Tanks

The First World War was the first industrialised war, with the tank as one of the newest modern weapons. The armoured fighting vehicles appealed to the imagination of both soldiers and civilians. The tank appeared in various ways in living rooms at the home front: through newspapers and magazines, but also in miniature models for propaganda purposes, as toys, or incorporated in all kinds of memorabilia. During the interwar period, the tank was used to keep the memory of the war alive.

How this precisely happened, is the passion of Guido Deseijn, who built an impressive collection on this subject. For more than thirty years he has been searching for all possible ways in which the new weapon made a bridge to the material culture of civilian society during and after the war.

Tanks in the living room
between propaganda, toys and souvenir

is the first major exhibition of this collection, donated by Guido Deseijn in 2020 to the In Flanders Fields Museum.