Verbotene Erinnerung? Die Neu-Belgier und der Erste Weltkrieg (1918-1925)

By the decisions of treaty of Versailles the inhabitants of the two German "Kreise" Eupen and Malmedy became Belgians in 1920. Since 1919, Belgium had shown its territorial claims on the region by positioning troops there. Which forms did the memory of the War take in the first years after the WW I? How could the people mourn the victims of the war - victims who had fought for the "army of the enemy" of the new "Vaterland"? The paper aims at illustrating the official politics of memory at one hand - e.g. the demolition of the soldiers' momument in Malmedy and the excemption of the military service for four years - and at including more intimate forms of war memory on the other hand. The focus lies on the significance of the war for the political and social communication in Eupen-Malmedy during the interwar period.