KULTURA MATERIALNA I ETOS ŻOŁNIERSKI. O WSPOMNIENIACH WOJENNYCH LOTNIKA WIKTORA WILLMANNA

The Polish soldier’s ethos of World War I is interpreted only on the basis of the literary representations of the armed action of the Polish Legions. However, it is not the romantic paradigm but a deliberation on dehumanization and mechanization of the modern battlefield that directs the discourse on historical and cultural death of the old Europe. What is ignored is the testimonies of the pilots, sailors, artillerists, who were actually most affected by the development of technology and industrialization at the time, which largely influenced the ways of depicting the fighting on the fronts of the Great War. Wiktor Willmann, graduate of the Military Academy in Wiener Neustadt was a pilot in the Austro-Hungarian army. His Wspomnienia wojenne (War memories) allow to review the popular opinion on the supremacy of the products of the munitions industry, i. e. objects, things, as understood by Tim Dant and Bjørnar Olsen in axiologically defined areas.