Inspired by a conference in Chernivtsi in 2014, the eleven contributions of this volume aim to shed light on the Ukrainian situation in World War I from different perspectives and disciplines. The book is structured into two main parts, “Perception” (“Wahrnehmung”) and “Reorientation” (“Neuorientierung”), and closes with an excursus on fieldwork in Bukovina. It is obviously impossible to discuss the history of Ukraine without mentioning its implications for the present conflicts. Accordingly, the editors stress the long-term effects of processes—“frozen conflicts” (9)—dissipating “national, governmental and cultural orientation within the population groups of the Bukovina, Galicia, and Bessarabia” (7) in their introduction. Shifting loyalties and allegiances and the permanent sense of being halfway between two empires where they become disjointed have shaped this region. The editors and authors of this book seek to consider the collective and individual experiences of war and of the interwar period. They also examine the Eastern front (Ostfront), which is seen here as a forgotten region on the periphery of perception. Indeed, it was not just a front but also an area of violence (Gewaltraum) (Jörn Leonhard, Die Büchse der Pandora. Geschichte des Ersten Weltkrieges [München, 2014] , 811–26) where the brutality of war reached its apex (9). Moreover, the collapse of these empires was simply unthinkable for a long time (10), and the founding of national states in an attempt to (re)establish stability often unprepared and improvised.

The first part contains five contributions dealing with memoirs in the form of ego documents and narrative literature. The broad scope of issues includes descriptions of the war and its consequences in the diaries and letters of both civilians and military personnel (Isabel Röskau-Rydel), the treatment and instrumentalization of the “kidnapping” and deportation of Chernivtsi's inhabitants to Siberia during the three periods of Russian occupation (Andrei Corbea-Hoisie), and the perception of World War I in Ukrainian literature from Galicia and Bukovina (Peter Rychlo, Kati Brunner, and Svitlana Kyrylyuk). Christina Spinei's contribution analyzes texts by the famous Jewish authors Israel Joshua Singer und Scholem Alejchem. Singer's melancholy farewell to a vanishing world is juxtaposed to Alejchem's detailed description of the war and war-related events. This interesting chapter highlights the changing demarcations and nationalistic ambitions as a special threat to minorities. Lastly, the partitioning of the former imperial lands into national states changed the living conditions of the entire (traumatized) population. Not only political loyalties but also people's personal situations (due to their religion or ethnicity) were in a state of uncertainty.

The second part comprises five chapters as well and opens with Mariana Hausleitner's profound examination of the conflicts between Rumanians and Ukrainians in the Bukovina before, during, and after World War I. The following contributions focus on the struggle for a sense of (re)orientation of diverse regional minorities like the Carpatho-Ruthenians (Karpatho-Ruthenen) (Marc Stegherr), Bessarabian Germans (Svetlana Suveica), or Zionists (Hans-Joachim Hahn). The chapters feature both the complicated rivalries and similarities of the different groups in detail, allowing for insights into heretofore little-known fields. Of great interest is the chapter on the University of Czernowitz by Kurt Scharr. Based on the biographies of (former) professors and dealing with their evacuation and difficult restart in Austria after World War I, it becomes apparent that the university represented the liberal politics of the past for the officials of the Austrian heartland. Its proponents (embodied in the exiled professors) did not fit in the emerging nationalistic zeitgeist. The last chapter by Jevgenij Paščenko gives a view into actual research processes. The participation of Croatian troops in the war had largely been forgotten, but is now about to be reconstructed. This work report indicates that the research on this region is by no means complete.

The strength of the publication lies in its presentation of microstudies that show the complex interdependencies of a multiethnic population structure held together by the Habsburg monarchy. With the outbreak of World War I, the lines of conflict were revealed and enabled old and new discriminations. Searches for (new) identities were often infused by nationalism and therefore included ostracizing and “othering” former neighbors. Minorities in particular—and the Austrian-Russian border region was predominantly populated by minorities—were under general suspicion. They were gratuitously accused of conspiracy and treason against Austria. The novella Judas (1915) by Ol'ha Kobyljans'ka is mentioned in different chapters of the volume as an impressive example of a literary treatment of this traumatic arbitrariness. The compilation of heterogenic contributions is always challenging. Nevertheless, more attention could have been given to internal connections and references. The establishment of a common theme within the texts could have made the difference between a collection of essays and a book. In conclusion, not only the region but also the idea of “Ukraine as a place of productive cultural negotiations” (68)—as Kati Brunner and Svitlana Kyrylyuk termed it in their remarkable article on Ukrainian prose—was destroyed by the First World War and the consequences of that can still be felt today.