| On June 28, 1914, the fateful shots rang
out in Sarajevo, killing Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife. Soon, Europe
was ablaze. The "seminal catastrophe of the 20th century" had begun.
Nearly 70 million people worldwide were under arms. While the imperial capital
and residence city remained untouched by the fighting, it was nonetheless at
the epicentre of the war. It was omnipresent and polarising. War enthusiasm,
megalomania, greed, and jubilation on one side; daily hunger, tuberculosis, women's
labour, and war invalidation on the other. The imperial capital and residence
city, the magnificent metropolis of the second-largest state in Europe, became
a city of barracks, a city of hospitals, a city of refugees, a city of war
invalids, and finally, the bloated capital of a small state. |
