Views of Violence: Representing the Second World War in German and European Museums and Memorials 9781789201277

Table of contents :
CONTENTS
ILLUSTRATIONS
PREFACE
ABBREVIATIONS
INTRODUCTION Representing the Second World War in German and European Museums and Memorials
PART I Museums
CHAPTER 1 Multi-Voiced and Personal Second World War Remembrance in German Museums
CHAPTER 2 The Experientiality of the Second World War in Twenty-First-Century European Museums (Normandy, the Ardennes, Germany)
CHAPTER 3 Exhibiting Images of War: The Use of Historic Media in the Bundeswehr Military History Museum (Dresden) and the Imperial War Museum North (Manchester)
CHAPTER 4 In the Eye of the Beholder: Gaze and Distance through Photographic Collage in the Topography of Terror and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights
CHAPTER 5 The Challenging Representation of National Socialist Perpetrators in Exhibitions: Two Examples from Austria and Germany
CHAPTER 6 “Warschau erhebt sich” The 1944 Warsaw Uprising and the Nationalization of European Identity in the Berlin Republic
PART II Memorials and Memorial Landscapes
CHAPTER 7 A Culture of Remembrance, Memorials, and Museum in the Hürtgenwald Region
CHAPTER 8 Contested Heroes, Contested Places: Conflicting Visions of War at Heldenplatz/Ballhausplatz in Vienna
CHAPTER 9 Commemorating Flight and Expulsion vor Ort: Local Expellee Monuments in Central and Eastern Europe
CHAPTER 10 Local Battlefields as “Cultural Landscape” of Global Value? Views of War in Normandy and the Classification as World Heritage
AFTERWORD The Memory Boom and the Commemoration of the Second World War
INDEX

Citation preview

VIEWS OF VIOLENCE

SPEKTRUM: Publications of the German Studies Association

Series editor: David M. Luebke, University of Oregon

Published under the auspices of the German Studies Association, Spektrum offers current perspectives on culture, society, and political life in the German-speaking lands of central Europe—Austria, Switzerland, and the Federal Republic—from the late Middle Ages to the present day. Its titles and themes reflect the composition of the GSA and the work of its members within and across the disciplines to which they belong—literary criticism, history, cultural studies, political science, and anthropology. Recent volumes: Volume 19 Views of Violence Representing the Second World War in German and European Museums and Memorials Edited by Jörg Echternkamp and Stephan Jaeger

Volume 14 Reluctant Skeptic Siegfried Kracauer and the Crises of Weimar Culture Harry T. Craver

Volume 18 Dreams of Germany Musical Imaginaries from the Concert Hall to the Dance Floor Edited by Neil Gregor and Thomas Irvine

Volume 13 Migrations in the German Lands, 1500–2000 Edited by Jason Coy, Jared Poley, and Alexander Schunka

Volume 17 Money in the German-Speaking Lands Edited by Mary Lindemann and Jared Poley Volume 16 Archeologies of Confession Writing the German Reformation, 1517–2017 Edited by Carina L. Johnson, David M. Luebke, Marjorie Elizabeth Plummer, and Jesse Spohnholz Volume 15 Ruptures in the Everyday Views of Modern Germany from the Ground Andrew Bergerson, Leonard Schmieding, et al.

Volume 12 The Total Work of Art Foundations, Articulations, Inspirations Edited by David Imhoof, Margaret Eleanor Menninger, and Anthony J. Steinhoff Volume 11 The Devil’s Riches A Modern History of Greed Jared Poley Volume 10 The Emperor’s Old Clothes Constitutional History and the Symbolic Language of the Holy Roman Empire Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger Translated by Thomas Dunlap

For a full volume listing, please see the series page on our website: http://berghahnbooks.com/series/spektrum

Views of Violence Representing the Second World War in German and European Museums and Memorials

 Edited by JÖRG ECHTERNKAMP and STEPHAN JAEGER Afterword by Jay Winter

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

First published in 2019 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2019 Jörg Echternkamp and Stephan Jaeger All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Echternkamp, Jörg, 1963– editor. | Jaeger, Stephan, 1970– editor. Title: Views of Violence: Representing the Second World War in German and European Museums and Memorials / edited by Jörg Echternkamp and Stephan Jaeger. Description: First edition. | New York: Berghahn Books, [2019] | Series: Spektrum: Publications of the German Studies Association; 19 | Includes bibliographical references and index.  Identifiers: LCCN 2018050326 (print) | LCCN 2018055963 (ebook) | ISBN 9781789201277 (ebook) | ISBN 9781789201260 (hardback: alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: World War, 1939–1945—Europe—Historiography. | World War, 1939–1945—Europe—Exhibitions. | World War, 1939–1945—Europe— Influence. | World War, 1939-1945—Germany—Exhibitions. | War and society—Europe. | Collective memory—Europe. | Collective memory—Germany. | Memorialization—Europe. | Museums—Germany. | Museums—Europe. Classification: LCC D744.7.E8 (ebook) | LCC D744.7.E8 V54 2019 (print) | DDC 940.53074/4—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018050326

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-78920-126-0 hardback ISBN 978-1-78920-127-7 ebook

 CONTENTS 

List of Illustrations

vii

Preface

ix

List of Abbreviations

x

Introduction. Representing the Second World War in German and European Museums and Memorials Jörg Echternkamp and Stephan Jaeger

1

Part I. Museums 1. Multi-Voiced and Personal: Second World War Remembrance in German Museums Thomas Thiemeyer 2. The Experientiality of the Second World War in Twenty-First-Century European Museums (Normandy, the Ardennes, Germany) Stephan Jaeger 3. Exhibiting Images of War: The Use of Historic Media in the Bundeswehr Military History Museum (Dresden) and the Imperial War Museum North (Manchester) Jana Hawig 4. In the Eye of the Beholder: Gaze and Distance through Photographic Collage in the Topography of Terror and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights Erin Johnston-Weiss 5. The Challenging Representation of National Socialist Perpetrators in Exhibitions: Two Examples from Austria and Germany Sarah Kleinmann 6. “Warschau erhebt sich”: The 1944 Warsaw Uprising and the Nationalization of European Identity in the Berlin Republic Winson Chu

27

52

75

92

109

129

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Contents

Part II. Memorials and Memorial Landscapes 7. A Culture of Remembrance, Memorials, and Museum in the Hürtgenwald Region Karola Fings

151

8. Contested Heroes, Contested Places: Conflicting Visions of War at Heldenplatz/Ballhausplatz in Vienna Peter Pirker, Magnus Koch, and Johannes Kramer

174

9. Commemorating Flight and Expulsion vor Ort: Local Expellee Monuments in Central and Eastern Europe Jeffrey Luppes

215

10. Local Battlefields as “Cultural Landscape” of Global Value? Views of War in Normandy and the Classification as World Heritage Jörg Echternkamp

233

Afterword. The Memory Boom and the Commemoration of the Second World War Jay Winter

252

Index

261

 ILLUSTRATIONS 

Figure 2.1. Narrative characters “See the war through our eyes.” Permanent exhibition. © Bastogne War Museum. Photo by Stephan Jaeger, 2016.

59

Figure 2.2. Scenovision 2: “The Offensive: In the woods near Bastogne—At the dawn of 16 December 1944 . . .” Permanent exhibition. © Bastogne War Museum. Photo by Stephan Jaeger, 2016.

61

Figure 2.3. Room entitled “Soviet Prisoners of War.” Permanent exhibition. Deutsch-Russisches Museum Berlin-Karlshorst, 2013. © Deutsch-Russisches Museum Berlin-Karlshorst.

65

Figure 2.4. Installation of “hero letters” in the display case “Mass Deaths: The Glorification of Dying.” Permanent exhibition. Militärhistorisches Museum der Bundeswehr (MHM), Dresden. Photo by Stephan Jaeger, 2013.

67

Figure 3.1. Cabinet “Barbarossa.” Chronological exhibition “1914–1945.” Permanent exhibition. Militärhistorisches Museum der Bundeswehr (MHM), Dresden. Photo by Stephan Jaeger, 2013.

82

Figure 4.1. Partial view of Albrecht Street House Prison mug shots. Permanent interior exhibition. Topographie des Terrors, Berlin. Photo by Erin Johnston-Weiss, 2016.

99

Figure 4.2. Oversized photographs of young girl at a Nazi rally and lawyer with bare feet and sign (smaller photograph included in internal caption). In section “Abuse of State Power,” “Examining the Holocaust” gallery. Permanent exhibition. Canadian Museum for Human Rights, Winnipeg. Photo by Stephan Jaeger, 2016.

102

Figure 6.1. Beginning of section “01.08.1944: Warsaw Rises.” Special exhibition Warsaw Rising of 1944. Warsaw Rising Museum, hosted by Topographie des Terrors, Berlin. Photo by Stephan Jaeger, 2014.

134

Figure 7.1. Mahnmal der Windhund-Division, with emblem at the gate, Vossenack. Photo by Karola Fings, 2010.

157

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Illustrations

Figure 7.2. Sculpture by Annemarie Suckow von Heydendorff, showing a soldier dying in the arms of his comrade, 1966. Memorial of the “Windhund Division.” Photo by Jörg Echternkamp, 2016.

158

Figure 7.3. Interior of the Museum Hürtgenwald 1944 und im Frieden, opened 2001 in Vossenack (Hürtgenwald, North Rhine-Westphalia). Photo by Karola Fings, 2010. 161 Figure 8.1. Heldenplatz, Vienna. Image Landsat/Copernicus, Google Earth, https://earth.google.com/web.

176

Figure 8.2. View into the crypt in the right wing of the Heroes’ Memorial in Vienna with the sculpture of the recumbent soldier, March 2012. Photo by Mathias Lichtenwagner.

196

Figure 8.3. Festival of Joy, Heldenplatz, 8 May 2015. Photo by BKA/Andy Wenzel.

198

Figure 8.4. Opening ceremony at the Memorial for the Victims of Nazi Military Justice, Ballhausplatz, 24 October 2014. Photo by Georg Hochmuth/APA via picturedesk.com.

200

Figure 9.1. Gedenkstätte auf dem Friedhof in Postelberg/Postoloprty (Memorial on the Cemetery in Postoloprty), 3 October 2011. Photo by SchiDD (CC BY-SA 3.0), https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:Postelberg-Gedenkst.jpg.

225

Figure 10.1. Remains of a bunker integrated in a residential building at Colleville-Montgomery. Photo by Jörg Echternkamp, 2016.

235

Figure 10.2. The Longues-sur-Mer battery. Photo by Jörg Echternkamp, 2016.

237

Figure 10.3. Tourists on top of a former bunker turned into a memorial at Omaha Beach. Photo by Jörg Echternkamp, 2016.

240

 PREFACE 

The idea for this book emerged from discussions in the German Studies Association (GSA) “War and Violence” interdisciplinary network, coordinated by Jörg Echternkamp, Stephan Jaeger, and Susanne Vees-Gulani from 2013 to 2017. This platform connected researchers from academic institutions and museums in Europe and North America to explore the history and memories of wars in modern times from a wide range of interdisciplinary perspectives. We, the editors, are grateful to Janet Ward, then co-chair of the Interdisciplinary Network Committee, who initiated this network, and to David Barclay, the executive director of the GSA, for his endorsement over the years. It was during the many discussions we enjoyed with these experts that we realized how fruitful it could be to study the representations of the Second World War in museums and memorials in order to shed new light on current public debates over the war’s place in national and European narratives. We would like to acknowledge Susanne Vees-Gulani, who co-organized the network’s activities together with us. We appreciate that Jay Winter has thoughtfully commented on the revised chapters in his afterword. The volume was also made possible through the financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, allowing us to hire research assistants. Our particular thanks go to Emma Mikuska-Tinman and Erin Johnston-Weiss, who proofread and edited most chapters. We would also like to thank the three anonymous readers for their meticulous reviews that have helped us to improve the manuscripts. We are also grateful to David Luebke, the editor of the Spektrum series, and to Marion Berghahn for their engagement with this volume, as well as to Senior Editor Chris Chappell, Editorial Assistant Soyolmaa Lkhagvadorj, and Production Editor Lizzie Martinez, the helpful editorial staff at Berghahn Books.

 ABBREVIATIONS 

ARD

BBC BdV CMHR CS DÖW EU FRG FPÖ GDR Gestapo GSA HIS IWM IWMN KPÖ MHDK MHM MIIWŚ NKVD NS

Arbeitsgemeinschaft der öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunkanstalten der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Association of Public Broadcasters in the Federal Republic of Germany) British Broadcasting Company Bund der Vertriebenen (Federation of Expellees) Canadian Museum for Human Rights, Winnipeg Christlichsoziale Partei (Christian Social Party), Austria Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes (Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance) European Union Federal Republic of Germany (BRD) Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (Freedom Party of Austria) German Democratic Republic (DDR) Geheime Staatspolizei (Secret State Police) German Studies Association Hamburg Institute for Social Research Imperial War Museum Imperial War Museum North Kommunistische Partei Österreichs (Communist Party of Austria) Militärhistorische Denkmalkommission (Military-Historical Monuments Commission), Austria Militärhistorisches Museum der Bundeswehr (Bundeswehr Military History Museum), Dresden Muzeum II Wojny Światowej (Museum of the Second World War), Gdańsk People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs National Socialism / National Socialist

Abbreviations



xi

NSDAP Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers’ Party) ÖAW Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Austrian Academy of Sciences) ÖKB Österreichischer Kameradschaftsbund (Austrian Union of Comrades) ÖVP Österreichische Volkspartei (Austrian People’s Party) PiS Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (Law and Justice), Polish political party POW prisoner of war SPÖ Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs (Social Democratic Party of Austria) SS Schutzstaffel (literally “protection squadron”) UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization WHC World Heritage Committee WKR Wiener Korporationsring (Vienna Corporation Ring) ZDF Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (Second German Television), public TV broadcaster ZgV Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen (Centre against Expulsions)

INTRODUCTION



Representing the Second World War in German and European Museums and Memorials JÖRG ECHTERNKAMP and STEPHAN JAEGER

T

he Second World War, as the last “total war,” has been in recent years at the center of various national and European debates surrounding the interpretation of the past. In many countries, it is still an, if not the most, important historical resource for discourses of political mobilization, legitimization, and national identity.1 A renewed interest in the advancing of national narratives runs contrary to the tendency to “Europeanize” collective memories,2 especially since 1989 and 1990, when the Holocaust became a common negative focus in Western Europe.3 At the same time, post-Soviet Eastern European countries have attempted to juxtapose the memories of two eras from the twentieth century, Stalinism and Nazism, which they have interpreted as equally criminal totalitarian regimes.4 Narratives of genocide confront narratives of national victimhood. Public representations of these narratives (national or European) reflect the ways in which they have been constructed, and have been evolving ever since. Therefore, museums and memorials lend themselves to an analysis of such shifts in memory culture.5 This holds particularly true for those representing the Second World War, as can be seen in the controversies surrounding the House of European History in Brussels, which opened in May 2017, particularly during the museum’s planning phase. Journalists and politicians, most of them British, questioned whether there was a coherent enough “European” identity to warrant a European history museum.6 The question also arose as to whether a single European master narrative can represent the Second World War or whether each member state in the European Union should have its own version(s) and interpretation(s) of how the war has shaped modern European history. Additionally, it must be asked whether a museum is able to express the tensions stemming from different interpretations of history.7

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The new Muzeum II Wojny Światowej (Museum of the Second World War, MIIWŚ) in Gdańsk is another striking example of recent memory debates about the war. In April 2016, the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage announced a new administrative structure in which the museum would merge with another new museum, which has yet to be constructed but will be located on Gdańsk’s Westerplatte peninsula, where the Second World War began, and will focus solely on the events in Poland during 1939. Polish and international historians, as well as the city of Gdańsk, protested the Polish federal government’s interference. These protests demonstrate the deep tensions in contemporary Polish society and memory culture about whether the Second World War should be remembered and represented in a comprehensive European framework or through a nationalistic emphasis on Polish heroism and suffering. 8 Because the Provincial Administrative Court in Warsaw reconsidered and temporarily suspended the previous court order, which permitted the museum merger and the new administrative structure, on 30 January 2017, the founding director, Paweł Machcewicz, was able to open the museum on 23 March 2017. On 5 April 2017, the Supreme Administrative Court of the Republic of Poland revoked the suspension decision, allowing the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage to merge the two museums and replace Machcewicz with Karol Nawrocki.9 The museum remains open today. The consequences of the approved merger and change of directorship have only slowly started to reveal themselves through minor but telling changes in the permanent exhibition10 design, implying a considerably more heroic tone.11 The Second World War has become the primary event for the current Polish government’s memory politics. A third example demonstrating current controversies around the interpretation of the Second World War is the Memorial to the Victims of the German Occupation by the sculptor Péter Párkányi Raab, erected in Budapest in July 2014. In the ruins of a temple with broken columns, a bronze eagle representing Nazi Germany towers over a bronze statue of Archangel Gabriel representing “innocent” Hungary. The memorial has triggered a protest movement, which has manifested itself in the hundreds of spontaneous remembrance notes and objects located opposite the memorial. An emotionally charged public debate indicates the problematic relationship between the Hungarian people and the current government’s interpretation of Hungary’s role in the Second World War.12 It remains to be seen whether the monument will end up working in favor of a nationalist revisionist narrative or becoming an unintended agent of change through memory controversy. Consequently, James E. Young sees monuments increasingly as sites “of contested and competing meanings,” more likely sites “of cultural conflict than of shared national values and ideals. . . . The state’s need for a monument is acknowledged, even as the traditional forms and functions of monuments are increasingly challenged.”13

Introduction



3

Indeed, the subject matter of war, and the Second World War in particular, in museums and memorials has become the object of recent research in numerous fields such as history, heritage and museum studies, literary studies, cultural studies, and Holocaust and genocide studies.14 On the one hand, museums, memorials, and monuments reflect public discourse and/or official politics. On the other hand, they are themselves agents of memory politics. Even before they open their doors or are inaugurated, they have most likely already triggered public debates on how the past should be referenced in form and content, and how this relates to prevailing national narratives. Museums and memorials are embedded in complex regional, national, and European narrative processes. They can turn either to universal ideas such as peace, tolerance, or human rights, or else to specific historical formations of victory, defeat, suffering, and atrocity. They can target specific agents and their roles, such as victims, perpetrators, bystanders, collaborators, soldiers, civilians, and resistance fighters. Exhibitions can highlight themes one would expect to see in a traditional war museum, such as specific battles and combat experiences, military equipment such as weapons and uniforms, distinctions of honor, and so on.15 They can reflect the relationship between society and war, for example, through exhibiting themes such as toys, fashion, language, or memory and war, as can be seen in the 2011 exhibition of the Militärhistorisches Museum der Bundeswehr in Dresden (Bundeswehr Military History Museum, MHM) or in the “society” gallery of the 2017 exhibition of the National Army Museum in London. For the researcher, it is crucial to explain the ethical, legal, aesthetic, and affective dimensions of the war’s representation and remembrance. These understandings are important in determining whether such roles blur together and make visitors reflect on the Second World War’s past and present complexities, or whether they reinforce societal assumptions. Contrary to the genre of academic research, museums and memorials depend on public acceptance, visitor numbers, and funding sources. Since exhibitions and memorials are not the result of individual research but rather the culmination of longer processes, accompanied by advisory boards, bureaucrats, politicians, and public debate, they appear to represent an “official” view of the past. They can also highlight the stories of individuals, which can supplement, diversify, or subvert master narratives. Similarly, by depicting history, museums and memorials contribute to the construction of collective identities. Jenny Kidd has argued that “the relationship between the museum’s role as an arbiter of collective memory and as an active constituent in the making and re-making of individual identities renders ambiguous any sense of an objective past, especially when it comes to heritages that challenge in the ways outlined above.”16 Thus, by analyzing the debates around the construction of museums and memorials, the production and reception of exhibitions, and the strategies of visualization, we can gain considerable insight into recent understandings of the past and their political implications.

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Additionally, we can learn about the decisions that inform the selection and the exclusion of specific themes, stories, objects, and perspectives of war. Because of the recent generational shift, museums and memorials that reference the Second World War have become public venues for negotiating interpretations of the past to an even greater degree than for previous generations. With the death of the last eyewitnesses, “communicative memory” is turning into “cultural memory.”17 When it comes to the Second World War and the commemoration of its victims and heroes, any interpretation ex cathedra is especially contested.18 This can be seen in particular when a museum takes on the hybridized goal of representing history and commemorating the past, or when a memorial is charged with expectations from numerous and starkly different interest groups. On the one hand, there are many types of historical museums, some of which create an intentional overlap in the concepts of museum and memorial: traditional military history museums, modern cultural history museums, memorial museums or memorials,19 documentation centers, memorial sites situated at authentic historical locations (which focus on learning through commemoration and history), and ideas museums.20 At the same time, a memorial (from memorialis) is a structure such as a monument that serves as a memory of an event or a person, frequently intended to celebrate it. War memorials, gravestones, mausoleums, and memorial plaques are common examples of memorials. But there are also memorial benches, even “ghost bikes,”21 and other less common memorials. When the memorial is constructed in order to commemorate something considered to be of national importance, the term national memorial or monument can be used. The term is also used for the acts relating to it, such as a service of remembrance or commemoration. The German use of “memorial” (Gedenkstätte) refers to a particular place—a memorial park, for instance—that may or may not contain monuments. The distinction between museum and memorial becomes increasingly blurred here, as Silke Arnold-de Simine notes: “New museums commemorating violent histories often double as memorials and quite a few memorials feature information centers.”22 Generally, memorial places serve the (negative) memory of Nazism, war, and genocide on the one hand and of Soviet occupation and socialist dictatorship in East Germany on the other. Concentration camps, in particular, are considered memorials that serve to remind visitors of a terrible past through their authentic setting, and often with the help of a permanent exhibition. Memorials in this sense are supposed to preserve the relics of that past and serve as a place of learning. In cases in which the memorial is closely linked to a monument built as a warning to future generations, the German translation of “memorial” would be Mahnmal, a particular form of Denkmal (monument/memorial). Most prominently, the popular shorthand for the Berlin Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is Holocaust-Mahnmal.

