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This article explores the way in which the First World War continued to speak to (West) German culture in the wake of the Second World War. It takes issue with the commonly held view that the Great War is a "long forgotten war" eclipsed by an even greater conflict. The notion of the "forgotten war" is best understood as a cultural representation in its own right, often used for political ends. Building on recent theoretical literature on cultural oblivion, this article charts the trajectory of remembrance and "forgetting" from the end of the Second World War to the centenary of the First World War. Focusing on the once powerful war myth of Langemarck, it examines the agency of war veterans, the war graves association, local administrators, public intellectuals, and grassroots activists to show that important memory traces of the Great War remained after 1945. Increasingly, though, Germans tended to approach war in a different register, one that was cerebral rather than emotional. The demise of the generation of veterans of the Great War triggered not an era of oblivion, but instead the most intense period of (critical) engagement with the First World War. This meant that the mode and mood of war commemoration changed permanently during the 1980s. A new, highly localized memory of the First World War became divorced from the traditional topography of remembrance that had centered on the Western Front. Now the emphasis was placed on confronting the past and on the lessons to be learned from it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Netherlands' escape from the 'hard hand of war' in 1914-1918 was explained until this century through several myths, all of which painted the country as a passive player during the war. That these myths are now discredited is not new. What has been given little attention, however, is the impact of these myths on the Netherlands' preparation for the next war, which it would not escape. The consequences of the country's faulty historical memory would have an impact well beyond its own borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the returned soldier, who has figured prominently in Australian historiography of war, should be understood as a site of collective memory. During the Great Depression, the Scullin government failed to remove preference in employment for returned soldiers, even though the Australian labour movement demanded the restoration of preference for unionists. Moreover, Scullin quarantined key categories of war pensions from the cuts imposed by the deflationary Premiers' Plan of June 1931. In the public debates surrounding these policy issues, the 'returned soldier' was constructed as a powerful representation of unity, national pride and sacrifice in the common good. These wartime values were now claimed to be needed as Australians faced another national crisis. Hence, even though individual returned soldiers were often affected adversely by the Depression, their privileged status as an imagined collective was affirmed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can Edward Said's concept of Orientalism be useful to reinterpret the widely accepted and long-lasting perceptions about the atrocities committed against the Armenians during World War I? And, why? Presenting important insights to comprehend this issue in a more sophisticated fashion, Orientalism helps deconstruct and reconstruct the existing discourses that have produced a particular kind of knowledge and way of thinking about the 1915 events. I argue that the historical perception of catastrophic events regarding the minorities prior to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire was immensely linked to British wartime propaganda, which ideologically and politically demonized the Turco/Ottoman image. It forged discourses, pseudo-knowledge, otherization, and imaginary that legitimized a self-assumed accountability to remove the kind of anachronism the Ottoman Empire displayed. Thus, the effects of British wartime propaganda surpassed the consequences of the Ottoman Empire's own failure to do its "homework," which was about implementing reforms for the Christian minorities, especially the Armenians as assigned by the Great Powers, primarily Britain. In order to concretize my argument, I examine British liberal, Lord James Bryce (1838–1922) and the Orientalist discourse he often employed in circulating disingenuous depictions of the Turks and the Ottoman Empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During and after the First World War, authors in several of the main belligerent nations presented the war as a young man's war. The young man's war proved to be a powerful trope, and a myth emerged about the typical trench soldier as handsome, white, and eighteen. In this article, I examine literature about the Great War across several nations – primarily Germany, Great Britain, and France – to demonstrate how and why youth became embedded in the collective memory and representation of the war. I argue, in part, that notions of youth in the early twentieth century allowed participating nations to emphasise innocence and tragedy, claiming the moral high ground in the process. As a result, it is now difficult to accurately depict the First World War soldiers as fathers as well as sons, husbands as well as fiancés, men with careers as well as boys fresh from school. The generation of 1914 must be conceived more broadly, which would disallow easy teleologies to later tragic events in the 1930s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the autumn of 2014, as Britain embarked on four years of activities to commemorate and mark the centenary of the First World War, the Mass Observation project asked its panellists to reflect on their feelings about the war. Over 180 people responded, writing about their family involvement in the war, about their thoughts and feelings on Remembrance Sunday 2014, and about popular representations of the war in the early twenty-first century. This article examines some of these responses, considering the extent to which gender and age shaped not only the panellists’ stated relationship to the centenary of the war, but also the language with which they expressed this relationship. It draws on ideas from the ‘emotional turn’ in historical studies to argue that older women, who often had a personal memory of the lived legacies of the war, drew on a particularly expressive repertoire to convey both an empathy with the men and women whose lives were shaped by the First World War, and to argue for a particular moral position with regard to warfare. These empathetic responses, which the article argues have much in common with family histories of the war, should be taken seriously by historians who examine the cultural memory of the war and who are often keen to dismiss the widespread sense of the war as a tragic blunder. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the affective motives for remembrance among British and German descendants of men and women who served in the First World War. Based on observations of a First World War centenary project funded by the Heritage Lottery and hosted in Bavaria in early 2016 by the London-based reminiscence organization Age Exchange, it asks why people are drawn to research the First World War pasts of their ancestors and how their historical pursuits connect personal experience to public commemoration in the two countries. It develops an understanding of legacy as operating across time in two directions: backwards from contemporary preoccupations to the First World War, and forwards across generations, from the survivors and their descendants to the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the plays "Memento Park," directed by Thomas Bellinck, and "Oeps," directed by Raven Ruell and Jos Verbist, in relation to the commemoration of World War I in Belgium. Topics include the relation of Flemish nationalism to cultural memory of World War I, the commemoration of the participation of non-Europeans in World War I, and criticism of tourism and marketing around World War I in Bellinck's play.

