction with the population, were difficult to keep under surveillance because of administrators’ inability to speak the local languages. Former Russian administrators had doubtless faced

44 GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, January 1916, 8. 45 Administrators at all levels frequently fretted over determining the level of standing ( Ansehen ) of the administration visàvis the locals and particular civilians or groups of civilians with regard to one another. 101

similar challenges; there was clearly an argument to be made for understanding the

Russian methods of rule in the occupied lands and continuing those that seemed effective.

In fact, the German occupiers implicitly understood their actions as the

substitution of one form of foreign rule for another. Each of the three empires fighting on

the Eastern Front wished to see their “buffer” territory expand rather than contract.

Although the German Empire did not have anywhere near the same percentage of ethnic

minorities as tsarist Russia, it could reference clear precedents for the project of making

foreign lands German and attaining all possible resources from them. Efforts to

Germanize Prussian Poland had taken place throughout the nineteenth century and had

intensified in the twenty years leading up to the First World War. Administrators like

Isenburg, Gayl and Gossler were undoubtedly aware of these efforts – indeed, Gayl had played a role in settlement policy in Prussian Poland – and understood their task in

Lithuania to be an attempt to instill longterm German influence and to take full

advantage of material benefits. Isenburg demonstrated his consciousness of this history by comparing the position of current German district captains to those of King Frederick

Wilhelm I in Prussian Lithuania and Frederick II in Poland. 46 Gayl arrived in Lithuania in

1915 ready to apply the Germanization policy practiced in Prussian Poland to the newly

acquired lands. 47 The only trustworthy groups capable of seeing that German policy was carried out were the gendarmes who in any case were not always particularly well suited to the task.

46 GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, January 1916, 7. 47 BAMA PH 30 III/7, 30 December 1915. 102

Lithuania as a Source of Raw Materials and Food

The importance of employing German administrators was partly a function of the

administration’s exploitive goals. Directed by the ever increasing shortage of food on the

home front, the Supreme Commander of the East made the economic use of the land the

administration’s absolute top priority. The Supreme Commander and the German

Administration for Lithuania crassly asserted that the occupied territories’ main purpose

was to provide for “ Heer und Heimat ”, for “army and homeland.” This policy effectively

turned occupied Lithuania into a colonial land in the sense that all work and resources

served Germany’s needs. Policymakers assumed that the wealth of Lithuanian

agricultural produce guaranteed that the occupied civilians could retain at least the

necessary nutrition for their own sustenance, but even this became a challenge as the war progressed.

Ruthless measures intended to secure all available agricultural produce were put in place piecemeal as the German offensive progressed through Lithuania in 1915. A considerable number had been established before the Eastern Front stabilized at the end of September. The harvest was already well underway by that time and the Supreme

Commander had ordered on 16 July 1915 that the entire fruit of the harvest was to be surrendered to the new administration. This decree prevented local farmers from selling any produce to private parties or traders; the only authorized purchasers were the German administration, the troops, the supply office of the army, and the East Prussian Settlement

Society, a German organization specializing in agriculture that was distinguished as one of the few authorized conveyors of goods to and from the occupied territories.

Lithuania’s food stores were explicitly purposed to serve the German troops even before

103

they met the needs of the local civilian population. 48 Occupied Lithuania was thus sealed off economically from the German homeland by a border porous in only one direction.

Subject to military rule, the land was reduced to economic dependence.

Both the extent and speed of the administration’s economic dominance of

Lithuania are startling and they demonstrate the importance of these new resources to the

German war effort at a time when war’s demands were becoming increasingly total. The effects of allied blockade became ever harsher in Germany and the army’s advance had provided thousands of square miles of new productive territory in one fell swoop.

Isenburg recognized in August 1915 that taking care of the harvest must be the “main focus” of all administration activity. Abundant Lithuanian agriculture caught administrators’ attention as the silver lining of the area’s almost total lack of industrial facilities; grain was a windfall that could be a great advantage to the German war effort.

Produce that was rarely available in Germany and which had been imported prior to the war, like hemp and flax, were grown in significant quantities in the occupied lands. 49

Gossler and others noted in official reports as early as the summer of 1915 that “surplus” agricultural goods could be harvested on time and shipped back to Germany. District captains’ first tasks involved identifying the potential for the lands under their control and ensuring that all land was maximally utilized. In September 1915 district captains submitted the results of their research into the amount of land by area which was either fields for planting, meadow, pasture, forest or unusable. Ober Ost administrators were pushed to fell and deliver the East’s great wealth of timber.

48 BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehl Nr. VII, 4 December 1915, 2. 49 BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehl Nr. II, 28 September 1915. 104

The occupiers did not hope for Lithuania to contribute much in the way of

finished industrial goods, but they knew that it could provide raw materials to be used in

German factories. District captains’ first tasks included determining which forests could be legally harvested and Isenburg helped by providing guidelines. Forested lands owned by the Russian state were considered the spoils of war and they had the fewest

restrictions on German use. The importance of learning what claims the Russian state had

on particular parcels of land is evidenced by the case of “donation estates”

(Donationsgüter ) which were lands in the possession of Russian military officers who

had served the state with distinction. According to German interpretation, these parcels

remained the property of the Russian state and were merely lent to their “owners.” These,

too, were therefore to be considered open to use as the property of the Russian state.

Private forests, on the other hand, required the permission of their owners, unless the

owners refused to make available for sale the necessary amounts of wood in their

respective districts. In the latter case, the district captains could compel the owners to do

so. The district offices received twenty percent from all private wood sales. The

collection of raw materials extended far beyond wood and included textiles, metals, and

rubber. The confiscation of items made of copper, brass and nickel presented a particular

imposition. All items composed of such metals were forcibly purchased by the

administration, with the exception of clerical items and objects with historical or artistic

value. Household items made of the desired materials were to be confiscated even prior

to the provision of replacement items. An emphatically worded order in December 1915

reminded German administrators that “one of the fundamental tasks of the district offices

is the preparation and sending back of raw materials for which there is a pressing need in

105

the homeland.” 50 The shortage of raw materials pushed the German administration to undertake reckless confiscation from the very start of the occupation.

The nature of requisitioned goods – raw materials such as timber, produce in the form of grain or vegetables, and household items taken for scrap metal – contributed toward German perception of Lithuania as a backward land. This was further underscored by the difficulty of physically removing items from Lithuania and shipping them back to

Germany. Lithuania’s railway network was not nearly as dense as the domestic German network. The same applied to roads in the western Russian Empire which were infamous among Germans for their generally poor quality and total impassability during the wettest times of the year. 51 Isenburg remarked that only one road in the entire Lithuanian administration region could be described as a “highway” by German standards. 52 The

administration set about repairing and improving roads just as soon as the end of the

harvest season made the requisite labor available. Railway and road improvements were

considered a pressing need for two important priorities in the occupied lands: they

facilitated the mobility of troops moving to and from the front and the faster export of

goods to Germany. Administrators collected and exported the 1915 harvest only

clumsily, gathering materials and grain near train stations and rivers, even requiring that

columns returning from the front transport grain back with them. 53 The means of making these changes were clarified in an order from November 1915: “Only those construction costs which need to be immediately met for the army’s interests are to be paid for with

50 BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehl Nr. IX, 31 December 1915, 4. 51 Friedrich Bertkau, Leiter der Presseabteilung Ober Ost, remarked in his 1928 dissertation on German wartime newspapers that Russia’s transportation “inadequacies were well known even before the war” and only worsened thereafter. Friedrich Bertkau, Das amtliche Zeitungswesen im Verwaltungsgebiet Ober-Ost (Leipzig: Verlag Emmanuel Reinicke, 1928), 20. 52 GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, 13 October 1915, 6. 53 BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehl Nr. I, 23 September 1915. 106

army funds.” 54 In spite of the singular motivation for improving transportation

infrastructure – namely Germany’s military and economic benefit – the material and

labor costs fell to the local civilians.

The lands and peoples of occupied Russia were unwillingly drawn into the

German war effort but they received little in return for their sacrifices. Civilians in

Lithuania surrendered everything to Germany’s Heer und Heimat short of the minimal

amount of grain necessary to sustain their own wellbeing. Drawing Lithuania into the

German sphere of influence in wartime obviously did not grant local civilians anything

like the rights and privileges of German citizens. The unquestioned subordination of the

occupied civilian population in all facets of policy meant that they received only

restricted imports from Germany in spite of the wholesale export of Lithuanian goods and produce to Germany. An order in October 1915 illustrates this principle: Lithuanians

would need to make do with a “less passable” but “good and healthy” variety of herring

imported from Germany because the restriction of meat consumption had increased

German demand for the more appealing varieties of herring. 55 This relatively mild

example shows how German citizens were favored over the occupied civilians for no justifiable reason given the burdens placed on Lithuanian producers. This cavalier

attitude toward the needs of occupied civilians was demonstrated by the failure of

administration to import goods as basic as salt in the early months of the administration.

Some German officials realized early on that a balance must be struck between exploiting

54 BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehl Nr. VII, 4 December 1915, 8. 55 BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehl Nr. VI, 16 November 1915, 56. This type of admonition was eventually publicized in press organs like Kownoer Zeitung , for example in 1917 when the administration provided detailed preparation instructions in order encourage the consumption of crows (which, as it happens, was also attempted with respect to German citizens within the Reich borders), or by admonishing the population over its reluctance to consume a less desirable form of imported German cheese. See “Zubereitung der Krähe,” Kownoer Zeitung , May 19, 1917; “Suppenküchen in Wilna,” Kownoer Zeitung , July 4, 1917, sec. Beiblatt. 107

the lands in Germany’s interests and encouraging the people to continue looking upon the

new administrators as liberators. 56 On the one hand, the military occupation of Lithuania

gave the administrators a certain efficiency: policies were generally unrestricted and

required only the approval of leaders in the military chain of command. On the other

hand, collateral effects from the fighting at the front continued to adversely affect the

occupied lands. Even after soldiers were technically prohibited from doing so, they

continued to issue “requisition certificates” ( Requisitionsscheine ) in exchange for locals’

grain and livestock stores. Others simply stole the goods and produce they desired. Thus,

the initial German demands upon Lithuanian civilians entailed the irregular and uneven

requisitioning of agricultural produce. Whereas these demands were unpredictable and

inequitably distributed, the German administration exacerbated the problem by

regularizing and increasing the onerous demands placed on local civilians.

Civilians were not simply required to surrender the fruits of the harvest and any

livestock or horses desired by the German administration – they also needed to provide

their labor to the German war effort. The Ministry of War urged through Ober Ost

directives that “all means within reach” be used to bring in the harvest. 57 Frequent reminders of this emphasis were issued ahead of the 1916 spring planting, intending to spur on administrators and economic officers to ensure the “careful and productive utilization of the entire available lands.” 58 Frenzied activity to achieve the greatest possible harvest transitioned directly into a period of equally energetic road

56 See, for example, accounts in Verwaltungsberichte documenting lack of goods imported by the East Prussian Settlement Society (Ostpreussische Landgesellschaft), the sole authorized importer of goods to the Ober Ost area. The district chiefs became increasingly impatient with the firm’s inability to provide such basic items months after receiving orders. 57 BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehl Nr. II, 28 September 1915. 58 BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehle Litauen, DVfL, 1 Feb 1916. 108

improvements and construction for Lithuanian workers. The labor of the occupied

civilians stood at the intersection of German military and economic goals. The difficult position of Lithuanian civilians is evidenced by an Ober Ost order from 1 November

1915 commenting on a particular labor issue:

The Russian agricultural workers currently employed in Germany are now frequently encouraged by their family members in writing to return to the homeland. The letters are certified by the local community authorities who confirm the necessity of their return. There can be no doubt that such messages are suited to creating growing unrest among the workers. The administrations of the occupied areas are therefore to energetically intervene against the sending of such letters and their certification by local community authorities. 59

This early prohibition indicates the extent to which Lithuanian workers’ individual rights were subordinated to the needs of the German war effort. Workers began to be formed into worker columns ( Zivilarbeiterbataillone ) that provided the labor necessary for sowing abandoned fields and repairing damaged infrastructure. Lithuanian civilian laborers were supplemented by thousands of prisoners of war from the Russian army at such a rate that by August, 1915 Isenburg noted that roughly 5,500 prisoners assisted in harvest work. 60 Prisoners of war were supervised with great care to minimize

opportunities for escape and were treated with especially great suspicion if they were

ethnically Russian. In spite of the differences between the two groups, prisoners of war

and Lithuanian civilians were both utilized for their labor in an equally forceful way.

59 BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehl Nr. VI, 16 Nov 1915, 8. At the beginning of the war the German state had no clearly developed policy toward the highly regulated foreign workforce employed within Germany. Only over the next several months was it decided that they would remain in their positions indefinitely. Ulrich Herbert, A History of Foreign Labor in Germany, 1880-1980: Seasonal Workers, Forced Laborers, Guest Workers (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990), 87119. 60 BAMA PH 30 III/4, 15 July to 20 August 1915, 45. 109

The Occupied Peoples of Lithuania

The vast effort of ensuring the most productive allocation of all civilian labor in

the occupied lands helped to shape German views of the area’s distinct ethnic and

national groups. Administrators’ reports heedlessly generalized about the respective

characteristics of Lithuanians, Latvians, Jews, Belarusians and Russians, linking them to

German perception of each group’s professional tendencies and capabilities. The

resultant view of the occupied East defined the local peoples by broad cultural

distinctions. The apparent selfsufficiency of the largely agricultural Lithuanian farmers

made them a natural source of labor for German improvement projects of all varieties.

Farmers worked their familial plots and then assisted on the abandoned and large estates

that were short of labor. At lulls such as at the end of the harvest or completion of spring planting, farmers worked on projects constructing roads, bridges, railroads or

administrative structures. These tasks seemed well suited to the “simple” Lithuanians

whom the Germans regarded with condescension for their basic needs and apparent lack

of education. The population’s “minimal desire to work” might require the spark of

German discipline and order, but the simple people were otherwise allegedly well suited

to the tasks assigned to them. 61

Evaluations of the various occupied groups’ economic potential were influenced significantly by investigation of social conditions under Russian rule. Lithuanians made up the large majority of the rural population, yet a comparison of property holdings reinforced the view that they were the most “primitive” of the groups in Lithuania. In the administration’s quest to determine the exact nature of property ownership in Lithuania, each district captain identified the total number of land holdings by nationality, area and

61 LSHA 641152, KH in Birsche, VB for February 1916, fol. 35. 110

value. The results indicated that a significant majority of properties were owned by ethnic

Lithuanians, yet the average size of Russian, Polish, and German properties dwarfed

Lithuanian holdings. Lithuanians possessed very little in spite of their overwhelming

numbers and the numbers seemed to correspond with their “lower level of culture.”

Lithuania’s Jews comprised the only notable group with an even more remarkable lack of property in comparison to their proportional size of the Lithuanian population were

Jews. 62 Russian social conditions left an unmistakable mark that strongly influenced

German perception of Lithuania’s local residents.

The administration’s position toward Jews was in some ways remarkably different from its policy toward nonJews but similarly molded by perception of social standing during Russian rule. Administrators clearly shared the views of the invading German soldiers who channeled antisemitic stereotypes and regarded Russian Jews as the prototypical dishonest Händler , in economic terms almost the mirror image of the hard working Lithuanian farmer. Jews of the Russian Empire were, after all, largely based in urban areas and employed in commerce and small crafts. These facts overwhelmingly shaped the administrators’ perception: Jews were depicted as intermediaries and usurious lenders who profited from the labor of the true producers. District captains noted that trade was “in the hands of Jews” 63 and remarked that the Jews were a “cancer on the

land”. 64 In spite of the occupiers’ abrogation of the Russian Empire’s antisemitic laws,

Jews were cited as the alleged source of innumerable ills plaguing the early

administration and they were habitually accused of hoarding cash, smuggling illegal and

untaxed goods, exploiting farmers by selling goods at extortionate prices and artificially

62 GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, May 1916, Anlage D. 63 LSHA 6411622, KH in Szawkiany, VB addition for November 1915, fol. 25. 64 LSHA 641152, KH in Birsche, VB for February 1916, fol. 5. 111

influencing the horse and livestock market to their financial advantage. 65 Jews represented a commercial class that the Germans saw as an impediment to their economic dominance of the land. Regulation after regulation issued from Ober Ost and the German

Administration for Lithuania restricting ever greater aspects of commercial life. Russian

Jews had played an essential role in the empire’s commercial life by producing goods, distributing them for sale, offering services, and making credit available. All merchants, however, had to adjust to the administration’s plan to eliminate “middlemen” to the greatest extent possible. Most items were regulated by price ceilings and eventually the trade of all goods was either prohibited or strictly controlled. Jewsasmerchants thus presented an impediment to German policy as a social class that could not be seamlessly integrated into German plans for the area. But this alone does not explain the visceral response of many administrators to the presence and professions of Jews in the occupied lands.

The clearest manifestation of antisemitism influencing German policy was the administration’s support for local commercial cooperatives. German administrators knowingly picked up where their Russian predecessors had left off by directing anti

Jewish sentiment toward the creation of nonJewish cooperatives. The locally run cooperatives were to serve as a substitute for Jewish merchants’ role as the distributors of food, groceries and manufactured goods, cutting out the merchants and, presumably, driving down prices. Lithuania was selfsufficient with regard to most agricultural products during the First World War, but it relied upon Germany for the importing of manufactured goods and grocery items like salt or sugar, which fell under the heading of

65 Egmont Zechlin, Die deutsche Politik und die Juden im Ersten Weltkrieg (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck u. Ruprecht, 1969), 226227. 112

Kolonialwaren , literally “colonial goods.” The policy of supporting nonJewish

cooperatives was driven by the economic goal of delivering such goods for sale

throughout Lithuania at set prices, but it was fueled by the assumption that Jewish small

traders were, on the whole, intent upon exploiting their customers to the fullest extent. To

Isenburg and other administrators, Jewish merchants were not a class working to get by

like any other, but rather a parasite sapping a properly functioning economic system.

Administrators’ perception of Jews was not entirely uniform, but it was frequently based

upon the assumption that Jews lived for nothing more than to turn a financial profit.

Isenburg instituted an antisemitic policy from the very start, explicitly referencing the

Russian state’s desire to do the same and cautioning against what might happen in the

absence of such a policy: Jews had been “held back under Russian rule” and care must be

taken to ensure that they did not develop into an “undesired power.” 66 By October 1915

Isenburg could report that he had begun the process of cutting Jews off from “profitable

trade in Kolonialwaren ”. 67 Cooperatives were one of the administrators’ primary means

of eliminating Jewish merchants’ role as Zwischenhändler , or middlemen. As Isenburg also noted, support of the cooperatives did not constitute an attempt to remove all merchants from the area; “conscientious wholesalers” ( Grosshändler ) augmented cooperatives by helping to bring goods to market. Isenburg commented somewhat more specifically in a January 1916 report that the price ceilings were posted in all shops in order to “protect the population from the cheating by Jewish Kleinhandel .” 68 As Isenburg saw it, the instinctively dishonest everyday practices of Jewish Klein- and

66 BAMA PH 30 III/4, 15 July to 20 August 1915, 10. 67 GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, 1 July to 1 October 1916, 5. 68 GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, January 1916, 20. 113

Zwischenhandel could only be avoided through direct and thoroughgoing preventive

measures.

Administrators did not ignore the effects of the new economic measures on local

civilians. Charged with maintaining order and ensuring the continued production of

agricultural goods, district captains took note of the moods of the population. Although

Isenburg was with few exceptions unrelentingly demanding, he too realized that

maintaining an acquiescent occupied population served the administration’s goal of

obtaining material benefit from Lithuanian lands. District captains assessed the mood of

the population in each of their reports, analyzing the respective attitude of each national

or religious group toward the administration as well as its willingness to work. Though

they led to few compromises, these assessments became one method of evaluating the

success of given policies in achieving the maximum economic gains while maintaining

the support of the population.

The mood of the occupied civilians in the summer of 1915 gave the

administrators reason to be hopeful and influenced early decisions that set the course for

subsequent policy. District captains evaluated each ethnic group by comparing general

impressions of the group’s willingness to participate in German measures with its perceived satisfaction under Russian rule. Lithuanians were largely farmers without

exceptional means or education and German administrators assumed that they were

happy to be free of Russian rule and indifferent to anything but their desire to carry out

their agricultural activities. Lithuanians’ simple and backward character was reflected in

their apparent obeisance to the better educated Catholic clergy which the administrators

114

assumed could and often did manipulate Lithuanians.69 The Prussian state’s decadeslong attempt to Germanize Poles in its eastern provinces rightly identified the Catholic clergy as a conduit for budding nationalism. Although no records exist of explicit comparisons of the Catholic clergy’s role fomenting Lithuanian and Polish nationalism, the administrators certainly did recognize priests’ influential role – often assuming that

Catholic clergy worked to Polonize Lithuanians – and this may have been conditioned by knowledge of Prussian Catholic Poles. Unlike Lithuanians who were regarded with only a moderate amount of suspicion, Poles were immediately suspected of undermining the administration by spreading nationalist ideas just as they had done for roughly the last century under Russian, Austrian, and German rule. Polish uprisings in the nineteenth century were some of the most visible and well known symbols of minority discontent with Russian rule. Opinions on Jews varied significantly but were both shaped by the administration’s commercial and economic policy and influenced by the general antisemitism Germans brought with them. Most administrators regarded the end of

Russian oppression and the mutual intelligibility of Yiddish and German speakers as fostering a natural marriage of political interests. On the whole, administrators felt that

Jews were generally receptive to the Germans. This very optimistic picture provided them with the sense that successfully governing the lands required a simple formula: removing backward and oppressive Russian rule and replacing it with German order and advanced methods could not fail to inspire the loyalty of the occupied peoples.

As the administrators quickly learned, German measures were only one of several factors that influenced the mood of the local population and that the context of the war

69 The clergy did play a leading role in the Lithuanian nationalist movement, particularly after the 1905 Revolution. Tomas Balkelis, The Making of Modern Lithuania (London: Routledge, 2009), 8687. 115

remained influential. Both the Germans and occupied civilians recognized that the new

government’s policy was conditional on the German army maintaining its foothold on the

Eastern Front. Administrators’ frequent comments attest to reluctance on the part of the

local population to expose themselves significantly to collaboration with the Germans

lest the Russian army should victoriously return. One district captain reported in March

1916 that the willingness of the population to work dutifully diminished on days when

heavy artillery fire at the front was audible. 70 Another district captain commented that

two recently delivered motorized plows had performed so poorly in the fields that their

only notable success had been in convincing the locals that the Germans intended to stay

for some time. A group of local workers returned from the direction of the front and

spread the rumor that the Germans would soon be retreating but the arrival of the plows

soon put the rumor to rest. The locals had supposedly remarked, “the Russians aren’t

coming back, otherwise the Germans wouldn’t send such valuable machines here.” 71

German administrators were rightly concerned with rumors that portrayed their activities

in a negative light and that might therefore adversely influence their administrative

capacity. Harsh economic measures inspired rumors of yet harsher measures to come and

administrators needed to alleviate both the effects of the policies and the rumors as

efficiently as possible.

Administration policies did, from time to time coincide with the desires and needs

of the occupied civilians. Tobacco and alcohol monopolies made those items available to

the public and provided commercial income to merchants who accepted the

administration’s terms of sale. In the case of spirits, however, the protests of district

70 LSHA 641152, KH in Birsche, VB for March 1916, fol. 65. 71 LSHA 641153, KH in Rossienie, VB 29 Apr 1916, fol. 51. 116

captains about the reintroduction of alcohol sale and consumption evidence a conflicted

set of priorities. The sale of alcohol in the occupied territories was complicated by a

number of factors, including army regulations which prohibited the sale of alcohol in the

Etappe , and the difficulty of determining which Russian policies had been effective and should therefore be continued. More importantly, district captains very much feared the effect that alcohol would have on the population since their highest priorities for the local population involved physically demanding tasks. Numerous district captains complained in their reports to Isenburg that their reservations were justified by frequent displays of public drunkenness that threatened public order and reduced productivity. 72 Isenburg reported that the normally peaceful population tended to commit acts of violence when under the influence of even small quantities of alcohol. 73 In the end, however, profit reigned supreme among the occupier’s motives. 74 What appeared to district captains as an unnecessary complication of their ability to maintain order struck the Supreme Command of the East as a natural means of boosting the occupied territories’ profitability. 75 In this case, the most practical means of achieving the stated economic objectives conflicted with the administrators’ desired means. An Ober Ost order from February 1916 determined that the best means of ensuring that felled wood from private forests reach the market for sale was by authorizing the few available timber firms to participate in the

72 The VB of districts Rossienie and Birsche are strongly against the reintroduction of alcohol. See, for example, LSHA 641152, KH in Birsche, VB for February 1916, fol. 17, 35; LSHA 641153, KH in Rossienie, VB 30 Jan 1916, fol. 30; LSHA 641153, KH in Rossienie, VB 29 Mar 1916, fol. 4142. Ethnic Lithuanian and Masurian citizens of the German Empire were stereotyped by their ethnic German neighbors as prone to excessively consume alcohol. Andreas Kossert, Ostpreussen: Geschichte und Mythos (München: Siedler, 2005), 180. 73 GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, January 1916, 16. 74 The importance of financial motives is reflected in an Ober Ost order from 6 February 1916 which negotiated the reopening of the alcohol points of sale and emphasized the “financial interest” as the primary reason. BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehl Nr. XII, 14 February 1916, 8. 75 One could speculate that administrators regarded the sale of alcohol as a compensatory measure with regard to the onerous tasks forced upon local civilian workers. The reports reflect no such opinion, neither from generosity nor cynical calculation. 117

sale. Not only did the administration wish to exclude most of these local operations from process, but it found an additional disincentive for their use in their largely Jewish

ownership. In this case, however, practicality prevailed over principle and lumber firms –

Jewish and nonJewish alike – were authorized to take part in the purchase and sale of

timber. The decree authorizing their employment reluctantly acknowledged that the need

for the income was so great that the use of “the few, mostly Jewish trading circles/firms

can’t be avoided”; the administrators lacked other means of effecting the sale. 76

Subsequent documents indicate that the administration did indeed seek to eliminate the

use of Jewish firms when possible. 77

The Spread of German Culture through Hygienic Improvements

A mix of economic, practical and cultural motives also strongly influenced

German measures for improving sanitary conditions in Lithuania. Administrators generally agreed with the invading soldiers who had found Lithuania to be a cleaner and less repulsive place than Poland, but the German view of the occupied lands remained laden with disgust. Administrators ridiculed the primitive state of sanitary measures and feared the consequences of the lack of hygiene. In fact, twenty percent of the German medical officers in Poland died from typhus. 78 This revulsion highlighted the East’s perceived backwardness as immediately threatening, putting one’s health at risk and attenuating the military and economic effectiveness of the area. Isenburg mocked the

76 BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehl Nr. XII, 14 February 1916, 5. 77 Correspondence in July 1917 from the German Administration of Lithuania to the district captains indicates a preference for employing Germans firms to undertake the felling and transporting of wood in order to “circumvent the local Jewish merchant.” LAS F231, Chef der Militärverwaltung, 30 July 1917, fol. 19. 78 Paul Weindling, Epidemics and Genocide in Eastern Europe, 1890-1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 78. 118

cities of the East as little more than “dirty villages” by German standards. Indeed, the

hygienic conditions could be extremely dangerous to the administrators intending to bring order to them. The initial report in August 1915 from the district captain of

Rossienie, Lieutenant von Walzdorff, simply asked for permission to delay his account

for some time because he had been stricken with illness and was bedridden. The

subsequent report written one month later by the captain’s economic officer indicated that

Walzdorff had caught typhoid shortly after arriving at the beginning of August and

needed to be sent back to the homeland – just across the border in Tilsit, East Prussia –

for continued treatment. 79 The illnesses greeting the administrators of Rossienie raged on for months and by November typhoid remained a problem and scarlet fever seemed to be spreading. 80 The threat of widespread disease in the occupied lands caused great concern

among German administrators who took accordingly severe measures to combat it.

Like most issues preoccupying administrators, the question of what to do about

Lithuania’s detrimental sanitary conditions had short and longterm ramifications.

Diseases needed to be immediately prevented from decimating the military and

combative sanitary measures frequently took the form of longterm infrastructure and policy alterations. Unlike other aspects of administration that took advantage of Russian

legacies to solve immediate issues of government, sanitary conditions were in such a

dilapidated state that initial work introduced procedures and technologies that had not been previously implemented in Lithuania. For this reason, the improvements appeared to

the administrators as a great leap from a shockingly backward state to efficient German

modern methods. The insufficiency of local sanitary measures was so great that Isenburg

79 LSHA 641153, KH in Rossienie, VB 18 Aug 1915, fol. 1. 80 LSHA 641153, KH in Rossienie, VB 27 Nov 1915, fol. 17. 119

remarked in a report that thankfully Lithuanian cities were so few, so distant from one

another, and separated by such poor roads that diseases did not tend to spread with great

speed between locales. The threat of epidemic greeting the Germans in 1915 was perceived to be the twofold responsibility of the Russians, whose soldiers had supposedly brought smallpox, dysentery, and cholera with them, and whose administration of the

lands had failed to provide the necessary sanitary measures. 81 Regardless of the reasons, the locals would have to be brought up to speed with the new measure if the conditions were to improve.

These initial German sanitary improvements were envisioned as the start of a comprehensive, longterm effort to bring the occupied territory up to German standards.

Improvements involved the most fundamental of measures; in some cases, district captains found themselves stationed in cities lacking even a single properly functioning well. 82 The first steps involved locating the necessary personnel and equipment. By

January 1916, only thirteen doctors had been found among the local population to care for over 400,000 people. To make matters worse, this number included those who were

“advanced in years, behind in their knowledge of medical matters, and individuals who were more estate owners than doctors.” 83 District captains often found reason to complain about the local doctors or the Russian military doctors who had been released from confinement as prisoners of war to provide medical services in the occupied lands; 84 local knowledge and methods were not considered sufficient. The Ober Ost decree from 28

July 1915 requiring that all confirmed or suspected cases of serious infectious diseases be

81 GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, 13 October 1915, 1011. 82 LSHA 6411622, KH in Szawkiany, VB 12 Sep 1915, fol. 14. 83 GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, January 1916, 9. 84 GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, May 1916, 11. 120

registered with the district captains was considered an innovation that had not previously

existed in Lithuania. Other novel sanitary measures included the complete regulation of

slaughterhouses, thus aligning sanitary and economic measures in order to yield greater

oversight of the often Jewish owned slaughterhouses. A German decree required all

slaughtering in cities with at least 2,000 residents take place in slaughterhouses with

German meat inspectors. 85 German officials – initially gendarmes, the socalled “jacks of all trades” – began special training to inspect the meat for trichinosis and other meat borne illnesses. 86 A similar confluence of sanitary and economic measures resulted in a special tax on civilians’ dogs and an order to kill those suspected of carrying rabies. This apparently successful measure reduced the number of dogs in the area by hundreds, ultimately boosting income while appearing to improve health and remove additional mouths to feed. Inoculation for smallpox fulfilled an objective similarly targeted for shortterm improvements by reducing the possibility of an epidemic. Doctors began the forcible inoculation of all children from the age of one to fifteen in November 1915 whereas adults were initially vaccinated only by choice. 87

The administration’s sanitary measures neatly aligned with its economic program and were equally assertive of the new imperial power’s right to govern the lands. These invasive policies required that all residents of the occupied lands – however remotely located – acknowledge both the authority and the superior “culture” of the Germans. This sense of superiority drove the institution of German practices and policies which were held to be an unquestionable improvement over the lands’ backward state. New sanitary

85 GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, May 1916, 1415. 86 An in the Kownoer Zeitung praised the gendarmes many functions. District captains relied on the gendarmes ability to perform varied tasks. See “Der Korpsgendarm des Ob. Ost – das Mädchen für Alles,” Kownoer Zeitung , May 5, 1916, 2. 87 BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehl Nr. VI, 16 November 1915, 9. 121 policy aggressively engaged many of the fundamental issues governing the occupied

civilians’ lives. By May 1916, twenty seven local civilians had been trained as

disinfectors ( Seuchentrupps ) for the cleaning of public spaces and buildings and forty young women were being trained as auxiliary nurses.88 An order in December 1915

required that the public be educated about the dangers of typhus and the means of

combating it. Instructional pamphlets were distributed and steps were taken to begin

delousing the population in addition to German military personnel and prisoners of war.

Delousing facilities were first established in local bathing facilities but soon replaced

with newly constructed buildings. An order in February 1916 required all local civilians

of the occupied area who were travelling to Germany – which in any case was a small

number including only the wealthiest and best educated – be stopped at the border for

delousing along with all of their possessions. German citizens could avoid this indignity but locals could not. Locals rode in separate train cars starkly divided from those carrying

German passengers. An Ober Ost order in May 1916 urged district captains to take

special notice of “people going about public streets and squares in ragged, dirty or lousy

condition, arousing public annoyance.” Such individuals were to be taken into custody,

deloused, and released only after their clothes were put in an ordered condition. If the

guilty parties could not pay for their compulsory sanitization, the costs were to be

covered through forced labor. 89 Other public measures included forcing the locals to maintain clean streets and requiring shopkeepers to keep their stores clean. 90 The policies

were intended first and foremost to prevent the spread of diseases but were undergirded

88 GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, May 1916, 11. 89 BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehl Nr. XVIII, 10 June 1916, 6. 90 GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, May 1916, 1112. 122

with an unshakeable belief in the need to impose the superior practices in place in

Germany.

Contested Borderland: Ethnicity and Colonization in Lithuania

Administrators’ views on the desirability and feasibility of imposing German policies in the occupied lands were tied to knowledge of the practices Russia had

instituted during its tenure. Ethnic Russians had always been an ethnic minority in the

empire’s western provinces, comprising the governing elite and possessing some few but

exceptionally large estates. Russians numbered approximately 120,000, or six and a half percent, of Government Kowno’s prewar population of 1,800,000. 91 By the summer of

1916 roughly 9,000 remained. This number was almost entirely exclusive of the elites who had instituted Russian policy in Lithuania. Most of those who remained were the direct beneficiaries of tsarist policy intended to increase the presence of ethnic Russians in the Empire’s western provinces, namely small scale farmers who had received assistance from the government as Russian settlers. In the wake of the 1863 Uprising, the state had seized the land of suspected political opponents and settled over 20,000 Russian colonists in province Kowno alone. 92 Additional colonization followed in the subsequent

decades.

These “colonists,” as German administrators referred to them, generally lived

clustered in certain areas. As a result, they were entirely absent in some German districts

while others had a number of distinct “settlements.” Because these settlements comprised

the most visible remaining concentration of ethnic Russians in occupied territory,

administrators greeted them with particular suspicion and took care to keep a special eye

91 GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, January 1916, 5. 92 Balkelis, The Making of Modern Lithuania , 5. 123

on them. District Szawkiany was home to a particularly high number of settlements and

the German captain’s first task was to determine the extent and nature of the Russian

communities. In September 1915 he reported the presence of Russian colonists and

remarked that they were the worst sort of characters because the Russian state had simply

gifted land to any prospective settlers who were of the Russian Orthodox faith (which is a

way of saying any settlers who were ethnic, Nationalrussen , or unambiguously members

of the majority ethnic Russian population). 93 Here the German administrator revealed his own middleclass background by ascribing the suspect behavior of the Russian colonists to their lack of means, though such characteristics also corresponded to prevalent stereotypes of ethnic Russians. He worked assiduously to determine the exact legal status of the land, discovering that the most recent of the colonies were supported by loans from the Russian Peasant Bank which had a branch in Kowno responsible for the colonies.

One month later, in October 1915, he reported that he was in the process of investigating whether the Russian colonists owned their lands outright or whether they qualified only as renters because they had not yet paid off the lands to their lender, the Russian Peasant

Land Bank; both positions had been argued by local sources who advised the district captain. Russian colonists made up a small ethnic minority in Lithuania but they were particularly conspicuous due to the Russian state’s program of support. In 1900 alone, the tsarist state spent six million rubles on settlement measures in the Kowno province and the resulting settlements were frequently geographically concentrated along railways. 94 In spite of this foothold, in 1915 many settlers did not seem to possess the telltale

93 LSHA 6411622, KH in Szawkiany, VB 12 Sep 1915, fol. 34. On the theme of Russification in the western Russian provinces, see Theodore R. Weeks, Nation and State in Late Imperial Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1996); Darius Staliūnas, Making Russians: Meaning and Practice of Russification in Lithuania and Belarus After 1863 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007). 94 Linde, Die Deutsche Politik in Litauen im Ersten Weltkrieg, 5. 124

certificates proving their ownership of the plots. 95 The district captain of Szawkiany worked under the implicit assumption that revealing the lands’ ownership to be legally dubious could be to the administration’s advantage. The process of identifying the settlements progressed slowly; in November 1915 the captain identified eleven settlements and one month later he had located an additional sixteen.

By December 1915 the picture had come into focus. The Russian government had undertaken settlement projects at two separate times and thus the Lithuanian colonies had varying legal statuses. The first and smaller set – five of the total twentyseven – was established in the 1860s and its properties were now owned outright by the Russian farmers. The remaining Rentengutskolonien had been established around 1909 and had not yet been fully paid for by the farmers. 96 The district captain took care to determine the exact terms of the loan – in this case a 55.5 year mortgage with a four percent interest rate and the provision that the property did not change hands until it had been paid for in full. 97 Framed as a battle to minimize ethnic Russian influence, the process of

investigating the presence of Russian colonies encouraged a view of Lithuania as a

contested borderland with an uncertain future. Administrators thought Russification to be

the only possible motive for the presence of the colonies, and furthermore they had

interrupted an active process which still offered parcels of land to Russian settlers. 98 The administrator of Szawkiany implied that the Russian settlers’ unpaid mortgages effectively made their lands the property of the Russian state. This, in turn, opened them

95 LSHA 6411622, KH in Szawkiany, VB addition for October 1915, fol. 17. 96 Note that the headquarters of district Szawkiany was moved to Kurschany (or Kurszany) between November and December 1915. LSHA 6411622, KH in Kurszany, VB for the fourth quarter 1915, 31 Dec 1915, fol. 4243. 97 LSHA 6411622, KH in Szawkiany, VB addition for November 1915, fol. 23. 98 LSHA 6411622, KH in Kurszany, VB for the fourth quarter 1915, 31 Dec 1915, fol. 4243. 125

to German use in the same way that stateowned estates and forests did not require

intense consideration of property rights; farmers occupying settler properties had no legal

standing to remain there. That the area also had heterogeneous Polish and Lithuanian

enclaves further emphasized the lands’ transitory, contestable status.

The German Empire’s attempt to determine the legal standing of the colonists’

land was part of a larger wartime question of what to do with minorities of enemy

ethnicity. Entente allies France and Britain also worked through their own responses to

the issue and often decided to detain suspect populations for the duration of the war. 99

The case of the German district captains identifying Russian colonies, however, was the

latest chapter in a long and complicated history. As Germans sought to locate the potentially dangerous Russian colonists, Russian authorities undertook measures against

the German colonists in Russian lands. Germans had begun migrating to Russia to

colonize new imperial lands since they had been invited to do so by Catherine the Great

in 1763. Roughly 43,000 settled in Russia in the two final decades of the eighteenth

century before the policy was progressively restricted up to its discontinuation in 1833. 100

That German colonists were loyal Russian subjects who in many cases practiced exceptionally productive agricultural methods did not preclude victimization by their own state when virulent antiGerman sentiment appeared following the outbreak of the First

World War. By the end of 1914, all male German colonists were ordered to leave

Russia’s Polish provinces. The measure affected nearly 200,000 German men. Anti

German measures in Russia’s western provinces were later expanded to include urban

99 On French and British labor practices and treatment of foreign populations, see Klaus J. Bade, Migration in European History (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003), 166181. 100 David Rempel, “The Expropriation of the German Colonists in South Russian during the Great War,” Journal of Modern History IV (1932): 50. 126

Germans as well, but they remained primarily targeted at agricultural communities

reputed to have more obstinately clung to their German identity. 101 As contemporary

sources like diaries clearly indicate, the German soldiers and administrators taking part in

the occupation of Russia in 1914 and 1915 were anecdotally aware of the deportations

that had primarily targeted Germans and Jews. 102

The encounter with Russian colonists in Lithuania was not a precondition for administrators’ evaluation of Lithuania’s potential for German settlement. Considering the possibilities for settlement was of a piece, very closely related to seeing the land as backward, in need of economic help, technological gifts, and political protection. Russian settlers certainly encouraged the district captains to view the lands as contested borderland territory suitable for the settlement of ethnic Germans, but the explicit directives of higher level administrators in occupied Russia ordered investigations into the favorability of conditions for German settlement. A report written by Gayl in

December 1915 described Lithuania as “new German settlement land ( neudeutsches

Siedlungsland ) that has so far seen little economic or cultural development.” 103 Isenburg

shared these views and encouraged his subordinates to consider the possibility of German

settlement. District captains were in no way authorized to initiate steps to actually settle

ethnic Germans in available land. Nevertheless these first efforts were an attempt to make

the most of the opportunity should it arise. The submission of detailed reports on the possibility for German settlement did not take place until the summer of 1916, long after

some district captains had already reported on the subject. Circumstances such as traces

101 Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire , 132. 102 For example, GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, 13 October 1915, 7. 103 BAMA PH 30 III/7, 30 December 1915. 127

of Russian settlement policy spurred these efforts at the local level thereby driving

forward the higher administrators’ plans which had not yet taken concrete shape.

Conclusion

German administrators felt they had many reasons for optimism by the summer of

1916. Isenburg report for May, 1916 provided a multitude of indications that the administration was on track to have the lands functioning smoothly and providing the occupiers with many benefits. Foremost was the simple fact that the German Empire had acquired tens of thousands of square miles of land that would fortify the blockaded nation’s available food stores. Isenburg’s compilation of his district captains’ reports led him to the conclusion that the previous year’s harvest would provide the occupied population with nearly enough grain to cover its own needs; he noted even more hopefully that the land was gradually yielding ever more produce. 104 Given the area’s

lack of significant industry, the “almost purely rural character” of the Lithuanian

administration region was regarded as the most obvious benefit to the occupiers who

tended to view the lands in terms of its latent potential. The administration had already

laid the groundwork for this to take place and Isenburg was pleased with the results. He

calculated that the administration’s income had covered all of its expenditures: forestry,

customs duties and the sale of manufactured goods and grocery items had all brought in

substantial profits. The liquor and cigarette monopolies introduced at the end of 1915 also

showed great promise.

Furthermore, the introduction of what were regarded as superior German methods

had progressed apace and indicated that they had already begun to improve the backward

104 GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, May 1916, 28. 128

lands. The war against disease had reduced the sometimes raging epidemics that greeted

the conquerors nine months earlier and local civilians were trained as disinfecting teams

and nurses in order to prevent any future outbreaks. Newly implemented practices

affected the most fundamental of sanitary issues: new wells were bored and German meat

inspectors supervised the slaughtering of animals in all but the most remote locales. Even

more important was the sense of German cultural superiority that accompanied these

changes.

The superiority of German methods as perceived by the administrators in

Lithuania went far beyond the nation’s undeniably impressive industrial achievements or

its productive agricultural techniques. More important to Isenburg was the

administrators’ success in convincing the occupied civilians that German rule was in fact

as advantageous as its implementers believed it to be. He noted among the civilian population a “gradually increasing trust in the activity” of German judges. 105 It remained to be seen whether Germany’s advanced legal proceedings could be easily transferred to a land with a lower “level of culture,” but they at least seemed to be winning over these apparently simple people. More generally, the civilians began to recognize the

“impartiality of German officials ( Beamten )” and conform themselves to the new system.

A mere eight to nine months after the German conquering of Lithuania, memory of the

Russian rule was still fresh in the minds of the local civilians and Isenburg noted that “the

frequently made comparison between the German and Russian administrations naturally

is to the benefit of the Germans.” 106 Both occupier and occupied necessarily continued to think of the lands as contested territory hanging in the balance between the two

105 GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, May 1916, 38. 106 GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, May 1916, 45. 129 belligerents. More often than not, administrators’ perception of Lithuania’s backwardness

and oppressive Russian rule were the pillars justifying German rule. The promise of

quick and lasting change through German methods buttressed this view.

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Chapter 3: The German Administration Press and the Cultivation of Deutschtum

Physical and operational changes in the areas of agriculture, forestry, industry, and infrastructure were complemented by a farreaching cultural program intended to prepare the occupied lands for longterm control. While foresters, economic officers, and gendarmes attempted to create the ordered conditions necessary for the full exploitation of Lithuania’s economic potential, administrators in the Ober Ost Press Department worked to forge less tangible but equally important changes in the minds of the Germans and local civilians. Propaganda urged both groups to “view the Germans not as conquerors but rather as the heralds of a rebirth of the land that bleeds from wartime wounds” and the message was distributed by a vast network of newspapers; 1 large and medium sized cities like Wilna, Kowno, Grodno, Bialystok, Pinsk, Mitau and Suwalki all published their own papers. These newspapers were the primary vehicle through which the administration disseminated propaganda in the occupied lands, and they consistently argued to Germans and local civilians alike that a nebulously defined set of essential national characteristics, methods and institutions – in a word, Deutschtum – provided the requisite legitimacy for Germany’s incipient wartime empirebuilding. Articles in

Kownoer Zeitung and other newspapers set the stage, drawing on German stereotypes of

Russia and the East through investigations of the historical and contemporary evidence for the superiority of Germanness.

The administration press’s foremost goals were to promote favorable political conditions in the occupied lands and to maintain the morale of German soldiers and

1 “Eine neue Zeitung im besetzten Gebiet,” Kownoer Zeitung , January 1, 1916. 131

administrators. Local civilians remained de jure subjects of the Russian Empire, ethnic distinctiveness and political resentments notwithstanding. The press thus worked to incite resentment of the Russian former rulers by repeatedly referencing former crimes and by painting every administrative action as the benevolent gift of the German conqueror. This approach also furthered the aim of supporting the morale of German soldiers and administrators serving on the Eastern Front; charging the Russian former rulers with barbaric crimes was intended to convince both locals and Germans of the justness of the

German cause. A major objective of German propaganda involved portraying Russian

Empire as essentially cultureless and barbaric. In doing so, administration organs like

Kownoer Zeitung channeled and heightened prewar stereotypes depicting Russia as fundamentally different, threatening, and nonEuropean. Although the administrators hoped to convince the Russian Empire’s minority ethnicities that the German Empire represented a more attractive alternative, the newspapers put forth a strongly paternalistic agenda centered on redeeming the ethnic minorities who had suffered from Russian neglect for over a century.

