After decades of political stability, people in Europe have once again been confronted with the reality of war. Although most people in Germany are only indirectly affected—through encounters with refugees, media images, and political debates about arms supplies, conscription, and rearmament—the topic of war has become omnipresent in everyday life.

This also applies to young people, who engage with public discourse through media use and encounter the topic at school. While the impact of war on the mental health of directly affected children has been studied to some extent, little is known about how those indirectly affected perceive and imagine war.

Building on historical studies of children’s perceptions of war by William Stern and others in 1915, this study invited high school students in northern Germany in 2025 to create a drawing in response to the question: “How do you picture war?” A qualitative-reconstructive analysis of these drawings reveals the participants’ implicit knowledge—shaped by media discourses, everyday experiences, and socio-cultural narratives.

Initial findings indicate that, on the one hand, war is still imagined much as it was in previous times, while on the other, it is increasingly seen as a technical phenomenon in which human actors seem absent. At the same time, war appears as a broader social catastrophe extending far beyond immediate suffering.

The presentation discusses these findings from a historical perspective and explores the implications of a militarised public discourse for children’s well-being, meaning-making, and agency.