Abstract
After the armistice, World War One remained an important topic in the Berliner Ilustrirte Zeitung – an illustrated magazine devoted to general, political and cultural news. Analyzing its coverage of the war allows us to address what these representations have to say about the expectations, fears and hopes of Weimar progressives at the time. After showing some benevolence towards former enemies at the beginning of 1919, the BIZ grew more acrimonious when the terms of the peace treaty became official. These disappointed hopes certainly made the cultural demobilization of the BIZ more difficult. The magazine continued to relay the war rhetoric for some time, before trying to tend to the wounds and ease the mourning through artistic means. Eventually, the BIZ did not seek to preserve the memory of the war, but rather to promote a pacifist and republican way of thinking.