Flight and Expulsion of the Galician Ruthenians: The Memory of Forced Migrations on the Eastern Front of World War I in the Diary of the Austrian Soldier Franz Arneitz

Abstract

This article sheds light on the records of the Austro-Hungarian soldier Franz Arneitz, a Carinthian from Unterferlach, who participated in the battles in Galicia during World War I. In his diary, he describes the fate of the Galician Ruthenians, who were accused of treason and collaboration with Russia after the outbreak of the war. The climate of “war hysteria” and “spy mania” fostered in the Habsburg Empire, as well as the exploitation of national and political antagonisms to combat real and imagined enemies, led to numerous war crimes against the Ruthenian population and the expulsion of residents from entire regions. The article presents Arneitz’s war diary as a form of private memory culture and as an ego-document that can be seen as a corrective to the traditional narrative about the “Great War”.