In a Time of Turmoil

Around 1900 a good part of the Styrian population lived in the country. As in previous centuries, people’s daily lives are determined by the work on the farm and the fields. The central point of experience is the village; prime authority lies with the Catholic Church.

The exhibition shows through photographs, film footage, letters, diaries and chronicles how this world disintegrates within just two to three decades: industrialisation and urbanisation attract people to the cities. From here they bring back new ideas and values to the villages.

The assassination in Sarajevo is followed by propaganda and war: supply problems and loss of resources in the villages are matched by the sensory overload on the front, a barrage from the authorities and encounters with foreign ways in the context of imprisonment during the war. What follows in many cases are desperation and desensitisation, the erosion of morals and belief. The war heralds the end of an era, there is to be no return to the familiar order of things.