Maurice of Battenberg

his grave, IWGC & Princess Beatrice

  • kenniscentrum
  • lezing

Over

Onder de titel "Gateways to the First World War" organiseren het In Flanders Fields Museum en de Universiteit van Kent (School of History) in het academiejaar 2017-2018 een reeks van acht seminars.
De lezingen vinden plaats op donderdagavond en zijn gratis toegankelijk
voor alle geïnteresseerden. De voertaal is Engels.

De vier lezingen die doorgaan in Ieper vinden plaats om 19u15
in de leeszaal van het In Flanders Fields Museum, Sint-Maartensplein 3.

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Thursday 22 November
Professor Mark Connelly, University of Kent
The Imperial War Graves Commission, Princess Beatrice
and the grave of Prince Maurice of Battenberg

Prince Maurice of Battenberg was the only direct member of the British Royal Family to be killed in the Great War. He was buried in the main city cemetery of Ypres in October 1914. His mother appealed for the right to repatriate his body, which she followed up with a concerted campaign to erect a headstone of her choice over his grave. These demands coming from such an influential person made Prince Maurice’s body, and the memory of him as a person, a test case for the authority of the newly-forged Imperial War Graves Commission. Determined to uphold the principles of non-repatriation and equality of treatment, the IWGC had to fight a delicate battle in which an individual’s body was subsumed into wider arguments about class, identity and the very meaning of the war itself.