Second Annual German-Americana Lecture to Feature Frederic Krome

The second annual German-Americana lecture, scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 19, 3-4:30 p.m., in Annie Laws (407 Teachers/Dyer), will feature Frederic Krome, professor of history at UC Clermont College who will speak about his recent research with the unpublished memoirs of a World War I German soldier. “In Times of War: Hans Schiller’s Recovered Memoirs” will provide a fascinating window into the motivations and experiences of a German soldier during tumultuous times, without the extensive post war re-writing so common to what historians are starting to refer to as “Ego Documents.”

Enlisting in the German Army in the fall of 1914, Hans Schiller fought on the Eastern, Italian and Western fronts during the war, and with the Freikorps in the Baltic from 1919-21. Sometime in 1922, as he was recovering from Scarlet Fever, Hans Schiller collated his notes and wrote a memoir of his military service. The handwritten memoir was then placed in a box, where it lay as Schiller married, had a family, and in 1939 was recalled to active duty as an occupation administrator in Eastern Europe. In January 1945 he committed suicide and his manuscript, still in the box, came to his younger daughter, who immigrated to the U.S. in the 1950s. It was re-discovered by Karin Wagner, Schiller’s granddaughter, shortly before her mother’s death.