War-Themed Exhibitions in Zagreb from 1915 to 1918: The Exhibition of Firing Trenches and Wartime Art Exhibitions

Abstract

By analysing and comparing unpublished archival sources, contemporaneous printed matter, and relevant scientific literature, this paper aims to depict a specific segment of war propaganda: exhibitions of war trophies and war-themed art exhibitions held in Zagreb from 1915 to 1918. Already in autumn 1914, certain Zagreb traders displayed captured enemy weapons and equipment in their shop windows, which can be interpreted as an indirect introduction to the wartime exhibitions. The actions of Zagreb traders were soon followed by the armed forces of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, which also ceremoniously displayed captured enemy weapons. Already in early 1915, the civilian and military authorities prohibited citizens from displaying and owning trophies. That autumn, the Croatian Zita’s Hall association, supported by the land government and military authorities, organised an Exhibition of Firing Trenches, most likely inspired by an exhibition bearing the same name that had been opened in the Prater in Vienna in the summer. A simulation of the front lines of the battlefield was created, accompanied by additional content, the digging of trenches, and displaying of trophies. In 1916, the Croatian Zita’s Hall association, the Ladies’ Wartime Assistance Committee, and the Croatian Arts Society, working together with the propaganda department of the Ministry of War (the Kriegspressequartier, KPQ) launched a War Paintings Exhibition, at which they presented the works of ‘war artists’ to the public. For the last two years of the war, the organisation of exhibitions of war-themed works was taken over by a private gallery, The Ullrich Salon. After the end of World War I in October 1918, the war-themed artworks created during the war were forgotten, along with the exhibitions at which they had been presented to the public.