Introduction



5

Monuments that function without supplementary exhibitions work have different spatial functions than museums. At the intersection of memory and space, historians have related social memory to the construction of symbolic places. The term “landscape” reflects the idea that nature is a human construct: it characterizes a Kulturlandschaft (cultural landscape) where constructs of the imagination are projected onto water and rock, as Simon Schama has rightly underlined.23 The coast of Normandy, where numerous monuments supplement the natural setting of the Allies’ landing on the beaches of Normandy (D-Day), is a case in point.24 Historians, as well as geographers and social scientists, analyze the “text” of the landscape, the framework in which this text is produced, and the ways in which it functions. In memorial landscapes where objects such as statues or plaques remind visitors of past events or persons, the landscape adds an emotional element of experience that allows visitors to connect the past to their present. Visitors might actively seek to visit primarily symbolic monuments for commemoration or to learn about the symbolic memory of the past, whereas museums contain contextual and interpretive information that have been actively and purposefully created for visitors. Wolfgang Muchitsch and others have asked whether war belongs in the museum.25 How can museums express the trauma, bereavements, horrific bodily experiences, atrocities, complex issues of guilt, and hope that occur in war? The interconnection of war and atrocity in the Second World War further complicates this question. Jay Winter argues: “All war museums fail to represent ‘the war,’ because there was then and is now no consensus as to what constituted the war. . . . They never describe war; they only tell us about its footprints on the map of our lives.”26 Winter maintains that war museums should resist the temptation of realistic-mimetic presentation and emphasize that these museums are sites of interrogation and contestation in order for visitors to understand the links between the past and a present shaped by the consequences of war. There is a trend of experiencing or reenacting the past, particularly in the Anglo-American world, in contrast to the “traditional” Second World War museum that emphasizes objects and artifacts.27 Since the so-called Beutelsbacher Consensus of 1976, German memorial sites have tended to avoid emotionally overwhelming visitors and stress the need for cognitive distance so that visitors can reflect and learn from history.28 Since this volume focuses on German museums and memorials in the European context, it is important to scrutinize this apparent contrast more closely. Both traditions highlight the importance of learning and emphasize the importance of performativity in museum exhibitions.29 German institutions still seem to be more documentary, whereas the Anglo-American museum landscape highlights the transformative educational value of history museums, as, for example, Kidd argues: “Heritage institutions contribute variously to a number of educative endeavours: to increase knowledge about the past; to aid in the understanding and construction of identity;

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to transform our relationships with our landscape, communities and ‘nation’; and, with any luck, to make us ‘good citizens,’ increasingly, enmeshed within talk of ‘social justice.’”30 This educational interest in the present connects with the concept of “difficult knowledge” as knowledge that does not fit into traditional discourse and forces visitors to challenge their own experiences.31 Every Second World War exhibition in the twenty-first century faces the representational and experiential challenges of how to involve the visitor and of how to connect “difficult” pasts to the present. Globally, contemporary museums use a variety of methods to create “experiences” of the past, often surrounded by vigorous debates over the degree to which representations of the Second World War should be emotional or documentary, or else how these modes can be complementary.32 This includes displaying authentic or simulated objects, documenting factual evidence, and combining text, images, film, and other forms of visualization and digitization. Historical authenticity can be defined in two ways: witnessing the past through firsthand accounts, auratic places, or objects from the past; and experiencing a simulated “authentic” past through replicas and historical reenactment.33 Some even have the visitors produce their own visions of the violent past. In contrast to a linear book, museum visitors choose what to read and perceive in a museum, making the recipient essential to the analysis of the cognitive, ethical, and aesthetic dimensions of a museum’s representation. Thus, how a museum controls its narrative or experiential message—and whether it allows visitors to explore tensions or different, ambiguous versions of the violent past—is significant. Violence, including the “history of violence” (Gewaltgeschichte), has become a contemporary category of interdisciplinary research. Not until the 1990s did violence become an object of historical, sociological, and ethnological research. Current scholarship is not only interested in the social, political, or cultural conditions that make violence possible. Instead, researchers look more closely at the process of violence itself to better understand its mechanisms. This new perspective has been influenced by the “cultural turn” through its focus on actors and meanings; the symbolic dimension of violence also plays a role. On the one hand, violent processes have come to be considered the basis of “spaces of violence” or “communities of violence.”34 On the other hand, the representation of violence, rather than violence itself, has become an object of research. After all, historians, literary critics, and other scholars deal with texts and images related to violence. Although they cannot and should not replace the study of violence as such, the analyses of textual and visual representations of violence enhance our understanding of the meaning ascribed to violence after it occurs. This holds particularly true when it comes to the representation of mass violence typical of war. Different forms of cultural representation have strongly influenced historical perspectives on violence. On the one hand, countless memorials have

Introduction



7

commemorated those who suffered and/or died because of violence, oscillating between grief and glorification. On the other hand, objects of war have been collected and arranged in museums, evoking the time and experiences of the war. Both representational forms of military violence have reflected contemporary ideas of war, the role of soldiers and civilians, and the self-perception of those doing the remembering. A logical consequence of these phenomena, for example, is that the MHM’s new permanent 2011 exhibition pursues the goal of representing the history and anthropology of violence.35 Similarly, the Mémorial de Caen, in Normandy, France, which opened in 1988, emphasizes in the latest version of its permanent exhibition (it underwent strong revisions in 2009 and 2010 in its third section, “World War, Total War”) how a particular concept of violence and the increasing brutalization on all sides provides an explanatory pattern for understanding the Second World War. The anthropological effects of violence also form the core of the permanent exhibition in the MIIWŚ, although they operate within a clearer victim-perpetrator frame (the Polish nation and other occupied states versus the totalitarian states, particularly Germany and the Soviet Union).36 The concept of violence allows all three museums to interweave the Holocaust with a Second World War narrative, despite their different memory contexts, demonstrating a clear trend in military history and Second World War museums. The Nazis’ program of conquest and genocide affected the course of the war that in turn led to the radicalization of their racial politics.37 The analysis of museums and memorials also points to important changes in cultural and societal value systems, such as the replacement of the epic vision of war following 1945, in favor of a more sober “post-heroic” view of military conflicts in many European societies. This new perspective highlights individual stories—that are not synthesized into master narratives—by depicting history from below, as well as the anthropological and cultural impact of war on society. Indeed, such new political paradigms can cause changes toward multidirectionality.38 At the same time, trends like these remain dynamic, and depend on constantly shifting paradigms, as the debates about the MIIWŚ indicate. Museums and memorials are consistently situated between regional, national, and inter- and transnational frameworks. Views of Violence analyzes the representational and commemorative strategies in twenty-first-century museums and memorials in order to understand the most recent views on the violent pasts of the Second World War in German, Austrian, and European contexts. Analyzing the specific media/genres of museums and memorials in the wider context of European memory culture39 reveals the complexities of exhibiting and memorializing the Second World War in history museums and special exhibitions, memorial museums, memorial sites/exhibitions, documentation centers, memorial landscapes and discourses, monuments, and cemeteries. Whereas American scholarship

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strongly focuses on Holocaust representation (as can be seen, for example, in the works of Michael Bernard-Donals, Jennifer Hansen-Glucklich, and Alison Landsberg),40 this volume highlights the complex relationship of Second World War, Holocaust, and other discourses of suffering and commemoration. Several chapters in this volume also relate to observations about how past and present can be linked to each other. Bernard-Donals has argued by example of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, that the museum “conveys historical and cultural memory but also—in its inculcation of individual memory—encourages visitors to remember events that bear little relation to the Holocaust as such but that are intimately connected to the visitors’ present, the moment of ethical engagement from which they are propelled to become witnesses.”41 This volume analyzes how museums, memory landscapes, and monuments visualize, verbalize, and mediate the Second World War for contemporary European audiences between experience, commemoration, and historical knowledge. The volume focuses on German and Austrian representations, supplemented by contemporary representations in the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Canada. Its comparative approach, centering on German and Austrian memory, has allowed us to develop answers to the various functions of current representation and commemoration techniques in the German and European memory landscape of the Second World War. Such a comparative approach has also allowed us to avoid the difficulty found in other collections, which seem to simply assemble individual case studies. Certainly, this demonstrates that there is not one, single, consistent memory of the Second World War, concerning either national master narratives or a (Western) European narrative. Indeed, complex entanglements exist and can only be understood through a multitude of studies surrounding the practices of representation and remembrance of the Second Word War in museums, memorial landscapes, and monuments. The comparative approach is significant, with all contributions revealing the tensions between national and European (or universal) discourses. This volume highlights different visualization, spatialization, narrativization, and framing techniques that are employed by museums and memorials, including the use of perspective; the creation of historical proximity and distance; the use of text, photography, film, and multimedia installations; and the temporal and spatial layers of memory with their cognitive, ethic, and aesthetic implications.

Museums This book focuses on museum representations, memory landscapes, and memorials. The first part, “Museums,” analyzes contemporary representational

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techniques in their historical tendencies. Additionally, it explores museumspecific techniques of creating experiential views of the past, as well as the use of space and visualization in the museum, and questions how perpetration can be represented in the museum and what it means to house a museum in a perpetrator country. Furthermore, it analyzes comparative narrative patterns, political discourses, and memory politics in the contemporary museum, marking the complexities between national and transnational trends. All the chapters are situated around questions concerning whether exhibitions are presented as fact-based places for learning, as entertainment, or as experience. The chapters also discuss whether the museum visitor is encouraged to think independently or is mainly prompted to digest a preconstructed version of the past. Another strand that connects the chapters is the notion of authenticity in relation to historical objects or media, as well as the location of an exhibition and building in which it is housed. In chapter 1, Thomas Thiemeyer provides an overview of historical and current trends in Second World War and Holocaust museal representation in Germany, highlighting the ways in which war representation in the media has changed in its transference from communicative into cultural memory. Thiemeyer identifies four phases of German museum representation, beginning with 1945–1960, which was shaped by the near disappearance of war representation in the museum in West and East Germany. Distant, intentionally objective memorial sites that remember Nazi history and atrocities characterize the second phase (1960s–1990s). The third phase (1990s–2000s) concentrates on new perpetrator research. Most recently, in the fourth phase, there are five clear trends in German museums. (1) Museums and memorials are geared primarily no longer toward veterans but rather toward younger people who have no firsthand memory of the war. (2) Therefore, remembering the war in museums has become more professionalized and institutionalized, exceeding the interests of military historians. (3) Historical events, such as the Second World War and the Holocaust, have become a prominent part of what is called the “heritage industry.” (4) Museums and memorial site exhibitions have changed according to their underlying political, educational, and historiographical concepts; they have become “performative spaces” in which people are supposed to “experience” the past rather than reflect on it. The historical object has become only one of many means to attract the museum’s potential audience, which in turn has become more important than the museum’s collection. (5) Finally, as discussed earlier, the concept of military history has undergone far-reaching methodological changes since the 1980s. Military historians no longer restrict their studies to military operations and organizations, but most importantly include approaches and topics including cultural studies, as well as the sociology of violence. Recent exhibitions increasingly focus on everyday life and individual experiences rather than the history of battles. People on the

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home front, prisoners of war, and crimes against humanity are some of the new topics under discussion. Chapter 2, by Stephan Jaeger, connects to Thiemeyer’s question of how to mediate the Second World War in the European museum in the contemporary historiographical and memory environment. The chapter develops a theoretical framework for understanding how contemporary museums mediate war through the narratological concept of “experientiality” in order to understand and theorize historiographical approaches for varying museal representations of the Second World War in the second decade of the twenty-first century. The approaches that are analyzed create a fine balance between representing historical knowledge, simulating historical structures and entanglements rather than historical events, and emotionalizing the visitor on various levels. Though almost all newer museums construct their own simulated historical, poietic worlds, they vary in their representational strategies. For example, variations occur in the historical distance between visitor and museum contents, the focus on individual voices and collective perspectives, and the use of narrative and scenography in relation to exhibited objects. The museum as a genre expands the notions of time and space, leading to a dynamic relationship between history and memory, while aiming to involve the present visitor’s future behavior in different emotional, moral, reflexive, and pedagogical dimensions. There are variations between museums that suggest differing primary experiences of the past, which allow the museum visitor to empathize with concrete historical perspectives. However, these perspectives are marked by their constructed nature and their structural experientiality. This can allow the visitor either to empathize with constructed collective perspectives or to experience simulated abstract effects of war in multifaceted ways. These effects are not historical events but rather constructions of historical knowledge that are clearly not in themselves historical. This chapter contextualizes such forms of experientiality in the context of the Western European museum, with particular emphasis on new exhibitions in the Second World War battleground regions of Normandy and the Ardennes, as well as the most recent German war exhibitions in Berlin-Karlshorst and Dresden. Exhibitions are sensual experiences that rely particularly on visual perception. In chapter 3, Jana Hawig explores specifically how historic images are used in contemporary Second World War representations. Museums use the power of images to construct forms of reality in the spectator’s gaze. They must also deal with the challenge that governments, as means of propagandistic war communication, have heavily used photography and video footage from the world wars. Visual media such as photography and film are used in exhibitions to depict scenes or people of the past. Today, visual material reveals what can no longer be seen: scenes of battlefields, victims, perpetrators, or atrocities. The comparative analysis of images in the MHM in Dresden and the Imperial War

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Museum North in Manchester reveals potential differences in the use of visual material in Germany and Great Britain in order to shed light on exhibition practices in modern museums. It does so while bearing in mind the differing national methods of Second World War remembrance. The findings illustrate that the heritage of the two countries’ war history in the twentieth century influence the use of images in museums today, with a tension between learning from media in Germany and affect-based representation in the United Kingdom. Furthermore, the findings deal with the degree to which each respective style aims to unsettle the visitor through confrontation with images in order to make them reflect on different meanings of the Second World War. This analysis demonstrates numerous representational tensions, such as that between the academic referencing of images and entertainment, and the cognitive and emotive dimensions of exhibiting historical sources in visual media. As discussed earlier, any analysis of the representation of the Second World War is closely entangled with the representation of the Holocaust. Erin Johnston-Weiss, in chapter 4, continues this volume’s exploration of the aesthetic and representational effect of visual media by examining empathy and distanciation in the museum visitor while being confronted with Holocaust photography in the Topographie des Terrors (Topography of Terror) and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. The chapter analyzes the intricacies of creating numerous levels of visitor empathy with victims, perpetrators, and bystanders. Consequently, empathy evidently is not opposed to cognitive-based learning about the past but rather can supplement such a learning process. This chapter demonstrates how empathy can be created through an exhibition’s way of allowing the visitor to take on the gaze of perpetrator and bystander through photographic collage. This concept of “gaze as empathy” challenges the visitor to rethink their relation to the “difficult knowledge” of the Holocaust and the Second World War. By contrasting a German documentation center and a Canadian museum, we can understand how different national narratives can contribute to how empathy and distanciation are perceived in two museums with similar subject matters. These representational techniques are used in specific ways for distinct audiences dealing with atrocities and human rights in the twenty-first century. The visitor is forced into a global perspective of war and human rights that is relevant to their present and goes beyond the goal of historical documentation. This link between past and present also indicates perspectives for the future analyses of genocide and mass atrocities in museums. In chapter 5, Sarah Kleinmann asks how museums can represent the National Socialist perpetrator in the context of a museum exhibition. She compares two exhibitions from the perpetrator countries of Germany and Austria, located at authentic sites of the “euthanasia killings”: the Museum Gedenkstätte Grafeneck (Grafeneck Museum memorial site) in southern Germany and the Lern- und Gedenkort Schloss Hartheim (Hartheim Castle Learning

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and Memorial Site) in northwestern Austria. The chapter demonstrates recent progress in representing perpetrators in a museum context, as well as ongoing curatorial, representational, and financial challenges of perpetrator exhibitions. Kleinmann analyzes representational means and sources, normative frames, explanations for the euthanasia killings, narrative structures, and the curatorial decisions of both exhibitions. In particular, Kleinmann underlines that the gender-specific dimensions of persecution could be further reflected in the exhibitions. Both exhibitions highlight a factual and documentary approach in their representation of perpetrators, based on both research and the demands of victims’ relatives. Despite the differences in memory debates and historical developments in Austria and Germany since 1945, there are analogous patterns of interpretation between the two exhibitions, proving that there is a transnational effect within the fields of perpetrator research, museum work, and memory politics. Kleinmann chooses a political-ideological framework for her chapter in order to highlight the potential for political and ideological pressures to reverse the insights of contemporary perpetrator research, making it even more important to reflect on the ways in which perpetrators can be represented in a museal context. Winson Chu concludes the first half of this volume with chapter 6, which demonstrates particularly how exhibition narratives are embedded within political and ideological contexts, blending national and European narratives. An analysis of how the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 has been portrayed in historical exhibitions in Germany reveals the difficulties of finding a shared European identity and the function of memory politics in the German-Polish discourse. This is especially highlighted in relation to the 2014 special exhibition developed for the seventieth anniversary of the uprising by the Warsaw Rising Museum at the Topography of Terror in Berlin. The site of the former Gestapo and SS headquarters on Wilhelmstraße was symbolic in displaying the genesis, development, and consequences of the epic struggle, which claimed the lives of some two hundred thousand Poles and temporarily wiped the city of Warsaw from the map. Supplemented by reflections on other projects in Poland and Germany, the chapter shows that Polish-German historical exhibitions since the 2000s have sought to portray a European paradigm of reconciliation that relies on the narrative of totalitarian oppression and victimization at the hands of Nazis and Soviets lasting from 1939 to 1989. Subordinating the uprising into this narrative of an eternal Polish search for independence has made any discussion about the causes and consequences of the uprising nonnegotiable. In the 2014 Berlin exhibition, the “bloody” defeat was transformed into a moral victory by emphasizing an uncompromising quest for freedom that justified the lives lost. Although the Europeanization of Second World War history has meant that national museums across Europe have begun to engage with their own countries’ participation in the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust,

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the Polish sponsor used the Berlin exhibition to reinforce nationalist narratives about Polish heroism and philosemitism. Exhibitions on German-Polish history have reflected increasingly divisive developments in European memory politics and the continuing nationalization of history writing. Indeed, the division of memory labor across Europe today ensures that even when projects have transnational cooperation, visitors seeing the same exhibition will come away with little that alters their own national viewpoints.

Monuments and Memorial Landscapes The second part of this book focuses on monuments and so-called memorial landscapes. Several contributions also analyze the role of museums and exhibitions in memorials as part of a wider memorial landscape. These monuments and memorial landscapes evoke various stages and problems of the war: D-Day; the Battle of Hürtgen Forest (1944–1945), east of the Belgian-German border; the death and suffering of civilians who fled the Red Army, and nonGerman populations taking revenge on Germans in formerly German or occupied territories from 1945 through the immediate postwar years; and the millions of fallen soldiers (and small number of deserters) in the Wehrmacht—a problem dealt with only recently. On the one hand, these aspects of war are referenced in “authentic” places where one can visit the remains of warfare, such as the bunkers on Omaha Beach or the fortifications of Hürtgen forest. On the other hand, monuments were also erected in centralized locations to send their message to a wider audience, such as the monument of the deserter, inaugurated in 2014, on the Ballhausplatz next to Vienna’s Heldenplatz, which is one of the most important public spaces in the capital. Additionally, different institutions have shaped the various views of violence they offer: central and regional, national and foreign, public and private. The fierce battles fought between US forces and the Wehrmacht on the Western Front in and around the Hürtgenwald (Hürtgen forest), from September 1944 to February 1945, are among the final and longest battles on the territory of the German Reich. In chapter 7, opening the “Memorial” part, Karola Fings analyzes how a memorial landscape has developed in the Hürtgenwald region in recent decades, consisting of monuments, war gravesites, memorial stones, and a museum. This memorial landscape has been characterized by a practice of remembrance and commemoration, with an emphasis on the memory of the German 116th Panzer Division and the victims of war. In particular, the two large war graves in the villages of Hürtgen and Vossenack are places to commemorate those who fell in the battle. In these representations, Wehrmacht soldiers are commonly presented as heroes, while German civilians are considered victims of war. Contrary to the development of national discourse,

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any critical historicization has been set aside. Thus, this memorial landscape has become a place of fascination for revisionist and right-wing groups. This chapter analyzes how the museum’s representation of the past fits into this ideologically charged memorial landscape; contextualizes the complex question of victimhood and perpetratorship, the involvement of social groups and institutions, and the public’s perception of commemoration practices; and demonstrates how increasing criticism has led to a shift of perspective in regional memory politics. This shift away from the glorification of German soldiers to a more critical and more inclusive view is also apparent in the Austrian case. Chapter 8 focuses on ongoing social and political processes and practices that have shaped and transformed two memorials at the renowned Heldenplatz and the adjacent Ballhausplatz, both in the heart of Vienna, during the past two decades: the Heldendenkmal (Heroes’ Memorial), and the Memorial for the Victims of Nazi Military Justice. The latter was only inaugurated in October 2014. The former was established in 1934, during the Austrofascist era, for the fallen soldiers of the First World War. Since the end of the Second World War, it has also been used for the soldiers of that war. Additionally, since 1965, the Weiheraum (consecrated space) inside the same building has been established as a memorial for the Austrian resistance fighters. These two memorials to obedient and disobedient actors are part of a database consisting of about 1,700 symbols of remembrance in Vienna. Peter Pirker, Magnus Koch, and Johannes Kramer highlight the necessity of analyzing the plurality and interrelations of sectional memories in society to understand the mechanisms of the politics of memory in democracies. The chapter explores social and political frameworks, as well as the driving force behind transformative agency in one specific cycle of war memorialization. This cycle ran through imperial, postimperial, fascist, National Socialist, and democratic constructions and appropriations. The chapter serves as an intensive case study of the country’s “working through the past” regarding the Second World War, ending in today’s new, complex national and European narratives.42 The creation of the deserters’ memorial on the Ballhausplatz reveals the possible impact of a small group of actors with a single issue, at an intersection of party politics, scholarship, and civil society activism. This has brought the National Socialist persecution of Wehrmacht deserters to light and has allowed for their legal and social rehabilitation. The incomplete musealization of the Heldendenkmal has also been mainly advanced by experts, who have found little advocacy in civil society. The same holds true when one examines yet another reminder of the Second World War, as well as its consequences on local and regional levels: monuments commemorating flight and expulsion in Central and Eastern Europe. There are more than 1,400 local expellee monuments in Germany today. Few of them, however, mark historical sites. To encounter such authentic memori-

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als, one must travel to Germany’s neighboring countries, where, over the years, criticism of the expellee organizations and Germany’s official remembrance of flight and expulsion has been most vociferous. Nevertheless, over the past quarter-century, expellee organizations and other groups have erected more than one hundred local onsite monuments at mass graves, internment camps, and elsewhere to memorialize the violent excesses perpetrated against ethnic Germans after the demise of the Nazi regime. In chapter 9, Jeffrey Luppes illustrates how monuments in the former “German East” have commemorated flight and expulsion. This chapter tracks the development of this memorial architecture to highlight the commonalities and divergences between memorialization of this topic at the local level, within both Germany and its eastern neighbors. Luppes particularly emphasizes the public debate over a memorial plaque in Postoloprty (Postelberg) in the Czech Republic to understand how these monuments (placed at authentic sites) use different terminologies to describe the forced migration of ethnic Germans and the atrocities committed against them. Additionally, he explores the possibilities that monuments and public discourse hold for a less contentious model of the remembrance of flight and expulsion. This chapter contributes to larger debates about German suffering during the Second World War and the history of war and violence in the twentieth century. It also offers a transnational comparison of the forms, inscriptions, and iconographies of local expellee monuments to understand this specific dimension of German postwar memory.43 Jörg Echternkamp concludes the volume’s second part with chapter 10. Similarly to Fings and Luppes, Echternkamp argues that memory culture develops at authentic sites or in authentic spaces. The landing operations on 6 June 1944 in Normandy have historically been presumed to be the decisive step toward liberation of German-occupied northwestern Europe, and the most important contribution to the Allied victory on the Western Front. While the particular landscape of the Normandy coast marked this military operation, the battles have left their marks on the coastline. The materiel traces of Operation Neptune cannot be overlooked even today: German fortifications as part of the Atlantic Wall, the aerial and naval bombardment by the Allies, the amphibious landings in the five sectors, and the tedious battle against the Wehrmacht that followed all altered the landscape. In addition to those authentic imprints of military history, a second historical layer has changed the landscape since the 1950s. War cemeteries, monuments, memorials, and museums of various kinds have reshaped the area. Thus, the Normandy battleground can be considered an example of the interaction between humans and space. With the “spatial turn” of cultural history in mind, and a focus on the history of memory, this chapter examines the transformation process by charting how the battlegrounds have been turned into a memorial landscape since the end of the Second World War. It identifies different historical “markers” of the memory space in Nor-

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mandy today, and demonstrates its symbolic meanings through its relation to the European master narrative of liberation and integration. Since 2014, the Normandy region has been trying to get the coastline on the list of UNESCO World Heritage sites, implying its outstanding universal value. The inclination toward an idealizing narrative in accordance with the framework of the World Heritage criteria also reflects the much more sobering logic of economy, “heritage tourism,” education, and remembrance against the backdrop of generational change. As in Thiemeyer’s chapter 1, Echternkamp concludes with the challenging question of whether the symbolism situated between culture and nature can replace the loss of eyewitnesses in representing the Second World War for future generations. In his afterword, Jay Winter situates the commemoration of the Second World War in a wider context of technologically driven memory booms in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries since the end of the First World War, highlighting how the changes in forms of remembrance affect what is remembered. Besides the link between media and memory, Winter emphasizes the role of the experiential: the way in which war is imagined and simulated in a globalized and commercialized world. He then contrasts the categories of secular and existential memory regimes. Winter captures the former in its relation to the mainly Western concept of human rights, whereas the latter is visible in numerous dimensions of the “sacred” languages of martyrdom, and thus a shared memory of the Second World War in Europe remains a utopian idea in the constant memory battles between the secular and the sacred. Jörg Echternkamp is Research Director at the Center for Military History and Social Sciences of the Bundeswehr, Potsdam; Associate Professor of Modern History at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg; and coeditor of Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift. He has worked widely on German and European social and cultural history (nineteenth to twenty-first centuries), focusing on nationalism, National Socialism and the Second World War, postwar memories, and historiography. His publications include seven monographs, recently, Das Dritte Reich (2018) and Soldaten im Nachkrieg (2014); two edited volumes, including Germany and the Second World War, Volume IX/1–2: German Wartime Society 1939–1945 (2014); and eight coedited volumes, most recently, Geschichte ohne Grenzen? (2017) and Gefallenengedenken im globalen Vergleich (2013). He is currently editing a book on military and society in East and West Germany from 1970 to 1990. Stephan Jaeger is Professor of German Studies and Head of the Department of German and Slavic Studies at the University of Manitoba. He researches on narratives, representations, and memory of war in German and European literature, film, historiography, and museums. His publications include two

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monographs, Theorie lyrischen Ausdrucks (2001) and Performative Geschichtsschreibung (2011); and seven coedited publications, including Fighting Words and Images: Representing War across the Disciplines (2012) and “Representations of German War Experiences from the Eighteenth Century to the Present,” a special issue of Seminar (2014). He is currently completing a monograph on twenty-first-century museum representations of the Second World War in Europe and North America.

