14 - Diaries of the Great War

14 - Diaries of the Great War
Title card
Genre	War
Directed by	Jan Peter
Produced by	Gunnar Dedio Serge Lalou Laurent Duret Paul Cadieux
Written by	Jan Peter Yury Winterberg Maarten van der Duin Andrew Bampfield Stephan Falk Florian Huber
Starring	see #Cast below
Music by	Laurent Eyquem
Cinematography	Jürgen Rehberg
Editing by	Susanne Schiebler Martin Schröder Jasmin Hoffhaus
Country	Germany France Canada
Language	German French English Russian
Original channel	ARTE ARD NDR SWR WDR ORF NTR VPRO BBC S4C SVT RAI
Original run	April 29, 2014 (2014-04-29) – May 13, 2014 (2014-05-13)
Running time	416 minutes
No. of episodes	8

14 - Diaries of the Great War (titled Great War Diaries when aired on the BBC) is a 2014 international documentary drama series about World War I. It uses a mix of acted scenes, archive footage, and animation. All episodes were directed by Jan Peter, series authors were Jan Peter and Yury Winterberg.^[1] In a dramatic advisory capacity, Dutch producer and screenwriter Maarten van der Duin and BBC-author Andrew Bampfield worked on the film's development. The series is based on an idea by Gunnar Dedio, producer at the film company LOOKS Leipzig and Ulrike Dotzer, the Head of Department ARTE at Norddeutscher Rundfunk.

Story

The individual episodes of the series tell the story of the First World War, not from the perspective of politicians and the military; but from the perspective of soldiers, housewives, factory workers, nurses and children. In total there are 14 main characters. Meaningful scenes from their lives are re-enacted and intertwined. The result is not only a political or military history of the First World War, but a story that poignantly captures the feelings and moods of the people.

Production

The series was produced by LOOKS Film Leipzig,^[2] Les Films d’ici Paris und Filmoption International Montreal.

Development

The scripts are based on quotes from diaries and letters from men and women who experienced World War I in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Russia and the United States, who wrote during the period from 1914 to 1918. More than 1,000 journals and collections of letters were examined and 14 moving stories of World War I were selected from this compilation. Overall, the selection of the diaries and subsequent development work took four years.

Archive footage

The series uses cinematic and photographic archive material from a total of 71 archives in 21 countries. Most material came from British Pathé (United Kingdom), Gaumont Pathé (France), Krasnogorsk (Russia), Bundesfilmarchiv (Germany), Österreichisches Filmmuseum, the National Archives and Records Administration (USA) and the Imperial War Museum.

Shooting

The series was filmed in France, Canada and Germany.^[3] Filming took place over a total of 50 shooting days

The French part of the shoot took place in and around Strasbourg. Among the location were the historical baths, an abandoned brewery and the chateau of Frœschwiller.^[4]

The Canadian part of the shoot took place in the province of Québec. Among the locations were an old quarry north of Montreal, where a trench system, complete with accompanying No-Man's-Land was constructed.

Team

Director	Jan Peter
Authors	Jan Peter, Yury Winterberg, Maarten van der Duin, Andrew Bampfield, Stephan Falk, Florian Huber
Cinematography	Jürgen Rehberg
Music	Laurent Eyquem
Production Design	Patric Valverde, Michel Marsolais
Costume Design	Valerie Adda
Editing & Graphics Design	Susanne Schiebler
Editing	Martin Schröder, Jasmin Hoffhaus

Main characters

Sarah Broom Macnaughtan

Sarah Broom Macnaughtan was born on 26 October 1864 in Partick, Scotland. Already having served in the Boer War, the British woman had experience as a nurse. In 1914, when assistants were being sought for the British Army in Belgium, she volunteered. In 1915 she witnessed the first gas attack at Ypres. Macnaughtan died on 24 July 1916 at the age of 51 years.