Laying the Groundwork for Press Operations in Lithuania

The linguistic makeup of the occupied lands naturally complicated efforts to communicate with both Germans and local residents. Lithuanian cities, for instance, frequently comprised Lithuanians, Latvians, Russians, Jews, Belarusians, Poles and

Germans. The use of any one language usually precluded the other linguistic groups’ comprehension. One means of meeting this problem was the creation of separate newspapers for the different ethnicities. The Lithuanian language paper Dabartis was

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published by Ober Ost from 1916 with the assistance of local Lithuanians. Homan appeared not long after and served the Belarusian population, which German administrators were particularly hopeful to win over. Other papers appeared in multiple languages, like the Bialystoker Zeitung which included content in Yiddish, Polish, and

German. Kownoer Zeitung , the German language newspaper for the Lithuanian city of

Kowno, was typical of the German language newspapers that sought both local and

German readerships.

Quite apart from the impossibility of communicating via one universally comprehensible language, difficulties stemmed from the legacy of the Russian Empire’s educational system. Germans touting the superiority of their national “culture” over

Russian backwardness were not without evidence to support their claims. According to the census of 1897, the only empirewide census ever conducted in tsarist Russia, only

27.7 percent of all Russian subjects were literate. This figure was shocking when compared to Germany’s literacy rate near 100 percent, as were the variations between

Russia’s ethnicities’ respective rates. Among the most literate of Russian ethnicities were the Estonians and Latvians at 94.1 percent and 85 percent, respectively. 78.5 percent of

Russia’s ethnic German subjects were literate, compared to only 29.3 percent of ethnic

Russians. Lithuanians stood in between with a figure of 48.4 percent. 2 Although these numbers were gathered in the midst of a trend toward rapidly increasing literacy that had not reached its peak in 1897, and though they were seventeen years old at the time of the

First World War, they do provide a rough outline of literacy along ethnic lines. 3 The figures were in accordance with what subjects of the German Empire had come to expect

2 Andreas Kappeler, The Russian Empire: A Multiethnic History (Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2001), 407. 3 Ibid., 310. 133

from its neighboring empire that did not even mandate primary school attendance. The percentages of those who had anything beyond primary education reinforced this picture:

1.51 percent of all Russian subjects had received further education, 2.28 percent of ethnic

Russians, 6.37 percent of Germans, .63 percent of Latvians, .59 percent Estonians, and

.27 percent of Lithuanians. From the German perspective, these numbers reflected the

differing and damaging practices in the Russian Empire, but they certainly also affected perception of the minority ethnicities themselves.

Although the relatively higher percentage of literacy among Lithuanians brought

them nearer in line with German standards than most other Russian ethnic groups, a

number of factors created further difficulties. Lithuania’s historical development had not produced a highly regularized and widely accepted written language. Instead of a

universal standard, numerous local thrived, each with its own distinct influences

and forms. This multiplicity had gradually been addressed by nineteenthcentury attempts

at reform but inauspicious political conditions slowed the process. Most significantly,

Governor Muraviev’s harsh repression in the western provinces following the Polish

Uprising of 1863 resulted in the banning of all Lithuanian writing in the Roman alphabet.

This prohibition had been rescinded prior to the First World War, but not soon enough for

the development of a universal written language. Additionally, the social and political privileging of ethnic Russians over all other minorities stifled the developing Lithuanian

middle class. Lithuania’s relatively underdeveloped industrial activity provided for only a

correspondingly small urban middle class. Partly as a result of these factors, Lithuanians

did not yet have the national consciousness of the Finns, Estonians or Latvians. 4

4 Ibid., 228. 134

The language barriers also tended to reemphasize Lithuania’s liminality. Just as ethnic Poles were divided among the competing empires in East Central Europe, so too was Lithuanian territory riven by the larger neighboring states. Although Prussian

Lithuania (also known as Lithuania Minor) contained only a fraction of the ethnic

Lithuanians that lived across the border in the Russian Empire, it attained a cultural importance in Lithuanian life that was largely attributable to the more favorable political circumstances on the western side of the GermanRussian border. 5 Although the Prussian

state – like its Russian counterpart – also repressed Lithuanian ethnicity by hindering the

use of the Lithuanian language in public life, such antiLithuanian measures did not go as

far as those in Russia. Whereas Lithuanians in the tsarist empire had been barred from

using the Roman alphabet to write their language and children prohibited from learning it

at school, Lithuanian subjects of the Kaiser could continue to receive religious education

in their native tongue even though were discouraged from speaking and learning

Lithuanian particularly from the 1870s onward. 6 This more liberal attitude and the

comparably favorable social conditions in Germany together fostered a Prussian

Lithuanian educated middle class that developed a standardized form of written

Lithuanian within the German Empire well before Russian Lithuanians had the

opportunity to do so across the border. Thus the first national newspaper of tsarist

Lithuania was published under the aegis of Prussian Lithuanians who had sufficient political freedoms to produce the paper in German territory beginning in 1883. 7 The

5 In 1910, Prussia was home to 94,000 Prussian Lithuanians (defined by native language) out of a total Prussian population of 35.5 million. Walter Hubatsch, Masuren und Preußisch-Litthauen in der Nationalitätenpolitik Preußens, 1870-1920 (Marburg: N.G. Elwert Verlag, 1966), 27. 6 Zigmas Zinkevicius, The History of the Lithuanian Language (Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopediju leidybos institutas, 1996), 280. 7 Zigmantas Kiaupa, The History of Lithuania (Vilnius: Baltos Laukos, 2005), 200. 135

editors of the newspaper Ausra (The Dawn) began with the version of written Lithuanian

established in Prussia and engaged with contributors to create a new written standard.

Germanisms and other inappropriate words for tsarist Russian were eliminated from the

new form. 8

By 1914 Lithuanian nationalism and education had spread apace but social factors continued to hamper the transmission of nationalist ideas in Russia. Following the revolution of 1905, Lithuanians had license to teach their native language in state schools but this did not often happen in practice. Still, within the first five years after the revolution over thirtyone newspapers were being published in tsarist Lithuania. 9 In spite of these improvements, the Lithuanian middle class had yet to expand beyond a small elite. Most Lithuanians were small scale farmers separated from the middleclass nationalists by both geography and education.

German newspaper editors in the occupied lands faced this complicated set of factors. Friedrich Bertkau served as Organisator and Leiter of the Ober Ost

Presseabteilung from November 1915 to and his 1928 dissertation provides the best available insight into the establishment of the German newspapers behind the Eastern Front. Bertkau’s work supplies not just the details concerning the paper’s founding, but is in fact highly indebted to his experiences as a leading figure of

the Ober Ost press corps. Supplementing his memories are documents he obtained from

the Reichsarchiv Potsdam, the contents of which were subsequently destroyed by allied

8 Zinkevicius, The History of the Lithuanian Language , 28990. 9 Kiaupa, The History of Lithuania , 224. 136

bombing in the Second World War. This combination presents an indispensible source that combines personal experiences with reflections on now extinct documents. 10

Although this chapter primarily examines the army’s German language newspaper operations, the constellation of decisions that stood before the editors of the administration’s Lithuanian language newspaper, Dabartis , demonstrate the problems

and decisions that faced the Ober Ost press more generally. The German military press

walked a tightrope while attempting to establish newspaper operations that would satisfy

diverging political and cultural priorities. Beginning from the position that the paper

would remain neutral with regard to Lithuania’s political future, the most difficult initial

decision concerned the fundamental question of which linguistic form the paper would

settle upon. Employed as editor was the Prussian Lithuanian Dr. Willy Steputat, a

German distinguished by his activity in local East Prussian government, in addition to his

service during the war with the rank of Rittmeister .11 Steputat advocated a relatively

liberal policy toward Lithuanian culture as he resisted the conservative views of

Verwaltungschef Franz Josef IsenburgBirstein. Isenburg asserted firstly that the publication of Dabartis in both Lithuanian and German would lead to more Lithuanians

learning German and secondly that the lack of a universal Lithuanian written language

would lead to misunderstanding among its readership. In response, Steputat argued that

the paper should not be a “reader for beginners,” that the translation would be excessively

difficult, that the use of two languages would consequently halve the paper’s total

content, and that the use of German would strain the readers’ trust of the occupiers’

motives. Contesting Isenburg’s assessment, Steputat cited the roughly 60 newspapers and

10 Friedrich Bertkau, Das amtliche Zeitungswesen im Verwaltungsgebiet Ober-Ost (Leipzig: Verlag Emmanuel Reinicke, 1928). 11 Ibid., 41. 137

200 books that were published in a nearly identical form of the Lithuanian language prior to the war. 12 Isenburg’s objections were ultimately overruled and Dabartis was published

as a Lithuanian paper using the most widely understood Lithuanian . Lastly, the

administration decided against using the distinctively German type, Fraktur , in favor of a

simpler Roman font more in line with the Russian Lithuanians’ expectations.

The creation of the paper catalyzed a set of issues that would animate

administration policy throughout the occupation. The Steputat faction had won out

against the arguments of the cultural nationalists like Isenburg, but the difficulties – as

well as the conceits of the Germans as “culturebearers” – remained. Bertkau recalled that

the Dabartis editors were forced to invent new words and that these were “not always

immediately understood by every [Lithuanian] farmer or worker.”13 Attempting to reach a largely peasant population – of whom perhaps over half were illiterate – in a language from which a universally recognized standard form had not yet emerged was a complicated task indeed. Translating administrative decrees into Lithuanian proved to be stultifying work; Prussian Lithuanian translators put the German texts into their

Lithuanian dialects and their drafts were proofed by a Russian Lithuanian who corrected stylistic differences. The subsequent document was then reviewed by an additional

Russian Lithuanian before being sent back to the editorial staff. These convoluted decisions on the form of the paper reflected only a fraction of the issues that plagued questions relating to the paper’s content.

Beyond these questions of practical implementation and form, the use of the

Lithuanian language rankled those who saw it as the surrendering of German

12 Ibid., 44. 13 Ibid., 44. 138

preeminence to Lithuania’s budding nationalism. In this context, even the mere expression of Lithuanian culture could be seen as the privileging of local ethnicities at the expense of Germany’s authority and prestige. These issues assumed paramount importance but the uncertainty of Germany’s comprehensive military situation yielded an equally clouded picture of the best course of action. Extremists wished to annex parts of the occupied lands outright but the prevailing, more realistic view took for granted that such plans could not be implemented before the war’s resolution on the Western Front.

As a result, the Ober Ost press corps began operations by attempting to gain the favor of the occupied peoples without actually making any promises for national autonomy or formal independence. This meant cultivating a sense that the German Empire stood ready to provide its eastern neighbors with friendly assistance and support. The very existence of the Lithuanian language was intended to signal a change in policy from the Russian

Empire’s ruthless suppression of Lithuanian culture in the half century following the

Polish Uprising of 1863. These gestures sought to gain the occupied population’s trust.

This message was part and parcel of the Lithuanian language newspaper program and the cost of potentially aggravating Lithuanian nationalist sentiment. It also became a recurring theme as the occupiers attempted a similar balancing act throughout the occupation.

A panoply of German language papers also emerged as a result of this ambivalent but clearly patronizing policy. It was not only the difficulties and deficiencies attending the production of foreign language newspapers that drove Ober Ost to make German language papers the center of its media program in occupied Russia. Although German papers could only be less effective reaching local audiences, they had the advantage of

139

necessarily asserting the occupiers’ cultural control over the lands and this impulse was at the root of Verwaltungschef Isenburg’s argument that the Lithuanian language merely

facilitate the locals’ efforts to learn German. The war’s uncertain result prevented

Germany from claiming the new lands as its own but it did not preclude the drenching of

the lands in German culture. This “culture work” ( Kulturarbeit ), as the newspaper man

Bertkau chose to contrast it against wartime military work, took the form of an extensive

German language media campaign. 14 In addition to the two Ober Ost foreign language papers, one Lithuanian and one Belarusian, the military administration also issued

Kownoer Zeitung , Wilnaer Zeitung , Mitausche Zeitung , Grodnoer Zeitung , Duna Zeitung ,

Kriegszeitung von Baranovitschi and several more. All of these papers were intended to reach beyond the readership of German soldiers and administrators to the local civilians.

Some of them, like the Kreigszeitung von Baranovitschi , were hybrid papers that focused first and foremost on providing news and information to the German soldiers at the front and those helping to keep order in the occupied territory. The Mitausche Zeitung ,

stemming from Kurland with its substantial German population, was exceptional for

retaining private, local by ethnic Germans, though it willingly conveyed Ober Ost decrees

and news items. 15 Other publications, namely those organized according to the

deployment of particular German army units, such as the Zeitung der 8. Armee

(Newspaper of the Eighth Army) or the Zeitung der 12. Armee , were not intended for

14 Bertkau’s framing of the issue in 1928 is indistinguishable from the way the Ober Ost press presented it during the war itself. The term Kulturarbeit was used in Kownoer Zeitung to describe German motives and actions in the Ober Ost region and Bertkau accepts is usage uncritically. In fact, he deploys it defensively in response to the terms of the peace settlement and the accusations that Germany had waged a “barbaric” war. Ibid., v. 15 Ibid., 99. 140

wide distribution among the local population in spite of the substantial amount of content shared between them and others like Kownoer or Wilnaer Zeitung .

Kownoer Zeitung and the German Newspapers

Kownoer Zeitung stood at the nexus of German press operations in occupied

Russia. Prior to the displacement of the German Administration for Lithuania’s

headquarters to Wilna, Kowno served as the center of the military administration and the

city’s newspaper reflected this position. Bertkau described this “special standing” as a

function of its close connection to the administrative headquarters. While the Wilna,

Grodno, and Bialystok publications served as “pure news propagators,” the Kowno paper

was “first and foremost an official organ.” 16 In fact, Kownoer Zeitung covered all types of material and serves as the best example of Ober Ost’s German language press. Unlike papers intended solely for the use of military personnel, or the Korrespondenz B , which compiled articles on the occupied territories to forward on to Germany’s domestic press,

Kownoer Zeitung sought to link Germans and occupied civilians through a common medium. Intended to function as a crucially important interface, Kownoer Zeitung was regarded to be as essential an endeavor as the more tangible construction projects in the occupied area. The paper served to place the administration’s cultural stamp on the lands, both by reaching the local civilians and by shaping the way that administrators and soldiers viewed and thus governed the land; building bridges and spreading German culture were related forms of Kulturarbeit . However, the administrators’ respective objectives for the occupied area’s distinct audiences (i.e. the various ethnic minorities)

16 Ibid., 55. 141

did not always coincide and this resulted in content that ran the whole gamut of possibilities.

Kownoer Zeitung worked to educate and to condition the values of Germans in occupied Lithuania. Whether administrators, doctors, nurses, soldiers or others working in the area, Germans reading the Kowno paper received updates on the important political and military conditions throughout the world. This type of information was supposed to

“strengthen and maintain the necessary confident attitude” of soldiers in the trenches. 17

For entertainment, the paper provided serialized novels, illustrated historical or cultural

articles, and advertisements and announcements pertaining to theater performances or public lectures. Beyond keeping the soldiers up to date and entertained when off duty,

Kownoer Zeitung also provided extensive coverage of various aspects of local culture,

geography, history, and science. According to Bertkau, such items were not intended to be merely informative, but one aspect of creating a “good agreement” between the army

and the enemy population. More specifically, the “careful study of [the occupied lands’] particular nature” would foster a fruitful relationship between soldiers and civilians.

Here, too, ambiguities in German intent abounded; soldiers and administrators were to

learn to love the new lands as a “second Heimat ” by taking part in the population’s

“sufferings and joys,” yet they were also to “prevent the excessive trustfulness to which

German soldiers tend.” 18 Bertkau passed over this tension without further remark, additionally noting that if the newspaper were able to educate the soldiers about the local population – whose “mental and political attitudes were very difficult for the soldiers to make out” – that “abruptness, arrogance, and, indeed, acts of violence against the

17 Ibid., 17. 18 Ibid., 18. 142

population could be avoided.” 19 Publications like Kownoer Zeitung were tasked with helping soldiers navigate the middle ground between treating occupied civilians like

Germans and lashing out at them because of their suspiciously inscrutable ways. 20

The task facing Kownoer Zeitung with regard to its local audience was if anything

even more complex and equally vexed by cultural differences. To begin with, the number

of German speakers in occupied Lithuania was limited to perhaps a few thousand ethnic

Germans and an even smaller number of well educated aristocrats, merchants with business contacts in the German Empire, bourgeois Lithuanians with exceptional

education, a few members of the clergy, and Yiddishspeaking Jews. An Ober Ost publication noted with pride that the local populations had taken an avid interest in the

German language papers, particularly in Kowno and Wilna where “hundreds of

subscribers were reached, thanks in whole or in part to the use of the use of the Roman

typeset.” 21 This dubious claim was intended to show the paper’s success, but even if the cited statistics were true they would still reflect the minimal number of civilians who could be reached via the German language. As had occurred during debate over Dabartis , the possibility of using the distinctively German (and, for German newspapers, the commonly used) Fraktur font over the simpler Roman Antiqua created notable disharmony that culminated in a petition to Ober Ost from dissatisfied German subscribers on the home front. 22 The German language papers for Lithuania ultimately

19 Ibid. 20 Chapter 4 presents evidence of soldiers’ and administrators’ not infrequent outbursts against the occupied population. 21 Das Land Ober Ost: Deutsche Arbeit in den Verwaltungsgebieten Kurland, Litauen und Bialystok- Grodno. Herausgegeben im Auftrage des Oberbefehlshabers Ost. Bearbeitet von der Presseabteilung Ober Ost (Stuttgart: Verlag der Presseabteilung Ober Ost, 1917), 136. 22 Bertkau, Das amtliche Zeitungswesen , 58. On the cultural debate within Germany over the use of Fraktur and Antiqua, see Silvia Hartmann, Fraktur oder Antiqua: Der Schriftstreit von 1881 bis 1941 (Frankfurt am Main: New York, 1998). 143

decided on the use of the simpler Antiqua font, thus avoiding the simplest obstacle to local comprehension.

Political difficulties played no less a role. Bertkau reflected in 1928 that German

“cultural work” in occupied enemy territory could have been more widely publicized to act as a counterweight to claims that the Germans had waged war in a “barbaric fashion.” 23 In fact, the very objectives that he cited as the Ober Ost Press’s guiding principles evidence the contradictory methods that ultimately alienated the occupied population. The press corps’s objectives differed rhetorically from those of the highest

level administrators. The commonly repeated slogan intended to keep German soldiers

and administrators on task received an addition that obviously suited the press’ propagandistic function: in the hands of press corps members like Bertkau, “for the army

and homeland” ( für Heer und Heimat ) became “for the army, homeland, and the [local

civilian] population” ( für Heer, Heimat und Bevölkerung ), addressing the local civilians’

needs in word if not in deed. In the rhetorical world of Kownoer Zeitung , Russian

subjects had become members of the German war effort. In this sense, the paper worked

to raise morale and inform the population of notable developments. In occupied Russia,

however, civilians had far fewer rights than did German citizens in Germany’s wartime

economy.

From its primary function as a means of maintaining strong morale among

German military personnel to its ancillary but no less important goals of creating and

winning over a local audience, Kownoer Zeitung was at once unique and representative of

German propaganda in the occupied East. The paper’s competing purposes could not be

23 Bertkau, Das amtliche Zeitungswesen , 20. 144

easily unified and the result was a typically confused mix of pandering to local civilians with praise of local culture while simultaneously informing them of policies repressing their cultural and occupational activity. Kownoer Zeitung best represents these competing goals, evidencing the inconsistencies and illusions of the German political position. The first issue appeared on 1 January 1916 and succinctly formulated the occupiers’ paternalistic attitude toward the local population; it would serve as the “carrier of German ideas” and “help to pass on the blessings of the German spirit and German work.” 24

Making the lands more German was therefore not only to the occupiers’ benefit, but also amounted to the gifting of superior methods to the poor inhabitants of the East. The editors’ desire that the paper serve as the “mediator between the local population and those who intend to bring to the wartorn land a cultural and economic upswing” unselfconsciously cast the occupiers as the faultless benefactors. Attractive rhetoric notwithstanding, overarching political goals placed limits on winning over the locals.

Keeping open the door to massive annexations while hedging bets in an attempt to prepare for an incomplete military victory muddled the attempts to build the trust of the local civilians.

Portraying Russian Rule

Kownoer Zeitung and other Ober Ost press organs persistently argued that the

Russian Empire lacked any legitimate claim to Lithuania’s territory or civilian population. The occupied lands and peoples were depicted as a contested borderland that swayed between two powerful empires standing in permanent and fundamental

24 “Eine neue Zeitung im besetzten Gebiet.” 145

opposition to one another. The press’s rhetorical attacks on Russian rule thus praised

German practices both explicitly and implicitly, reporting on Russia’s abject failures by presenting Germany’s shining achievements as an alternative. Undermining the legitimacy of Russia’s multiethnic empire theoretically had an identical effect upon

Germany’s aspirations to rule the borderlands after the war; the efficiency, advancement, and justness of German rule and Germanness, however, were presented as the more important factors. The press also argued – implicitly, in this age of selfdetermination – that Russia’s ethnic minorities were so distinct as to merit their excision from the Russian

Empire, but yet not advanced enough to survive on their own without German protection and guidance. Kownoer Zeitung ultimately focused on the inherent Russian character

traits that precluded effective governance. The German Empire, by contrast, provided its

subjects freedoms and opportunities that the borderlands population would never attain

while subordinated to Russian administration.

The press’s attack on Russian rule initially dwelled upon the outward

manifestations of deficient Russian governance as a means of promoting German rule as

a substitute. This message had the general purpose of convincing all readers of the

necessity and value of German policies and institutions when contrasted with Russia’s

treatment of its subjects. German soldiers learned about Russian villainy while local

readers were reminded or informed of the reasons that they should gleefully welcome

German administration. This message could be pitched to German and Russian alike

without obvious contradictions. Wartime circumstances and events were the subject of

the first charges against the Russian Empire and these key themes underlay antiRussian

critiques for the remainder of the occupation. Irregularities in the Russian war effort

146

became grist to the German propaganda mill, emerging as evidence that Russia was a fundamentally devious malefactor that endlessly harassed and oppressed its own subjects.

On 16 January 1916 readers were reminded that the Russians bore responsibility for burning the bridge in Kowno. 25 Another piece likewise highlighted the typically arbitrary destructive motive that had triggered the Russian plundering of the Kowno municipal hospital. 26 The repressive indignities suffered by ethnic minority subjects continued even

after the tsarist army had been expelled from western provinces. Poles and Jews

continued to face discrimination and restrictions after they had been deported from homes

and driven to the interior of Russia; the pleasant lands of Lithuania and Poland were a

distant memory as they played the role of “cultural fertilizers” in barren, imposing

Siberia. 27 These stories highlighted the arbitrariness of Russian rule and the

consequentially harsh outcomes for innocent Russian subjects.

While Russia’s destructive oppression was harsh and apparently arbitrary,

Kownoer Zeitung argued that it resulted from a deep divide separating the two empires.

Russia was cast as a barbarian land that had no appreciation for the advanced culture

emanating from Germany and the west. An article mocked the purported motive of Grand

Duke Nikolai Nikolaevitch as the Russian army invaded the German Empire in 1914,

namely that “Russia fights for culture, which it is prepared to bring to the residents of

East Prussia.” 28 The author ridiculed the absurd notion that the Cossacks, of all people,

could be considered “culture bringers” given their infamous “appetite for destruction.” 29

25 “Winterspaziergang in Kowno,” Kownoer Zeitung , January 16, 1916. 26 “Das Kownoer städtische Krankenhaus,” Kownoer Zeitung , January 23, 1916. 27 “Polen und Juden als Kulturdünger für Sibirien,” Kownoer Zeitung , January 17, 1916. 28 “Hunnen,” Kownoer Zeitung , January 9, 1916. 29 This supposed feature of the Cossacks was frequently expressed with the German “ Zerstörungswut .” See also “Die Weißrussen,” Kownoer Zeitung , January 22, 1916. 147

Kownoer Zeitung framed the issue in no uncertain terms by asserting that “the fight against us is in reality a fight against culture.” The dichotomy established early on and presented throughout the paper’s existence set Kultur against a nebulously articulated barbarism. While articles more often than not stated that the Russian enemy represented a lower level of culture, it was frequently implied that Russian culture was trivial or even nonexistent in comparison to German culture. The reader – German or local – was beckoned to view the Russian Empire as a nefarious, threatening body whose malevolence should turn all nonRussians into natural allies. 30 This emphasis on

Germany’s victimization at the hands of the Russians served in theory if not in practice to conflate the interests and experiences of the occupier and the local civilians visàvis

Russia. The first month of publication regularly featured articles that intended to prove this shared victimhood. German readers were preconditioned to receive this strongly anti

Russian message.

The administration’s attempt to cast the Russian Empire as a barbaric, cultureless

land tapped into established cultural stereotypes. Russia was frequently depicted in

Wilhelmine Germany as fundamentally different ; one German paper’s representative

response to the outbreak of war described it as “European civilization against despotism

and barbarism.” 31 Russia’s alleged difference from Germany – it was often referred to as

Asian, “halfAsian” or Oriental – was most consistently defined in terms of barbarism,

which is to say an absence of the ordered and advanced conditions prevailing in the

30 German stereotypes included the portrayal of Russia as home to a “destructive unculture.” Hans Hecker, Die Tat und Ihr Osteuropa-Bild 1909-1939 (Köln: Wissenschaft und Politik, 1974), 26. 31 Excerpt from the Münchener Neueste Nachrichten , quoted in Troy Paddock, “Creating an Oriental Feindbild,” Central European History 39 (2006): 239. 148

West. 32 Russia had been associated with “the East” and the Orient since the mid

nineteenth century and this means of signifying exotic Russian difference was solidified by the time of the First World War. 33 In the years leading up to the First World War,

German schoolchildren learned the identical information about Russia that had been taught to their fathers and grandfathers, namely that Russia was a barbarian land populated by indigent inhabitants whose only advancements and culture came from the

West. 34 Slavs in general and Russians in particular had been maligned in the German press in the decades leading up to the First World War. Though it is difficult to assess just

how far Russophobia permeated the outlook of the individual writers and publishers

working for the administration press, such antiRussian tendencies were by 1914 a

“constitutive element of bourgeois class and national character.” 35 The associated

stereotypes presented Slavs as hopeless slaves who were cultureless, “incapable of being

cultured”, and “hostile to culture”. 36 This portrayal rendered the Russian Empire as a strange and exotic place that had little in common with Western Europe. Kownoer

Zeitung did not need to create this portrayal, but rather channeled contemporary

understanding of life in Russia. The main difference, of course, was that readers of the

32 Hecker, Die Tat und Ihr Osteuropa-Bild 1909-1939 . 33 On the origins of German perception of Russia as part of “the East” rather than “the North”, see Hans Lemberg, “Zur Entstehung des Osteuropabegriffs im 19. Jahrhundert. Vom ‘Norden’ zum ‘Osten’ Europas,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 33 (1985): 4891; Hans Lemberg, “'Der Russe ist genügsam.' Zur deutschen Wahrnehmnung Rußlands vom Ersten zum Zweiten Weltkrieg,” in Das Bild "des Anderen": Politische Wahrnehmung im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert , ed. Birgit Aschmann and Michael Salewski (Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 2000), 233. 34 Claudia Pawlik, “'Ein Volk von Kindern' Rußland und Russen in den Geographielehrbüchern der Kaiserzeit,” in Russen und Russland aus deutscher Sicht: 19./20. Jahrhundert: von der Bismarckzeit bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg , ed. Mechthild Keller (Munich: W. Fink, 2000). 35 Gerd Koenen, Der Russland-Komplex: Die Deutschen und der Osten, 1900-1945 (München: Beck, 2005), 7. 36 Maria Lammich, “Vom 'Barbarenland' zum 'Weltstaat' – Rußland im Spiegel liberaler und konservativer Zeitschriften,” in Russen und Russland aus deutscher Sicht: 19./20. Jahrhundert: von der Bismarckzeit bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg , ed. Mechthild Keller (Munich: W. Fink, 2000), 150. 149

paper were now able to test what they had learned against the evidence in front of their very eyes.

Indeed, the occupiers grappled with Russia’s foreign deficiencies on a daily basis and they viewed backward conditions in the borderlands as a function of the Russian

Empire’s methods of governance. The emphasis on Russia’s barbarism rendered both major and minor differences between Russia and Germany as fundamental chasms that could be and must be greatly improved with German assistance. Even the most superficial of these caught the administration’s attention. As the warmer months approached, several articles documented the poor state of gardens in Kowno – this in spite of the city’s status as the “fruit supplier for Petersburg,” the capital of the Russian

Empire. 37 One author contemptuously noted that the “Russian manner” had left the gardens in a state of dilapidation and praised the new German changes. The article ended with the patronizing assertion that the city’s gardening would bloom if the residents would give up their ineffective Russian practices and take on the “new” methods taught by the “German masters [of gardening].” On the one hand, the focus on gardening reflected the blockadeinduced, ever intensifying need to cultivate all arable land. Such pieces, however, emphasized that apparently superficial and aesthetic deficiencies would be profoundly affected by superiority of German methods; these symptoms of Russian misrule would also be healed. An additional article on city gardens expressed this theme under the title “Beautification of the Cityscape.” 38 The value of beautification was harder to measure than major construction projects composed in iron and stone. German aesthetic changes were nevertheless explicitly judged to be an improvement over the

37 “Die Gärten von Kowno,” Kownoer Zeitung , May 2, 1916. 38 “Verschönerung des Stadtbildes,” Kownoer Zeitung , May 18, 1916 150

Russian practices – an infusion of culture where there previously had been a deficit – and

Kownoer Zeitung reported these garden improvements as earnestly as it did the improvement of infrastructure or the introduction of more productive agricultural methods. All of these observations were laden with significance, even the Russians’ disinterest in planting a sufficient amount of flowers. 39

This tendentious theme was sustained by frequent reporting on more tangible improvements; one of Kownoer Zeitung ’s primary means of conveying antiRussian sentiment was to assail the Russian Empire’s failure to govern in an ordered, organized manner. Deriding Russia’s inability to provide the materials, infrastructure, and technology necessary for a healthy economy dovetailed with the dichotomy of culture and barbarism, providing an explanation Russia’s backwardness. 40 Critiques of the

Russian Empire’s former governance of occupied Lithuania littered the pages of

Kownoer Zeitung , all of them in line with the preponderant stereotypes of chaotic Russian

rule. Articles published in the first few days of the paper’s existence railed against the

indebtedness of Russian cities and the decline of Russian agriculture. 41 The occupiers learned more about Russian practices and informed their readers about these facts and allegations in ways that contrasted the administration’s manifold accomplishments with

Russia’s gross failures. The occupiers completed a new bridge spanning the Wenta River in February 1916. German soldiers built the 60 meter long bridge with the “strongest materials” and even fitted it with icebreaking devices. At the opening celebration, the

39 “Sonja über unsere Gärtnerei,” Kownoer Zeitung , June 14, 1916. After the occupiers had improved an elevated area overlooking Kowno (which was dubbed Wilhelmshohe, or “Wilhelm’s Heights”), an article reported that soldiers and Kowno civilians alike were very happy about the “splendid” new area. See “Die Weissruthenen,” Kownoer Zeitung , June 12, 1916. The emphasis of this article is on what the Germans have achieved. 40 This stereotype existed prior to the war. See Hecker, Die Tat und Ihr Osteuropa-Bild 1909-1939 , 26. 41 “Die starke Verschuldung der russischen Städte,” Kownoer Zeitung , January 4, 1916; “Der Niedergang der russischen Landwirtschaft,” Kownoer Zeitung , January 4, 1916. 151

army captain responsible for leading the construction noted that German hard work and drive had quickly completed a project which “during the long period of Russian control had never moved even past the initial stages [of planning].” 42 The article failed to mention that the German occupiers would not have so swiftly made such an investment in infrastructure without a correspondingly pressing military and economic justification.

Instead, it praised the usefulness of the bridge to the population of District Okmjany and many towns in the surrounding districts in order to highlight the Russian’s inability to undertake a task with such clear benefits for the local population. The paper trumpeted this notion of Russian incompetence and incompleteness with regard to almost every aspect of life in Lithuania.

Barbarism alone did not amount to a sufficient explanation for Russia’s deficiencies. These first attacks on the result of Russian governance in the borderlands demonstrate the ambiguities surrounding the alleged causes of Russian misrule. German improvements emphasized the dichotomy of old and new, as well as of chaos and disorder, but these constructions did not sufficiently explain Russia’s inability to run

Lithuania properly. A new German map of Kowno, for example, was a “document of

German Kulturarbeit ” that depicted “all details of the city with German exactitude” and

added an alphabetical list of street names and places at the end. 43 Maps from the Russian era, by contrast, were of not only “small scale and extremely incomplete,” but inferior because they lacked the precision of the new occupiers due to the lower level of Russian

“culture.” Russian maps were deficient in other respects, however, namely their exclusion of state properties and crown estates: “the Russian officials never authorized the city

42 “Eine neue WentaBrücke,” Kownoer Zeitung , March 2, 1916. 43 “Ein deutscher Stadtplan von Kowno,” Kownoer Zeitung , January 15, 1916. 152

administration to take account of these properties.” 44 The cynical political designs of a

hegemonic empire seemed to go hand in hand with incompetence, though allegations of

this sort rarely provided further differentiation between the two explanations. The two

were not mutually exclusive, and indeed both offered an effective means of attacking the

legitimacy of Russian rule. These types of unresolved differences were typical of

Kownoer Zeitung ’s antiRussian reporting.

The attempt to undermine the legitimacy of imperial Russian rule addressed the prospect of fundamental change in the borderlands with both direct and indirect reference to the ethnic minorities who were the region’s native inhabitants. Russian rule was almost always portrayed in a negative light by virtue of the deleterious consequences that it inflicted on its subjects; German rule, by contrast, would unambiguously improve upon

Russian failings. Many depictions of Russia’s ineptitude and German improvements presented the local population merely as passive onlookers. Reports on “chaos” and food shortages within Russia did not presuppose the active involvement of the occupied civilians. 45 The German administration’s elimination of a “many headed band of robbers”

that had terrorized the Russian borderlands for many years likewise simply allowed the

local population to “breathe more easily” while going about their lives as usual. 46 Both examples illustrated cases in which German protection had obviated further misfortune, and they encouraged the locals to envision a rosy future under German rule. Other examples, however, began to explicitly address the need to more actively engage the local population in order to remove the vestiges of Russian influence: the legacies of

Russian rule could not be erased without the local population’s compliance with the new

44 “Ein neuer Stadtplan von Wilna,” Kownoer Zeitung , March 23, 1916. 45 “Chaos in Rußland,” Kownoer Zeitung , January 12, 1916. 46 “Säuberung der Räuberbände,” Kownoer Zeitung , March 20, 1916. 153

German regulations and institutions. Just as the German masters of gardening could not fulfill the higher purpose of beautifying the city if the locals simply stood by uninvolved,

Germany’s plans to improve every aspect of life in the borderlands demanded that the locals adjust to the new regime. Kownoer Zeitung noted that the trials of two men accused of attempting to bribe German officials for preferred treatment illustrated that the population “still labors under true Russian views.” The accused had mistakenly thought

“the German Beamte would be just as open to bribery as the Russian was in his day”, but they learned otherwise. One of the two received a milder sentence because he was an

“uneducated person who naturally had taken on Russian views and customs into his flesh and blood.” 47 Russian officials would no longer place onerous obstacles in the way of commerce and industry, but locals would nevertheless need to make adjustments to the

German regime. 48 The German administration planned and advertized fundamental changes, but it also directed its attention to the local civilians whose compliance and participation were necessary. Who were these civilians and how could they be compelled or enticed to change their views and accept the innovations of the German administrators?

The Fraught Theme of Ethnicity in the Russian Empire

Notwithstanding the speed at which some German changes were implemented, the ethnic composition of the western Russian provinces could not be altered by any radical measures. An article in Kownoer Zeitung in July 1916 went so far as to state that

“almost nowhere else do so many peoples ( Völkerschaften ) live among each other in such

47 “Im Banne russicher Anschauungen,” Kownoer Zeitung , May 10, 1916. 48 “Kownos Handel und Industrie vor dem Kriege,” Kownoer Zeitung , May 16, 1916. 154

a small area.” 49 Indeed, the occupied East was far more ethnically diverse than any

territory within the German Empire. This mix intimidated Germans unfamiliar with

governing in such conditions and the administration published a reference work to help

make sense of it. In the summer of 1916, Kownoer Zeitung Press issued Völker-

Verteilung in West-Rußland , an atlas of the western Russian provinces that used data

from the 1897 census to indicate the proportional ethnic and religious breakdown. 50 In the

volume’s short introduction, the authors vacillated between the various terms to describe

the makeup of the East. The words Volk (meaning “people” but also “nation”) and

Völkerschaft (likewise meaning “people” but also “tribe”) were most commonly used.

Nationalität (“nationality”), however, was also used and without any apparent distinction from the others. This variance reflected more than the words’ overlapping meanings.

Census data deployed in such a publication provided the appearance of scientific certainty to claims that the Russian Empire’s many ethnic groups in fact wished to be permanently separated from their former state. Russians were described as “Great

Russians” in order to distinguish them from the “White Russians” (Belarusians) and

“Small Russians” (Ukrainians). 51 Thus the different groups were described as entirely distinct from one another and equally valid, emphasizing the idea that they did not belong to Russia and the German desire that they be permanently separated from imperial

Russian control. These “ethnographic conditions,” as they were described, did not

49 “Die Völkerverteilung in Westrussland,” Kownoer Zeitung , July 20, 1916. 50 Völker-Verteilung in West-Rußland (Verlag der Kownoer Zeitung, 1916). Demand for the volume was such that a second edition was published in January 1917. “Atlas der VölkerVerteilung in Westrussland,” Kownoer Zeitung , January 25, 1917, sec. Beiblatt. 51 This volume appeared before the administration’s decision to abandon the name “White Russians” in favor of “White Ruthenians.” Preference for the latter stemmed from the simple fact that it created the illusion of a fundamental difference between Belarusians and Russians. Unlike the Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians, Belarusians were Slavs with a language closely related to Russian. Variance in Germans’ appellations for Belarusians reflect a sense of fluidity and uncertainty in understanding ethnicity in the East. See “Die Weissruthenen,” Kownoer Zeitung , June 8, 1917, sec. Beiblatt. 155

translate directly into an argument for independence. They suggested that the peoples were perhaps not ready for complete independence, 52 and indeed the German leadership

continued to hold out hope for territorial annexation. Frequent emphasis on the diversity

of ethnicity and the unanimity of resentment against Russians evidenced German political

ambitions and cultural biases.

Although the press initially avoided explicit discussion of the Russian borderlands’ postwar political configuration, commentary on the occupied area’s ethnic

makeup was a staple. As Ober Ost Press director Friedrich Bertkau recalled, “the theme

of [local] political matters was essentially closed off to the papers” and “the reporting of

cultural issues” ballooned to serve as a substitute. 53 The paper’s cultural reporting, however, contained clear political implications about the Russian Empire. Fully in line with pieces praising German infrastructure improvements, articles on the borderlands’ groups and history attempted to convince the local civilians that they would be better off without the influence of their former Russian rulers. The object of this approach was to

“create antiRussian ( russenfeindlich ) and proGerman ( deutschfreundlich ) beliefs that would support [German] military operations and promote German political influence.” 54

The administration attempted to foster this perspective by adding a focus on the ethnic distinctiveness of the local population to the incipient attacks on Russia’s barbarism. On the one hand, Press director Bertkau argued that the population’s

“obedient” attitude was due to the occupation amounting to an “improvement over

52 Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, “Der Osten als apokalyptischer Raum. Deutsche Fronterfahrungen im und nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg,” in Traumland Osten: Deutsche Bilder vom östlichen Europa im 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006), 59. 53 Bertkau, Das amtliche Zeitungswesen , 29. 54 Ibid., 41. Here Bertkau references this as the foremost task of the Lithuanian language papers but the principle applies to all German media in the East. 156

Russian conditions”. An encapsulation of the locals’ response to the Russian withdrawal quite viscerally depicted a man crossing himself and defiantly wishing, “May they never return!” 55 But the civilians’ trust at the start of the occupation was hindered by enemy

misinformation. Bertkau noted that upon German arrival in the fall of 1915 “the population of Wilna was convinced that the French had already crossed the Rhine and

had taken Cologne.” 56 “Incitements and untruths” propagated by the Russian press – particularly those that went beyond allegations of German incompetence and sought to incite fear of the occupiers – were to be overcome in part by the efforts of the German media. Stories advertizing the administration’s improvements in infrastructure and governance led the way and were soon followed up with a range of pieces attacking the legitimacy of Russian rule on the basis of the local population’s ethnic distinctiveness.

Some examples from the litany of antiRussian pieces published in the first four months of Kownoer Zeitung showcased this theme: “Panslavism – A Great Russian Lie”; “How

Russia Enslaves Its Foreign Populations ( Fremdvölker )”; “Russian Atrocities against the

Romanians”; and “How Russia Treats Its German Colonists.”57 These articles emphasized the multiethnic character of the Russian Empire and asserted that it invariably led to state’s suppression of minority ethnic groups. Other stories struck closer to home: a local ethnic German resident described the horror of Russian deportations in

Kowno just prior to the German capture of the city in May 1915. According to the author, all Jews of the Kowno, Wilna, and Suwalki Governments were forced from their homes

55 “Verwaltung im Gebiet Ober Ost,” Kownoer Zeitung , March 3, 1916. 56 Bertkau, Das amtliche Zeitungswesen , 26. An example in Kownoer Zeitung is an article from January 1916 which addressed “Hun” as a slur against Germans. “Hunnen.” 57 “Der Panslawismus – eine großrussische Lüge,” Kownoer Zeitung , March 1, 1916; “Wie Rußland die Fremdvölker knechtet,” Kownoer Zeitung , March 2, 1916; “Russische Grausamkeiten gegen die rumänische Bevölkerung,” Kownoer Zeitung , April 15, 1916. “Wie Russland die detuschen Kolonisten behandelt,” Kownoer Zeitung , April 18, 1916. 157

and deported in a matter of twentyfour hours. “Thousands upon thousands” crowded

Kowno’s train station with belongings in hand, including even the “upper middleclass

[Jewish] citizens”. The commandant of Kowno made a special plea for the latter group but it only evoked the response that “all Jews are traitors.” 58 The article ominously

suggested that Russian subjects of Polish, German and Lithuanian ethnicity would also be

deported from Kowno. The implication, which was reinforced in numerous pieces, was

that these outrageous wartime excesses were an inevitable outcome of the Russian

Empire’s illegitimate rule over so many different ethnic groups. Kownoer Zeitung stated that “the residents of the occupied area will be best able to recognize and evaluate the difference between German and Russian government.” 59 While this was undoubtedly true

– whether the locals decided in favor of or against the occupiers – the press worked to

engender an appreciation of the more abstract principles delegitimizing imperial Russian

rule.

The exploration of ethnographic details provided further evidence of the minority

groups’ distinctiveness which undermined the notion that they could justifiably remain

subjects of the Russian Empire. Some groups’ ethnic particularity was selfexplanatory

while others required further investigation. The great similarity of the Belarusian and

Russian languages and the former’s lack of a modern written tradition called for a more

thorough, convincing case than did the obviously variant ethnic differences separating

Russians and Lithuanians. An article presenting the history and culture of the Belarusians

to the readership of Kownoer Zeitung in January 1916 explored the people’s defining

58 “Zwei Gedenktage,” Kownoer Zeitung , May 29, 1916. There is little evidence that the Ober Ost press (which, incidentally, was well represented with German Jewish writers) had any particular interest in the welfare of local Jews. 59 “Verwaltung im Gebiet Ober Ost.” 158

ethnic qualities and rested its case on historical development: “That [the White Russians] were not considered identical to the true Russians – those who regarded themselves as the ruler of all foreign peoples in the great area subjugated to the tsar – is evidenced in their given epithet ‘White’Russians.” The author continued his historical speculation by averring that “White” (in “White Russian”) might have originally been “pale” ( blass ), signaling that they were considered distinct from the Poles and Russians and therefore given name that essentially meant “HalfRussians” (Halbrussen ). Where these cultural factors failed to provide airtight proof of singularity, the author relied upon political history by citing the importance of Belarusian culture hundreds of years earlier.

Belarusians and Lithuanians “always enjoyed a neighborly relationship” and Belarusian had served as an official language when White Russia belonged to the Grand Duchy of

Lithuania in the fourteenth century. In those days “the ‘Great Russian’ language as we now know it did not even exist,” implying that the Russians’ relatively young culture provided them a weak claim to hegemony over the borderlands’ other, more historically significant ethnicities. 60 The article further buttressed these appeals to the relevance of medieval history by asserting that the first Slavic translation of the Bible appeared in the

Belarusian language. While this analysis took particular pains to emphasize that these two apparently similar Slavic groups were indeed far removed from one another, its justification for these assertions are typical of the arguments that were also applied to

Lithuanians. 61 Each of the region’s ethnic groups’ particular characteristics were examined in order to demonstrate the injustice of Russian rule. The objectives, and purpose, of this tack are best summarized by a statement on the relationship of

60 “Die Weißrussen.” 61 See, for example, “Litauischer Glaube an Götterkraft,” Kownoer Zeitung , July 30, 1916; “Wilkowiszki,” Skizzen-Mappe der Kownoer Zeitung , July 30, 1916. 159

Belarusians to Russians: “That this tribe ( Stamm ) has maintained its language and

völkisch independence in spite of all the [Russian attempts to do away with it], and that

the forceful, Great Russian attempt at Panslavism has not yet succeeded in soaking up the

Belarusians into Moscow’s Großrussentum is the best proof that they are unique

(wurzelecht ) and independent.” 62 Kownoer Zeitung starkly contrasted the people’s

culturally distinct and politically independent pasts with the oppressive Russian policy

that proliferated ever since.