Fully-trained professional nurses worked on hospital ships during the First World War, caring for the wounded during their transfer from the Gallipoli Peninsula to military hospitals on the Island of Lemnos and in Egypt. Many wrote accounts of their experiences, including diaries, official narratives for inclusion in Arthur Butlers ‘Official History of the Australian Army Medical Services, 1914–1918’, and published memoirs. The paper explores the mythical prism through which they interpreted their experiences. Following an analysis of the ‘romance trope' upon which they drew, the paper identifies themes of ‘ordeal’ and ‘struggle’ which formed the central elements of their writings. It also identifies the ambivalence inherent in these writings, which focus on both the ‘heroism’ of soldier-patients and the pressures nurses appear to have felt to behave ‘heroically’ themselves. It concludes that behind the lines of nurses’ narratives there is a sense that, in doing such extraordinary work, these women believed they were both carving out an identity for themselves as female professionals on a world stage, and discovering their own strength and power as individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Fifty years after the conclusion of the Civil War, the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania faced the challenge of another war. From 1914 to 1917, the townspeople followed events in Europe closely, becoming vehement supporters of the American entry into the war by April 1917. In 1918, the Gettysburg Battlefield became inundated with American soldiers for the second time in its history, as doughboys trained for overseas service on the site of Pickett’s Charge. This paper considers the way the town of Gettysburg reacted to and mobilized for the First World War. It explores the notion of a ‘forgotten’ American war in a place that is perpetually haunted by war memories. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In Portugal, the development of a memorial project commemorating the First World War, from the treatment of physical bodies to their more or less symbolic (or more or less doctrinal) representations, did not achieve its intended results, in the sense that it did not succeed in consecrating Portugal as a participant of recognized standing and a victorious Allied nation. The memory of the war was clearly shaped by a dimension of tragedy and not by victory. This article will provide, via the dialectics between official and public memory, an in-depth analysis of the politics of memory as it manifests in official commemorative projects. It will examine the forms, pace of implantation and rituals carried out to renew the meaning of memory, as well as the underlying play of forces it is subject to, along with the way in which it establishes cultural and even political rupture or continuity. Through the observation of elements that constitute a war culture - images, language and practices - which emerged during and after the conflict, this study seeks to clarify the First Republic's successes and failures in delineating and consolidating an official memory of the First World War in Portugal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is a historical inquiry into the cultural memory of First World War and German occupation. The author notes that negative image of the German occupation and the images of Germans forming during this period between the wars affected the dynamics of political relations. The German occupation administration's forced recruitment and the compulsory labor left a particularly bad impression in the collective memory of Lithuanians. During the Soviet times, the First World War was not studied or discussed, thus images of the German occupation finally disappeared both from scholarly discourse and the collective memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the Balkan Wars in 1912/1913 as well as the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 as results of a historical clash between the traditional European power system and newly established nation-states in Southeastern Europe. On the eve of the 20th century, great powers like the British Empire or Tsarist Russia pursued their political and territorial interests on the Balkan Peninsula. In doing so, they either ignored or tried to exploit new political players like Serbia or Bulgaria and promoted the image of a protecting power. Emancipating from the old European system, the Balkan states, on the other hand, utilised this image to realise own nationalist aspirations. Whereas academic discourses on First World War and the European crises of 1912-1918 mainly focused on great power rivalries, the article argues for a conscious consideration of the role and the influence of so-called small players in European history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In situations of political crisis, what role do historical analogies and memories of earlier crisis situations play? To address this question, the example of the Marseille Assassination in 1934 and its aftermath can provide a striking and revealing case study. When King Alexander of Yugoslavia was assassinated on 9th October 1934 in Marseille, this dramatic event immediately provoked comparison, throughout Europe, with the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914; it raised the question of whether Marseille would become "another Sarajevo" and lead to a new war. At the same time, there were also strong attempts to refute parallelism between Sarajevo and Marseille, highlighting the differences between both events and their contexts. By whom, for which purposes and in which ways was the memory of Sarajevo 1914 used after the assassination of King Alexander and during the subsequent international crisis? And to what extent did the references to Sarajevo 1914 contribute to the escalation or de-escalation of the post-assassination crisis, which was eventually resolved at the League of Nations in December 1934? The paper is based on an analysis of archival sources and press articles from different European countries and sees itself as a contribution to European comparative and transnational research on the remembrance of the First World War and the impact and use of traumatic memories during political crisis situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The centenary commemorations of the First World War have prompted renewed debate as to the ways in which it ought to be remembered in future, not least through teaching and through historical fiction. This article discusses two contemporary collections of short stories and a number of novels published between 1991 and 2014. It reads these modern literary accounts of the First World War against current popular perceptions of and commemorative discourses surrounding the war, including the representation of the war in secondary education and the use of literature in the classroom. In doing so, the article draws in part on a research project that investigated the teaching of the First WorldWar and its literature in English secondary schools between February 2013 and August 2014. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on values that are represented by collection at Nutana Collegiate Memorial Art Gallery in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Topics discussed include history of the war memorial gallery, collective memory of first world war and cultural impact of the war. Other topics which includes Canada during the first world war are also discussed.

