”Tusinder af vingeskudte Trækfugle”. Soldatergrave og dansk-franske erindringssteder 1915-1925 ca.

Abstract

Thousands of Wing-Shot Migratory Birds. Soldier Graves and Danish-French Places of Remembrance Approx. 1915-1925 During the months following the end of the First World War in November 1918, some 100,000 prisoners of war passed through Denmark on their way home from the camps on the Eastern Front. Some did not make it all the way, but died from exhaustion and the Spanish flu during their stay in Denmark. The present article deals with the part that these dead soldiers came to play in the formation of a remembrance culture in a country which had not itself taken part in the war. More specifically, it deals with the monuments which a small group of nationally-conservative men and women with ties to the armed forces and the social elite erected between 1919 and 1925 in remembrance of the dead French soldiers. To their minds, France had been the sole serious ally in the struggle for the return of North Schleswig to Denmark. For that reason, they were also behind two monuments in France to commemorate the fallen Danish-minded Schleswigers and the fallen Danes of the French Foreign Legion. Their national-conservative engagement and criticism of the policy of neutrality pursued during the war by the Danish government largely determined the creation and the form of the cemeteries.