Hungarian Accounts from the Ottoman Fronts of the First World War

Abstract

Even though the annexation of Bosnia by the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in 1908 raised the tension between the Monarchy and the Ottomans, Hungaro-Turkish political, economic, and cultural relations significantly improved from the beginning of the twentieth century until the end of the First World War. With the eruption of the Great War these friendly relations turned into a war alliance, where suddenly the battlefields became fields of joint effort. As a consequence, the outbreak of the war caused intensification of mutual visits and the arrival of Hungarian soldiers, journalists, and even artists and religious representatives in greater numbers in the Ottoman Empire. In this paper the author mainly focuses on Hungarian accounts of different Ottoman fronts during the First World War, while not forgetting to put all these activities in the frame of the wartime alliance. War correspondents like Bela Landauer, Istvan Dobay, and Jenő Heltai from different Hungarian journals, soldiers from the Austro-Hungarian Army like Dr Emil Videky and Dr Laszlo Kiraly, the painter Geza Maroti, and even a military chaplain, Pal Schrotty left behind detailed memoirs of environments ranging from the picturesque Bay of Izmir to the desert of Palestine. These mostly unknown depictions reveal the cruelty of the war, research the healthcare system of the capital, and provide detailed accounts of the Berlin-Bagdad line and historical sites in the Empire, while also raising questions regarding the situation of Turkish women.