Notes 1. See, e.g., Kerstin von Lingen, ed., Kriegserfahrung und nationale Identität in Europa nach 1945: Erinnerung, Säuberungsprozesse und nationales Gedächtnis (Paderborn, 2009). 2. See Stefan Berger, “Remembering the Second World War in Western Europe, 1945–2005,” A European Memory? Contested Histories and Politics of Remembrance, ed. Małgorzata Pakier and Bo Stråth (New York, 2010), 119–36; Jörg Echternkamp and Stefan Martens, eds., Experience and Memory: The Second World War in Europe (New York, 2010); Manuel Bragança and Peter Tame, eds., The Long Aftermath: Cultural Legacies of Europe at War, 1936–2016 (New York, 2016); Jörg Echternkamp and Hans-Hubertus Mack, eds., Geschichte ohne Grenzen? Europäische Dimensionen der Militärgeschichte vom 19. Jahrhundert bis heute (Berlin, 2017). For the discussion of the Holocaust as negative founding myth of Europe, see Claus Leggewie, “Seven Circles of European Memory,” Eurozine, 20 December 2010, http://www.eurozine.com/ articles/2010-12-20-leggewie-en.html; cf. Claus Leggewie and Anne Lang, Der Kampf um die europäische Erinnerung: Ein Schlachtfeld wird besichtigt (Munich, 2011). 3. For reading the Holocaust as vehicle of an institutionalized Pan-European memory, see Oliver Plessow, “The Interplay of the European Commission, Researcher and Educator Networks and Transnational Agencies in the Promotion of a Pan-European Holocaust Memory,” Journal of Contemporary European Studies 23, no. 3 (2015): 378–90. For the prevailing national narratives of basically all European nations as victims and resisters in the Second World War, see Monika Flacke, ed., Mythen der Nationen: 1945—Arena der Erinnerungen: Eine Ausstellung des Deutschen Historischen Museums—Begleitbände zur Ausstellung 2. Oktober 2004 bis 27. Februar 2005. Ausstellungshalle von I. M. Pei, 2 vols. (Berlin, 2004). For the increasing status of the Holocaust as globalized memory, see Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider, Erinnerung im globalen Zeitalter: Der Holocaust (Frankfurt, 2007); Aleida Assmann, “The Holocaust—a Global Memory? Extensions and Limits of a New Memory Community,” in Memory in a Global Age: Discourses, Practices and Trajectories, ed. Aleida Assmann and Sebastian Conrad (Basingstoke, 2010), 97–117. 4. Cf. Zuzanna Bogumił, Joanna Wawrzyniak, Tim Buchen, Christian Ganzer, and Maria Senina, The Enemy on Display: The Second World War in Eastern European Museums (New York, 2015); Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (New York, 2010); Volker Knigge and Ulrich Mählert, eds., Der Kommunismus im Museum: Formen der Auseinandersetzung in Deutschland und Osteuropa (Cologne, 2005). 5. For the German Second World War experience in the twenty-first century, see also Susanne Vees-Gulani and Stephan Jaeger, “Introduction: Representations of German War Experiences and the Legacy of the Second World War,” in “Representations of

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7.

8. 9.

10. 11.

12. 13. 14.



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War Experiences from the Eighteenth Century to the Present,” ed. Stephan Jaeger and Susanne Vees-Gulani, special issue, Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 50, no. 1 (2014): 1–17. For the changing configuration of museums, see Simon J. Knell, Suzanne MacLeod, and Sheila Watson, eds., Museum Revolutions: How Museums Change and Are Changed (New York, 2007). See, e.g., Chris Doidge, “Does Europe Need a £44M History Museum?” BBC News, 12 February 2013, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-21383375. For the problems of musealizing Europe, see Wolfram Kaiser, Stefan Krankenhagen, and Kerstin Poehls, eds., Exhibiting Europe in Museums: Transnational Networks, Collections, Narratives, and Representations (New York, 2016). For discussion on the limitations of the museum’s approach, see Veronika Settele, “Including Exclusion in European Memory? Politics of Remembrance at the House of European History,” Journal of Contemporary European Studies 23, no. 3 (2015): 405–16. See also Oliver Grimm, “Kampf und Krampf um ‘Haus der Europäischen Geschichte,’” 25 January 2012, Die Presse, http://diepresse.com/home/ausland/eu/726922/ Kampf-und-Krampf-um-Haus-der-Europaeischen-Geschichte. See also Winson Chu, this volume. The discussion has also been well documented in the international press. See, e.g., Rachel Donadio and Joanna Berendt, “Poland’s Second World War Museum is Imperiled,” New York Times, 24 January 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/24/ arts/design/polands-world-war-ii-museum-is-imperiled.html. Note that this volume uses “exhibition” throughout; “exhibit” is only used, as is common in British English, to signify a single object in an exhibition. Cf. Julia Michalska, “Outcry over Polish Government’s Changes to Second World War Museum,” The Art Newspaper 21 December 2017, https://www.theartnewspaper.com/ news/outcry-over-polish-government-s-changes-to-second-world-war-museum. For an analysis of the original exhibition, see Anna Muller and Daniel Logemann. “War, Dialogue, and Overcoming the Past: The Second World War Museum in Gdańsk, Poland,” Public Historian 39, no. 3 (2017): 85–95. For further details, see Silke Arnold-de Simine, “The Ruin as Memorial—The Memorial as Ruin,” Performance Research 20, no. 3 (2015): 97. James E. Young, “Memory and the Monument after 9/11,” in The Future of Memory, ed. Richard Crownshaw, Jane Kilby, and Antony Rowland (New York, 2010), 78. For Eastern Europe, cf. Ekaterina Makhotina, Ekaterina Keding, Włodzimierz Borodziej, Etienne François, and Martin Schulze Wessel, eds., Krieg im Museum: Präsentationen des Zweiten Weltkriegs in Museen und Gedenkstätten des östlichen Europas (Paderborn, 2015); Monika Heinemann, Krieg und Kriegserinnerung im Museum: Der Zweite Weltkrieg in polnischen historischen Ausstellungen seit den 1980er-Jahren (Göttingen, 2017); Stefan Troebst and Johanna Wolf, eds., Erinnern an den Zweiten Weltkrieg: Mahnmale und Museen in Mittel- und Osteuropa (Leipzig, 2011). For the Second World War in museums in Western Europe, see Thomas Thiemeyer, Fortsetzung des Krieges mit anderen Mitteln: Die beiden Weltkriege im Museum (Paderborn, 2010); Jay Winter, “Museum and the Representation of War,” in Does War Belong in Museums? The Representation of Violence in Exhibitions, ed. Wolfgang Muchitsch (Bielefeld, 2013), 21–37; Silke Arnold-de Simine, Mediating Memory in the Museum: Trauma, Empathy, Nostalgia (Basingstoke, 2013). For an eclectic collection of mostly case studies, see Muchitsch, Does War Belong in Museums? For a theoretical discussion of war

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15. 16. 17.

18. 19.

20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

30. 31.

32.



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in memorial landscapes, see Keir Reeves, ed., Battlefield Events: Landscape, Commemoration and Heritage (London, 2015); Annika Björkdahl and Susanne Buckley-Zistel, eds., Spatializing Peace and Conflict: Mapping the Production of Places, Sites and Scales of Violence (Basingstoke, 2016); Marie Louise Stig Sørensen and Dacia Viejo-Rose, eds., War and Cultural Heritage: Biographies of Place (New York, 2015). For the evolution of the German war museum from 1945 to the present, see Thomas Thiemeyer, this volume. Jenny Kidd, “Introduction: Challenging History in the Museum,” in Challenging History in the Museum: International Perspectives, ed. Jenny Kidd, Sam Cairns, Alex Drago, Amy Ryall, and Miranda Stearn (London, 2014), 4. For the concepts of communicative and cultural memory, see Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen (Munich, 1992), 48–56. For the German context, see Aleida Assmann, Shadows of Trauma: Memory and the Politics of Postwar Identity, trans. Sarah Clift (New York, 2016). See Bill Niven, ed., Germans as Victims: Remembering the Past in Contemporary Germany (New York, 2006); Helmut Schmitz, ed., A Nation of Victims? Representations of German Wartime Suffering from 1945 (Amsterdam, 2007). See esp. Paul Williams, Memorial Museums: The Global Rush to Commemorate Atrocities (Oxford, 2007), 7–9. For the merging of museum and memorial, here in the French term historial for the Historial de la Grande Guerre (Historial of the Great War) in Péronne, see also Jean-Jacques Becker, “The Origins of the Historial,” in The Collections of the Historial of the Great War, ed. Caroline Fontaine, Annette Becker, Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeaui, and Marie-Pascale Prévost-Bault (Paris, 2008), 31–32. For the concept of the “ideas museum,” see Karen Busby, Adam Muller, and Andrew Woolford, eds., The Idea of a Human Rights Museum (Winnipeg, 2015). A ghost bike is a bicycle roadside memorial, placed where a cyclist has been killed or severely injured. Arnold-de Simine, Mediating Memory, 76. Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (New York, 1995). Cf. Jörg Echternkamp, this volume. Muchitsch, Does War Belong in Museums? Winter, “Museum and the Representation of War,” 23. Cf., e.g., the subtle discussion by Arnold-de Simine, Mediating Memory. For further details, see Thiemeyer, this volume. E.g., Rosmarie Beier-de Haan, “Re-staging Histories and Identities,” in A Companion to Museum Studies, ed. Sharon Macdonald (New York, 2006), 186–97; Sharon Macdonald, Difficult Heritage: Negotiating the Nazi Past in Nuremberg and Beyond (New York, 2008); Aleida Assmann, Geschichte im Gedächtnis: Von der individuellen Erfahrung zur öffentlichen Inszenierung (Munich, 2007), 136–79. Kidd, “Introduction,” 7. Cf. Erica Lehrer, Cynthia E. Milton, and Monica Patterson, eds., Curating Difficult Knowledge: Violent Pasts in Public Places (Basingstoke, 2011); Julia Rose, Interpreting Difficult History at Museums and Historic Sites (Lanham, MD, 2016). For the Second World War, see esp. Macdonald, Difficult Heritage. The tension between distant reflection and the emotional involvement of the visitor is crucial for museums’ representational decisions concerning the Second World War. For example, the MIIWŚ quoted the German historian Stefan Troebst on its website

20

33.

34.

35. 36.

37. 38. 39. 40.

41. 42. 43.



Jörg Echternkamp and Stephan Jaeger

after a roundtable discussion in the museum as follows: “‘German museums are totally bleached of any emotion when touching on such topics as the Holocaust, occupational terror, mass executions, or other terrifying events’—Prof. Troebst said and continued to explain that German exhibitions typically limited themselves to presenting documents, black-and-white photographs, and the like.” Muzeum II Wojny Światowej, “Whats On,” entry 23 January 2017, last accessed 23 March 2017, http://www.muzeum1939 .pl/en/aktualnosci/act/news-info/type/month/y/2017/m/01#article-1c79554cb2f8 541728cca66701fb6ab6. These entries have disappeared after a complete website redesign as a consequence of the director change. In contrast, scholars such as Thiemeyer, Fortsetzung des Krieges, 248–49, have repeatedly warned that experiential museums can manipulate the visitor through scenographic spectacles and reduce the visitor’s capacity for reflection. For a discussion of different layers of “experientiality” that museums can express or create, see Stephan Jaeger, this volume. Eva Ulrike Pirker, “Authentizitätsfiktionen in populären Geschichtskulturen: Annäherungen,” in Echte Geschichte: Authentizitätsfiktionen in populären Geschichtskulturen, ed. Eva Ulrike Pirker, Mark Rüdiger, Christa Klein, Thorsten Leiendecker, Carolyn Oesterle, Miriam Sénécheau, and Michiko Uike-Bormann (Bielefeld, 2010), 17–18. Jörg Baberowski, Räume der Gewalt (Frankfurt, 2015); Winfried Speitkamp, ed., Gewaltgemeinschaften: von der Spätantike bis ins 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 2013); Stefan Kühl, Ganz normale Organisationen: Zur Soziologie des Holocaust (Berlin, 2014); Axel T. Paul and Benjamin Schwalb, eds., Gewaltmasse: Über Eigendynamik und Selbstorganisation kollektiver Gewalt (Hamburg, 2015). Cf. Stephan Jaeger, “Temporalizing History toward the Future: Representing Violence and Human Rights Violations in the Military History Museum in Dresden,” in Busby et al., The Idea of a Human Rights Museum, 229–46. Muller and Logemann, “War, Dialogue, and Overcoming the Past,” 89, contextualize violence in the MIIWŚ as follows: “The similarities between the murderous ambitions of both Germany and the Soviet Union bring to focus the urgency of the war machine and an internal logic of violence.” Doris L. Bergen, War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust, 2nd ed. (Lanham, MD, 2009). Cf. Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (Stanford, CA, 2009). E.g., Muchitsch, Does War Belong in Museums?; Makhotina et al., Krieg im Museum; Troebst and Wolf, Erinnern an den Zweiten Weltkrieg; Olga Kurilo, ed., Der Zweite Weltkrieg im Museum: Kontinuität und Wandel (Berlin, 2007). E.g., Michael Bernard-Donals, Figures of Memory: The Rhetoric of Displacement at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (Albany, 2016); Jennifer Hansen-Glucklich, Holocaust Memory Reframed: Museums and the Challenges of Representation (New Brunswick, NJ, 2014); Alison Landsberg, Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture (New York, 2004). Bernard-Donals, Figures of Memory, 17. Because of its status as a national case study, the chapter is approximately double the length of other chapters in this volume. See also Christopher Whitehead, Katherine Lloyd, Susannah Eckersley, and Rhiannon Mason, eds. Museums, Migration and Identity in Europe: Peoples, Places and Identities (London, 2015).

Introduction



21

Bibliography Arnold-de Simine, Silke. Mediating Memory in the Museum: Trauma, Empathy, Nostalgia. Basingstoke, 2013. ———. “The Ruin as Memorial—The Memorial as Ruin.” Performance Research 20, no. 3 (2015): 94–102. Assmann, Aleida. Geschichte im Gedächtnis: Von der individuellen Erfahrung zur öffentlichen Inszenierung. Munich, 2007. ———. “The Holocaust—a Global Memory? Extensions and Limits of a New Memory Community.” In Memory in a Global Age: Discourses, Practices and Trajectories, edited by Aleida Assmann and Sebastian Conrad, 97–117. Basingstoke, 2010. ———. Shadows of Trauma: Memory and the Politics of Postwar Identity. Translated by Sarah Clift. New York, 2016. Assmann, Jan. Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen. Munich, 1992. Baberowski, Jörg. Räume der Gewalt. Frankfurt, 2015. Becker, Jean-Jacques. “The Origins of the Historial.” In The Collections of the Historial of the Great War, edited by Caroline Fontaine, Annette Becker, Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeaui, and Marie-Pascale Prévost-Bault, 30–33. Paris, 2008. Beier-de Haan, Rosmarie. “Re-staging Histories and Identities.” In A Companion to Museum Studies, edited by Sharon Macdonald, 186–97. New York, 2006. Bergen, Doris L. War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust. 2nd ed. Lanham, MD, 2009. Berger, Stefan. “Remembering the Second World War in Western Europe, 1945–2005.” In A European Memory? Contested Histories and Politics of Remembrance, edited by Małgorzata Pakier and Bo Stråth, 119–36. New York, 2010. Bernard-Donals, Michael. Figures of Memory: The Rhetoric of Displacement at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2016. Björkdahl, Annika, and Susanne Buckley-Zistel, eds. Spatializing Peace and Conflict: Mapping the Production of Places, Sites and Scales of Violence. Basingstoke, 2016. Bogumił, Zuzanna, Joanna Wawrzyniak, Tim Buchen, Christian Ganzer, and Maria Senina. The Enemy on Display: The Second World War in Eastern European Museums. New York, 2015. Bragança, Manuel, and Peter Tame, eds. The Long Aftermath: Cultural Legacies of Europe at War, 1936–2016. New York, 2016. Busby, Karen, Adam Muller, and Andrew Woolford, eds. The Idea of a Human Rights Museum. Winnipeg, 2015. Doidge, Chris. “Does Europe Need a £44M History Museum?” BBC News, 12 February 2013. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-21383375. Donadio, Rachel, and Joanna Berendt. “Poland’s Second World War Museum Is Imperiled.” New York Times, 24 January 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/24/arts/ design/polands-world-war-ii-museum-is-imperiled.html. Echternkamp, Jörg, and Stefan Martens, eds. Experience and Memory: The Second World War in Europe. New York, 2010. Echternkamp, Jörg, and Hans-Hubertus Mack, eds., Geschichte ohne Grenzen? Europäische Dimensionen der Militärgeschichte vom 19. Jahrhundert bis heute. Berlin, 2017.

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Flacke, Monika, ed. Mythen der Nationen: 1945—Arena der Erinnerungen, eine Ausstellung des Deutschen Historischen Museums, Begleitbände zur Ausstellung 2. Oktober 2004 bis 27. Februar 2005, Ausstellungshalle von I. M. Pei. 2 vols. Berlin, 2004. Grimm, Oliver. “Kampf und Krampf um ‘Haus der Europäischen Geschichte.’” Die Presse, 25 January 2012. http://diepresse.com/home/ausland/eu/726922/Kampfund-Krampf-um-Haus-der-Europaeischen-Geschichte. Hansen-Glucklich, Jennifer. Holocaust Memory Reframed: Museums and the Challenges of Representation. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2014. Heinemann, Monika. Krieg und Kriegserinnerung im Museum: Der Zweite Weltkrieg in polnischen historischen Ausstellungen seit den 1980er-Jahren. Göttingen, 2017. Jaeger, Stephan. “Temporalizing History toward the Future: Representing Violence and Human Rights Violations in the Military History Museum in Dresden.” In Busby et al., The Idea of a Human Rights Museum, 229–46. Kaiser, Wolfram, Stefan Krankenhagen, and Kerstin Poehls, eds. Exhibiting Europe in Museums: Transnational Networks, Collections, Narratives, and Representations. New York, 2016. Kidd, Jenny. “Introduction: Challenging History in the Museum.” In Challenging History in the Museum: International Perspectives, edited by Jenny Kidd, Sam Cairns, Alex Drago, Amy Ryall, and Miranda Stearn, 1–22. London: Routledge, 2014. Knell, Simon J., Suzanne MacLeod, and Sheila Watson, eds. Museum Revolutions: How Museums Change and Are Changed. New York, 2007. Knigge, Volker, and Ulrich Mählert, eds. Der Kommunismus im Museum: Formen der Auseinandersetzung in Deutschland und Osteuropa. Cologne, 2005. Kühl, Stefan. Ganz normale Organisationen: Zur Soziologie des Holocaust. Berlin, 2014. Kurilo, Olga, ed. Der Zweite Weltkrieg im Museum: Kontinuität und Wandel. Berlin, 2007. Landsberg, Alison. Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture. New York, 2004. Leggewie, Claus. “Seven Circles of European Memory.” Translated by Simon Garnett. Eurozine, 20 December 2010. http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2010-12-20-legge wie-en.html. Leggewie, Claus, and Anne Lang. Der Kampf um die europäische Erinnerung: Ein Schlachtfeld wird besichtigt. Munich, 2011. Lehrer, Erica, Cynthia E. Milton, and Monica Patterson, eds. Curating Difficult Knowledge: Violent Pasts in Public Places. Basingstoke, 2011. Levy, Daniel, and Natan Sznaider. Erinnerung im globalen Zeitalter: Der Holocaust. Frankfurt, 2007. Lingen, Kerstin von, ed. Kriegserfahrung und nationale Identität in Europa nach 1945: Erinnerung, Säuberungsprozesse und nationales Gedächtnis. Paderborn, 2009. Macdonald, Sharon. Difficult Heritage: Negotiating the Nazi Past in Nuremberg and Beyond. New York, 2008. Makhotina, Ekaterina, Ekaterina Keding, Włodzimierz Borodziej, Etienne François, and Martin Schulze Wessel, eds. Krieg im Museum: Präsentationen des Zweiten Weltkriegs in Museen und Gedenkstätten des östlichen Europas. Paderborn, 2015. Michalska, Julia. “Outcry over Polish Government’s Changes to Second World War Museum.” The Art Newspaper, 21 December 2017, https://www.theartnewspaper.com/ news/outcry-over-polish-government-s-changes-to-second-world-war-museum. Muchitsch, Wolfgang, ed. Does War Belong in Museums? The Representation of Violence in Exhibitions. Bielefeld, 2013.