Just as political objectives colored the Ober Ost press’s views on ethnicity, so too

did politics guide the press toward the most convenient position on the mutability of local

conditions. When praising German achievements and assessing the prospects of

introducing “German” methods, the press gave readers the impression that change could be effected with the steady guidance of German administration. Other categories were

less fluid, at least when the desired end related to combating the image of Russian rule in

the borderlands. Although Ober Ost publications rarely used the category “race” to

describe the ethnicities of the borderlands, the rigidity and scientific connotations of the

word were occasionally employed to lend a greater sense of certainty to the coverage of

ethnographic issues. Comparison of the linguistic and cultural characteristics of “White

Russians” and “Great Russians” presented readers with evidence that the two groups

were fundamentally different from one another. The Ober Ost press occasionally

solidified this point by adding racialized rhetoric. Belarusians’ particular “fondness” for

62 “Die Weißrussen.” Other articles emphasized the Belarusians’ historical emergence prior to the “Great Russians.” An article from described them as “an independent people” which has lived “since the beginning of their history in the area they continue to inhabit.” As evidence of this fact, the author cites the unique constitution and development of Uniate Christianity, to which some though by no means most Belarusians belonged. See L. Bergsträsser, “Die Weissrussen,” Kownoer Zeitung , September 27, 1916, sec. Beiblatt. 160

white clothing, for example, suggested that they might share a common origin with Serbs and Croats, and that this theoretical shared ancestor might have migrated to the East in the sixth or seventh centuries. The author admitted that this theory was merely speculation, but he implied that other facts had been established with absolute certainty, however, including the observation that “White Russians are pure Eastern Slavs

(Ostslaven ) unlike the Great Russians who are strongly mixed with TartarMongolian blood.” Ample evidence for this assertion was manifested in the groups’ morphology:

“[The White Russians’] external appearance – they are of the blond, lighteyed type – strongly recalls the Serbs and the residents of Bosnia; to our knowledge there is no greater proof that they must be of Serbian origins. One might assume that the White

Russians and Serbians belonged to a common ancestral tribe ( Urstamme ) from which

they branched off in different directions.” 63 The author used the term “Slavic” to denote

not just linguistic but also biological similarity. All of the groups in question were Slavic, but the Russians alone had been corrupted by barbaric Asian influences. In this way,

group’s particular characteristics were correlated with their racial profile. While the primary objective was to undermine the basis of imperial Russian rule, the claims

suggested that national characteristics were to a large extent fixed and difficult to change.

The German position on the borderlands’ capacity for change may have been driven by

opportunism but it certainly relied heavily on such firm notions of the ethnic basis of

national identity.

The investigation of fundamental national characteristics appeared to shed light

on the inept and despicable governance of the Russian Empire, helping to explain why

63 “Die Weißrussen.” 161

Russian practices tended to be defined by chaos and malevolence. An investigation of the

“Russian national character” in a series of articles in June 1916 asked the sort of questions about Russian ethnic qualities that previous articles had asked about

Belarusians and Lithuanians. The characteristics assigned to the Russians (who in this context were presented as “Russians” rather than “Great Russians” presumably because the purpose did not involve contrasting them with the empire’s ethnic minority populations) mirrored their position at the head of a large multiethnic empire. Kownoer

Zeitung depicted the Russian as a jack of all trades but a master of none. Russian laborers

were unable to follow through with longterm projects because they were “generally short

on persistence and ambition.” 64 This deeply ingrained quality meant that “[the Russian]

feels no grief when a venture he is undertaking stalls or fails completely.” The resulting benefit, “a certain versatility” in one’s activities and capabilities, was undermined by the

concomitant “superficiality” and incompleteness of achievements. These characteristics

defined not only the Russian work ethic and emotional disposition; Russian intellectuals

demonstrated a versatile knowledge of numerous languages, economics, science, history,

and foreign lands and peoples, but the Russian never feels “at home,” never pursues a

meaningful purpose. This critique drew upon prewar stereotypes encouraging a view of

Russians as simple “men of nature” (Naturmenschen ). These primitive “bearers of childlike simplicity and youthful vitality” lacked the capacity to singlemindedly pursue a goal in order to advance their wellbeing. 65

64 Russians were “wenig audauernd und strebsam .” “Der russische Nationalcharakter und seine Wirkungen auf das russische Leben,” Kownoer Zeitung , June 7, 1916, sec. Beiblatt. The piece continued in subsequent issues of Kownoer Zeitung , namely on June 8, 10, and 12. 65 Martin E. Malia, Russia Under Western Eyes: From the Bronze Horseman to the Lenin Mausoleum (Cambridge, Mass: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), 211. 162

Sketches of an essentialized Russian character claimed to pinpoint inherent characteristics shared so widely that they plagued the nation and, by extension, the empire’s minority populations. Given that the central defect did not appear to concern an inherent drive to subjugate as many other peoples as possible, these factors might have appeared rather benign without the framing of the article and the antiRussian context of the Ober Ost press. The consequence of these qualities, however, was that the empire could never be organized on a more just, efficient basis because Russians were simply incapable of taking the necessary steps to do so. This formulation provided one solution to the problem of the German Empire admonishing the Russian Empire for its oppression of foreign peoples, a critique metaphorically similar to the pot calling the kettle black.

The German Empire was more ethnically homogeneous and marginally more democratic than the Russian Empire but it could not rightfully boast of substantially greater freedoms in either regard. Focusing on Russians’ immutably flawed national characteristics eschewed the theme of a multiethnic empire’s legitimacy in absolute, universal terms.

Instead, it asserted that Russian character deficiencies should preclude its superiority over other peoples; it could not act as a fair administrator. Although the article only alluded to the question of empire – the word itself was never used – the comparison of Russian and

German qualities was perfectly clear. The Russian would never perform any “outstanding achievements” as the ancient Romans had and the German continued to do. The very idea of pursuing an “ultimate purpose” escaped the Russians – not only could they “not even dream of such a purpose”, in fact it would be “entirely incomprehensible”. 66 The

66 “Der russische Nationalcharakter und seine Wirkungen auf das russische Leben.” 163

admirable and productive qualities that Germans possessed in spades would forever elude

Russia’s grasp.

The issue of national characteristics reflected the importance of the vast swaths of borderlands territory coveted by both empires. The Ober Ost Press remained cagey on the

open question of whether the nonRussian, native residents could ever reach beyond their

humble, backward conditions and attain the advanced level of civilization – or, as the

occupiers called it, culture – that Germany brought to the lands. Notwithstanding the

many articles in Kownoer Zeitung and other papers that highlighted the cultural

distinctiveness of Lithuanians, Belarusians, Latvians and Jews, the press generally did not

hold the groups’ culture in high regard even though it sought to win their political

sympathies. A number of factors contributed to the view that these groups would best

remain subjugated to a powerful neighbor, and the German press implicitly argued that it

should be to their neighbor to the west. Russia’s minorities had, after all, failed to break

free of their Russian oppressor without German help. 67 And although Kownoer Zeitung

described their respective qualities in as endearing a tone as the paper’s paternalistic,

condescending thrust could accommodate, articles tended to focus on the relative backwardness of all Russian peoples, “Great Russians” and subject peoples combined.

The implied racial component reinforced the apparent permanence of these backward

conditions – what guaranteed that German changes could outlive actual German

administration of the lands? Moreover, the populations of a Lithuanian, Latvian or

Belarusian nation would be so insignificant and inhabiting territories so small – all of this

67 An article in June 1916 on Lithuanian religious beliefs noted the role of Lithuanian “indolence” played in continuing the people’s subjugation to the Russian Empire. “Litauischer Glaube an Götterkraft.” The theme of Lithuanian indolence is discussed elsewhere. See, for example “Litauische Liebeslieder,” Kownoer Zeitung , November 9, 1916. 164

in a politically contested area circumscribed by two large empires with the additional possibility of a reconstituted independent Polish state.

Linking the German Past and Future in “the East”

Ober Ost press organs regularly issued articles on the history of ethnic German communities and German polities in the occupied territories. These stories illuminated obscure historical events and cultural details that otherwise would not have come to the attention of German soldiers and administrators. Most Germans knew very little of the

Russian Empire and their firsthand impressions of Russian life sharply diverged from their experiences as citizens of the German Empire. Repeated references to the history of

Germans in the East helped to bridge that gap, fostering an artificial familiarity through the equivalence of German historical and present experiences. The purpose of the articles was to showcase continuity in German interest in the East from medieval times to the present by arguing for a leading role bringing advanced culture west to east. This theme was portrayed as being greater than any individual – it went beyond personal connections to the East such as those of Baltic Germans or merchants with commercial interests in

Russia. German nationalists had from roughly the second half of the nineteenth century conceived of the totality of historical German activity in the East as part of a single interconnected story, or as David Blackbourn put it, “‘acts’ in a longrunning ‘drama’.” 68

Kownoer Zeitung implicitly forwarded the argument that all German soldiers,

administrators, industrialists, and businessmen in the East continued the spreading of

68 David Blackbourn, “‘The Garden of our Hearts’: Landscape, Nature, and Local Identity in the German East,” in Localism, Landscape, and the Ambiguities of Place: German-Speaking Central Europe, 1860- 1930 , ed. David Blackbourn and James N. Retallack (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), 152 154. 165

German culture, thereby improving the East. By simply performing their duties, German occupiers during the First World War fit into a proud history that included the Teutonic

Knights, the Hanseatic League, the Baltic Germans in Kurland, and the thousands of

German emigrants who in earlier times overcame great obstacles to form agricultural colonies in Russia. 69

The historical articles printed by Kownoer Zeitung covered the period from the

earliest organized German presence in the East to modern times, providing evidence on

the longevity of this relatively unknown German past. The articles on the oldest subject

matter presented stories on the Teutonic Knights’ crusades and statehood in the territory

of the modern day Baltic states in the thirteenth through sixteenth centuries. Almost no

articles told the story of the Baltic lands prior to the Teutonic Knights’ arrival. The

exclusive focus on examples of German culture may very well have given Kownoer

Zeitung readers the impression that the area did not have any recorded history prior to the

arrival of the Germans. An exposition on the history of Lithuanian literature noted that a

translation of a German catechism in 1547 was the oldest Lithuanian book. 70 An article

on Daugavgriva, the town and fortress located at the mouth of the River near

Riga, explained that this “fortified harbor town of Riga developed from a solid (fortified)

castle built there by the Teutonic Knights.” 71 German culture allegedly provided the

69 The influx of Germans to the East during the Middle Ages was, in fact, a historically significant phenomenon. The broader roots of this theme were often subordinated in nationalistic histories which instead suggested that it was an “elemental, primordial, inevitable and unified process, impossible to resist, and moreover defined essentially as a German phenomenon.” This myth was well established prior to the First World War. Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, The German Myth of the East (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 19. 70 “Die Literatur der Litauer,” Kownoer Zeitung , February 22, 1917, sec. Beiblatt. 71 The German words provide a more obvious linguistic connection between modern Germans ( Deutsche ), and the Teutonic Knights ( Deutschritter ), “Dünamünde in der Kriegsgeschichte,” Kownoer Zeitung , March 29, 1916. 166

Wilna’s cultural and architectural foundation. 72 Soldiers and administrators in the Ober

Ost area were subjected to argumentation along these lines on a regular basis. One civilian, a Professor Otto Bremer, argued that “all cities which arose in the East are

German creations.” 73 According to Kownoer Zeitung , Bremer’s speaking tour through

Ober Ost occasioned fortythree lectures on the subject, at least some of which attracted

large audiences. 74 An article on the history of trade and industry in Kowno noted that the

city is well known in the history of the Hanseatic League as a “settled town and

significant storehouse for goods.” 75 Medieval Germans created a cultural and economic

achievement in Kowno but this all fell apart upon Russian arrival, the city’s naturally

“favorable geographical location” notwithstanding. Without ever formally declaring the

great caesura of borderlands history to be the creeping Russian influence, the Ober Ost press published article upon article attacking every aspect of Russian presence in the area.

The portrayal of an idealized German past that predated Russian rule underpinned

German efforts to administer some of the same lands during the First World War.

Explicitly and frequently drawn connections between medieval German

achievements and the current administration of the Ober Ost region promoted the idea

that Germans must fulfill their historical role by spreading culture to the East. They had

and would continue to spread what would necessarily be German culture, but this conception rested on the more basic dichotomy of culture and barbarism. Germans had not only brought their superior culture to the East, ushering in a new but unfortunately short lived period of history as they did, but had consequently established a historical

72 “Die Baudenkmäler Wilnas. Zweiter Lichtbildervortrag Prof. Dr. Webers,” Kownoer Zeitung , January 24, 1917. 73 “Vortrag im deutschen Eisenbahnerheim,” Kownoer Zeitung , April 14, 1916. 74 “Vortrag,” Kownoer Zeitung , April 24, 1916. 75 “Kownos Handel und Industrie vor dem Kriege.” 167

German mission to raise the culture of their neighbors. In this formulation, Germans could not help but do so simply by living and working in the East; the presence of

Germans was the only prerequisite for vast improvement. Historical examples of German successes in this regard littered the pages of Ober Ost newspapers. German settlement in

Kurland lent many attractive examples to this line of argumentation due to its constant

German settlement since the middle ages and the existence of German social elite that had created many lasting visible achievements. German institutions like the University of

Dorpat (its Russification from the 1880s onward only proved the importance of its original German character) and structures like German nobles’ magnificent estates provided visual evidence of the fruits of German culture. According to the logic of most proGerman articles in Kownoer Zeitung , however, such tangible reminders were merely the consequence of the less visible but absolutely essential qualities of German culture.

The Kurland city Goldingen, which Kownoer Zeitung praised because it had “remained a center of Deutschtum through the whirl of past events,” was the subject of an article on

the importance of German education. Goldingen had a reputation for its excellent schools

and the author traced this heritage back to Gottfried Kettler, a prominent German

administrator for the Teutonic state in the sixteenth century. This historical example’s

lesson: “Good schools are the core of selfpreservation, the eternal and inviolable

foundation for holding out in all struggles.” 76 Adherence to this principle had assured the

Baltic Germans’ place as the “cultural upper class” that seemed to retain an edge in

education, employment and advancement over the surrounding nonGerman peoples. 77

76 “Goldingen,” Kownoer Zeitung , January 5, 1916. 77 “Die deutsche Sprache in Kurland,” Kownoer Zeitung , November 17, 1916, sec. Beiblatt. Additionally, Ober Ost press leader Friedrich Bertkau wrote on the use of the German intelligentsia in Kurland for administrative positions, a practice that rarely occurred with nonGerman civilians. He presented this as a 168

Notwithstanding the dubious logic, an array of such concrete examples reinforced the idea of German culture as the torch bearer of an idealized culture in the otherwise backward East.

The Ober Ost Press did not invent the idea that serious, “culturepromoting” work

was a staple of Germanness – it did not need to. Just as schoolchildren in Wilhelmine

Germany learned that Russia was an exotic and vaguely threatening place, so did they

learn that Germans have a history of creating impressive achievements through hard

work. Moreover, Germans were credited with bringing the barest notion of civilization to

eastern Europe to begin with. 78

Kownoer Zeitung highlighted the links between the German pasts and the present

day by publishing articles on the historical forces and processes that had inspired German

colonists to spread Deutschtum in eastern lands. Such pieces promoted the idea that the

salient, enduring characteristics of German culture could be traced through history and

linked to modern Germans. An article on the Lutheran community in Kowno emphasized

this trajectory. Kowno’s Lutherans were almost exclusively Germans and they had

maintained a strong presence since their arrival around the time of the Hanseatic

League’s activity in the region. Although the Germans in Lithuania did not have the

deeply rooted community and economic station of their counterparts in Kurland, they too

were able to maintain their Germanness because it guaranteed their capacity to perform

function of the Baltic Germans’ level of education and knowledge of the lands but the decision was undoubtedly influenced by the sense of camaraderie and national unity effected by the shared ethnic ties of Germans from both empires. See Bertkau, Das amtliche Zeitungswesen , 1920. 78 Troy Paddock, “Land Makes the Man: Topography and National Character in German Schoolbooks,” in Lived Topographies and their Mediational Forces , ed. Gary Backhaus and John Murungi (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005), 79. 169

“serious and culturepromoting work.” 79 Thus they successfully sustained their

communities in the face of “foreign” threats like Russian “appetite for destruction”

(Zerstörungswut , the Russian counterpart to the Germans’ Kulturarbeit , or “cultural

work”) and Jewish immigration. According to the author, the pressure applied to the

Germans by the Russian and Jewish aggressors belied the desire of the areas’ genuine

residents to welcome German colonists and receive all of the accompanying benefits.

Proof of these interactions was supplied by reference to the nobles who invited Germans

to settle their lands, like Graf Johann Chodkiewiez, Prince Radziwill, and King Stanislaus

August.

Readers were reminded time and again of these invitations from eastern political

leaders who wished to benefit from German colonists’ superior culture. Although this

form of colonization had operated on a basis that seemed totally foreign to the

nationalism and economic systems of the early twentieth century, these stories supported

the paper’s argument that German intervention was desired by those who lived in the East

and suffered its backwardness. Medieval and early modern German colonists were

merchants and craftsmen whose advanced skills and knowledge, it was implied, allowed

them to retain their particular religious customs in an otherwise Catholic area. German

qualities were so attractive to those in the East who recognized their value that they were

entitled to civil rights that other groups did not have. It was these qualities, for instance,

that enabled them to become the “true drivers of [Kowno’s] economic activity.” 80

79 L. Bergsträsser, “Die evangelischen Kirchengemeinden in Gouvernement Kowno,” Kownoer Zeitung , March 23, 1916. Other articles also reported on Germans’ maintenance of evangelical communities. “Kownos evangelische Gemeinde,” Kownoer Zeitung , February 3, 1916. 80 L. Bergsträsser, “Die älteste Verfassung der Stadt Kowno,” Kownoer Zeitung , August 5, 1916, sec. Beiblatt. The article promotes the notion that ethnic Germans had played a role improving Lithuania’s trade and economy since the middle ages. 170

Catherine the Great’s invitation for colonists in 1763 showed that even the Russians had once acknowledged their need to rely upon the Germans. This Russian call was not addressed to any one particular group of foreigners, but over 100 German colonies with around 27,000 residents were established along the Volga river before the end of the eighteenth century and had since grown to a population of 500,000. The colonists combated nomads, bandits, epidemics and the meddling of Russian governments that spitefully suppressed their Germanness. The areas nevertheless continued to display a particularly German “love of order” which combined with diligence and efficiency. 81

Whether middleclass merchants or simple farmers, German colonists allegedly possessed a unique capacity to “maintain their language and customs and work to rise up economically.” 82

These stories promoted the idea that backward eastern lands flourished under

German leadership and stagnated under the Russians. The example of New East Prussia

(Neu Ostpreußen ) entailed a particularly direct argument along these lines. As the article

explained, New East Prussia was a province annexed by the Prussian crown during the

third of Poland in 1795. This 50,000 square kilometer strip of primarily Polish

lands (inclusive of the cities Bialystok and Plock) remained in German possession for

only 11 years prior to Napoleon’s reshuffling of the political order in East Central

Europe. That short span, however, approached fateful proportions in the account provided by Kownoer Zeitung . The Prussian monarchy had supposedly managed to create a

“model province” out of an area that had been “brought to the brink of ruin.” The greatest

“intellectual gift” that the new administrators gave the new territory was the Prussian law

81 “500,000 Detusche an der Wolga,” Kownoer Zeitung , October 14, 1916, sec. Beiblatt. 82 “Vortrag im deutschen Eisenbahnerheim.” 171

code, described in the article as “one of the most superb and noble statutebooks ever created by civilized humanity.” 83 The quote of one contemporary drove home the link between New East Prussia and the German administration of Ober Ost: “It is unbelievable how much progress in the prosperity of the province has been achieved since it became part of Prussia, especially by the farming community. The cities are unrecognizable. The dirt covering the streets has disappeared and there are now friendly houses in the place of miserable huts.” 84 This case of Verwaltungsarbeit (literally: administrative work) was presented as an example of the way Germans govern foreign lands in the East and therefore a forerunner to Ober Ost and the German Administration for Lithuania. The Prussian administrators were so effective that they easily won over the area’s nonGerman population, a task which the administrators in 1916 also hoped to achieve. Perhaps most tellingly, the contemporary witness’ report speculated at what the

Prussian administration might be able to achieve with just a few more “uninterrupted years” of activity. Here is the German view of the East in a nutshell; German methods can always be counted on to succeed, but the East must remain backward if they are not provided sufficient time to blossom. If the Prussian monarchy could accomplish this work in spite of “the wild, tumultuous spirit of Poland back in those times,” certainly the

German administrators of the twentieth century could do the same. 85

83 Praise for the “gifting” of a new legal code to New East Prussia in the late eighteenth century was part of a theme in Kownoer Zeitung ; articles covering German medieval presence in the East frequently remarked upon the importation of a superior German law code from Magdeburg. Notwithstanding the interpretive biases of Kownoer Zeitung , these assertions were based in fact. See Liulevicius, The German Myth of the East , 26. 84 “NeuOstpreußen,” Kownoer Zeitung , April 29, 1916, sec. Beiblatt. 85 German administrators in occupied Poland addressed the issue more concretely by attempting to recover historical Prussian government documents from Polish archives. Stefan Lehr, “Die ‘Rückforderung’ preußischer Archivalien aus Warschauer Archiven im Ersten Weltkrieg,” in Die Deutschen und das östliche Europa. Aspekte einer vielfältigen Beziehungsgeschichte , ed. Dietmar Neutatz and Voker Zimmermann (Essen: Klartext, 2006), 4766. 172

The great wealth of historical examples appearing in Kownoer Zeitung fostered the view that these positive German characteristics were as historically conditioned and as widely shared as the malevolence and incompetence that predetermined Russia’s failures. German diligence and efficiency had steadily influenced the backward lands for centuries. The idealized cultural pioneer in the East struggled to retain his core German characteristics even if he did not always have sufficient time or resources to prevail over the resisting forces, namely “the Russian bear”, religious opponents, nomads, robber bands or diseases. Germanness could not help but play a mitigating role in the struggle

against eastern barbarism. The important function of these articles to the mission of the

Ober Ost press was epitomized by Professor Bremer during his speaking tour of the Ober

Ost territory; Bremer asserted that the Eastern Front during the First World War was the

location of a fight “for a greater future for Deutschtum ,” that is, for all Germans and for

Germanness itself. 86 Friedrich Bertkau later discussed the way that this mentality affected

the founding of the Ober Ost press. A German newspaper was seen as necessary in Wilna

in order to represent German interests alongside those of local nationalities like Poles,

Lithuanians and Jews. The Wilnaer Zeitung was intended to serve as a “support for

Deutschtum (Germanness and Germans)” in the East. 87 This meant supporting Russian

Germans who were native to the area, teaching German soldiers and administrators to love the occupied lands “as a second Heimat (homeland),” and, more generally,

spreading German culture. 88 Bertkau’s 1928 citation of now extinct Ober Ost documents evidences the administration’s longterm intentions: the establishment of Kownoer

Zeitung was guided by “the assumption that Kowno would remain German after the

86 “Vortrag im deutschen Eisenbahnerheim.” 87 Bertkau, Das amtliche Zeitungswesen , 1314. 88 Ibid., 19. 173

war.” 89 Articles on Germany’s historical role in the East established continuity and essentialized German characteristics, in effect linking past and present. The past served to illustrate the potential futures awaiting the German Empire and the occupied peoples. The onus fell upon the reader to choose between them and comport himself accordingly.

Local Nationalities’ Standing in the Press

Publicizing these historical examples was a means of conceptually and rhetorically liberating the occupied territories from onerous Russian rule. The local minority ethnic groups of the Russian Empire were portrayed as naturally belonging to the area and deserving of greater freedoms, but the press’s promotion of these ideas was not uncomplicated. The emphasis on a proud German history predating Russian influence in the area by several centuries helped portray the Russian state in particular and Russian culture more generally as poisonous external threats; if the German historical role in the

East was creative and advanced where Russian efforts had been destructive and backward, however, the occupied nonRussians fell somewhere in between. More than a century of Russia rule certainly had hindered the local civilians’ development, but the locals’ own deficient identities and characteristics also appeared to comprise a stumbling block. Highlighting the past and present achievements of German rule in the lands led the reader to the unmistakable conclusion that the future in the East would be considerably brighter if Germans were allowed to shape it. The links between past, present, and future were clearly presented and widely disseminated; they were not merely hinted at. Frequent examples of Germans improving Lithuanian commerce or farming were the other side of

89 Ibid., 57. 174

the coin displaying Russia’s gross administrative failures. This approach was accompanied, however, by ethnographic and historical expositions on the distinctiveness of the subject minority populations. Lithuanians and Belarusians were at home in the borderlands but they too were so backward that they would certainly need German help to fend off the Russians and to raise their unfortunately low level of development.

The editors could easily portray both Germans and nonGermans as victims of the

Russian “appetite for destruction,” 90 but they could not praise the historical or present day

role of Germans as “culturebearers” without simultaneously implying the relative

inferiority of all nonGerman groups. Numerous articles on the distinctive ethnic

characteristics of the borderlands population implicitly and explicitly expressed this

message. Ober Ost newspapers targeted German and local audiences alike by presenting positive interpretations of subjects like Lithuanian folk songs, Belarusian dress, or the

origins of local languages. As they touted the locals’ distinctive identities, however, the papers were replete with paternalistic insinuations that harped on the disadvantages of

local “backwardness.” Ubiquitous references to the role that Russians had played

retarding the development of local culture told only half of the story. The actual qualities

of the local nationalities – namely the particulars rather than the simple fact of their

ethnic distinctiveness – were almost as significant as the history of culturespreading and

colonization was to the German story. (In fact, the history of German influence in the

East was also closely tied to the depiction of local cultures.) Distinguishing the essential

qualities of Lithuanians or Belarusians from those that were strongly colored by Russian

influence was fraught with difficulties, especially due to the seemingly irresistible urge to

90 See “Die Weißrussen”; Bergsträsser, “Die evangelischen Kirchengemeinden in Gouvernement Kowno.” 175

notch propaganda victories against the Russians at every opportunity. The distinction remained muddled but it only slightly adulterated the tendency to present the locals’ characteristics as historically conditioned, deeply rooted, and as genuine as those of the

Germans or Russians.

The bulk of the population in the occupied borderlands consisted of Lithuanian,

Latvian, and Belarusian farmers, and articles in the Ober Ost press reflected the political importance of these ethnic and social facts. The agriculturally based segment of the

Lithuanian and Belarusian populations heavily outweighed the numbers of the landed nobility or urban Jewry and therefore Kownoer Zeitung sought to win their political

sympathies. As a result, much of press’s local coverage concerned Lithuanian and

Belarusian peasants. Latvians received somewhat less attention in Kownoer Zeitung , partly because they largely resided in Kurland rather than Lithuania (where Kownoer

Zeitung was published and distributed most widely), but also because the presence of a

German social elite in primarily Latvian lands gave rise to special political considerations in Kurland. Moreover, the desire to annex the heavily German area decreased the interest in stoking Latvian nationalism. In either case, the only Lithuanians, Latvians, or

Belarusians capable of reading Kownoer Zeitung were a small segment of middle and upperclass society with knowledge of the German language.

Kownoer Zeitung presented an impressionistic, quasiscientific study of local ethnography that was driven by the occupiers’ revulsion with the dirty, backward conditions they witnessed in the borderlands. The commentary in soldiers’ diaries on the lands’ appallingly primitive conditions was mirrored in newspapers with stories that described such observations as the manifestations of the East’s general backwardness.

176

These signs stood as evidence of a pronounced lack of culture that resulted in Russian civilization hovering just above the level of barbarism. According to Kownoer Zeitung , the Russian government had served as a model to its subject peoples of how to live with dirt, disorder, and ignorance, as was evidenced by the Russians’ lack of sanitary improvements and failure to provide quality education. 91 Worse yet, as an article on “the

Russian farmer” made clear, the general opinion of Russian character was in fact far too

complimentary. Russian farmers were at an “exceptionally low level of culture” and their

defining characteristics served as proof: due to their inability to break free from

subsistence conditions, their widespread drunkenness, and their primitive communal

lifestyles, Russian farmers were essentially at the level of animals. Whereas the

“European has the advantage over the Russian due to his belief in law, the Russian

embodies raw power” and is “restrained only by the gendarme where the European is

restrained by his conscience.” 92 Such depictions differed little from colonialist portrayals of supposedly inferior and primitive peoples. Most articles on Russian culture did not quite reach such extremes, but the underlying view of a helpless yet threatening civilization was pervasive indeed and it reflected poorly upon the civilians who had become accustomed to Russian practices and standards over the course of generations.

Specific investigations of the “favored” nationalities in the Ober Ost region, like the Belarusians and Lithuanians, were far less fearmongering but equally disdainful.

These more common perspectives on life in the borderlands intended to convey the historical basis of eastern backwardness. Noting, for instance, that the “principle article

91 “ZivilEntlausung Ob.Ost,” Kownoer Zeitung , January 12, 1917, sec. Beiblatt; “Das Schulwesen in Kowno vor dem Kriege,” Kownoer Zeitung , December 21, 1916, sec. Beiblatt; “Das Schulwesen in Kowno vor dem Kriege. II.,” Kownoer Zeitung , December 22, 1916, sec. Beiblatt. 92 “Der russische Bauer,” Kownoer Zeitung , July 31, 1916, sec. Beiblatt. 177

of clothing of the White Russian is the … white sheepskin hat accompanied by a white shirt and white pants,” Kownoer Zeitung speculated – admittedly without any strong evidence – that this custom could have simply developed from a historical lack of knowledge of dyes. 93 Agricultural technology remained in a similarly retarded condition:

Belarusians farmed in the simplest manner with fragile wooden farming equipment that

recalled the “olden days.” Knowledge of these practices, and of the “small, strawroofed

huts” in which the farmers lived, conveyed the sense that Belarusians’ current way of life

was entirely in line with their medieval practices. Reference to simple wooden

agricultural tools emphasized the great distance separating Germans’ industrial

knowledge from the basic capabilities of the eastern peoples. The Belarusians and

Lithuanians were not, however, entirely to blame for their woes because they suffered a

natural disadvantage in the form of land which was full of swamps and forests and not particularly advantageous to farming. Here the natural merged seamlessly with the political as the article stated that compounding factors included the “minimally developed

infrastructure and the lack of nearby export areas”; 94 Russian governance was complicit

once again even if it was not solely responsible.

Examinations of Lithuanian culture in the pages of Kownoer Zeitung almost

invariably referenced the people’s heathen past. Stories on Lithuania’s exceptionally late

conversion to Christianity similarly evoked the idea that Lithuanians were an

underdeveloped people that could not escape its backward historical legacies. Kownoer

Zeitung reported the peculiarities of Lithuanian Easter celebrations with amusement:

“Apart from the church celebrations there are many folk customs also connected with

93 “Die Weißrussen.” 94 Bergsträsser, “Die Weissrussen.” 178

Easter which to a large extent call attention to the fact that they have to this day retained artifacts from their heathen traditions, namely celebrating the reawakening of nature that had been part of the Lithuanian pagan Spring festival.” 95 Apart from the occasional publication of homilies on religious holidays, Ober Ost papers generally did not promote

a heavily Christian point of view. Nevertheless, the linking of Lithuanian culture to its preChristian traditions cast local culture in a negative light and drifted toward a focus on

such observations as legacies of a primitive and surprisingly recent past that needed to be

overcome. This argument was most explicitly articulated by asserting a causal link between outdated beliefs and retarded development. On the one hand, the Lithuanians’

“obvious indolence” was responsible for their “yet remaining lack of development”. The

“fundamental obstacle” at the heart of this problem, however, was “doubtless the

extremely marked belief in old supernatural powers.” These outdated superstitions had

not been driven out because “the Christian religion … is only a thin patina under which

hides the old belief in the wondrous powers of the gods of Lithuanian paganism.” The

author did not praise Christian values so much as he portrayed paganism as outdated and

as the stumbling block preventing its believers from realizing humans’ innate power to

improve their lives without any imagined dependence on supernatural powers. The

obvious implication was that more “advanced” peoples, like the Germans, had given up

detrimental primitive beliefs and therefore were able to attain great modern

achievements: “No people can rely completely on religious or traditional views without

consequences of equal [but negative] value to modern progress.” 96 In this view, the

European, Christian Lithuanians were seen as belonging to an earlier stage of human

95 “Litauische Ostersitten,” Kownoer Zeitung , April 22, 1916, sec. Beiblatt. 96 “Litauischer Glaube an Götterkraft.” 179

development as if they were colonial subjects on a distant continent who lacked a sufficient measure of European culture.

Articles in Kownoer Zeitung disseminated German views on Lithuania by commenting on the region’s supposedly antiquated culture and outdated agricultural practices. Within this context, the paper helped spread the associated idea that

Lithuanians existed in a simpler, inferior state that was considerably closer to nature than was true of more advanced German culture. 97 Lithuanian backwardness, as the examination of their pagan beliefs attempted to demonstrate, certainly had negative consequences for a people that could benefit a great deal from breaking free of those chains and striving to become more developed. Unlike depictions of “the Russian farmer,” however, the essentialized Lithuanian farmer’s simplicity was a combination of endearing and piteous qualities that eschewed the Russian’s highly destructive and threatening nature. Lithuanians could be summed up with reference to their aspirations and vistas: “The Lithuanian’s [peaceful temperament] is in part the result of a certain indolence in the Lithuanian people’s character. The Lithuanian lives at peace – happy and satisfied – with the food provided him by his fields and farmland. He does not have the desire to climb great heights; he prefers an ailing dependence to the struggle for ambition.” 98 To the Germans, good natured simplicity defined Lithuanian character.

Another article stated that Lithuanians did not bother painting their homes or improving

the landscape around them; they were supposed to be perfectly content in their self

97 A strain of German völkisch thought asserted that Germans had coevolved with the natural landscape of the forest and that Germans therefore had a natural, racial predisposition to harmonious and productive relationships with forests. Notwithstanding Kownoer Zeitung ’s tendency to emphasize nebulously defined German virtues, its content more frequently praised German scientific advances that more concretely demonstrated national superiority. Michael Imort, “A Sylvan People: Wilhelmine Forestry and the Forest as a Symbol of Germandom,” in Germany's Nature: Cultural Landscapes and Environmental History , ed. Thomas M. Lekan and Thomas Zeller (New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 2005). 98 “Litauische Liebeslieder.” 180

contained worlds and so free from pretense that they had no interest in improving the external appearance of their homes – why bother when it served no purpose and the space was also shared with animals?

The theme of Lithuanian simplicity rested to a great degree on the German

observation of harmonious relationships with animals. Lithuanians were perceived to be bonding with animals to such an extent that, for example, horses were friends rather than just a means of alleviating labor. 99 The Lithuanian “love of horses” ( Pferdeliebe ) stood out as one of the most commented upon characteristics in the German press and in private reports. 100 The result was a caricature of a primitive being: Lithuanian farmers walked barefoot, produced all of their possessions using their own materials and labor, lived in shabby huts with straw roofs, shared living quarters with livestock, and did not consider the hygienic danger of giving all manner of mammals and insects unencumbered access to their home. 101 Kownoer Zeitung presented such depictions as the fundamental qualities of the Lithuanian farmer and, by extension, the Lithuanian nation. The paper’s readers learned that Lithuanians enjoyed an almost spiritual communion with horses and were never as “full of inner joy” as when they are in the forest. These qualities found expression in the most palpable forms of distinctively Lithuanian culture like the Dainos and Randos , the often discussed traditional folk songs. The Lithuanian’s entirely different relationship to nature was displayed, for instance, by the repeated references to trees, “as

99 “Das Gemütsleben der Litauer,” Kownoer Zeitung , January 4, 1917, sec. Beiblatt. 100 Fur coats became a widely recognized symbol of life in the Russian Empire. An article on Kowno’s young newspaper hawkers describes the young men as almost inseparable from their fur coats and hats. This fur outfit extended from the head down the knees, and in most cases was “greasy and ragged.” Moreover, the paper sellers were compared to a “flock of cheeky sparrows waiting for their feed.” “'Kownoer Zeitung von haite! . . .',” Kownoer Zeitung , March 3, 1917. 101 Herbert Eulenberg, “Die Bauern,” Kownoer Zeitung , October 19, 1916, sec. Beiblatt. 181

if they were his brothers.” 102 Lithuanians’ close communion with horses, livestock and

other creatures was explained in the paper as partly the result of the belief that “the

human soul can wander via animals,” a belief that was attributed to Pythagoras and

Indians. 103 Such were the frequently repeated and directly stated characteristics of

Lithuanians in Kownoer Zeitung .

One can only speculate on the effect that these frequent portrayals had upon soldiers and administrators who had known nothing of the borderlands prior to the war.

These gaps in our knowledge notwithstanding, it is clear that Ober Ost newspapers incessantly encouraged readers to look upon the occupied population – particularly the rural population – as an inferior relic of a bygone era. The signs of “backwardness” that

Germans saw throughout the occupied area were reported and contextualized in Kownoer

Zeitung in a way that almost certainly would have encouraged readers to fit their experiences into this officially sanctioned thematic framework. The newspaper’s attempt to reach both German and local audiences undoubtedly affected German perception of the locals. Friedrich Bertkau recalled that the population’s unfamiliarity with German methods meant that newspapers repeatedly conveyed information on new and misunderstood regulations. 104 These efforts at keeping the locals uptodate with the

multifarious and Byzantine administrative decrees appeared with great frequency in

Kownoer Zeitung , not at all set apart from the content directed specifically at German

soldiers. Indeed, one imagines that the publishers intended such items to keep both locals

and administrators informed.

102 “Das Gemütsleben der Litauer.” 103 Herbert Eulenberg, “Die Kreuze,” Kownoer Zeitung , October 22, 1916, sec. Beiblatt. 104 Bertkau, Das amtliche Zeitungswesen , 21. 182

Intentionally or otherwise, the promulgation of orders on basic administrative policy further reinforced the notion that the local population needed to be raised to a

higher level of civilization. 105 Such items sometimes explained regulations and

sometimes simply offered helpful advice. A sampling of titles in 1916 demonstrates the

general thrust: “Cleanliness in shops!”; “Clean homes of old junk!”; “Improved cleaning

of house properties”; “Clean the drainage ditches!”; “Clean the sidewalks!”; and “Clean

the chimneys!” One order promoting increased cleanliness in shops noted that “poverty

and sparseness need not go hand in hand with uncleanliness” and threatened dirty shops

with the revocation of their operating licenses. 106 The changes compelled by these articles

ostensibly promoted public well being and in doing so reaffirmed the administration’s

mission to improve local conditions. Such descriptions also necessarily reminded

Germans of the East’s endemic laziness and dirtiness. Cleaning homes of “old junk”

likely fulfilled the stated purpose – namely fire prevention – but it also highlighted what

Germans felt were revolting practices. Homes full of dirt and junk offended to German

sensibilities not least due to frequent official reminders that such conditions invited the

growth of germs and, by extension, the spread of disease. 107 The type of items that the paper asked the locals to remove from their homes also indicates the publishers’ perspective; in one article, likely items for disposal were described as “useless furniture

items, rags, and paper, etc.” 108

The editors of Kownoer Zeitung rather openly expressed the theme of a German civilizing mission in the East and it is doubtful that readers could have failed to discern

105 This was always explained in terms of “culture,” but the point was to combat the Russian Empire’s underdevelopment. 106 “Sauberkeit in Geschäften!,” Kownoer Zeitung , March 22, 1916. 107 “Verhütung der Verbreitung von Krankheitskeimen!,” Kownoer Zeitung , March 30, 1916. 108 “Reinigt die Häuser von alten Gerümpel!,” Kownoer Zeitung , March 24, 1916. 183

the thread of cultural superiority that ran through so much of the paper. The prewar attitude that had regarded the forceful Germanization of Prussian Poles as a kindness was operative in the occupied borderlands. 109 Local civilians were portrayed as ignorant children who needed to be instructed on how to conduct themselves in the German manner, that is, as fully formed adults. The enlightenment of the locals ( Aufklärung der

Einhemischen ) conveyed basic, commonly understood knowledge on all manner of daily

tasks and habits. A member of the newly instituted health commission in Suwalki

commented that “the most naïve views still prevail with regard to these minimal sprouts

of culture.” The author of the article ended on the following sardonic note: “Though it

surely sounds peculiar to German ears, it is necessary that the education ( Erziehung ) of

the population must begin with education on the purpose and methods of public

conveniences (lavatories, registering deaths and births, etc).” 110 Urgent wartime shortages of food and materials pushed the administrators to maximize productivity in the occupied area and they attempted to raise the area’s level of culture – its technological, sanitary, and organizational standing – as quickly as possible. Little documentation exists on what were undoubtedly thousands of local decrees, public postings, and information and training sessions, but Kownoer Zeitung and other Ober Ost papers published what remains a comprehensive sample of these items. Friedrich Bertkau recalled in 1928 that the Ober Ost newspapers had issued numerous special instructions on different aspects of agriculture, including items on the care of local fruit tree varieties, the effective storage of potatoes, and the threat of harmful insects. To Bertkau, these examples showed “the demands that the administration placed on the enlightening activity ( aufklärende

109 On attitudes toward Poles before the war, see Werner Conze, Polnische Nation und deutsche Politik (Cologne: BöhlauVerlag, 1958), 30f. 110 “Gesundheitskommission,” Kownoer Zeitung , September 2, 1916, sec. Beiblatt. 184

Tätigkeit ) of the papers appearing in the occupied area and how urgently they required

the press’s support.” 111 This “upbringing and instruction” ( Erziehung und Unterrichtung),

as Bertkau referred to it ten years later, covered all sorts of practical economic, industrial

and agricultural matters in an attempt to fundamentally and comprehensively raise the

occupied peoples to a respectable level of culture. To be sure, this type of instruction ran parallel to some extent with wartime industrial and agricultural regulations back home in

Germany. Unlike the domestic regulations, however, the German occupiers held a patronizing attitude toward the local civilians that pitted German advanced methods

against the East’s threatening backwardness. This cultural superiority was inextricably

linked to the idea of German culture’s inherently superior value, as evidenced by the

almost total exclusion of occupied civilians from local administrative positions. The only

major exceptions, of course, were the Baltic Germans, who were presupposed to share the

occupiers’ cultural superiority. 112

By the summer of 1916, papers like Kownoer Zeitung had begun convincing its

readers that the administration had achieved a great deal already and would continue to bring all manner of improvements to the land in the future. One precondition for doing so

was reminding the paper’s audience of just how deficient the area was prior to German

arrival. Russia’s negative contributions were implied where they were not stated outright,

and yet the purpose of many such stories was simply to describe the lands as they had

existed while free of German influence. The handful of articles on Lithuanian markets

111 Bertkau, Das amtliche Zeitungswesen , 223. 112 Ibid., 19. Bertkau claims that this occurred mostly at the start of the occupation and purely out of necessity; the use of local Ortsvorsteher in Lithuania later on supposedly proves his claim. In fact, Baltic Germans enjoyed a special relationship with the Imperial German occupiers throughout the invasion. Both Baltic German and local nonGerman civilians served in leadership positions at various points of the occupation but their standing visàvis German administrators was not equivalent. 185

evidences a German fascination with urban life in the occupied lands. A number of characteristics distinguished Lithuanian cities from the Prussian cities that most observers would have had in mind when writing about Lithuania; examples include more varied ethnic composition, poorer infrastructure, and less advanced technological machinery like automobiles. Articles in Kownoer Zeitung on local market scenes crystallized the German response to Lithuanian conditions and promoted a highly derogatory view of the occupied population. The type of available goods and the way that they were presented for sale repulsed the German onlookers. Markets offered little more than Trödelhandel , the exchange of essentially worthless, junky goods, many of which were so antiquated that they seemed hopelessly foolish to German eyes and would never be seen back home. 113

More bizarre and troubling yet was the manner in which the goods were displayed, with

inappropriate, outdated signs and all manner of items placed next to each other without

any rhyme or reason. One shop selling iron goods set new chimney flues next to rusty old padlocks and offered the additional juxtaposition of horseshoes and dinnerware. Many

local merchants simply did not have appealing goods to offer for sale, but even those who

did failed to present them in an attractive way. The missing ingredient, according to

Kownoer Zeitung , was not material but rather constitutional: locals lacked the Germans’

“mind for order and the drive to create something from nothing.” 114 By suggesting that

Germans would have known how to accomplish more with the same amount of resources, the author implied that the lands were hampered by more than just Russian influence. A description of the market in Schaulen evinces Germans’ visceral disgust with local conditions: “To most Panjes the word ‘cleanliness’ means something horrible. Meat lies

113 “Marktplätze in Kowno,” Kownoer Zeitung , March 21, 1916. 114 “Auf dem Kownoer Hauptmarkte,” Skizzen-Mappe der Kownoer Zeitung , October 8, 1916. 186

unappetizingly on old towels and rags. The horses have seen neither comb nor brush in years.” 115 The paper presented local backwardness as a set of deeply ingrained

characteristics that represented the ‘old’ to the Germans’ ‘new.’ The paper implicitly

encouraged a view of local civilians’ simplistic backwardness in an unflattering light.

The description of local market scenes conveyed information on the conditions

that had greeted the arriving occupiers in 1915; documenting these local conditions provided evidence of improvements that the Germans had already introduced. Articles on

Germanled transformations showed how capably and concretely administrators had

worked to improve the civilians’ living conditions. Some changes took place so quickly

that traces of the original conditions were already disappearing. The Kowno train station

still had its distinctive porters with packs strapped to their backs and “ Panje coaches”

continued to await arriving guests just outside of its doors, but German order, cleanliness,

and energy had wrought more fundamental changes. German readers were reminded that

new arrivals to the Kowno train station had not always been greeted by a building that

visibly resembled a modern German station. 116 Indeed, the entire city had begun to take

on a pleasantly German look due to fundamental changes the new administrators had

implemented, including newly paved streets, impressive bridges, an efficient garbage

collection system, bathing facilities, and cleanliness that had nearly eradicated all of the

city’s flies. 117 The obvious “beautification” of the city symbolized the depth of these changes. According to Kownoer Zeitung , “the German administration alone” was to be

115 “Schaulener Marktleben,” Kownoer Zeitung , November 4, 1916, sec. Beiblatt. 116 “Bahnhof Kowno,” Skizzen-Mappe der Kownoer Zeitung , July 16, 1916. 117 “Die Stadtverwaltung Kownos,” Skizzen-Mappe der Kownoer Zeitung , August 13, 1916; “Vom alten und vom neuen Kowno,” Kownoer Zeitung , August 17, 1916, sec. Beiblatt. 187

“thanked for the ordered and settled conditions” that now prevailed. 118 Articles in the

Ober Ost press took full ownership for the changes, arguing that they had resulted from the essential qualities of Germanness. The future benefits were to be equally impressive as one article indicated: these achievements were a “peaceful accomplishment,” but more importantly a “German accomplishment that serves as the basis for a new, beautiful period of a German Kowno.” 119 According to this widely disseminated view, German methods were the linchpin of Kowno’s bright new future. The Russian retreat was a necessary precondition, but there was no separating the region’s great promise from the particular characteristics of its new caretaker.

