Presentation

Abstract

The dead who populate the pages of this volume have become embedded in art and literature, which turn into containers and cultural artifacts in which to dialogue and (re-)negotiate ownership. It is the living who appropriate, rewrite and remember those who are no longer there, who serve as a projection for imaginaries and imaginations. The dead who are related to the violence and repression of dictatorial regimes, as well as to wars, fundamentally the First and Second World Wars, take on a special role. The approximately thirteen million deaths brought about by the Great War forced modern European nations to confront mass crimes for the first time and the ensuing problem of burying the bodies of soldiers and commemorating them in the national ideologies that were being developed at the time.