Although they were both gifted artists, Tor decided to pursue a career in medicine, while Felix followed his elder brother Erwin in studying chemistry.
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| Tor (left) and Felix on leave during WW1 |
Felix broke off his studies at the University of Munich to sign up in 1914. He served initially in the Bavarian RIR 16 and fought in many battles at the Western Front, where he was severely injured just a few months into the war in December 1914. At the Eastern Front, he fought in Galicia (today's Ukraine) as well as in Romania, and once again landed in a lazaret in Brest-Litowsk (today's Belarus) in October 1916. During 1916, he was promoted to Leutnant of the Reserves and served in the RIR 3. In early 1918, he was released from the army and took up his studies again. In 1919, he completed his doctor's thesis in Erlangen, Bavaria, and worked in various factories as a chemist. In the bleak economic landscape of post-war Weimar Germany, Felix decided to emigrate in 1927 with his wife and two children to Honduras, where he worked as a chemist. The next year, they moved to the eastern United States, where he continued his work as a chemist, specializing in food preservatives. After a successful career in the US, Felix returned to Germany, where he remarried (his wife Erne had died in 1938) and died in Bruchsal in 1965.
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| Felix at the Western Front, summer 1917 |
During the summer of 1916, Felix was stationed very close to Tor near Poworsk in today's Ukraine and was able to ride out to visit him on many evenings. His reports of these visits in his diaries can also be correlated with Tor's letters home to his family, many of which will be shown under Tor's Letters.
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| Tor and Felix with their sister Sylvestra, who worked as a nurse on the Western Front, in summer 1913 |
Tor was also studying medicine in Munich when war broke out. He returned home and joined the Red Cross at Germersheim in Rheinland-Pfalz as a medic in a lazaret, where he treated soldiers wounded at the Western Front. Shortly afterwards, he joined the RIR 249 and served as a doctor at the Eastern Front until the end of the war in the East, when he returned with his batallion, now the RIR 250, to the Western Front. Tor recorded that the wounds of those injured in the war in the East were not as horrific as those in the West, as the Russians did not possess as much artillery as the Allies. However, the Russians were excellent shots. He also records various incidents of "Überläufer" at the Eastern Front - soldiers from the Russian army who defected to the German side, where the conditions for the men were considerably better. In addition, Tor's letters tell of at least once incident of an unofficial truce between the Russians and his German unit, as well as incidents of "friendly" interchange, during which the Russians and the Germans applauded each others' singing, for example.
Tor passed his final doctor's examinations at the end of 1915 and by the end of the war was the deputy Regiment's Doctor, a position approximately equivalent to Major. He was also a prolific writer and wrote home to his family in Ettlingen every few days. We have been able to learn much about military movements and life at the Eastern Front from these letters, as well as the work of a doctor in a lazaret.
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| Tor's telegram of 12/30/1915: Medical exams passed |
After the war, Tor set up practice as a dermatologist in Kaiserslautern, where he remained until he died. He maintained strong friendships with various artists and was closely involved in the new artistic movements of the 1920s. He became a patron of the arts and, although he appears to have ceased painting himself after 1920, he continued all his life to write poetry, novels, books of art criticism and works of a psychological nature.
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| Tor in July 1916, wearing a new uniform just after a promotion |
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| Felix with his horse, April 1917 |
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