An article from August 1916 is typically expresses the contention that Germans were uniquely qualified to unlock Lithuania’s full potential: “Those who get to know

[Kowno] today no longer see the many difficulties that had to be overcome, but rather just the friendly city with its beautiful setting; thanks to German work and the art of

German administration, the city becomes cleaner and more beautiful each day and freer of the Schlakken of Russian mismanagement.” 120 The improved, German version of the city simply exploited the location’s natural beauty and potential, but the area remained contested territory that could attain a positive, rosy future or lapse back into the disasters of its Russian past. The brief period of German occupation had already left its mark: “We

Germans have awoken a ‘sleeping beauty land’ from its slumber!” The praise of

Lithuania centered on the “versatile fertility” offered by its “rich natural resources.” 121

The tendency to praise Lithuania’s natural potential put a different spin on the generally

118 “Die Detusche Verwaltung Litauen,” Skizzen-Mappe der Kownoer Zeitung , September 3, 1916. 119 “Vom alten und vom neuen Kowno.” 120 “Die Stadtverwaltung Kownos.” 121 “Bilder aus Litauen,” Skizzen-Mappe der Kownoer Zeitung , January 7, 1917. 188

negative view of the East as a backward land. However, it comfortably fit the consistent framing of the new lands as a space where Germans could make huge advances.

Occasional praise of the local conditions – always with reference to actions the German administration had undertaken to vastly improve them – inextricably linked future success with the absence of Russians and guiding hand of Germans. German culture arrived to wipe away the “population’s centuryold habituation to dirt and disorder,” 122 healing the land of its deficiencies and “attaining a greater level of prosperity than had previously been the case.” 123

Conclusion

The German propaganda effort in newspapers like Kownoer Zeitung reinforced the view that the occupied East required superior German methods and institutions. There is no reason to think that this tack succeeded in winning over vast segments of the local population. Linguistic obstacles and the strain of economic exploitation greatly hindered the attempt to gain the favor of the occupied civilians. Among German administrators and soldiers, however, Kownoer Zeitung likely succeeded in tapping into stereotypes of

Russia as a backward land in vast need of improvement. It is not improbable to imagine that the paper succeeded in convincing its German readership that the raw simplicity of the occupied lands required German control or at the very least custodianship. The core of Germanness, or Deutschtum , provided the unique mixture of superiority, benevolence, and generosity which the occupiers were certain was necessary for the lands’ future success.

122 “ZivilEntlausung Ob.Ost.” 123 “Die Detusche Verwaltung Litauen.” 189

Notwithstanding the newspaper’s mixed results in attempting to reach out to different segments of its target audience, the manner in which Kownoer Zeitung attempted to further German interests over the course of the war is highly significant. Its contents provide insight into the way that Germans came to terms with their role as the conquerors of vast amounts of “enemy” territory that did not seem to have much in common with the Russian enemy’s culture or interests. The borderlands territories required the creation of a propaganda effort make sense of this ambiguous condition.

Kownoer Zeitung and other administration papers did so by articulating a vision of benign German imperialism with virtuous Deutschtum at the center. If First World War

generally “radicalized all enmities and friendships, all phobias and affinities”, 124 the

administration press in the East provides a telling example. The largely latent

Russophobia gained a massscale audience and the project of making the former Russian

lands German fomented a nebulously articulated sense of German cultural superiority

that could be expanded upon in the future.

The area’s native inhabitants were ostensibly lauded as the liberated, ethnically

distinct residents of the borderlands. This praise, however, was only intended to serve the purpose of precluding the continuation of Russian rule. Portrayals of local culture were,

in essence, quite damning of the civilians’ level of culture. In the final analysis, they were best suited to remaining imperial subjects and the German Empire generously offered

them the prospect of a bright new future.

124 Koenen, Der Russland-Komplex , 20. 190

Chapter 4: Heer, Heimat, Bevölkerung : The Intersection of Culture, Politics, and Policy

German administration in occupied Lithuania was bracketed by economic goals on the one hand and the cultural imperatives promoted by Ober Ost press programs on the other. These ostensibly complementary efforts were intended to facilitate the smooth functioning of all aspects of the administration; the press worked to keep German administrators motivated and entertained while the messaging directed more specifically at occupied civilians disseminated administrative dictates in order to help them adjust to the contours of the new system. In spite of the relatively sanitized depiction of German rule in the Ober Ost press, administration policy and the press’s cultural program together worked toward the same end. Positive, but paternalistic portrayals of various aspects of borderlands life and culture only supported the view that German should direct the borderlands’ future; policy made similarly empty concessions while singularly pursuing the maximal exploitation of Lithuania’s resources and stifling homegrown political activity. The cultural program and policy requirements together framed Lithuania as contested territory inhabited by ignorant civilians who must be subordinated to the broader priorities of Germany’s war effort and peacetime border security.

During the first six to eight months of the occupation, administrators began to install the administrative structures that would create order and allow Germany to begin reaping material benefits from the conquered land. Notable for the still uncertain military situation at the front and the initial confrontation with borderlands political questions, this relatively fluid period took on a more static and predictable form by the end of the first

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winter. Longerterm policies regarding the economic system and political participation of the occupied area took shape and administrators and local civilians strove to find a workable balance between German circumscriptions and local needs. Locals skeptical of the new changes and unsure of their permanence and mutability undoubtedly began to realize the farreaching scope of German economic control and resource extraction.

Administrators made few concessions to local desires and needs. The trend in occupied

Lithuania – no different from that in the economically, industrially and agriculturally struggling homeland – was toward increasing output by whatever means.

The full use of foreign labor and resources occurred in all areas under German occupation. Belgian laborers were thrust into forced labor battalions, helping the German war effort by mining coal, working in factories, and tilling fields. The residents of conquered eastern lands were also compelled to accept the responsibilities of contributing to the German war effort and they likewise did not receive any of the rights and privileges that accompanied German citizenship. Politicians and interest groups eyed the

conquered territory in both the east and west as the potential objects of annexation. It is

important, however, to note conceptual and political distinctions that separated east from

west in German perception. Whereas France and Belgium comprised belligerent nations –

notwithstanding the vastly different circumstances in each case – the occupied East was

home to ethnic groups that did not possess their own nationstates. The cultural

distinctiveness and national aspirations of the occupied eastern nationalities – subjugated

Poland yearning for independence as well as a number of aspiring national movements in

Lithuania, and Ukraine – shaped their political and cultural relationships to the

German occupier. The industrialized nationstates Belgium and France were thought to

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be roughly equivalent by most measures to Germany, whereas the occupied East’s lower level of industrial development rendered it a primitive backwater in German perception.

Wilhelmine Germany’s long history of restricting and regulating unskilled laborers from the East (overwhelmingly ethnic Poles) led to the uncontested continuation and extension of harsh labor practices visàvis occupied Russian subjects. In occupied Belgium, however, similar practices developed only over time and in spite of severe reservations. 1

All Germans were familiar with obvious examples of western cultural achievements and political influence, but few had any knowledge of Lithuanians or Belarusians. It was the latter groups, paradoxically, whose cultures and political aspirations were thought to be so underdeveloped as to be eminently pliable. 2 They were therefore praised in propaganda in spite of the sense of cultural superiority unendingly manifested by the occupiers.

This understanding overlaid the entire German experience in the East and comprised a potential source of tension. The administration followed politics in the East ever closer as the war progressed. The collapse of the Russian Empire and the concomitant rise of new or reconstituted nation states in the imperial borderlands demanded adjustments in German political ambitions. The declaration of Polish independence in the fall of 1916 did not, for instance, preclude the annexation of arguably Polish land or the attainment of a German dominated Mitteleuropa , but it did

1 Ulrich Herbert, A History of Foreign Labor in Germany, 1880-1980: Seasonal Workers, Forced Laborers, Guest Workers (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990), 102119. 2 Robert L. Nelson argues that the Germans felt that the French were “a people much like themselves”, in contrast to the markedly foreign residents of the eastern borderlands, and many Germans even spoke French. Robert L. Nelson, “Representations of the Occupied East in German Soldier Newspapers, 1914 1918,” Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung 51, no. 4 (2002): 500, 519. 193

place new limits on the achievement of those ends. 3 The German Empire jockeyed to

achieve the most favorable political settlement possible in the East and, in the case of the

German Administration for Lithuania, this meant bolstering Lithuanian nationalism in

order to counteract Russian and Polish influence and bring the lands as close to Germany

as possible.

Supporting national movements in the occupied lands was part of a political a balancing act and it was manifested more often in word than in deed. The German

leadership earnestly wished to undercut Polish claims to the heavily ethnic Lithuanian parts of the former PolishLithuanian Commonwealth, and supporting Lithuanian

nationalism was the best means of doing so. Wilna, the historical Lithuanian capital, was

at the time of the First World War more Polish and Jewish than Lithuanian in cultural

terms. 4 On the other hand, the development of Lithuanian nationalism into a mass movement entailed potentially detrimental implications for Germany’s plans to politically dominate the lands after the successful conclusion of the war. As a result, German cultural organs heaped effusive praise on favored cultures like Lithuanians and

Belarusians while remaining cagey about a political settlement as they angled behind the scenes for the desired, warcontingent outcome. If favoring Lithuanian nationalism did not lead to definitive political action with regard to formal independence in Lithuania, the example of the occupied lands to the north shows that the preference of Baltic German influence over Latvian nationalism in Kurland pushed Latvians to the background of

3 Imanuel Geiss, Der Polnische Grenzstreifen, 1914-1918: Ein Beitrag zur Deutschen Kriegszielpolitik im Ersten Weltkrieg (Lübeck: Matthiesen, 1960), 46. 4 The 1897 census recorded the following figures for Wilna: Jews, 40 percent; Poles, 25 percent; Russians and Belarusians, 25 percent; Lithuanians, 2 percent. Tomas Balkelis, The Making of Modern Lithuania (London: Routledge, 2009), 2. When the Germans arrived as conquerors in 1915, they did not yet understand its importance to the Lithuanian nationalist movement and instead proclaimed it as the “pearl of the Polish Kingdom.” Börje Colliander, “Die Beziehungen zwischen Litauen und Deutschland während der Okkupation 19151918” (University of Åbo, 1935), 17. 194

cultural and political reporting. Coverage of events relating to the development of Polish independence likewise received short shrift. In spite of the clearly preferential treatment given to Lithuanian culture for the sake of political goals, the prevailing view was both favorable and unfavorable, depending on the point of comparison. A thread running throughout coverage of Lithuanian culture was the emphasis on the people’s inherent limitations , as manifested in their simple, undemanding, and apparently primitive character. Administration policy reinforced this point of view by imposing harsher restrictions than the local civilians had known during Russian times to further the end of maximum resource extraction. The ruthlessly pursued priorities of Heer und Heimat necessarily clashed with the occupier’s allegedly benevolent interest in developing the lands and improving living conditions.

The process of economically exploiting the occupied lands was certainly shaped and colored by the sense of German cultural superiority, yet it was also partly a function of the expanding demands of total war. All political and cultural issues were subordinated to the priority of winning the war. Even within Germany, the process of maximizing industrial and military mobilization entailed contentious debates and serious political costs. Increasing the onerous burdens on the rural and urban working classes could only be achieved through political concessions. Workingclass food riots occurred in Berlin before the end of 1915 and malnutrition affected Germans of lesser means for the remainder of the war. When Hindenburg and Ludendorff – the military heroes of the East and the founders of Ober Ost – headed the Supreme Army Command from 1916 onward they continued to sacrifice German civilians’ well being to the higher priority of winning

195

the war by whatever means. 5 Ignoring the long history of workingclass unrest and the more immediate signs of rising discontent, they pushed to strip German workers of basic freedoms and to increase the range of ages that could be drafted for military service.

Assessments of the population’s mood in the fall of 1916 indicated that “vast majority of

Germans were war weary.” 6 Nevertheless, “little serious thought was given to the causes of growing discontent and low morale or the fact that the population was exhausted after three years of fighting and deprivation.” 7 Instead, the government issued propaganda to

educate the population on the importance of its sacrifices. The Ober Ost administration of

Lithuania echoed this approach by similarly insisting that the demands of the war

superseded the occupied civilians’ discontent. The trend toward increasingly onerous

demands affected the two areas differently, however, due to the occupied civilians’ status

as the subjects of a foreign state. Workingclass political rights and organizing power placed real limits on the expansion of industrial and military mobilization. In the

occupied borderlands, by contrast, the civilians lacked legal rights and political power,

and they were disdained for their relative dearth of culture. Whereas the General

Governor of occupied Belgium warned that the excessively harsh implementation of

forced labor could lead to acts of resistance among the civilian population, the

administrators in Ober Ost seem to have had few second thoughts about the local

civilians’ docility and political ignorance. 8

5 David Welch, Germany, Propaganda and Total War, 1914-1918: The Sins of Omission (London: Athlone, 2000), 84133. 6 Ibid., 166. 7 Ibid.

8 Jens Thiel, "Menschenbassin Belgien": Anwerbung, Deportation und Zwangsarbeit im Ersten Weltkrieg (Essen: Klartext Verlag, 2007), 67. 196

The Relationship of Economics and Politics

German observations on politics in occupied Lithuania adhered to a fairly consistent pattern of paying lip service to the aspiring national groups’ cultural independence but granting only the most superficial of concessions. The unstated German goals may be summarized as the desire to exploit the lands’ economic potential without outside interference while – or perhaps more accurately, by – giving the impression that

German wartime administration was, in spite of its admitted faults, far better than what the Russians had been able to accomplish. According to the administrators’ own assessments, they were largely successful in this regard. The political situation in the East remained dynamic throughout the war, ultimately ending in the collapse of the Russian

Empire and the creation of independent nation states in the former imperial borderlands.

At the level of politics, one can observe the aspirant nationalists’ activities gradually expanding over the course of the war as the prospect of an outright German victory waned and the concept of selfdetermination became paramount. 9 Notwithstanding these

significant changes, the German administration succeeded in functioning without any

restrictions or widespread popular resistance for most of its three and a half year

existence. Political activities took place in Switzerland, Germany, and, eventually

Lithuania, but the German administrative machinery remained largely unshackled from political developments.

The exploitive economic measures implemented by the invading army in the summer and fall of 1915 made broad claims on conquered resources for the German war effort, and, following the trend experienced in all combatant nations, they also

9 See Eberhard Demm, Ostpolitik und Propaganda im Ersten Weltkrieg (Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang, 2002). 197

progressively expanded over the course of the increasingly “total” war. While the

German military eventually became somewhat more permissive with regard to the publication of Lithuanian nationalist literature, the conditions on the ground became all the more oppressive. Dogged advocates of Lithuanian nationalism appeared to be separated from the broad mass of Lithuanian farmers by an enormous social gap that limited their interaction and influence. Certain legacies of Russian rule eased the transition to the harsh implementation of German measures: the lack of strong national movements and substantial political engagement, the citizens’ poor educational level, and the very fact of oppressive foreign dominance which made the complete substitution of

German rule less contentious. German administrators clearly shared the view put forward by the likes of Kownoer Zeitung that Lithuanian farmers – which is to say the great majority of the population in the German Administration for Lithuania – were entirely indifferent to political matters and would suffer any political conditions as long as they perceived them to be favoring their economic situation. 10 Given the harsh demands that the German economic program made on agriculture and forestry, this would not seem to have been a favorable set of circumstances. The other side of this coin, however, was the institutionalized belief that the Lithuanians were “impressed only by power”, meaning that the only means of ensuring compliance was to compel it through force. 11 Although administrators never made the connection directly, they implicitly argued that the only way to keep Lithuanians politically quiescent by improving their economic lot while at the same time imposing an exploitive economic framework would be to reprise the

Russian role of the incontestably powerful foreign occupier: in the German version,

10 BAMA PHD 23/50, VB Isenburg, 1 October 1916 to 31 March 1917, 45. 11 GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, May 1916, 45. 198

however, the oppression would be paid for with lasting benefits to Lithuanians in the form of an infusion of advanced German culture. 12

When attempting to assess the occupied civilians’ attitude ( Stimmung ) toward

German institutions and policies, administrators were understandably challenged by the ethnic mix confronting them in the occupied East. Rural Lithuania was overwhelmingly populated with Lithuanian peasants and Polish nobles while urban areas added strong

Jewish representation and Polish cultural elites. Scattered pockets of Belarusians and

Latvians were also present. Some administrators realized that differentiating based on social status could muddy the waters even further. This composition defied easy generalization but the Germans tried nonetheless. The moods of the salient ethnic and social groups were regularly evaluated in district captains’ administrative reports (and, subsequently, the collated reports penned by Verwaltungschef Isenburg) and were described as either “sympathetic to the Germans or German influence”

(deutschfreundlich ) or “hostile to the Germans” ( deutschfeindlich ).

Administrators’ use of the terms varied and were contingent upon the time period, the individual’s subjective analysis, and the context of the issue under consideration. The earliest administrative reports of district captains generally contain more frequent positive assessments than appeared in the later stages of the occupation, suggesting that the newly occupied population’s initial optimism was over time transformed into resentment. Most evaluations of sympathetic behavior concerned what district captains perceived to be

12 This attitude applied to other areas of the Russian Empire under German occupation and even after the Bolshevik Revolution prompted a more conciliatory German tone visàvis local political movements. In Germanoccupied Ukraine the military continued to extract food supplies under the assumption that “the Russian understands only the language of authority” in spite of the fact that Germany had recognized Ukrainian independence. Frank Grelka, Die ukrainische Nationalbewegung unter deutscher Besatzungsherrschaft 1918 und 1941/42 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2005), 289. 199

unambiguously “complaisant” ( entgegenkommend ) behavior, such as an influential clergyman’s eagerness to assist with the implementation of German decrees. Behavior did not need to be so instrumentally useful in order to qualify as sympathetic; context could help the occupiers assume shared interests, like when a terrorized Jewish family described instances of harsh Russian behavior. Indeed, the occupiers were forced to presume the civilians’ bearing based on the limited accessible evidence, and sympathetic behavior often described swaths of the civilian population rather than individuals. The groups with the poorest level of education were described as sympathetic more often than others; farmers – who were, coincidentally, most often ethnic Lithuanians – were therefore most likely to be considered such. As economic measures increasingly embittered the civilian population over course of the war, the term was applied less frequently and with a greater sense of ambiguity. “Hostility to the Germans,” by contrast, was never used as liberally as “sympathy to the Germans,” and it appeared without qualification in only the clearest instances of resistance to German governance and usually – though by no means exclusively – with reference to individuals rather than groups. Those included in the category were robber bands, colonies of ethnic Russian farmers, and particular agitators among the clergy or Polish nobility.

Some space did exist between the extremes of hostility and sympathy. “Not deutschfeindlich ” often signaled that the group or individual in question held some grievance but was not at risk of agitating outright against the German administration.

“Not deutschfreundlich ” meant “not quite sympathetic” and indicated that an apparent

lack of hostility that did not rule out deeper grievances. The application of these terms

changed throughout the occupation, particularly because they were tied to civilians’

200

reactions to concrete German policies and these responses were difficult to gauge. Few, if any, district captains spoke Lithuanian and therefore had to rely on intermediaries or other means of assessing the level of compliance with economic provisions. Better educated Polish nobles and Yiddishspeaking Jews could exchange ideas directly with

German officials, though this often ended with the Germans unsure of the local civilian’s motives and frankness.

Lithuanians held prominent standing in German perception as the most important group to consider. Manifold reasons explain this development, most obviously the fact that they comprised over 80 percent of the population within the borders of the German

Administration for Lithuania and the Germans hoped to use them as a counterweight to

Polish nationalism. 13 Another important contributing factor was the “complaisance” that administrators perceived to be a defining characteristic of most Lithuanian farmers.

Officials described the product of this quality in their reports as “political indifference.”

This stemmed from observations of widespread illiteracy and simple living conditions, as well as the lack of any visible nationalistic activity among the broad masses of the

Lithuanian peasantry. Those Poles and Jews who were literate and educated evoked much greater suspicion. Verwaltungschef Isenburg’s assessment of Lithuanians in January 1916 typifies those of German administrators (and, given his position of influence over

Lithuanian district captains, Isenburg’s opinions likely encouraged other administrators to

13 The 1916 German census counted 904,217 Lithuanians among a total population of 1,066,104. The proportion of Lithuanians decreased somewhat but remained overwhelmingly predominant when the German Administration for WilnaSuwalki merged into the German Administration for Lithuania in March 1917. GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, 1 July to 1 October 1916, 10. 201

conform their opinions to his own):

The Lithuanians are farmers and workers and behave peacefully, they are not sympathetic to the Russians, they have no nationalistic ambitions and nor will they have them in the future if they are not artificially awakened (through agitation and the press). Every attempt to court their favor will be misunderstood and interpreted as weakness, resulting in the opposite of the intended effect. A powerful, steady, and calm political approach will be recognized, even if they are made to carry the difficult burdens of the war. The Lithuanian has a complaisant attitude toward the German Administration, particularly because he has already begun to understand that even during wartime he has better material conditions [under the Germans] than he would have under the Russians. The Germans allowed Requisitionsscheine to be redeemed for cash, whereas the Russians simply requisitioned without payment. 14

Isenburg’s essentialization of Lithuanian political tendencies remained consistent

throughout the war and it speaks volumes about German methods of governance in the

occupied lands. Consideration of Lithuanian desires focused first and foremost on their

Anspruchslosigkeit , literally their “lack of claims,” and what might be better translated as their thoroughly undemanding character. Germans in the East seem to have universally agreed upon this idea of simplicity as the essential point to keep in mind when designing policy for occupied Lithuania.

Administrators therefore did not perceive a need to take complex, delicate issues into consideration, nor must they give special thought to Lithuanian nationalism: they simply needed to meet the occupied civilians’ material needs in order to exceed their expectations for Russian administration. Lithuanians’ frequently observed “political indifference” seemed the natural extension of their undemanding character. They were oblivious to abstract political questions as long as they could work their farms and feed their families. This view had much to do with the German conception of a steadily diminishing cultural gradient running west to east that terminated in the Russian Empire’s

14 GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, January 1916, 30. 202

vacuum of sophisticated culture. Lithuanian peasants were to the German administrators the living embodiment of the concept: perhaps a majority was illiterate, they were not required to nor did all have the opportunity to attend schools, they farmed their plots in an outdated manner yielding relatively little beyond their personal nutritional needs, they suffered from epidemics that had been virtually extinguished in Germany, and they inhabited farflung settlements interconnected by only the most primitive infrastructure.

This was a people who, so the Germans thought, had neither the time nor the capacity to engage in issues that extended beyond hearth and home. In other words, occupied citizens’ material wellbeing essentially comprised their political disposition. As paternalistic as this might seem, German assessments of other groups were not as generous.

Ethnic Poles accounted for the second highest representation by ethnic group in the German Administration for Lithuania, numbering 73,057 and comprising nearly 7 percent of the population. 15 In spite of the Poles’ seemingly insignificant proportion of

Lithuania’s population, they caught the attention of German administration for a number of reasons that help reveal the underpinnings of German policy. Poles, like Lithuanians, were often portrayed as belonging to one particular social class, though in this case it was a privileged, culturally elite overclass. Lithuanian Poles were not, in fact, wholly aristocratic, but noble Polish estate owners were a particularly visible element. Polish culture had played a dominant role in Lithuanian lands since the two independent nations merged into the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth in the sixteenth century. The had gradually usurped Lithuanian in politics and high culture to the extent that

15 This percentage likely increased following the incorporation of the German Administration for Wilna Suwalki in March 19176. GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, 1 July to 1 October 1916, 10. 203

speaking Polish lent a superior cultural standing. Many aristocratic Lithuanian families became increasingly Polonized over the course of the centuries and this fact contributed to Wilna’s transition from the medieval capital of Lithuania to a Polish city in cultural terms. Germans took special note of Polish estate owners as they entered Lithuania because they admired their wealth and could more frequently communicate with them in

German. Even more importantly, German administrators were well aware of the anti

Polish measures in Prussian Poland. 16 Polish nationalism – promoted by precisely the type of educated aristocratic elites who were represented in parts of German occupied

Lithuania – was a contributing factor toward the establishment of a civilian rather than military government in occupied Poland. Predictably, Germans generally regarded Polish nobles as intent on ensuring continued Polish preeminence in Lithuania, if tactfully

“reserved.” Poles did not have to overtly demonstrate their nationalistic intent

(großpolnische Bestrebungen ) for German officials to assume that they coveted

Lithuanian territory for a postwar Polish state.

Jews held the third highest numerical representation in occupied Lithuania, comprising 5 percent (54,559) of the total but as much as 50 percent of urban Lithuania.

Whereas Poles outnumbered Jews by nearly 20,000 individuals, the former included many farmers of much the same social standing as Lithuanian peasants and these rural

Poles were far less visible and accessible to German officials than were the tens of thousands of Yiddishspeaking Jews who inhabited Lithuania’s cities. Verwaltungschef

Isenburg noted that Jews’ residence in the cities and villages – the very hubs of

16 On the history of Germanization efforts in Prussian Poland, see William W. Hagen, Germans, Poles, and Jews: The Nationality Conflict in the Prussian East, 1772-1914 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); Richard Blanke, Prussian Poland in the German Empire (1871-1900) (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1981). 204

administrative power – was a defining characteristic separating them from the rural, agricultural Lithuanians. Also in contrast to Lithuanians, they were more likely to have basic literacy and at least a minimal amount of education. Germans did not perceive Jews to have a clearly predictable political position beyond the desire to remain free of harsh

Russian antisemitic policy. Their political interests were unclear: “In their case one can speak neither of Russen- nor Deutschfreundlichkeit .” 17 In describing the Jewish population’s social, political, and economic characteristics, however, administrators

rarely failed to comment upon Jews’ strong representation in Lithuania’s commercial

activity. This observation almost invariably met with disapproval, particularly because

Jews were purported to “exploit the rural population economically.” 18 This judgment

immediately preceded the evaluation of Jews as political opportunists, thus helping to

link portrayals of Jews’ economic and political characteristics in order to cast them as political and social outsiders interested only in their individual and communal economies.

Though expressed in different terms, the focus on economics diverged very little from the

administrators’ means of assessing poor Lithuanian farmers. Labeling Jews calculating

outsiders with the potential to intentionally harm others to achieve their particularistic

goals, however, differed substantially.

The most striking feature of German assessments was the sense of certainty in the

occupied groups’ supposed lack of fitness to govern their own affairs. In this sense,

German judgments evinced a certain colonialist perception of the newly won territory. A

number of historians have made initial efforts to understand the highly derogatory

German views in such terms; among the most helpful is Robert L. Nelson’s work on

17 GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, January 1916, 30. 18 Ibid. 205

soldiers’ newspapers that uses the framework of colonialism to analyze German perception. 19 The cultural program found in German newspapers was a significant

contributing factor, one which almost certainly both reflected and influenced the views of

the German district captains who implemented Isenburg’s policies and also sent back

their own recommendations for adjustments. Although the district captains were

generally not as politically engaged as the Verwaltungschef and other high level officials,

they nevertheless subscribed to the German view of the East as a fundamentally different place.

Intent and Implementation

German plans for occupied Lithuania were presented without exception as the gift

of a benevolent and generous occupier, but even this uncontroversial foundation of propaganda was riddled with contradictions that were never meaningfully addressed in policy. The singular focus on using the occupied lands to the benefit of Heer und Heimat

meant that rhetorical pandering to locals’ needs and desires never evolved into substantial

concessions easing the harsh wartime regulations on the availability of food, materials,

and labor. Unlike the position of the German working class, increased impositions were

not accompanied by promises of political concessions. Moreover, political opinions were

regarded to be almost entirely a function of economic conditions and this view

encouraged administrators to govern in a severe and punitive manner. Locals were

thought to be accustomed to harsh behavior at the hands of the former Russian rulers and,

more importantly, administrators assumed that their low level of education and social

19 Nelson, “Representations of the Occupied East in German Soldier Newspapers, 19141918”; Robert L. Nelson, ed., Germans, Poland, and Colonial Expansion to the East (New York: Pargrave Macmillan, 2009). 206

development meant that they would naturally tend to view the lands’ political options as either the choice between Russian and German rule. Administrators confidently predicted that this choice could only be decided in favor of Germany in spite of the imposing economic measures that aroused considerable discontent among the population. Although local district captains were at times more receptive than Verwaltungschef Isenburg to

Lithuanian responses to German measures, the combination of Isenburg’s orders and the

cultural program in organs like Kownoer Zeitung restricted any deviance from the officially encouraged position. 20 The end result was the paternalistic view that

Lithuanians’ political desires need not be considered. Isenburg complained in January

1916, for example, that the Lithuanian newspaper Dabartis included far too much political content focused on worldwide events that bore no relevance to the lives of common Lithuanians. He argued that such issues were “often incomprehensible to

Lithuanians” who “could not understand [the events of] Serbia or Egypt. What happens there interests them no more than the development of the airplane.” Isenburg suggested that “practical advice on agriculture would be very welcome”, highlighting the mentality that governed nearly the entirety of the German occupation. 21 Lithuanians were disinterested in abstract, intellectual issues not because of the immediate economic issues confronting them, but rather because they lacked the capacity to engage them.

Severe economic measures were built into the system of rule under the German

Administration for Lithuania from the very start and may rightly be viewed as a political calculation. Notwithstanding Lithuanians’ status as an oppressed minority of the Russian

20 At least as far as their responses in official administrative reports are concerned. Scant sources shed light on district commanders’ personal responses to administration policy specifically or the experience of administering the lands more generally. 21 GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, January 1916, 30. Echoed in LSHA 6411306, KH in Kielmy, VB for December 1915, fol. 2223. 207

Empire rather than a belligerent nation, German policymakers felt that direct political appeals were not a very high priority. The lack of a widespread popular nationalist movement in Lithuania corresponded to a dearth of massscale participation in representative government. Reforms granted after the of 1905 had been in place for less than a decade and had not reached the majority of Lithuanian farmers. German imperialist designs remained entirely contingent on the outcome of the war, yet the process of striving for maximal political and territorial gains demanded the suppression of Lithuanian politics. The administration wished for the Lithuanian population to favor German rule over Russian but they did not perceive a need to pay too dear a price for that advantage. 22

The founding of cooperative societies, for instance, satisfied a number of

administrative priorities even if the program was not defined by a singular purpose. The program was partly a means of exerting more direct control over commercial life to

Germany’s benefit; the administration could regulate the sale of German imported goods by overseeing cooperative organizations that would make them available to the occupied population. In this sense, the cooperatives advanced the clear and ever important goal of

ensuring that all aspects of the borderlands’ economic activity came under the purview of

German administration. Other motives, however, enter the picture as answers to the

question of why the administration did not simply assert direct control over the sale of

commercial goods in the same manner that it had taken over the supply of produce,

22 The Foreign Office did make efforts to suppress negative press on the occupation, as in the case of the publication, Juozas GabrysParšaitis, La Lituanie sous le Joug-Allemand 1915-1918 ; Le Plan annexioniste allemand en Lituanie (Lausanne: Librairie centrale des nationalités, 1918). The Foreign Office worked to prevent the book’s publication and to exert some influence on the military government in Lithuania, but it was the seismic political shift of the Bolshevik Revolution that substantially affected German policy. Demm, Ostpolitik und Propaganda im Ersten Weltkrieg , 270272. 208

namely by entirely cutting out local civilians’ role as commercial intermediaries. 23

Instead of seizing control of this commercial capacity, the administration encouraged the existing nonJewish cooperatives and founded new organizations with the explicit hope of “gradually demonstrating to the [nonJewish] population that they can expect better living conditions if they can end their dependence on Jews.” 24 In this way, cooperatives

served as a means of economically privileging ethnic Lithuanians, and Lithuania’s

nationalist intelligentsia likely agreed with the basic premise of these measures. 25 Jews

were not prohibited from forming their own cooperatives, but the policy’s primary goal

was certainly to increase the number of nonJewish cooperatives. On one of the few

occasions when district captains mentioned Jewish run cooperatives, the institutions were

charged with the same antisemitic commercial stereotypes that fueled restrictions on

independent Jewish merchants. Jewish commerce was regarded as an impediment to the

fruitful activity of the Lithuania’s small scale farmers as well as to the ordered conditions

instilled by German administration. 26 Although Lithuanian cooperatives were not

universally lauded for their flawless performance, they were thought to address

Lithuanian economic interests while somewhat improving the administration’s ability to

23 The main practical reason to avoid doing so was perhaps the shortage of personnel that always hampered the administration’s range of activity, though no direct evidence supports this inference. Isenburg even made a direct comparison between the purposes of the cooperative program and the direct purchasing of the harvest from the population. GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, May 1916, 15. 24 GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, May 1916, 16. This argument was not a novel innovation of the German occupiers. Some local cooperatives already operated on this basis, though Lithuanian nationalists were not driven by antisemitism to the same extent as Polish nationalists. See Theodore R. Weeks, From Assimilation to Antisemitism: The “Jewish Question” in Poland, 1850-1914 , 2006, 92. On cooperatives in Lithuania, see Zigmantas Kiaupa, The History of Lithuania (Vilnius: Baltos Laukos, 2005), 220. 25 Balkelis, The Making of Modern Lithuania , 30, 3637. 26 German planners of course hoped that German rule would outlive the duration of the war. Ethnic Lithuanian cooperatives were therefore a means of creating more favorable conditions for German rule and for German settlers who would be in much the same position as Lithuanians visàvis Germans’ stereotypical Jews. 209

regulate the local economy. Isenburg endorsed the cooperative program only reluctantly, fearing that the cooperatives would become hotbeds of the Lithuanian national movement. 27 Given that administrators were certain of both Lithuanians’ primitiveness

and of the consequent idea that their political sympathies were equivalent to their

economic well being, the risk was judged to be worth the potential benefit.

The program of support for local cooperatives evidenced the type of paternalistic policymaking that buttressed nearly all German directives for the occupied population.

Administrators assumed that the creation of cooperatives would amount to an economic

improvement over the available methods and they crafted policy to deal with entrenched

social obstacles. The conferring of monopoly status on cooperatives with regard to the

sale of imported goods rather straightforwardly privileged the nonJewish coops at the

expense of Jewish merchants. District captains’ reports noted, however, that Lithuanian

consumers’ resistance to change proved a serious impediment that would require a

significant amount of time to overcome. The creation of viable and successful coops was

intended to demonstrate to Lithuanians that this innovation was worth their support.

District captains generally interpreted instances of hesitant engagement with the coops as

little more than unthinking adherence to outdated, selfdefeating patterns of behavior. 28

The allencompassing severity of the administration’s economic measures even

interfered with desired initiatives like the encouragement of cooperatives. Whether due to

the administration’s low prioritization or simply due to the increasing scarcity of

27 Isenburg encouraged district commanders to support the cooperatives as long as “only economic goals are being pursued.” GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, May 1916, 16 17. 28 See, for example, LSHA 6411515, KH in Wiezajcie, VB for 1 January to 31 March 1917, fol. 185; LSHA 6411306, KH in Kielmy, VB for 1 June to 15 July 1916, fol. 5758; LSHA 6411306, KH in Skaudwile, VB for August 1916, fol. 74. 210

commercial goods as the war progressed, the local cooperatives struggled to maintain profitability. The main problem was not so much the feared and maligned shortage of qualified coop leadership among the local population, or even the reluctance of

Lithuanian consumers to adjust to the new institutions, but rather the inability of the

German administration to provide the necessary goods to these budding commercial organizations. The East Prussian Settlement Society, a German organization operating under the aegis of the administration during the war, was tasked with importing the goods ordered by the individual district captains for sale through local cooperatives. Coops were to trade primarily in Kolonialwaren , consumable grocery items like tea, sugar, and tobacco. Due to the utter failure of the Settlement Society to establish a predictable schedule of delivery for these goods, the coops never functioned reliably for an extended time. 29 Periods of productive commercial activity were interspersed with longterm downtimes during which the districts suffered from shortages of items as basic and essential as salt. In some cases, locals appealed to administrators for greater scope to sell goods produced within Lithuania. Because this suggestion did not jibe with German plans to fully exploit the local lands to the benefit of Heer und Heimat , the requests were turned down. 30 In sum, the administration did not make the material investments and policy compromises necessary to ensure that the cooperatives would succeed.

Verwaltungschef Isenburg placed great stock in the fact that his balance sheet for imports

and exports to occupied Lithuania demonstrated that the lands provided more than they

29 Examples of supply shortages litter district captains’ reports. LSHA 6411306, KH in Skaudwile, VB for the first quarter 1917, fol. 113; LSHA 6411515, KH in Wiezajcie, VB 1 October 1916, fol. 144; LSHA 6411515, KH in Wiezajcie, VB for 1 October 1917 to 31 March 1918, fol. 281. Isenburg noted in March 1917 that imports of Kolonialwaren were restricted yet further to saccharin and salt. BAMA PHD 23/50, VB Isenburg, 1 October 1916 to 31 March 1917, 30. 30 For example LSHA 6411622, KH in Kurschany, VB for 1 October 1917 to 31 March 1918, fol. 233. It is impossible to know from the district captain’s description just why the request was refused, but this response was fully in line with the administration’s exclusive claims to the land’s produce. 211

consumed. Importing more goods for the civilian population would have placed the cooperatives on sounder footing, and, notwithstanding the increasing food and consumer goods shortages, the failure to do so at least partly demonstrates a measure of contempt for the political sensibilities of the occupied civilians.

The ruthless exploitation of human and material resources in Lithuania undercut efforts to win the political allegiance of the occupied civilians. The strict regime of subordinating the needs of the local population to those of German civilians and military personnel persisted throughout the entire occupation and increased in severity from 1915 onward. This practice was institutionalized early on. An administrative order from

November 1915 indicates the strictness with which this principle was inculcated at the local level: “The district captains are first and foremost representatives of the army and the Heimat , they are not the fathers of their districts. Army and fatherland take precedence. Lithuanian desires must take second place.” 31 Isenburg’s order likely

stemmed from his dissatisfaction with district captains’ exercise of authority. The first

few months of the occupation were indeed a period of transition in which the German

administrative apparatus gradually came into being. District captains’ reports from this

early period testify to lingering uncertainties regarding the methods desired by the

Verwaltungschef . While Isenburg looked forward to the economic ruin of the area’s Jews,

one of his subordinates either failed to grasp that this was the very purpose of German policy or else simply feared that it would lead to the creation of an impoverished and presumably restive ethnic and social group. The district captain of Szawkiany reported

this reservation in September 1915, and repeated it again in April 1916 when he

31 This order additionally indicated that reservations with particular BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehl Nr. VI, 16 November 1915, 1. GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, 1 July to 1 October 1916, 21, 23. 212

additionally noted Jewish traders’ important role distributing goods. 32 The district captains were the administration’s best means of gathering information on the mood and needs of the occupied populations at the local level and making it available to the policymakers. Their reports demonstrate a sensitivity to the needs of the occupied civilians that seems to have evoked little concern in the higher echelons of leadership.

Isenburg and his superior Ober Ost officials accepted the deterioration of civilian support as long as the locals remained compliant enough to continue producing food and materials for the German army and homeland.

In fact, severe intervention into the lives of the occupied civilians was a central component of Ober Ost policy rather than an unfortunate byproduct. Ober Ost measures were crafted under the assumption that the apolitical Lithuanians would respect and obey only the raw exercise of power. The harsh imposition of German regulations was regarded as the bedrock of successful administration in Lithuania. Isenburg and other high ranking executors of policy did not assess civilians’ satisfaction or dissatisfaction with German rule in order to subsequently make adjustments that might ease their burdens and improve their feelings toward the administration. The struggle to increase

Lithuania’s contributions to the German army and homeland precluded this possibility because Lithuanians were thought to be too backward to increase their output without stringent German guidance. This conceptual framework justified severe punitive measures in the German Administration for Lithuania, as reflected in an order issued by

Isenburg in November 1915: “Responding to cases of nonchalant or rebellious attitudes

32 The district commander of Szawkiany/Kurschany (the district was renamed at the end of 1915) was in agreement with the general thrust of antiJewish policy. This single objection suggests that he felt that the administration needed to find an economic role to serve as a substitute for commercial activity. LSHA 641 1622, KH in Szawkiany, VB 12 Sep 1915, fol. 9; LSHA 6411622, KH in Kurschany, VB for the first quarter 1916, fol. 90. 213

on the part of local authorities will only lead to the recurrence of unpleasant incidents. …

We should not provoke even the faintest thoughts of the possibility of active or passive resistance to the orders of the administration by responding with leniency, even in particular cases where it is perhaps justified.” 33 Even unjustifiably harsh measures were

considered appropriate because they communicated the incontestability of German power.

The exceptional emphasis on the outward manifestation of power rested on the

idea that German administrators had no other choice if they hoped to realize the vision of

the occupied lands promoted in sources like Kownoer Zeitung . German policy was in fact

driven by the notion that Lithuania’s productive capacity could be sharply increased by

importing German methods. An Ober Ost order on 28 March 1916 explained this logic to

the district captains who were primarily responsible for ensuring the rational

implementation of German methods:

The economic struggle inflicted upon us with such bitterness by our enemies due to their military impotence and helplessness forces us to take the strongest economic measures. It is therefore not enough to provide the residents of the occupied area with good advice and tips for the successful planting of the fields and to make available the necessary items (seed for planting, machines, equipment, etc). It must rather be ensured with all energy and strength that our orders are also followed so that even the smallest piece of land suitable to farming does not remain fallow without good reason. To this purpose, the Militärbefehlshaber and administrative offices have at their disposal the ... approved measures for dealing with the indolent and reluctant parts of the population. 34

33 BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehl Nr. IX, 31 December 1915, 2.

34 Befehls und Verordnungsblatt des Oberbefehlshaber Ost, “Zu den Bekanntmachungen vom 25.2. und 1.3.1916 betr. Maßnahmen zur Durchführung einer vollsätndigen und ordnungsmäßigen Ackerbestellung ,” Befehls und Verordnungsblatt des Oberbefehlshabers Ost 18 (7 April 1915), 1656. Henceforth BUV. 214

The depiction of Lithuanian farmers and lazy, indifferent, and incompetent frequently appeared in spite of Lithuanians’ status as a favored group. The people of the occupied territory were generally portrayed as lacking the capacity for “the practice of daily work, the observation of its progress and results, and the joy of its blessings.” 35 Farmers who were uninterested in improving the appearance of their modest homes could not be expected to actively work to improve agricultural yields.

Preparations for the spring planting in 1916 were part of a wider effort to increase the occupied lands’ productive capacity. Isenburg emphasized the Ober Ost order that

“every spot of earth” be taken advantage of and the result was greater intervention into the daily lives and exertions of civilians. Isenburg’s instructions to the district captains were to “completely draft the unemployed population for agricultural work,” signaling a push toward total control in the administration’s plans for 1916. His order did not simply specify that the unemployed were to be provided opportunities to work, but rather that

“all district residents who stand around and are demonstrably workshy are to be punished.” 36 Instead of fining these ostensibly lazy members of the population and

encouraging them to work, administrators were instructed to create groups of workers in

the cities and to employ them in agricultural activities. District captains’ task of ensuring

full employment also included tasks that could not be carried out through the use of

forced labor, namely promoting among schoolchildren the gathering of wild berries,

mushrooms, and resin. 37 Women and children were identified as good workers for

35 See, for example, the differences between German and Eastern merchants’ work ethic depicted in Fritz Zielesch, “Kaufleute ohne Kunden,” Kownoer Zeitung , March 10, 1917, sec. Beiblatt. 36 BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehl Nr. XVII, 16 May 1916, 2. 37 GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, May 1916, 29. 215

strawberry farming. 38 The incentive in these cases took the form of cash payments for any such produce that locals delivered to the district offices. Busily employed farmers could not expect to be left to conduct their affairs in peace; agricultural labor and equipment could be used in German directed purposes whenever the district captains saw fit. 39 Administrators even saw untapped potential in the private garden plots of the occupied area. With encouragement and German oversight, these plots might yield “a

[large] amount of valuable and healthy food.” 40 The order conveying these plans did not assume a basic knowledge of horticulture; they also explained how to prepare fruit trees for a productive season.

The exploitation of material resources expanded just as dramatically as the administration’s plans for the full use of civilian labor. The bells and metal roofs from

Russian Orthodox churches fell victim to the German war effort. Although other denominations’ houses of worship were initially spared, civilians could not help but notice that the requisitioning of raw materials expanded to include all manner of copper and tin household items, including bathtubs and boilers. 41 Household items were

requisitioned even in the absence of immediately available replacement items. Isenburg

reported that 60,000 kilograms of copper and brass had been collected by the end of May

1916 and encouragingly speculated that yet more could be extracted. 42 The German officials searched all commercial buildings for supplies of saltpeter in April 1916; stocks

38 BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehl Nr. XVII, 16 May 1916, 2. 39 BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehl Nr. XVIII, 10 June 1916, 4. 40 BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehl Nr. XVI, 27 April 1916, 3. 41 BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehl Nr. IV, 18 October 1915; BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehl Nr. XXVII, 28 October 1916, 2; BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehl Nr. XXXI, 22 January 1917, 2. 42 GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, May 1916, 23. 216

of rabbit pelts and livestock hides also came under increased scrutiny. 43 The list of produce to which the German Administration held exclusive right also gradually grew.

