"Alone among Tsar's servants": autobiographical texts of Lithuanian prisoners of war in the First World War

ENOn 6 and 7 October 1915, the two Lithuanians Josef Weilant and Anton Kowalewski were recorded by the anthropologist Rudolf Pöch in the then prisoner-of-war camp of Theresienstadt. The resulting Phonogramme (Ph 2649–2652 and 2656), as well as unrecorded text preserved in written form, contain poetry, songs and prose texts in Lithuanian with a comparatively high amount of personal and autobiographical references of the informants. In this article, the contents of the texts composed by the informants themselves, the informants’ personal choice of other texts, and also the language and dialectal features displayed in the recordings will be examined. The texts provide information about the two personalities, their patriotic feelings, their opposition to Tsarist rule in Lithuania and also their diverging political commitments; moreover, they illustrate further tendencies in the Lithuanian and European societies of that time, such as popular education and enlightenment.