First World War I

June 28th 1914: Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, and his wife are killed by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo. The assassination makes headlines throughout Europe and triggers a fatal alliance dynamic. Not only will the major European powers soon be at war, but with the entry of allied nations and colonial troops, fighting escalates into a world war. Modern military technology - artillery, gas, air and submarine warfare - claims victims on an unprecedented scale. "This is not war, this is the end of the world", as a soldier of the British Indian troops writes home.

After the founding of the Reich in 1871, Reich Chancellor Otto von Bismarck employs a clever system in his attempts to balance the European nations and prevent the great powers from forming alliances against the German Reich. In 1890, he must ultimately go. Considering Bismarck’s policy of alliances obsolete, Kaiser Wilhelm II steers a new foreign policy course: World power politics. He wants to get in on the imperial race for colonies, power and influence. "World power or destruction ", is the motto. The armaments factories are in full swing, not only in the German Reich. All the major powers are arming aggressively. War is becoming ever more likely.

The First World War has two faces: In the West, it turns into grueling trench warfare after only a few weeks. Over a distance of 750 kilometers, soldiers are entrenched in ditches and holed up behind barbed-wire. Every offensive turn into widespread death - not only in Verdun and the Somme. By 1916, over 5 million men have fallen, or been seriously wounded on the Western Front. The war in the East is different. It is a war of movement with advances in open country. The technically superior German army maintains the upper hand under Generals Hindenburg and Ludendorff, while, the Russian Tsar is relying on ever new supplies of soldiers from his vast empire. With devastating consequences for the populace in the multi-ethnic border regions.

Violence against the civilian population reaches new heights during the First World War. With deportation, pogroms and genocide, particularly in the multi-ethnic border regions. Serbia, one of the most brutal war arenas, where Austrian troops slaughter around 4,000 civilians – widely concealed from official war reports. In the shadow of world war, the Armenian genocide also occurs. Soldiers of the Ottoman Empire kill hundreds of thousands through massacres and trains of deportation into the desert. The German government does not intervene, seeking to keep Turkey as a war ally.

"The war was a terrible thing, but nevertheless enormous. I couldn't miss it for the world." Painter Otto Dix eagerly goes to war in 1914. Like many other artists, he too wished to break out of the narrow-minded world of the Empire and gain insight into the darkest abyss of humanity. But disillusionment was quick to follow. He experiences the horror of the material battles to henceforth process the horrors of war in his paintings. They show dead soldiers in barbed wire, those who have gone mad, battlefields as moonscapes. Later, he will say: "I was anxious to depict the war objectively, without arousing pity, without all the propaganda."

"For one crazy moment, the entire battle rages around me like a circus. Then a hand rises above my head in one motion and releases a hand grenade. We have become dangerous animals." In his anti-war novel "Im Westen nichts Neues" (All Quiet on the Western Front), published in 1929, Erich Maria Remarque describes the horrors of the First World War from the perspective of a young soldier. Like many writers, he deals with his experiences on the front in literary form. Georg Trakl, August Stramm, Edlef Köppen, Robert Graves and John McCrae also find a special language for their horrendous experiences. In poems, novels and autobiographical works they wrote of the brutality of war and senseless dying.

In Belgium alone, more than 600,000 soldiers lose their lives in the First World War. The section of the front surrounding Ypres is heavily besieged. Soldiers of 50 nations clash in four great battles in Flanders. Today, the "In Flanders Fields Museum" in Ypres, presented as an extracurricular learning venue, commemorates the war on the West-Flemish frontline. Interactive installations and films enable, visitors to immerse themselves in life on the front. Media stations, historical exhibits and photographs also tell of war propaganda, the "little peace" of Christmas 1914/15 and the ongoing commemoration of the many fallen.