Items that had previously escaped the administration’s claims because they were not as essential as grain and potatoes now entered into the equation; poppy seed and walnuts, for instance, were added in September 1916. 44

In strong contrast to the idyll depicted in Kownoer Zeitung and promoted by

Verwaltungschef Isenburg , the process of so rapaciously administering the occupied

lands created barriers between the occupiers and the occupied. Isenburg objected to the

image of the district captains as “fathers of their districts”, presumably because the word

father suggested a sense of shared identity and interests. By contrast, the district captains

received frequent reminders to make firm distinctions between Germans and the occupied population. Germans were to demonstrate “greatest caution” when dealing with residents

of the borderlands, even if the locals in question were of German descent. 45 Frequent reminders that postal communication between soldiers and the population was forbidden almost certainly indicate that violations of the policy occurred with some regularity. 46 In

September 1917 soldiers were ordered to maintain military bearing while visiting Wilna,

refraining from walking “arm in arm with questionable women”; 47 the administration had

already announced that soldiers’ desire to marry local women was not in the army’s

interest. 48 The threat of epidemic led to the explicit prohibition of soldiers attending local

43 BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehl Nr. XVI, 27 April 1916, 7. 44 “Beschlagnahmen,” Kownoer Zeitung , September 13, 1916. 45 BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehl Nr. XVI, 27 April 1916, 13. The administration did, however, develop a more conciliatory attitude toward ethnic Germans by the end of the war. See Chapter 5. 46 BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehl Nr. XVIII, 10 June 1916, 10; BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehl Nr. XXI, 20 July 1916; BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehl Nr. XXXVIII, 4 August 1917, 7. 47 LAS F2318, Armeeoberkommando, 28 September 1917, fol. 69. 48 BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehl Nr. XXXIV, 17 March 1917, 11. 217

religious festivals like the feast of Corpus Christi, whether in churches or in the streets. 49

Repulsive imagery highlighted the threat of disease: soldiers were to avoid close contact

with locals because the typhusspreading louse could “fall from clothes onto the floor and

come crawling up the body of someone who enters a Panjehome even briefly.” 50 A number of reasons explained this enforced separation. On the one hand, administrators were reminded that they remained occupiers of enemy territory. Even if the local population did not appear outright belligerent, their sympathies were difficult to gauge. 51

The sheer backwardness of the locals was also cited as cause for hygienic concern, as

well as skepticism and reservation. Isenburg once noted: “It has been observed on

numerous occasions that local residents do not know the year and date of their birth. Most

are illiterate. They count [their age] by trusting to luck; the older they get, the more they

err in doing so.” 52 District captains needed to take a firm hand when dealing with a population ignorant of such basic knowledge, particularly given the type of economic

impositions carried out by the German administrators.

The stark distinction drawn between the occupiers and the occupied population

conceptually reinforced the district captains’ essentially autocratic rule. Local captains

were encouraged by Ober Ost orders and Isenburg’s provisions to undertake “energetic”

or “ruthless” measures to achieve German goals. The example of one local administrator

who took the necessary measures to shear the sheep in his area demonstrated to others

49 LAS F2318, Armeeoberkommando, 7 June 1917, fol. 28. 50 LAS F2318, Armeeoberkommando, fol. 96. By contrast, “the door of the delousing facility is tantamount to the gates of paradise” for soldiers who had been quartered in a Panje hut or had been unable to wash themselves. “Reinlichkeit,” Kownoer Zeitung , December 14, 1917. Soldiers were to be “totally separated” from the civilian population, at least to the greatest possible extent. See BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehl Nr. XXXV, 23 April 1917, 3. 51 BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehl Nr. XVIII, 10 June 1916, 6; BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehl Nr. XXVI, 14 October 1916, 3. 52 BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehl Nr. XVI, 27 April 1916, 11. 218

how they might take initiative for Germany’s benefit. 53 The abundance of tasks was so great as to render any hesitation unjustifiable, and district captains ensured that work continued on to the greatest extent possible. Major projects like bridge or railway construction required limited resources like specialized personnel and equipment, and agricultural work was largely suspended during the coldest winter months. As soon as the harvest work was complete, however, farmers were required to gather stones from their fields at the roadside in order to speed road construction projects. Those who failed to do so could be compelled by German officials. 54 Homes unfit for inhabitation due to damaged windows, doors, or roofs were also to be fixed by locals at the direction of administrators. 55 Because Lithuanian agricultural water management was considered far inferior to the methods practiced in the homeland, German administrators worked to make improvements that could lead to a substantial improvement in yields. Locals’ lack of comprehension for the importance of these tasks required “energetic change” with “all means and powers.” A great deal could be accomplished with very little effort in many places; German district captains were to supply the missing ingredient in the form of “a serious and firm will to effect change.” 56 The spirit of taking energetic action to accomplish rapid yet fundamental change was enshrined as a core principle of German administration in the East.

The constant encouraging of administrators to undertake energetic and intrusive actions to compel local adherence to German regulations unintentionally led to overzealous behavior. Admonitions and corrections among administrative orders testify

53 BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehl Nr. VII, 4 December 1915, 3. 54 BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehl Nr. I, 17 January 1916, 8. 55 BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehl Nr. I, 17 January 1916, 10. 56 BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehl Nr. XXXIV, 17 March 1917, 89. 219

to this effect. For instance, while Isenburg praised the success of raw material requisitioning and pushed his subordinates to maximize extraction, the removal of factory equipment rendered local industrial facilities useless. 57 Administrators received an even more basic reminder in January, 1916 with regard to the supply of food in Lithuania. The order reminded administrators that they must ensure that local civilians have enough food and livestock available to sustain themselves and continue working effectively for the administration. The overemphasis on prioritizing German demands over local needs seems to have given the wrong impression. 58 Occupying soldiers were reminded in the summer of 1917 that stealing food from the population was considered plundering and punished accordingly. Repeated violations of this order prompted the issuance of a corrective admonishment. 59 Further orders chiding German excesses indicate that some

occupying soldiers occasionally saw fit to beat the locals. Administrators were again

reminded that such offenses were punishable. 60 All of these examples demonstrate how easily the conceptual emphasis on the priority of German needs and the superiority of

German culture could have detrimental consequences on the treatment of the locals.

These incidents doubtless aroused illwill.

Combating Enemies, Educating Allies

The effort to extract every possible resource from occupied Lithuania maximized

German intrusion into civilians’ lives. Nearly everything came under German purview,

57 BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehl Nr. XVII, 16 May 1916, 7. 58 BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehl Nr. I, 17 January 1916, 3. 59 BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehl Nr. XXXVII, 25 June 1917, 7. Providing some insight into soldiers’ motives, an order from two months earlier reminded soldiers that they were allowed to bring only six kilograms of food back to Germany, not several suitcases full. BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehl Nr. XXXVII, 25 June 1917, 3. 60 BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehl Nr. XXVI, 14 October 1916, 9. 220

from Russian gold rubles obtained from the population in exchange for precious consumables like sugar, to copper household items forcibly purchased from civilians’ homes. Although these processes were portrayed as so necessary and straightforward as to preclude debate over their costs, they certainly entailed negative consequences.

Administrators expected that the benefits of German innovations would ultimately outweigh the impositions of the harsh economic program. They hoped – even demanded

– that farmers would come to recognize the benefit of German innovations in the areas of farm field irrigation and drainage, and in the selection of higher yielding grains. In the cities, better sanitary measures and commercial regulations would win over the urban population. In this context, punishment for violations of German regulations was thought to be education as well as a means of forcing compliance. Punishment was considered the only means in some cases of communicating the specifications of the new regime to the occupied population. Schools overseen by German administrators were a site where

German innovations could be inculcated over time, but the adult population received its

“instruction” from the administration in the form of severe punishment for any aberrant behavior.

The activity of marauding bands of Russian soldiers and escaped prisoners of war prompted the administration to take punitive measures wholly in line with the regulations that affected nearly every other aspect of the occupied civilians’ lives. This “criminal gang activity” ( Bandenunwesen ) appeared in 1916 and continued until the armistice in spite of the administration’s concerted efforts to quell it. Russian soldiers roved in bands of various sizes, ranging from a mere handful to several dozen, and they successfully harried the economy of occupied Lithuania. This perceived vestige of detrimental

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Russian influence demanded that the administrators find some means of assessing the groups’ continued ability to evade German countermeasures. The bandits’ activities were generally ascribed to selfinterested plundering and a nominal loyalty to the Russian

Empire rather than a cogent political program, but administrators still placed some of the blame for their continued success on the occupied civilians. Even though the administration felt that Lithuanian farmers – the segment of the population most disadvantaged by Russian bandits – were politically indifferent and generally disinterested in helping the bandits, they assumed that material comforts provided by the largely defenseless Lithuanians were crucial to sustaining the heavily armed Russian soldiers. This response was typical in assuming that the locals’ innate deficiencies could be overcome through stricter adherence to German policy. The general backwardness of the occupied lands’ topography also hindered German efforts in so far as the plentiful swamps and forests and the absence of well developed infrastructure assisted the bandits’ evasion of security forces. The administration placed rhetorical blame on the bandits and the civilians themselves, but the evaluation of the banditry problem reinforced the conceptual difficulty of claiming to work in the local population’s interests while failing to invest the resources necessary to effectively do so.

Perception of local farmers’ relationship to the bandits played a central role in the development of policy. Administration regulations stipulated that the unarmed civilians immediately report the presence of bandits to the authorities, emphasizing the importance of occupied civilians’ active assistance combating banditry. German administrators struggled to understand why the locals were not more forthcoming even though neither gendarmes nor larger contingents of soldiers were ever able to fully prevent attacks. They

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were likely correct to assume that Lithuanians hesitated to report bandits’ presence because they feared reprisals from the outlaws. Accommodation and fear were logical reactions to a potentially mortal threat and many farmers seem to have provided food and shelter only after their lives and property appeared to be at risk. In other cases, however, district captains caught wind of rumors that escaped prisoners of war assisted local farmers with agricultural labor in exchange for food and shelter. 61 One policy response to this unacceptable situation was the requirement that all homes post a list of the permanent inhabitants on the door so that gendarmes and soldiers could better differentiate civilians from bandits during raids. District captains subsequently reported that this preventive measure was insufficient because farmers sheltered bandits in their barns or in subterranean hideouts. After unsuccessfully fighting the bandits for years, one district captain concluded in 1918 that the only solution was to surprise suspected communities and to search all buildings high and low, isolating the population for the duration of the search in order to prevent their interference. 62 Political objectives notwithstanding, the

local population was regarded – and indeed treated – as indifferent at best and hostile at

worst when in fact the roaming bandits presented a serious risk to life and property.

Local farmers were woefully unprepared to take action against hostile bandits and

this fact evoked little concern among the German authorities who were responsible for

ensuring their safety. Insistence that locals surrender all firearms and ammunition

rendered civilians totally defenseless to the soldierscumbandits. Belief in the singular

efficacy of harsh reprisals made the ownership of weapons in violation of German

regulations a crime punishable by death and the wide announcement of such executions

61 LSHA 6411306, KH in Skaudwile, VB for September 1916, fol. 80. 62 LSHA 6411622, KH in Kurschany, VB for the fourth quarter 1917, fol. 205. 223

seems to have in fact encouraged the surrender of weapons to the authorities. 63 The very same belief in the importance of severe reprisals led to the harshest of measures against populations suspected of assisting bandits. Captured bandits were executed, and any

communities supporting them were subject to summary judgments resulting in collective

fines of thousands of marks and individual imprisonment. Verwaltungschef Isenburg

reported in May 1916 that contributions had been levied on seven communities, none of

which resulted from the support of banditry and the highest of which was 2,000 marks.

By the end of August 1916, the administration had begun levying contributions on

communities that supported bandits and the imposed punishments totaled 200,000

marks. 64 The locals’ impotence in defending against the bandits and the administration’s inability to guarantee their safety led to harsh reprisals rather than a more lenient or generous policy. One district captain noted that civilians could not justifiably argue that they only helped bandits after being threatened with a weapon unless there existed evidence to support the contention. 65 Particularly egregious cases, such as the murder of a gendarme by bandits in the village of Glawdele in the fall of 1916 precipitated exceptional measures. Outrage at Gendarm Wille’s death led to the deportation of village residents and this measure was judged to have “made a strong impression” that would

“continue to have a long lasting effect” on other communities. 66

63 The district captain of Kielmy reported the discovery of a shotgun in the possession of a local resident. The individual’s execution resulted in the voluntary surrendering of several more guns. LSHA 6411306, KH in Kielmy, VB for January 1916, fol. 28. For an example of a public announcement of an execution in the Ober Ost press, see “Hinrichtung,” Kownoer Zeitung , June 8, 1917, sec. Beiblatt. 64 GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Moll, 1 August 1916, 7. 65 LSHA 641152, KH in Birsche, VB for March 1916, fol. 66. 66 LSHA 641152, KH in Birsche, VB for the fourth quarter 1916, fol. 138. Must check quote precisely. Auch die über viele Dörfer verhängten nicht unwesentlichen Kontributionen und die Aussiedelung der Einwohner des Dorfes Gladwele, wo Gendarm Wille ermordet wurde, scheinen starken Eindruck gemacht zu haben, so das ihre Heilsame Wirkung nicht ausbleiben wird. 224

District captains dutifully followed guidelines for responding to banditry in spite of their dubious efficacy and legality. The captain of district Rossienie dealt with the banditry problem in his area with blanket measures in spite of the lack of strong justification for doing so. He speculated that the bandits were “doubtless supported by some local residents, mostly vagabonds.” He furthermore noted that the parties responsible for controlling the bandits, namely gendarmes and foresters, did not have sufficient resources to do so. Like most district captains, he was of the opinion that the periodic searching of the area by large contingents of soldiers would be far less effective than the posting of smaller sized units for longer durations; such provisions did not, however, appear to be forthcoming. Making the soldiers’ failure to conclusively end the banditry all the more galling, the troops had neglected to adhere to economic regulations and instead requisitioned or purchased any food and equipment they desired. Comprised primarily of old reservists, the soldiers could not be prevented from doing so, partly because of the great distances separating the farms at which subordinate units were stationed. Poultry, pigs, lambs, butter, eggs, and milk were all consumed with no regard for the economic wellbeing of the land. The soldiers lazily neglected to fell the proper types of trees for firewood, instead opting to use the dearer stands of trees because of their more convenient location. 67 The troops seem to have caused greater economic

distress than the bandits themselves. Nevertheless, the district captain was underway with

an investigation to determine which communities should be punished with contributions

for having supported the bandits. By his own account, the bandits were willingly

supported only by marginal social elements, socalled “vagabonds,” and the

67 LSHA 641153, KH in Rossienie, VB for 1 October to 31 December 1916, fol. 88. 225

administration’s security institutions were incapable of apprehending the bandits.

Moreover, the troops dispatched to solve the problem had accomplished nothing of value and threatened the locals’ already precarious nutritional conditions. Collective punishment in light of all this could have only further embittered farmers who were already conscious of their susceptibility to bandit attacks. The institutionalization of this practice and the apparent incompetence of the German response undoubtedly caused an increasing contempt for the occupiers.

Actual incentives for the local communities to cooperate with the administration’s antibanditry measures took the form of modest rewards for information leading to the capture of outlaws. Kownoer Zeitung publicized a reward of 50 marks for information leading to the capture of bandits and 100 marks for civilians who themselves captured and delivered bandits. 68 The prospect of these rewards seems to have meant little in the face of violent bandits and the severe repression issued by the German administration.

Administrators at all levels regularly evaluated policy measures’ effectiveness with regard to their influence on the administration’s standing ( Ansehen ) in the eyes of the locals. In this regard, harsh punishments were the disincentive that allowed the authorities to wield absolute control over the occupied population. The primary importance of the punishments – deterring future violations of German regulations – could not be achieved if the punishments were not widely announced among the population. Judgments against bandits were to be issued as quickly as possible and made public in the population’s native language on brightly colored paper. District captains were also instructed to have

68 Kownoer Zeitung even less precisely alleged that Russian soldiers were combining with the “bad elements” of the local population. “Gegen das Bandenunwesen,” Kownoer Zeitung , January 22, 1918. 226

clergy members announce these cases from the pulpit. 69 Administrators had this dynamic in mind when they reported that the bandits’ unhindered harassment of the population hurt the standing of the German administration. 70 One district captain noted with exasperation in June 1917 that the “steadily blooming” bandit problem made most of the population more sympathetic to the German administration, but that nevertheless the standing of German power suffered. 71 The administration’s inability to put a quick solution appeared to be more problematic even than the suffering and economic disruptions that the bandits inflicted on the population. Above all else, the image of the administration’s incontestable power needed to remain intact. Attempts to raise and maintain the administration’s standing in the eyes of local civilians took the form of rather feeble arguments in Kownoer Zeitung on examples of success capturing bandits, the shared interests of the population and administration, the need for the two sides to operate on a basis of “mutual trust,” and the detrimental legacies of Russian government. 72

Though most administrators seemed to remain willfully ignorant of Germany’s own unintended contributions to the worsening banditry problem, the preoccupation with asserting a powerful image of German power did elicit occasional responses suggesting that some problems might require reforms of the occupiers’ behavior. District captains understood that excessive German policy violations and irregularities increased dissatisfaction with the administration. They argued that the administration must adhere

69 BAMA PHD 23/42, Verwaltungsbefehl Nr. XX, 7 July 1916, 7. 70 LSHA 6411622, KH in Kurschany, VB for 1 April to 30 September 1917, fol. 187188. LSHA 6411 53, KH in Rossienie, VB 29 Aug 1916, fol. 67. 71 LSHA 641153, KH in Rossienie, VB for 1 April to 30 June 1917, fol. 164. 72 “Gegen das Bandenunwesen,” Kownoer Zeitung , January 3, 1918; “Bandenunwesen,” Kownoer Zeitung , August 12, 1918; “Gegen das BandenUnwesen,” Kownoer Zeitung , October 8, 1918. 227

to a uniform set of rules in order to convincingly project strength rather than weakness, thereby buttressing the foundation of German order in the occupied lands. District captains regretted instances of gendarmes treating civilians poorly and German soldiers’ purchasing and stealing food from locals in clear violation of policy. 73 As the occupation progressed they even began to question the usefulness of certain applications of collective punishment and the harsh restrictions on travel. 74 Banditry was never stamped out, as was

indicated by an order in July 1918 that authorized the arming of rear line troops in order

to better combat hostile bandits. 75 By March 1918 the administration intended to discontinue the public announcement of imposed contributions, perhaps recognizing that such punishments did not deter the population when gendarmes and soldiers were unable to provide protection from bandit attacks. 76 The fundamentally harsh nature of German policy persisted throughout the occupation in spite of the inability to protect local civilians and the increasing political awareness of Lithuanians and other national groups.

There is evidence to suggest that at least some district captains advocated a more lenient implementation of administration policy than that demanded by their superior officers. Archival correspondence regarding the investigation of fires among civilian properties provides insight into the administrators’ means of assessing guilt and imposing punishments. District captains served as intermediaries between the office of

Verwaltungschef Isenburg and the police and judges who investigated and decided the

73 On Germans buying up goods, see LSHA 6411622, KH in Kurschany, VB for the fourth quarter 1917, fol. 211; Gendarmes’ behavior mentioned in LSHA 6411515, KH in Wiezajcie, VB for 1 April to 30 September 1917, fol. 227, and LSHA 6411306, KH in Skaudwile, VB for the last quarter 1917, fol. 155. 74 LSHA 6411306, KH in Skaudwile, VB for the six months from 1 October 1917 to 31 March 1918, fol. 188189. 75 LAS F2342/2, Etappeninspektion Njemenarmee Etappenbefehl No. 197, 16 Juli 1918. 76 LAS F2342/2, Etappeninspektion Njemenarmee Etappenbefehl No. 89, 30 March 1918. Some instances were nevertheless publicized in organs like Kownoer Zeitung . “Bestrafung von Gemeinden,” Kownoer Zeitung , April 7, 1918, sec. Beiblatt; “Bestrafte Gemeinden,” Kownoer Zeitung , July 20, 1918. 228

cases. Reports from district captains to Verwaltungschef Isenburg’s office from 1917 indicate that district captains were confronted with a broad range of cases ranging from vengeful arson to instances of negligence and socalled “acts of god.” As one district captain pointed out, most investigations of fires did not lead to the conclusive identification of a cause, and even fewer processes precisely identified the perpetrator.

Further complicating the matter, German judges were required to decide cases according to Russian law. In cases where none of these impediments precluded a clear judgment, sentences could be harsh. A twentythree year old woman who intentionally burned down her father’s home received ten years in a penitentiary. 77 A thirteen year old alleged to have intentionally started a fire with a cigarette was sentenced to three years in jail. 78

Most cases were not as straightforward but nearly all were regarded to be crucially

important to the maintenance of order in occupied Lithuania. The primary goal was to

minimize the loss of grain stores, the occupied area’s most precious commodity. In order

to prevent further destruction of grain, communities were to be held collectively

responsible for any “hostile fires” ( Schadenfeuer ) in their districts: “From now on a fine

corresponding to the damages will be imposed in every case.” 79 District captains were

ordered to educate the locals on the importance of strict oversight of grain stores and of

the severe consequences of failing to do so. Notwithstanding the inevitability of

accidental fires and the population’s general defenselessness against the marauding

Russian soldiers who were accused of starting such fires, uniformly applied punishments

were the means of ensuring compliance.

77 LSHA 6411661, Brände RussischKrottingen, fol. 110. 78 LSHA 6411119, Brände Rakischki, fol. 185193. 79 The order was inspired by a case of Russian soldiers setting fire to grain stores in Kurland. LAS F231, Chef der Deutschen Verwaltung, 27 August 1916, fol. 147. 229

The challenge of identifying perpetrators, however, made it enormously difficult for the administration to communicate its message via collective punishment. Lower level administrators struggled to draw a line between accidental, punishable fires, and accidental fires for which no one was deemed at fault. Fires most commonly resulted from either faulty equipment (usually chimneys or ovens) or from insufficient oversight

(of an oven or child, for example). In both cases, the administration urged punitive measures in as many cases as could be justified. The district captains responsible for reporting fires, however, often recommended that the lack of evidence of foul play should preclude punishment. They presented the accidental perpetrators of fires as victims, which they likely were after fire had relieved them of their homes and valuables. Another mitigating factor for some district captains was the absence of grain stores among the destroyed property. Although the correspondence between district captains and the administrative headquarters has not been preserved in full, the extant letters indicate that district captains generally argued – sometimes vehemently – for more lenient judgments while their superiors demanded harshly punitive results.

A number of inconsistently defined gradients illustrate the types of punishments meted out to local civilians as well as the sometimes controversial judgments that underlay them. Beyond the clearest instances of arson, the most straightforward cases were those involving accidental fires caused by negligent behavior. Such fires were generally punished with fines of up to 100 marks. One district captain reflexively suggested that seven poor families who had accidentally burned down their shared home should make up for their negligence by having all of the adults undertake a few days of

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forced labor. 80 In other cases, however, district captains might take the civilians’ lack of means into consideration and argue that they had already suffered enough. The responsible parties were often punished nonetheless, as in one such case with a sentence of two weeks of forced labor. 81 Negligence could be difficult to determine when faulty equipment contributed to the outbreak of a fire. A German judge noted that a defendant had failed to comply with chimney inspection provisions requiring “expert” monthly maintenance only because no such experts were available in the area. Moreover, the man had himself cleaned the chimney and was judged to both possess sufficient expertise and a “reliable and orderly” character. 82 The man was likely punished nonetheless.

Punishment often followed even when the legal process could not produce any evidence

of negligence. A fire in the village of Bauble was initially determined to result from

negligence but the subsequent court proceeding did not find sufficient proof. The district

captain provided his summary: “Because the damage was very minimal [and] grain stores

were not at all involved, a collective punishment (Zwangsauflage ) of 200 marks should

suffice.” 83 Punishment of some variety certainly comprised the default option, yet local administrators faced a difficult set of issues when determining who should be punished.

Two district captains highlighted the problems that predictably resulted from the imposition of fines in every instance of fire. In Skaudwile, the district captain observed that the population regarded such punishments as “purposeless oppression and not without reason.” 84 He argued that it was unfair to punish civilians for equipment defects

and that punishments should not be imposed in cases with no obvious perpetrator. In

80 LSHA 6411661, Brände RussischKrottingen, fol. 38. 81 LSHA 6411119, Brände Rakischki, fol. 4151. 82 LSHA 6411513, Brände Wiezajcie, fol. 65. 83 LSHA 6411661, Brände RussischKrottingen, fol. 5658. 84 LSHA 6411306, KH in Skaudwile, VB for the first quarter 1917, fol. 117. 231

Wiezajcie, Lieutenant Friedrich resisted collective fines and punishments in cases with no proven perpetrator. In March of 1917 he presented a thoroughly argued case against a military order from January 1917 that had demanded punishments for all fires but those

“obviously caused by an act of god.” 85 Such instances had never occurred in his district.

He protested the notion that the administration could assume that the population acted in

malice and that each fire represented a “danger to the troops,” the latter serving as the

legal basis for collective punishment. This position “strongly contradicted a sense of justice and does not serve to strengthen the standing of the German offices.” This strict

adherence to treat local civilians fairly by adhering to the rule of law put him at odds with

superior administrators, as is evidenced by a series of exchanges in late 1916 and early

1917 on the subject of when and how to impose collective fines. In the first case, a farmer

accidentally caused a fire while drying grain in his barn. The German court decided not to punish him because it could not conclusively prove negligence. A number of letters

written by Friedrich from January through March suggest a heated exchange with his

superiors, though the communications of the latter have not been preserved. Friedrich

argued that the case did not warrant either individual or collective punitive measures because negligence could not be proven, the population at large was not in any way

responsible, the security of the troops had never been endangered, and the “perpetrator”

of the fire was “severely harmed [financially]” by the losses. The accompanying report of

the investigating gendarmes laid out the lack of evidence against the farmer while the

local mayor noted that that the poor construction materials endemic to the occupied lands

surely sensitized local citizens to the importance of reducing fires by all possible means.

85 LSHA 6411515, KH in Wiezajcie, VB for 1 January to 31 March 1917, fol. 188191. 232

It is unclear if the farmer and his community were ultimately punished, but the inclusion of suggested fine amounts among the correspondence suggests that the district captain’s arguments did not prevail.

The entire logic of the administration worked against efforts to treat such cases in a fair and equitable manner. Subsequent conflicts between Friedrich and administration and military superiors suggest that it was essentially futile to resist the drive toward harsh punishment even where no guilty parties could be ascertained. When a thirteen year old farmer’s son accidentally caused a fire by dropping match in a barn, he was punished with a mere reprimand as specified under Russian law. The military Etappe of the Eighth

Army protested the result, arguing that either the family or the community should be punished in the case of a child committing a crime. Friedrich once again protested that the law did not allow for such additional and senseless punishment, and it is unclear how the case was finally resolved. Several months later in the summer of 1917 two children damaged a telephone cable and were punished accordingly: the eleven year old was too young to be punished and the fourteen year old received three weeks in jail. Military superiors once again intervened, however, and suggested that additional punishment should be imposed in the form of a collective punishment on the community. Several

Ober Ost officials discussed the legality of such punishment, essentially determining that punishment could but need not be applied in such a case given the mitigating circumstances. Ober Ost could issue collective punishment in cases when “shared responsibility can be assumed or when, for example, it appears to be appropriate for the prevention of further incidents.” The correspondence strongly suggests that collective fines were ultimately issued on the latter basis: “Even if a direct guilt for the actions of

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[the two children] perhaps cannot be attributed, a collective fine doubtless still seems appropriate and corresponds to the interests of the army because it would cause the two communities to keep a close eye on the two boys – who are clearly capable of [crimes] – and prevent the carrying out of further criminal offenses.” 86 Both the family and the

community were to receive a lesson in parenting in the form of a collective fine.

Notwithstanding the occasional acknowledgement that German administrative practice might be improved in certain regards, officials brooked little deviation from the

administrative measures regulating agricultural production. Lithuania’s production of

food for the German war effort was viewed as the primary justification for the investment

of German resources in the conquered territory. These considerations drew Lithuanians

into the German war effort while denying them any recourse to German civil law. The

obligations placed on Lithuanian civilians as a result of this perspective are illustrated in

the report of the district captain of Birsche in December 1916:

Many of the people forget that they are still in wartime conditions and especially that they provisionally remain Russian subjects. Sometimes they express some views much more suited to peacetime. Farmers explain that because they are paid less for transporting wagon loads when under the orders of the agricultural administration than when they are being paid for services by the district office, they would rather pay the fine than undertake the task. Naturally it is then explained to them in the necessary language that this is an impossible point of view. Still, it is telling that they even come to consider such thoughts. 87

From the summer of 1916 on, nearly every aspect of the locals’ activity was subject to

the occupier’s extraction of agricultural and material goods from the land. Labor,

livestock, equipment, and produce all came under German purview and their immediate

importance to the German war effort precluded any hesitation among the local

86 LSHA 6411513, Brände Wiezajcie, fol. 98102. 87 LSHA 641152, KH in Birsche, VB for the fourth quarter 1916, fol. 146. 234

population. One district captain nevertheless argued that the population’s minimal legal protections needed to be subverted in order to carry out the economic program:

The decision … giving enemy subjects the right to begin legal processes against German officers has had the regrettable consequence that a local resident has brought a case against an economic officer in the civil court because a horse was taken away from him. I have the intention of issuing the strongest possible punishment against the plaintiff as soon as the legal situation is somewhat clearer in order to make a deterring example to the population to prevent the repeat of such cases which harm the standing of the German army. 88

The administrators most responsible for the execution of policy regarded the harshly enforced incontestability of German rule to be the sole means of ensuring compliance.

There would no end to legal battles if the economic officers most responsible for securing agricultural stores from the occupied land could be arraigned by locals simply because they performed their duties.

Intrusive measures to extract all possible food stores from farmers continued throughout the occupation in spite of administrators’ gradual realization that local civilians were not, in fact, withholding large quantities of food from the administration.

Each instance of interdicting smugglers or finding illicit stores of food encouraged the district captains to reassess their opinions of local compliance. The methods of securing food became increasingly direct and expansive over the course of 1916 and 1917. Many district captains had initially authorized merchants to travel around the district collecting food which they must then sell directly to the district office, but these tasks became centralized in the hands of the German administrators directly subordinated to the district commanders. These Amtsvorsteher worked with the gendarmes and economic officers to buy up food directly from the producers in their areas. This arrangement ultimately

88 LSHA 6411306, KH in Kielmy, VB for February 1916, fol. 36. 235

settled on the system of collecting fixed amounts of butter, milk and eggs from each community. Production that surpassed quotas was rewarded with additional cash payments and the failure to fulfill the quotas resulted in fines. 89 Newly constructed or

regulated dairies and slaughterhouses – always run by German personnel – increased productive capacity further yet. By requiring that a German soldier oversee each grain mill, the administration placed an obstacle in the way of furtive milling of grain for the black market. Directly purchasing and controlling food in this manner seems to have been quite effective according to the district captains’ own assessments. German expectations for the harvest frequently overshot the actual yield and the stringent search of locals’ homes for hidden supplies was the means of ensuring maximal control of the area’s grain.

By the summer and fall of 1917, however, a number of district captains noticed that searches of homes turned up very little in the way of hidden grain and that local farmers genuinely struggled to fulfill their quotas. Optimistic hopes for increased production transitioned to the frank acknowledgement that administrators were already bringing in all that they possibly could. 90 Other district captains continued to increase punishments for insufficient deliveries with the expectation that this would yet improve their yields. 91

89 LSHA 641153, KH in Rossienie, VB 29 Aug 1916, fol. 69. He also mentions controlling grain mills LSHA 641153, KH in Rossienie, VB for 1 October to 31 December 1916, fol. 94. See also LAS F231, KH in SchaulenBeisagola, 1 July 1916, fol. 119. 90 First he is skeptical of complaints about butter quotas, but several months later in June 1917 he says that raising butter quotas difficult for many families. LSHA 641152, KH in Birsche, VB for the first quarter 1917, fol. 180; LSHA 641152, KH in Birsche, VB for the second quarter 1917, fol. 219. See also LSHA 641153, KH in Rossienie, VB for 1 October to 31 December 1916, fol. 98; LSHA 641153, KH in Rossienie, VB for 1 April to 30 September 1917, fol. 181. 91 LSHA 6411306, KH in Skaudwile, VB for the six months from 1 April 1917 to 30 September 1917, fol. 146147. 236

Overreach and Adjustment

The German Administration for Lithuania fervently pushed to increase the lands’ output until the continued expansion of economic measures no longer seemed politically feasible. The Russian provisional government’s pledge in early 1917 to continue fighting the could not be fulfilled when the Bolshevik revolution thrust Russia into civil war in the fall, effectively removing Germany’s opponent on the Eastern Front.

While this ultimately gave Germany free reign in the East – a position that was formalized in the unimaginably advantageous Treaty of BrestLitovsk in March 1918 – the western allies’ overwhelming numerical and material advantage began to appear unstoppable in the West. Germany began taking concrete steps to shape the political future of the conquered eastern territory nonetheless, hoping that minor political concessions might create a more favorable settlement. A small but vociferous Lithuanian intelligentsia had for some time been advocating the creation of an independent

Lithuanian state. These political developments occurred far from the occupied territories and from Germany itself until Germany’s threatened military situation in 1917 could no longer be denied. Germany needed to at least posture as though it intended to create an independent postwar Lithuania; anything less would be a major propaganda defeat. 92

Germany therefore began a more direct but nevertheless dilatory campaign to portray itself as the friendly guarantor of Lithuanian independence. The creation of the

Lithuanian Land Council (German: Landesrat ; Lithuanian: Taryba) in September 1917 immediately granted Lithuanian civilians considerably more political freedom than they

92 KarlHeinz Janssen, “Die Baltische Okkupationspolitik des deutschen Reiches,” in Von den baltischen Provinzen zu den baltischen Staaten: Beiträge zur Entstehungsgeschichte der Republiken Estland und Lettland 1918-1920 , ed. Jürgen von Hehn (Marburg/Lahn: J.G.HerderInstitut, 1977), 230; Demm, Ostpolitik und Propaganda im Ersten Weltkrieg , 172173. 237

had yet experienced during the war. 93 German leadership primarily viewed the authorization of Lithuanian political activity as a means of better controlling and directing Lithuania’s incipient nationalism and so these new developments only led to minor adjustments in administrative practice. Germany maintained control of Lithuania’s economy in spite of Russia’s defeat and the primary justification remained the idealized presentation of German rule in contrast to Russia’s harmful methods.

The banning of forced labor battalions occurred within this context. 60,000 civilians were employed in the battalions at the height of the practice, isolating the workers from their communities and compensating them with a pittance that few administrators regarded as fair ( Verwaltungschef Isenburg was one of them). 94 District

captains observed (and, to some degree, complained) that the forced labor battalions were

a primary reason for the population’s increasingly bitter attitude toward German

authority. Rumors swirled about the workers’ conditions within the battalions and many

locals did all they could to avoid having to serve, some going so far as to volunteer for

military service in the Polish Legion. 95 Forced labor was banned on 20 September 1917

and district captains welcomed the change. The formal change did not, however, put an

immediate end to the practice. District captains noted that German firms violated the prohibition by forcibly retaining workers beyond the expiration of their contracts or

refusing to pay the promised wages. 96 Some locals were compelled to work in spite of the

93 Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity and German Occupation in World War I (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 205210. Chapter 5 addresses the political developments in 1917 and 1918 in greater detail. 94 Ibid., 734. 95 LSHA 6411306, KH in Skaudwile, VB for the first quarter 1917, fol. 117118. Regarding workers running away from forced labor battalions after being gathered to work, see LSHA 641153, KH in Rossienie, VB for 1 October to 31 December 1916, fol. 102. 96 LSHA 6411306, KH in Skaudwile, VB for the last quarter 1917, fol. 162; 641153, KH in Rossienie, VB for 1 April to 30 September 1917, fol. 166, 178179. 238

administration’s failure to supply them with the necessary clothing. 97 The captain of

District Skaudwile reported in January 1918 that two exceptionally bad cases of mistreatment by the Military Railway Commission prompted him to file a complaint against the German agency. The railway officials did not respond to his inquiries, however, in spite of his insistence that railway employees’ interventions in the labor market must be sharply curtailed. The hated labor battalions even degraded security when disgruntled workers fled to join the criminal bands thriving at the expense of local farmers’ food supplies.

Administrators noted an increasing sense of dissatisfaction among the local population. Measures like collective punishment for fires that had not even been judged arson were seen by the population as “senseless oppression,” and district captains occasionally even shared this assessment. 98 Contributions were levied on communities – and made public – for questionable violations like the failure to surrender the military clothing and equipment and reluctance to help a German forester douse a fire. 99 A number of factors likely contributed to the this surging resentment, including the burden of food requisitioning, the unfair and exploitive labor practices, and the inability of the administration to even guarantee the civilians’ safety visàvis the raging banditry crisis.

District Rossienie suffered from a particularly violent outbreak of banditry and the district captain noticed a development in bandit activity that reflected the evolving character of local resentment. In his report from December 1916, he referred to the bandits as the “Russian plague”, indicating that the bandits comprised Russian soldiers

97 LSHA 641153, KH in Rossienie, VB for 1 January to 31 March 1917, 142. 98 LSHA 6411306, KH in Skaudwile, VB for the first quarter 1917, fol. 117; LSHA 6411515, KH in Wiezajcie, VB for 1 January to 31 March 1917, fol. 188189. 99 “Unbotmässige Gemeinden,” Kownoer Zeitung , December 1, 1916; “Bestrafte Gemeinden.” 239

and escaped prisoners of war who were not members of the occupied citizenry. Six months later, the composition of the bandits seemed to include many more local civilians.

These “young, adventurous rascals” clearly had no political or military purpose; they dutifully worked alongside their parents or supervisors during the day and robbed wealthier farmers at night. Because they had Ober Ost passports, they could only be identified when caught in the act or when otherwise violating regulations. 100 The line between the obedient, well intentioned civilian population and the malevolent enemy, never perfectly clear to administrators in the culturally disorienting borderlands, became increasingly blurred over the course of the occupation. District captains’ new awareness of the detrimental effect of German policy inspired few ameliorative efforts.

Those working for the German administrative apparatus could not have helped but notice that the privileging of the German army and homeland had dire consequences for local civilians. Although they occasionally took note of the civilians’ suffering and deprivation, they did not have the capacity to make sweeping changes. The locals remained fixed in administrators’ perception as a crucial component of the German war effort. Indeed they were, yet the prioritizing of the German military’s needs ultimately produced outcomes that hindered the region’s ability to continue supplying locals and

Germans. The drafting of horses demonstrates how this dynamic injured the economic potential of the lands as well as civilians’ perception of German rule. German sources

frequently commented on the importance of horses to the Lithuanian farmer. Articles in

Kownoer Zeitung described an almost preternatural connection between Lithuanians and

their “ Panjepferde ” (“Panjehorses”), noting that farmers looked upon them as friends as

100 LSHA 641153, KH in Rossienie, VB for 1 October to 31 December 1917, fol. 189. See also LSHA 641153, KH in Rossienie, VB for 1 April to 30 June 1917, fol. 1467. 240

well as workers. 101 The district captain of Birsche confirmed this during his tenure,

observing that “the Lithuanian derives his greatest pleasure from raising horses” and that

“he loves his horse above all else”; 102 they are his “friend and companion, but also his wealth and his pride.” 103 By March 1917, however, he presided over a new round of

horse requisitioning that took 1,125 horses, 800 of which had been owned by farmers

who subsequently lacked even a single horse. Twelve months later, an additional 739

horses were drafted, further reducing the local supplies. 104 The remaining horses rarely

had enough fodder to complete the desired tasks, mirroring the conditions within

Germany due to the empire’s prewar reliance on food exports. 105 Lithuania’s horses

appeared to be in even worse condition than they actually were due to farmers’ efforts to

dissuade German officials from drafting them. 106 The district captain in Rossienie noted

as early as December 1916 that any additional drafting of horses would severely impede

locals’ ability to carry out their agricultural tasks. 107 District captains nevertheless issued punishments all the while for locals’ refusal to help with transport wagons or attempt to

spare horses from the purchasing agents. 108 By the spring of 1918, district captains

reported that a large percentage of horses were overworked, lame, or mangy. 109

101 “Das Gemütsleben der Litauer,” Kownoer Zeitung , January 4, 1917, sec. Beiblatt; “Land und Leute in Litauen.” 102 LSHA 641152, KH in Birsche, VB for the fourth quarter 1916, fol. 165. 103 “Der Litauer und sein Pferde,” Kownoer Zeitung , February 6, 1918, sec. Beiblatt. 104 LSHA 641152, KH in Birsche, VB for the first quarter 1917, fol. 193; LSHA 641152, KH in Birsche, VB for the six months from 1 October 1917 to 1 April 1918, fol. 277278. On the subject of locals’ last horse being taken, see LSHA 6411306, KH in Skaudwile, VB for the last quarter 1917, fol. 164165. 105 Prior to the war, Germany annually imported five million (metric) tons of fodder. Welch, Germany, Propaganda and Total War, 1914-1918 , 120. 106 LSHA 6411622, KH in Kurschany, VB for 1 October 1917 to 31 March 1918, fol. 224; LSHA 6411 52, KH in Birsche, VB for the first quarter 1917, fol. 188189. 107 LSHA 6411515, KH in Wiezajcie, VB for 1 October to 31 December 1916, fol. 165. 108 He noted that the construction of a railroad in the area would help a great deal, alleviating the need to draft locals’ teams of horses to transport supplies and materials around the district. LSHA VB Kurschany, 3/1917 /16970; LSHA 641152, KH in Birsche, VB for the fourth quarter 1917, fol. 256. 109 LSHA 641152, KH in Birsche, VB for the six months from 1 October 1917 to 1 April 1918, fol 284. 241

Discontent with the encroaching requisitioning came to a head and administrators could do little to stem the tide. During one requisitioning in 1918, administrators discovered a sign written in Lithuanian that urged the horse owners to refuse compliance with the

German measures. Powerless to catch the perpetrator by any other means, the local office offered a 300 Mark reward for information. 110 The captain of district Birsche resignedly

observed that instructing local civilians on the necessity of the drafting had no effect,

while newspaper articles threatened owners who hid their horses from the administration

with six months jail time and a 600 mark fine; the administrators experienced a

diminishing capacity to reach the civilians with arguments. 111 The occupiers continued to apply unjust policies: horses with East Prussian brandings were confiscated without question while horses demonstrably stolen from Lithuanian farmers and smuggled across the border into East Prussia were not returned to their rightful owners. 112 Justifiably or not, local civilians remained subject to the demands of the German war effort and they had little recourse to address legitimate grievances.

Local contentment with German rule flagged, understandably enough, in accordance with the decreasing availability of food and materials as the war progressed.

The severe administrative framework that caused the scarcities in Lithuania was slightly mitigated but not severely curtailed; the same was also true of the propagandistic organs that explained the benefits of German rule to the occupied civilians and German readers alike. Though written entirely in German, Kownoer Zeitung doggedly endeavored to justify German activities and policies in Lithuania. A typical portrayal in this vein

110 LSHA 6411515, KH in Wiezajcie, VB for 1 October 1917 to 31 March 1918, fol. 269. 111 LSHA 641152, KH in Birsche, VB for the six months from 1 October 1917 to 1 April 1918, fol. 277; “An die Pferdehalter,” Kownoer Zeitung , February 6, 1918, sec. Beiblatt. 112 LSHA 6411306, KH in Kielmy, VB for 1 June to 15 July 1916, fol. 59; LSHA 6411515, KH in Wiezajcie, VB for 1 October 1917 to 31 March 1918, fol. 284. 242

commemorated the second anniversary of the capture of Kowno on 19 August 1917, praising the occupiers’ “maintenance of public safety, provision of the city with food, the rebirth of the commercial and industrial operations ... the cleanliness of the streets, the care for gardens and parks, and unfolding the entirety of civil life and activity in the streets just as in peacetime.” 113 In fact, the lives of Lithuanian civilians bore little

resemblance even to the limited freedoms they had enjoyed under Russian rule prior to

the outbreak of war. Kownoer Zeitung argued the opposite, however, stating that “the

local population would never come to regret the ‘German invasion’. It was much worse

in Russian times.” 114 Civilians’ access to food and a livable wage were by 1917

substantially worse than they had been in peacetime but the article dismissively referred

to a few complaints about problems resulting from the war, noting that Lithuania would

nevertheless soon enjoy “a new and happier future.” The administration thus

acknowledged in passing the obstacles currently standing in the way of the German

officials’ perfection of their administrative activity, but then cheerfully insisted that the

future would reveal the true, benevolent design pursued all the while.

The benefits of German administration were presented as gifts that would be

appreciated in time. Particular administrators were even singled out as benefactors who

selflessly worked to improve every facet of the locals’ lives. Verwaltungschef Isenburg, the zealous chief administrator in Lithuania who desired to settle ethnic Germans in the occupied lands and encouraged his administrators not to shy away from the harsh punishment of civilians, was lauded in Kownoer Zeitung for “using all of his means to

113 “Zum 2. Jahrestag der Einnahme Kownos,” Skizzen-Mappe der Kownoer Zeitung , August 19, 1917. Headlines also read, “Kowno zwei Jahre Deutsch!” 114 Ibid. 243

even out the hardships that necessarily come with the war.” 115 The article speculated that

“the population would perhaps recognize in time the thanks that they owe to this man’s

welfare.” Praise of administrators in this manner was to some degree simply a cynical

whitewashing of the undesirable but ameliorable conditions imposed by Isenburg’s

regime. On the other hand, it was fully in line with the type of paternalism that shaped the

attitudes of administrators from Isenburg down to the district captains and gendarmes. In

spite of the fact that the Russian Empire no longer comprised a serious military threat, the

German administration insisted that its continued direction of all aspects of life in the

East was for the wellbeing of the locals themselves. Examples of concrete improvements

undertaken by German personnel provided the most effective means of making the point.

An article in December 1917 reported on a drainage ditch in the middle of a hay field that

was divided into a number of individually owned parcels. The ditch had once provided

effective drainage, but the gradual accumulation of sediment had rendered it ineffective.

