Monuments and Cemeteries of the First World War in Europe : Toward a Transnational History / edited by Kamil Ruszała.

Format:

Book

Series:

Early Modern History and Modern History E-Books online, Collection 2026.

Early Modern History and Modern History E-Books online, Collection 2026

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

War memorials.

Collective memory.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (707 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Other Title:

Toward a Transnational History

Place of Publication:

Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2026.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

What do war cemeteries and monuments tell us about the way societies remember? This book takes you across Europe, from Flanders Fields and Galicia to Greece, Italy, and the Balkans, to uncover how the First World War’s dead were commemorated. It shows how monuments can be read as texts – revealing entanglements of memory, politics, and identity – and how battlefields were transformed into enduring landscapes of remembrance. Drawing on rare archival materials, local case studies, and international perspectives, it offers fresh insights into the shifting meanings of commemoration, and why these memorials still matter in the twenty-first century. Contributors are Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska, Emmanuel Debruyne, Dominiek Dendooven, Ljiljana Dobrovšak, Damjana Fortunat Černilogar, Joanna Jakutowicz, Megan Kelleher, Nenad Lajbenšperger, Laima Laučkaitė, Hannah Malone, Marcus van der Meulen, Petra Svoljšak, Daniele Pisani, Kamil Ruszała, Vasilijus Safronovas, Danilo Šarenac, Mari-Leen Tammela, Pieter Trogh, Mihael Uršič, Vlasis Vlasidis, Jay Winter, and Laurence van Ypersele.

Contents:

Front Cover

Half Title

Series Informations

Title Page

Copyrights Page

Contents

Figures and Tables

Figures

Tables

Notes on Contributors

Part 1 Introduction

1 Architectures of Commemoration: Shaping Wartime Memory through Spaces and Practices

Bibliography

2 War Memorials: Ten Questions for Historians Revisited

1 Why Have Historians Neglected Them?

2 Why Have Historians Lately Become More Interested in Them?

3 What Was New about the Memorials of 1914-1918?

4 What Uniformities and What Differences Are Evident from Country to Country?

5 Why Monuments Aux Morts in French and War Memorials in English?

6 What Ceremonials Occasions Have Been Connected with Memorials?

7 What Similarities and Differences are Evident between Memorials of 1914-1918 and 1939-1945?

8 Are War Memorials the Shrines of a Civil Religion?

9 What Now?

Part 2 The Transfiguration of the Battlefields into Commemorative Landscapes

3 For Evermore? The Emergence and Evolution of the First World War Commemorative Landscape in Flanders Fields

1 The Issue of Repatriation

2 Pilgrimage

3 Hauling Bodies

4

Nationalizing the Cemeteries

5 Architecture and Outlook

6 The Architecture of the Imperial War Graves Commission

7 Memorializing the Missing

8 The Unremembered

9 Advocates of Peace

4 Locality, Statehood and Nationalism: East Prussian First World War Monuments and Their Social Function between 1914-1945

1 Introduction

2 East Prussia until 1945

3 East Prussian First World War Monuments and Their Construction Regulations

Construction Time, Costs and Authors of Monuments

5 Monuments, Their Meaning and Social Context

6 Conclusion

Bibliography.

5 When the Battlefield Speaks: Deciphering the Narratives of First World War Monuments and Cemeteries in Habsburg Galicia

1 Introduction: from Fields of Death to the Institutionalization of War Burials

2 Western Galicia as a Designated Area for Imperial Projects

3 The Language of Victory and the Battlefield Narrative: "West Galicia Heroes' Graves"-Rudolf Broch and Hans Hauptmann

4 Mythologizing the Battlefield: a Study of Johann Jäger and the Cemeteries of District II (Jasło) in Western Galicia

5 Summary: War Monuments Deciphered?

6 Military Cemeteries on the Isonzo Front

2 Military Cemeteries - Historical Background

3 Military Cemeteries on the Isonzo Front

7 The Military Cemeteries and Memorials of the Great War in Croatia

1 Introductory Remarks

2 The Military Cemeteries in Croatia

3 Memorials of the Great War in Croatia

4 Conclusion

Part 3 War Monuments in Postwar Realities: in the Service of the State and Nation