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Muller, Anna, and Daniel Logemann. “War, Dialogue, and Overcoming the Past: The Second World War Museum in Gdańsk, Poland.” Public Historian 39, no. 3 (2017): 85–95. Niven, Bill, ed. Germans as Victims: Remembering the Past in Contemporary Germany. New York, 2006. Paul, Axel T., and Benjamin Schwalb, eds. Gewaltmasse: Über Eigendynamik und Selbstorganisation kollektiver Gewalt. Hamburg, 2015. Pirker, Eva Ulrike, and Mark Rüdiger. “Authentizitätsfiktionen in populären Geschichtskulturen: Annäherungen.” In Echte Geschichte: Authentizitätsfiktionen in populären Geschichtskulturen, edited by Eva Ulrike Pirker, Mark Rüdiger, Christa Klein, Thorsten Leiendecker, Carolyn Oesterle, Miriam Sénécheau, and Michiko Uike-Bormann, 11–30. Bielefeld, 2010. Plessow, Oliver. “The Interplay of the European Commission, Researcher and Educator Networks and Transnational Agencies in the Promotion of a Pan-European Holocaust Memory.” Journal of Contemporary European Studies 23, no. 3 (2015): 378–90. Reeves, Keir, ed. Battlefield Events: Landscape, Commemoration and Heritage. London, 2015. Rose, Julia. Interpreting Difficult History at Museums and Historic Sites. Lanham, MD, 2016. Rothberg, Michael. Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009. Schama, Simon. Landscape and Memory. New York, 1995. Schmitz, Helmut, ed. A Nation of Victims? Representations of German Wartime Suffering from 1945. Amsterdam, 2007. Settele, Veronika. “Including Exclusion in European Memory? Politics of Remembrance at the House of European History.” Journal of Contemporary European Studies 23, no. 3 (2015): 405–16. Snyder, Timothy. Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin. New York, 2010. Sørensen, Marie Louise Stig, and Dacia Viejo-Rose, eds. War and Cultural Heritage: Biographies of Place. New York, 2015. Speitkamp, Winfried, ed., Gewaltgemeinschaften: Von der Spätantike bis ins 20. Jahrhundert. Göttingen, 2013. Thiemeyer, Thomas. Fortsetzung des Krieges mit anderen Mitteln: Die beiden Weltkriege im Museum. Paderborn, 2010. Troebst, Stefan, and Johanna Wolf, eds. Erinnern an den Zweiten Weltkrieg: Mahnmale und Museen in Mittel- und Osteuropa. Leipzig, 2011. Vees-Gulani, Susanne, and Stephan Jaeger. “Introduction: Representations of German War Experiences and the Legacy of the Second World War.” In “Representations of War Experiences from the Eighteenth Century to the Present,” edited by Stephan Jaeger and Susanne Vees-Gulani. Special issue, Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 50, no. 1 (2014): 1–17. Whitehead, Christopher, Katherine Lloyd, Susannah Eckersley, and Rhiannon Mason, eds. Museums, Migration and Identity in Europe: Peoples, Places and Identities. London, 2015. Williams, Paul. Memorial Museums: The Global Rush to Commemorate Atrocities. Oxford, 2007. Winter, Jay. “Museum and the Representation of War.” In Muchitsch, Does War Belong in Museums? 21–37. Young, James E. “Memory and the Monument after 9/11.” In The Future of Memory, edited by Richard Crownshaw, Jane Kilby, and Antony Rowland, 77–92. New York, 2010.

PART I

 Museums

CHAPTER 1



Multi-Voiced and Personal Second World War Remembrance in German Museums THOMAS THIEMEYER Translated by Erin Johnston-Weiss

T

he end of the Second World War in 1945 is relatively poorly canonized in German memory culture. The memories of German suffering and guilt were too intertwined to be able to build a cultural consensus concerning the end of the war. Consequently, the memorability of “1945” and of the war’s end is seemingly dynamic in today’s remembrance of the events of the Second World War.1 The memory of the war’s end has been newly contoured in recent years in a process that began with Richard von Weizsäcker’s 1985 speech characterizing the end of the war in Germany as liberation from the Nazi regime instead of as a German defeat. This was followed by debates surrounding violent crimes in the Soviet occupation zone2 and questions of the expulsion3 and reintegration of Germans living in the conquered territories after 1945.4 It is therefore interesting to note how German museums thematized the seventieth anniversary of the war’s end in 2015. A brief discussion of three special exhibitions can clarify the ways in which the curators approached the commemoration of the war’s anniversary. The Deutsches Historisches Museum (German Historical Museum) in Berlin presented the exhibition 1945: Niederlage, Befreiung, Neuanfang—Zwölf Länder Europas nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg (1945: Defeat, liberation, new beginning—Twelve European countries after the Second World War), which focused specifically on the immediate postwar period and examined the comparative postwar hardships of twelve countries “without qualifying or weighing the experiences or the suffering of the different individuals against one another.”5 It explored the reality of war-torn Europe and narrated the history of ordinary people through thirty-six biographies in order to represent the complexity of individual experiences. The central goal of

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the exhibition was “to demonstrate the different war experiences of each country. Naturally, there were parallels, for example regarding how to deal with collaboration and crimes. However, the exhibition and its panorama of postwar stories highlight the specific developments in each individual country.”6 In the same year, the Militärhistorisches Museum der Bundeswehr (Bundeswehr Military History Museum, MHM) in Dresden held an exhibition entitled Schlachthof 5: Dresdens Zerstörung in literarischen Zeugnissen (Slaughterhouse 5: Dresden’s destruction in literary works). This exhibition analyzed the ways in which authors with a variety of perspectives worked through the bombing of Dresden. The exhibition’s focal point was the concept of the author as historical witness and chronicler, exemplified through the work of Kurt Vonnegut, particularly in his 1969 novel Slaughterhouse-Five. The story of an American prisoner of war who survived the bombing by taking shelter near a slaughterhouse, Vonnegut’s literary work had a lasting effect in shaping the English-speaking world’s view of Dresden. Rather than representing the Dresden bombing as a narrative of German suffering, the exhibition began with a “tunnel” of photography, which intertwined the history of bombing campaigns in Dresden with those in other European cities. Therefore, the exhibition reminded visitors that, before the bombs fell on Dresden, the Luftwaffe themselves bombed cities such as Coventry and Rotterdam.7 Finally, the Berlin documentation center Topographie des Terrors (Topography of Terror) ran the special temporary exhibition Deutschland 1945: Die letzten Kriegsmonate (Germany 1945: The last months of war). This exhibition represented themes of individual people occupying the permanent space between destruction and terror, as well as loss of orientation and fears about the future. It also equally focalized German perpetrators and victims, as soldiers, children, and expellees, through the direct contrast of large, cropped photographs of a German youth in the destroyed remains of Berlin and an old man in the ruins of Paris.8 Although these three examples provide only a rough sketch of German exhibitions centered on the war’s end, they nevertheless point to a new trend that is typical of the contemporary emphasis on German memory culture: all three exhibitions narrated the last months of the war through the fate of individuals. All three addressed either the war’s end or a distinctive event during the war’s final phase, and none focused particularly on the representation of the Nazi dictatorship or on the war as a whole. Consequently, in 2015, the war’s end and the immediate postwar period could become the dominant narrative in German Second World War representation. Speaking about one coherent narrative is disingenuous, however, since contemporary Second World War narrative has become differentiated, whereas one core narrative previously shaped each anniversary year: in 1985, questions of guilt and liberation dominated the discussion; in 1995, the crimes of the Wehrmacht,9 as well as questions about

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the perpetration of “ordinary men,”10 came into focus; and in 2005, the experience of German suffering during bombardments and the flight and expulsion of Germans in the East became an increasingly popular representational subject. In 2015, the temporal distance between the present and the events of the war was finally large enough for exhibitions to begin to simultaneously represent different experiences of war. Based on these contemporary observations and the history of German Second World War exhibitions, which I will develop and explain later, I would like to formulate two theses that will build the thread of this chapter. First, I suggest that we are experiencing a contemporary phase of anthropologizing the Second World War, similar to the representation of the First World War in the 1990s.11 Contemporary narratives of the Second World War revolve around the war experience of individuals of the wartime generation.12 This focus on the individual explores how people interpret war, which differentiates itself from an events-based history. The wider the distance between the visitor and the events of the war become, the more museums’ desire to focalize individual wartime actions and experiences is strengthened. Second, the narratives of the Second World War have become diversified. Historically, museal narratives have raised the issue of the National Socialist industrialization of mass murder, and questions of guilt and responsibility. Debates surrounding German guilt framed museal narratives, which were demonstrated, for example, by the Historikerstreit, the intellectual and political controversy of the late 1980s in West Germany about how best to remember Nazi Germany; the question of historicizing National Socialism; and the controversy surrounding the so-called Wehrmacht exhibition.13 In contrast, Germans’ self-perception can now play a larger role in the public eye. The “nation of perpetrators” is no longer necessarily the only acceptable perspective. Rather, the wartime generation has the right to narrate its own experiences of the war. This narrative is multifaceted and differs from the former historic canon. SS members can exist next to displaced persons; soldiers in the war of extermination can exist next to raped German women. Perpetrator and victim are no longer categories with which to distinguish different nations; one can find examples of both within the same country. Both developments are new, especially concerning German war exhibitions.14 I will pursue these developments and, in doing so, differentiate between four separate stages, starting with the first phase from 1945 to 1960, in which the Nazi crimes and the war faded out of museum exhibitions. The second phase occurred from 1960 to the 1990s, in which the contents and aesthetics of Nazi memorial sites and war exhibitions primarily steered the German perception of the war toward the war of extermination in the East and the criminal Nazi regime. The third phase (from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s) used—through the writings and critiques of the historiographers Christopher Browning and

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Daniel Goldhagen—the journals of Victor Klemperer and the Wehrmacht exhibition to begin the so-called critical investigation of perpetrators. Finally, the fourth phase, from the mid-2000s to the present, marks—alongside the dominant narrative of perpetration—the rediscovery of Germans as victims of the war and the events following it.

Phase 1: 1945–1960 The heavy losses during the last months of the war, the subsequent flight and expulsion of Germans, and the violence of the occupying forces in the war’s immediate aftermath deeply traumatized the German people, pushing aside memories of blitzkrieg and the atrocities perpetrated in the East. The German war of extermination in the East, and the Wehrmacht’s participation in these crimes, split German war memory between the individual remembrance of war experiences and silence about these crimes. Members of the perpetrator nation saw themselves as victims of a criminal regime. The reeducation policy of the Allied forces did not allow German citizens to ignore German atrocities. The corpses in the concentration camps made the extent of the mass murders clear to everyone, and extinguished every trace of National Socialist ethos within Germany. However, the war itself was barely touched on in the Allied “propaganda of truth,” and the 1950s saw the powerful return of entertainment media (film, literature, and Landser books) into West Germany society. The Landser was the immaculate German hero, whereas the stories kept silent about the culpability of ordinary German citizens for the crimes of the Einsatzgruppen. Not coincidentally, the post-1945 German war memorials were dedicated to German soldiers, and to the civilians of the German Volk killed in the war. The victims of Germany’s violent crimes only gradually saw justice, and when they did, the perpetrators of the Holocaust were demonized as outsiders on the fringe of German society. Their many followers and “ordinary citizen” perpetrators were only scarcely prosecuted.15 For German museums (as for most European museums), the period after 1945 was onerous. The air war had wrought destruction on various nations, and destroyed many museum buildings and exhibitions.16 The victorious parties had also looted the holdings of the military history museums. By the 1960s, many museums were engaged in securing their holdings, collecting new artifacts, repairing their buildings, and—with the little money they had—continuing the smooth running of their operations. There was no future for the German military history museums directly after 1945 because the Allies decreed that all museums and exhibitions of a military nature throughout Germany be closed by 1 January 1947.17 Only after the Westernization and rearmament of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), as well as the entrance of the German Dem-

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ocratic Republic (GDR) to the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact, could military history once again begin to be represented in German museums.18 Even then, this change took place gingerly: the Bayerisches Armeemuseum (Bavarian Army Museum) in Ingolstadt remained closed, and its collections were temporarily given to the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum (Bavarian National Museum). After reopening in 1949, the Badisches Armeemuseum (Baden Army Museum) removed “Army” from its name and, in the following years, devoted itself to national—as opposed to military—history.19 Many of the garrison, regiment, and army museums that had been established after 1918 disappeared permanently.20 The exclusion of war remembrance from the German museum is particularly noteworthy because of the war’s portrayal in popular media as an adventure and important life experience. Depictions of this type were disseminated to the German public in fictional form through editions of the Landser, illustrated news reports, and films during the FRG’s first decade, to a degree unmatched before or since. Starting in the 1960s, the war disappeared from popular entertainment and public awareness, and only remained an important theme for specialists, veterans, and collectors of memorabilia.21 Although museums had the credibility to represent a “true” picture of the war, they chose not to do so. The theme of war was too explosive to be processed in documentary form.22 The GDR adhered to Soviet memory politics, in which museums focused on the remembrance of the victory in the Great Patriotic War. The Berlin Arsenal and the Dresden military museums received their looted goods back from the Soviet Union, and the Museum für Deutsche Geschichte (Museum for German History) was opened in 1952 in the former arsenal. Nine years later, the Deutsche Armeemuseum (German Army Museum) in Potsdam memorialized the glorious military history of socialism and was subsequently allowed to access the collections of the former Heeresmuseum (Army Museum) in Dresden. The Potsdam German Army Museum emphasized the importance and worthiness of the defense of one’s country against imperialist foreigners and embedded its military history into the broader history of socialism.23 On 24 March 1972, the museum moved from Potsdam to the site of the former Heeresmuseum and of today’s MHM in Dresden, and was renamed the Armeemuseum der DDR (GDR Army Museum). The memory of the Second World War in East Germany followed a different path than in the West. The founders of the GDR united with the Soviet leadership and, in doing so, hid their involvement in the National Socialist war of annihilation. Instead, they memorialized the members of the German workers’ movement as resistance heroes. The antifascist resistance formed the core for a shared East German past. Its story concluded with the Red Army’s liberation of Germany. In East Germany, unlike in West Germany, the Battle of Stalingrad was portrayed as the origin of an East German and Soviet friendship and as a positive turning point of the war in favor of the Soviet Union.

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Additionally, the Allied forces’ bombing campaign against Germany—with the Dresden Frauenkirche as a memorial (Mahnmal)—and the Wehrmacht’s participation in the war of annihilation were not taboo subjects. In the master narrative of the GDR, the German antifascists defeated Hitler together with the Soviet Union. The official view of the war did not correspond with the memories of ordinary East Germans, however, so the GDR had to pursue an active memory politics to adjust public discourse through new memorials, memorial sites, and other remembrance media.24 Consequently, the Second World War and its fighters were heroicized in East German museums, while West German exhibitions avoided focalizing the war and were largely apolitical. The 1960s in the FRG saw the return of the military history museum to the public eye.25 After the state of shock in the immediate postwar years began to dissipate, a new phase of representing the war in museums began in the West: the Bundeswehr, established in 1955, developed new collections for educational purposes, and regional museums once again began to display military memorabilia. Starting in 1952, the Bundesgrenzschutz (Federal Border Guard) began to display its weapon collection in Lübeck. In 1954, the Deutsche Marine Bund (German Naval Federation) reestablished a collection in the cenotaph (Ehrenmal) in Laboe. In 1957, a museum “to the memory of the air forces of the old army, the imperial navy, and the Luftwaffe”26 opened at the Uetersen Airfield. By the end of the 1960s, military history museums could once again be a visible part of West German memory culture: in 1969, the Federal Ministry of Defence began constructing the Wehrgeschichtliche Museum Rastatt (Rastatt Military History Museum) as the FRG’s central military history museum. Three years after the construction of the Rastatt museum, the Bavarian state government opened the Bavarian Army Museum in Ingolstadt. In contrast to Dresden, the representation of both world wars was totally absent in Ingolstadt, and they were only present in Rastatt through isolated pieces of military memorabilia. The First World War did not find a permanent place in either museum until 1994 (Ingolstadt) and 1999 (Rastatt). Neither world war received museal space in the FRG until the 1990s.27

Phase 2: 1960s–1990s The 1950s saw the first signs of the end of museal apathy toward the war. New museums and commemorative institutions were developed, including Nazi memorial sites. War museums and Nazi memorial sites are distinct types of institutions that developed independently for decades.28 That changed after memorial sites became museum-like institutions with large exhibition spaces in the 1980s. Today, the Second World War and the Holocaust cannot be strictly separated in either institution type. In some ways, the institutional set-

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tings overlap, marking the emergence of a new type of museum: the memorial museum.29 The Allies secured a few memorial places in former concentration and death camps immediately after the war, and made them publicly accessible.30 Systematically planned and professionally operated memorial sites were developed on German ground, but only after a number of delays. These institutions’ use of memory politics for political education occurred for the first time in the 1970s. Before that, there was a single initiative of this kind: in 1958, the GDR established the Nationale Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Buchenwald (National Buchenwald Monument and Memorial) near Weimar, a monumental site with a tremendous amount of open space. Led by an initiative from the concentration camp’s former prisoners, the state of Bavaria established a small museum in Dachau’s old crematoria in 1960, before the current memorial site and museum opened there in 1965. In Bergen-Belsen, near Celle, a so-called document house was established with a small exhibition about the onsite warehouses.31 In contrast to museums, memorial sites are located in public places of remembrance, which primarily evoke memories of victims.32 In Germany, places of victimization are signifiers of negative memories (Mahnmale), at which the population of the FRG (as the legal successor to the German Reich) was supposed to remember the crimes and injustices of the period of National Socialism. The locations themselves are the primary element of these sites. They focalize mass crimes committed in concentration and death camps, and the desecration of humanity that they entail. With this focus, the image of remembrance is narrowed to the war’s darkest time. The Holocaust and the war thus appear as two isolated experiences. However, the public perception of the war resulting from this narrowed remembrance was shattered in the 1990s.33 Memorial sites slowly but pointedly moved the mass crimes of the concentration and death camps into the Germans’ visual, collective memory. Additionally, they established a new exhibition form, which set the standard for war history exhibitions and radiated outward to other museums. Their new representational style emphasized the reproduction of written documents and reports, fully relied on the authenticity effect of the historic sites (it happened here!), and avoided any scenographic or experiential representation. Rather than being staged through mimetic reproductions of camp barracks and prisoner beds, images of these events were supposed to develop in the minds of the visitor. This approach set up an intellectual “working through” of the subject matter instead of being emotionally overwhelming.34 Following the so-called Beutelsbacher Consensus of 1976, German memorial sites slowly began to commit themselves to a prohibition of “over-emotionalization,” that is, to a pedagogy independent from the indoctrination of visitors and/or from overwhelming them emotionally. This attitude—fully established by the 1990s35—marked a general skepticism toward the idea of visitors feeling empathy for victims, be-

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cause “emotional excitement is not automatically a belief, nor is identification [with victims] knowledge.”36 The fragmentary nature of the museum experience in particular was seen to present an opportunity for intense self-reflection and thus enable learning from history. To be able to remain emotionally distant from mass murder, German memorial sites chose to use emotionally “cool” forms of representation and functional scenes.37 Convinced that their collections of artifacts and archives must not be supplemented with elaborate stage design, they decided against representing real horror in order to leave a strong impression on the visitor. Instead of realistic room furnishings, they chose abstract, coolly rational interior architecture (white posters and charts, minimal colors, subdued tones, and clear forms without ornamentation) in order to stimulate the visitor into thinking through the exhibition and accepting these conceptual images as an adequate representation of the Holocaust. The Nazi memorial sites were the first institutions in Germany in which questions surrounding the relationship between ethics and aesthetics were principally explored; they also attempted to answer questions about the ideal leaning outcomes for its visitors and about the choice of images that should accompany themes of genocide and perpetration. This type of exhibition established new aesthetic standards and comprised a deeply political exhibition praxis that sought to balance shock effects with the piety of victimhood. It shaped installation conventions that other museums with ethically sensitive themes subsequently followed.38

Phase 3: 1990s–2000s In the 1980s, historians’ interest in the Second World War in West Germany stood in the shadow of Nazi regime and Holocaust research. After it was accepted that the annihilation of European Jewry and warfare were closely connected and could not be analyzed separately, the events of the war moved into the view of researchers, who used letters from the front and oral history documents as new source materials.39 The 1990s saw significant changes in how the united Germany handled the question of perpetration. The contemporary relevance of war brought about by the Balkan and Gulf wars, the end of the Cold War, the disappearance of firsthand witnesses to the Second World War, and the interpretational independence of the postwar generations ended a phase in which the participatory perpetration of the “ordinary Germans” was shielded. Important new ideas during this phase came from outside Germany: in particular, Christopher Browning’s groundbreaking scientific study Ordinary Men (1993) and Daniel Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners (1996) paved the way for a new debate about perpetration. This debate was escalated by the Wehrmacht exhibition, as will be discussed later. Critical re-

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search into perpetrators questioned the sphere of influence and responsibility of the individual, and dismissed the idea of “orders by superiors” as a way of escaping guilt.40 These critical perspectives were especially concerned with the development plans of German museums and rallied around the Wehrmacht exhibition. Thirty years after the war, in 1995, the Hamburg Institute for Social Research (HIS) launched an exhibition with the provocative title Vernichtungskrieg: Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941 bis 194441 (War of annihilation: Crimes of the Wehrmacht 1941 to 1944).42 This exhibition, as the focal point of scandal, saw around 850,000 visitors over four and a half years and became “Germany’s most successful political exhibition.”43 The exhibition, which visited thirty-four German and Austrian cities44 and included suggestive photographs and pointed text, triggered a storm of indignation. Working under the auspices of the claim that the “lies” of an uncontaminated Wehrmacht were being corrected, the curator Hannes Heer accused German military historians of refusing to admit that the Wehrmacht was active in all crimes and logistical organization of the war. The exhibition strove to prove this exact fact.45 Hardly a year had passed before the media’s goodwill increasingly turned to criticism.46 This criticism was exacerbated by the claim that the Wehrmacht actually began the war crimes. “The exhibitors agitate,” claimed the historian Horst Möller. “They kill the visitor with an abundance of drastic images, with horrendous scenes. The visitors conclude: this is how the Wehrmacht was. . . . The exhibition sails under false flags—they are hardly speaking of the Wehrmacht. Honest language would be if they admitted that they deliberately chose their main images to further their own goals, for example, of the barbarity of the war against the Soviet Union.”47 The exhibition became political. After critics were able to prove that a few photos in the exhibition were falsely labeled and did not actually demonstrate any of the Wehrmacht’s crimes, Jan Philipp Reemtsma, head of the HIS, decided to close the exhibition in 1999 and let a commission of experts examine it. The commission concluded: “The core statements of the exhibition . . . in their substance fulfill international research standards. However, through false differentiation and incorrect generalization, the exhibition not only triggered misunderstandings but also made it possible that opponents of the exhibition could have at least partially been starting a successful distraction manoeuver. Because of this, it seems to be necessary . . . to thoroughly rework the exhibition or else reconceptualize it entirely.”48 In 2002, a fully reconceptualized second version of the Wehrmacht exhibition without decontextualized sweeping generalizations was presented. What was so provocative about the first exhibition? At its core was the attempt to break the contemporary generation’s monopoly on memory and to destroy the image of the “clean” Wehrmacht with drastic visuals and rhetorical vehemence. These photographs created public awareness, even though

