The first ever TV series about WWI for a young and family audience brings to life children diaries.

“Today is August 1st, 1914. It is very hot. The rye harvest started on July 25, the rye is almost white. As I was walking past a field one evening, I picked some ears and hung them up over my bed with a thumbtack. As of today, Germany is at war. My mother advised me to write a diary about the war; she says I will find it interesting when I am old. That’s true. When I am fifty or sixty years of age, what I have written as a child will seem strange to me. And still it will all be true because you can’t tell lies in a diary.” (Diary entry of a twelve-year old German girl) When the First World War was raging across Europe, children from all nations confided their experiences, hopes and fears to their diaries. Now, one hundred years later, these diaries are brought back to life in the first ever TV series about the Great War for a young and family audience. Why speak of this War to children now? Through its history, children can come to a better understanding of our world. Why the EU and the UN exist has their roots in the Great War. Much of today’s technology, with which our young viewers naturally grew up, was developed at this time: telephones, film, cars, airplanes etc. Besides, many of their problems are the same now as they were then: arguments with parents; the search for friends and love but also for a direction in life, for heroes and idols; the loss of people close to them This momentous epoch is presented in an imaginative and exciting way: combining vivid drama, carefully selected archive and creative animation, it is easy-to-understand and historically correct. What did it mean to be young during the First World War? The diaries tell us fascinating stories… … like like Tobias’ story: the 10-year-old shepherd’s boy from Austria is forced to lead Italian soldiers across the Alps. Overcoming avalanches and extreme cold together sparks an unexpected and unspoken friendship between them … The children of the time speak to us in their authentic and touching voices. The children of today can put themselves into the lives of those children, laugh or cry with them, or even play.