Places of memory, places of sorrow: World War I in the Cultural History of Europe

The Great War does not cease to excite the minds. At the same time, much less attention is paid to the processes, thanks to which the Europeans tried to comprehend, and then get out of its catastrophic experience. Numerous places of memory and places of sorrow - both public and private - that arose as a result of this conflict, were not previously studied in a comparative way. This book is dedicated to them. In France, Great Britain and Germany, both during the First World War, and immediately after its completion, the chronicle of the losses concerned everyone. The main warring powers can be said without exaggeration that every family wore mourning. In the post -war years, those who remained face to face with this army of the dead made attempts to perpetuate their memory, which were not reduced to the reproduction of traditional patriotic templates. Yes, millions of people fell in battles for their country, but these words became only the beginning, and not the result of the search for the “meaning” of an unprecedented massacre - the Great War. In order to remember the experiences of 1,500 days of the war, it was necessary to master the art of forgetting, in the interwar years, those who were not able to supplant painful nightmares from consciousness were in the medical care for the insane ones. Most coped. They knew how to remember and forget and, applying both, at least gained a chance to break out of the circle of terrible military injuries. The book will be about the details of this process