The Douaumont charnel house is a burial site for the bones of soldiers killed on the western front near Verdun, who could not be identified. In 1984, on the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War, François Mitterand and Helmut Kohl stood here hand in hand and declared: “We have reconciled. We have come to an understanding. We have become friends”.
Image: picture-alliance/PHOTOPQR/LE PARISIEN/MAXPPP/O. Boitet
The Battle of Verdun, in the north-east of France, is a symbol of the horror of the First World War. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers died between February and December 1916. The museum, founded in 1967, was reopened in the presence of the French President François Hollande and the German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the 100th anniversary of the commemoration of this battle.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/U. BaumgartenMemorial Notre-Dame-de-Lorette
The Memorial Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, completed in 2014, lists in the “Ring of Remembrance” (L’Anneau de la Mémoire ) the names of around 600,000 soldiers killed in the northern French region during the First World War. These include soldiers from the British Empire, Germany, France and French colonies in Africa.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/M. SpinglerThe German-French memorial at Hartmannswillerkopf
This German-French memorial was opened in November 2017 by French President Emmanuel Macron and Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. It complements a national cemetery and a crypt which, since the end of the First World War, have commemorated the victims of a senseless battle of trench warfare over the mountain of the same name in French Alsace.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Images/P. SeegerIn Flanders Fields Museum
One of the main war sites of the First World War is the region around the Belgian city of Ypres. The war museum “In Flanders Fields” is located in the Gothic textile halls building, which was rebuilt after the devastating destruction. The name of the museum is the title of a poem by the Canadian military doctor John McCrae, whose friend died in 1915 at Ypres shortly before he wrote it.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/F. Schumann
Opened in 2005, the museum in Mons, Belgium, does not focus on war equipment or strategies, but on the human being. The display cases contain many personal objects of soldiers and civilians, which give an impression of life during the war and occupation. The region in the northwest of Belgium was a hotly contested site during both world wars.
Image: picture-alliance/epa/O. Hoslet
In the northern Italian town of Rovereto, a war museum, the Castel Dante ossuary and the peace bell commemorate the victims of the First World War. The bell was cast in 1924 from molten cannons of the war opponents Italy and Austria-Hungary. With 100 chimes every evening it recalls the dead of all wars.
Image: picture-alliance/CTK/C. Karel
The region of Kobarid in present-day Slovenia was also the scene of several battles between Austria-Hungary and Italy during the First World War. The Kobarid Museum (Kobariški Muzej documents the battles on the Isonzo front as well as the everyday warfare of the soldiers on both sides.
Image: picture-alliance/Arco Images/G. LenzÇanakkale Martyrs’ Memorial
Like many others on the Turkish peninsula of Gallipoli, the Çanakkale monument commemorates the battle of the same name between soldiers of the Ottoman Empire and troops from Great Britain, France, Australia and New Zealand. Engraved in stone is a quote attributed to President Atatürk: “There is no difference between the Johnnies and Mehmets. Therefore rest in peace.”
Image: picture-alliance/AA/E. Aydin
In Germany, remembrance of the First World War is mainly decentralized. In almost every community there are monuments for those who died. The “Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany to the Victims of War and Tyranny” has been the Neue Wache in Berlin since 1993. Inside, the bronze sculpture “Mother with Dead Son” was designed by the artist Käthe Kollwitz.
Image: picture-alliance/imageBROKER/J. Woodhouse
Source link : https://amp.dw.com/en/world-war-i-europe-and-the-politics-of-remembrance/a-46217587
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Publish date : 2018-11-08 08:00:00
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