# Royal and Imperial War Press Headquarters

The Royal and Imperial War Press Headquarters (German - kaiserlich und königliche Kriegspressequartier or KPQ) was a department of the Austro-Hungarian Army's high command, formed on 28 July 1914 under Generalmajor (previously Oberst) Maximilian Ritter von Hoen. From March 1917 until the end of the First World War it was commanded by Wilhelm Eisner-Bubna, an Oberst from the general staff.
At the outbreak of the First World War the KPQ's task was to coordinate all press information and propaganda via all the mass media then available. In total 550 artists and journalists worked for the KPQ over the course of the war, including 220 painters in its art group.

## Concentration of forces

The Royal and Imperial Telegraph Correspondence Bureau (now APA) was incorporated into it in 1914.
To increase artistic quality, a large number of artists and writers were brought into the KPQ, such as Albert Paris Gütersloh, Alfred Kubin, Egon Erwin Kisch, Robert Musil, Leo Perutz, Alice Schalek, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Roda Roda, Rainer Maria Rilke, Alfred Polgar, Franz Karl Ginzkey, Franz Theodor Csokor, Felix Salten, Stefan Zweig, Ferenc Molnár, Robert Michel und Franz Werfel. Many of them were convicned patriots but some were forcibly transferred into it and other saw service in the KPQ as a way to avoid frontline military service (it exempted its employees from such service).

## Concentration of media

Soon after the outbreak of war the importance of using film and photography alongside writing and fine arts was recognised. Journalists (including Alice Schalek, the first certified female war correspondent) and writers wrote press reports for the KPQ. Its photographers included Hugo Eywo and more than 33,000 KPQ photographs are now in the State Archive of the Austrian National Library.
Sascha Kolowrat-Krakowsky, the founder of the Sascha Filmfabrik, was put in charge of the KPQ's film department in 1915, thus giving film a significance in the propaganda effort. Kolowrat-Krakowsky was able to save several film-makers from being killed in the war by appointing them to the KPQ. The Kriegsarchiv (War Archive) was initially responsible for war film and propaganda film production, but these responsibilities were transferred to the KPQ on 1 June 1917.

### Art group

From 1914 to 1916 the members of the art group were led by Oberst Wilhelm John, who from 1909 had also been director of the k.u.k. Heeresmuseums (now the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum). He was succeeded from 1916 to the war's end by Major Georg Sobicka. The artists produced massive numbers of sculptures, paintings, drawings, watercolours, illustrations, posters and postcards for the KPQ on the all fronts of the war and less often in the safe area behind the lines. In the words of the regulations for pictorial reporting in war, they were tasked with "producing propaganda at home and abroad that is effective for the present in order to show the Wehrmacht's achievements in the right light, and to procure material for the future that historiography and the subsequent glorification of military exploits through art urgently need to supplement the written record". Some of the artists were conscripts and some volunteered. They wore black and yellow armbands printed with the words "Kunst" (Art) or "Kriegspressequartier" (War Press Headquarters) and received corresponding credentials.
The artists had to use their own initiative to find "effective and interesting painterly motifs of wartime life". The relevant commands had to support them and ensure they created something militarily "useful". Landscape painters were to be "encouraged" to draw positions and battlefields, whilst "figural talents" suited to painting battle scenes were to be given the chance to observe combat where possible, preferably with the artillery to keep danger to a mimimum. Portraitists were to produce coloured and pencil sketches of "higher commanders, particularly distinguished officers, and private soldiers". According to KPQ regulations, one sketch had to be submitted for every week at the front and one picture for every month of rest.
A large number of artists applied to join the KPQ, both highly and lesser qualified ones, as well as those who tried to use the art group to avoid full military service. The admission criteria were very strict, however, and became more so as the war progressed, since the army had to ensure that even half-fit men saw active service. An equal number of artists were admitted from the Cisleithanian and the Transleithanian halves of the empire.
Conscripted painters and sculptors had to hand over a portion of the works created during their KPQ service to the KPQ itself. From there, depending on their suitability, the works were assigned to Royal and Imperial War Archive or the Royal and Imperial Army Museum or to decorate higher military authorities' offices. These artists included Oskar Brüch, Albin Egger-Lienz, Anton Faistauer, Anton Kolig, Ferdinand Andri, Alexander Demetrius Goltz, Oskar Laske, Karl Friedrich Gsur, Ludwig Heinrich Jungnickel, Alexander Pock, Victor von Eckhardt, Oskar Kokoschka and Moritz Coschell.
In the KPQ and especially in its art group, women were also accepted, completely contrary to the rest of the contemporary Austro-Hungarian military. The eldest such woman was the painter Friederike („Fritzi“) Ulreich (1865–1936), an officer's daughter, went to Belgrade on the south-east front in 1914, painting destroyed fortifications, military cemeteries and individual graves. Helene Arnau (1870–1958), daughter of a court actor and a sculpture student at the Wiener Akademie in her youth, painted on the Carinthian front from February to May 1917. The youngest of the women, Stephanie Hollenstein (1886–1944), even disguised herself as a man to go into battle with the Standschützen.
The art group was in charge of the picture collection centre, which was housed at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna from spring 1916 onwards. There the pictures were deposited, catalogued, managed and framed for their various new homes. By the war's end, there had been 33 shows in Austria-Hungary and neutral and foreign countries, displaying a total of over 9,000 artworks. The permanent galleries in Army Museum in Vienna include an impressive number of paintings by numerous KPQ painters.

## Bibliography (in German)

* Walter Reichel: „Pressearbeit ist Propagandaarbeit“ - Medienverwaltung 1914–1918: Das Kriegspressequartier (KPQ). Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchiv (MÖStA), Sonderband 13, Studienverlag, Wien 2016, ISBN 978-3-7065-5582-1.
* Walter F. Kalina: Österreichisch-ungarische Propaganda im Ersten Weltkrieg. Das k.u.k. Kriegspressequartier 1914–1918, in: Republik Österreich/Bundesministerium für Landesverteidigung und Sport (Hrsg.): Viribus Unitis. Jahresbericht 2015 des Heeresgeschichtlichen Museums, Wien 2016, ISBN 978-3-902551-66-5, S. 9–23.
* Walter F. Kalina: Alexander Pock. In: Viribus Unitis, Jahresbericht 2010 des Heeresgeschichtlichen Museums. Wien 2011, S. 125–149, ISBN 978-3-902551-19-1.
* Ilse Krumpöck: Anton Faistauers militärische Nichtsnutzigkeit, in: Schriftenreihe zu Anton Faistauer und seiner Zeit. Herausgegeben vom Anton Faistauer Forum, Maishofen, 2007, S. 15–23.
* Adalbert Stifter Verein (Hrsg.): Musen an die Front! Schriftsteller und Künstler im Dienst der k.u.k. Kriegspropaganda 1914–1918. Ausstellungskatalog (2 Bände), München, 2003.
* Liselotte Popelka / Heeresgeschichtliches Museum (Hrsg.): Vom „Hurra“ zum Leichenfeld. Gemälde aus der Kriegsbilderausstellung 1914–1918, Ausstellungskatalog, Wien 1981.
* Hildegund Schmölzer: Die Propaganda des Kriegspressequartiers im ersten Weltkrieg 1914–1918, Dissertation, Universität Wien, 1965.
* Klaus Mayer: Die Organisation des Kriegspressequartiers beim k.u.k. Armeeoberkommando im ersten Weltkrieg 1914–1918. Dissertation, Universität Wien, 1963.
* Paul Stefan: Die bildende Kunst im Kriegspressequartier, beigelegt dem Katalog Kriegsbilder-Ausstellung des k.u.k. Kriegspressequartiers, Künstlerhaus, Wien 1918.