Copyright of Journal of Belgian History / Revue Belge d'Histoire Contemporaine is the property of Cegesoma and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Author-supplied Abstracts.)

The article presents information on the proceedings of a conference entitled "Beyond Defeat and Victory. Physical Violence and the Reconstitution of East-Central Europe, 1914-1923" that was held on September 17-19, 2015. Topics discussed include the current study of violence during and in the aftermath of the First World War; concepts of the culture of victory and culture of defeat; and the situation in the victorious and defeated states during the First World War.

The article is devoted to the history of the foundation and the activities of the All-Russian Memorial Society for the Soldiers of the Russian army, fallen during the war with Germany, Austria and Turkey. This public organization was founded for the implementation of commemorative projects and the improvement of military burials during the First World War. Recent historiography has for the most part neglected the All-Russian Memorial Society. The author uses new archival sources, such as official correspondence (incoming and outgoing letters), protocols and registers of the executive agency of the All-Russian Memorial Society, parish registers, lists of members, as well as published sources such as the organization's charter, directives of the Holy Synod and articles from the journal Arkhitekturno-khudozhestvennyi ezhenedel'nik. The article concludes that by the beginning of 1917 the All-Russian Memorial Society had received support from the Emperor, had opened local departments all across the Empire and had prepared for the implementation of its projects. Activities of the All- Russian Memorial Society stopped after the Bolshevik's seizure of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author responds to the article "Fiction and memoir of Britain's Great War: disillusioned or disparate?," by Rodney Gerald Beecham, which is presented within this issue. It explores the history and historiography of World War I in literature. the War and collective memory, and the War's influence on British society.

A roundtable of historians specializing in studies of World War I, including Christopher Capozzola, Andrew Huebner, and Julia Irwin, is presented. Topics include the centennial celebrations of World War I, the war and memory, the causes for the entrance of the United States into the War in 1917, and under-explored history of Americans in the War.

