The Soldiers of the Kaiser. Identities, Experiences and National Awareness of Czech

The Soldiers of the Kaiser. Identities, Experiences and National Awareness of Czech Participants of the First World War The topics of presented dissertation are identities and experiences of Czech soldiers of the First World War. The sources of the dissertation are ego-documents of Czech soldiers, in particular mostly their diaries, in lesser extent also pieces of field correspondence and memoirs. The aim of the dissertation is the analysis of representations of identities, experiences and national awareness of authors of analysed sources. The research questions of the dissertation inquire about representations of constructions of identities in the sources, particularly about national, regional, religious or social identities; about construction of the otherness and depiction of the enemy in texts, about relation to the otherness and potential conflict of loyalties to the Czech national society and to service in the Austro-Hungarian army; about their gender identity; and about the question of construction of corporeality and experience of corporeality and the body as the construct of masculine identity. The presented dissertation belongs to the discipline Historical Anthropology.