Art between Censorship and Propaganda during the First World War

Abstract

The essay deals with the relationship of the Austrian state apparatus to art during the First World War. A very important role was attributed to censorship, which succeeded in controlling all areas of public and private life in the Austrian half of the Monarchy, while public opinion lay in the domain of the War Press Office. The War Press Office exercised its control over artistic propaganda in the press, in books, in postcards and in other public media products. The article, therefore, discusses the office’s fields of work and also sheds light on the activities of the art group (Kunstgruppe), which also ‘recruited’ artists for the war effort: Ivan Vavpotič and Luigi Kasimir from the Slovenian-speaking area. The list of mobilized artists contained a few famous names in the art world, such as Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele.