Suchergebnisse

When discussing "wartime ephemera", of the kind that has been passed down through families since the Second World War, Germany and Austria could be considered as a counterexample to Britain. In German and Austrian historical memory, "wartime" cannot be separated from pre-war Nazi society (beginning in 1933 and 1938, respectively). Moreover, what we might loosely call the "Antiques Roadshow experience"—discussing family objects from the Second World War in a sympathetic public forum—has never been open to the majority of Germans and Austrians, who were rather inclined to hide and forget such objects in the family home. Even so, mundane Nazi-era objects survived in their millions and this essay discusses their display in German and Austrian history museums. There, they serve to illustrate a history of mentalities during and after the Nazi regime. Austrian museums are currently playing a proactive role in the transfer of objects from the private, family archive to public, cultural memory. This article considers how notions of "family" are constructed in museum discourse and asks how the millions of German and Austrian citizens and residents with no family connection to the Second World War can be included in a form of national family storytelling that arguably "re-ethnicizes" memory.

The article attempts to move beyond the scholarly debates surrounding the so-called Wehrmacht Exhibitions by broadening the focus to include a wide spectrum of public exhibitions about the National Socialist era in Germany, mounted mostly between 1995 and the present. Three straightforward questions — `What is exhibited?', `Who exhibits it?' and `Where is it exhibited?' — throw up some complex answers: a shift from history to memory becomes evident; the line between protest exhibitions and establishment exhibitions becomes blurred as public memory work becomes increasingly institutionalized; and exhibitions use a combination of symbolic and indexical place (as defined by Aleida Assmann) to make statements about the relationship of contemporary communities to the National Socialist past.

"Memorialization in Germany since 1945 provides a wide-ranging discussion of contemporary Germany's rich memorial landscape. It discusses the many memorials to German losses during the Second World War, to the victims of national socialism, and to those of GDR socialism. With up-to-date coverage of many less well-known memorials as well as the most publicised ones"--Provided by publisher