While harvest years with moderate rainfall produced a not insignificant amount of good

quality hay, heavy rains of any duration during the harvest season would lead to the

decay of the entire crop. An estate owner named Filiskowski had purchased some nearby

land from the farmers and he offered to improve the ditch if each farmer would contribute

ten rubles. The famers, however, “preferred to lose thirty to forty loads of hay than to

sacrifice ten rubles.” This situation would not stand under the Germans: “The German

district captain now gave his attention to the meadow. He ordered that the farmers of the

115 Isenburg’s acceptance of an honorary doctorate from a German university was the primary reason for the article. “Dr. Fürst von IsenburgBirstein,” Kownoer Zeitung , June 29, 1917, sec. Beiblatt. Other German administrators were also praised in the press; the chief administrator for the city of Kowno was alleged to have left a strong, positive mark on the city, and a square was named after Kowno’s first commandant. “Wechsel in der Kownoer Stadtverwaltung,” Kownoer Zeitung , June 25, 1917, sec. Beiblatt; “WernerEhrenfurchtPlatz,” Kownoer Zeitung , June 26, 1917. 244

surrounding villages make themselves available for forced labor in order to dig a canal through the meadow. The labors strongly progress under the leadership of a [German] engineer.” If the raising of the meadow’s agricultural potential were not enough to justify the effort, the German leaders could also take comfort in the knowledge that “the farmers now recognize the good deed and happily undertake forced labor because they understand that a single investment of ten to twenty rubles will bring in a yearly income of 500 to

600 rubles.” 116 German leadership had increased the field’s productive capacity and proved to the local farmers the value of using energetic, rational labor to improve one’s

economic situation. This type of action was exactly what all district captains were

intended to undertake for the good of the army, the homeland, and the civilians. 117

In praising concrete achievements as the pillar justifying the severity of German administrative methods, Kownoer Zeitung and other sources reprised and encouraged the institutionalized notion that German administrators’ harsh imposition of policy provided essential education that benefitted the people. Kownoer Zeitung suffered no shortage of examples and indeed the German authorities had created a workable if unsustainable order in Lithuania. If the exploitive practices had not incurred such enormous human costs, they might have even lived up to the adulation. The press nevertheless argued that these changes must be publicized in a way that also encouraged the major beneficiaries – allegedly the civilian population of Lithuania – to acknowledge the responsibilities accompanying them. For example, “the administration exerted itself with great success to

116 “Deutsche Kulturarbeit,” Kownoer Zeitung , December 14, 1917, sec. Beiblatt. 117 Prussian technocrats specializing in the hydrological improvement of agricultural land had evinced similar attitudes toward reluctant Prussian farmers in the previous fifty years. Improved drainage and irrigation were seen as means of solving social problems, and a way to “transfer the concepts of maximum efficiency and productivity from the mechanical to the organic world.” Rita Gudermann, “Conviction and Constraint: Hydraulic Engineers and Agricultural Amelioration Projects in NineteenthCentury Prussia,” in Germany's Nature: Cultural Landscapes and Environmental History , ed. Thomas M. Lekan and Thomas Zeller (New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 2005). 245

fight epidemics and infectious diseases in the occupied area” and this naturally brought about certain benefits. The occupied area boasted 134 delousing facilities (with 98 already operating in the fall of 1917 and an additional thirty six under construction) and

100 medical isolation houses with 1,997 beds. These resources were sufficient to devote

“particular attention” to the hygienic struggle but they required the proper attitude of the population in order to delouse 40,000 people per day. 118 Hygienic measures extended to the daily lives of city residents now required to undertake strict measures that they had never known in Russian times. Residents’ obligation to sweep in front of their homes alleviated the anklehigh dirt that had supposedly plagued the city prior to the Germans’ arrival. Grocers now kept a much closer eye on the cleanliness of their shops. 119 These

measures created cities with cleaner streets and more ordered commercial activity which

reduced the number of native residents succumbing to epidemics or seeking shelter in

foreign lands. 120 Administrators acknowledged that the introduction of such measures necessarily disrupted civilians’ lives but demanded in typical fashion that the locals recognize their value: “Some residents find all of these regulations uncomfortable, some even think they amount to harassment. But even these people will have to recognize that such discomforts are ordered simply for their own good.” 121 Even in the summer of 1918 workers who refused to fell trees and farmers who refused to transport wood were punished and the public was reminded that such tasks “absolutely must be performed for

118 “Behördliche Gesundheitspflege in Litauen,” Kownoer Zeitung , September 1, 1917. 119 “Deutsche Ordnung,” Kownoer Zeitung , August 12, 1917, sec. Beiblatt. 120 “Rossienie während des Krieges,” Kownoer Zeitung , October 28, 1917, sec. Beiblatt. 121 “Deutsche Ordnung.” 246

the general good” and “that the compensation is good.” 122 It seems that these virtues were not manifest to the occupied population most affected by them.

Portraying the administration’s work as a benevolent gift necessarily assumed the lands’ inferiority to German practices in every imaginable way. These depictions rested on at least the tacit understanding of the cultural gradient declining from west to east.

Creating an impressive and permanent achievement from the East’s raw materials required more advanced methods. The concept of bringing German methods to bear on eastern deficiencies extended beyond agricultural production or hygiene. Kownoer

Zeitung published an article in September 1917 by Reserve Captain Weiß entitled “The future Kowno.” Captain Weiß’s stated aim was to consider the city’s future from “the perspective of modern urban planning methods.” From this advanced perspective,

Germans saw countless instances of untapped potential, almost as if Germany’s higher level of development provided Captain Weiß with the means to see into the future because the improvement of Lithuania would ultimately render it more similar to

Germany’s present condition. With proper administration, Kowno could take advantage of its geographical location and establish strong economic ties to its western neighbors.

Modern innovations into the city’s transportation layout and its division into municipal districts would create more ordered and efficient conditions. Property reforms would do wonders for the economy. 123 These imagined improvements were suffused with the

certainty in modern, scientific, German methods like the digging of agricultural drainage

ditches and the prevention of typhus through delousing. The important point was to

122 “Arbeitsverweigerung,” Kownoer Zeitung , July 7, 1918, sec. Beiblatt. 123 “Das zukünftige Kowno,” Skizzen-Mappe der Kownoer Zeitung , September 9, 1917. 247

ensure that they be relentlessly implemented and maintained, and that Germany receive all due credit for bestowing them upon Lithuania.

Administrators managed to fit the dynamic political changes in late 1917 into this same perspective. The founding of the Lithuanian Taryba in September yielded only nominal rhetorical deference to Lithuania’s newfound political significance. To begin with, this provisional governmental body remained subordinate to German administration and was charged with “advising on the future administration and economy of Lithuania” rather than officially pursuing a path toward independence. Announcing this new arrangement in the 25 September 1917 edition of Kownoer Zeitung , the press reminded readers that it was the Germans who liberated Lithuania from Russian tyranny and revitalized it in every way. They had “found a chaotic land filled with a timid and distrustful people” that had been held in artificial “isolation and culturelessness” by the

Russians. In contrast, by founding the Taryba “a sapling was planted which under the care of wise gardeners should become a Volksbaum providing shade and issuing forth blessings to its people.” Although the identity of the future “gardeners” remained

unspecified, the accompanying survey of the German administration’s many

achievements left little doubt that the author envisioned a particularly bright future for

Lithuania if it maintained close ties to Germany. The German initiated “renewal process”

(Erneuerungsprozess ) had wrought fundamental change by infusing the land with advanced culture. The occupier offered nothing short of “the beginnings of Western culture.” The ideal solution would be for Lithuania’s political leaders to realize that it was in the best interests of their land and population to work within the framework

248

provided by the German administration. 124 This view was expressed with the kind of scientific certainty that underlaid descriptions of all that Germany had achieved and hoped yet to accomplish in the occupied East. The metaphor of the new Lithuanian political institution as a sapling was in this sense apt, and redolent of the administration’s agricultural designs. On the cultivation of Lithuanian fruit trees, an article had noted that

“the culture of the fruit still leaves much to be desired,” and that there remained much order to be instilled in the locals’ plantings. 125 Just as selfinterest compelled administrators to exert themselves cultivating Lithuanian orchards, so too were

Germany’s political intentions less selfless than they appeared. Reminders of Germany’s benevolent contributions nevertheless exhorted all readers to understand that a lasting bond between Germany and Lithuania would be to the benefit of both nations.

The new political developments that began in the fall of 1917 hardly changed the administration’s calculus and they made even less of an impact on the attitudes of the administrators who implemented German policy. Discontinuation of the hated forced labor battalions and the eventual reduction of certain travel requirements produced marginally better outcomes for local civilians without alleviating their primary burdens.

District captains’ observations in the months after the creation of the Taryba demonstrate how superficial changes had influenced the administrators’ tasks without causing fundamental change. One reported at the end of September 1917 that Germany’s apparently sinking fortunes in the war made the population cavalier toward administrative regulations; they resisted learning German, avoided paying taxes, and

124 “Berufung eines Landesrates für Litauen,” Kownoer Zeitung , September 25, 1917. 125 “Obstbau in Litauen,” Kownoer Zeitung , May 9, 1917. 249

generally appeared less friendly. 126 One month later and the situation was even worse as the population became increasingly aware that the German presence in Lithuanian was less permanent than it had ever been and that German officials were now compelled to

“court their affection.” The result was a newly “selfconfident and unwilling” population.

Worse yet, the population heard “the constantly repeated orders about the benevolent treatment and consideration of the population” and now “every crime of the troops, even slight ones, which previously would have been accepted in silence, becomes cause for complaint.” 127 In spite of these changes, administrators continued extracting resources

from Lithuania and punishing the civilians who violated regulations. Civilians remained

subject to the nearly absolute powers of the German administrators.

Administrators of all ranks continued to regard local civilians’ deficiencies as the

main obstacle to the changes that were to transform the lands. Although Germans

appreciated what they perceived to be Lithuanian farmers’ almost universal disinterest in politics, they deeply regretted that this insularity appeared to stem from indolence.

Locals’ laziness was interpreted in a number of ways: they planted only what they needed because they were not accustomed to striving for better conditions, they assumed the

Germans would provide for them, or they were simply accustomed to their lazy habits. 128

The prescription for managing this problem – most administrators believed that it could only be solved over a longer period of time – was a combination of training on new methods, strict oversight, and the type of hard punishments to which some administrators

126 LSHA 641153, KH in Rossienie, VB for 1 April to 30 September 1917, fol. 179, 185187. 127 LSHA 641153, KH in Rossienie, VB for 1 October to 31 December 1917, fol. 199. 128 LSHA 6411515, KH in Wiezajcie, VB 30 Nov 1915, fol. 40; LSHA 6411515, KH in Wiezajcie, VB for 1 April to 30 September 1917, fol. 235; GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Moll, 1 August 1916, fol. 22. 250

assumed Lithuanians inured. 129 Punishment continued to be the order of the day in 1917 and 1918 because Germany’s need of the lands’ food stores only increased over time and administrators had long been conditioned to regard the firm hand as the best means of compelling the obedience of the occupied civilians.

Disdain of the locals also strongly determined attitudes toward their employment in administrative roles. Doctors, nurses, tradesmen, and community leaders all provoked the ire of German administrators when their training and temperament fell short of

German standards. The overwhelmingly negative views of locals’ work ethic and capabilities informed Manichaean policies like the exclusion of locals from the administrationregulated meat inspection process. One district captain expressed his agreement with this policy by observing that locals lacked the necessary “sense of responsibility, conscientiousness, and Sinn für Ordnung .” 130 This policy prevailed in spite of the enduring shortage of German personnel and the multitude of tasks carried out by gendarmes, including the fight against banditry. Local civilians were not German enough in their bearing to undertake crucial tasks; unlike the frequently alluded to

“incorruptibility” of the German officials, local civilians were thought to be lazy, irresponsible, and noted liars. 131

129 In order, LSHA 6411515, KH in Wiezajcie, VB 30 Nov 1915, fol. 41; GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, 1 July to 1 October 1916, fol. 33; LSHA 6411515, KH in Wiezajcie, VB for 1 April to 30 June 1917, fol. 222. 130 LSHA 641152, KH in Birsche, VB for the first quarter 1917, fol. 179. Isenburg notes in May 1916 report that meat inspection was introduced in 41 cities and the positions were occupied only by trained gendarmes or German soldiers. GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, May 1916, 14. 131 Examples of locals considered liars. LSHA 641153, KH in Rossienie, VB 27 November 191518; LSHA 6411515, KH in Wiezajcie, VB for 1 January to 31 March 1917, fol. 194195. 251

Conclusion

German efforts to assert absolute control in Lithuania ultimately undermined the attempt to win over the occupied population. The nation’s increasingly precarious material well being certainly provided a compelling justification to extract every possible resource in the conquered territory. In practice, however, the economic subjugation of

Lithuania recalled the autocratic injustices of prewar tsarist rule. Depiction of the occupied lands as helplessly backward and culturally inferior exacerbated the severity of resource extraction, the administration’s raison d’etre. The distinct inferiority of local civilians was inscribed in Ober Ost policy and relentlessly propagated in the military press organs. Even attempts to portray the locals’ distinctness in a positive light often placed eastern inferiority and simplicity in contrast to superior Germanness. At the local level, district captains undertook intrusive and nearly unrestricted actions to control civilians’ lives. Quite apart from the consequences of such measures on the lives of

Lithuanians, these policies reinforced German perception of local civilians’ inferiority.

Locals were depicted as essentially helpless and in need of advanced German methods, yet they were only allowed to receive what the administrators deigned to provide; they were rarely more than mere objects of German policy and gained few unambiguous advantages. Simple violations of German regulations were answered with harsh punishment. Contributions and forced labor were two instruments for exerting the unquestionable totality of German rule. Administrators were selected and evaluated not on the basis of their professional qualifications or adherence to strictly defined rules, but rather due to a “practical outlook and the capacity to undertake quick and energetic

252

activity.” 132 The accompanying claim that these qualities would allow administrators to

work “in close cooperation with the locals” ignored the fact that harsh policy discouraged

the consideration of all but the most basic local interests.

An article in Kownoer Zeitung on 7 November 1917 attempted to put a new round of horse requisitioning into context. Administrators were by this point well aware that any reduction of the already depleted horse supplies would put Lithuanian farmers in an ever more difficult position. Nevertheless, the “increasing intensity of the war” over the course of 1917 “demand[s] the greatest sacrifices from all peoples ( Völker ), regardless of

which side they are fighting on” because “any sacrifice which accelerates the end of the

war is not too great.” 133 From the Lithuanian perspective, however, withholding horses

and food from the German administration was also a means of accelerating the end of the

war, only doing so from a position unfavorable to German interests. An Ober Ost memo portrayed this disparity, however, as “the locals lacking an understanding of today’s

wartime demands.” The memo encouraged the dismantling of measures that were

“especially hard on religious and national lives,” but nevertheless insisted on the

importance of drafting local civilians for administrationdirected labor. According to the

Ober Ost formulation, “drafting of the local population to work has become so important

that it is to be prepared and carried out exactly like mobilization.” 134 The administration’s

failure to address the inherent difficulties involved with attempting to “mobilize” a

foreign population with divergent interests guaranteed the occupied civilians’

increasingly embittered sentiment. The largely negative view of borderlands culture and

society helped justify exploitive German economic policies.

132 “Die Verwaltung Ober Ost,” Kownoer Zeitung , October 4, 1917. 133 “Neue Pferdemusterungen,” Kownoer Zeitung , November 7, 1917. 134 LAS F231, Oberbefehlshaber Ost, 14 October 1916, fol. 173. 253

Chapter 5: Ethnicity and Social Change in the Borderlands, 19171918

Issues of ethnic and national identity became more pressing near the end of the war as the favorable military outlook on the Eastern Front increased the German leadership’s confidence in its plans for permanent political gains in the East. The result was an attempt to sew up German control of the occupied borderlands even as the military situation on the Western Front and the material conditions at home continued to deteriorate. The German Administration for Lithuania heavily relied on ethnic and religious markers of identity when evaluating the future potential of the occupied territory and its population. The salient ethnic, national, and confessional categories provided the administrators with a rough means of assessing the effects of policy on the local civilians.

Social factors were not ignored, however, and in fact they were regarded to be essential to understanding how the occupied lands could be changed for the better. The occupiers manifested this interest in the earliest reports by generalizing about the political sensibilities and cultural predilections of Jews, Lithuanians, Poles, and other groups.

District captains understood their administrative responsibilities with regard to sweeping and often crude judgments on the groups’ respective qualities.

In 1917 and 1918 a number of factors conditioned policy and perception in occupied Lithuania. The Treaty of BrestLitovsk decisively concluded the military conflict on the Eastern Front and the administration worked to ensure that its control over the conquered eastern lands became permanent, urging local political leaders to accept some form of union with Germany. Plans for German settlement of Lithuania and

Kurland were the natural consequence of an increasing confidence in the German 254

position in the borderlands. Views on the area’s ethnic groups did not radically change over the course of the occupation – in fact they remained within the same basic framework – but the conditions of the final year of the occupation offer particularly good insight on the Ober Ost vision of and for the borderlands and their native residents.

Deutschtum was praised as fervently as ever, but now it was backed up with support to local Germans of Russian citizenship. Political maneuverings over ethnic Lithuanians reinforced the underlying view of Lithuania’s national immaturity and vulnerability, further stressing the need for German presence. Jews continued to be viewed with scorn, perhaps even more so when epidemics broke out and urban populations appeared even more helpless and destitute as food supplies diminished. Administrators’ views on the mutability of local conditioned remained contradictory and muddled. Evaluations of the borderlands natives were harsh and unforgiving, but they did not inflexibly consign the

nonGerman groups to eternal backwardness on the basis of fixed racial characteristics.

The Ober Ost conception – shared among propagandists and administrators – did

ultimately hold out some hope that borderlands social and cultural conditions could be

improved by following the guidance and accepting the protection of their benevolent

neighbors from the German Empire. Advancement and improvement were always framed

with reference to German superiority, yet the German Empire’s reluctance to embrace

radical ideologies limited the occupation’s range of activities.

German Settlement

The initial engagement with Germanness in Lithuania largely eschewed concrete plans for local ethnic Germans. Propaganda rhetorically Germanized Lithuania by

255

heavily emphasizing the supposed importance of Deutschtum in providing the area the minimal culture it possessed. Underpinned by the dichotomy of East and West, the praise of Deutschtum at the expense of local backwardness and “culturelessness” was expressed in administrative policies and propaganda as a means of asserting the occupiers’ right and ability to maintain control of the area. For the occupied civilians, this translated into policies like the teaching of the German language in schools and endless reminders that all new innovations comprised the benevolent gift of superior German culture. German soldiers and administrators were likewise encouraged to conceive of German culture as an unambiguously positive infusion to the wanting lands. Administrators from the

Verwaltungschef to the district captains worked more concretely to determine the land’s

German future by evaluating the area’s potential for German colonists.

The category of Deutschtum fit comfortably into the conception of the occupied lands as contested imperial territory. The discovery of statesupported ethnic Russian colonies certainly contributed to this view. Moreover, the Russian Empire’s ethnically selective deportations reinforced the lands’ uncertain status; wartime dislocations had created new conditions, new possibilities for the future. The potential for advantageous

German settlement in the vacated areas contributed to the Ober Ost ban on property sales. 1 District captains reported on the postwar prospects for German settlers and they

readily evaluated the available resources, the legal status of property holdings, and the

likelihood of political resentment among the native population. The result was an almost

unanimously rosy view on the potential to colonize the lands with ethnic Germans; the

1 Börje Colliander, “Die Beziehungen zwischen Litauen und Deutschland während der Okkupation 1915 1918” (University of Åbo, 1935), 90. 256

plan hinged primarily on a military victory that would give Germany a free hand in the occupied East.

District captains acknowledged in reports from as early as September 1915 that the land could be useful as colonial territory. Some administrators noted – apparently without any official urging – both that the Russian government had operated a colonization program and that the “backward” Lithuanian lands could serve a program of

“purposeful inner colonization” for the German Empire. 2 In fact, the concept of “inner colonization” rested upon an understanding of the lands as inherently lacking and

“empty.” 3 The Russian government’s plans to Russify the borderlands provided a clear precedent for what might be achieved under German leadership. The district captain’s

application of the term “inner colonization” in this context almost certainly indicates

familiarity with the Germanization of Prussian Poland prior to the First World War,

thereby framing Lithuania as future German territory.

Plans for Germany’s future development of Lithuania encompassed various provisional efforts to create favorable postwar conditions. Some of these were directed by

the Oberbefehlshaber Ost or Verwaltungschef Isenburg and others appear to have

emerged from the initiative of eager district captains and soldiers. The overarching desire

to restrict any major adjustments in property ownership falls under both categories. Ober

Ost policy strictly regulated property transactions among locals, though it did not publicly indicate that this was motivated by a desire to facilitate postwar German

settlement. Indeed, this central motivating factor was not the singular reason for the prohibition; the administration sought total control over the occupied lands and

2 See, for example, LSHA 6411360, KH in Retowo, VB 15 August to 15 September 1915, fol. 1617. 3 See Robert L. Nelson, ed., Germans, Poland, and Colonial Expansion to the East (New York: Pargrave Macmillan, 2009). 257

restrictions on property sales also simply furthered the end of better directing local social and economic conditions.

The chronologically scattered appearance of district captains’ input on settlement prospects suggests that individual initiative and background strongly affected these evaluations. The district captain of Retowo, for instance, seized upon the possibility of inner colonization within a month of assuming his post, but others did not so instinctively consider the lands’ colonial potential. District captains’ quarterly administrative reports required an evaluation of “settlement efforts” ( Ansiedlungsbestrebungen ) but the field evoked a variety of divergent responses. Some district captains responded as though they had been asked to evaluate the potential for German settlement. Others, like the district captain of Birsche, for example, instead reported on the housing situation among the local population and displaced persons. 4

Unsolicited input on settlement potential indicates that some district captains

clearly understood the desirability of augmenting the ethnic German presence in

Lithuania through a statesupported program of settlement. 5 To these administrators, the

task of investigating property rights and assessing the proportion of land falling into the

categories of fields, swamps, forest, etc., was intended to determine where and how

German settlers could be best situated. 6 Without any apparent encouragement, some

district captains noted that the lands provided “very favorable conditions” for German

4 LSHA 641152, KH in Birsche, VB for March 1916, fol. 49; LSHA 641152, KH in Birsche, VB for April 1916, fol. 79. 5 Such efforts appear as manifestations of what Woodruff D. Smith has identified as the conception of settlement. Annexationists advocating Lebensraum inspired settlement plans envisioned the direct annexation of foreign territory and the settlement of small scale German farmers. This vision was shaped by the ideal of the virtuous peasant farmer who organically maintained Deutschtum as depicted in völkisch thought. See Woodruff D. Smith, The Ideological Origins of Nazi Imperialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). 6 See, for example, LSHA 6411360, KH in Retowo, VB 15 August to 15 September 1915, fol. 16. 258

“hard work and activity” to “very quickly bring a backward agriculture into high bloom.” 7 District captains’ assessment of German methods and work ethic anticipated the

very similar expression of this theme in cultural organs like Kownoer Zeitung . The

example of Russian colonies did not merely encourage the administrators to perceive the

land as contested; investigations of the colonies’ legally dubious status rendered them prime candidates for replacement with ethnic German settlers. 8 Administrators felt that the practice of German settlement could in any case follow a similar pattern to Prussia’s own efforts at inner colonization in its eastern provinces by purchasing financially threatened large estates and dividing them up for German settlement. 9

Evaluations of future settlement clearly fell within the Ober Ost slogan for

German efforts in the occupied territories, namely that the purpose was to serve “ Heer und Heimat ” rather than the lands’ native residents. Those district captains most interested in future German settlement anticipated potential conflict over property ownership and maintenance with regard to future German plans:

The living conditions of the locals are, with the exception of a few higher standing estate owners and clergy, thoroughly shabby and scanty, particularly in the city. As long as the future of the land remains undecided, I do not consider a commencement of efforts to rebuild better homes desirable, since this would hinder the intent of subsequent German colonization activity. In contrast, the destruction of numerous homes and entire towns resulted in a reduction of the value of the property and land, and the lack of better living quarters has the

7 LSHA 6411622, KH in Kurszany, VB for the fourth quarter 1915, fol. 4243. 8 LSHA 6411572, KH in Kupischki, VB 1 April 1917, fol. 57. 9 See, for example, LSHA 6411622, KH in Kurszany, VB for the fourth quarter 1915, fol. 4243. Mentions taking advantage of state lands, namely those of the Russian peasant bank. Parts of the large estates could also be made available through compensation to the owners (implying that expropriation would be used, as in Prussian Poland). See also LSHA 6411306, KH in Kielmy, VB for February 1916, fol. 37; LSHA 6411306, KH in Kielmy, VB for April 1916, fol. 52. For a summary of the Royal Prussian Settlement Commission’s program of inner colonization, see Scott M. Eddie, “The Prussian Settlement Commission and Its Activities in the Land Market, 18861918,” in Germans, Poland, and Colonial Expansion to the East , ed. Robert L. Nelson (New York: Pargrave Macmillan, 2009). 259

advantage that the land and property would be available to a German settlement policy at a cheaper price. 10

A note in the margins of the report, presumably written by Verwaltungschef Isenburg or another higher Ober Ost official, indicates agreement with this position. The Kielmy district captain further noted that it was presently too early to begin systematically compensating residents for war damage because such a program would “send German money to a foreign land which in the case of nonannexation would be unconditionally lost.” 11 The process of acquiring settlement land “still in the hands of nonGerman elements” would also require forcible purchasing from owners who did not agree to sell the land of their own free will. 12 While most district captains did not so extensively spell out the potential obstacles to German settlement, such views were fully in line with those of the higher level administrators as well as with the program of Germanization in

Prussian Poland before the war. These positions also provided a strong incentive to restrict locals’ attempts to rebound from wartime damage.

Indeed, administrators who viewed the occupied land with an eye toward German colonization had reason to be optimistic. Facilitating future settlement through wartime administration policy could be easily regarded as simply one function of maintaining ordered conditions in the warravaged, Germandominated lands. Verwaltungschef

Isenburg’s district captains provided him justification to report in May 1916 that the lands held “pleasant views of the prospects for a determined policy of settlement

(Besiedlungspolitik ).” 13 The district captain of Kurschany noted that the land required

10 LSHA 6411306, KH in Kielmy, VB for March 1916, fol. 3940. 11 LSHA 6411306, KH in Kielmy, VB for March 1916, fol. 4445. 12 LSHA 6411306, KH in Kielmy, VB for March 1916, fol. 45. 13 GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, May 1916, 18. 260

only an investment in infrastructure and an infusion of German settlers. 14 Rossienie’s district captain reported in June 1916 that his district was “wholly suited to the settlement of German farmers and also by large estate owners.” The land was of “average quality, capable of growing clover, and with very good meadows.” Particularly conspicuous were

89 abandoned estates, some of which had been almost totally destroyed by the warring armies; this led the district captain to speculate that “many owners will be in no position to get their operations underway by themselves when they return, but rather they would be happy to get rid of them to German settlement operations

(Ansiedlungsunternehmungen ).” 15 Such conditions struck the administrators as quite

advantageous. Better yet, the Rossienie district captain noted two months later in August

1916 that native Lithuanians’ lack of a strong national identity ( Nationalgefühl ) would

allow ethnic Germans to take up any available properties rather than to function in

isolated, purely German colonies. This type of scattered German settlement would

“increase the speed of Germanization” and “significantly increase the economic output

through the presentation [to the locals] of a good model.” 16 Benefits of German

colonization in Lithuania would therefore accrue to all parties involved, including the

German state, German settlers, and “backward” Lithuanians unknowingly thirsty for

knowledge of more productive techniques. History was instructive on this point; ethnic

Germans in Kurland provided an apparently irrefutable example of how Germans

maintained culture among their nonGerman neighbors.

14 LSHA 6411622, KH in Kurszany, VB for the fourth quarter 1915, fol. 43; LSHA 6411360, KH in Retowo, VB 15 August to 15 September 1915, fol. 16. 15 LSHA 641153, KH in Rossienie, VB 13 July 1916, fol. 58. 16 LSHA 641153, KH in Rossienie, VB 29 August 1916, fol. 70. 261

Administrators regretfully understood that a program designed to introduce

German citizens as colonistfarmers could not begin until the war had been concluded in

Germany’s favor. Even administrators who did not generally demonstrate independent activity to further the settlement project noted as much, like the district captain of

Kurschany who observed in July 1916 that “German settlement will have to be restricted to the dispensing of papers until the political fate of the land is determined.” 17 Though

their range of activities was circumscribed, other administrators did not stand aside idly

for the duration of the war. The Skaudwile district captain, a particularly strong advocate

of German settlement, reported in December 1916 that some soldiers had registered an

interest in settlement [in Lithuania] after the war.” 18 It is impossible to know whether

German soldiers were informed about the possibility of settlement at this stage of the

occupation or if they chose to sign up of their own volition. The practice of keeping lists

of interested settlers in 1916 appears confined to district Skaudwile. The practice

certainly could have led to objection in the Reichstag or among Lithuanian nationalists in

the occupied lands. To advocates of colonization, however, the lists offered the potential

for the swifter exploitation of Lithuanian farmland once the war was won.

Administrators familiar with the ideologies of migrationist colonialism

immediately understood the borderlands context as a competition among the neighboring

empires and nationalities. At the political level, the obvious participants were the

German, Russian, and AustroHungarian Empires. Also worthy of consideration,

however, were the longoppressed Poles, the increasingly strident Lithuanian nationalists,

and the substantial urban Jewish population. Administrators like the district captain of

17 LSHA 6411622, KH in Kurschany, VB for the second quarter 1916, fol. 123. 18 LSHA 6411306, KH in Skaudwile, VB for October, November, December 1916, fol. 87. 262

Skaudwile understood the mixture of groups to be operating in a context similar to that of

Prussian Poland prior to the First World War. Conversations with local Polish estate owners reinforced this view when the Poles expressed reservations about Lithuania’s annexation to the German Empire precisely because they feared the expropriation of their land holdings. The Skaudwile district captain reported that these Poles considered themselves the “carriers of culture” among the area’s ethnic Lithuanians, directly comparing themselves to the ethnic Germans who comprised the aristocratic upper class in Kurland. 19 Although these Poles stated a preference to become part of the less oppressive AustroHungarian Empire, they seemed to share many assumptions with the

German occupiers with regard to the necessity of a more cultured people leading those incapable of taking care of themselves. 20 Conversations with ethnic Lithuanians likewise

reinforced this view; Lithuanians allegedly viewed “the German as the natural ally in the battle for his national character/customs ( Volkstum )” and therefore looked favorably upon a close political connection with the German Empire. 21 Even if this did not correspond

exactly to the Skaudwile district captain’s desire that Germany annex Lithuania outright,

it did speak to many of his underlying assumptions.

The historical facts of ethnic German presence in the East reinforced the justification for a continued German role. Perspectives on ethnic Germans in Kurland and

the history of German activity in Lithuania were widely circulated among the Ober Ost

19 LSHA 6411306, KH in Kielmy, VB for February 1916, fol. 37. 20 LSHA 6411306, KH in Kielmy, VB for April 1916, fol. 52; LSHA 6411306, KH in Kielmy, VB for February 1916, fol. 37. The Polish preference for the AustroHungarian Empire over the German Empire is encapsulated by the AustroHungarian Empire having been one of many countries and groups that protested the 1908 German law providing for the forced expropriation of properties owned by ethnic Poles. Eddie, “The Prussian Settlement Commission and Its Activities in the Land Market, 18861918,” 5051. 21 Quoted in LSHA 6411306, KH in Skaudwile, VB for second quarter 1917, fol. 131, LSHA 6411306, KH in Kielmy, VB for April 1916, fol. 52; LSHA 6411306, KH in Skaudwile, VB for second quarter 1917, fol. 132. 263

press and these stories shared much in common with the way administrators ultimately viewed the lands. An Ober Ost order from March 1916 noted that the printing of a new map of the occupied area offered an opportunity for changing the names of Russian cities and estates. The order solicited suggestions for “recreating the old historical names, especially those from the time of the .” 22 Bringing order and culture to the

East reputedly went hand in hand with the restoration of German influence. Major Julius

Caemmerer, an Ober Ost adjutant stationed at the Lithuanian headquarters in Kowno, wrote to an official from the Ministry of the Interior who had visited the headquarters in

Lithuania and written in the registry the Germanized “Kauen” as the place name rather than the much more widely accepted version of “Kowno.” 23 Curious to know more,

Caemmerer explained to the official that he had “until now searched for the legitimation of this old German name for Kowno without any result.” He and others had a “great interest” in definitively establishing the historical basis of the German name “Kauen,” and he inquired whether the official had any particular information on the subject. In reply, the official explained that his usage of “Kauen” was merely a “simplification” but that he had discovered some relevant files on the subject in the ministry’s library. It remains unclear from the available correspondence whether the documents definitively solved the issue, but they certainly seem to have encouraged Caemmerer’s enthusiasm when he expressed the desire that the “old German [Teutonic] Order places names will be accorded the same rights as the Russified Polish places.” 24 To ignore the German past

22 LAS F231, Chef der Militärverwaltung, 29 March 1916, fol. 58. 23 GSTA PK I HA Rep 77 Ministerium des Innern, Titel 875, Nr. 14 Bd. 1. 24 This correspondence took place mere weeks prior to Major Julius Caemmerer’s death, as indicated in the obituary written by Hindenburg that appeared in Kownoer Zeitung . “Major Caemmerer,” Kownoer Zeitung , February 13, 1916. 264

was to ignore the historical legitimacy of German claims to the contested imperial territory.

Administration policy and zealous advocates of German settlement effectively made preliminary attempts to prepare the lands for postwar German colonization.

Evaluations of the lands’ suitability began with the encouragement of Verwaltungschef

Isenburg’s solicitation of relevant information via the district captains’ quarterly reports early in 1916. While the policy was generally confined to planning for the arrival of favorable postwar conditions, administrators often viewed the lands within the framework of competing ethnicities with widely held national characteristics. As expressed in administrative policy and propaganda, the struggle to promote Deutschtum in Lithuania was broadly defined to almost any measure intended to improve the occupied lands. 25 Agricultural, industrial, and educational programs were all framed as

the infusion of superior German methods. While district captains played a direct and

multifaceted role in efforts to maintain the strength of Deutschtum in occupied Lithuania,

the creation of a program to privilege local ethnic Germans at the expense of other local

ethnicities developed well after administrators first took notice of the potential to settle

German citizens. The relationship between the German Empire, ethnic German Russian

subjects, and ethic German citizens possessing imperial German citizenship (Reich

Germans) became firmly established in the attitudes and activities of administrators.

Policies engaging the local ethnic German population were sparse throughout the

occupation and the most substantial efforts emerged only in the fall of 1917. While

administrators and propagandists encouragingly noted and counted the relatively small

25 GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Moll, 1 August 1916, 21. 265

number of ethnic Germans living in Lithuania, the prewar population of roughly 30,000 did not seem to merit much additional concern. Apart from census measures that were equally applied to all local ethnicities, district captains’ first official engagement with occupied ethnic Germans occurred in January and February 1916 when the German

Administration for Lithuania ordered them to take stock of properties owned by

Germans. These properties were to be singled out and administered directly by the administration in the form of a “trusteeship” ( Pflegschaft ). The language of the responses suggests that the order simply asked that the “abandoned estates of German owners

(Besitzer )” be taken into trusteeship and administered by the German occupiers. 26

Although the district captains administered largely rural lands and their responses therefore addressed the agricultural conditions at hand, it is possible to surmise from their responses that they were explicitly directed to focus on agricultural estates owned by

German farmers. This emphasis corresponds to the administration’s early fascination with the possibility for German settlement in the East; keeping properties that were already “German” would assist future colonization. 27 These efforts therefore brought more agricultural land under direct cultivation by the administration and secured it for potential colonization.

The district captains’ responses to the trusteeship question highlighted emergent ambiguities with regard to the administration’s engagement of ethnic Germans; establishing the identity of these “Germans” and the assessing the value of administering

26 The order itself has not been preserved, but numerous district captains’ responses within the quarterly reports indicate that they were explicitly directed to establish these trusteeships. LSHA 641152, KH in Birsche, VB for March 1916, fol. 6163; LSHA 6411306, KH in Kielmy, VB for March 1916, fol. 4142; LSHA 6411572, KH in Kupischki, VB 29 Mar 1916, fol. 13; LSHA 6411233, KH in Schadow, VB March 1916, fol. 58; LSHA 6411515, KH in Wiezajcie, VB for 1 April 1916, fol. 85. 27 This notion corresponded to the social goals of inner colonization and migrationist colonialism, namely ensuring sufficient land for, bodenständig , selfsufficient farmers. 266

their estates were not clear processes. In the same quarterly report in which the district captain of Skaudwile enthusiastically noted the opportunities for German settlement – particularly if destroyed and damaged properties were left in a state of disrepair until such a program could be put into effect – he also responded to the query about abandoned

German estates:

I do not consider it necessary to create trusteeships for the abandoned properties of German owners. There are no estates of Reichsdeutsche (Reich Germans) in the district, nor are there any of Germanspeaking Russians. A few small properties of Germanspeaking Russians could be present. The creation of trusteeships for such owners would create an unnecessary burden for the entire operation and a liability for the economic officers that would take them away from their real responsibilities. 28

He noted an important distinction between German subjects with property holdings in

Russia and Russian subjects of German ethnicity, a distinction that seems to have been absent from the original request. The small properties of ethnic German farmers – as opposed to the type of large estates that drove the conception of Lebensraum colonization in which smaller familyowned farms were more efficient and beneficial – were essentially deemed too small to waste resources on, particularly if the owners were not

German subjects whose citizenship created direct ties to the German state. This emphasis, too, fit squarely into schemes for future settlement; small, isolated properties were of considerably less value than great estates that encompassed vast tracts of land. In the only other report that did not simply note the absence of any relevant German owned properties, the district captain of Birsche commented that the German estates – Reich

German and Russian German – had already been taken into German administration and

28 LSHA 6411306, KH in Kielmy, VB for March 1916, fol. 41. 267

would not require additional measures. 29 The use of large estates fit both the wartime priority of maximizing agricultural production and preparation of the land for postwar

settlement. On the basis of this admittedly incomplete evidence, it would appear that the

early interest in German property focused on the lands themselves – particularly in the

case of Reich German owners – and only secondarily on their ethnic German owners.

German ownership marked the lands as more likely to be available for settlement after

the war, though wartime considerations also affected administrators’ assessments.

After directly addressing the German property question in March 1916, district

captains’ reports included only scattered references to German property or colonization

over the course of 1916. The comments assessing future settlement in March and April

1917 suggest that further orders requested input on future German settlement; not all

district captains reported on the subject, however, leaving the issue uncertain. Those who

did, notably the district captains in Wiezajcie and Kupischki, returned to the prospects for

settlement in some detail. In Kupischki, “abandoned Russian villages” provided an

opportunity for closely knit German communities of settlers to essentially substitute places with the Russians. 30 Small size land parcels necessitated a complete redistribution

of property, but the situation offered bright prospects. The district captain of Wiezajcie

identified the southern and western parts of the district that would be suitable for

settlement, particularly due to the new railroad construction in the area. 31 The district’s large estates could be broken down into smaller parcels, giving “each settler a piece of

29 The lack of additional responses from different district captains does not mean that some administrators ignored the issue. What is more likely is that the extant references are from those district captains who chose to include information in their administrative reports that had already been communicated via telegram or letter. LSHA 641152, KH in Birsche, VB for March 1916, fol. 6163. 30 LSHA 6411572, KH in Kupischki, VB 1 April 1917, fol. 58. 31 LSHA 6411515, KH in Wiezajcie, VB for 1 January to 31 March 1917, fol. 178. Some prospective settlers also noted the advantage of a close railroad connection. 268

forest for his use,” a feature that the district captain confidently noted was “necessary” for successful settlement. Moreover, Lithuania’s short vegetation period demanded that each plot be no less than 60 hectares and include “large stretches of meadow, pasture and clover fields due to the poor yield of the land and the great need for manure.” These provisions would afford the colonist “sufficient income for himself and his family.”

Concern with the lands’ Germanness appeared to be increasing as the possibility of victoriously ending the war in the East improved.

The number of policies addressing the region’s ethnic Germans also increased throughout 1917 and evidence a change in the conceptual understanding of Germany’s relationship to them. The first policy to assist the present Germans – as opposed to those who had fled and whose estates were taken into trusteeship – again focused on absence, and on providing support for warinduced deficiencies. Ober Ost correspondence from

May 1917 indicates an attempt to seek out and support “orphans of German descent.” 32

District captains had apparently been ordered to report the presence of any such orphans

in their districts and nine responded affirmatively. Sent to all district captains, the

correspondence noted that more such “nationally endangered” orphans would likely be

found. Although no other records exist which spell out the policy or explain its motives,

the implied danger was that these abandoned German children would succumb to non

German groups and lose their ties to German culture. Given the widespread emphasis on

Deutschtum , the policy does not conclusively indicate a racial conception of German

32 LAS F231, Oberbefehlshaber Ost, 12 May 1917, fol. 297. This rule was potentially implemented in response to the initiative of district captains who had previously sent the Germanspeaking children of deported parents to the “Heimat für Heimatlose” of the Red Cross in Miechowietz in Upper . LSHA 6411515, KH in Wiezajcie, VB for 1 January to 31 March 1917, fol. 186. 269

national identity. It does, however, prioritize ethnic identity as a marker of essential national characteristics.

Prior to the First World War, Germans living in foreign lands were recognized as descendents of German colonists but they were not thought to be intimately associated with Reich Germans who were citizens of the German state. James Casteel’s study of the discourse on Russian Germans in the suggestively argues that the First

World War and its aftermath profoundly altered the place of ethnic Germans living in foreign lands within the national imaginary. The age of popular sovereignty rendered the

Volk , rather than the state, as the “central political actor.” 33 Casteel notes that this new transborder nationalism took full flight after the war had ended but it had clearly begun to develop with regard to Russian Germans during the occupation of borderlands territory. Ober Ost administrators in Lithuania increasingly viewed the ethnic Germans of the occupied lands as closely connected to the German Volk . Documentation even

evidences the increasingly widespread usage of the subsequently prevalent term,

Auslandsdeutschen (literally: Germans in foreign lands). Although the administration

took unambiguous action to conceptually and materially bring the Russian Germans

under the umbrella of the German state and Volk , these nascent policies of the First

World War offered only inconclusive answers to these contentious questions.

Administrative policies directly engaging ethnic Germans emerged in the summer

of 1917 and they institutionalized the labeling of Russian Germans as Auslandsdeutschen .

Prior to this process, the first recorded usage of “ Auslandsdeutschen ” among

33 James Casteel, “The Russian Germans in the Interwar German National Imaginary,” Central European History 40 (2007): 430. 270

administrators was by the district captain of Kielmy in December 1916. 34 He was uniquely interested in and informed about the possibilities for German settlement in the

East and yet he used the term just once prior to the official introduction. Kownoer Zeitung first used the term in September 1917, nearly three months after it had been established as the operative term in official documentation. 35

The conceptual birth of “Auslandsdeutschen ” for the administrative apparatus

occurred in July 1917 when the administration began a program of financial support for

the ethnic Germans of the occupied area. Justification for this support was provided by

way of reference to the various “foreign peoples of the occupied area, especially the

Lithuanians, Poles and Jews,” who “receive substantial support and help through a

number of support committees created through Ob. Ost.” 36 Ober Ost’s generosity in

facilitating the care for these disadvantaged locals had to this point overlooked the needs

of the Auslandsdeutschen. As expressed by Ober Ost Quartermaster von Brandenstein in the initial report, the main purpose was “political”; the policy aimed to “raise the national consciousness ( völkisches Bewusstsein ) and devotion to the old Heimat ” and to

“strengthen their standing ( Ansehen ) in the eyes of the other local residents.” The program of support would also “bring home to the nonGerman locals that the German administration takes care of Auslandsdeutschen of shared descent ( stammverwandten ) in

a particular way.” This new emphasis on Auslandsdeutschen was in many ways the natural extension of the administration’s overarching emphasis on supporting Deutschtum

in the occupied territories: it would buttress sources of perceived German culture and parade those examples before the eyes of local nonGermans as a means of demonstrating

34 LSHA 6411306, KH in Kielmy, VB for March 1916, fol. 4142. 35 “Unterstützung der Detuschen in Ob.Ost,” Kownoer Zeitung , September 27, 1917, sec. Beiblatt. 36 LAS F231, Oberbefehlshaber Ost, 17 July 1917, fol. 331. 271

their superiority. Still, the program to identify and directly support Auslandsdeutschen from 1917 onward drastically changed the former policy of essentially ignoring ethnic

Germans.

Closer national identification with Germans abroad preceded the First World War.

Pressure groups like the PanGerman League had pushed for greater recognition of the ties binding Reich Germans and Auslandsdeutschen and these efforts culminated in the

Reich citizenship law of 1913. The new law established German citizenship on the basis of jus sanguinis , making it possible for Germans abroad to attain citizenship in the

German Empire upon returning and undergoing naturalization. 37 Interest groups played a role in the formation of administrative policy. Although the genesis of Ober Ost financial support for Auslandsdeutschen remains obscure, the order instituting the policy explicitly acknowledged the financial support of the Association for Germans Abroad (Verein für

das Deutschtum im Auslande , abbreviated VDA), a group founded in 1881 to support

ethnic Germans in foreign lands. 38 In July 1917, the organization provided the initial

10,000 marks to fund the program. By the end of August, 60,000 marks were available for supporting Auslandsdeutschen , suggesting that the administration had substantially broadened its base of financial support among concerned Reich Germans. Here the VDA played an important symbolic role in the development of German ethnic policy in the borderlands. The organization’s panGerman ideology was laden with the type of anti

37 Casteel, “The Russian Germans in the Interwar German National Imaginary,” 431. On the longerterm discourse on the state’s obligation to Auslandsdeutschen , see Howard Sargent, “Diasporic Citizens: Germans Abroad in the Framing of German Citizenship Law,” in The Heimat Abroad: The Boundaries of Germanness , ed. Krista O'Donnell, Renate Bridenthal, and Nancy R. Reagin (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), 1739. 38 See also Renate Bridenthal, “Germans from Russia: The Political Network of a Double Diaspora,” in The Heimat Abroad , 187218; Gerhard Weidenfeller, VDA, Verein für das Deutschtum im Ausland, Allgemeiner Deutscher Schulverein (1881-1918): Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des deutschen Nationalismus und Imperialismus im Kaiserreich (Bern: H. Lang, 1976). 272

Slav, antisemitic, and aggressively militaristic sentiment that characterized the German

Empire’s nationalist pressure groups. The VDA had close institutional links to the Pan

German League and their combined membership during the war neared 100,000. 39 The

VDA’s involvement must be contextualized alongside the other panGerman nationalist groups’ efforts to define citizenship as “membership in the Volk” with racial and biological overtones. 40 Debate over the Reich citizenship law had balanced the needs and capabilities of the state alongside those of the Volk , or people as defined by a shared ethnic identity regardless of citizenship. Both the German state and the

Auslandsdeutschen appeared to benefit from the establishment of closer ties. A Kownoer

Zeitung article from November 1917 on the support provided to Auslandsdeutschen stated that “every German will feel satisfied that the condition of their countrymen is being improved with such exertion.” 41

Articulation of the Auslandsdeutschen identity was not, however, a self

explanatory concept within the context of the occupied borderlands. The first official use

of the term necessitated a brief explanation that circumscribed Auslandsdeutschen as

“locals of definitive German descent but without German citizenship.” 42 Therefore the

trappings of German culture did not suffice to qualify as an Auslandsdeutsche ; middle

class Jews or Poles fluent in the German language fell outside the bounds of the

definition because they lacked German descent. Blood was in this case the operative

factor. It was not specified whether the German ancestors needed to have possessed a particular citizenship for their descendents to be valid Auslandsdeutsche ; a historical

39 Walter von Goldendach and HansRüdiger Minow, Deutschtum erwache!: Aus dem Innenleben des staatlichen Pangermanismus (Berlin: Dietz, 1994), 3391. 40 Sargent, “Diasporic Citizens: Germans Abroad in the Framing of German Citizenship Law,” 25. 41 “Auslandsdetusche im Ob.Ost,” Kownoer Zeitung , November 21, 1917. 42 LAS F231, Oberbefehlshaber Ost, 17 July 1917, fol. 331. 273

identification and ethnic German identity appeared to suffice. The second condition – namely the lack of German citizenship – was complicated by the fact that the 1913 citizenship law separated Russian Germans and Reich Germans only by the legal process of naturalization. Notwithstanding the ethnic Germans’ lack of Reich citizenship and the many ambiguities of the policies designed to address them, the administration’s closer identification with the Auslandsdeutschen in July 1917 brought these Germans under the

umbrella of the German Empire’s goals in the occupied territories.

