Many of us may know that the Great War broke out in 1914 and lasted four years. You surely know that it affected the whole European continent, its political order, its villages, towns and cities, its nature and – maybe most importantly – its men, women and children. However, are you aware of what exactly happened in Europe one century ago? What exactly did cause the outbreak of the Great War? Which parties were involved? To what extent did the Great War affect civilians? And how was the international conflict eventually solved?
Therefore, we want to deal with these questions in our workshop ‘Once upon a time… there was a Great War’. We will look for answers in the four European cities of Dundee (Great Britain), Freiburg (Germany), Gdynia (Poland) and Paris (France). For this purpose, project groups will be formed in the run-up to the HistoryCampus. These project groups will do research on how the respective urban population experienced the Great War. Then, we will develop a standardised survey to discover what present-day urban populations still know about the Great War and the fate of their cities.
The project groups will come together at the HistoryCampus in Berlin. Even if you don’t live in one of the four respective cities and thus are not able to participate in the project group, you are however cordially invited to participate in the workshop in Berlin in May. We will present and compare our work results and elaborate explanations for occurring similarities and differences in the survey. We will furthermore prepare and conduct an additional survey for the Berlin population.
The project aims at raising the awareness of the Great War and informing about what happened 100 years ago.
Workshop speakers:
Eleanor Mackie, Paris, France
Erin Hughes, Freiburg, Germany
Jan-Philipp Wagner, Dundee, Great Britain
Natalia Chamera, Gdingen, Poland