Lest we forget: the symbols of First World War remembrance and what they mean

The poppy

The red poppy is the best known symbol of First World War remembrance. It comes from the poem In Flanders Fields, written in May 1915 by the Canadian military doctor John McCrae after the Second Battle of Ypres. Corn poppies were the first plants to return to the churned soil of Flanders – a botanical fact that became an image.

Since 1921 the paper poppy has been worn for Remembrance Day on 11 November in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and its sale still funds veterans' welfare. The phrase lest we forget, taken from Kipling's Recessional of 1897, was adopted onto war memorials across the Commonwealth after 1918.

The cornflower and its double meaning

In France the blue cornflower – the Bleuet de France – has served the same function since 1916, named after the blue uniforms of the young conscripts. It is worn on 11 November and on 8 May, and like the poppy it funds veterans' support.

In German-speaking countries the same flower carries a different history. The cornflower was a Prussian emblem in the nineteenth century and was later adopted as a recognition badge by German nationalist and far-right groups, particularly in Austria. Anyone using it in a commemorative context needs to know that history and say so, or the gesture will be read as the opposite of what was intended.

The forget-me-not

The forget-me-not carries its message in its name. In the flower language of the nineteenth century it stood for fidelity and lasting memory, and it appears frequently on gravestones, memorial cards and field postcards of the First World War.

Unlike the poppy and the cornflower it never became an official national symbol, and it therefore stayed free of political appropriation. That is why it is often chosen for remembrance work with school groups: the meaning needs no explanation, and it belongs to no side.

Different cultures of remembrance

The same war is remembered very differently across Europe.

• France observes 11 November as a national holiday; almost every commune has a memorial listing its dead by name.
• Britain and the Commonwealth maintain a highly ritualised observance built on the poppy, the two-minute silence and the Cenotaph ceremony.
• Belgium has sounded the Last Post at the Menin Gate in Ypres every evening since 1928, interrupted only by the German occupation.
• Italy marks 4 November, the end of the war on its own front.
• Germany has neither a victory day nor a national holiday from this war. The Volkstrauertag is a day of mourning, and the Second World War overlays the memory of the First.
• Russia long treated it as the forgotten war; state commemoration only resumed in the 2000s.

These differences are not accidental. They follow the outcome of the war and what came after it.

Remembering when no one can tell you

The last veterans of the First World War died around 2010. Remembrance since then rests entirely on transmission: on archives, objects, places, and on the decision to engage with them.

That changes the task. Where people once told the story, it now has to be researched. This makes the material traces more important, not less – the names on the memorials, the grave plots in municipal cemeteries, the letters in family drawers. The German section of this portal sets out how to work with them, and its register of war grave sites is searchable by place name in any language.