The centenary commemorations of the Great War in Belgium

As the start of the centenary commemoration of the First World War ( wwi ) in 2014 drew closer, Belgium saw the rise of a bigger ‘commemorative competition’. The different governments launched their own commemorative programmes, parallel to (and sometimes against) each other. In the slipstream of this, a huge commercial and business competition erupted in a struggle for funding and visitors. There was also an unprecedented funding of new academic wwi -research. This contribution first makes some remarks on this research, and then looks briefly at the commemorative and memorial policies. On the... Mehr ...