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historical research had already long corrected the image of the innocent Wehrmacht. The exhibition changed the public perception of the war in the East.49 “The scandal of the exhibition lies therein that it overstepped dividing lines and made the overlapping points between war and crimes in the actions of the Wehrmacht visible.”50 A decisive condition for this reception was the changed German memory culture of the mid-1990s, which reflected on how willingly the German people participated in the war of annihilation. As early as four years before the Wehrmacht exhibition, the Topographie des Terrors displayed its exhibition Der Krieg gegen die Sowjetunion 1941–1945 (The war against the Soviet Union 1941–1945),51 which became the foundation for the Deutsch-Russisches Museum Berlin-Karlshorst (German-Russian Museum in Berlin-Karlshorst) and explicitly documented the Wehrmacht’s participation in the perpetration of mass murder in the East—without shrill theses or seductive photo collages. Since this revised exhibition did not become a scandal, the German historian Thomas Kühne concluded that the myth of the German soldier as a victim was finally fading, almost sixty years after the Battle of Stalingrad.52 Steven Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List (1993), the German tour of Daniel Goldhagen (1996), and the newly published journals of Victor Klemperer (1996) destroyed the myth of an innocent German populace. Initially, Germans eagerly received Goldhagen’s thesis of “eliminationist anti-Semitism” as an ancient German form of xenophobia that led to the annihilation of the Other in order to achieve “ethnic purity.”53 “Both [Goldhagen and the Wehrmacht exhibition] confronted the public with the forceful accusation that ‘ordinary Germans,’ and with that, an undeterminable number of the still-living generation of fathers and grandfathers, ‘participated’ in systematic mass murder.”54 The exhibition displayed private sources, such as photographs of executions from the wallets of ordinary soldiers, which made its historical narrative particularly overwhelming—and therefore dangerous. Private photographs often showed the faces of the perpetrators and thus made them identifiable. The distance between the violent masses and the history of individual families was therefore overcome, and the photographs were seen as an attack on collective as well as individual remembrance. The exhibition was vulnerable to criticism by historians who pursued a more differential attempt at historiography, since it reflected the public’s expectations and awareness of history, which asked for graphic images and an affirmative approach to the theme.55 Regardless of one’s opinion of the Wehrmacht exhibition, it sensitized German museums to questions surrounding soldiers as perpetrators and the influence of National Socialist ideology on the Wehrmacht. The MHM in Dresden opened its own permanent exhibition in 1998/1999 on the period 1919–1945. The exhibition included exemplary biographies of ten soldiers and emphasized the perpetrator role, as well as the ideology of individual soldiers. Additionally,

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the German Historical Museum opened a new permanent exhibition in 2006, which did not forgo the presentation of drastic images of the war of annihilation—including the iconic picture of the shooting of hostages in Pančevo in 1941—thus reflecting on the role of the Wehrmacht.

Phase 4: 2000–Present Whereas every Second World War exhibition in Germany since the Wehrmacht exhibition has had to critically address the issue of the Wehrmacht soldiers’ guilt, the connection between the Wehrmacht and the war of extermination is barely mentioned in the exhibitions at the Musée de l’Armée (Army Museum) in Paris, the Mémorial de Caen (Caen Memorial Museum), or the two Imperial War Museums in London and Manchester. In these exhibitions, perpetrators are limited to Hitler and the defendants at the Nuremberg trials. The national view of the war leaves space for the presentation of topics that are controversial in other countries (and the same applies to the German museums). Conditions are different with regard to the Holocaust, which since the 1990s has become exportable beyond German museums and memorial sites. The Imperial War Museum in London supplemented its permanent exhibition in 2000 with a large section on a separate floor, exclusively devoted to the murder of the Jews and other victims of the Holocaust.56 In its exhibition on the Second World War, the Musée de l’Armée devotes a side room off the main tour route to concentration camps.57 In the Mémorial de Caen, the Holocaust now forms the negative climax of the exhibition,58 after having been moved from the margins to the center of the tour in 1992 following public protests.59 The Imperial War Museum North in Manchester, in its chronological tour, devotes one of six display cases on the Second World War to the Shoah. In three of these four museums (the exception being the Imperial War Museum North), the exhibition architecture used in the Holocaust sections differs from that of the rest of the exhibitions. In a comparatively reduced design, they follow the trends in memorial culture, appearing as dark or cool commemorative spaces that require silent reverence for the innocent victims, instead of dramatizing military action—as in the rest of the exhibitions.60 Although the Nazi regime also provides the referential framework into which the Second World War is placed in these museums, the German perspective of the nation of perpetrators does not dominate the presentation. On the contrary, the active struggle of each country’s own soldiers and of Allied soldiers in general against barbaric Nazism is centrally focalized. In these exhibitions, Germans are presented as necessary antagonists and thus are used to frame the war as a struggle between good and evil. This in turn paints the Allied participation in the war as both noble and necessary. Subjects such as

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collaboration with the Nazis or the failure to bomb the railroad tracks leading to the extermination camps are mostly overlooked in a master narrative designed to create meaning. War, the message runs, required sacrifices, but it was necessary: “The ideals defended by the Allies in this conflict eternally represent a solemn hope.”61 Expressed in general terms, the difference lies in the fact that the two German museums convey a verdict of “never again” regarding the Second World War, while the British exhibitions, the Musée de l’Armée, and even the Mémorial de Caen perceive the Second World War as a necessary evil and as a war that has continued to have meaning right down to the present day. Their “rhetoric of a civilizing mission”62 condemns violence and suffering but accepts the purpose of the war. However, this generalized rhetoric originates, to a considerable extent, in the museums’ differing perspectives. The German museums focus much more strongly on the war on the Eastern Front than do the British and French museums (the whole of the German-Russian Museum is devoted to it); this is because the institutions are located in the eastern part of Germany and take into account the operational areas in which German soldiers moved in the Second World War.63 In sight of the Wehrmacht exhibition’s unmasking of the German perpetrator, German public debates about new aspects of world war remembrance solidified in the early 2000s.64 These debates attempted to locate the perpetrator’s perspective within the victim discourses of the bombing war and of the expulsion from the former German eastern territories, which were now prominent in the German collective memory.65 For the first time since the 1950s, the lived and reported experiences of German witnesses were earnestly appreciated. This differentiation was reinforced by a new scientific interest in violence. In the last years of the twentieth century, “violence” became a new central category for the understanding of war and the military.66 Contemporary military history analyzes the suffering caused by and the origin of violence in war, as well as the role of violence in peace. As such, military violence can no longer be explained simply as obedience to superiors’ commands, and ordinary soldiers can therefore no longer simply claim to be innocent victims. The critical perpetrator research of the 1990s was pioneering for this change in perspective. The question of individual freedom of action and the effects of daily contact with death and violence moved into focus. This new research applied the sociology of violence of the 1990s more strongly to the concept of war, and questioned both the origin of violence and its phenomenology. Heinrich von Popitz was the first scholar to argue that violence could only be analyzed as an act in and of itself, and that the search for its origin diverted from the perpetrator and their responsibility.67 Contextually, this development connects itself to the subtle anthropologizing of the Second World War, which is now being narrated as the story of individual experience of the people involved, or else as a history of the mentalities of the contemporary soldiers and officers.68

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As the war retreats further into history, exhibitions use memory to protect it from oblivion. Previously, the preferred medium was the biographical narrative. As early as 1994, the German-Russian Museum viewed itself as “a very human museum. . . . The interest is primarily for people who felt and suffered the effects of war: the simple soldiers and the civilian population.”69 Especially distinct was the reopening of the MHM with its founding concept of people of the military and of the war: “The new exhibition focuses on the human being, the anthropological side of violence. If we want to gain a better understanding of the potential for war in our world to be able to question and overcome it, we have to approach the reasons and nature of that share of violence which has always been part of ourselves and all other people in all known social orders.”70 These examples uphold this biographical foundation of war history, which has three origins: first, it follows the knowledge of historiography and the trends of historical representation in mass media, which recognize letters from the front, documentary films, and oral history projects of witnesses (and their perspectives) as being especially authentic. Moreover, war history that turns toward cultural history is interested in the subjective, individual war experiences of ordinary people. Second, it follows the logic of an experiential museum, which strives for emotional closeness and a degree of dramaturgy in order to put the visitor under a spell. Third, it follows the personalization of war history as a strategy to eliminate contemporary distance from the events in question for the museum visitor. These events are no longer familiar to the visitor. Therefore, the end of living memory of the Second World is essential.

War Memory as Differentiated Histories of Experience from the Bottom The overlap between the contemporary war generation and the immediate postwar generation is visible in how war representation in the media has changed. Communicative memory only lasts a lifetime and will expire within the next years. Fewer and fewer participants of the war are alive to pass on their version of war experience. The memory of the world wars must be transferred into cultural memory, where it is artificially generated, specifically passed on, and institutionally secured.71 It becomes a case for the museum. This is not to say that war will only become musealized if no one left living has experienced it. In contrast, precise themes attract contemporary visitors. First, however, if living war memory becomes cultural memory through communication, it must be decided which memories of the war will be preserved and how. Since the 1980s, the commemoration of the Second World War continues as a “phase of preservation of the past.”72

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Not only is the production of memory affected by the disappearance of witnesses, the reception of war itself is also changing. The MHM presently narrates its war and military history not through veterans and eyewitnesses of the world wars but rather through the postwar generation. The shift in target audience means that many museums no longer seek specialists (veterans, soldiers, military collectors) as their primary visitors but instead want to motivate the everyday public73 to visit. Next to recruits and officer candidates, school groups and tourists—depending on the location of the museum—make up the biggest visitor groups. The change, with respect to the expansion of target audiences, means that the political pressure of lobby groups and survivors to have their interpretation of history represented has slackened. Veterans enter exhibitions with precise expectations of what they wish to be confronted with, including specific weapons, uniforms, battles, and military operations. This is because they experienced the war first hand. Additionally, the war was the existential experience of their lives, which is why its representation is so close to their hearts. The passing away of eyewitnesses means “the transition from struggles over memory to memory culture.”74 Conforming to the expectations of veterans is no longer the starting point of exhibition concepts,75 which instead leave behind the duties of chroniclers, and the fear of the “untouchability” of sensitive themes with it, and bring forward the possibility of representing the war in entirely different ways. Exhibitors must take into account that the “corrective of the controlling connoisseurship of the contemporary witnesses”76 is missing. The handling of objects is also changing: the postwar generation is poorly served by the bare-knuckle display of military equipment, decorations, or uniforms, because these objects have nothing to do with their previous knowledge or individual war experience. Instead, it is now important to convey the war as such while incorporating the fact that knowledge about it has greatly decreased. The tendency to anthropologize is owed to this new memory imperative, which is attempting to translate war into a language that can still be understood seventy years after its end. Today, this language uses a different pitch and vocabulary than it did in 1945. Whether we will one day be able to appropriately label this kind of kaleidoscopic historiography as plural, positionless, arbitrary, pioneering, or pragmatic remains to be seen. Thomas Thiemeyer is Professor of Museum Studies at the Ludwig-UhlandInstitut für Empirische Kulturwissenschaft in the Department for Historical and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Tübingen. From 2003 to 2006, he worked as a curator at HG Merz, an architecture and museum design firm, where he aided in developing the concepts for the Mercedes-Benz Museum (2006) and the Porsche Museum, Stuttgart (2009). His publications include Fortsetzung des Krieges mit anderen Mitten: Die beiden Weltkriege im Museum (2010) and “Cosmopolitanizing Colonial Memories in Berlin: The Humboldt

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Forum and the Current Shift in Germany’s Culture of Remembrance” in Critical Inquiry (forthcoming).

Notes This chapter is a revised and updated version from the German text “Vielstimmig und nah am Menschen: Wie deutsche Museen heute an den Zweiten Weltkrieg erinnern,” which appeared first in Polish as “Polifonicznie i blisko czlowieka: Jak niemieckie muzea przypominaja dzis o drugiej wojnie światowej,” in Druga wojna światowa w pamięci kulturowej w Polsce i Niemczech: 70 lat później (1945–2015), ed. Jerzy Kalazny, Amelia Korzeniewska, and Bartosz Korzeniewski (Gdańsk, 2015), 81–104. 1. For a comprehensive analysis, see Norbert Frei, 1945 und wir: Das Dritte Reich im Bewusstsein der Deutschen (Munich, 2005). 2. See, e.g., Anonymous, A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City—A Diary, trans. Philip Boehm (New York, 2005). 3. Cf. the debates around the Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen (Center against Expulsions) in Zeitgeschichte-online, “Materialien zur Debatte um das ‘Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen,’” January 2004, http://www.zeitgeschichte-online.de/thema/ materialien-zur-debatte-um-das-zentrum-gegen-vertreibungen. 4. Andreas Kossert, Kalte Heimat: Die Geschichte der deutschen Vertriebenen nach 1945 (Munich, 2008). 5. “ohne Erlebtes und Erlittenes gegeneinander abzuwägen oder zu relativieren.” Deutsches Historisches Museum, 1945: Niederlage, Befreiung, Neuanfang—Zwölf Länder Europas Nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, exhibition pamphlet (Stuttgart, 2015), http:// www.dhm.de/fileadmin/medien/relaunch/ausstellunngen/1945/1945_Flyer.pdf. All translations from non-English references are by Erin Johnston-Weiss unless otherwise noted. 6. “auf die ganz unterschiedlichen Begebenheiten in den einzelnen Ländern hinzuweisen. Gab es durchaus Parallelitäten, etwa bei der Frage nach dem Umgang mit Verbrechen und Kollaboration, so wird das Panorama der Nachkriegsgeschichten insbesondere die jeweiligen landesspezifischen Entwicklungen aufzeigen.” Deutsches Historisches Museum, ed., 1945: Niederlage, Befreiung, Neuanfang—Zwölf Länder nach dem Ende der NS-Gewaltherrschaft (Stuttgart, 2015), 12. 7. Cf. Gorch Pieken, Matthias Rogg, and Ansgar Snethlage, eds., Schlachthof 5: Dresdens Zerstörung in literarischen Zeugnissen—Eine Ausstellung zum 13. Februar 1945 (Dresden, 2015). 8. Cf. Stiftung Topographie des Terrors and Claudia Steurs, eds., Deutschland 1945: Die letzten Kriegsmonate—Ein Begleitkatalog zur gleichnamigen Ausstellung, Berlin (Berlin, 2014). 9. Hans-Günther Thiele, Die Wehrmachtsausstellung: Dokumentation einer Kontroverse (Bonn, 1997); Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung, Verbrechen der Wehrmacht: Dimensionen des Vernichtungskrieges 1941–1944 (Hamburg, 2002); for the history of its reception, see Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung, Eine Ausstellung und ihre Folgen: Zur Rezeption der Ausstellung “Vernichtungskrieg: Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941 bis 1944” (Hamburg, 1999). 10. Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York, 1992).

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11. Cf. Thomas Thiemeyer, “Unter Beschuss: Das Londoner Imperial War Museum,” Merkur 69, no. 2 (2015): 71–76. 12. See also Frei, 1945 und wir, 10. 13. Miriam Arani, “‘Und an den Fotos entzündet sich die Kritik’: Die ‘Wehrmachtsausstellung,’ deren Kritiker und die Neukonzeption—Ein Beitrag aus fotohistorisch-quellenkritischer Sicht,” Fotogeschichte 85–86 (2002): 97–124; Helmuth Lethen, “Der Text der Historiografie und der Wunsch nach einer physikalischen Spur: Das Problem der Fotografie in den beiden Wehrmachtsausstellungen,” Zeitgeschichte 2 (2002): 76–86. 14. In recent years, different countries have displayed a growing interest in war museums and exhibitions that deal with the two world wars. Eastern European countries in particularly have become a point of inquiry for the Second World War. This dynamic might even be strengthened since the new and heavily contested Muzeum II Wojny Światowej (Museum of the Second World War, MIIWŚ) in Gdańsk opened its doors in March 2017. See Rachel Donadio, “A Museum Becomes a Battlefield over Poland’s History,” New York Times, 9 November 2016, https://www.nytimes .com/2016/11/10/arts/design/museum-of-the-second-world-war-in-poland-debate .html. For a summary of scholarly research, see also Thomas Thiemeyer, Fortsetzung des Krieges mit anderen Mitteln: Die beiden Weltkriege im Museum (Paderborn, 2010), 28– 31. With regard to more recent literature, see Zuzanna Bogumił, Joanna Wawrzyniak, Tim Buchen, Christian Ganzer, and Maria Senina, The Enemy on Display: The Second World War in Eastern European Museums (New York, 2015); Ekaterina Makhotina, Ekaterina Keding, Włodzimierz Borodziej, Étienne François, and Martin Schulze Wessel, eds., Krieg im Museum: Präsentationen des Zweiten Weltkriegs in Museen und Gedenkstätten des östlichen Europa (Munich, 2015). Concerning the Polish memory of the Second World War and the museum, see also Winson Chu, this volume. 15. Richard Bessel, “Gewalterfahrung und Opferperspektive: Ein Rückblick auf die beiden Weltkriege des 20. Jahrhunderts in Europa,” in Der Zweite Weltkrieg in Europa: Erfahrung und Erinnerung, ed. Jörg Echternkamp and Stefan Martens (Paderborn, 2007), 256; Habbo Knoch, Die Tat als Bild: Fotografien des Holocaust in der deutschen Erinnerungskultur (Hamburg, 2001), 429–39; Cornelia Brink, Ikonen der Vernichtung: Öffentlicher Gebrauch von Fotografien aus nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslagern nach 1945 (Berlin, 1998), 43; Peter Reichel, Politik mit der Erinnerung: Gedächtnisorte im Streit um die nationalsozialistische Vergangenheit. (Frankfurt, 1999), 86; Gerhard Paul, Bilder des Krieges—Krieg der Bilder: Die Visualisierung des modernen Krieges (Paderborn, 2004), 268; Gerhard Paul, “Von Psychopathen, Technokraten des Terrors und ‘ganz gewöhnlichen’ Deutschen: Die Täter der Shoah im Spiegel der Forschung,” in Die Täter der Shoah: Fanatische Nationalsozialisten oder ganz normale Deutsche? ed. Gerhard Paul (Göttingen, 2002), 16–19; Edgar Wolfrum, “Nationalsozialismus und Zweiter Weltkrieg: Berichte zur Geschichte der Erinnerung—Die beiden Deutschland,” in Verbrechen Erinnern: Die Auseinandersetzung mit Holocaust und Völkermord, ed. Volkhard Knigge and Norbert Frei (Bonn, 2005), 153–69. 16. The Bayerische Armeemuseum in Ingolstadt and the Wehrgeschichtliche Museum Rastatt have timely evacuations to thank for their pristine collections. Conversely, the collection of the Army Museum in Darmstadt was almost completely incinerated. The Heeresmuseum (Army Museum) in Kassel and the Berlin Zeughaus (Arsenal) were likewise decimated in the bombing war; cf. Alois Friedel, “Das militärische Museumswesen: Rückblick und Bestandsaufnahme,” Wehrkunde 10 (1961): 286–93.

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17. Cf. Eugen Lisewskie and Hans Mehlhorn, “Von der Arsenal-Sammlung zum Armeemuseum Dresden (1897–1945),” in 100 Jahre Museum im Dresdner Arsenal (1897– 1997): Eine Schrift zum Jubiläum, ed. Christian Wilhelm von Prittwitz und Gaffron (Dresden, 1997), 25. 18. Eva Zwach, Deutsche und englische Militärmuseen im 20. Jahrhundert: Eine kulturgeschichtliche Analyse des gesellschaftlichen Umgangs mit Krieg (Münster, 1999), 140–45. 19. This museum is an exception. By 1964, the cultural department of the French military administration approved the reopening of the museum, which rested on the integrity of the new director, Erich Blankenhorn. Cf. Vereinigung der Freunde des Wehrgeschichtlichen Museums Rastatt, ed., Unter dem Greifen: Altbadisches Militär von der Vereinigung der Markgrafschaften bis zur Reichsgründung 1771–1871 (Karlsruhe, 1984), 212. 20. Friedel, “Das militärische Museumswesen.” 21. Knoch, Die Tat als Bild, 429–39. 22. Cf. Thiemeyer, Fortsetzung des Krieges, esp. 85–89. War remembrance in victor nations was different: these countries could connect their preexisting military traditions to the events of the Second World War. For them, the war was perceived not as history but rather as an ongoing experience, as colonial and proxy wars forced them into further campaigns. 23. Zwach, Deutsche und englische Militärmuseen, 157. 24. Wolfrum, “Nationalsozialismus”; Monika Flacke and Ulrike Schmiegelt, “Deutsche Demokratische Republik: Aus dem Dunkel zu den Sternen—Ein Staat im Geiste des Antifaschismus,” in Mythen der Nationen: 1945—Arena der Erinnerungen, Katalog zur Ausstellung im Deutschen Historischen Museum Berlin, vol. 1, ed. Monika Flacke (Mainz, 2004); Dorothee Wierling, “Krieg im Nachkrieg: Zur öffentlichen und privaten Präsenz des Krieges in der SBZ und frühen GDR,” in Echternkamp and Martens, Der Zweite Weltkrieg in Europa, 237–52. 25. Zwach, Deutsche und englische Militärmuseen, 139–47. 26. “zur Erinnerung an die Luftstreitkräfte des alten Heeres, der kaiserlichen Marine und der Luftwaffe.” Ibid., 144–45. 27. Thiemeyer, Fortsetzung des Krieges, 99–100. 28. With reference to Nazi memorial sites, see James E. Young, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (New Haven, CT, 1993); James E. Young, At Memory’s Edge: After-Images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture (New Haven, CT, 2000); KZ-Gedenkstätte Neuengamme, ed., Gedenkstätten und Geschichtspolitik (Bremen, 2015). 29. Paul Williams, Memorial Museums: The Global Rush to Commemorate Atrocities (Oxford, 2007). 30. For example, immediately after the liberation of the concentration camps, the Americans forced residents of nearby villages to directly confront the horror of the camps. As early as 1947, the securing of the camps began with Auschwitz, and with that the beginning of the concept of Gedenkstätten (memorial sites), although this site was located in Poland. 31. Cf. Ulrike Puvogel, Martin Stankowski, and Ursula Graf, eds., Gedenkstätten für die Opfer des Nationalsozialismus: Eine Dokumentation (Bonn, 1995). 32. Shoah Rotem, Constructing Memory: Architectural Narratives of Holocaust Museums (Bern, 2013); Young, The Texture of Memory; Young, At Memory’s Edge. 33. Cf. Thiemeyer, Fortsetzung des Krieges. 34. Cf. ibid., esp. 238–53.

