Stumbling Stones: Holocaust Memorials, National Identity, and Democratic Inclusion in Berlin (original) (raw)
Related papers
2014
In their studies of the memorialization process and its outcomes, geographers have traditionally focused on state-driven commemoration. This is true for studies of Holocaust memorials in Berlin, which have mostly investigated the roles of the state in the creation of state-sanctioned memorials. It is also important to focus on non-state actors who are engaged in the creation of memorials to better understand how individuals interpret and shape a cultural landscape. In this paper we use a case study of German artist Gunter Demnig's Stolpersteine (stumbling stones), which are small memorial stones that commemorate individual victims of the Holocaust at their former homes and businesses. Individuals, families, and school groups conduct historical research and finance the emplacement of these memorial stones in sidewalks in Berlin and other cities. The research findings are based on participant observations at ten installation ceremonies in Berlin in May 2011, interviews with Demnig's assistants and participants in the ceremonies, and media accounts of the Stolpersteine. Responding to recent calls for the inclusion of agency in the memorialization literature, we study how individuals shape a cultural landscape. These agents of memorialization negotiate meanings of the Holocaust with city and federal governments, thereby (re-)creating a cultural landscape for current and future generations.
Germany's Metamorphosis: Memory and the Holocaust in the Berlin Repulic
Cultural Studies Review, 2013
I want to focus on two recent debates in Germany from the same inaugural period of Germany’s SPD–Green government, which both have as their focus the contestation of memory in relation to the Holocaust. In both debates the Holocaust serves as a negative myth of origin and a primal phantasmatic scene of guilt and shame around which German national identifications are organised. The first is the Walser–Bubis debate and the second the much more protracted but no less fierce debate about the building of a Holocaust memorial in Berlin, which peaked around the same time. Both debates are important in the German context because they come at the end of a long period of Christian Democratic (CDU) rule and at the beginning of a new SPD era in German politics. They are significant, moreover, because they appear to send contradictory messages about German self- understanding to the international community.
Remembering Complexity? Memorials for Nazi Victims in Berlin
How do memorials shape who we think we are? And how are our identities involved when we debate, create, and interact with memorials? This essay engages in a conversation with scholarship on intersectional identities and memorial practices in Berlin. Intersectionality scholarship, with its roots in US critical race feminism, has much to offer for thinking about the complexity of identities, yet it does not consider the role of memory, time, and temporality. The scholarship on memory and memorials, in turn, does not sufficiently consider the complexity of identities of those who are memorialized and of those who visit memorials. The essay asks how three different monuments for Nazi victims in Berlin allow for or facilitate the memory of complex identities. The example of the Monument for the Persecuted Homosexuals shows that memorial practices can be crucial in contemporary identity politics and social movements. The essay calls for a more self-reflexive approach to the role of identities and complexity in memorial scholarship and practice.
Georg Ulrich Grossmann and Petra Krutisch, The Challenge of the Object = Die Herausforderung des Objekts: 33rd Congress of the International Committee of the History of Art (Comité International d'Histoire de l'Art - CIHA) Nuremberg, 15th-20th July 2012, Germanishes National Museum, Nürnberg, 2013., 2013
Abstract: In an attempt to resolve contested memory narratives, the urban landscape of Berlin has given rise to the process of reconstructing German identity itself. This paper provides a critical analysis of the controversial cycle of growth, demolition and reconstruction of the built environment on Schlossplatz in Berlin-mitte. In the context of Erinnerungskultur, it will argue that the removal of the Palast der Republik is not as significant as the planned Wiederaufbau of the former Prussian Stadtschloss in its place. Independent of the Stadtschloss’ resurrection as potentially detrimental to the organic authenticity of the urban landscape, this paper will ask what this action may tell about Germany’s current relationship with its Prussian past. Does the decision to rebuild the Stadtschloss (even in partial form) represent a normalized relationship with Prussian identity, and if so, exemplify a ‘mastery of the past’? Could a confrontation with complex historical legacies help forge a new sense of united German identity on the urban landscape? If so, would this be desirable, or could it present a slippery slope of renewed nationalism? What is at stake for the identities of former East (and West) Germans to achieve an emotional integration and a sound historical self understanding? Finally, in relation to Germany’s continued dialogue with GDR memory, is destruction of the Palast/reconstruction of the Stadtschloss reminiscent of the same dialectic of memory and repression that facilitated a kind of self-justification rather than an acceptance of responsibility in the immediate post-war era? These questions should act as prisms through which wider problems of collective memory and cultural identity in reunified Berlin can be examined. Citation: MaryKate Cleary, "Destroying the Palace/Rebuilding the Castle: Collective Memory and the Search for Historical Identity in Berlin," in: Georg Ulrich Grossmann and Petra Krutisch, The Challenge of the Object = Die Herausforderung des Objekts: 33rd Congress of the International Committee of the History of Art (Comité International d'Histoire de l'Art - CIHA) Nuremberg, 15th-20th July 2012, Germanishes National Museum, Nürnberg, 2013, pp. 460-464.
International Journal of Žižek Studies, 2016
The debate about a German Leitkultur (leading culture), as it attempts to address issues around the integration of immigrants, contributes to the discourse of “normalization” i that began in the early 1980s. With an attack on the Erinnerungskultur (culture of remembrance), conservatives aimed to reestablish a ‘normal’ German national consciousness within a European context. However, forty years after the end of WWII, President Richard Weizacker reminded the public that the traumatic Nazi past should be in the memory of every Germanii. Within Leitkultur narratives, Vergangenheitsbewaltigung (coming to terms with the past) raises further questions about what constitutes a contemporary German identity, particularly as Germany becomes increasingly dynamic within global political and cultural spheres. The collapse of the Berlin wall and subsequent influx of a large numbers of immigrants and asylum seekers led to one of the greatest challenges Germany faces today: how to reconcile the dif...