8 Constructing World War I Military Cemeteries in Greece in the Interwar Period

2 The British

3 The French

4 The Italians

5 The Germans

6 The Russians

7 The Serbs

8 The Bulgarians

9 The Greeks

10 Conclusions

9 Fascist Italy's Military Ossuaries of the First World War as Propaganda and as Heritage

1 The Genesis of Italy's Fascist Ossuaries

2 The Ossuaries and the Memory of the First World War

3 The Ossuaries as Objects

4 The Afterlife of the Ossuaries from 1945 until Today

5 Rewriting the Ossuaries

6 The Many Faces of Redipuglia

7 Conclusions

10 A Tale of Shapeless Boulders from Alpine Battlefields: on Gabriele D'Annunzio's Garden of Relics

1 Hard Post-war Times for a "Hero"

2 Boulders

3 The Garden and the Relics.

4 Liturgies

5 The Garden of Relics: Exception or Model?

11 Memory of the Fallen in an Occupied Capital City - Brussels, 1918-1940

1 A Belgian City in Full Expansion

2 A European Capital City

3 An Occupied City

12 The Heritage of the Great War and the Politics of Commemoration in Interwar Era Estonia

2 First World War Graves in the Republic of Estonia

3 Burial Sites Law of 1925

4 Other Developments in the Following Decade

5 Monuments to Estonian Soldiers Who Died in the First World War

Part 4 War Cemeteries and Monuments between Adaptation and Redefinition

13 Who Should Take Care of the Fallen? War Graves and Their Maintenance in the Interwar Period in East Prussia and Lithuania

2 The Number of Graves from the Great War

3 "Our Own" or "Foreign" Graves?

4 Actors in War Graves Maintenance in East Prussia

5 Maintenance of War Graves in Lithuania: Official Negotiations and Unofficial Public Actions

6 Lithuanian Public Initiatives and Their Role

7 Instead of Conclusions

14 From the Battlefield to the Stadium

The Transformation of Male and Female Bodies in German Commemorative Practices regarding the First World War in the 1920s and 19

2 Materials and Methods

3 The Gender of the Dead

4 Reintroducing the Dead into Society

5 How the Commemorative Process Involved the Bodies and Sport

6 The Culture of Spectatorship

15 German War Memorials in Vilnius: Two Cases with a Different Fate

2 Interwar Period

3 Soviet Period

4 Second Lithuanian Republic

16 A Landscape of Remembrance.

The Dichotomy between Commemorative Architecture and National War Memory during the Interwar Period in the Westhoek

2 The Architecture of Commemoration in the Interwar Period

3 Conclusion

Part 5 Fallen Soldiers and Commemoration Practices

17 'A "Dog in the Manger" Kind of Treatment'

The Commemoration and Care of First World War Dead on British Soil by the Imperial War Graves Commission

1 An Overview of the Imperial War Graves Commission's Work in the United Kingdom

2 Media Perceptions of War Dead Commemorated in the United Kingdom

3 Enquiries Files and Familial Reactions

4 International War Dead Buried in the United Kingdom

5 Conclusion

18 The Return of the Dead: Belgians and the Great War, 1914-1923

1 During the War

2 Identification of the Civilian Dead

3 Identification of the Military Dead

4 The Search for Information

5 Renewing Traditions

6 Exiting the War

7 The Re-burial of Civilians Who Died in Occupied Belgium

8 Homecoming Celebrations or the Visibility of the Absent

9 The Return of Personal Effects

10 The Return of Names on War Memorials

11 The Return of the Bodies and the Reburial of Soldiers

12 The Unknown Soldier

13 Conclusion

19 The List of Names: in Flanders Fields Museum's Project to Deal with the Many Legacies of the First World War

1 Origins and Context of the Project

2 The List of Names Project

3 Sources, Methodology and Participation

4 An Inclusive and Differentiated Perspective

5 Applications

6 More Lists of Names?

20 Serbia's Great War Dead and Archaeology: an Innovative Path Forward?

1 Methodological Concerns

2 Serbia, Archaeology and the 1912-1918 Wars

3 The Belgrade Dead

4 Identifying the Unknown Soldier

5 Exhumations in Greece.

6 The Unexpected Intrusion of the Past

7 Conclusion

Part 6 Reshaping Memoryscapes: from Sites of Fallen to Sites of European Remembrance

21 The Memorial Church of the Holy Spirit in Javorca - "the Basilica of Peace" on the Edge of the Isonzo Front

2 The Idea for the Monument and Taking the First Steps

3 The Careful Selection of the Church's Location and its Construction

4 Wartime Echoes of the Memorial Church

5 The Fate of the Memorial Church after the Second World War

6 The Memorial Church Today

22 First World War Cemeteries and Monuments in Serbia - Characteristics of Their Arrangement and Protection (1918-2018)

1 Historiographical Overview

2 First World War Cemeteries and Monuments - a General Overview

3 During the Time of the First World War

4 Graves, Cemeteries and Monuments of the First World War during the Kingdom of SCS/Yugoslavia

5 During the Second World War

6 Graves, Cemeteries and Monuments of the First World War in Socialist Yugoslavia

7 First World War Graves, Cemeteries and Monuments in Serbia after the Collapse of Yugoslavia

8 Conclusion

Index of Name

Index of Places.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Description based on print version record.

Part of the metadata in this record was created by AI, based on the text of the resource.

ISBN:

9789004764576

OCLC:

1613769737

Publisher Number:

10.1163/9789004764576 DOI