We and homeland: German occupation, Lithuanian discourse, and war experience in Ober Ost
ENSome years ago, epitomizing an opinion widespread in the academic world, the scholar Sanijuel Hynes observed that the First World War was not only a political and military event, but also a 'great imaginative event. It altered the ways in which men and women thought not only about war but about the world, about culture and its expressions) Far from being a mindscape-unifying event, the war changed the basis of experience. Such changes depended on pre-existing cultural codes and individuals degree of involvement in military operations. War experience in the trenches differed from the experience of civilians. Soldiers and civilians' experience differed remarkably on the western and Eastern Fronts. Moreover, civilians' experience differed depending on the nature of relation to the military forces, on displacement and so on.
