Chancellor Angela Merkel and her French counterpart marked the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I by unveiling a plaque at Rethondes. Leaders from 67 countries are set to join the weekend's commemorations.
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France, Germany mark end of World War I
02:32
The leaders of Germany and France on Saturday made a pilgrimage to Rethondes, the Glade of the Armistice, the place where the document was signed a century ago to end World War I.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron took part in a memorial ceremony at the Compiegne forest, 90 kilometers (56 miles) northeast of Paris.
On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, 1918, an initial agreement came into effect to end four years of one of the world's deadliest conflicts. It was signed by the Allies and Germany a few hours earlier in a train carriage in a nearby forest clearing, from where the two leaders on Saturday held a symbolic repeat signing ceremony.
Merkel and Macron then watched as the French and German militaries held a joint march to remember the 1.4 million French and 2 million German soldiers killed in the 1914-1918 war.
Saturday's meeting was the first since 1945 between French and German heads of state at the location where the armistice was signed.
100 years ago, the First World War ended on November 11, 1918 with the Compiègne Armistice. In Europe, numerous museums and memorials commemorate the victims of cruel and senseless battles.
The Douaumont charnel house is a burial site for the bones of soldiers killed on the western front near Verdun, who could not be identified. In 1984, on the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War, François Mitterand and Helmut Kohl stood here hand in hand and declared: "We have reconciled. We have come to an understanding. We have become friends".
The Battle of Verdun, in the north-east of France, is a symbol of the horror of the First World War. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers died between February and December 1916. The museum, founded in 1967, was reopened in the presence of the French President François Hollande and the German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the 100th anniversary of the commemoration of this battle.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/U. Baumgarten
Memorial Notre-Dame-de-Lorette
The Memorial Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, completed in 2014, lists in the "Ring of Remembrance" (L’Anneau de la Mémoire ) the names of around 600,000 soldiers killed in the northern French region during the First World War. These include soldiers from the British Empire, Germany, France and French colonies in Africa.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/M. Spingler
The German-French memorial at Hartmannswillerkopf
This German-French memorial was opened in November 2017 by French President Emmanuel Macron and Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. It complements a national cemetery and a crypt which, since the end of the First World War, have commemorated the victims of a senseless battle of trench warfare over the mountain of the same name in French Alsace.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Images/P. Seeger
In Flanders Fields Museum
One of the main war sites of the First World War is the region around the Belgian city of Ypres. The war museum "In Flanders Fields" is located in the Gothic textile halls building, which was rebuilt after the devastating destruction. The name of the museum is the title of a poem by the Canadian military doctor John McCrae, whose friend died in 1915 at Ypres shortly before he wrote it.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/F. Schumann
Mons Memorial Museum
Opened in 2005, the museum in Mons, Belgium, does not focus on war equipment or strategies, but on the human being. The display cases contain many personal objects of soldiers and civilians, which give an impression of life during the war and occupation. The region in the northwest of Belgium was a hotly contested site during both world wars.
Image: picture-alliance/epa/O. Hoslet
Ossuary of Castel Dante
In the northern Italian town of Rovereto, a war museum, the Castel Dante ossuary and the peace bell commemorate the victims of the First World War. The bell was cast in 1924 from molten cannons of the war opponents Italy and Austria-Hungary. With 100 chimes every evening it recalls the dead of all wars.
Image: picture-alliance/CTK/C. Karel
Kobarid Museum
The region of Kobarid in present-day Slovenia was also the scene of several battles between Austria-Hungary and Italy during the First World War. The Kobarid Museum (Kobariški Muzej documents the battles on the Isonzo front as well as the everyday warfare of the soldiers on both sides.
Image: picture-alliance/Arco Images/G. Lenz
Çanakkale Martyrs' Memorial
Like many others on the Turkish peninsula of Gallipoli, the Çanakkale monument commemorates the battle of the same name between soldiers of the Ottoman Empire and troops from Great Britain, France, Australia and New Zealand. Engraved in stone is a quote attributed to President Atatürk: "There is no difference between the Johnnies and Mehmets. Therefore rest in peace."
