Zagreb's Croatian History Museum will mark the centennial of the 1918 end of World War I by staging an exhibition titled "1918 - A Turning Point for Croatia", which will symbolically open at 11 am on Sunday, November 11, exactly 100 years after the armistice that ended the fighting between the Allies and Germany took effect.

The exhibition, that will run through May 19, includes more than 500 exhibits in addition to archive and library material, curated from the museum’s own holdings, as well as other institutions’ collections.

Museum director Mate Brstilo-Resetar told a news conference on Thursday that the exhibition would focus on political decisions that eventually had far-reaching influence on the course of Croatia’s history.

For Croatian historians, the year 1918 is seen as a turning point in terms of the country’s political and social history. Towards the end of that year, Croatia ceased to be part of Austria-Hungary, before joining a new country of South Slavs which eventually became Yugoslavia.

“Croatian political parties and leaders active in the country and abroad at the time focused on solving the national question,” the museum said in its press release, referring to the burning question of forming a Croatian nation state.

However, in the territories of the former Austria-Hungary populated by South Slavic peoples, the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs (SHS) was created in late October 1918, which only months later joined Serbia and Montenegro, to form the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, formally proclaimed in Belgrade on December 1, 1918, and which took part in the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.

Europe’s central ceremony marking the end of World War I will be held in Paris on 11 November with more than 60 heads of state in attendance, including President Donald Trump of the United States, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and Croatia’s Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic.

Day earlier, on November 10, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are due to visit the forest near Compiegne in northern France where the armistice between the Allies and Germany was signed in a railway carriage, marking the end of the conflict which began in July 1914.

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