Stones of War: a Guideline About War Memorials in the USA and Europe -their Meaning, Appearance and Political Background

Almost every village in my home country Austria has a war memorial included in its municipal landscape, in order to keep the fallen soldiers of the past wars in mind. The majority of them were built after the Great War - World War I - and, only with a few exceptions, became adapted after 1945 to commemorate the soldiers who died in the Second World War. But this is not a specific attribute for villages in Austria; war memorials have been erected all over the world for almost every war which was fought in the course of time. These war memorials have fulfilled a lot of functions in the years during and after the wars; they have helped to handle the horror, the losses and the cruelties which happened at the front lines and at the home fronts. Besides memorials, war literature, art, war poetry and cinema became other ways which served as valves to provide possibilities for mourning and remembering.