»Fast geht es mir wie dem Vaterlande …«

Heinrich Oskar Kunitzsch from Leipzig has left behind numerous self-testimonies, including a diary of his time as a soldier in World War I, a photo-album, field letters and postcards, and a collection of quotations. All documents reveal a deep insight into the character and the mindscape of a young man, who – after finishing his apprenticeship as a bookseller – is levied into the military and had been experiencing the horrors of the war for 18 months, before he fell ill with a life-threatening illness. The special value of the sources lies in their authenticity, which is – taken by itself – not unproblematic.

This book attempts to reconstruct the inner and outer world of Oskar Kunitzsch by relating the different sources to each other and thus let them speak in many ways, whereby the reader himself possesses an important role in the course of construction, which in turn might unfold nuances of interpretation and extend the subjective example to the general line of history.