THE first World War, which claimed the lives of more than 10 million soldiers, most of them around Leaving Cert age, cast a menacing shadow across Europe that lingers a century later.
In this context an Irish initiative to commemorate events surrounding the 1914 Christmas truce in Flanders is worthy of note. It concerns the development of a sports field near the site where British and German soldiers played their legendary football match and is the brainchild of the Derry writer Don Mullan, whose book Eyewitness Bloody Sunday helped initiate the Saville inquiry.
At the core of the project is the ideal that youth from around the world will come to play football and other sports, and then return home to spread the message of peace in their own communities. Such an initiative, it is envisaged, will serve to enhance the memory of the hundreds of thousands of young men, British, Irish, French, Canadian, Australian German etc. tragically killed in the first World War, and serve to nurture belief in the primacy of life. As such, appropriately, it is in line with the wider project of European integration beloved of the EU’s founders.
Germany, forced to bite the bullet of defeat in 1918, wilted under the burden of reparations imposed, notably, by France and Britain. During the country’s first stab at democracy in the Weimar Republic period 1918-33, successive German governments chose to print money in preference to raising taxes. The resulting hyperinflation and currency collapse was to bring about enormous suffering for the German people.
The folk memory of these years of devastation is still a reality for a wide swath of German political and economic opinion. Hence the reluctance by Angela Merkel and her advisers to entertain calls for the European Central Bank to act as a lender of last resort for the sovereign states of the EU.
One of Merkel’s predecessors, 93-year-old Helmut Schmidt, delivered a blistering wake-up call last year at the Social Democratic Party congress in Berlin with his analysis of the historical evolution towards the European project. It was a clear recall to fundamentals, not least for the wider Germany which needed, in effect, he said, either to pass or at least deal sensitively with the tempting chalice of economic hegemony, in deference to the project of European integration. SPD chairman Sigmar Gabriel, told the delegates: “We need a market that conforms to democracy, not a democracy that conforms to the market”.
The German ambassador to Ireland, Dr Eckhard Lübkemeier, was a special guest at a concert in Kimmage Manor last December to raise funds for the development of the Flanders sports field. It was held in conjunction with the international Christmas truce carol and folk festival in Flanders and was broadcast live by satellite around the world.
The project’s ground-breaking ceremony took place in Flanders last January, led by Willi Lemke, UN special adviser on Sport for Development and Peace. The British and German ambassadors were in attendance as well as a representative from the Irish Embassy. At Mullan’s request, singer Jerry Lynch delivered Cormac MacConnell’s evocative A Silent Night, Christmas 1914 and one could hear a pin drop. The German ambassador was clearly moved by the symbolism of the event and has been most supportive, says Mullan. Hence his hosting of a crucial meeting this coming Friday at which ambassadors or their representatives from Ireland, Britain, France, Austria and Turkey will attend, where the Derry man will present the Christmas truce concept.
The project, inclusive of a small stadium, will cost about €5 million and that is where the support of the individual governments will be important, Mullan argues. He will present the Christmas truce project to the diplomats as an opportunity to create a peace memorial rather than a war memorial, an appropriate legacy for the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the first World War.
The proposed development is located on a hill overlooking what was once no-man’s land, close to where the football game was played between soldiers serving on the opposing British and German sides during the short-lived 1914 Christmas truce. It conjures up a gentle parody of Máirtín Ó Cadhain’s classic, Cré na Cille, with the reality of thousands of graves being replaced, at least in imagination, by the joyful spectre of eager sportsmen and their supporters focused on life, not death.
It is not far from the tower in the Messines Peace Park inaugurated by president Mary McAleese in November 1998, a few weeks after the Omagh bombing. The peace tower is dedicated to the memory of those Irish who fought and died in the first World War.
Significantly, it is erected at the site of the Messines Ridge battlefield, the only location in the conflict where the 36th Ulster and the 16th Irish divisions fought side by side. The memorial recalls the sacrifices of those from the island of Ireland, of all traditions, who took part in the war.