Charles Edward Montague

Charles Edward Montague was born on 1 January 1867, the son of a Roman Catholic priest and grew up in London. After graduating, he became a journalist. Montague was anti-war and a pacifist - until the summer of 1914. Despite his 47 years, he volunteered for the war effort. After the war he resumed his journalistic career but retired shortly after in order to spend his old age as a writer. Charles Edward Montague died on the 28th of May, 1928 at the age of 61 years.^[5]

Käthe Kollwitz

Käthe Kollwitz was born on July 8, 1867 in Königsberg. The well-known German artist was an avowed socialist and pacifist. But when the war began, the 47 year-old could not elude the patriotic spirit of optimism in Germany. Her son Peter volunteered for military service and marched into Belgium in 1914. Käthe Kollwitz died on April 22, 1945 in Moritzburg at the age of 77 years, a few days before the end of World War II.

Ethel Cooper

Ethel Cooper was born on 24 December 1871 in North Adelaide. Between 1897 and 1906, she studied music in Leipzig, but returned temporarily to Australia. From 1911, Leipzig becomes her adopted home. When the war broke out, she found herself suddenly considered a foreign enemy. She was spied on and suffered from hunger and disease, but she was not allowed to leave the country. Caroline Ethel Cooper died on the 25th of May 1961 in Malvern, Australia at the age of 90.^[6]

Louis Barthas

Louis Barthas was born the son of a barrel maker and a seamstress on 14 July 1879 in the French wine-growing region of Languedoc. He took up his father's profession. At 35 years of age Barthas was recruited into the reserve army. In the last days of 1914 he found himself on one of the most dangerous sections of the German-French front and experienced the horrors of trench warfare. After the war, he began work as a barrel maker once again. Barthas died on 4 May 1952 at the age of 72 years.

Karl Kasser

Karl Kasser was born in 1889 in the Lower Austrian town of Kilb. Despite a hand injury, the 25-year-old farmer was deemed fit for military service. Reluctantly, he had to enlist in early 1915. He was captured by the Russians during fighting on the Eastern Front. This was the beginning of a multi-year odyssey throughout the Tsarist Empire which only ended on 4 October 1920. Karl Kasser died in 1976 at the age of 87 years.^[7]

Gabrielle West

Gabrielle West was born in 1890. For the young woman from a wealthy British family, it was only natural to serve her country through volunteer work. She becomes a guard in a munitions factory, where she is confronted with the terrible working conditions of the women there. Her date of death is unknown. Her diary was published under the name World War I diary of Miss G. West.^[8]

Paul Pireaud

Paul Pireaud was born in 1890 in southwestern France. At the beginning of the war, Marie and Paul Pireaud were a young couple. But the young farmer was separated for a long time from his wife, Marie, by the war. His only connection to her was the field post. In his letters he tells of the suffering of the soldiers at the front. After many years together with his wife, Paul Pireaud died in 1970 shortly before his 80th birthday.Your Death Would Be Mine: Paul and Marie Pireaud in the Great War, by Martha Hanna, was published in 2008.^[9]

Marie Pireaud

Marie Pireaud was born in 1892 near Paris. At the beginning of the war, Marie and Paul Pireaud were a happy, young couple. However, when her husband went to war, Marie had to do the hard work on the farm. In her very personal letters to Paul she writes about her jealousy and her great desire for intimacy, tenderness and a child. Later the couple give birth to a son. But there are unfortunately no grandchildren who might remember the love of the two. Marie Pireaud died eight years after her husband in September 1978 at the age of 86 years. Your Death Would Be Mine: Paul and Marie Pireaud in the Great War, by Martha Hanna, was published in 2008.^[10]

Vincenzo D’Aquila

Vincenzo D' Aquila was born on 2 November 1893 in Sicily. After the emigration of his parents, he grew up in the United States. In the spring of 1915, the 22 year old travelled with a ship full of volunteers to Europe. The volunteers were young men who wanted to fight for their ancient homeland Italy. D' Aquila died on the 26th of July, 1971 at the age of 78 years.

Ernst Jünger

Ernst Jünger was born on 29 March 1895 in Heidelberg. The then high school student, who later became a writer, signed up for military service in August 1914. At the end of 1914, he was assigned to the front in France. He survived several battles before the end of the war in 1918, including the bloody battles of the Somme. He died in 1998 at the age of 102 years at the hospital in Riedlingen.

