The back-to-school routine has settled in for us and the car pool and sports schedules are in place. This also means that I can better plan my “further afields,” like my return visit to Schloss Schallaburg this week. Schallaburg does an extremely good job of repurposing itself; I had visited the castle late last summer for an exhibit on “India of the Maharajas” that was multi-dimensional with sights and aromas, not to mention being very well done. On this particularly beautiful day I grabbed my camera (and my Niederösterreich Card!) and pointed the wagon into the Waldviertel for another WWI exhibit and a stroll about the beautiful grounds. 

The exhibit, “Glory and Gloom” presented personal accounts of the war from persons in all of the countries involved, including the United States. American Boy Scouts were busy once the United States entered the war, distributing war pamphlets and selling war bonds. In their down time, they read adventures novels. “The Boy Scout Signal” was written in 1915 and showed the Scouts using modern weaponry in the trenches.

Propaganda included posters by the National War Garden Commission in D.C. encouraging Americans to “Can vegetables…and the Kaiser too.”

A campaign requesting relief for the Ottoman genocide of Armenian minorities across its empire. It was not until 1943 that the term “genocide” was assigned to the systematic extermination of these people.

Advice from the Red Cross. I wonder what the success rate of package delivery was to the American prisoners?

Not American propaganda, but this gallery caught my eye. Apparently the Vienna police department had lots of free time on its hands during the war to be able to summarize its citizens war complaints every week.

This, and the exhibit in Vienna’s Military History Museum, were far and away the most interesting and informative hours I’ve spent learning about WWI.  And now, onto the castle…