Ober Ost also struggled with its attempt to define the purpose of the program by

deciding which Auslandsdeutschen were the most worthy recipients of financial support.

The “political” purpose of the support followed from the idea that “ Auslandsdeutschtum can be one of the most important foundations for the spread of German influence in the occupied area.” Supporting Auslandsdeutschen was not so much out of sympathy for the

Russian Germans’ trials and suffering, but rather due to the longerterm goal of ensuring that the land retained a significant measure of Deutschtum ; Auslandsdeutschen enabled this goal by maintaining German culture and displaying its virtues to the local non

Germans, and by providing a foothold for future colonization. Within the context of the war, the Germans in most pressing need of help were those who had lived in Russia prior to the outbreak of hostilities. Financial support was, after all, explicitly regarded as a means of evening out the extra assistance that Lithuanian, Polish, and Jewish groups had all received. The order also allowed funds to go to Reich Germans who had emigrated to

Russia prior to the outbreak of the war, but the priority was on helping Germans with deeper roots. Supporting ethnic Germans in this way was also a means of staking a claim

274

to the lands by beginning to accept, or rather insist upon, certain obligations toward these foreign citizens of German descent.

The Russian Germans identified as most worthy of assistance were described as

“local rooted ( bodenständig ) Deutschtum (German small property owners, small farmers and craftsmen).” 43 The term “ bodenständig” described Russian Germans who had retained firm connection to their German customs and traditions. The indication of preferred social classes figured prominently in Lebensraum colonialist ideology, emphasizing the importance of assisting Auslandsdeutschen who maintained their

Germanness in a foreign land. These groups could provide a strong economic basis for the future of the area’s Deutschtum . The follow up order of 30 August 1917 more explicitly noted that financial support should provide both shortterm relief and longterm sustenance; the money should reach those “who find themselves in serious difficulties, but who have not yet turned to the public resources available to the poor (the bashful poor). These people should receive not only financial support, but should also be given opportunities for employment and other preferential treatment allowing them to keep themselves above water economically.” 44 In other words, financial support was intended

to promote the creation of an economically sound ethnic German community, if

necessary through programs that privileged Germans at the expense of nonGerman

locals. Prior to the implementation of this program for the support of ethnic Germans, the

Germans of the occupied territories had competed for the area’s limited resources without

any institutionalized advantages over the other local groups. The new program

43 LAS F231, Oberbefehlshaber Ost, 17 July 1917, fol. 331. On the place of the concept Bodenständigkeit in the prewar volkish movement and its racial implications, see Uwe Puschner, Die völkische Bewegung im wilhelminische Kaiserreich: Sprache – Rasse – Religion (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2001), 145. 44 LAS F231, Oberbefehlshaber Ost, 30 August 1917, fol. 346. 275

fundamentally changed this dynamic through the conflation of German interests irrespective of citizenship.

The process of distributing sums to Russian Germans required the close attention

and discretion of local level administrators like district captains, Amtsvorsteher , and

mayors. After announcing the plan to financially support ethnic Germans, Ober Ost

officials decided against the creation of a formal organization that would uniformly

distribute funds throughout the occupied lands. Instead, district captains and their

subordinate officers investigated local conditions and utilized local institutions and

community leaders, though only scattered reports indicate the results of their activity. 45

Verwaltungschef Isenburg reported in September 1917 that 6,000 marks had been

distributed to the evangelical (Lutheran) community of Wilna; the Ober Ost report

specifically mentioned pastors as the type of local leaders who could be utilized to

identify needy individuals. By January 1918, the district captains of Kurschany and

Skaudwile reported that they had already begun putting the funds to good use by directly

helping individuals. Roughly half of the 2,000 marks made available to district Skaudwile

were distributed to 80 people with an average of ten marks per person. The “truly poor

families” received “genuine joy at Christmas” due to the gift. 46 Two months later, the

district captain described the German population as “thoroughly impoverished and

without any means, suffering in severe emergency.” 47 The German population certainly benefitted from the largesse of the Reich German neighbors. The district captain in

Kurschany, too, remarked upon the salutary effects of the charitable gifts, particularly with regard to the children, the sick, the elderly, and families that had lost a wage

45 LAS F231, Oberbefehlshaber Ost, 30 August 1917, fol. 346. 46 LSHA 6411306, KH in Skaudwile, VB for the last quarter 1917, fol. 170. 47 LSHA 6411306, KH in Skaudwile, VB for 1 October 1917 to 31 March 1918, fol. 201. 276

earner. 48 Significantly, the funds appeared to “do a great deal toward helping the German

national consciousness.” 49 To help further this aim, the district captain of Kurschany used some of the transferred funds to establish special educational programs for

Auslandsdeutschen children, noting that their education was very poor during Russian

times. 50 The material benefits distributed in Kowno included free firewood as well as

clothes and shoes for children. 51 At this point in the war, clothing items were in short supply and such donations certainly gave the ethnic Germans justification for regarding their Germanness as a valuable asset distinguishing them from the nonGerman ethnicities. 52

The final year of the occupation also witnessed renewed efforts to prepare the land for settlement with Reich Germans by identifying prospective settlers and soliciting crucial information on their suitability. The surviving district captains’ reports attest to only one administrator maintaining lists of prospective settlers prior to 1918. The practice continued in district Skaudwile at least through March 1918, suggesting that it was condoned all the while by Ober Ost decision makers and that it likely took place elsewhere. 53 What can be established with certainty is that the process was centralized by the summer of 1918 when Baltic German nobles in Kurland agreed to divide up their great estates in order to make smaller parcels available to Reich German settlers. A

Kownoer Zeitung article announcing the decision and lauding the magnanimity of the

48 LSHA 6411622, KH in Kurschany, VB for the fourth quarter 1917, fol. 218; LSHA 6411622, KH in Kurschany, VB for 1 October 1917 to 31 March 1918, fol. 234. 49 LSHA 6411622, KH in Kurschany, VB for the fourth quarter 1917, fol. 215. Stabi, VB Heppe, 1 October 1917 to March 1918, fol. 30. 50 LSHA 6411622, KH in Kurschany, VB for the fourth quarter 1917, fol. 218. See also LSHA 6411 336, KH in Poniewiez, VB for 1 October 1917 to 31 March 1918, fol. 95. 51 LSHA 6411584, KH in Kowno, VB for 1 October 1917 to 31 March 1918, fol. 103. 52 See, for example, LSHA 641153, KH in Rossienie, VB for 1 January to 31 March 1917, fol. 142. 53 LSHA 6411306, KH in Skaudwile, VB for 1 October 1917 to 31 March 1918, fol. 192. 277

Baltic Germans quoted the stated goal that the land should be settled with “ablebodied, selfsufficient, heimfester and heimfroher citizens who can provide the state that which it most needs: people who are healthy in body and soul.” 54 Using the language of

Lebensraum settlement, the project was couched in völkisch terms emphasizing the

egalitarian nature of the land distribution and the idealized character of the smallscale

farmers who would settle there. Further emphasizing the role of private institutional

influence and in some ways mirroring the collection of support monies given to

Auslandsdeutschen , the distribution of land was to be organized by the Landgesellschaft

Kurland. By settling the land with ethnic, Reich Germans, the administration would buttress the empire’s claim to the new territory.

The new availability of settlement land in Kurland did not apply in equal measure

to Lithuania where few ethnic Germans owned vast tracts of property. The process of

finding suitors for parcels in Kurland nevertheless appeared to give new impetus to the

idea of settling Lithuanian land. Applicants for the settlement program of the

Landgesellschaft Kurland were directed to the Ober Ost administration when their needs

surpassed the offered properties in Kurland. Baltic German manors would be divided into plots no greater than twenty hectares in order to maximize the number of Germans who could be settled there, effectively burnishing the legitimacy of German rule. Those who sought larger properties wrote administrators in Lithuania and were asked to indicate the size of their desired property and the financial means available to them. Aspirants were

54 “Landgesellschaft Kurland zur Besiedlung des Baltenlandes,” Kownoer Zeitung , June 29, 1918. This language tapped into the stereotype of the selfsufficient German settler living in an agrarian idyll on the frontier. Robert L. Nelson, “The Archive for Inner Colonization, the German East, and World War I,” in Germans, Poland, and Colonial Expansion to the East; David Blackbourn, “The Conquest of Nature and the Mystique of the Eastern Frontier in Nazi Germany,” in Germans, Poland, and Colonial Expansion to the East . 278

commonly, though not exclusively, engaged in military service. Some sought and received permission to visit particular estates in Lithuania, even going so far as to come to financial terms with a local owner. Other applicants were denied this privilege. In any case, the wartime prohibition on the sale of property remained the incontrovertible obstacle. Although the official responsible for these issues remained circumspect in his replies to aspirant settlers, he did note that the underdeveloped condition of Lithuanian farms and fields would place unusually high financial demands on German settlers. 55

Propaganda on the importance of Deutschtum and the fervent attempt to make permanent

Germany’s acquisitions in the occupied East were – however conditionally – united in these measures.

Lithuanians’ German Future

The political and military conditions that affected policy on the future of ethnic

Germans in Lithuania in 1917 and 1918 were also consequential to the administration’s views of nonGerman ethnicities. Concrete steps to privilege ethnic Germans accompanied frantic efforts to secure a favorable German role in the political future of an area that was home to few ethnic Germans. Kownoer Zeitung continued to praise the apparently manifold benefits of Deutschtum in the abstract, but it also mentioned programs providing financial assistance to Lithuania’s ethnic Germans and the division of Baltic estates into plots suitable for the settlement of Reich German farmers. The paper prognosticated ever more on the area’s future dependence upon Germany as the disordered political situation in Russia led to further territorial gains and the peace

55 LSHA 6411697a. The collection contains correspondence between Captain Leisterer and aspirant settlers between August and November 1918. 279

settlement at BrestLitovsk in March 1918. Even as Germany struggled to maintain its military capability and made rhetorical concessions in favor of Polish and Lithuanian independence, the administration retained a singleminded focus on asserting the importance of Germany’s role protecting the East from the dangerous influences of

Polish, Russian, and, perhaps most fantastically, Jewish agitation. The task of undercutting local institutions while praising the area’s bright future fit comfortably into the well established preference for rhetorically privileging ethnic Lithuanians. Doing so not only provided the most direct means of addressing the era’s unavoidable focus on ethnically based selfdetermination, but seamlessly fit into the conception of the East as a backward land inhabited by simple people who could not function without the benevolent infusion of Germany’s vast resources and advanced methods.

The synergy between the efforts of administrators and press organs like Kownoer

Zeitung is accurately encapsulated in a June 1918 article summarizing a public lecture by

Captain Tafel, district captain of Kupischki. 56 Captain Tafel’s lecture began with slides

displaying Lithuania’s natural beauty in the form of “deep cut river valleys and

atmospheric lakes.” The fertile soil allowed for the profitable use of agricultural,

livestock, and forestry. Having established the scene, Tafel commented upon the area’s past and future: “This beautiful, promising land has been boxed in by the great German

and Slavic Empires for as long as it has had any history at all, and it has drunk much

good German blood. The World War will bring it a first development, a future.” Without

German influence, the area would return to its dire Russian past rather than achieve its promising future. Occupied Lithuania was in its totality a raw material to be reworked by

56 “LichtbilderVortrag des Herrn Hauptmann Tafel im Soldatenheim,” Kownoer Zeitung , June 2, 1918. 280

German experts whose descent from those who had historically spilled their blood in the region made them particularly qualified and deserving to do so. Lithuanians’ ethnic uniqueness was essential to this conception; they “belonged” absolutely to neither the

German nor Slavic cultural groups, though their “fine, blond, thin type” and

Indogermanic roots made them more similar to Frisians and Lower Saxons (i.e. Germans) than anyone else. Even more favorably, Lithuanians were “exclusively a nation of farmers ( Bauernvolk )” which lacked a real intelligentsia. The simple adherence to primitive customs underlaid the conception of Lithuania as “ Zukunftsland ” and

“Siedlungsland ”; Lithuanian farmers were defined by their “isolation from the world and

idyllic seclusion.” Given the current harsh wartime conditions and the emphasis on

Germany’s gains from the close association with Lithuania, Tafel expressed a vision for a

mutually beneficial Lithuania in which all residents would profit.

Notwithstanding the countless references to historical precedents of German

superiority and borderlands backwardness, the administration never established a clearly

articulated position on the local population’s capacity to improve its “cultural” standing.

Locals were portrayed on the one hand as simple pawns as static in their backwardness as

Germans were in their virtuosity. District captains defined Lithuanian character as

mendacious, indolent, and cumbersome. 57 Along the same lines, many district captains seem to have implicitly accepted the metaphor of Lithuanians as children who could benefit from firm guidance and sound education. The district captain of Schadow made the comparison explicit when observing that “the Lithuanian farmer resembles a

57 LSHA 6411572, KH in Kupischki, VB 29 Mar 1916, fol. 14, 16; LSHA 6411572, KH in Kupischki, VB 11 Jul 1916, fol. 34; LSHA 6411374, KH in Janischki, VB 28 December 1916, fol. 78. 281

mendacious child in many regards.” 58 This model proved to be quite durable and apparently rested on the observance of outdated agricultural practices and living conditions of Lithuanian farmers. The district captain of Wiezajcie estimated that only five percent of rural Lithuanians were literate, and that most of those could write little more than their names. 59 The corresponding lack of a broad based middle class also helped to convince administrators that Lithuanians required German help.

Even as the war progressed and the administration quite obviously struggled to provide ordered and just conditions for the occupied population, this perspective

continued to block out selfcriticism in favor of justifying the measures taken as well as

the continuation of German rule well into the future. To the appointed representatives of

the Lithuanian nation who comprised the Lithuanian Taryba, the litany of German

administrative transgressions precluded the future German administration of the land.

District captains responsible for implementing those measures, however, lamented the population’s incomprehension of the necessity and justification of instituting “peace,

order, and cleanliness” through “extreme strictness.” 60 The population simply was not

“intelligent enough” – referring to education and social factors rather than native

intelligence – to understand that the measures were “irrefutable consequences of the years

long state of war” rather than intentional harassment. 61 Speculation on the reasons for their discontent included the possibility that the “Latvian element” had poisoned the

Lithuanians with unfairly biased antiGerman sentiment.

58 LSHA 6411233, KH in Schadow, VB March 1916, fol. 60. 59 This evaluation reflects German biases more than it does reality; nearly 50 percent of Lithuanians were literate. LSHA 6411515, KH in Wiezajcie, VB for 1 October 1917 to 31 March 1918, fol. 288. 60 LSHA 6411389, KH in Johanischkele, VB 15 July 1916, fol. 56 61 LSHA 6411374, KH in Janischki, VB 28 December 1916, fol. 83. 282

To counter antiGerman feelings in the politically momentous years of 1917 and

1918, Kownoer Zeitung trumpeted the vast number of improvements that the German

administration had instituted in Lithuania. In the face of allegedly repressive cultural and

economic policies, the paper emphasized the policies’ hidden strengths. These victories

and achievements were often quite ambiguous without contextualization, but Kownoer

Zeitung provided background in the form of comparisons to the history of Russian rule in the area or the well accepted outlines of Lithuanian backwardness. Articles on the profusion of new schools under the German occupation and the value of German innovations like school gardens addressed the perception that cultural policies were too harsh. 62 Support for symbols of Lithuanian national identity and Lithuanian literature also

heavily emphasized the role that Germany played in furthering the locals’ potential. 63 The paper addressed accusations in the enemy press about the mistreatment of Lithuanian prisoners by claiming that the returnees had been treated well and learned many lessons about German methods that they could now apply to their homeland. In the process they

“became acquainted with the highly developed cultivation of the fields, became familiar with drainage systems through experience with largescale operations, learned to appreciate the cleanliness of the German farm, experienced meticulous personal hygiene, and least of all do they have anything to say about rough treatment”; the article assumed the readers’ familiarity with Lithuania’s deficiencies in these regards. 64 Moreover, wartime economic deprivations under the German administration resulted from the

62 “Kownoer Schulgärten,” Kownoer Zeitung , June 12, 1918; “Litauisches Schulwesen,” Kownoer Zeitung , November 10, 1918. 63 “Kämpfe der Litauer um ihre Muttersprache,” Kownoer Zeitung , July 29, 1917, sec. Beiblatt; “Ein litauisches NationalHeiligtum,” Skizzen-Mappe der Kownoer Zeitung , July 29, 1917; “Litauisches Schrifttum in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts,” Kownoer Zeitung , August 24, 1917, sec. Beiblatt. 64 “Rückwandererarbeit,” Kownoer Zeitung , August 12, 1918. 283

former Russian army’s destruction of crops upon its retreat and its casual attitude toward rampant banditry. 65 While the confiscation of the harvest was an economic burden, it was

an unavoidable consequence of the war and would be outweighed by Germany helping

Lithuania achieve a postwar “economic upswing” of the likes it had never seen. 66 In sum, most of the wartime difficulties were not the fault of the German Empire (in spite of its stated argument that the occupied population must share the burdens of war as much as

German citizens) and the benefits would far outweigh the damages.

Observations on Lithuanians’ supposed failure to appreciate the benefits of

German rule fit into tropes on Lithuanian characteristics that were widely shared among administrators. The overarching view of Lithuania was one of a land and people lacking the means to utilize the area’s and people’s great potential. The district captain of

Kupischki observed the following about the Lithuanian work ethic in September 1917:

“Support from the population for the completion of such road improvements is minimal.

The Lithuanian recognizes the advantages of Vorflut etc and of good roads in general, but on the other hand he is too lazy to perform these labors without compulsion.” 67 This

typical critique of Lithuanian “laziness” was echoed in the same month by the district

captain of Wiezajcie in spite of his acknowledgement of the horrible conditions suffered by civilians workers in German employ: “The Lithuanian, who is accustomed to only

doing the work that is necessary to survive, tries to get out of all work that the German

offices request.” 68 These views corresponded to the judgments of the Lithuanian national

65 “Die Rationierung der Lebensmittel,” Kownoer Zeitung , February 9, 1917, sec. Beiblatt; “Die Beseitigung der Ernährungsschwierigkeiten in Wilna,” Kownoer Zeitung , May 20, 1917, sec. Beiblatt; “Bandenunwesen,” Kownoer Zeitung , August 12, 1918. 66 “Die Beschlagnahme der Ernte in Litauen,” Kownoer Zeitung , July 16, 1918. 67 LSHA 6411572, KH in Kupischki, VB for 1 April 1917 to 30 September 1917, fol. 92. 68 LSHA 6411515, KH in Wiezajcie, VB for 1 April to 30 September 1917, fol. 235. 284

character that appeared regularly in Kownoer Zeitung ; Lithuanians were thought to be simple, modest, and undemanding, and this meant that they also lacked ambition of the sort that German administrators felt was necessary for improving the rough lands. The logical conclusion was written into German policy as the necessity of forcing locals to undertake the administration’s prescribed actions; it was accompanied by the commonly held belief that the Lithuanians simply lacked the necessary means of taking care of themselves.

Interethnic Tensions

Revolution within Russia in the winter and the fall of 1917 created a new sense of urgency among German administrators with regard to Lithuania’s future political configuration. The Germany army marched victoriously into Riga in September 1917, achieving another symbolically meaningful conquest of Russian territory. In the same month the administration agreed to the formation of the Taryba, a representative body of local leaders that would help shape the land’s political future. 69 The ethnic Lithuanians who comprised the vast majority of the region’s population finally had an officially recognized political outlet, even if the Taryba and administration were at loggerheads on the question of the institution’s purpose; the occupiers disconcertedly watched the newly formed organization extend beyond its desired function as a rubber stamp on German policy and become an independent representative body. 70 The closely involved General

Max Hoffmann encapsulated German apprehension by stating that Lithuanians are “as

69 On German negotiations over the Taryba, see Eberhard Demm, Ostpolitik und Propaganda im Ersten Weltkrieg (Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang, 2002). 70 Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity and German Occupation in World War I (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 200. 285

capable of ruling themselves independently as my daughter Ilse is of educating herself independently.” 71 After the Bolshevik revolution in November 1917, the administration pushed the Taryba to declare a “permanent union” with Germany; it did so, but not without simultaneously declaring Lithuanian independence. 72 Over the next several months the Taryba struggled to find official German approval of its declaration, upping the ante in February 1918 with a proclamation of independence that excluded permanent union with Germany. The conflict was eventually papered over by the Kaiser’s acknowledgement of Lithuanian independence in March 1918 on the basis of the

December 1917 declaration. High ranking Ober Ost administrators planned to continue

Germandominated rule of Lithuania after the war and this view corresponded to the opinions of the district captains responsible for executing policy. 73

By 1917 district captains began to closely engage the question of Lithuania’s future political configuration. The imperial borderlands context remained fundamental as they surveyed the pressing political questions; the German Empire had effectively won the right to serve as adjudicator of lands’ future on the basis of its decisive victory on the

Eastern Front. The war continued, however, and so did the conception of the borderlands as a territory contested among groups with incompatible characteristics and overlapping territorial, national, and imperial claims. Russians, Germans, Lithuanians, Poles,

Latvians, and Jews were all seen as competitors for the area’s finite land and resources.

Administrators generally seem to have believed that Russia’s past oppression of borderlands residents precluded any popular desire for continued Russian influence.

Although a handful of groups and individuals were occasionally singled out for their

71 Quoted in Ibid., 201. 72 Ibid., 2034. 73 On Gayl’s rather elaborate plans for German dominance, see Ibid., 2023. 286

unfortunate retention of sympathies with Russia, these feelings were regarded as aberrant and unacceptable. Relying on this basic assumption, administrators worked to triangulate the relationships of the groups who appeared to wield the most influence on Lithuania’s future, namely Germans, Lithuanians and Poles. District captains assessed each group’s position on Germany’s future role in the borderlands as well as their perspectives on one

other. Lithuanians and Poles were regarded as the two local groups competing for

Lithuania’s future.

Members of the Lithuanian middle class and clergy certainly favored an

independent nationstate with Lithuanian language and culture predominant. The growing

intelligentsia had broadened its base of support in the decades leading up to the defiant

declarations of independence in December 1917 and February 1918. Catholic Lithuanian

clergy members, however, caught the attention of the German district captains more than

any other identifiable group of Lithuanian nationalists. This is partly explained by the

concentration of secular middleclass political activity in Wilna and Kowno, whereas the

surviving administrative reports tend to emphasize smaller cities and rural areas. 74 More importantly, the clergy emerged from the Revolution of 1905 as the dominant purveyor of popular nationalist enthusiasm. 75 Additionally, priests played an instrumental role under German rule by serving as a crucial interface between the administrators and the population at large. They were highly regarded community leaders who wielded

74 The district captain of Kowno noted in April 1918, however, that “only a small circle of Lithuanians – the socalled Lithuanian intelligentsia and the clergy – is interested in politics, though they seek to influence the population politically in the nationalistic Lithuanian sense.” LSHA 6411584, KH in Kowno, VB for 1 October 1917 to 31 March 1918, fol. 107. 75 Tomas Balkelis, The Making of Modern Lithuania (London: Routledge, 2009), 8687. 287

significant influence on the political persuasion of common Lithuanians. 76 German officials oftentimes communicated with multilingual priests who could then relay important details about German policy to the population during church sermons. District captains acknowledged the significance of the nationalistic priests: “The clergy are almost without exception carriers of Lithuanian nationalism ( Nationalgedankens ).” 77

Another district captain observed that a “large part of the Catholic clergy is nationallitauisch ,” emphasizing the link between their Lithuanian ethnicity and advocacy of Lithuanian nationalism. In the broad outlines of administrators’ perception, priests were Lithuanian, Catholic, and politically conscious. For all these reasons the clergy’s political tendencies were of great interest.

German officials found reason to be optimistic about the Lithuanian clergy’s anti

Russian and antiPolish tendencies. Historical examples grounded commonsense interpretations of the clergy’s politics and emphasized Lithuanian animosity toward

Russia and particularly toward Poland. The former Russian rulers had suppressed

Lithuanian culture and the Catholic religion, while the Polish elites had long favored their own national culture at the expense of the Lithuanian language and culture. 78 District captains heavily emphasized the centrality of the clergy’s antiPolish orientation to their expression of Lithuanian nationalism:

Among Lithuanian clergy the antiPolish position is dominant. They are against any connection with a Polish kingdom. The reason they give is the centurieslong suppression of the Lithuanian nationality ( Volkstum ) by the leading Polish class. It

76 LSHA 6411360, KH in Retowo, VB 15 August to 15 September 1915, fol. 29; LSHA 6411306, KH in Skaudwile, VB for 1 April 1917 to 30 September 1917, fol. 149; LSHA 641153, KH in Rossienie, VB for 1 October to 31 December 1917, fol. 199. 77 LSHA 6411306, KH in Skaudwile, VB for October, November, December 1916, fol. 98; LSHA 6411 306, KH in Skaudwile, VB for 1 April 1917 to 30 September 1917, fol. 150. 78 Advocates of Lithuanian nationalism among the clergy did in fact hold these views. Piotr S. Wandycz, A History of East Central Europe: The Lands of Partitioned Poland, 1795-1918 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974), 304. 288

should be emphasized that events in Poland – the particularly obliging orientation of the administration there visàvis Polish [nationalist] efforts – always have repercussions in Lithuania. They are always followed actively by the carriers of Lithuanian nationalism (Nationalgedankens ), and the clergy who are against any connection with Poland; they explain that the Lithuanians must be given the same rights and freedoms that the Poles have. 79

Conflict between Poles and Lithuanians was obvious to district captains when manifested publicly in feuds over the language of education in primary schools or privately when

Polish estate owners or Lithuanian priests expressed concerns about the other group’s political maneuvering. 80 The clergy appeared to provide the administration with a powerful tool against the political designs of the Poles. Even if some nationalists perceived that the Poles were accorded preferential treatment in the General Government

Warsaw, the Germans actually favored the Poles only to the extent that doing so kept

them out of the sphere of Russian influence.

Although the German administration had no intention of creating an autonomous

Lithuanian state, the Lithuanian clergy’s antiPolish position appeared to conveniently

align with Ober Ost’s circumscribed goals. According to one district captain, the “clergy

have reasonable demands – freedom of religion and maintenance of their Lithuanian

nationality and distinctiveness ( Eigenart ).” 81 Ober Ost policy pledged strong rhetorical

support for these goals and had indeed encouraged the founding of Lithuanian schools

and cultural institutions. Full freedom of expression and activity for the Lithuanian national movement was not forthcoming, but district captains recognized the

79 KH in Skaudwile, VB for 1 April 1917 to 30 September 1917, fol. 150. Another district captain likewise noted that a political connection between Lithuania and Poland was “out of the question” due to this animosity. LSHA 641153, KH in Rossienie, VB for 1 October to 31 December 1917, fol. 199. 80 See, for example, LSHA 6411572, KH in Kupischki, VB 1 April 1917, fol. 64. See also Hans Zemke, Der Oberbefehlshaber Ost und die Schule im Verwaltungsbereich Litauen während des Weltkrieges (Dessau: Hofbuchdruckerei C. Dünnhaupt, 1936), 35. 81 LSHA 641153, KH in Rossienie, VB for 1 April to 30 September 1917, fol. 186. 289

prioritization of Lithuanians over Poles and observed that German policy had succeeded in making Lithuanian clergy “thankful for … allowing free practice of his religion and help with the desire for Bildung through the founding of Lithuanian primary schools.” 82

Given German consensus about the broad Lithuanian population’s supposed single minded focus on economic conditions and indifference to politics, securing the approval of the educated and politically minded clergy was a precondition for a nominally independent Lithuania under German direction. Although administrators occasionally punished or even deported priests for spreading antiGerman messages, the general opinion on the clergy at the critical juncture from the fall of 1917 through the end of the war was quite positive. 83 One district captain noted that a priest who in private

conversations criticized the administration’s harsh economic measures made a point of

“enlightening the people” about the necessity of those same measures. This priest and

others like him appeared to work within the confines of administrative framework in

order to effect favorable change for the Lithuanian population and secure the most promising future. This did not surprise the district captains responsible for meting out

harsh punishments to priests who took the alternative tack of inciting resistance to

German rule.

If analysis of the tensions separating Poles and Lithuanians emphasized the pride

of place of the latter at the expense of the former, it also regarded Poles to be a more

formidable political and cultural force. Ethnic Poles in Lithuania were represented along

the entire social spectrum but nationalist estate owners were the most prominent. In spite

82 LSHA 6411306, KH in Skaudwile, VB for second quarter 1917, fol. 132. Some nationalists, however, tended to view German language education as part of an insidious Germanization project. Colliander, “Die Beziehungen zwischen Litauen und Deutschland während der Okkupation 19151918,” 93. 83 From the beginning of 1916 through 4 April 1917, at least eleven priests were deported to Germany. Ibid., 67. 290

of the favoring of Lithuanian nationalism, administrators’ interactions with these upper class Poles drove home the shared role of Poles and Germans as “carriers of culture” in the borderlands. Poles had argued to German administrators from the very start that

Polish culture was historically dominant in Lithuania. One district captain recorded that

Poles “gladly talk about how they are the only carriers of culture for the Lithuanian underclass and that the Lithuanian written language is an artificial product that’s come about only in the last thirty years and it will not be able to resist superior Polish culture.” 84 The Poles expressing this point of view argued that these ties justified

Lithuania becoming part of the new Polish state because “what the Lithuanians possess in

cultural values were given by the Poles.” Polish nationalists were “not completely

wrong” on this score; this was essentially the view of Lithuanian backwardness propagated in sources like Kownoer Zeitung , and district captains found it to be

accurate. 85 Polish nationalists pushed their “superior” culture upon the “inferior”

Lithuanians just as the Germans had done to Polish Germans within the Reich borders.

As political issues became more prominent in September 1917 during the establishment

of the Taryba, the Poles apparently had a “superior sense of disdain about the Lithuanian

Land Council,” viewing it cynically as the “Germans using it as bait to trap the still

childlike Lithuanian.” 86 Here the Polish observers had seen right through the German

authorization of Lithuanian political activity: Ober Ost had in fact declared to the council

that “without annexation to Germany, further negotiations are impossible,” making

84 LSHA 6411306, KH in Kielmy, VB for February 1916, fol. 37. This depiction corresponds to the broad outlines of the conflict between Poles and Lithuanians; Poles claimed that they had elevated Lithuanian culture and Lithuanians blamed the Poles for the denationalization of their elite cultural class. Wandycz, A History of East Central Europe: The Lands of Partitioned Poland, 1795-1918 , 247. 85 LSHA 6411306, KH in Skaudwile, VB for October, November, December 1916, fol. 98. 86 LSHA 6411306, KH in Skaudwile, VB for 1 April 1917 to 30 September 1917, fol. 150151. 291

perfectly clear that the Lithuanian institution would adhere to the strict terms set by the

Germans. 87 Administrators certainly worked to combat Polish nationalism but they

nevertheless understood its superiority over Lithuanian culture in the same terms as their

local Polish sources. Ober Ost’s limited support for Lithuanian nationalism entailed an

absolute insistence that the relatively superior Poles could not be politically outmuscled

without German backing.

Notwithstanding administrators’ chauvinistic certainty in the superiority of all

things German, the relative weakness of Lithuanian “culture” was evaluated with regard

to social composition and other factors affecting the future state’s viability. Lithuanians

were thought to be politically indifferent because they lacked the education necessary for judiciously assessing the political landscape. General enthusiasm for the newfound

freedom of Lithuanian nationalist project was described as a “fantastical joy about the

consideration of the long suppressed Lithuanian national culture” that overlooked the

many deficiencies of Lithuanian society; such opinions were not surprising coming from

the “simple class of farmers” that “had no familiarity with any countries outside of

Lithuania” and had no means of learning about them.88 According to the German administrators, these naïve Lithuanian views ignored the social and political obstacles precluding a viable fully independent Lithuanian state: “where revenue, the army, and government officials would come from is not of interest, nor of where the laws would

come from.” 89 Lithuanians saw the sputtering Russian war effort as the opening for a free

Lithuanian state, but German administrators perceived that “a Lithuanian upper and middle class are almost totally absent, moreover the upper class is almost totally Polish

87 Quoted in Liulevicius, War Land , 200. 88 LSHA 6411306, KH in Skaudwile, VB for 1 April 1917 to 30 September 1917, fol. 150. 89 LSHA 641153, KH in Rossienie, VB for 1 October to 31 December 1917, fol. 199. 292

and the middle class mostly Polish.” Lithuania could not compete with the Poles under these circumstances, meaning that “a totally autonomous Lithuanian state is not conceivable, unless one wants to hand it over to the Poles and this absolutely must be prevented.” The much better prepared Poles seemed to be waiting in the wings. In

Rossienie the clergy drew the desired conclusion by understanding “fully well that a small people of about five million can’t exist without dependence on a Grossstaat and that this must be Germany.” 90 The political waters became even muddier once the

Bolsheviks thrust Russia into further revolutionary convulsions that made Lithuania even more certain to become a “plaything” for its more powerful neighbors. 91

Lithuania’s vulnerability visàvis Poland and Russia suggested to administrators

that Germany could serve as the “natural ally” to the nascent nation, but policy and perception remained contradictory. 92 While the main cost of becoming the favored guarantor of the future Lithuanian state was thought to be the approval of Lithuanian cultural activity, aberrant Lithuanian political expression calling for the removal of

German influence was harshly suppressed. 93 Even apparently innocuous activities were suppressed when they took place within a nationalist framework, as when a Polish

Agricultural Society attempted to find participants for a course in Wilna on the mechanics and operation of motor plows. The advertisement in the paper suggested that training Polish mechanics would obviate dependence on expensive foreign mechanics when the war was over. 94 The administration not only disapproved of the meetings but

90 LSHA 641153, KH in Rossienie, VB for 1 April to 30 September 1917, fol. 186. 91 LSHA 6411622, KH in Kurschany, VB for 1 October 1917 to 31 March 1918, fol. 239. 92 LSHA 6411306, KH in Skaudwile, VB for second quarter 1917, fol. 131. 93 LSHA 6411572, KH in Kupischki, VB 1 April 1917, fol. 65; LSHA 6411306, KH in Skaudwile, VB for 1 October 1917 to 31 March 1918¸ fol. 208. 94 LAS F231, Chef der Militärverwaltung, 14 April 1917, fol. 1. 293

went so far as to demand that “all plow teams be ordered that local civilians not be taught about plows in any way and that their attempts to get nearer to plows are forbidden.”

Given the assessment of the population’s apolitical character, the Germans simply needed to give the appearance of independence while providing the more tangible benefits of industrial advancement and protection from Poland and Russia. This did place certain limits on German behavior – some district captains noted that a program of forceful

Germanization would undercut Germany’s appeal as an effective counterweight to Polish and Russian influence. 95

German political prospects appeared to become even more favorable as Russia

descended into revolution. Ober Ost propaganda had unceasingly depicted the Russian

government as a malevolent influence and Russia’s weakening military standing in 1917

made it seem that Germany would be the only reliable major power in the borderlands

upon the war’s conclusion. When refugees returned from Riga in September 1917, they

told stories about the Russians’ “reign of terror” and a Russian general’s insistence that

Lithuania constituted merely the Governments Kowno and Wilna rather than an aspirant

nation. 96 These concerns fit into the mold of the administration’s antiRussian propaganda, even if the Russian war effort was by this stage under the control of the

democratic provisional government. The subsequent Bolshevik Revolution prompted a

new emphasis on the need for Germany to guarantee Lithuania’s “independence.” These

critiques relied on well worn themes; in a matter of months news about Russia shifted

from stories of tsarist generals pledging to recapture Lithuania to tales of chaos in

Bolshevik Russia. Reports from refugees about the new “Russian conditions” under the

95 LSHA 6411306, KH in Skaudwile, VB for second quarter 1917, fol. 132; LSHA 6411389, KH in Johanischkele, VB 1 July 1917, fol. 106. 96 LSHA 6411306, KH in Skaudwile, VB for 1 April 1917 to 30 September 1917, fol. 151. 294

Bolsheviks resembled the timeless characterization of tsarist Russia in many respects.

District captains reported that the population became more “thankful” to the German administration because the German presence spared them from “murders, fires, and beatings by Bolsheviks.” 97 Others, however, felt that the Germans should nevertheless leave immediately. 98

The process of determining local civilians’ level of sympathy with Bolshevik

Russia introduced new considerations into administrators’ understanding of Lithuanian society and politics. Though evaluations of the Bolshevik threat recycled many themes from critiques of the tsarist government that were based on an essentialized and harshly negative view of the East, assessment of Bolshevism’s political implications in occupied

Lithuania began to more directly engage Bolshevik ideology. Although these attempts relied on little more than a superficial understanding of the Bolshevik platform, they nonetheless spurred administrators to think of the new ideology in terms that addressed social stratification in Lithuania. District captains did not hold uniform views on

Bolshevism; some perceived that it posed a threat to Lithuania while others remained confident that it held little attraction to borderlands residents. Administrators gradually developed a sense of how it might affect the occupied lands from their interaction with local civilians. Polish estate owners, for instance, heard stories about returnees from

Russia and they feared that Bolshevik ideology would transform Lithuania into a cesspool for radical democracy and Russianfriendly views; they feared “anarchy and possible land redistribution.” 99 Lithuanian estate owners likewise worried about the future of an independent democratic Lithuania because of the “emphasis on democracy

97 LSHA 6411306, KH in Skaudwile, VB for 1 October 1917 to 31 March 1918, fol. 208. 98 LSHA 6411622, KH in Kurschany, VB for 1 October 1917 to 31 March 1918, fol. 239. 99 LSHA 6411622, KH in Kurschany, VB for 1 October 1917 to 31 March 1918, fol. 239. 295

with reference to consequences of property redistribution in Russia.” 100 Yet another

district captain recorded complaints among Lithuanian property owners, in this case

“simple farmers” who assumed that Germany would need to provide security in Lithuania

to avoid Bolshevik property redistribution. The district captain who conveyed this

observation noted that “Bolshevik ideas have no support among the agricultural population,” while other administrators reported less sanguine impressions. In

Johanischkiele, the “simple people” who were “disinterested and uncomprehending”

about political issues – what the district captain referred to as the “broad masses” of the

Lithuanian population – had “the latent longing that political changes will divide up the

lands of those who have more, i.e. the great estate owners and the larger farmers, and that

a portion of those lands will go to the small people.” 101 The district captain of

Johanischkiele noted ominously: “Here Bolshevik ideals lie dormant.”

Although the Bolsheviks’ revolutionary ideology caused unease among the

German administrators, perception of Lithuanians’ lack of political agency appeared to provide a natural barrier against ideological penetration. While simple Lithuanian farmers might seize upon Bolshevism as a means of realizing their base desires to acquire more land, German administrators regarded Lithuanians as petulant children who needed to be kept in line with a strong hand. The district captain who noticed synergy between

Bolshevik property redistribution and Lithuanians’ hunger for more land also observed that “the train of thought [about acquiring new land from the rich] does not ever manifest itself in peaceful times when the land is governed in a firm and purposeful manner.” The reason for this was to be found in the Lithuanian national character: “When the

100 LSHA 641153, KH in Rossienie, VB for 1 October to 31 December 1917, fol. 199. 101 LSHA 6411389, KH in Johanischkele, VB for 1 October 1917 to 31 March 1918, fol. 142. 296

Lithuanian is peacefully and firmly governed, he is by virtue of his obedience, patience, and indolence a particularly pleasant subject to rule.” They key factor, however, was the maintenance of strict control: “If one lets him have the reins, he will kick over the traces due to the complete political unripeness and the previously alluded to naïve, radical desire of this yet quite lowly standing Naturvolk ; this can be highly dangerous to the ruler and to those of higher social and cultural standing.” 102 Outside agitators might influence

Lithuanians as they supposedly had in the revolutionary days of 1863 and 1905, but such

instances would always comprise the manipulation of the simple Lithuanian rather the

expression of homegrown ideological resentment. In political terms, Lithuanians

remained “in children’s shoes” and therefore needed to be governed strictly.

As support for this point of view, district captains identified the “understanding”

or “more understanding” segment of the population as those who accepted the fact that

Lithuania was unable to control its own political future. These supposedly more perceptive locals did not necessarily stem from social groups that had supported the

German administration throughout the occupation. Even Polish estate owners who

opposed the German Empire’s removal of Lithuania from the Polish sphere of influence

appeared to understand that the spread of Bolshevik chaos into Lithuania would be worse

than a semiindependent Lithuania with a close connection to Germany. 103 A number of

district captains noted that Poles were aware of the Germanization program in Prussian

Poland, and the very district captain making this observation also noted how closely the

Poles “stuck together.” Nonetheless, the changing political landscape had pushed them

into the open arms of the German Empire. This dynamic appeared to have won over

102 LSHA 6411389, KH in Johanischkele, VB for 1 October 1917 to 31 March 1918, fol. 142143. 103 LSHA 6411622, KH in Kurschany, VB for 1 October 1917 to 31 March 1918, fol. 239. 297

Lithuanian estate owners who “thanked the German government for peace and order in the land in spite of complaints with the Germans.” 104 Another district captain made similar comments:

The understanding Lithuanian says to himself that Lithuania cannot maintain itself as a nation without strong German support or else it would fall to the Poles or Jews. … A totally independent Lithuania would be a Greek gift to the Lithuanians and would make it a victim to other Völkerschaften and unscrupulous demagogues. The most radical Lithuanians – who are numerically small and live in the larger cities – cannot be considered the representatives of the Lithuanian farmer population ( Bauernbevölkerung ) whose interests go in a different direction. 105

Lithuania must therefore remain in thrall to one of its more powerful neighbors.

Bolshevik ideology did not comprise a direct threat based on its appeal to the broad masses of the Lithuanian population, but rather because it could be used by external forces (i.e. Russia) to manipulate gullible and defenseless Lithuanians.

German administrators refused to admit even the slightest possibility that

Lithuanians could succeed in creating an independent state without German backing, but this evaluation did not ultimately rest on the perception of fixed cultural identifies that would forever preclude independent Lithuanian statehood. The issue instead concerned social and political factors that the administrators implicitly argued could change over time. Lithuanians were a “people of nature” ( Naturvolk , as contrasted with Kulturvolk ) by

virtue of their minimal middle class and industrial development, but this backwardness

did not make it impossible for a more advanced people like the Germans to help improve

the situation. Popular support for independence was most prominent among the “half

educated,” while the more intelligent Lithuanians – namely those who had the most

104 LSHA 6411306, KH in Skaudwile, VB for 1 October 1917 to 31 March 1918, fol. 208. 105 LSHA 6411515, KH in Wiezajcie, VB for 1 October 1917 to 31 March 1918, fol. 288. 298

education and social privilege – understood that close affiliation with Germany offered the best means of securing a promising economic and political future for Lithuania.

Jews and Social Change in the Borderlands

As administrators assessed the respective positions of the two most prominent

ethnicities vying for political influence in the later stages of the war, Jews received

somewhat less attention as the third most populous group. In spite of their substantial

numbers, Jews’ confinement to urban areas and concentration in commercial occupations

– legacies of Russian policy – rendered them a marginal political factor in German perception. Unlike Lithuanians and Poles, Jews were thought to lack a meaningful claim

to determine Lithuania’s future. In part, this was due to the political tensions that

separated the nascent Lithuanian nationalists and Jewish leaders and resulted in Jews’

exclusion from the Taryba. 106 Notwithstanding the administration’s abrogation of

antisemitic Russian law, German perception of Jews was largely negative. German policy’s focus on agricultural output and strict control of commerce emphasized Jews’ perceived social burden. As ever, both German policy and perception were a convoluted

and contradictory mix. Negative views of Jews stemmed both from the trend toward total

control of the local economy and from outright antisemitism: the administration

ultimately regarded Jews as an unreliable and undesirable component of the Lithuanian political landscape. The tendency to discriminate against Jews likely found resonance

among Lithuanian nationalists. In any event, antiJewish views remained quite consistent

106 Jewish leaders rejected the conditions that ethnic Lithuanian members of the Taryba imposed upon their inclusion, and the administration restricted alternative forms of political activity. Egle Bendikaite, “Expressions of Litvak ProLithuanian Political Orientation c. 19061921,” in The Vanished World of Lithuanian Jews , ed. Alvydas Nikzentaitis, Stefan Schreiner, and Darius Staliūnas (New York: Rodopi, 2004), 89107. 299

over the course of the occupation, in part because discriminatory German policies produced outcomes that reinforced negative biases.

The earliest assessments of Jewish political sympathies were essentially similar to evaluations of nonJewish locals; Jews were thought to be either indifferent to or friendly toward the German administration on the basis of their newfound freedom from Russian rule. 107 As was the case with nonJews, the occupiers initially found no reason to think that local Jews would be discontent. This calculus shifted within the initial year when the imposition of harsh economic restrictions pulled the rug out from under the feet of the

Jewish commercial class. 108 The district captain of Rossienie observed in April 1916 that

“the sympathies of the Jewish population are no longer on our side to the same extent” because “monopolization of trade and the regulation of passport and travel policies have brought almost all of their occupations to a halt.”109 In district Kurschany, the German

district captain feared that the administration “must support those whose very existence

depends on trade, namely the Jews; they should be allowed to trade, otherwise they will become a proletariat.” 110 A third district captain reported several months later in July

1916 that the “mood among Jews is embittered because their means of earning money were to a large extent taken away.” 111 Jewish opinion appeared to have turned against the administration mere months after German policies had come into effect, and not without reason.