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35. Cf. Brink, Ikonen der Vernichtung. 36. “eine Gefühlsregung nicht automatisch eine Überzeugung und Identifikation noch keine Erkenntnis ist.” Bernhard Sutor, “Politische Bildung im Streit um die ‘intellektuelle Gründung’ der Bundesrepublik Deutschland,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 45 (2002), http://www.bpb.de/publikationen/P4395K,3,0,Politische_Bildung_im_Str eit_um_die_intellektuelle_Gr percentFCndung_der_Bundesrepublik_Deutschland .html; Volkhard Knigge, “Gedenkstätten und Museen,” in Knigge and Frei, Verbrechen Erinnern, 405. See, however, Stephan Jaeger, this volume, regarding new dimensions of experientiality, and Erin Johnston-Weiss, this volume, regarding a more dynamic scale of distanciation and forms of empathy, which demonstrate other representational paradigms and theoretical concepts that overcome the simple dichotomy of documentary and experience-based exhibitions. 37. See also Jana Hawig, this volume; Sarah Kleinmann, this volume. 38. Cf. Thiemeyer, Fortsetzung des Krieges. 39. Thomas Kühne, “Der nationalsozialistische Vernichtungskrieg und die ‘ganz normalen’ Deutschen: Forschungsprobleme und Forschungstendenzen der Gesellschaftsgeschichte des Zweiten Weltkriegs—Erster Teil,” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 39 (1999): 581–89; Anne Duménil, Nicolas Beaupré, and Christian Ingrao, “Introduction,” in 1914–1945: L’ère de la guerre, Tome 1 (1914–1918)—Violence, mobilisation, deuil, ed. Anne Duménil, Nicolas Beaupré, and Christian Ingrao (Paris, 2004), 11–33. 40. Kühne, “Der nationalsozialistische Vernichtungskrieg und die ‘ganz normalen’ Deutschen”; Thomas Kühne, “Der nationalsozialistische Vernichtungskrieg im kulturellen Kontinuum des Zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts: Forschungsprobleme und Forschungstendenzen der Gesellschaftsgeschichte des Zweiten Weltkrieges—Zweiter Teil,” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 40 (2000): 440–86; Peter Longerich, “Tendenzen und Perspektiven der Täterforschung: Essay,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 14–15 (2007): 3–7. 41. Much has been written about this exhibition, which is why I do not include an indepth analysis of it. See, e.g., Thiele, Wehrmachtsausstellung; Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung, Eine Ausstellung und ihre Folgen; Heer, Vom Verschwinden der Täter: Der Vernichtungskrieg fand statt, aber keiner war dabei (Berlin, 2004). 42. On the history of the reception of the exhibition, see Heer, Vom Verschwinden der Täter. 43. “erfolgreichsten politischen Ausstellung der Bundesrepublik.” Ulrich Raulff, “Schockwellen: Das Bild des Zweiten Weltkriegs hat sich geändert,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 1 September 1999. 44. For the Austrian memory of the Second World War and the historical function of the Wehrmacht exhibition in it, see Peter Pirker et al., this volume. 45. Hannes Heer, “Einleitung,” in Vernichtungskrieg: Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941 bis 1944. Ausstellungskatalog, ed. Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung (Hamburg, 1996), 7. 46. Kicked off primarily by a brochure and article by Günter Gillesen, “Zeugnisse eines vagabundierenden Schuldempfindens: Wenig Wissenschaft, viel Collage und Pamphlet—Die Ausstellung über die ‘Verbrechen der Wehrmacht,’” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 6 February 1996, 33. For the history of the exhibition’s reception, cf. Heer, Vom Verschwinden der Täter, 17–23. 47. “Sie erschlagen den Besucher mit einer Fülle von zum Teil drastischen Bildern, mit entsetzlichen Szenen. Der Besucher kommt zu dem Schluss: So war die Wehrmacht . . . Die Ausstellung segelt ja unter falscher Flagge—von der Wehrmacht ist kaum die

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48.

49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

55.

56. 57. 58. 59. 60.



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Rede. Redlich wäre, sie auf das zu reduzieren, was sie wirklich bietet, nämlich Beispiele für die Barbarisierung des Krieges gegen die Sowjetunion an ausgewählten Frontabschnitten.” Interview with Horst Möller, Fokus, 25 October 1999, reprinted in Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung, Verbrechen der Wehrmacht, 714–16. “Die Kernaussagen der Ausstellung . . . in ihrer Substanz dem internationalen Forschungsstand entsprechen. Durch fehlende Differenzierungen und ungerechtfertigte Pauschalisierungen hat die Ausstellung jedoch nicht nur Missverständnisse ausgelöst, sondern auch dazu beigetragen, dass es den Gegnern der Ausstellung möglich war, zumindest teilweise erfolgreiche Ablenkungsmanöver zu starten. Es erscheint deshalb notwendig, die Ausstellung . . . gründlich zu überarbeiten oder neu zu konzipieren.” Omer Bartov, Cornelia Brink, Gerhard Hirschfeld, Friedrich P. Kahlenberg, Manfred Messerschmidt, Reinhard Rürup, Christian Streit, and Hans-Ulrich Thamer, Bericht der Kommission zur Überprüfung der Ausstellung “Vernichtungskrieg: Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941 bis 1944” (Hamburg, 2000), 82. Ibid., 89–90; Hans-Erich Volkmann, “Der öffentliche Umgang mit den Verbrechen der Wehrmacht: ‘Vergessen prägt unser Dasein,’” Militärgeschichte 2 (2002): 5–11. “Der Skandal der Ausstellung bestand darin, dass sie die Trennungslinien überschritt und Überschneidungspunkte von Krieg und Verbrechen im Handlungsraum der Wehrmacht sichtbar machte.” Lethen, “Der Text der Historiografie,” 76. Reinhard Rürup, ed., Der Krieg gegen die Sowjetunion 1941–1945: Eine Dokumentation zum 50. Jahrestag des Überfalls auf die Sowjetunion (Berlin, 1991). Kühne, “Der nationalsozialistische Vernichtungskrieg und die ‘ganz normalen’ Deutschen.” Daniel Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York, 1996), 8–9. “Beide [Goldhagen and the Wehrmachtsausstellung] konfrontierten die Öffentlichkeit mit der eindringlichen Anklage, dass ‘gewöhnliche Deutsche’ und damit ein unbestimmter Teil der noch lebenden Väter- und Grossvätergeneration am systematischen Massenmord ‘partizipiert’ hatte.” Kühne, “Der nationalsozialistische Vernichtungskrieg und die ‘ganz normalen’ Deutschen,” 620. Cf., e.g., Aleida Assmann and Ute Frevert, Geschichtsvergessenheit—Geschichtsversessenheit: Vom Umgang mit deutschen Vergangenheiten nach 1945 (Stuttgart, 1999), 280–81; Hans-Ulrich Thamer, “Wehrmacht und Vernichtungskrieg: Vom Umgang mit einem schwierigen Kapitel deutscher Geschichte” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 22 April 1997. Cf. Gunnar S. Paulsson, The Holocaust Exhibition at the Imperial War Museum London (London, 2000). The idea for a special exhibition emerged for the first time in 1993, and planning for the exhibition started in 1995. Paris has had its own Mémorial de la Shoah since 2005, and the Holocaust section in the Musée de l’Armée, which had to be included at the time for reasons of memory politics, may therefore eventually close. This was the case in April 2007, at least. The exhibition has since been restructured. Benjamin Brower, “The Preserving Machine: The ‘New’ Museum and Working through Trauma—The Musée Mémorial pour la Paix of Caen,” History and Memory 11 (1999): 84–85. On the Imperial War Museum, see also Suzanne Bardgett, “The Depiction of the Holocaust at the Imperial War Museum since 1961,” Journal of Israeli History 23, no. 1 (2004): 146–56; on the Musée de l’Armée, see Nadine Bonnefoi and Vincent Gi-

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61.

62. 63.

64. 65.

66. 67.

68. 69.

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raudier, “Présentation générale du parcours,” Revue de la Société des Amis du Musée de l’Armée 120 (2000): 46–47; on the Mémorial de Caen, see Le mémorial de Caen: Guide de visite (Caen: Mémorial de Caen, 2003), 10–11. “Les idéaux défendus par les Alliés de ce conflit représentent toujours une grave espérance.” From the text in the concluding area (Actes de Conclusion) at the end of the section on the Second World War in the Musée de l’Armée in Paris. The text is located in the final room in the exhibition, where visitors leave the darkness of the war rooms and enter a brightly lit area, where they are welcomed with a quotation from Charles de Gaulle, “Le jour de victoire est arrivée.” The large photographs on display include the German war criminals in the dock in Nuremberg. Jan Philipp Reemtsma, Vertrauen und Gewalt: Versuch über eine besondere Konstellation der Moderne (Hamburg, 2008), 269–70, 282–83. Cf. Thomas Thiemeyer, “Exhibiting the War: Heroes, Perpetrators, and Victims of the Two World Wars in German, English and French Museums,” in Out of the Tower: Essays on Culture and Everyday Life, ed. Monique Scheer, Reinhard Johler, Thomas Thiemeyer, and Bernhard Tschofen (Tübingen 2013), 288–307. Nevertheless, even in the second decade of the twenty-first century, heroic memory and challenges of representing perpetration by German soldiers are still important topics of specific local memory cultures; cf. Karola Fings, this volume. Ute Frevert, “Geschichtsvergessenheit und Geschichtsversessenheit revisited: Der jüngste Erinnerungsboom in der Kritik,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 40–41 (2003): 6–13; Helga Hirsch, “Flucht und Vertreibung: Kollektive Erinnerung im Wandel,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 40–41 (2003): 14–26; Aleida Assmann, Shadows of Trauma: Memory and the Politics of Postwar Identity, trans. Sarah Clift (New York, 2016); Frei, 1945 und wir; Ulrich Raulff, “1945: Ein Jahr kehrt zurück—Tausche Geschichte gegen Gefühl,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, 30 October 2003. For details, see Thiemeyer, Fortsetzung des Krieges, 161–87. Alf Lüdtke and Bernd Weisbrod, “Introduction,” in No Man’s Land of Violence: Extreme Wars in the 20th Century, ed. Alf Lüdtke and Bern Weisbrod (Göttingen, 2006), 7–9; Heinrich von Popitz, Phänomene der Macht (Tübingen, 2004); Peter Imbusch, “Gewalt: Stochern in unübersichtlichem Gelände” Mittelweg 36, no. 2 (2000): 25–26; Dirk Schumann, “Gewalt als Grenzüberschreitung: Überlegungen zur Sozialgeschichte der Gewalt im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert,” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 37 (1997): 366–86. For a summary of the sociological debates about the phenomenology of violence, see Peter Imbusch, “‘Mainstreamer’ versus ‘Innovateure’ der Gewaltforschung: Eine kuriose Debatte,” in Gewalt: Entwicklungen, Strukturen, Analyseprobleme, ed. Wilhelm Heitmeyer and Hans-Georg Soeffner (Frankfurt, 2004), 125–48. Cf. Sönke Neitzel and Harald Welzer, Soldaten: Protokolle vom Kämpfen, Töten und Sterben (Frankfurt, 2011); Sebastian Groß, Gefangen im Krieg: Frontsoldaten der Wehrmacht und ihre Weltsicht (Berlin, 2012). “ein sehr menschliches Museum . . . das Interesse gilt in erster Linie den Menschen, die den Krieg gefühlt und erlitten haben, den einfachen Soldaten und Zivilbevölkerung.” Reinhard Rürup, “Ein Museum gegen den Krieg,” in Erinnerung an einen Krieg, ed. Museum Berlin-Karlshorst (Berlin, 1997), 11. Gorch Pieken, “Contents Space: New Concept and New Building of the Militärhistorisches Museum of the Bundeswehr,” in Does War Belong in Museums? The Representation of Violence in Exhibitions, ed. Wolfgang Muchitsch (Bielefeld, 2013), 65.

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71. Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen (Munich, 1992) 51–56. 72. “Phase der Vergangenheitsbewahrung.” Assmann and Frevert, Geschichtsvergessenheit, 145–47; see also Frei, 1945 und wir, 26. 73. The attempt to attract a wide audience (rather than just academics) has not been limited to military history museums but rather has been the objective of all art and cultural history museums since the 1970s. At an early stage in Germany, the societal function of museums was problematized in the museum conference “Museum: Lernort contra Musentempel”; cf. Ellen Spickernagel and Brigitte Walbe, eds., Das Museum: Lernort contra Musentempel (Giessen, 1976). 74. “den Übergang vom Erinnerungskampf zur Erinnerungskultur.” Frei, 1945 und wir, 26. 75. Thiemeyer, Fortsetzung des Krieges, 103–6. 76. “Korrektiv der kontrollierenden Kennerschaft der Zeitgenossen.” Ibid., 56.

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Puvogel, Ulrike, Martin Stankowski, and Ursula Graf, eds. Gedenkstätten für die Opfer des Nationalsozialismus: Eine Dokumentation. Bonn, 1995. Raulff, Ulrich. “1945. Ein Jahr kehrt zurück: Tausche Geschichte gegen Gefühl.” Süddeutsche Zeitung, 30 October 2003, 11. Raulff, Ulrich. “Schockwellen: Das Bild des Zweiten Weltkriegs hat sich geändert.” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 1 September 1999. Reichel, Peter. Politik mit der Erinnerung: Gedächtnisorte im Streit um die nationalsozialistische Vergangenheit. Frankfurt, 1999. Reemtsma, Jan Philipp. Vertrauen und Gewalt. Versuch über eine besondere Konstellation der Moderne. Hamburg, 2008. Rotem, Shoah. Constructing Memory: Architectural Narratives of Holocaust Museums. Bern, 2013. Rürup, Reinhard, ed. Der Krieg gegen die Sowjetunion 1941–1945: Eine Dokumentation zum 50. Jahrestag des Überfalls auf die Sowjetunion. Berlin, 1991. ———. “Ein Museum gegen den Krieg.” In Erinnerung an einen Krieg, edited by Museum Berlin-Karlshorst, 9–12. Berlin, 1997. Schumann, Dirk. “Gewalt als Grenzüberschreitung: Überlegungen zur Sozialgeschichte der Gewalt im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert.” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 37 (1997): 366–86. Spickernagel, Ellen, and Brigitte Walbe, eds. Das Museum: Lernort contra Musentempel. Giessen, 1976. Stiftung Topographie des Terrors, and Claudia Steur, eds. Deutschland 1945: Die letzten Kriegsmonate—Ein Begleitkatalog zur gleichnamigen Ausstellung. Berlin: Stiftung Topogaphie die Terrors, 2014. Sutor, Bernhard. “Politische Bildung im Streit um die ‘intellektuelle Gründung’ der Bundesrepublik Deutschland.” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 45 (2002): 17–27. http://www .bpb.de/publikationen/P4395K,3,0,Politische_Bildung_im_Streit_um_die_intellek tuelle_Gr percentFCndung_der_Bundesrepublik_Deutschland. Thamer, Hans-Ulrich. “Wehrmacht und Vernichtungskrieg: Vom Umgang mit einem schwierigen Kapitel deutscher Geschichte.” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 22 April 1997, 10. Thiele, Hans-Günther. Die Wehrmachtsausstellung: Dokumentation einer Kontroverse. Bonn, 1997. Thiemeyer, Thomas, “Exhibiting the War: Heroes, Perpetrators, and Victims of the Two World Wars in German, English and French Museums.” In Out of the Tower: Essays on Culture and Everyday Life, edited by Monique Scheer, Reinhard Johler, Thomas Thiemeyer, and Bernhard Tschofen. Tübingen, 2013. 288–307. ———. Fortsetzung des Krieges mit anderen Mitteln: Die beiden Weltkriege im Museum. Paderborn, 2010. ———. “Unter Beschuss: Das Londoner Imperial War Museum.” Merkur 69, no. 2 (2015): 71–76. Vereinigung der Freunde des Wehrgeschichtlichen Museums Rastatt, ed. Unter dem Greifen: Altbadisches Militär von der Vereinigung der Markgrafschaften bis zur Reichsgründung 1771–1871. Karlsruhe, 1984. Volkmann, Hans-Erich. “Der öffentliche Umgang mit den Verbrechen der Wehrmacht: ‘Vergessen prägt unser Dasein.’” Militärgeschichte 2 (2002): 5–11. Wierling, Dorothee. “Krieg im Nachkrieg: Zur öffentlichen und privaten Präsenz des Krieges in der SBZ und frühen GDR.” In Echternkamp and Martens, Der Zweite Weltkrieg in Europa, 237–52.

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Williams, Paul. Memorial Museums: The Global Rush to Commemorate Atrocities. Oxford, 2007. Wolfrum, Edgar. “Nationalsozialismus und Zweiter Weltkrieg: Berichte zur Geschichte der Erinnerung—Die beiden Deutschland.” In Knigge and Frei, Verbrechen Erinnern, 153–169. Young, James E. At Memory’s Edge: After-Images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture. New Haven, CT, 2000. ———. The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning. New Haven, CT, 1993. Zeitgeschichte-online. “Materialien zur Debatte um das ‘Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen.’” January 2004. http://www.zeitgeschichte-online.de/thema/materialien-zur-debatteum-das-zentrum-gegen-vertreibungen. Zwach, Eva. Deutsche und englische Militärmuseen im 20. Jahrhundert: Eine kulturgeschichtliche Analyse des gesellschaftlichen Umgangs mit Krieg. Münster, 1999.

CHAPTER 2



The Experientiality of the Second World War in Twenty-First-Century European Museums (Normandy, the Ardennes, Germany) STEPHAN JAEGER

F

iction can create historically probable characters and their consciousness in fictional worlds, which can in turn reflect historically plausible facts and circumstances. Historiography can document historical experiences or imitate them as simulations of collective and exemplary individual historical experiences, as well as simulations of atmospheres of specific historical times or situations. Unlike fiction, historiography is limited in its ability to create experiences because of the referential truth pact it holds with its recipient.1 Monika Fludernik introduced the term experientiality into narratological research by defining narrativity as representation of experientiality.2 Experientiality is defined as “the quasi-mimetic evocation of real-life experience.”3 This experience incorporates actions, intentions, and feelings. With regard to historiography, Fludernik argues, “The experientiality of the source is . . . sublimated and transformed into collective experience as the historical object of analysis.”4 Yet, whereas any form of historical experience is mediated and constructed, the usefulness of the term experientiality shifts if the idea of experiential consciousness is seen in the act of reception. If one recognizes that historiography always produces constructed, simulated experiences, Fludernik’s “quasi-mimetic evocation of real-life experience” shifts from individual to collective experience. Since a collective perspective is always a retrospective construct—humans can feel like part of the collective, but they can never experience collective perception in the present moment—the visitor becomes significant as mediator for

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experientiality. This analysis assumes an ideal museum visitor as “the museum visitor,” that is, it uses an aesthetic response theory in analyzing the semiotic and aesthetic potentialities of the museal space that a visitor can evoke.5 In reality, different visitors will react differently to each museum display based on, among other things, their background, their intentions and interests, and their time during the museum visit.6 This chapter will demonstrate that the theoretical concept of experientiality is extremely useful in understanding and theorizing current historiographical approaches by exemplifying museum representations of the Second World War in the second decade of the twenty-first century. I argue that almost all historical museums today construct their own simulated historical, poietic worlds and thereby their own experientiality, although their representational strategies vary. Examples of these strategical variations include the creation of proximity and distance between visitor and museum content, focus on individual voices and collective perspectives, and use of narrative and scenography in the exhibition of objects. The medium of museum can expand the notion of time and space, leading to a dynamic relationship between history and memory and prompting the visitor to contemplate their future behavior through different emotional, moral, reflexive, and pedagogical dimensions. Recent research on museum representations of the Second World War has mostly analyzed the evolution of museums that reflect national cultural memories.7 The concept of experientiality allows for the further development of a theoretical framework to understand contemporary museums’ possibilities of mediating war, as well as their ability to generate aesthetic and emotional responses in the museum visitor. Experiences of war can relate to the perspectives of combatants, civilians, perpetrators and victims of war crimes and genocide, political actors, mothers, children, and many other collective perspectives. They may also create empathy between the museum visitor and different historical perspectives. Experiences can also be structural for the visitor. For example, structural experience can be invoked in understanding how an increasing brutalization of warfare and attitudes toward warfare shaped the Second World War. Experientiality and the simulation of historical atmospheres can be created at authentic battleground locations and in museum contexts that are more abstract and separated from concrete historical events. For example, Patrick Finney has emphasized how the new challenges arising at the end of living memory of the Second World War impact questions of authenticity and the construction of collective experiences of the past in different media such as museums.8 This corresponds to Eva Ulrike Pirker and Mark Rüdiger’s definition of historical authenticity in two ways: as witnessing and as experiencing the past.9 All military history museums aim to generate authenticity, but the form of authenticity varies between different degrees of reconstructive and simulated authenticity.10 To understand the full range of experientiality, this chapter first examines museums located in battlefield regions, before moving to German exhibitions

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that have been created with only minor reliance on authentic historical spaces. Specifically, this chapter will examine museums in Normandy, highlighting the events of the D-Day landing and the ensuing battle for Normandy; in the Ardennes, focusing on the Battle of the Bulge around Bastogne; and in Germany, including the German-Russian Museum in Berlin-Karlshorst and the Bundeswehr Military History Museum in Dresden.

