With its exhibition “Familles à l’épreuve de la Guerre”, the Musée de la Grande Guerre in Meaux approaches a very moving part of the First World War: the separation of families during the war.

The painful separation, the stress related to the announce of the father’s or husband’s death behind the lines, the months spent at the front praying to return to one’s wife and children, without talking about coming back home after physical and mental injuries, wars look like each other with this pattern.

And when War touches the whole world and takes 48.2 million men at the front (including 7.9 million of men in France only), no need to say that many family lives have been disrupted!

Evolving around three sequences, the Familles à l’épreuve de la Guerre exhibition explains:

• The painful separations during call-ups,
• The disruption of the daily lives at the frond as well as behind the lines,
• The announce of the loss followed by a painful mourning or the soldiers’ return to their home and the civil life.

Throughout this tour suited to children starting from 10 years old, this exhibition presents about 300 collector’s pieces from the First World War – letters, family belonging, costumes, uniforms, graphic works, sculptures – displayed in an intimate staging. You can make kids and grown-ups raise awareness about History and support the Duty of Remembrance.

We discover weddings have been celebrated with a medal, women are invited to “passionately kiss” their husband and fiancé during the 7 days of their leaver, and we can read the love and fear messages written for a husband, a son or a brother fighting at the front.

This exhibition manages to show us the daily life at the front and behind the lines, and the moving moments that have been possible thanks to letters and leaves, even though death wasn’t very far.

Women wearing their mourning attire, letters returned to sender because the soldier is “missing”, War remains a traumatizing event and the Musée de la Grande Guerre presents it without hurting or shocking!

Exhibition curator Jean-Yves Le Naour explains:

This is a compelling exhibition to be discovered on the occasion of WWI Centennial; because of its unique thematic approach hailed by the Ministry of Cultural Affairs, the exhibition receives the “exposition d’intérêt national” [Exhibition of National Interest] label for 2018!