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Born 1892

German seaman

"This hitherto unknown sailor had filled the most conspicuous gap in German war literature by describing for the first time the response of the great masses of men in the army, the navy, and in industry to the social, economic, and political upheaval caused by the war."
—From Daniel Horn, ed. and trans., War, Mutiny and

Richard Stumpf was an ordinary German soldier, but he wrote an extraordinary diary. Unlike the officers and politicians who wrote memoirs for publication, Stumpf only wrote for himself. Instead of writing so that the world would remember him well or to "set the record straight," Stumpf wrote to amuse and entertain himself, to vent his anger, and to record what he knew about the war. He wrote daily and sometimes hourly to stave off the boredom of being an enlisted seaman from 1914 to the end of World War I. His diary stands as the...