War, Mutiny and Revolution in the Germany Navy: The World War I Diary of Seaman Richard Stumpf (Daniel Horn, translator and editor).

Stumpf enlisted in 1912, served as an ordinary seaman on the Helgoland for most of the war, was subsequently transferred to the Wittelsbach and the Lothringen, and was discharged in November 1918. He’d kept his diary from 1914 through 1918, and in 1926 came forward to offer it to the Reichstag Investigating Committe as the testimony of an ordinary sailor. That body had already for 7 years been examining the reasons for the loss of the war and the collapse of the German regime – in which the naval mutinies figured prominently – amid accusations from the Right of Socialist subversion, and counter-accusations from the Left of poor conditions, ill-treatment and disregard for the lives of the sailors. The diary rather shook its readers, as Stumpf was anything but a radical, being a staunch Catholic, politically conservative, and a loyal patriot, to which his diary attested, at the same time as it attested to the sailors’ grievances.

Stumpf was a tinsmith by trade, a Catholic, a trade unionist, nationalistic and conservative. He was also an autodidact who continued to educate himself throughout the war, a critical reader of newspapers and avid collector of other peoples’ information and accounts. Prior to the war he had spent a year as a travelling journeyman in the Tyrols. He also seems to have had a good source in an Executive Officer who kept the men informed and countered rumours and restlessness with
analysis. As best I can determine, this is not the raw diary, since he has worked in information that only later became available to him: for instance, the entry dated August 20 includes a narrative of the Battle of Helgoland, which took place on August 28, with commentary on the information subsequently gained from the examination of unexploded British shells (the British shells were inferior to the German).

I’m not very far in, but Stumpf is a born diarist: he gives a detailed, candid account, moving from objectivity to subjectivity and
back; he frames his information and is responsible in his reporting (allowing for the bigotry of the time). From him I have an important scene in the novel: immediately prior to the outbreak of war, the Helgoland, the ship on which Stumpf was serving, was in the Fiord of Songe, where the Royal Yacht was moored on the Kaiser’s yearly holiday. Stumpf describes the ships putting on a display for the Kaiser, the men in holiday mood, the showy departure, and sketches in the beautiful
natural setting. (I have to find and look through Simon Schama’s book on landscape and culture because I’m sure German romanticism figures strongly in it, and I may be able to use it). Since I’m thinking of a non-linear structure for this novel, moving freely back and forth through time, that idyll will be juxtaposed with one of the grimmer scenes – at present I’m thinking of putting it adjacent to the scuttling of the fleet itself (the final chapter), or adjacent to the scenes from the internment itself. Probably the latter, making it the second last chapter in the book.