The television documentary-drama The War That Changed Us (TWTCU, 2014), one of the first publicly funded commemorations of the centenary of the First World War, traces the transformative experiences of six Australians in the war. It does so with a narrative guided by the dramatisation of diaries and letters against a backdrop of archival film and photographs and commentary from historians. This article analyses how the program's focus on the evocation of emotions, empathy and personal stories brings the past near for a twenty-first-century viewing audience with no living memory of the war. It thus addresses the relationship of TWTCU's examination of the inherent drama and pathos of the First World War, with docudrama and affective history. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents a report from a July 9-11, 2015 conference in Munich, Germany on political aspects of death in Eastern Europe. Topics of presentations delivered included the position of Jews in World War I in Polish collective memory, Ukrainian collective memory of the 1918 battle of Kruty, Ukraine, and the celebration of women Red Army soldiers as heroes.

The article discusses the emergence of Vimyism, the mythology surrounding the Battle of Vimy Ridge in France, and World War I veteran and Canadian professor of political economy Harold Innis. According to the author, Vimyism is a form of martial patriotism obscuring the reality of World War I. Topics of discussion include Innis's thoughts about war, the idea that the Battle of Vimy Ridge was a defining moment in the history of Canada, and the unveiling of the Vimy Memorial in 1936. Canada's Citizenship Guide and economic nationalism are also mentioned.

The article discusses the emergence of Vimyism, the mythology surrounding the Battle of Vimy Ridge in France, and World War I veteran and Canadian professor of political economy Harold Innis. According to the author, Vimyism is a form of martial patriotism obscuring the reality of World War I. Topics of discussion include Innis's thoughts about war, the idea that the Battle of Vimy Ridge was a defining moment in the history of Canada, and the unveiling of the Vimy Memorial in 1936. Canada's Citizenship Guide and economic nationalism are also mentioned.

The article focuses on the commemoration of war and the development of collective memory in Canada. Topics of discussion include the delayed recognition of Canada's involvement in World War I and II, the Vietnam War and Canadian-U.S. relations, the perception of war in English-speaking and French-speaking Canada, and Canadian politics and military history in the 20th century. Historian Paul Cohen and his study of history and popular memory, Canada's involvement in the Cold War, and the reception of the World War II television series "The Valour and the Horror" are also mentioned.

The article discusses the emotional power and size of a war memorial. According to the author, the size of a war memorial should not be confused with the emotional power it conveys. Topics include the World War I memorial in Chelsey, Ontario, dedicated to the Boys of Geneva Church School, the National War Memorial in Ottawa, Ontario, the Canadian National Vimy Memorial in Northern France, and criticism over the Never Forgotten National Memorial to be erected on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. The war memorial program proposed by Canada's Minister of Militia and Defence, Sir Sam Hughes, after World War I is also mentioned.

The article focuses on the commemoration of war and the development of collective memory in Canada. Topics of discussion include the delayed recognition of Canada's involvement in World War I and II, the Vietnam War and Canadian-U.S. relations, the perception of war in English-speaking and French-speaking Canada, and Canadian politics and military history in the 20th century. Historian Paul Cohen and his study of history and popular memory, Canada's involvement in the Cold War, and the reception of the World War II television series "The Valour and the Horror" are also mentioned.

Aleksandr Solženicyn wrote in 1969/1970 his 'August Fourteenth' ('Avgust četyrnadcatogo'), a historical novel about the First World War which closely adheres to historical fact. The events of the war are themselves, however, not told, making the novel unsuitable as a text of remembrance. In contrast, Vasilij Rozanov composed his 'The War of 1914 and Russian Rebirth' ('Vojna 1914 goda i russkoe vozroždenie') at the beginning of the war in 1915, an ideological and emotional pamphlet that discusses the meaning of the coming war while ignoring historical fact. Solženicyn writes an 'Anti-Rozanov' in regard to content and poetics. Despite their extreme differences, both authors implicitly view the First World War as not memorable for Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the history of World War I landscapes in Flanders, including the role that landscape architecture played in the battlefields and the collective memory of World War I. An overview of the impact that the depiction of World War I in art and photographs had on landscape architecture innovations, including in regard to photographs of the battlefield of the 1917 Third Battle of Ypres, Belgium and paintings by the British painter Paul Nash, is provided.

