Roads to the Great War: Love, War, and Sexuality

Show Catalog

Venue

In 2007, the Hôtel national des Invalides in Paris, presented a delightful exhibition on this topic, Amours, Guerres et Sexualité – 1914–1945, which I had almost forgotten about until I was checking over some old files recently. I had a particular interest in the program since three of our past contributors, Tony Langley, Bert Govaerts, and Olivier Pierrard, not only attended the opening, but made contributions to the displays. Here are the statement of intent from the sponsors and some examples of the specimens displayed, some of which were from my pals.

How and in what ways did the two world wars affect intimate relationships between men and women? At the crossroads of the history of wars and the history of gender, the exhibition Love, wars and sexuality 1914-1945, explores the question through the collections of the Army Museum, the Museum of Contemporary History-BDIC and with the collaboration of researchers from the National Center for Scientific Research. Objects, official and film posters, postcards, paintings, photographs, private correspondence, diaries, press clippings, literary works: in total, more than 400 items have been brought together for this exhibition on a theme that is, it must be said, a first for the Army Museum. Far removed from the " Make love, not war " of the pacifists of the 1970s, the aim here is to see under what conditions one could do both, or failing that, dream of one and do the other, in the context of a sexuality that was in any case disrupted and placed under strict military control.