Life of Lithuanian residents in World War I photographs

The German Empire army entered the Russian Empire in the spring of 1915, and by the autumn it had occupied most of the territory on which later the independent state of Lithuania was founded. In the occupied territory of the Russian Empire, the chief of the army of the Eastern Front of the German Empire established an administrative territorial unit - Oberost. The occupation of the German Empire lasted for almost three years.
War correspondents and the soldiers themselves captured the events and the environment at the time. Often Lithuania and Lithuanians were not perceived as a separate national or cultural unit by the soldiers of the German Empire. The whole country for them was just a frontier of the Russian Empire, with Russian and Jewish populations. However, Lithuania and Lithuanians can be distinguished from the place names mentioned in the photographs.
While visiting the occupied cities and villages of the Russian Empire, German imperial soldiers watched the environment, its inhabitants, their customs and their everyday life. They told about this to their relatives in letters and photos. Lithuania, in the memoirs and photographs taken by the soldiers of the German Empire, is a messy, poor and backward country, with nature full of untapped resources and people as timid and naïve “savage”. Common motif in photographs: primitive wooden houses with thatched roofs and poorly dressed, often barefoot people near them.
The soldiers of the German Empire did not shy away from commemorating the humble peasants. However, the life of the Lithuanian population did not improve during the German occupation. The occupiers were very strict, constantly demanding more and more locals, who were viewed only as service personnel of the German Empire.
Kaunas 9th Fort Museum offers to get acquainted with photographs reflecting the life of the Lithuanian population during the First World War. The photographs presented in the virtual exhibition reveal the life of the long-suffering tsarist occupation of Russia and the disasters of the First World War just before the restoration of a free and independent state of Lithuania.