| Summary: | This paper presents the results of a cross-cultural discourse analysis of the chapters on Word War I in French and German history textbooks. More precisely, the study deals with textbook authors’ representations of the relationship between “the past” and the present of the teaching and learning situation. It shows that authors convey – and construct – these representations by a variety of linguistic and discursive means such as the title of their textbook, temporal markers, different types of description and of reported speech, as well as comparisons of events to other events and the positioning of the students in the tasks they are asked to accomplish. In general, French textbook authors take on a contemporary perspective, but do not always succeed in rigorously following it, whereas German authors go back and forth between the past and the present time and engage the students in doing so as well.
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