Reformulating memory – propaganda and commemoration as an integral part of the cultural history of the first world war

The First World War brought watershed changes to the existing commemorative practices, leading to the formation of collective memory. Similar to in the West, Northern Europe, the United States and Australia, the dead began to "return to among the living" in a new fashion. New conceptualisation of national communities were formed, and with them, along with new forms of memorialising their war victims. A romantic presentation of the fallen soldiers, who had previously lived mostly in the memory of their kin or narrow communities, was replaced by the figure of national heroes. The names chiselled into parish memorial plaques and the individuals lost in the sea of crosses in military cemeteries and faces in group photographs, which while becoming completely anonymous, also began to represent a new community with recognisable characteristics.