Marina Yurlova

Marina Yurlova was born in 1901 in a small village in the Caucasus. The daughter of a colonel of the Kuban Cossacks was just 14 years old when her father went to war in August 1914. In the search for her father, she became a child soldier in the Russian army at age 14. She originally worked as a groom in Armenia; however, after two months of this she was sent to fight the Turkish Army. In 1915 she was wounded while blasting bridges across the Erivan River. She was treated at the Red Cross hospital in Baku and then returned to the Eastern Front. In 1916 she was again wounded and also had a mental breakdown and was sent to an asylum. However, in 1919 she was released and emigrated to the United States. Yurlova published two autobiographies, Cossack Girl (1934) and Russia Farewell (1936).^[11] In 1984 Marina Yurlova died at the age of 84 years.

Elfriede Kuhr

Elfriede Alice Kuhr (known as Piete) was born on April 25, 1902 in the German town of Schneidemühl (modern Pila), about 100 kilometers from the border with Russia. At the beginning of the war, the 12 -year-old girl, who lived with her grandmother, celebrated the German victories; but then Elfriede experienced how the war brought suffering and misery. She died on March 29, 1989 at the age of 86 years.^[12]

Yves Congar

Yves Congar was born on the 8th of April, 1904 in Sedan in northern France, where he grew up well protected until the age of ten. In 1914, he had to experience the German invasion and beginning of a four-year occupation of his hometown. Later he would become a Catholic theologian and cardinal. Yves Congar died on 22 June 1995 at the age of 91 years in Paris.

Cast

The 14 main characters of the series are played by the following actors.

Character	Actor
Charles Edward Montague	David Acton
Marie Pireaud	Emilie Aubertot
Sarah Macnaughtan	Celia Bannerman
Louis Barthas	Mikaël Fitoussi
Ethel Cooper	Megan Gay
Käthe Kollwitz	Christina Große
Paul Pireaud	Lazare Herson-Macarel
Ernst Jünger	Jonas Friedrich Leonhardi
Vincenzo d‘Aquila	Jacopo Menicagli
Elfriede Kuhr	Elisa Monse
Karl Kasser	David Oberkogler
Yves Congar	Antoine de Prekel
Gabrielle M. West	Naomi Sheldon
Marina Yurlova	Natalia Witmer

Budget and broadcast

The series is one of the most elaborate docudrama formats ever co-produced in Germany and was already sold in more than 25 countries worldwide before broadcast. The budget for the German version alone was around 6 million euros,^[13] for all the international versions together the budget was closer to 8 million euros.

On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the start of World War the television broadcaster, ARTE, will broadcast an eight-part series beginning on the 29 April 2014 in parallel in Germany and France.^[14] In Germany, Partners of the series are, next to ARTE - SWR, NDR and WDR, ORF in Austria and the BBC in the UK. The ARD / ORF will broadcast the series in four episodes of 45 minutes each. The BBC will show “14 - Diaries of the First World War” under the title "Great War Diary" in three episodes of 60 minutes.^[15]

Dutch broadcasters NTR and VPRO produced an additional episode about the situation in the Netherlands which aired on April 5, 2014 on Nederland 2.^[16] The remaining eight "international" episodes aired in the Netherlands between April 12 and June 7.

Sweden's SVT had several additional segments produced for their airing of the series which included introductions to each episode by historian and author Peter Englund and dramatisations of diaries from six Swedes to tell the story of Sweden during the Great War.^[17] These were edited into the original eight episodes which meant they ended up with a running time of sixty minutes. This version of the series premièred on SVT1 on June 26.

List of episodes

This list of episodes contains the eight episodes of the drama series “14 - Diaries of the First World War”, sorted by date first screened on ARTE.

