First World War

Lions and kangaroos : mobilising the Anzac legend in the Ypres salient

Auteur(s)

In 1936, the Australian War Memorial acquired two stone lions that once guarded the Menin Gate entrance to the Belgian town of Ypres. The Memorial’s director, John Treloar, felt the Memorial had scored a “great scoop” because of their “historical value”. However, when the lions arrived in Canberra, it was apparent the damage they sustained during the war meant they would need to undergo some form of restoration. Unfortunately, little progress was made in this endeavour for several decades and the lions did not end up going on permanent display until 1991.

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First World War

Politics of Memory

Diplomatic History

Identities Lost and Found in the Commemorative Landscapes of the Great War

Auteur(s)

Karen Shelby

By their very nature, national building programs legitimize and ennoble some groups and exclude and silence others. This is underscored in commemorative architecture, which visually amplifies messages of communal belonging or separation. In the First World War, the burial and sacrifices of soldiers in the Indian Expeditionary Forces and those employed in the Chinese Labor Corps were subsumed into a topography of a British remembrance practice.

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Commemorations (WW I)

First World War

Routes of Remembrance: exploring the Ypres Salient and its battlefields, 1919-1939

Auteur(s)

Mark Connelly & Tim Godden

As a focal point of British military operations during the First World War, Ypres attracted large numbers of British visitors. The sites of memory scattered across the battlefields of Ypres were created by the events of the war. However, their continuing profile, status and significance was very much shaped by the way visitors explored the district. A number of interlocking elements relating to individual, and group, interests and practical issues of access and movement influenced the evolution.

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Commemorations (WW I)

Politics of Memory

First World War

Julie Podevyn and Sebastiaan Vandenbogaerde “Ce n’est pas la loi qu’il faut changer, c’est la mentalité” Ypres Tribunal for War Damages (1918 -1935): intermediary for a city in reconstruction

Auteur(s)

Julie Podevyn & Sebastiaan Vandenbogaerde

In January 1919, Sir Winston Churchill (1874–1965) chaired a session of the Imperial War Graves Commission in London during which he declared that the destroyed city of Ypres was a symbol for the suffering of the British Empire. He intended to keep the centre of Ypres in permanent ruins, as holy ground and a “zone of silence”. Initially, Belgium’s government supported the idea, which was firmly disapproved by the local Ypres population. Moreover, since 1916, state officials had drafted plans to reconstruct the country through several institutions.

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First World War

Judicial History