107 See, for example LSHA 6411659, KH in Plungiany, VB 18 August 1915, fol. 5; LSHA 641153, KH in Rossienie, VB 14 September 1915, fol. 7; LSHA 641153, KH in Rossienie, 18 October 1915, fol. 13; GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, January 1916, 30. 108 This very metaphor was used. LSHA 6411622, KH in Kurschany, VB for February 1916, fol. 75. 109 LSHA 641153, KH in Rossienie, VB 29 April 1916, fol. 53. 110 LSHA 6411622, KH in Kurschany, VB for the first quarter 1916, fol. 90. 111 LSHA 6411306, KH in Kielmy, VB for 1 June to 15 July 1916, fol. 66. 300

As the German administration expanded its control over occupied Lithuania in

1915 and 1916 through a bevy of new regulations, the difficulties and contradictions of

the rules affecting Jews became ever more apparent to the administrators responsible for

executing policy. The district captain in Rossienie complained that burdensome

requirements for travel permits placed too many obstacles in the way of Jewish

merchants, thereby infringing upon the “only way to provide the population with the

necessary groceries.” 112 Several months later he also reported that the goal of obtaining

all available materials (e.g. flax, skins, horse hair, etc) was only possible by using Jewish

merchants to freely circulate and purchase them. 113 In Kurschany, the “purchasing of

agricultural products like eggs, butter, flax, etc” was “truly difficult with the exclusion of

the … Jewish merchant class ( Händlertum ).” NonJewish rural cooperatives only partially ameliorated the problem because they were “very backward.” 114 The employment of Jewish merchants to facilitate economic transactions in occupied

Lithuania continued throughout the course of the occupation because no viable alternatives existed. Efforts to avoid losing profits to Jewish “middlemen” doubtless constrained the amount and potential sources of income available to Jews, yet it simply was not possible to fully exclude them.

Another justification for the exclusion of Jews as commercial intermediaries was the suspicion that doing so would disadvantage and agitate the nonJewish civilians who

“hated and despised” them. Administrators presumed that this intense dislike could then be transferred over to the German offices employing Jewish merchants for commercial tasks. Jews’ “many years of sucking [the nonJews] dry” had created a “deeply rooted

112 LSHA 641153, KH in Rossienie, VB 28 December 1915, fol. 24. 113 LSHA 641153, KH in Rossienie, VB 29 March 1916, fol. 4344. 114 LSHA 6411622, KH in Kurschany, VB for the first quarter 1916, fol. 9596. 301

hatred” that administrators assumed must be justified. 115 Antisemitism was a component part of Lithuanian nationalists’ desire to “reclaim” urban centers from the “foreign” Jews,

Russians, and Poles, though this theme was not universally expressed in antisemitic terms. 116 As a result, Jews seemed to be in a poor position to serve as the natural

linguistic intermediaries between the German administration and local population. One

district captain recommended putting official translators in post office positions in order

to prevent Jews from demanding high prices from nonJewish locals for translation. 117

Even more critically, Jews appeared to exploit their approved commercial positions and activities as a means of financially cheating local nonJews. Jewish merchants’ supposed profiteering and exploitation reflected poorly on the administration’s effort to create a functional wartime economy. Verwaltungschef Isenburg complained even in August 1915 that Jews illegally purchased horses by convincing nonJews that the German administration would otherwise simply take them. 118 Jews’ ability to understand

administrative decrees and German language news appeared to make them ideally positioned to deceive nonJews who had less access and might be easily convinced of

false and financially disadvantageous claims. 119 Isenburg feared Jews’ ability to read domestic German newspapers because they might spread reports about economic shortages in the homeland, thereby hurting the locals’ regard for the strength of the

115 This formulation also shows how Germans could justify discriminatory measures on the basis of approval of local nonJews’ antisemitism. LSHA 6411306, KH in Kielmy, First VB of District Kielmy, fol. 4; GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, 13 October 1915, 13. 116 Balkelis, The Making of Modern Lithuania , 3040; Zigmantas Kiaupa, The History of Lithuania (Vilnius: Baltos Laukos, 2005), 192193; Vladas Sirutavicius, “Notes on the Origin and Development of Modern Lithuanian Antisemitism in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century and Beginning of the Twentieth Century,” in The Vanished World of Lithuanian Jews , 64. 117 He also regretted that they would in the process spread their “spoiled [variant of] German.” LSHA 641 1306, KH in Kielmy, VB for January 1916, fol. 26. 118 BAMA PH 30 III/4,15 July to 20 August 1915, 56. 119 LSHA 6411572, KH in Kupischki, VB 26 Apr 1916, fol. 27. 302

German war effort. When the district captain in Rossienie caught wind of a local rumor that the administration’s effort to count all available livestock presaged the slaughtering of all local animals, he reflexively assumed that the misunderstanding had been intentionally spread by a “Jewish trader.” 120 In some senses, at least, the illiterate

ignorance of the rural nonJews appeared a virtue in contrast to Jews’ selfserving

duplicity. Moreover, German administrators were sympathetic to the antisemitic

grievances of nonJews in spite of the disregard they normally had for their views.

Administrators dealt in common antisemitic stereotypes when observing that

Jewish merchants’ activities must be regulated. Several administrators noted in almost

identical language – perhaps following the lead of Verwaltungschef Isenburg – that “trade is almost entirely in the hands of the Jews.” 121 Administrators quickly concluded that

Jews were by nature dishonest traders. The district captain of Kurschany noted in March

1916 that Jews “will circumvent the regulations in order to make a profit” because of

“their strongly developed desire for earning.” 122 While German administrators did

sometimes reference former Russian policies as influences on the present borderlands

social conditions, judgments of Jewish character seemed to transcend such factors.

Ruling Lithuania’s Jews was a “difficult struggle against the carelessness, dirt, shirking,

and craftiness of Jews.” 123 Another district captain noted that “their means of earning money were to a large extent taken away” by German policy, but he subsequently

120 LSHA 641153, KH in Rossienie, VB 30 January 1916, fol. 34. 121 LSHA 6411622, KH in Kurszany, VB for the fourth quarter 1915, fol. 40; LSHA 6411336, KH in Poniewiez, VB 24 December 1915, fol. 2; GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, 13 October 1915, 6. 122 LSHA 6411622, KH in Kurschany, VB for the first quarter 1916, fol. 101. 123 LSHA 6411572, KH in Kupischki, VB 26 Apr 1916, fol. 2526. 303

observed that Jews’ income was “also in times of peace made up of smuggling.” 124

Comparisons to other local ethnic groups rarely portrayed Jewish characteristics as virtuous. Locals were in general willing to work on administrationdirected tasks, but

“constant pressure” was a precondition for ensuring Jews’ compliance. 125 Lithuanians were thought to require oversight and pressure to remain on task, but they were at times also described as “trusting and compliant”; Jews, on the other hand, “always have an eye to their own advantage, are often therefore obsequious and useful, but now and then disobedient and intent on playacting.” 126 Verwaltungschef Isenburg took his particularly virulent antisemitism even further by basing the restriction of Jewish commerce on a moral argument with great consequences:

Over time, the current regulation of commerce will lead to a large part of the Jewish population taking up craft professions or emigrating. This development is desirable in the interest of the state, since a healthy economic prospering in the land cannot be achieved as long as the Jewish element of the local population rules trade; they have a shockingly low level of moral convictions and a complete lack of statesupporting ( staatserhaltender ) qualities. 127

In Isenburg’s interpretation, Jewish merchants provided no positive value whatsoever to

Lithuania’s economy and in fact they ruled trade in a morally harmful manner.

Isenburg did not explicitly spell out the reasons why Jews could not comprise a

stable element of Lithuanian society but his judgment clearly rested on an inextricable

linkage of moral deficiency and economic liability. As commercial intermediaries who

supposedly did not contribute anything of substance to society at large – in spite of the

fact that district captains tacitly acknowledged Jews’ vital commercial role by relying on

124 LSHA 6411306, KH in Kielmy, VB for 1 June to 15 July 1916, fol. 66. 125 The primary issue in this case may well have been Jews’ capacity to communicate with German administrators. LSHA 6411515, KH in Wiezajcie, VB 15 Jul 1916, fol. 118. 126 LSHA 6411359, KH in Juschinty, VB 15 July 1916, fol. 1314. 127 GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, May 1916, 15. 304

them to fulfill such functions throughout the occupation – Jews were expected to deal with the situation by taking up more productive fields like small industry and agriculture or else simply emigrate. Although Isenburg seemed to acknowledge that some Jews could successfully make this transition, the assumptions underlying his evaluation favored emigration as the more desirable outcome. Isenburg’s emphasis on the exclusion of Jews did not merely address the wartime administration or the conditions of a future Lithuania, but rather the future of the German Empire’s anticipated political dominance of Lithuania after the war. In the same report in which he questioned Jews’ statesupporting

(staatserhaltend ) deficiencies, he praised ethnic Lithuanians’ capacity to become “an easily manageable national component ( Volksteil ) of a new, larger Germany.” 128

Isenburg’s optimism did not extend to Jews.

Jews’ high representation among Lithuania’s urban population strongly

conditioned German evaluations. Cities were on the one hand a site where some Jews

lived in middleclass conditions more familiar to German administrators than ethnic

Lithuanians’ peasant farmsteads. Jews were occasionally admired for their literacy, focus

on education, and ability to learn languages. Like the invading German soldiers’ firsthand

accounts, however, administrators’ reports also tended to associate Jews with unfavorable

urban characteristics. Lithuania’s largest cities and towns served as the centers of German

administration. They presented particular challenges and many of these issues were

understood to affect Jews disproportionately. In Schadow, the district captain noted that

the nearly 100 wooden homes of the Jewish quarter had been systematically destroyed by

the retreating Russians. 129 Even where the destruction had not been as extensive, district

128 GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, May 1916, 45. 129 LSHA 6411233, KH in Schadow, VB March 1916, fol. 60. 305

captains determined the legality and ownership of property holdings with great difficulty;

Jewish owners were unable to say “what actually belongs to them.” 130 Some cities hardly seemed to be cities at all, yet these too were apparently Jewish , as the district captain in

Johanischkiele reported: “Cities are not present. The small Städtchen are in essence

collections of Judenhäusern .” 131 Wartime destruction induced deracination that worsened

over the course of the occupation in accord with the diminishing availability of food

supplies. District captains were surprised by unexpected migrations of urban Jews in

1916, and by 1917 Jews traveled the countryside in order to purchase or steal bread from

Lithuanian peasants. 132 Surviving administrative reports from four different districts attest

to the widespread problem of destitute urban Jews (primarily from Wilna) migrating to

rural areas in order to find enough bread to survive. 133 The problem became acute in the

spring of 1917 and did not abate for the remainder of the war. Migrations sometimes

affected the overcrowded and clumsily managed refugee populations that tended to

gather in cities. Several hundred such displaced Jews were intentionally relocated from

Wilna to Poniewiez in the spring of 1917, for instance, though the district captain

receiving them noted that they and 700 other Jews from Wilna who had illegally migrated

130 LSHA 6411515, KH in Wiezajcie, VB for 1 October to 31 December 1916, fol. 161. 131 LSHA 6411389, KH in Johanischkele, VB 1 January 1917, 1 Jan 1917, fol. 75. 132 LSHA 6411233, KH in Schadow, VB for 15 July to 1 October 1916, fol. 75. 133 LSHA 6411572, KH in Kupischki, VB 1 April 1917, fol. 63; LSHA 6411572, KH in Kupischki, VB for 1 April to 30 June 1917, fol. 71; LSHA 641152, KH in Birsche, VB for the second quarter 1917, 30 Jun 1917, fol. 207208; LSHA 641152, KH in Birsche, VB for 1 October 1917 to 1 April 1918, 1 Apr 1918, fol. 275; LSHA 6411515, KH in Wiezajcie, VB for 1 April to 30 June 1917, fol. 202203; LSHA 6411515, KH in Wiezajcie, VB for 1 October 1917 to 31 March 1918, fol. 284285; LSHA 6411389, KH in Johanischkele, VB 1 July 1917, fol. 107. The pattern of warstrained urban dwellers traveling to the countryside to acquire provisions by whatever means necessary had already been established in the German homeland. David Welch, Germany, Propaganda and Total War, 1914-1918: The Sins of Omission (London: Athlone, 2000), 123. 306

to Poniewiez would have to be quartered in the countryside in order to avoid additional overcrowding in the city. 134

In German perception, Lithuanian Jews’ urban concentration appeared to

correspond to deep set character traits. Chief of these was the charge that Jews were

unwilling to take part in physical labor. As a consequence of the administration’s harsh

restrictions on commercial activity, much of the urban Jewish population lacked

opportunities for gainful employment and were therefore obvious targets for forced labor battalions. In Skaudwile, the district captain noted that Jews hid the full extent of their poverty “because they fear being drafted for physical labor.” 135 Locals of all ethnicities apparently tried to avoid being drafted into forced labor battalions, but Jews in particular were singled out for “seeking all means of escaping them.” 136 Jews were the only group

uniformly regarded to be “trying to avoid work whenever possible.” 137 As a result, constant pressure was considered the only means of ensuring that Jews remained on task when at work. Strong nineteen year old Jews protested service in the work battalions because the wages were not high enough, and prospective recruits joined the Polish

Legion because they sought more “pleasant” opportunities. 138 Jews appeared to prefer the

continuation of their former commercial practices, keeping themselves afloat

economically through the “laborious sale of all manner of small things.” 139

Complaints about Jews as laborers did not simply aver that Jews preferred not to undertake physically demanding tasks; the problem was presumed to have deeper roots.

134 LSHA 6411336, KH in Poniewiez, VB 3 June 1917, fol. 64. 135 LSHA 6411306, KH in Kielmy, VB for April 1916, fol. 49. 136 LSHA 6411359, KH in Juschinty, VB 19 October 1916, fol. 25. 137 LSHA 6411584, KH in Kowno, VB 4 April 1917, fol. 34. 138 LSHA 6411306, KH in Skaudwile, VB for the first quarter 1917, fol. 117. 139 LSHA 641153, KH in Rossienie, VB for 1 April to 30 September 1917, fol. 180. 307

Labor battalions made up of Jews from Kowno were the bane of the administrative overseers because they appeared incapable of undertaking the desired projects. They were

“hardly useable because they were not accustomed to agricultural work.” 140 Ober Ost

correspondence noted that Jews could not be made to work alongside nonJews because

their religious dietary requirements would lead to malnourishment. 141 A district captain

observed that Jews had always found ethnic Lithuanians to perform “physical labor” in

their place. 142 While Lithuanians workers were “steady and hardworking under

supervision,” Jews were simply “poor workers” who “did not accomplish much” even

when carefully directed; Jews lacked both “will and ability” and laziness was not

considered to be a sufficient explanation. 143 The district captain of Rossienie succinctly expressed this view: “Attempts to employ the urban Jewish population in jobs that require physical exertion turned out mediocre. In my opinion this is not only the result of their aversion to such activity, but rather much more the centurieslong weaning of the race [from such activities], which is not to be changed in a short amount of time.” 144 The

term “race” portrays Jews as a unified group and emphasizes the difficulty of adjusting

widely shared traits. This view was certainly held by Verwaltungschef Isenburg and seems to have been widely though not universally shared among district captains.

Administration policy never institutionalized a racially determined policy, however, and even this relatively harsh judgment leaves open the possibility that the root cause was

140 LSHA 6411374, KH in Janischki, VB 29 August 1916, fol. 62; LSHA 641152, KH in Birsche, VB for the third quarter 1916, 30 Sep 1916, fol. 121. 141 LAS F231, Oberbefehlshaber Ost, 14 October 1916, fol. 173. 142 LSHA 6411306, KH in Skaudwile, VB for the first quarter 1917, fol. 110. 143 LSHA 6411572, KH in Kupischki, VB for 1 April to 30 June 1917, fol. 80. 144 LSHA 641153, KH in Rossienie, VB for 1 April to 30 June 1917, fol. 157. 308

social rather than biological. The judgment was in any case quite unfavorable and sweeping in its depiction of all Jews as poor workers.

Ober Ost policy effectively directed administrators to force Jews into agricultural endeavors but they broached the subject of social engineering only rarely.

Notwithstanding the limited success of these efforts, administrators tended to divide the local population into the categories of farmers ( ackerbautreibend ) and nonfarmers

(nichtackerbautreibend ). Given the emphasis on acquiring all available food from the occupied territory, Jews’ categorization among the latter group emphasized their classification in German perception as a burden on the administration. In the haphazard and heavy handed administration of Lithuania, no uniform program existed to alter this situation. Groups of Jews were moved from overtaxed cities to rural areas and set to work in fields, but administrators were not optimistic about their ability to undertake agricultural activity. 145 The district captain of Kupischki regarded Jewish migrants from

Wilna as a plague ( Landplage ), and as parasites who brought nothing of value to the countryside; on the other hand, presumably nonJewish families displaced from the area of operations “proved themselves to be useable and capable Arbeitsmaterial .” 146 Even when Jews were observed leasing land for farming because they lacked any other means of earning a living, administrators had little to say about the development. 147 By the time this occurred in the fall of 1917, the civilians of occupied Lithuania had suffered from food shortages for well over a year. Urban Jews had been the first victims of nutritional shortages and they continued to bear the brunt. The district captain in Kielmy noted in

145 LSHA 6411336, KH in Poniewiez, VB 3 June 1917, fol. 64. 146 LSHA 6411572, KH in Kupischki, VB for 1 April 1917 to 30 September 1917, fol. 91. 147 LSHA 6411306, KH in Skaudwile, VB for 1 April 1917 to 30 September 1917, fol. 140; BAMA PHD 23/51, VB Isenburg, 1 April to 30 September 1917, 17. 309

December 1916 that “at the moment only Jews in the city are going hungry,” emphasizing Jews’ perceived uselessness to this central social and economic issue. 148

Verwaltungschef Isenburg reluctantly acknowledged that food apportioned to Lithuanians

was justified because they “provide so much else for the troops and the Heimat” and such

sentiments were never applied to Jews. 149 Jews were more likely to be regarded as

“totally worthless Arbeitermaterial ”, and as “useless Mitesser ” who threatened the administration’s well being. 150 These charges against Jews corresponded to common

antisemitic tropes, particularly those emphasized by völkisch German ideologists who

demonized cities and industry while stressing the value of rootedness in agriculture as a

signifier of racial superiority. 151 Most Ober Ost administrators did not evince such extreme views, but many did at least partially subscribe to stereotypes of Jews as an inferior, harmful social and racial group.

Perception of Jews as a social burden dovetailed with the notion that they were an impediment to improving the health of the occupied civilians at large. Jewish slaughterhouses were found to be wanting, and the butchers who ran them were accused of adhering to ritual Jewish laws that did not correspond to German standards of cleanliness. 152 Shops, tea houses, and bakeries were all deficient, in some cases giving the impression that “the floors and walls had not been cleaned with soap and water in years.” 153 A number of cheders failed to correspond to hygienic regulations and were

148 LSHA 6411306, KH in Skaudwile, VB for October, November, December 1916, fol. 89. 149 GSTA PK I. HA Rep. 77 Titel 875 Nr. 14 Adhibendum 2, VB Isenburg, 1 July to 1 October 1916, 16. 150 LSHA 6411515, KH in Wiezajcie, VB for 1 October 1917 to 31 March 1918, fol. 284285. 151 Puschner, Die völkische Bewegung im wilhelminische Kaiserreich: Sprache – Rasse – Religion , 1145. 152 LSHA 641153, KH in Rossienie, VB 28 December 1915, fol. 20; LSHA 6411336, KH in Poniewiez, VB 26 January 1916, fol. 15; LSHA 641152, KH in Birsche, VB for the first quarter 1917, fol. 186187. 153 LSHA 641152, KH in Birsche, VB for February 1916, fol. 13; LSHA 6411306, KH in Kielmy, VB for January 1916, fol. 25. 310

therefore closed. 154 Visits to the primarily Jewish sections of cities revealed courtyards

and streets with “unbelievably dirty streets” and unchecked sewage. 155 After making such observations, administrators concluded that “the Jewish population is hard to educate in order and cleanliness.” 156 Only assiduous daily inspections could overcome the root

causes of indolence and laziness among Jews. Public pronouncements on epidemics

remained typically neutral toward Jews, 157 but they had already established the dirtiness

of cities that readers already perceived as particularly Jewish. 158 Reports on the ghettos’ labyrinthine streets, chaotic markets, and unsanitary Jewish shops all identified Jews as dangerously unhygienic without employing explicitly antisemitic stereotypes.

The charge of Jewish hygienic deficiency proved to be of particular importance during the final months of the war. Epidemics raged from the spring of 1917 onward, checking administrators’ confidence in the ability of German hygienic methods to improve the supposedly backward and dirty lands. Given the urban concentration of epidemics, Jews naturally received a disproportionate amount of attention. Epidemics struck Wilna, Georgenburg, Poniewiez, and Rossienie, among other Lithuanian cities.

Isenburg reported in the fall of 1917 that Wilna had suffered over 700 cases of typhus in

154 BAMA PHD 23/50, VB Isenburg, 1 October 1916 to 31 March 1917, 43; LSHA 6411622, KH in Kurschany, VB for the second quarter 1917, fol. 184. 155 LSHA 6411515, KH in Wiezajcie, VB 1 October 1916, fol. 148. 156 LSHA 6411515, KH in Wiezajcie, VB 15 Jul 1916, fol. 113. 157 Robert L. Nelson argues that Ober Ost Press depictions of Eastern European Jews were surprisingly positive. What is most surprising, however, is how the German papers managed to convey negative evaluations of Jews into passages that merely gave the appearance of neutrality and sympathy. Some Germans who served in the East sympathized with local Jews from a sense of shared cultural and religious identity, like . Viktor Klemperer – a convert to Christianity in 1912 – more typically expressed revulsion. Both perspectives were presented in Kownoer Zeitung but the majority comprised ostensibly neutral but functionally negative depictions, as was also true of depictions of the other local ethnic groups. See Robert L. Nelson, “Representations of the Occupied East in German Soldier Newspapers, 19141918,” Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung 51, no. 4 (2002): 500. 158 “Entlausung der gesamten Kownoer Einwohnerschaft,” Kownoer Zeitung , March 10, 1918, sec. Beiblatt. 311

May, a number that had only diminished to 141 for the month of September. 159 An Ober

Ost order prohibited German soldiers from speaking to locals in the streets of Wilna, emphasizing that “all members of the administration have scrupulous cleanliness as their duty.” 160 The Verwaltungschef instituted increasingly stringent measures, going so far as to demand the delousing of the entire population. The original order no longer exists, leaving only the response by the district captain of Skaudwile who indicated that it was neither practicable nor desirable: not all city residents required delousing and “in the urban and Jewish populations there are many families and individuals who keep their person and homes very clean and would consider the carrying out of this order to be a shame or insult.” 161 He did comply with the order, but not without noting that Lithuanians

farmers were just as likely if not more so to be liceinfested. In his estimation cleanliness

could be achieved by requiring schoolchildren to bathe under the supervision of educators

every two weeks. In Poniewiez, on the other hand, a severe outbreak of dysentery led the

district captain to close the schools. He did institute educational programs on the role of

lice in spreading typhus because the population appeared to be riddled with them. 162

As the case of the district captain of Skaudwile shows, not all administrators

regarded Jews as wholly responsible for dangerous unsanitary conditions. They

nevertheless focused primarily upon Jews during the crisis and this is not entirely

explained by the fact that urban epidemics received a disproportionate amount of

attention. Observations on Jews’ supposed physical weakness bled into evaluations of

their role in the hygienic crisis and fostered widespread antisemitism. Two months before

159 BAMA PHD 23/51, VB Isenburg, 1 April to 30 September 1917, 10. 160 LAS F231, Chef der Militärverwaltung, 16 April 1917, fol. 282. 161 He also notes that priests should not be required to do so alongside the poor. LSHA 6411306, KH in Skaudwile, VB for second quarter 1917, fol. 121. 162 LSHA 6411336, KH in Poniewiez, VB for 1 April to 30 September 1917, 4 Oct 1917, fol. 70. 312

the district captain in Skaudwile argued that respectable bourgeois Jews who maintained a sufficient standard of cleanliness should be spared from compulsory delousing, he had maligned Jews’ role in the spread of epidemics: “The mostly Jewish population of the small towns is not very healthy and as resistant [to disease] as the Lithuanian, who is exceptionally resistant due to his constant residence in the fresh air.” This explanation appeared to rest upon social factors that entailed consequential hygienic and biological manifestations: “Jews also have a certain degeneration whose root can be found in inbreeding, illness, and poor living conditions.” 163 Although this district captain went

furthest in analyzing the reasons behind Jews’ supposed susceptibility to disease, the basic charge of physical weakness and vulnerability was widespread. This theme was so broadly construed as to allege that Jews frequently suffered from fantasies of “pain and

overanxiety,” falsely believing that their minor ailments meant that they were “on their

last legs.” 164 With regard to the epidemics of 1917 and 1918, however, German

administrators unambiguously identified the worst hit group as “primarily the Jewish population.” 165 Worse yet, the same poor residents and refugees in Wilna who roamed the countryside searching for food were also thought responsible for simultaneously spreading the epidemics; they were identified as “merchants, refugees, and beggars,” which were the administration’s most frequently used categories for Jews. The population of Georgenburg was repeatedly deloused during the summer of 1917, but “especially the

Jews” as the district captain reported. 166 Verwaltungschef Isenburg ordered that entry to

163 LSHA 6411306, KH in Skaudwile, VB for the first quarter 1917, fol. 108. 164 LSHA 641152, KH in Birsche, VB for the second quarter 1917, 30 Jun 1917, fol. 214. 165 LSHA 6411336, KH in Poniewiez, VB for 1 April to 30 September 1917, fol. 70; Stabi, VB Heppe, 1 October 1917 to March 1918, 10. 166 LSHA 641153, KH in Rossienie, VB for 1 October to 31 December 1917, fol. 190; LSHA 6411336, KH in Poniewiez, VB for 1 April to 30 September 1917, fol. 70. 313

the cities’ soup kitchens required a delousing certificate. 167 In Poniewiez, “the socalled

ghetto … was totally disinfected”; as a further measure, residents of the ghetto could no

longer receive ration cards for bread and meat without first displaying proof of a recent

delousing. 168 The construction of more efficient delousing facilities became a higher priority, as did the education of children about cleanliness in the hope that the lessons would brush off on their parents. In Skaudwile, in any case, the district captain complained that even Jewish schoolchildren were “difficult to educate about cleanliness.”

Their teachers were informed that they must make progress in this regard or else the schools would be closed. 169

On the whole, German perception of Lithuania’s Jewish population was based on a set of criteria largely similar to those used to assess nonJews: a belief in the socially transformative power of German technological prowess and cultural institutions remained the driving principle. Divergences in tone and content, however, evidence the tendency for German perception of Jews to be particularly harsh and damning. Centralization of policy brought the administration into close contact and, inevitably, conflict with local

Jews and Jewish institutions. Several key distinctions contrast German Jewish policy with its perception of and regulations for nonJews. The capacity of all Yiddishspeaking Jews to directly engage Germans in conversation was of great consequence. An observation by the district captain of Wiezajcie exemplifies this dynamic: “The ever dissatisfied Jew is more difficult to deal with than the Lithuanian. Lithuanians complain but go through with things, knowing that helping the front will end the world war sooner. The Jews tries to get out of his duties through all possible excuses and false assertions, which is easier due

167 BAMA PHD 23/51, VB Isenburg, 1 April to 30 September 1917, 11. 168 LSHA 6411336, KH in Poniewiez, VB for 1 October to 31 December 1917, fol. 80. 169 LSHA 6411306, KH in Skaudwile, VB for 1 April 1917 to 30 September 1917, fol. 148. 314

to his knowledge of the German language.” 170 In point of fact, German administrators

rarely had opportunity to communicate directly with the typical Lithuanian peasant and

the latter were almost certainly discouraged from attempting to evade duties due to their

inability to speak the conqueror’s language. Jews’ ability to speak German, on the other

hand, made their protestations all the more remarkable. Urban residences and commercial professions aligned with Jews’ ability to communicate; the German occupiers predictably

relied on antisemitic stereotypes of eastern Jews. At times administrators regarded these basic facts of Jewish life in the East to be just as much a function of Russian social and political factors as any of the Lithuanians’ or Poles’ general characteristics. On the other

hand, Jews were greeted with a kind of suspicion that belied their ability to communicate

with the Germans. They were considered something of an aberration in national terms.

Their cultural distinctiveness was thought to help them “stick together,” much as the

administrators perceived to be true of Polish nationalists. Unlike the Poles, however,

Jewish political sympathies were thought to be abstruse and more centered on economic

motives than on a highminded political platform. In this sense at least they were similar

in German perception to Lithuanians, yet Jews’ urban concentration and apparent focus

on education at once negated the similarity to uneducated Lithuanians. The significant

financial support provided by German and American Jews – “foreign coreligionists” as

they were referred to – also made Jews appear something of a national outlier.

The final surviving reports on the occupied population’s political sympathies

evidence the extent to which Jews remained an enigma to the occupiers. Russia’s descent

into revolutionary chaos had – realistically or otherwise – given administrators the

170 LSHA 6411515, KH in Wiezajcie, VB for 1 October 1917 to 31 December 1917, fol. 266. 315

impression that local support for a lasting Russian political role in the borderlands had reached its nadir. Bolshevik ideology was thought to have little appeal to Lithuanians and

Poles who strove for a political reorganization that excluded Russia, particularly given that the rumors coming out of Russia told stories of expropriation and chaos. While Jews were not thought to be any more ideologically sympathetic to Bolshevism than

Lithuania’s other ethnic groups, administrators nevertheless felt that Jews were the only group still favoring a political connection with Russia over Germany. Although the various district captains’ reports did not offer uniform conclusions, they did share a basic assumption about the importance of economic factors to the shaping of Jews’ political views. The district captain of Rossienie summed up this perspective in December 1917, noting that “[the] union [of postwar Lithuania] with Russia appeals to the Jews whose earlier sympathies were totally lost through our economic measures.” 171 The district

captain of Kurschany similarly noted that Jews possessed a “strong desire for re

connection to Russia.” 172 In this version, the justification was not the oppressive German

regulations themselves but rather Lithuanians’ expression of antipathy toward Jews and

their efforts – led by the Catholic clergy – to “found cooperatives everywhere possible in

order to cut out the Jewish merchants.” The district captain failed to explicitly

acknowledge the relationship between German encouragement of antiJewish economic

measures and the Lithuanians’ subsequent attempts to implement such practices, but his

conclusion that Jews desired to remain part of Russia seems to accept the

administration’s role. The administrator of Kowno found Jews “hard to evaluate” but

ultimately extrapolated their political views from his observation that “they try in every

171 LSHA 641153, KH in Rossienie, VB for 1 October to 31 December 1917, fol. 199. 172 LSHA 6411622, KH in Kurschany, VB for 1 October 1917 to 31 March 1918, fol. 23940. 316

way to get economic advantages for themselves.” 173 Because of this fundamental

characteristic and their consequent distaste for the administration’s economic regulations,

they “look ahead to a strict state and economic postwar order along the German model

with very mixed feelings and view the Russian conditions as more advantageous.” The

district captain of Wiezajcie likewise concluded that “a large part of [the Jewish population] is very mistrustful of the German administration because they fear a

restriction of their business ( Geschäft ) would result from German order and German

law.” 174 Unlike other administrators, he assumed that this made Jews sympathetic to an independent Lithuanian state. Notwithstanding this difference in conclusions, the same basic premise drove the analysis. Firstly, economic decisions determined Jews’ political views. Secondly – and most importantly because it distinguished them from nonJews in

German perception – Jews appeared to desire somewhat unregulated, disordered economic conditions in order to maximize the profitability of their commercial endeavors. However brief, these evaluations of Jewish political sympathies fostered a

Manichaean view that pitted disordered, selfinterested Jewish avarice against structured and noble German order.

Conclusion: Propaganda and Reality

During the final year of the war and occupation, German administrators never faltered in their view that the borderlands should come under permanent German control.

The choice of either German or Russian control became even starker as ominous news emerged from the . The Bolsheviks’ revolutionary program provided for

173 LSHA 6411584, KH in Kowno, VB for 1 October 1917 to 31 March 1918, 5 Apr 1918, fol. 107. 174 LSHA 6411515, KH in Wiezajcie, VB for 1 October 1917 to 31 March 1918, fol. 289. 317

a new twist on Germany’s antiRussian propaganda, but the end effect was simply the replacement of the tsarist regime with the radical democratic Bolsheviks. AntiBolshevik pronouncements appeared frequently throughout 1918 and they emphasized the importance of German order maintaining a bulwark against this more detrimental iteration of Russian chaos. A Lithuanian student who had returned from Russia gave a lecture on what he had witnessed, noting that the new regime’s defining features were the

“arbitrary use of power, and force.” 175 Numerous articles observed that Bolshevik

ideology threatened to overturn the entire basis of ordered western conditions; this new

type of eastern chaos was expressed as the denial of all property rights, and the “hatred of

everything having to do with state order .”176 Germany, on the other hand, had preserved the freedom of the borderland peoples ( Randvölker ) and it should be allowed to continue protecting the lands from Russian aggression. 177 Perhaps sensing that the occupation’s onerous demands might have made Lithuania’s civilians sympathetic to the Bolsheviks, a

May 1918 article directly compared the conditions that prevailed on the two sides of the border. In contrast to the Bolsheviks’ chaos, residents of the German occupied borderlands experienced “a particular blooming thanks to the order that was created with a strong hand.” 178 The article acknowledged that the strictness required for such ordered

and peaceful conditions had its own costs. If only everyone could personally experience

the conditions in the two areas, “it would not be difficult to decide where one can live in

a better and more humane fashion.” In short, the civilians of Lithuania were lucky to be

spared the “the horrible misery that naturally accompanies the dissolution of all state

175 “Litauische Versammlung im Rathaussaal,” Kownoer Zeitung , May 21, 1918. 176 “Die Drohung des Bolschewismus,” Kownoer Zeitung , October 14, 1918; “Die Tat der Kurländischen Ritterschaft,” Kownoer Zeitung , July 2, 1918. 177 “Deutschlands Kampf und die Randvölker,” Kownoer Zeitung , October 15, 1918. 178 “Heilige Ordnung,” Kownoer Zeitung , May 26, 1918. 318

imposed order.” Although the actors and ideologies had changed, Germans remained convinced that life in Russia was fundamentally chaotic. Whereas Cossacks had been cast as barbarian murderers in 1914 and 1915, Bolsheviks were put in a similar role when

Generaloberst Graf Kirchbach of the Eighth Army issued an order in March 1918 that placed Bolshevik partisans “outside of international law” ( ausserhalb des Völkerrechts ).

The revolutionary regime’s incitement of a partisan warfare behind German lines required that the bandits be ruthlessly “destroyed/exterminated.” 179 The German army accused the Bolsheviks of taking local civilians hostages and indiscriminately murdering them. All captured partisans were therefore to be held hostage and used for retaliation if the Bolsheviks murdered any local Latvians, Estonians or Germans. General Kirchbach said of these criminals: “a bullet is too good; a rope [for hanging] awaits them.” Such was the German opinion of the likely successors to German order in the East.

Revolution in Russia made German administrators ever more certain that the borderlands must come under German control, but there is little reason to believe that they ultimately had much confidence in the locals’ ability to recognize this supposedly selfevident fact. Some politically engaged locals had indeed begun agitating for the dismantling of the German administration after the establishment of peace with Russia in

March 1918. Administrators regarded the expression of such opinions as mere naiveté and continued to repress any threatening political activity. Expressions of discontent with

German policy therefore reinforced rather than undermined the assumptions driving the administrators’ imperialist mindset. Locals’ modest virtues notwithstanding, the outlook expressed by district captains fit comfortably into the clearly defined perspective of

179 “Bekämpfung bolschewistischer Banden,” Kownoer Zeitung , March 13, 1918, sec. Beiblatt. 319

media outlets like Kownoer Zeitung that presented the locals as utterly incapable of forming a durable state without German guidance.

The administration’s fundamental characteristics remained in place through the end of the war even if they did not remain entirely stable. The occupiers struggled to assert control over the occupied civilians. This effort was based on the desire to extend

German imperial control over the borderlands for political, military, and economic reasons, but it was expressed instead as a virtuous attempt to improve the lands for both

Germans and for Lithuania’s native residents. Administrators and politicians gave the appearance of fostering civilians’ nationalist aspirations while working to ensure their subordination to German political institutions and aspirations. Concrete plans to settle ethnic Germans remained contingent on the ultimate outcome of the war but nonetheless developed as a new attentiveness to the area’s native and transplanted ethnic German communities. Advocacy of an abstract Germanness morphed into concrete efforts to financially support ethnic Germans, bridging the divide between idea and reality.

Administrators’ antisemitism rested on similar assumptions, namely that Jews’ alleged widely shared characteristics were deep set. Nevertheless, policy never relied on an entirely racialized notion of ethnicity and nationality. Many administrators seem to have assumed that social and political change could be effected over the long term, transforming Lithuanians’ and Jews’ putative deficiencies into more advanced, more

German qualities. The view of Russia was the constant of these modulating opinions.

Bolshevism gave the administration’s fervid antiRussian propagandizing a new tinge without fundamentally altering its characteristics. Notwithstanding the difficulties involved with Bolshevism’s rhetorical support for democracy and selfdetermination,

320

portrayals of the radical new ideology’s chaotic and violent manifestations made the administration’s propaganda seem almost prescient.

This paternalism doubtless outlived the administrative regime as manifested in

Ober Ost and the German Administration for Lithuania. Defeat and revolution in

November 1918 signaled the administration’s demise without immediately revoking its authority. In some quarters, however, the change precipitated an immediate response from local civilians who began to resist the authority of the gradually retreating German occupiers. A Lithuanian and German commission penned a report on 22 November 1918 that shed light on the civil disturbances that took place after the armistice in the district

Olita. 180 Local civilians had begun to ignore administrative decrees and, more radically,

some also attacked German administrators, soldiers, and gendarmes. The report ascribed

an economic motive to the theft of grain, livestock, and equipment from German

administered estates. The destruction of telegraph and telephone infrastructure appeared

to have less of a personal incentive for the perpetrators. The acts seemed to be primarily

driven by a resentful desire to harry the forces of the administration as they prepared to

return to Germany. Locals harassed soldiers and gendarmes by stealing their weapons,

firing upon them, and destroying their quarters. The administration responded to these provocations by demanding that the locals return all of the stolen items; the incentive to

do so was expressed as a threat that the Germans would otherwise “burn down the entire

surrounding area.” They failed to follow through with this particular threat, but they did

ruthlessly burn down the homes of those suspected of harboring stolen German weapons:

“In two cases the weapons were surrendered after we had set fire to the building, in other

180 LAS F231, fol. 358363. 321

cases explosions were heard in the burning houses, indicating the presence of weapons.”

In several other cases, the German security personnel shot and killed allegedly hostile

Lithuanian civilians. Residents of the village Geidukuni were suspected of firing upon

German patrols and were subsequently compelled to surrender their weapons when thirteen German gendarmes and soldiers arrived to begin burning down homes suspected of harboring weapons. The sound of explosions in the burning buildings and the surrendering of additional weapons confirmed the purpose of the German actions.

Additional confrontations between Lithuanians and Germans suggest that the years of harsh occupation policy had incited the locals to resentfully attack the suddenly vulnerable occupiers. Such instances were fully in line with a military occupation that had codified and propagandized the importance of imposing order in the backward borderlands with an iron fist.

322

Conclusion: Enduring German Visions of the East

The German military administration of occupied Lithuanian ended on much the same terms that had defined its three years of operation. Rhetorical deference to local political movements and the ostensible easing of economic impositions were new features in 1917 and 1918, but little changed in either the occupiers’ mentalities or the policies that shaped civilians’ daytoday existence. The German occupiers were not wholly wrong to assume and observe in 1915 that the local civilians’ attitudes toward

Russian rule generally ranged from indifferent to hostile; though glib, the liberation narrative variously and repeatedly articulated Germany’s real potential to politically reconfigure the borderlands to the benefit of both parties. In fact, the administration remained singularly focused on the least likely outcome of the war, namely complete military victory and the permanent subordination of the borderlands to German rule.

Many administrators appear to have firmly believed the illusion that the harshness of

German rule was the best means of benevolently gifting superior methods to a backward region, and that the supposedly apolitical locals would endure any amount of oppression.

The prioritization of Heer und Heimat remained the guiding principle of administrative policy. Even those administrators who regarded policy as unnecessarily punitive did not question the underlying logic. District captain Lieutenant Werner

Friedrich, for example, had protested the imposition of unjust punishments on civilians suspected of causing fires, yet he also insisted that farmers be punished if they failed to meet German production quotas. In an April, 1918 report, Friedrich related the story about the wife of an estate owner who said to him, “Herr district captain, we are indeed

323

now in peacetime and yet you wage war against us [through economic measures].” 1

Though cognizant of the loss of civilian support, district captains strove to increase local civilians’ productivity. Friedrich expressed this need in typical form in April, 1918: “In spite of any possible political concerns, it was necessary to intervene with emphatic severity if the maximal gains were to be achieved as requested by the administration for the benefit of Heer und Heimat .” 2 Administrators accepted the subordination of civilian

needs to German material demands.

Critically assessing the suppression of occupied civilians’ occupational and political activities would have undermined certainty in local inferiority. Germans brought

this conviction with them across the border in the form of prewar stereotypes of the East

that were subsequently confirmed by observations of the borderlands’ relatively inferior

technology, industry, and education. Although these differences were in many cases real,

such observations combined with administrators’ essentialized view of the East’s

universally inferior “culture” to produce selffulfilling outcomes. Inspired in part by

antisemitism, economic discrimination against Jews embittered local Jewish opinion of

the German administration and administrators; in turn, administrators regarded Jews with

even greater suspicion. Insisting upon the “cultural” inferiority of all local civilians led to

oppressive administrative policies with destructive consequences. When religious

services were cancelled during epidemics, locals feared that “the Germans want them to part with their old beliefs.” From the German perspective, the rumors “shine a telling light on the mental maturity of the population and might also be influenced by Polish

1 BAMA PH 30 III/3, Kreishauptmann Militärkreisamt Podbrodzie, 3 April 1918, 3334. 2 BAMA PH 30 III/3, Kreishauptmann Militärkreisamt Podbrodzie, 3 April 1918, 5. 324

agitators.” 3 The complaints were primarily interpreted as the result of an ignorant and naïve population that resisted the necessary imposition of modern hygienic measures for apparently senseless reasons. Administrators might have more realistically interpreted such complaints as the grievances of a population chafing against the German assumption that the occupiers’ and occupied civilian’s interests were identical.

As indicated by German assessments of locals’ political views during the final year of the war, administrators did not necessarily assume that the masses’ allegedly apolitical and ignorant nature consigned them to permanent inferiority and subjugation.

The liberation narrative continued to be dominant even after the Bolsheviks came to power and espoused a democratic ideology with profound implications for the borderlands’ political future. Educated locals were generally thought to agree with the

German assessment that Bolshevism retained Tsarism’s expansive and repressive qualities, and a small nation like Lithuania appeared to be in no position to defend itself against the Russians or even the Poles. 4 Although this interpretation was certainly

convenient for the German Empire given its attempt to create a new dependency from borderlands territory, there is no reason to think that administrators did not sincerely believe it. The occupied territory continued to be viewed as an imperial borderland

contested among three powerful states. Germans certainly held derogatory views of

Russian rule and “culture,” but they also feared the potential of a resurgent Russia.

Within this context they looked upon an independent Lithuania with unease; German

administrators certainly exaggerated Lithuanians’ political inexperience, but it is true that

a Lithuanian state would need to be created from the ground up. Given the size of the

3 BAMA PH 30 III/3, Kreishauptmann Militärkreisamt Podbrodzie, 3 April 1918, 31. 4 Of course Lithuanian nationalists’ positions were not so simple. See Tomas Balkelis, The Making of Modern Lithuania (London: Routledge, 2009). 325

Lithuanian population in comparison to Russian and Polish threats, this was not an entirely cynical concern.

Administrators insisted that Germany should guide Lithuania’s future because they firmly believed that the expansion of German influence to the region would impose a beneficial new order. Colonial frameworks do not unconditionally apply to occupation policy in Lithuania, but the basic assumption underlying German perception and policy was similar to the paternalistic outlook of a colonial regime. Confident that German methods would ultimately bring the land great benefits, administrators overlooked the negative consequences of the push to extract every possible resource from Lithuania; local civilians, like German workers on the home front, would need to forego immediate comforts in order to enjoy the benefits of a victorious military outcome. 5 In the

meantime, they appeared to be much in need of German assistance. Wilhelm Freiherr von

Gayl expressed his view of German improvements in Lithuania in December, 1915:

The artificially sustained ignorance that the Russian government imposed on the Lithuanian [people] prevents an economic upswing. The [Lithuanian] Volk lacks an awareness of its situation and a striving to improve its conditions. Only among the large estate owners and the Jews were there a few isolated bringers of progress. 6

Gayl likely hoped that Germany would be able to improve its border security and grain production by directly annexing borderlands territory, but he also genuinely believed that doing so would by consequence yield enormous economic benefits to the local civilians.

Farms would become more productive, factories would be built, new roads and railroads would facilitate the export of grain and timber, and new schools would guarantee the

5 On the relationship between this mentality and the concept of a German dominated Mitteleuropa , see Eberhard Demm, Ostpolitik und Propaganda im Ersten Weltkrieg (Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang, 2002), 133137. 6 BAMA PH 30 III/7. 326

literacy of Lithuanian farmers. Political subordination to German policy was always assumed to be part of this equation. The broad masses of the Lithuanian population would, according to this model, gain advantages that would allow them to compete with their economic betters, Polish nobles and Jewish merchants.

This chauvinistic faith in the superiority of German methods bore little resemblance to the reality of occupied Lithuania and it precluded sufficient concessions and investments. Wartime maximization of Lithuania’s resource production did not result in any major benefits to Lithuania’s native civilians. Furthermore, it embittered them to an enormous degree and their resistance to German measures was subsequently regarded as little more than unthinking adherence to outmoded patterns of behavior. The German administration reinforced certainty in these beliefs that Germans had brought with them to the East without radically questioning or dynamically reshaping the underlying assumptions. Millions of Germans gained firsthand exposure to the region and they understood the experience within the Manichaean terms of German superiority and eastern disorder.

327

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