No.	Title	Directed By	Written By	Original Air Date	Viewers
1	"The Abyss"	Jan Peter	Jan Peter, Yury Winterberg	April 29, 2014 (2014-04-29)
In the records of the young Cossack Marina Yurlova, the Austrian farmer Karl Kasser and the children Yves Congar and Elfriede Kuhr, who are experiencing the outbreak of war at home, there is little room for jubilant patriotism. The episode describes how everyday life collapsed with the beginning of the war, together with the inflammatory speeches of a teacher and the heroic portrayals of the first days of the war.
2	"The Onslaught"	Jan Peter	Jan Peter	April 29, 2014 (2014-04-29)
3	"The Anguish"	Jan Peter	Jan Peter, Yury Winterberg	May 6, 2014 (2014-05-06)
4	"The Heart's Desire"	Jan Peter	Jan Peter, Yury Winterberg	May 6, 2014 (2014-05-06)
5	"The Annihilation"	Jan Peter	Jan Peter, Yury Winterberg, Stephan Falk	May 6, 2014 (2014-05-06)
6	"The Home Front"	Jan Peter	Yury Winterberg, Jan Peter	May 13, 2014 (2014-05-13)
7	"The Uprising"	Jan Peter	Jan Peter, Florian Huber	May 13, 2014 (2014-05-13)
8	"The Tipping Point"	Jan Peter	Jan Peter	May 13, 2014 (2014-05-13)

Music

The score was created by French Canadian composer Laurent Eyquem. Choir pieces were recorded in Prague.

DVD and Blu-ray

The German edition of the series is being released on May 14, 2014 on DVD and Blu-ray Disc.^[18]

Radio feature

Beginning on 9 March 2014 the WDR broadcast a six-part, eponymous Radio Documentary by Christine Sievers and Nicolaus Schröder. This series is based and created in collaboration with the TV series.^[19]

Accompanying books

The series is accompanied by a coffee table book, which is being published by BBC Books in the United Kingdom, and Bucher Verlag in Germany. In eight chapters, the book presents high resolution photographs, which were colorized prior and during World War I. Each photo is accompanied by a diary quote. The foreword is written by Peter Englund.^[20]

The accompanying book "Der grosse Krieg" by Oliver Janz was published in October 2013 by Campus Verlag.^[21]

Accompanying exhibition

The Military History Museum Dresden shows in a special exhibition "14-Menschen-Krieg" from 01. August 2014 until 24. February 2015 all 14 biographies and their perspectives on World War I. The exhibition focuses on the eve of the war and furthermore shows the dimension and forms of sufferings of both, soldiers and civilians. The exhibition draws a conclusion of World War I and ends with a forecast on the soon to follow World War II. ^[22]

Reception

Critical response

The series received very positive reviews. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung called it "Gripping, emotional, and real. A milestone for European television.".^[23] Süddeutsche Zeitung describes the series as "A story of the destruction and the future of television.".^[24] Stuttgarter Zeitung calls it “Woven together like a modern television series.”.^[25] Neue Züricher Zeitung says that "the program manages to fascinate by combining different observations, in different locations, and managing to condense these into a coherent mood.".^[26] Le Monde ascribes to the series "a never before seen virtuosity",^[27] while Direct Matin calls it "of exceptional quality." ^[28] The Dutch version of the series was described as follows by NRC Handelsblad: "Phantastic Television Making… We ride a rollercoaster of emotions, as if we are not supposed to understand history but rather to live it ourselves." ^[29] After watching the series on Netflix, William F.B. O'Reilly called the series "superbly done" and said "unlike other Netflix programming that escapes the mind moments after consumption, "14" lingers. It consumes its viewers rather than the other way around."^[30]

Audience ratings

Broadcaster	Country	Timeslot	Target Rating for Timeslot	Average Rating Episodes 1-8 (in %)
ARTE	Germany	Tuesday, 20.15 - 22.50	1,0%	1,4%[31]
ARTE	France	Tuesday, 20.50 - 23.35	2,0%	2,2%[32]
ORF	Austria	Tuesday, 22.35 - 00.05 + Friday, 22.50 - 00.20	12,2%	14,0%[33]

External links

• Official web page of 14 - Diaries of the Great War (in German)
• 14 - Diaries of the Great War on the main production company's website
• Official trailer
• Review at Fernsehserien.de
• Special exhibition at Militärhistorisches Museum der Bundeswehr in Dresden
• 14 – Diaries of the Great War at the Internet Movie Database

References