Image: picture-alliance/AA/E. Aydin
Neue Wache
In Germany, remembrance of the First World War is mainly decentralized. In almost every community there are monuments for those who died. The "Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany to the Victims of War and Tyranny" has been the Neue Wache in Berlin since 1993. Inside, the bronze sculpture "Mother with Dead Son" was designed by the artist Käthe Kollwitz.
Image: picture-alliance/imageBROKER/J. Woodhouse
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'War to end all wars'
The 'Great War' mobilized some 70 million military personnel as two European alliances fought a war that, at the time, wrought death and destruction on an unprecedented scale.
Some 40 million people were killed or injured in World War I — as many as 11 million of them were military personnel.
Earlier on Saturday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau kicked off the weekend's solemn events with a visit to a cemetery in northern France containing the remains of 820 Canadian casualties from the 1914-1918 conflict.
Trudeau is one of 67 heads of state due to take part in the commemorations in France, which culminates with a ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in central Paris on Sunday morning. Two minutes of silence will be held around the world to remember those killed and wounded.
US President Donald Trump failed to make his planned visit to a US war cemetery outside Paris on Saturday due to "logistical difficulties caused by the weather," according to the White House. There was slight rain falling in the area.
Further armistice commemorations are being held all over the world this weekend, including in London, where on Sunday, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier will become the first German head of state to take part in the annual wreath-laying ceremony at the Cenotaph war memorial.
Steinmeier will join Queen Elizabeth and British Prime Minister Theresa May at the solemn observance, which will be followed by a service at Westminster Abbey.
End of WWI and its aftermath
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US President Donald Trump, meanwhile, was due to visit US military cemeteries in northern France on Saturday and Sunday, where many of the 110,000 American dead out of 4 million US troops mobilized during World War I are buried.
Trump met Macron at the Elysee Palace earlier on Saturday, shortly after blasting his French counterpart's plans to launch a European army as "very insulting."
Serbia, which is sometimes wrongly accused of starting World War I after a Serb nationalist assassinated the Austrian archduke in Sarajevo, Bosnia, in 1914, was holding large military drills on Saturday to mark the armistice centenary.
Commenting on the drill that involved some 8,000 troops, Serbian strongman Aleksandar Vucic said he was "overjoyed" by the display. He also announced more state investment into the armed forces and more armored transporters supplied by its traditional ally, Russia.
"I am very happy – everyone has seen the ground trembling with MiGs flying above, and when those 250-kilo (551 lb) bombs hit, half the hill was shaking," he told the Serbian national broadcaster.
The live-ammunition maneuvers, dubbed "The Century of Winners," are widely seen as a show of force amid rising tensions with neighboring Kosovo.
1914/1918 - Not then, not now, not ever
Artists from the 31 countries involved in the First World War were given a block of wood from the front. They created different commemorative works reflecting on the destruction of war and the hope for peace.
Image: Hermann Nitsch/Jack Kulcke
Germany / Günther Uecker: Untitled
The exhibition "1914/1918 - Not Then, Not Now, Not Ever," shown at the German Reichstag in Berlin, was commissioned to commemorate the end of the First World War on November 11, 1918. The works were created by artists from the 31 countries involved in the conflict. This one is from the German sculptor and installation artist Günther Uecker.
Image: Günther Uecker/Jack Kulcke
Günther Uecker: Untitled, detail
Uecker has been using nails in his art since the 1950s. The Düsseldorf artist's symbolic works, which deal with different political issues, have been featured in different Bundestag exhibitions, including the 1996 installation entitled Fall, in remembrance of the pogrom night in Germany on November 9, 1938. He also designed the Bundestag's Prayer Room in 1998–99.
Image: Günther Uecker/Jack Kulcke
Bulgaria / Nedko Solakov: Dead Warriors
Each artist was given the same material to create a work for the exhibition: a cube of wood of 30 by 30 by 30 centimeters (12" x 12" x 12") from oak trees that stood in a fiercely disputed section of the front in Alsace. Through discolorations or even leftover war projectiles, traces of the conflict can still be seen in the wood itself. This work is by Bulgarian artist Nedko Solakov.
Image: Nedko Solakov/Jack Kulcke
Nedko Solakov: Dead Warriors, detail
One of the best-known Bulgarian artists of his generation, Solakov has regularly participated in international exhibitions, such as the Documenta 12 (2007) and Documenta 13 (2012), and the Venice Biennale in 2001, 2003 and 2007. His storytelling works include historical references and touches of humor. Here, he added a few ink spots to the cube of wood to create a work called Dead Warriors.
