ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the experience of commemoration by investigating the link between commemoration and intergenerational transmission of knowledge and personal importance of the First World War. It explores how personal experiences of the First World War are shared amongst generations, and the effects this has on the descendants’ experience of commemoration. It is based on in-depth interviews with older German-speaking people in East Belgium, the parents of whom lived through this conflict, and so who are likely to have been exposed to family stories about the war. It finds that the effect of commemoration on people’s collective identity seems to partly depend on personal concern of historical events, which includes intergenerational transmission. Thus, how individuals respond to commemoration may not only be a question of public efforts to render commemoration affecting, but also a question of individual psychological readiness.
