THE MANY DEATHS OF JOHANN PONGRATZ 1915-1918

Ever since I was a child, there was this story that a brother of my Austrian grandmother had died during the World War I. However, that was all the story told: there was no name, no age, no details given at all.  

My grandmother was from Carinthia, Austria. She grew up in a small village in the mountains of the Drau Valley, in Tragail-Paternion, near Villach. Born in 1901, she was just a child when World War I began in 1914. After the war, most of her kin had died. She came to the Netherlands in the 1920s to build a better future, married and my mother was born in 1934. I never knew her; she died before I was born.

Grandmother in 1914; pass for train and ferry

 

However, this story about the brother that had fought in the trenches and died there intrigued me, and I started to do some research. Old photographs of my mother were the starting point. During a period of some 15 years, me and my wife visited archives and did field research. When we were in the mountains, it was quite customary for us to hike along the front line of the Austrian troops and their Italian adversaries during the Alpine war of 1915-1918. 

 

Austrian war cemetery, Ploeckenpass, Carinthia

We found out his name - Johann Pongratz. He turned out to be a half-brother of my grandmother actually, being born some 20 years before her, and having the same mother. He proved to be quite elusive in the military archives. So we also visited almost the whole of the frontline where his regiment served, hoping for a sign that he had been there. Every place we visited had a history of blood and death, and every time I had this canny feeling that he had died there on the spot. Impossible, given the many places we visited, so in my head I started to think of his death as not just one, but many deaths. It was for me a kind of symbol, a remembering of the suffering of the many. A whole generation of - mostly poor - young men wiped out. And this in one of the most beautiful - albeit harsh - landscapes on Earth. That the sanctuary of the mountains was the hell on earth for three years - I never really could get grip on this reality. So I tried to translate it all in images.

Taken with camera's dating from around 1920 and printed mostly as lith prints. This is just a small selection.

 

View from the 'Landstumweg', Ploeckenpass, Carinthia

 

Austrian Forte Venezza, Alpe Cimbra, Trentino

 

Austrian trench on Suldenspitze, South Tyrol

Italian artillery, Monte Piano, Dolomites

 

Austrian covered supply mountain path, Dolomites

 

Italian Fort Strinio, Val di Sole

 

Barbed Wire and bones, Adamello

 

Austrian mountain path for supply on Monte Piano, Dolomites

 

Austrian trench, Dolomites

 

Trench, Presena glacier, Adamello

 

 

Austrian Fort Verle, Alpe CImbra, Trentino

 

 

Austrian heavy gun,  Cima Tre Cannoni, 3275m, South Tyrol

 

Austrian barracks, Carinthia

 

 

In the end, with the help of the Austrian war archives we found out  that he had died in Galicia, fighting Russians in what is now modern Ukraine. He got reported missing on the third day after arriving at the front. How ironic history and modern times can be. Just as we planned to visit the area, the Russians invaded Ukraine and  the war of our time obstructed our plans. Modern trenches blocked our visit to the ones of a century before.