Into the Great war with a camera in your hands (Image heavy)

[Betonov]

Peter Naglič from Šmarce near Kamnik just reached 31 years when the first world war began, the bloody dance (krvavi ples) as he named it. In his time he was known as a successefull brush entrepreneur, history will remember him for his colection of priceless war time photographs.


Peter Naglič, 1883-1959, in his army uniform


Peter Naglič had a multitude of hobbies, but his favourite was photography. He left behind an extensive photo archive, about 800 negatives on glass plates and 3000 celuloid films. His grandson, Matjaž Šporar remembers well, his grandfathers diaries and films, but he did not yet recognised the importance of it in his early years, but he shows that more care for the preserved material and shows it to the public to this day.

Without his photographs we would have been deprived of an important time, when Ljubljana castle was used as a quarantine station for prisoners of war. Added to that there is a multitude of other photographs he took until 1917, when he returned home alive. Some diaries, where he wrote memoirs of his war years, also survived to this day.


Salute on castle hill
He avoided the first mobilization, against Serbia, but he did managed to write about the sorrow of the first men that took off to the front. ''some cried, others were enthusiastic'' and a naive motion that ''with weapons such as these, the war can't last more than 2 months''. On Hom train station he watched a scene where soldiers said goodbye to their fammilies ''eyes teared up on even the manliest of faces''



The train is ready to take the regiment to the Carpathian front


Naglič was mobilised towards the end of the year ''when they started running out of men''. December 12th he started towards the draft office in Kamnik, he went to Ljubljana on February 15th when he was assigned to the 7th Jaeger batallion in Vrhnika. As he was sworn in he realised the seriousnes of the army status which ''is not a joke'' but also instilled a sense of pride of being ''a man of the Empire'' And so started a life full of worries. He tasted the first troubles of an army life in Vrhnika, clothes too small, cold and mud, the unkind effects of an army during winter that seriously damaged his health, which also prevented his early departure to the front.


Regiment marches down Vrhnika road


Frost stricken soldiers and a doctor


On his way to Steiermark, where his unit was transfered in May, Naglič and a few other soldiers were held in Ljubljana for the needs of the army services. He was assigned in the rear for the duration of the war and completely avoided front fighting. In January 1916 he was assigned to the Ljubljana castle as a guard for the POWs. A small cottage industry developed under the lead of Major Karl Kern and Naglič used the status to make economic ties with his fathers brush workshop and the POW camp.




When the command ''sniffed out'' he knows photography, he was given a camera, because ''there was always something to take pictures of''. ''I was not happy with this, it meant I had even more duties. We were bound to to this service and always had to be ready for Eskorte (Naglič was a part of the so called Eskortbereitschaft, always ready for an escort) There was eight of us there, most often we escorted runaway soldiers back to the Soča front as they were released from jail. It wasn't pleasant.''


Major Karl Kern, knight something I couldn't translate

Nagličs diary entries end in December 1917, but his photographies go as far as 1919.

Pictures gallore





Gallizian refugees


Italian POWs










Dentistry didn't change that much in 100 years