After a promising start, academic historiography of the First World War in Belgium fell silent after 1928. There was nothing that resembled an academic field of World War I studies in Belgium for decades. Two reasons might be the strength of Flemish national historiography and the enduring dominance of the Second World War. A remarkable shift occurred in the late 1990s, leading up to the frantic mobilization in 2014. This shift was not a generational occurence, but a convergence of separate decisions. This article hypothesizes that the underlying context was the end of the "golden era" of Belgian World War II historiography after the commemorative year 1995. This created the space for an academic field of World War I historiography. ... : 1914-1918-Online International Encyclopedia of the First World War ...