Shortly after the First World War ended, Australian authorities erected memorials in France and Belgium in memory of the Australian Imperial Force. Decades later, during the so-called ‘second generation of memory’, Australians again engaged in planting memorials on sites of memory on the Western Front. This article compares the two periods of memorial building, contrasting the sites that were chosen for commemoration and examining what these suggest about the difference between past and contemporary modes of remembering the First World War. It highlights the growing importance, in extra-territorial commemoration, of memorial diplomacy and the development of a shared memory between Australians and the communities which host their memorials. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The collection of official war art housed in the Australian War Memorial has played an important role in shaping a memory of the First World War for almost a century. This article explores the importance of eyewitness testimony in the production of war paintings for the Memorial's collection during the interwar years. Focusing on the repainting of official artist Harold Septimus Power's canvas Saving the Guns of Robecq, it explores the reasons why—in the inevitably contested construction of memory—Charles Bean and John Treloar privileged veterans’ memories over artists’ interpretations of the conflict. It argues that in the process of memory making aesthetics mattered less than portraying the war in a way acceptable to the men who had experienced it. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An introduction is presented to this special issue focused on topics related to World War I in Australia including memory studies, collective memory, memorialization, nationalism, and identity politics.

In this article I return to interviews I conducted in the 1980s with Australian World War One veteran Fred Farrall, armed with new historical sources and new ways of thinking about war, suffering and memory. My interpretation of Fred's war and its consequences was central to the approach to individual and collective memory, and their complex interaction across time, which I articulated in my book Anzac Memories. Focusing on Fred's experience and narrative of shell shock and pacifism, this article complicates my understanding of Fred's war and postwar life, and of how he created and recreated his war memory in different contexts and relationships, including the relationship between interviewer and interviewee, historian and witness. I investigate ideas about trauma, intersubjectivity, and memory composure that have become important theoretical tools for oral historians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a report from an August 31 to September 7, 2014 conference in Darmstadt, Germany on Russian occupation of the Crimean Peninsula of the Ukraine. Topics of presentations delivered included regional differences in the collective memories of 20th-century World Wars in Germany, Poland, and Ukraine, the role of Ukrainian anarchist Nestor Machno in Polish emigration, and college students in Vienna, Austria and Warsaw, Poland in the 1930s.

The article presents a report from a July 25-26, 2014 conference in Frankfurt am Main, Germany on teaching history hosted by the Konferenz für Geschichtsdidaktik history teaching society. Topics of presentations delivered included World War I in collective memory, the personal viewpoints and prejudices of teachers in immigrant societies, and war memorials in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.

The article offers information on the conference "Histories of 1914: Debates and Use of Origins of World War One in Southeastern Europe" organized by the Centre for Southeast European Studies at the University of Graz, Austria, from November 20-22, 2014. Topics discussed include the assassination of Archduke Frances Ferdinand, Austrian memory of the war, and commemorations and memorials.

The 100th Anniversary of the Second Battle of Ypres was marked with Royal Attendance of a remembrance ceremony and, perhaps more importantly to most Canadians, a "shout-out" to the battle given by Don Cherry on Coach's Corner. The ways in which this battle has been remembered and written about have shifted significantly in the last 100 years, and this paper attempts to chart some of the ways in which it has been understood by scholars and soldiers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2015 Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae's hometown of Guelph, Ontario and the nation will memorialize McCrae and commemorate the 100th Anniversary of the writing of his poem "In Flanders Fields The poem was penned on May 3rd, 1915 during the Second Battle of Ypres following the death of his friend Lieutenant Alexis Helmer. His poem was the inspiration for the use of the poppy as an international symbol of remembrance. John McCrae was a multi-dimensional man with a complex personal history. McCrae died overseas on January 28, 1918. This year's civic celebrations will pay tribute to McCrae-soldier, poet and physician. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the development of a civil historiography of World War I and scholarly research on the social and political history of World War I. The establishment of official narratives of the declaration of war in Germany, Great Britain, Russia, Belgium, France, Austro-Hungary, and Serbia is described, regional differences in the war justifications and narratives of the countries are examined, and research on German occupation of Eastern European, Balkan, and Middle Eastern countries during World War I is analyzed. Elements of collective memory in World War I historiography are investigated along with the social aspects of total war mobilization.