Image: Nedko Solakov/Jack Kulcke
Austria / Hermann Nitsch: Untitled
Austrian avant-garde artist Hermann Nitsch turned the cube of wood into a symbolic butcher's block covered with blood, recalling the brutality of war. World War I caused 20 million deaths and about 23 million military personnel were wounded, making it one of the deadliest conflicts in human history.
Image: Hermann Nitsch/Jack Kulcke
Hermann Nitsch: Untitled, detail
Nitsch has long shown his fascination with bloody scenes. His performances in the early 1960s were so provocative that they led to court trials and imprisonment. Although the 80-year-old artist now avoids killing animals during his performances, his "120. Aktion" from 2004 still involved a slaughtered bull, five dead pigs and 600 liters of blood. The blood on the wooden block, however, is paint.
Image: Hermann Nitsch/Jack Kulcke
South Africa / Wim Botha: Untitled
Botha is best known for his sculptures carved out of books. The South African artist often juxtaposes light and movement with dark figures in a state of conflict. The pieces of glass placed around the wooden skeleton in this piece mirror the work's current surroundings, adding new elements and questions to the history of war.
Image: Wim Botha/Jack Kulcke
Wim Botha: Untitled, detail
Born in 1974, Botha is one of the youngest artists in the show, along with the Ukrainian Aljoscha and the Turk Cevdet Erek. The exhibition's oldest artist, the Romanian Geta Bratescu, was born in 1926. Interestingly, her installation was the only one to include a video on an iPad. "Variety in the forms of expression was important in the selection of the artists," said curator Mattijs Visser.
Image: Wim Botha/Jack Kulcke
Ireland / Sean Scully: The Disappearing Boys
The Irish-born American-based artist Sean Scully is renowned for his large abstract paintings. However, for his work entitled The Disappearing Boys, he created a very concrete sculpture. John, Johannes, Jean: three versions of the same name in English, German and French are engraved on a coffin, referring to three of the major European powers at the center of the world conflict.
Image: Sean Scully/Jack Kulcke
Sean Scully: The Disappearing Boys, detail
The curator of the exhibition, Mattijs Visser, said he was fascinated by how the works on show reveal deep connections with the country of origin of the artists. The title of Scully's work can be seen as a reference to those who were abducted, killed and secretly buried during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. These victims were known as the Disappeared.
Image: Sean Scully/Jack Kulcke
Australia / Fiona Hall: Fell
War and death also have consequences for subsequent generations. The Australian artist Fiona Hall placed a charred cradle on a coffin in her work, entitled Fell. The sculptor was the first to represent Australia in its new pavilion at the Venice Biennale when it opened in May 2015.
Image: Fiona Fall/Jack Kulcke
Fiona Hall: Fell, detail
Hall is renowned for transforming ordinary, everyday materials into organic forms in her works, giving them historical and contemporary relevance. With the sawdust from her sculpture, she also created a bread that's wrapped in barbed wire. Sawdust was sometimes added to baked goods during World War I to compensate for shortages of flour.
Image: Fiona Fall/Jack Kulcke
Armenia / Jean Boghossian: Double World
Born in Syria, the painter and sculptor Jean Boghossian is Lebanese and has been living in Brussels since 1975. Since he is also of Armenian descent, the international artist represented the country at the Venice Biennale in 2017 as well as in the "1914/1918 - Not Then, Not Now, Not Ever" exhibition. He split his block of wood into two pieces.
Image: Jean Boghossian/Jack Kulcke
Jean Boghossian: Double World, detail
Boghossian is renowned for his experimentation with fire and smoke in his works. In Double World, one side is burnt, representing the losers of the conflict. The sharp edges of the two pieces show how the different camps appear threatening to each other and clash, but the two laser-cut blocks also fit perfectly together, which the artist sees as a symbol of hope.
Image: Jean Boghossian /Jack Kulcke
1914/1918 - Not Then, Not Now, Not Ever
Tours can be booked to visit the memorial exhibition "1914/1918 - Not Then, Not Now, Not Ever," on show in the German Reichstag building until January 6, 2019. The exhibition will travel to the UN's headquarters in New York in 2019.