Dying for the Kaiser

These personal stories and photos from the frontlines are painful and sad, wistful or grim, full of hope or fear; they are all the voices of a destroyed future that is now our past, returned after 100 years to warn the present that having forgotten their pleas and sacrifices it is condemned to harm the future.

“What’s the use of calling the stretcher bearers to bring him to the dressing station? He can no longer be saved; a funny, courageous, powerful man, one of many – oh, amongst how many! – has gone over to the other side with love for his mother on his pale lips.”

The dramatic and thoughtful excerpts and photos are a reminder of what war was all about for the young German soldiers who marched to the frontlines and gave their lives for the Kaiser and their fatherland convinced of the rightness of their cause.