German public supports World War I project

Hundreds of participants of all ages in Germany have contributed personal memorabilia from World War I to the online “First World War in everyday documents" project.

The project is a joint initiative of Europeana, the German National Library and Oxford University. More than 350 people attended the first four participation days in Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Munich and Stuttgart. The memorabilia range from individual field postcards and photos to huge albums, detailed diaries or commemorative beer mugs to an entire box filled with a sword, spiked and steel helmets and a regiment’s grave cloth.

Over 15,000 digital images were taken from documents and memorabilia brought in. A large part of the contributions has already been catalogued and is publicly-available for research on the project website, along with directly uploaded objects.

Four additional participation days will take place in Dresden, Erfurt, Kiel and Regensburg in June/July 2011.