© Jeannot Ries / RTL Télé Lëtzebuerg
A century after the fighting stopped, historians are still trying to determine the effect the First World War had on the Grand Duchy.
One thing seems to be clear: the war of 1914 to 1918 changed the face of the country forever.
The Dudelange exhibition "Etre d'ailleurs en temps de guerre" ("Being elsewhere in times of war") gives visitors a good idea of the situation in Luxembourg at the time. Even then, Luxembourg was a melting pot for all kinds of nationalities, but locals largely overcame their national identities and stuck together. The steel industry in the south played a major role in this social cohesion.
In Dudelange, 8 out of 10 residents were not Luxembourgers but Italians, Belgians, Germans, Frenchmen and Austrians - nations that were facing each other on Europe's battlefields.
Dudelange was one of the first targets to be invaded in neutral Luxembourg during the first world war. Due to its geographical position and its thriving industry, German soldiers took the city shortly after the beginning of the war.
For the inhabitants of Dudelange, the German invasion meant that the border with France shut down. This closed off some of the usual trade and supply routes and marked the start of a wave of famines. Allied forces decided to place neutral Luxembourg under a food embargo because it was under German rule.
For more information on the exhibition, follow this link to the website of the documentation centre for human migrations (CDMH).
