It's a
good thing to start listing well-defined projects and not only the promising
but often iffy ones. One of these is what comes out with the name 1914 - Mitten in
Europa: Das Rheinland und der Erste Weltkrieg (1914 – The Middle of
Europe: The Rhineland and the First World War). Its concept is simple, nice and
above all applicable to other national cases. In other words, we believe that
this project can turn into a case study: a wise and compelling mix of
exhibitions, excursions, events and research programmes with strong cooperation
among museums, cultural departments and national and international partners. The
focus in this case is on the years 1913-1915 but we all have to think that the
First World War Centenary appears today as a long five year period and absolutely needs to catch a fine
tuning and a progressive modulation in such a long timeframe. Secondly, another crucial point is under everyone's eyes: the First World War and consequently its
centennial is a matter of different and very different "regional" wars, basically overlapping with the different fronts (and all fronts have two sides!) and
this fragmentation needs to be transformed into a plus. In this case we all
know the relevance of Rhineland before and after the war and we can confidently look at this new project as a reference one. The advisory board is chaired by
Professor Gertrude Cepl-Kauffman from the Heinrich-Heine-Universität
Düsseldorf. Last but not least we should look at it as probably the first project with a river clearly present in its name. The relevance and big potential of rivers during World War One have been often underestimated. It was not only a symbolic component. This big potential and protagonism of rivers during World War One is something that absolutely needs to be recovered.
Here is the web site of the project, for the moment only in German.