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The Douaumont ossuary emerged from the ground within around ten years. We can identify several stages leading to this emergence: public formulation of the idea, the laying of the founding stone, architectural competition, partial inauguration, final inauguration. Why should we care about their treatment in the newspapers of that time? It is not so much a matter of accounting for the fact that the breadth of editorial material dedicated to these stages varied across different newspapers and moments in time, but rather to analyze the evolutions of the meanings attributed to the monument, as well as the ways in which it was invested by different categories of actors who did not share the same commemorative craze. While religion was an important factor in the ossuary’s construction, politics and the media were also involved. These three elements interacted with each other, undertaking a never-ending work of reformulation of the past in the present.