ABSTRACT
A war memorial, especially one found in a war cemetery, is a place of memory, designed to remind those coming after of the events of the war which it commemorates. The case of Hans Chlumberg's little-known German play Wunder um Verdun explores the precise problems of memory and memorial at the mid-point between the two great wars of the twentieth century, and from that vantage-point it looks onwards as well as back. Chlumberg's play is ideally suited as a case-study within the theme of memory and war, opening in a military cemetery which is being visited by tourists of different nationalities at that ironic and prophetic date in the future. The play may be compared with other dramas of the First World War, such as Paul Raynal's slightly earlier Le Tombeau sous l'Arc de Triomphe – in English The Unknown Warrior – written in 1924, which also expressly invokes in its title the specifically memorial aspect.