Historiography, Museum, and Experientiality With the advent of cognitive theory,11 experientiality has become an important category in discussing the representation and narration of history.12 In Fludernik’s view, historiographic narrative can merely express experience, not experientiality.13 Traditional debates between traditional, fact-oriented versus postmodern historians can be overcome by recognizing that one of the tasks of historiographic narrative is to construct or simulate historical experience. This is evident in museum representations, where the recipient must be integrated into historical analysis as a potential or ideal visitor, underlining that we discuss never the experiences of the real past but, to quote Jonas Grethlein, only “experiences of experiences.”14 My argument is that museums do not simply create experientiality in subjective or single experiences; instead, they are carried, in Fludernik’s sense, by human consciousness, whereby historiographical representations hold the possibility of creating secondary, poietic spaces.15 These spaces do not simply depict, document, or even reconstruct the past but rather allow for—often in a nonmimetic way—structural experiences of war. These are realized through building experiential relations between the visitor, the museum installation, and the simulated past. Poietic spaces are particularly significant in museums, since any narrative component of representation happens in a three-dimensional space and requires the visitor to complete the act of perception. The importance of the argument for secondary experiences and experientiality becomes clearer when we juxtapose two opposing theorists of museal representations of war and atrocity. Thomas Thiemeyer argues in his study on museum representations of the two world wars that narrative-scenographic war exhibitions—using the examples of the Mémorial de Caen (Caen Memorial Museum) and the In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres—might trivialize war’s serious and painful elements by representing it as a cheerful and exciting amusement.16 Thiemeyer’s position contrasts sharply with the concept of prosthetic memory from Alison Landsberg, who argues, “We recognize the importance of this experiential mode to the acquisition of particular kinds of knowledge.”17 For Landsberg,“the experiential mode complements the cognitive with affect, sensuousness, and tactility.”18 Via Freud’s concept of transference, memories of traumas such as the Holocaust become imaginable, thinkable, and

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speakable to the visitor or recipient.19 At first glance, we see here the classical conflict between a more Anglo-American approach (highlighting the emotions of history) versus a more German one (highlighting the cognitive historical understanding of the past). Both scholars acknowledge the wider scope of the argument, but their own views are oversimplified. Landsberg at times seems to overemphasize the bodily effects of museal, pictorial, and cinematic perception. Though Thiemeyer underlines the newer theory, which states that cognitive and emotional functions of historical representations cannot be strictly separated,20 he seems to operate with a certain bias against the experiential. Instead, he emphasizes the value of actual objects, the need for historiographical source criticism, and the contextualization of images and objects.21 I argue that neither Thiemeyer nor Landsberg come close to answering why the discussion on the experientiality of war and atrocities is so relevant for museum representation today, or why it is important to understand the level of experientiality that museums can potentially produce. Thiemeyer distinguishes between the German concepts Erlebnis and Erfahrung,22 both of which are usually translated into English as “experience.” The distinction he makes characterizes the former as a possibly inconsequential experience and the latter as the internalization and understanding of an experience. Thiemeyer’s distinction is similar to Fludernik’s distinction between experience and experientiality. As Thiemeyer points out, museums continue to attempt to reproduce relatively simple experiences so that the visitor feels like one specific character, such as an exemplary individual, or else as part of a historical collective. This is most famously seen in the trench and Blitz bunker experiences from the old Second World War exhibition in the Imperial War Museum in London. Indeed, these experiences are mainly for entertainment23 and do not lead to an understanding of history, or to learning from it; they confirm the status quo.24 However, once one distinguishes between primary and secondary experience, one can recognize that museums can simulate historical structures that do not rely on an individual or collective entity. Thus, it becomes possible to analyze numerous museum techniques that create experientiality of war and do not fall in the trap of the naive, mimetic experience model. Instead, exhibitions can perform experientiality with considerable nuance by representing historical knowledge, using the authenticity of artifacts and locations, constructing individual and collective experiences, simulating historical structure, and emotionalizing the visitor on different levels.

Primary Experiences of War What are experience and experientiality in a museum? A primary experience in a museum is a simulation of actual historical events or of exemplary histor-

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ical situations that members of a group could have experienced as such. The museum offers some promise of real experience or closeness to the situation, even if it is clear that such real experience is an impossibility in any museum exhibition. To further understand the difference between primary and secondary experience, it helps to briefly analyze an example from the Bastogne (Sous-Lieutenant Heintz) Barracks, which—though still hosting military operations—has functioned as an interpretation center for the Second World War since 2010. The Bastogne Barracks became the headquarters of Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe, acting commander of the US 101st Airborne Division, after he arrived in Bastogne with his division during the Battle of the Bulge. When US forces became encircled, the German command demanded that McAuliffe surrender, to which he responded with the legendary reply of “Nuts!” on 22 December 1944. The Bastogne Barracks interpretation center creates experience through reconstructing exact scenes in the authentic surroundings of the barracks. A shining example of this is the diorama that portrays the Christmas dinner of nine commanding officers, reconstructed from a photograph. The mannequins of the diorama copy the exact facial expressions and positioning of the nine officers around the table; even the food on the plates is replicated. Such imitations of scenes that symbolize specific stages in a campaign (or other historical moments) are very popular in traditional war museums, as well as in more recent museums. This popularity highlights the value of collectors’ objects. Whereas the museum visitor might be truly in awe while observing a meticulously reconstructed historical scene in an authentic setting, they cannot perceive any simulated war experience because of the lack of involvement of any human consciousness. The visitor cannot experience the actions, intentions, or feelings of the officers represented. Certainly, twenty-first-century museum representation has the potential to go beyond the static historical reconstruction and imitation of the Bastogne Barracks, often through digital and multimedia installations. Museums try to reinitiate simulated experiences that let the viewer empathize with specific historical experiences. The Musée Airborne (Airborne Museum) in Sainte-MèreÉglise announced a new museum experience in 2014 as follows: “In the brand new building Operation Neptune, be prepared to parachute on the 6th of June 1944! Join the nighttime embarkation of a C-47 aircraft in England, then drop into the square of Sainte-Mère-Église in the midst of the fighting and take part in the operations that followed.”25 The promise is that the visitor will become part of the historical parachute experience of the 82nd Airborne Division and therefore sensually empathize with the perspective of the parachutists and their subsequent experiences in the village and Normandy.26 The visitor first walks through a C-47 aircraft filled with mannequin parachutists on both sides of the dark, narrow aisle of the plane’s cargo. Then the visitor exits the plane onto a glass bridge over a model of Sainte-Mère-Église under a night

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sky; a wind tunnel, as well as light and sound installations, simulates the idea of landing in the village. The Operation Neptune experience continues chronologically—first in hours and then in days—with relatively traditional museum rooms documenting the path of the 82nd Airborne Division, and of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment in particular. The museum attempts to simulate an authentic perspective; the visitor should feel sensations and emotions close to those of the real parachutists. Indeed, the Airborne Museum reconstructs the illusion of the primary experience of landing in Sainte-Mère-Église. Because of the imitation of consciousness in an actual historical world, Operation Neptune still constitutes primary experientiality, as its simulated experiences pretend to allow the visitor to reengage with the past as other individuals or groups have experienced it. Even more elaborate than the Operation Neptune experience is the D-Day Experience in the Dead Man’s Corner Museum in Saint-Côme-du-Mont, Normandy, installed in 2015. An epitaph in front of the museum reminds the visitor of the words of Lieutenant Colonel Robert Lee “Bull” Wolverton—the commanding officer of 3rd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division—spoken to his men before they boarded the C-47 transport aircrafts to parachute into Normandy in the night of D-Day. Wolverton was killed by German machine gunfire in an orchard outside Saint Cômedu-Mont. The exhibition personalizes the telling of Wolverton’s story in its title: “It’s my story.” The exhibition contains glass panels that house mannequins and original gear of the parachutists. It also tells short anecdotal stories of the men’s fates, including Wolverton’s, mainly through first-person narration. The visitor enters a briefing room in which Wolverton’s holographic ghost introduces the mission awaiting the parachutist-visitor in a ten-minute speech. The speech itself is not authentic; it introduces many military equipment details to the visitor that are not necessary for the parachutists to hear in reality but does end with Wolverton’s own words. Mimetic naivety is also complicated by the fact that a dead officer’s ghost functions as narrator. After the briefing, the visitor enters the shell of the authentic Stoy Hora C-47 aircraft converted into a high-tech flight simulator for the second episode of the American war drama miniseries Band of Brothers. The windows show the simulated world of Southern England, clouds over the channel, other airplanes, shooting (which partially hits the plane), a sky full of parachutists, and an apparent landing or crashing of the plane. The simulator shakes, cabin lights go out, and bright red explosions lead to sudden darkness. The visitor leaves the airplane over a ramp into the rest of the exhibition, holding a large variety of memorabilia and mannequins. There are also textual references from the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment and others, with an emphasis on the Stoy Hora, in the second half of the museum. The question of what is experienced in the Dead Man’s Corner Museum is complex. Experiences of direct empathy only occur during the briefing and the

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flight simulation, the illusion of which is immediately contradicted by the fact that most visitors know that the original plane was transformed into a simulator for a TV series, whereby they may feel more like a TV star than able to empathize with historical American parachutists. The series Band of Brothers highlights the emotions, suspense, and anxiety of the men ready to jump. The museum is in contrast occupied by visitors taking photos and videos for memorabilia purposes. At best, the visitor is experiencing an entertaining ride, coming nowhere close to the historical experience or emotions of the parachutists. Authenticity is created more traditionally through the brief story pieces on the fates of specific soldiers and the authentic objects commemorating them, their valor, and their sacrifice. As Thomas Thiemeyer argues in this volume, individual voices and stories allow the visitor to feel close to the war. My last Normandy example, the Arromanches 360 Circular Cinema in Arromanches-les-Bains, demonstrates how museums can engage the visitor in a more structural sense. In this theater, visitors stand at railings in a dome and are immersed in a 360-degree image show for nineteen minutes. The imagery covers the one-hundred-day Battle of Normandy, from the planning of D-Day to the Allied bombings, and concludes with images of the Allies liberating Paris. In place of a unified narrator, there are only a few brief voices of Allied political and military leaders. The audio is a mixture of dramatic instrumental music and battle sounds from original footage. The imagery is a montage of iconic footage and photographs, from which the camera frequently zooms in and out, as if they were moving images. The difference from the three previous examples is that the installation does not attempt to simulate a primary experience. Instead, the visitor experiences the D-Day campaign from an undefined observer perspective, encompassing images from the Allied victory to German defeat to civilian suffering. The images and music are clearly intended to blur the viewers’ cognitive capacities in favor of an emotional experience of the whole campaign.27 Indeed, it is clear to visitors that they are immersed not in the representation of a primary, historical experience but rather in a powerful audiovisual construct, that is, a secondary, structural experience. Despite this, viewers are led to believe that this is an authentic representation. Arromanches 360 produces experientiality in its representation of the Normandy campaign by varying the distance between the camera, the subjects, and the objects represented. The secondary experientiality allows the visitor to feel close to the actual events despite the constructed nature of the representation.

Between Primary and Secondary Experiences From the very beginning, the redesigned exhibition of the Bastogne War Museum immerses the visitor in experiences of the past through its depiction of

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the Battle of the Bulge, which occurred from 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945. This museum emphasizes the role of the city of Bastogne while incorporating a more comprehensive picture of the Second World War. It opened in a new building on 22 March 2014 and is located next to the Mardasson Memorial, which honors the American liberators. The museum’s exhibition relies on numerous audiovisual features, including image collages, enlarged poster-like photographs, video eyewitness accounts, and floors, walls, and display panels that constantly change color. The museum uses original objects, but they are secondary to the visual and experiential approach of the exhibition. The anchor points of the permanent exhibition are three “scenovisions,” three-dimensional theaters where the visitor enters a stage and is immersed in the events of the war. Through the audio guide, the viewers automatically hear the narrative voices of four characters: Émile, a thirteen-year-old student; Mathilde, a twentyfive-year-old teacher and casual member of the Belgian resistance; Hans, a twenty-one-year-old Wehrmacht lieutenant; and Robert, a twenty-year-old American soldier of the 101st Airborne Division (see Figure 2.1). The characters are constructed from multiple eyewitness accounts of the battle from the American, German, and civilian perspectives, though some characters are fairly close to actual biographies. Despite the characters’ cartoon-

Figure 2.1. Narrative characters “See the war through our eyes.” Permanent exhibition. © Bastogne War Museum. Photo by Stephan Jaeger, 2016.

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ish construction, the visitor feels they could represent real historical persons. In the exhibition’s last section, which depicts the end of the war, the audio tour completes the story of all four characters through the Battle of the Bulge and describes their fate afterward as if they had really lived. For example, the audio guide notes that Émile is still living in Bastogne. The museum plays with the idea that the character is real, intensifying the reality effect. The audio guide narrator continues: “Walking down the streets of Bastogne, you might pass [Émile] by without knowing him.” The visitor listens to these characters from close up, mostly as people directly experiencing the battle, encirclement, and bombardment of Bastogne. Sometimes, however, the characters provide larger contexts from a greater narrative distance, especially in the first scenovision, which intersperses an overview of the war from 1939 to the eve of D-Day with the concrete accounts of the four characters, framed as a fictitious pre-D-Day press conference. This corresponds to the exhibition’s technique of constantly fluctuating between proximity and distance.28 The second and third scenovision emotionalize the visitor through a combination of storytelling and images. The second one, entitled “The Offensive: In the woods near Bastogne: At the dawn of 16 December 1944 . . . ,” serves as a primary example of the exhibition’s creation of experientiality (see Figure 2.2). Visitors sit on benches made out of tree trunks looking at the stage of the Ardennes Forest full of tree stumps. Machine guns emerge from foxholes. A three-dimensional projection of audiovisual scenes immerses the visitor in the forest. The cartoonlike characters are projected as images on the wall, which breaks the illusion of reality for the visitor. The voices contextualize the fighting and shift from nearer to farther from the battle. Although the title of the scenovision identifies a specific moment in time as its starting point, it narrates the whole German counterattack and encirclement of Bastogne through the voices of the four characters, up until the US Third Army of General George S. Patton relieves the 101st Airborne Division on 26 December 1944. The visitor can empathize with all four roles, though Émile and Mathilde are more prominent in the third scenovision, highlighting the civilian experience. In the beginning of the second scenovision, Hans’s and Robert’s perspectives as soldiers change quickly. For example, Hans reports on the different villages conquered by the Germans while focusing on Bastogne, whereas the Americans have simultaneously received reinforcements. Hans gives the visitor an idea of the general situation, describing where the German advance stopped and what areas are still under American control. He then highlights how his men raze every forest they come across. The narration then switches to Robert, who says, “We have been digging foxholes all night long; we are ready for them.” At this point, simulated explosions commence, and the visitor is immersed in a battle narrated by Robert’s commands from the American perspective. Dramatic music overlaps with the sounds of fighting, and Hans’s voice sets

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Figure 2.2. Scenovision 2: “The Offensive: In the woods near Bastogne—At the dawn of 16 December 1944 . . .” Permanent exhibition. © Bastogne War Museum. Photo by Stephan Jaeger, 2016.

in, talking about the German lack of success and how exhausted his men are after going two days without real food. This back-and-forth between the two situations continues, highlighting the human needs of each group while giving an overview of the military situation. The narration ends when Robert’s group captures Hans. Iconic images, space, a multimedia show, and narrative work to authenticate each other. The viewer is emotionalized to empathize with all four characters; they are all represented in reconciliatory way, so no conflict between them arises. The visitor can identify as much with Robert as with Hans, since their human character traits are highlighted. Unlike in the Operation Neptune or the D-Day Experience installations in Normandy, the visitor’s ability to identify with a specific collective perspective is continuously broken: first through the constant shift in proximity and distance to the soldiers’ “real” experiences and summaries of the battle, and then through the multiperspectival shifts between the four characters. The visitor experiences a secondary meta-reality of the whole battle, which consistently includes primary forms of identification with the specific perspectives of individual characters. This form of representation carries a conciliatory and, to an extent, anti-war message. Consequently, the visitor could potentially lose the ability to critically engage with war crimes and the soldiers’ ideology. Hans seems too morally

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good to be a stereotypical representation of German soldier. Yet, images, interview footage, and text throughout the exhibition add narratives of war crimes in the Ardennes, Belgium, and across the world, as well as the Holocaust, to the stories of the four characters. Unlike in the Normandy examples, the Bastogne War Museum transcends cheap empathy or simplistic entertainment experiences through a complex structure, which combines iconic images, fully developed narrative perspectives, and an empathetic experience of an authentic but clearly constructed scene in the woods near Bastogne. This allows the visitor to develop questions about war, which surpasses the goal of empathizing with the soldiers in the forest or with the civilians in bombed-out Bastogne basements. In the third scenovision, all four characters, including the POW Hans, meet in Émile’s uncle’s café during the Luftwaffe’s bombardment of Bastogne in the night of 23–24 December. The visitor is placed at a table to watch and listen. The scene moves from café to its basement. On the one hand, it is a very intimate setting. The civilians share soup with Hans, who plays his harmonica while Émile plays his accordion in the dimly lit basement. At the end of the scenovision, Émile hears the news of his parents’ death, and Mathilde describes a lesson she teaches in a postwar classroom near Bastogne by analyzing a German text that states the world may never see such a Christmas again: “To snatch a child from his mother, a husband from his wife, a father from his children, is this worthy of a human being? . . . Universal fraternity will undeniably rise from ruins, blood, and death.” The scenovision ends with Émile riding his bicycle, accordion on his back, to the sea. The cartoonlike character of Émile becomes a real person in the footage, who disappears on a road into the distance accompanied by images of the sea. It had always been Émile’s dream to see the sea and ride there by bicycle with his father, the owner of a bicycle shop. Even more than in the previous scenovision, the characters are used to deliver an overarching message of the brutality of war. This is reminiscent of the techniques used in the 2013 TeamWorx/ZDF German miniseries Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter (Generation War), in which exemplary characters from the early 1920s generation allow the viewer to empathize with personal perspectives.29 On the other hand, they are simultaneously incorporated in a larger network of identifying war as such as the cause for all the brutality and atrocities of the period. The Bastogne War Museum brings the everyday experience of war very close to the visitor, who can therefore empathize with the personalized and somehow stereotypical experiences of the different characters. It is worth drawing a second comparison to Band of Brothers: the sixth episode, “Bastogne,” covers the Battle of the Bulge up until the encirclement of Bastogne is broken up on 26 December 1944.30 In the episode, General McAuliffe’s Christmas message includes telling the aforementioned “Nuts!” story to the soldiers who start to relax and laugh, and “Nuts!” is eventually heard everywhere. Simultaneously, the camera moves back and forth between the of-

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ficer reading the message and the almost expressionless face of this episode’s protagonist, the medic Eugene “Doc” Roe, who works through suffering while treating the casualties in the forest around Bastogne and in Bastogne itself. Shortly afterward, the Christmas night bombardment of Bastogne culminates in Roe entering the ruins of Bastogne’s church looking for a Belgian nurse he befriended. The viewer does not see the corpse of the nurse, just the expression of Roe’s face when he discovers her headscarf in the rubble. The Bastogne War Museum, with its variation of proximity and distance, is not able to recreate the series’ emotional close-ups that express the pain and trauma of the soldier’s war experiences. However, the museum’s constructed secondary reality brings the visitor closer to the past through prototypical stories from multiple angles, with sufficient distantiation to allow for an understanding of the overall picture. Band of Brothers is limited to a certain proximity, yet it leaves more room for the viewer to interpret a character’s emotions. Consequently, the museum provides a new secondary experientiality perception of the Battle of Bastogne and Second World War—one that, unlike the TV miniseries, remains factual in the sense that it references the war historiographically. The characters are fictional compounds of many historical persons, which allows for the increase of the war’s concrete experientiality.

Structural Experientiality German museums are considerably less connected to the experientiality of particular battles in Second World War battleground regions. Only a few actual battles were conducted on German territory, but even in those cases, the complex memory of the German perpetrator nation causes museums to shy away from creating empathy with actual battle experiences. Small memory museums like the Gedenkstätte Seelower Höhen (Seelow Heights Memorial) focus not on the historical events of the Soviet attack in April 1945 but rather on forms of memory, at least in the Gedenkstätte Seelower Höhen’s most recent permanent exhibition.31 As a result, the visitor is immersed in war experience not through primary experientiality but rather as secondary experientiality. This secondary experientiality is significantly more structural than in the case of the installations in Normandy and the Ardennes. My first German example, the new permanent exhibition of the Deutsch-Russisches Museum (German-Russian Museum) opened in May 2013 in Berlin-Karlshorst (the historical villa where the “Eastern Front” Second World War surrender was officially signed). The exhibition contrasts the perspectives of Germany and the Soviet Union to express an abstract simulated experience about the impact of war. The museum does not attempt to create the illusion that the past can be “experienced” as such. Instead, it simulates structural experiences that rely on the constructed

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collective perspectives of specific groups, such as the Soviet prisoners of war, in the interactions between Germans and civilians in the Soviet Union during the occupation, or through the experiences on the Soviet and German home fronts. As discussed elsewhere,32 this exhibition simulates a structural experience by initiating the visitor’s entry into the collective proceedings behind planning the campaign to destroy the Soviet people. Its first room, where the visitor enters a black cube with dimmed lights, contains quotations from Nazi and SS leaders and leading Wehrmacht officers, eleven résumés of German leaders, and numerous facsimiles of German policies, directives, maps, and propaganda fliers. There is no primary experience exhibited here. The visitor is presented with factual documents, data, artifacts, quotations, and descriptive text about the actions of the German leaders during the Third Reich. All this data collectively presents a network of ideas that made up the policies and practices behind the war of annihilation against the Soviet Union. For example, a quotation from a speech Hitler gave to his Eastern Front commanders highlights the difference between the war in the West and in the East, as well as the ideological concept of total destruction of the Slavic peoples. The brutality, racism, and contempt for humanity are evident throughout the room. By presenting data about figures like the German officer Georg Thomas, the exhibition highlights the difficulty of distinguishing between perpetrators and victims of the regime. Thomas was on the one hand instrumental in the implementation of starvation policies in Operation Barbarossa and, on the other, was imprisoned after Hitler’s assassination because of earlier connections to the German military resistance. Furthermore, it is noted without further assessment in the biography of Franz Halder, the chief of the General Staff of the High Command of the German Army from September 1938 until September 1942, that he was instrumental in propagating the myth of the innocent Wehrmacht soldier, preventing any “working through” of the guilt of German soldiers. The visitor receives a wide range of information so that they first know the policies, war crimes, and atrocities in the planning phase and early stages of the war against the Soviet Union. Second, the visitor sees how many different leaders were involved in the planning of the war. The myth of the innocent Wehrmacht is shattered without explicitly being addressed. This structural experience echoes throughout the exhibition so that the visitor can assemble secondary structural themes and perspectives. For example, the third room creates a collective perspective and structural experience about the total exploitation and fate of Soviet prisoners of war (see Figure 2.3). An installation with a coat and cap of an unknown Soviet POW with “60 percent” written in large font—referring to the percentage of Soviet POWs who died (in contrast to 3.6 percent in of Western European POWs)—welcomes the visitor into a small darkened room. On the one hand, the visitor experiences the suffering and fate of Soviet POWs, planned murders, death marches,

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Figure 2.3. Room entitled “Soviet Prisoners of War.” Permanent exhibition. Deutsch-Russisches Museum Berlin-Karlshorst, 2013. © Deutsch-Russisches Museum Berlin-Karlshorst.

camps, forced labor, experiments on human beings, and collaboration in a structural sense. A pseudo-chronicle of contextualized photographs, several small objects, two audio samples of biographical stories, some video footage, survey panels for each subtopic, and quotations of orders and reports from the German perpetrator perspective complete the experience. Related to the war planning from room one, a photo of a Jewish commissar digging his own grave is part of a narrative cluster of material about the targeted killing of political officers. At the same time, a nearby photograph of a captured female Soviet soldier highlights how German soldiers loathed and often immediately killed female soldiers. There is again no depiction of the primary experience of being loathed or of being sent to a concentration camp, but the viewer can piece together a structural experience of how the war of annihilation was conducted. To summarize, the museum uses a presentist approach, that is, it avoids steering the visitor didactically, emotionally, or through a narrative frame toward one specific interpretation.33 The museum’s displays do not require further commentary, allowing the visitor to experience a structural reality of Soviet prisoners of war. As in the following room, which addresses the German occupation of Soviet territory, the visitor seems to travel through the horrors of German atrocities. However, the later rooms depicting the perspective of German civilians and the final advance of the Soviet Army also highlight war crimes and collective experiences. Although the German-Russian Museum rep-

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resents a historically specific world, it moves beyond this specificity by creating a universal experience of multiple collective gazes on horror and war crimes. The museum simulates the principal experience and atmosphere of total war.

