As the Great War began to re-emerge in Anglophone culture from the mid-1950s, the attention was often shifted towards the Somme providing an alternative prism through which to view the conflict. Many themes can be detected in this shift surrounding the changing status of Britain and its relationship with the Commonwealth, and wider cultural changes which could be grafted on to the history of the Somme. Of course, this did not mean that Ypres was utterly eclipsed; rather, the Somme emerged more strongly into the commemorative landscape and provided a much stronger alternative memory site than it had in the inter-war period.
Ypres was no longer. The town to which battlefield tourists returned from the 1960s had changed its name to Ieper. Langemarck, too, was a thing of the past, replaced by Langemark. The new spelling (in German) was not simply a matter of orthography. Langemarck had represented both an idea and a site; Langemark, by contrast, was a mere place name. After 1944 the Langemarck myth was never invoked again. This talk will explore collective memory and cultural amnesia in the second half of the 20th century.
Venue: The reading room of the In Flanders Fields Museum, Sint-Maartensplein 3, Ieper
