New Europe College Regional Program Yearbook 2001-2002

NIKOLAI VUKOV
FIG. 6 – VICTORY MONUMENT IN CONSTANÞA (1968), PHOTO: N. VUKOV, 2002.
Another characteristic of this relationship between the First and the
Second World War utilizations of death can be pointed out. It is actually
a consequence of those characteristics already mentioned. In an insightful
analysis of the ways in which monuments to the dead shape the identity
of the living (Kosellek 1997), R. Kosellek dedicates special attention to
the occurrence of the process of democratization of death which can be
traced in the history of public monuments and reaches a peak in the
monuments to the dead in the First World War.
The equality in death is replaced by equality, which guarantees national
homogeneity: the homogeneity of the living and the survivors. Monuments
are erected by political entities, which mutually demarcate each other.
That is why the function of the monuments to the dead tends to a religion
civile, in the sense meant by Rousseau, and contributes to the foundation
of democratic legitimity (Kosellek 1997: 151).
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