During the first year of the First World War two different discourses dominated the Lithuanian public sphere. On the one hand, the advance of the German troops to the East and the demands of Tsarist propaganda promoted the emergence of an image of the war as a new fight against the „Teutonic Order”. The Lithuanian intelligentsia, who hoped that the quick defeat of the German army would guarantee autonomy to Lithuania, gave some support to this narrative as a means of mobilizing citizens. On the other hand, after many of their regular contributors had fled the war operation zones, Lithuanian newspapers had a severe lack of first-hand information. Thus, news and reports by people who had remained within the frontline started to be published in the periodic press. These news items and reports became the source of a second narrative that looked at war operations as a process of disintegration of the economic landscape of the Lithuanian countryside and morality. In the 1920s and 1930s the two narratives melted together in Lithuanians' memories. In people's memories, then, the German occupation of „Ober Ost” was envisaged as a period of captivity which reminded them of the violence of the „Teutonic Order” and which led to the indiscriminate exploitation of Lithuanian resources and lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article places remembrance in the context of the development of an English-speaking South African identity until 1939. It looks at the interconnectedness between identity and memory and traces the emergence of a group memory common to the majority of English-speakers and linking them to other members of the British diaspora, particularly in the other dominions. The way in which English-speakers commemorated and memorialised the wars in which they fought is the main focus, beginning with the Cape eastern frontier wars, the Anglo-Zulu War and the South African War. The article then concentrates on the commemoration and memorialisation of the First World War until 1939, examining the role of organisations such as the South African Legion of the British Empire Service League and the MOTHS and touching on the role of the patriotic associations, schools and churches. The emphasis is on the memorialisation of the battle of Delville Wood and the commemorations associated with Delville Wood and Armistice Days and the way in which the First World War reflected the continuing British identity of English-speakers as well as the growth of a South Africanist identity. The way in which honouring the fallen was linked to service and duty is examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A total of twenty-six monuments were erected in Szeged in the interwar years and further five in its catchment area. They were paid for by individual donations, religious denominations, regiments, schools, associations (for example, the commemorative tablet to Heroic Firemen), or were commissioned by the city. Most were created from public contributions, or with the support of the municipality. At the unveiling ceremonies the speakers referred to the monuments as though they were altars where people could come to pray and gather strength. Because of their lasting nature the monuments would forever proclaim the heroism of the soldiers who took part in the First World War. Approaching the phenomenon from the angle of the civil-religion, collective memory, and places of remembrance, the author examines the subject in newspapers, denominational materials and the minutes of general assemblies in the interwar years. She selects as a particular example the Gate of Heroes (Szeged) that illustrates the predominant national view of history and the civil religion of the period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The literature of the Eastern Front during World War I has not received the same critical attention as has that of its western counterpart. This article will address this lacuna by focusing on a neglected but at the time popular prisoner-of-war novel: Friede H. Kraze's The Magical Forests (Die magischen Wälder) (1933) published under the pseudonym Heinz Gumprecht. The Magical Forests reworks experiences of wartime captivity in Russia and places them in a narrative that demonstrates the prisoners' loyalty to their comrades and to the nation. Russia is portrayed in the novel as feminine, primitive, and backward, qualities that the prisoners find to be both exotic and attractive. The novel is unique in that it not only focuses on the prisoners' suffering but also presents Russian captivity as having allowed the prisoners to forge a revitalized national community based on the values of male soldierly comradeship. This article will analyse Kraze's depictions of the natural landscape and peoples of Russia encountered by the prisoners. It shows how the masculine bonds of comradeship among the prisoners are both reinforced and challenged by their relations with Russian women. While The Magical Forests articulates colonial fantasies of settling and developing Russian territory, the novel also displays a more complex identification with the lands and peoples of the country that challenges the notion of a straight path from turn-of-the-century Russophobia to Nazi anti-Bolshevism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a report on a conference on the collective memory of World War I in Great Britain and Germany, organized by the Prinz-Albert-Gesellschaft historical society and held in Coburg, Germany, from September 4-6, 2014. Topics of discussion included the representation of the war in art, websites on the war, particularly the "Europeana 1914-1918" digital library project, and museum exhibitions about the war.