Structural Secondary Experiences The creation of a structural experientiality that abstracts concrete historical events and primary experiences is even more pronounced in the new permanent exhibition of the Militärhistorisches Museum der Bundeswehr (Bundeswehr Military History Museum, MHM) in Dresden, which (re)opened in October 2011. To fulfill its goal of representing the history and anthropology of violence, the MHM has chosen a twofold approach: first, it presents the traditional story of German warfare from 1300 to the present as a chronological exhibition in the original arsenal building; second, a thematic tour confronts the visitor with the violent effects of war in a more abstract way, as ideas and themes.34 Two observations raise the question of whether experientiality is the wrong concept with which to approach the MHM. First, nowhere does the museum create immersive experiences in the historical sense of the visitor reliving the past. Second, in both parts, the chronology and the thematic tour, the MHM highlights historical artifacts over narrative. Even more than the German-Russian Museum, this allows the MHM to use a method of presentism. Visitors are challenged to become active and to form their own interpretations when observing objects,35 especially in making connections between different objects and installations in the museum. The MHM relies on a networking technique that creates potentials for clusters of different concepts and topics throughout the museum.36 Instead of simulating individual or collective experiences, the MHM generates experientiality by simulating abstract effects of war, whereby “the combination of thematic/abstract concepts and historicity in a temporalized setting offers a way of representing ideas with implications for the future while maintaining their historical specificity.”37 Throughout the museum, the visitor must determine whether they are in a traditional army museum or in an anti-war museum. The museum consistently challenges the visitor to think about the impact of war. One could argue that the many different retellings of war’s impact, and the Second World War’s in particular, reflect a constant working through of the war and its losses, as well as its criminal nature. This is most evident in the thirtysix library-like cabinets on level three of the thematic tour that make up the section “War and Memory.” For example, one cabinet entitled “Mass Deaths: The Glorification of Dying” assembles “hero letters” about fallen Wehrmacht soldiers coming from the town of Rheda and sent to the mourning family (see Figure 2.4). The visitor is led to empathize with the mothers and family mem-

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Figure 2.4. Installation of “hero letters” in the display case “Mass Deaths: The Glorification of Dying.” Permanent exhibition. Militärhistorisches Museum der Bundeswehr (MHM), Dresden. Photo by Stephan Jaeger, 2013.

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bers receiving these letters, reliving their trauma to an extent.38 The visitor is also led to ask questions, such as whether the families believed the National Socialist propaganda or had become truly cynical about the Third Reich. Opposite to the latter cabinet is an installation of hundreds of metal cards about German Air Force members as an example of the industrialization and bureaucratization of modern mass armies. A few cabinets away, the visitor finds hundreds of propaganda portraits on photo cards of “flying aces” and other idols (mainly pilots and U-boat captains), showing how the war propaganda in both world wars, but particularly in the Second World War, tried to single out individual stories and heroes from the modern, anonymous, mass army. These examples in the memory section only offer a glimpse into the museum’s extremely rich network of topics. The cabinets connect to many other topics about the Second World War displayed in the museum. For example, the section “War on Film” shows film clips that range between war and anti-war themes in another cabinet of the memory section. Another link leads from mourning and loss in the hero letters to the section “War and Suffering,” which displays a letter from a mother to her son, a Wehrmacht lieutenant, who fell before his mother’s last letter was actually written, and an envelope with the handwritten note “Return to sender: Died for Greater Germany.” Thus, the visitor experiences the effect of a topic such as mourning and communication in war by connecting different exhibits throughout the museum.39 Active visitors can use their imagination to understand what communication of death, lying between propaganda and personal grief, might have been like. The section “The Formation of Bodies” allows visitors to reflect on the role of the individual in mass armies. The hero photographs of U-boat captains correspond to the “Submarine Warfare” cabinet in the Second World War chronology. There, the visitor encounters everyday snapshots of submarine crewmembers and is left to wonder how that relates to heroes in propaganda. The MHM creates a museum space that puts the visitor in a temporalized situation; the past must still be understood, and it becomes present in light of the museum’s representation of its cultural impact on society. Visitors are thus forced to reflect on the relationship between violence/war and their own attitudes and actions, as well as the broader future goals of human society. The experientiality is poietically created through the acts of reception, connecting themes, imagination, and interpretation. This form of poietic experientiality requires an active visitor. The museum plants traces of which themes might be linked to one another, but in the end each empirical visitor will find an individual path through the museum. The museum does not present historical reality to be simulated and experienced, but structural parts of war and violence maintain historical depth and specificity. Therefore, the MHM, also very artifact-based, overcomes the illustrative character of artifacts that shapes many object-based museums in producing secondary realities for its visitors.

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Conclusion In conclusion, visitors often experience the past instead of understanding it or noting its historical facts. This development highlights the need for modern museum representation to discuss the creation of historical reality. There is no doubt that bodily experience can occur in a metonymic sense, yet more successful representations abstract the mimetic experience toward a poietic one. Therefore, the Operation Neptune experience and the D-Day flight simulation in Saint-Côme-du-Mont fall flat, since their only goal is to allow the visitor to empathize with approximations of collective past experience; no further reflection is needed. The entertainment value of the elaborate simulations is not questioned by the museum, and risks underselling the pain and severity of war in Thiemeyer’s sense. Poietic experientiality can be designed in such a way—as in the Arromanches 360 panorama—that diffuses the reflective capacities of the visitor so that they are manipulated in accepting a specific selection of data and one particular narrative as factual. It can be done in a localized, but more creative and open setting such as in the Bastogne War Museum, which leaves more room for interpretation. However, the experience also runs the risk of overwhelming the visitor’s intellectual or critical capacities. Experientiality can also be executed through explicit structural experiences, simulating a constructed collective atmosphere, such as in Karlshorst, or the effects of war, such as in Dresden. None of the structural examples constitute cheap entertainment; the Belgian and the German exhibitions leave room for innovative insights into war experience. Because of their simulated and secondary structure, all examples point toward experientiality, not experience in Fludernik’s sense. Whereas digital and multimedia installations play an increased role in museums across the world, the examples from Karlshorst and Dresden prove that there are plenty of ways to use traditional media for creating experientiality. As discussed by Thomas Thiemeyer in this volume, once the Second World War leaves the realm of intergenerational communicative memory and enters the cultural memory, museums must take charge of group narratives, whether this means a master narrative of reconciliation, national heroism, or sacrifices, or a narrative of multiperspectival stories of perpetration and suffering. However, as structural experiences, they cannot be traced to the experientiality of the historical source. Instead, they must create a poietic world that keeps the pact of historiographical trustworthiness alive while recreating past atmospheres or effects. To create a world of qualities, which in literature would require no definite referents outside itself, the museum visitor takes over some of the consciousness role that fictional characters carry. Only then can we call such representation experiential, distinguishable from mimetic attempts of imitating “authentic” primary experiences. Whether the museums’ political mis-

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sions, moral goals, financial restraints,40 and so on, require more experiential closure and emotional manipulation or more experiential openness differs. At least in permanent exhibitions in Western Europe with a certain goal of capturing the essence of the Second World War through the lens of either specific battlefield localities or more comprehensively,41 there is a strong tendency toward multiperspectival presentations that highlight reconciliation, peace, and the anthropology of war.42 Stephan Jaeger is Professor of German Studies and Head of the Department of German and Slavic Studies at the Universit of Manitoba. He researches on narratives, representations, and memory of war in German and European literature, film, historiography, and museums. His publications include two monographs, Theorie lyrischen Ausdrucks (2001) and Performative Geschichtsschreibung (2011); and seven coedited publications, including Fighting Words and Images: Representing War across the Disciplines (2012) and “Representations of German War Experiences from the Eighteenth Century to the Present,” a special issue of Seminar (2014). He is currently completing a monograph on twenty-first-century museum representations of the Second World War in Europe and North America.

Notes The research for this chapter was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. 1. Cf. Stephan Jaeger, “Erzählen im historiographischen Diskurs,” in Wirklichkeitserzählungen: Felder, Formen und Funktionen nicht-literarischen Erzählens, ed. Christian Klein and Matías Martínez (Stuttgart, 2009), 110–11. 2. Monika Fludernik, Towards a “Natural” Narratology (London, 1996), 20–43. 3. Ibid., 12. 4. Monika Fludernik, “Experience, Experientiality, and Historical Narrative: A View from Narratology,” in Erfahrung und Geschichte: Historische Sinnbildung im Pränarrativen, ed. Thiemo Breyer and Daniel Creutz (Berlin, 2010), 41–42. 5. Consequently, this chapter does not employ an empirical approach of actual visitor research, nor do the spatial potentialities of a museum space necessarily correspond to the intentions of curators and museum planners. 6. Cf., e.g., John H. Falk and Lynn D. Dierking, The Museum Experience Revisited (Walnut Creek, CA 2012). 7. See, e.g., the German-language collection Ekaterina Makhotina, Ekaterina Keding, Włodzimierz Borodziej, Étienne François, and Martin Schulze Wessel, eds., Krieg im Museum: Präsentationen des Zweiten Weltkriegs in Museen und Gedenkstätten des östlichen Europas (Paderborn, 2015). Wolfgang Muchitsch, ed., Does War Belong in Museums? The Representation of Violence in Exhibitions (Bielefeld, 2013) also emphasizes individual case studies over theoretical questions. The most advanced monograph on empathy and experience in the museum channels its ideas through the concept “of

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8. 9.

10. 11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

17.

18.



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identifying transnational tendencies.” Silke Arnold-de Simine, Mediating Memory in the Museum: Trauma, Empathy, Nostalgia (Basingstoke, 2013), 3. See also Stephan Jaeger, “Between the National and the Transnational: European Memories of the Second World War in the 21st Century Museum by Example of Germany and Poland,” in The Changing Place of Europe in Global Memory Cultures: Usable Pasts and Futures, ed. Christina Kraenzle and Maria Mayr (Cham, 2017), 26–31, 41–42. Patrick Finney, “Politics and Technologies of Authenticity: The Second World War at the Close of Living Memory,” Rethinking History 21, no. 2 (2017): 154–70. Eva Ulrike Pirker and Mark Rüdiger, “Authentizitätsfiktionen in populären Geschichtskulturen: Annäherungen,” in Echte Geschichte: Authentizitätsfiktionen in populären Geschichtskulturen, ed. Eva Ulrike Pirker, Mark Rüdiger, Christa Klein, Thorsten Leiendecker, Carolyn Oesterle, Miriam Sénécheau, and Michiko Uike-Bormann (Bielefeld, 2010), 17. Witnesses, whether through firsthand accounts, auratic places, or objects from the past, seem to guarantee authenticity. At the same time, a visitor of a museum is increasingly led to experience a simulation of the past. This can be achieved through replicas, historical reenactment, or the evocation of an authentic feeling that relates to the mood or atmosphere of the past, even if such an experience is always constructed and on a secondary level. Stephan Jaeger, “Visualization of War in the Museum: Experiential Spaces, Emotions, and Memory Politics,” in Visualizing War: Emotions, Technologies, Communities, ed. Anders Engberg-Pedersen and Kathrin Maurer (London, 2017), 165. For cognitive approaches on museum and narrative, cf. Daniel Fulda, “‘Selective’ History: Why and How ‘History’ Depends on Readerly Narrativization with the Wehrmacht Exhibition as an Example,” in Narratology beyond Literary Criticism, ed. Jan Christoph Meister (Berlin, 2005), 179–82; Julia Lippert, Ein kognitives Lesemodell historio(bio)graphischer Texte: Georg III.—Rezeption und Konstruktion in den britischen Medien (1990–2006) (Trier, 2010). Cf. Jonas Grethlein, “Experientiality and ‘Narrative Reference,’ with Thanks to Thucydides,” History and Theory 49, no. 3 (2010): 315–35. Fludernik, “Experience, Experientiality, and Historical Narrative,” 70. Grethlein, “Experientiality,” 320. Cf. Stephan Jaeger, “Poietic Worlds and Experientiality in Historiographic Narrative,” in “Towards a Historiographic Narratology,” ed. Julia Nitz and Sandra Harbert Petrulionis, special issue, SPIEL 30, no. 1 (2011): 33–36. Thomas Thiemeyer, Fortsetzung des Krieges mit anderen Mitteln: Die beiden Weltkriege im Museum (Paderborn, 2010), 249. The German original reads: “Zusammengefasst laufen narrative-szenografische Kriegsausstellungen wie in Caen und Ypern Gefahr, den Inhalt durch die Verpackung zu banalisieren und so die schmerzhaften Seiten des Krieges zugunsten fröhlich-erlebnishafter Unterhaltung auszublenden. Dann können sie nur den gesellschaftlichen Konsens bestätigen und nicht irritieren, weil sie ihre Besucher nicht zu kritischer Reflexion des Gesehenen. sondern zu passivem Konsum erziehen. Sie bleiben Erlebnis und werden nicht zur Erfahrung.” Alison Landsberg, Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture (New York, 2004), 130. Landsberg examines further popular media, including virtual history exhibits allowing recipients to experience “a mediated representation” of historical events. Alison Landsberg, Engaging the Past: Mass Culture and the Production of Historical Knowledge (New York, 2015), 19. Landsberg, Prosthetic Memory, 131.

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19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

Ibid., 135–36. Thiemeyer, Fortsetzung des Krieges, 240. Ibid., 263–312. Ibid., 249. A good example of such entertainment as “the dominance of audiovisual spectacle and the disorderly mixture of original and replica, authentic and scenery” is also given by Péter Apor, “An Epistemology of the Spectacle? Arcane Knowledge, Memory and Evidence in the Budapest House of Terror,” Rethinking History 18, no. 3 (2014): 332. Cf. the concept of “active memory work,” as developed by Susan Crane, “Memory, History and Distortion in the Museum,” History and Theory 36, no. 4 (1997): 63. For approaches that highlight transformative educational ways for visitors to experience personal and local memories, see Roger Simon, “The Terrible Gift: Museums and the Possibility of Hope without Consolation,” Museum Management and Curatorship 21, no. 3 (2006): 198–99. Based on Simon’s theories, Julia Rose, Interpreting Difficult History at Museums and Historic Sites (Lanham, MD, 2016), developed a “commemorative museum pedagogy” for using practical ideas of remembrance learning, especially in regard to “difficult knowledge” such as atrocities and violence. Airborne Museum, Sainte-Mère-Église, “Discover the Museum,” accessed 22 August 2018, https://www.airborne-museum.org/en/discover-the-museum. For an analysis of Normandy’s memoryscape, see Jörg Echternkamp, this volume. For the dangers of overwhelming the visitor’s cognitive capacities, see Thiemeyer, Fortsetzung des Krieges, 240–42. For the effect of distantiation, see also Erin Johnston-Weiss, this volume, on the use of photography in the Topographie des Terrors and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. Philipp Kadelbach, dir., Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter [Generation War], DVD (Chicago: Music Box Films, 2014). David Leland, dir., Band of Brothers, episode 6, “Bastogne,” DVD (Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 2011). Gedenkstätte Seelower Höhen website, accessed 22 August 2018, http://www .gedenkstaette-seelower-hoehen.de/cms. On Hürtgenwald 1944, see also Karola Fings, this volume, reflecting on the challenges of museum representation and commemoration of German soldiers. Jaeger, “Between the National and the Transnational,” 31–33. Ibid., 35–36. For further details, see ibid., 33–37; Stephan Jaeger, “Temporalizing History toward the Future: Representing Violence and Human Rights Violations in the Military History Museum in Dresden,” in The Idea of a Human Rights Museum, ed. Karen Busby, Adam Muller, and Andrew Woolford (Winnipeg, 2015), 231–40. For the MHM’s techniques in putting visitors out of their comfort zones, see also Arnold-de Simine, Mediating Memory, 50. Jaeger, “Temporalizing History,” 234; Jaeger, “Between the National and the Transnational,” 36. Jaeger, “Temporalizing History,” 242. This clearly shows that empathy as imaginative investment (cf. Arnold-de Simine, Mediating Memory, 46) is used in basically every museum, even if it is more artifact-based and less experiential in the sense of simulating primary experiences. Cf. also Johnston-Weiss, this volume.

24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32. 33. 34.

35. 36. 37. 38.

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39. For the function of the display of dead bodies, atrocities, and suffering in photography and film in the MHM, see Jana Hawig, this volume. 40. Cf. Arnold-de Simine, Mediating Memory, 7–9. 41. The exceptions are museums that focus explicitly on Allied experiences, particularly American liberation, as seen in the Normandy examples discussed in this chapter. The Mémorial de Caen is the most comprehensive museum in Normandy and tries to capture the Second Word War in its totality. Whereas the museum does appeal to the visitor’s sense and at times overwhelm the visitor’s cognitive capabilities (Thiemeyer, Fortsetzung des Krieges, 240), the museum—at least in its revised exhibition section “Guerre mondiale, guerre totale” (World war, total war) from 2010—also challenges the visitor to think about and interpret objects, images, data, and interpretations by using the method of presentism. 42. See also Jaeger, “Between the National and the Transnational,” 41–42.

Bibliography Airborne Museum, Sainte-Mère-Église. “Discover the Museum.” Accessed 22 August 2018. https://www.airborne-museum.org/en/discover-the-museum. Apor, Péter. “An Epistemology of the Spectacle? Arcane Knowledge, Memory and Evidence in the Budapest House of Terror.” Rethinking History 18, no. 3 (2014): 328–44. Arnold-de Simine, Silke. Mediating Memory in the Museum: Trauma, Empathy, Nostalgia. Basingstoke, 2013. Crane, Susan. “Memory, History and Distortion in the Museum.” History and Theory 36, no. 4 (1997): 44–63. Falk, John H, and Lynn D Dierking. The Museum Experience Revisited. Walnut Creek, CA, 2012. Finney, Patrick. “Politics and Technologies of Authenticity: The Second World War at the Close of Living Memory.” Rethinking History 21, no. 2 (2017): 154–70. Fludernik, Monika. “Experience, Experientiality, and Historical Narrative: A View from Narratology.” In Erfahrung und Geschichte: Historische Sinnbildung im Pränarrativen, edited by Thiemo Breyer and Daniel Creutz, 40–72. Berlin, 2010. Fludernik, Monika. Towards a “Natural” Narratology. London, 1996. Fulda, Daniel. “‘Selective’ History: Why and How ‘History’ Depends on Readerly Narrativization with the Wehrmacht Exhibition as an Example.” In Narratology beyond Literary Criticism, edited by Jan Christoph Meister, 173–94. Berlin, 2005. Gedenkstätte Seelower Höhen. http://www.gedenkstaette-seelower-hoehen.de/cms. Accessed 20 March 2018. Grethlein, Jonas. “Experientiality and ‘Narrative Reference,’ with Thanks to Thucydides.” History and Theory 49, no. 3 (2010): 315–35. Jaeger, Stephan. “Between the National and the Transnational: European Memories of the Second World War in the 21st Century Museum by Example of Germany and Poland.” In The Changing Place of Europe in Global Memory Cultures: Usable Pasts and Futures, edited by Christina Kraenzle and Maria Mayr, 23–47. Cham, 2017. ———. “Erzählen im historiographischen Diskurs.” In Wirklichkeitserzählungen: Felder, Formen und Funktionen nicht-literarischen Erzählens, edited by Christian Klein and Matías Martínez, 110–35. Stuttgart, 2009.

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———. “Poietic Worlds and Experientiality in Historiographic Narrative.” In “Towards a Historiographic Narratology,” edited by Julia Nitz and Sandra Harbert Petrulionis. Special issue, SPIEL 30, no. 1 (2011): 29–50. ———. “Temporalizing History toward the Future: Representing Violence and Human Rights Violations in the Military History Museum in Dresden.” In The Idea of a Human Rights Museum, edited by Karen Busby, Adam Muller, and Andrew Woolford, 229–46. Winnipeg, 2015. ———. “Visualization of War in the Museum: Experiential Spaces, Emotions, and Memory Politics.” In Visualizing War: Emotions, Technologies, Communities, edited by Anders Engberg-Pedersen and Kathrin Maurer, 165–81. London, 2017. Kadelbach, Philipp, dir. Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter [Generation War]. DVD. Chicago: Music Box Films, 2014. Landsberg, Alison. Engaging the Past: Mass Culture and the Production of Historical Knowledge. New York, 2015. ———. Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture. New York, 2004. Leland, David, dir. Band of Brothers. Episode 6, “Bastogne.” DVD. Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 2011. Lippert, Julia. Ein kognitives Lesemodell historio(bio)graphischer Texte: Georg III.—Rezeption und Konstruktion in den britischen Medien (1990–2006). Trier, 2010. Makhotina, Ekaterina, Ekaterina Keding, Włodzimierz Borodziej, Étienne François, and Martin Schulze Wessel, eds. Krieg im Museum: Präsentationen des Zweiten Weltkriegs in Museen und Gedenkstätten des östlichen Europas. Paderborn, 2015. Muchitsch, Wolfgang, ed. Does War Belong in Museums? The Representation of Violence in Exhibitions. Bielefeld, 2013. Pirker, Eva Ulrike, and Mark Rüdiger. “Authentizitätsfiktionen in populären Geschichtskulturen: Annäherungen.” In Echte Geschichte: Authentizitätsfiktionen in populären Geschichtskulturen, edited by Eva Ulrike Pirker, Mark Rüdiger, Christa Klein, Thorsten Leiendecker, Carolyn Oesterle, Miriam Sénécheau, and Michiko Uike-Bormann, 11–30. Bielefeld, 2010. Rose, Julia. Interpreting Difficult History at Museums and Historic Sites. Lanham, MD, 2016. Simon, Roger. “The Terrible Gift: Museums and the Possibility of Hope without Consolation.” Museum Management and Curatorship 21, no. 3 (2006): 187–204. Thiemeyer, Thomas. Fortsetzung des Krieges mit anderen Mitteln: Die beiden Weltkriege im Museum. Paderborn, 2010.

CHAPTER 3



Exhibiting Images of War

The Use of Historic Media in the Bundeswehr Military History Museum (Dresden) and the Imperial War Museum North (Manchester) JANA HAWIG

W

hile exhibitions are highly sensual in nature, they tend to particularly address one’s sense of vision: visitors look at objects, read labels, or watch other visitors. Exhibitions can be seen as conglomerations of different types of media such as texts, objects, films, sound, and so on, which are connected by the architectural design. All these media convey information as individual elements and in relation to other parts of the display. Their arrangement forms a unique narrative in space, which each visitor reads in their own manner and at their own pace. The ability to see and interpret is a key aspect of understanding exhibitions and can even be an indicator of social differences.1 Historic image material is suitable for visualizing subjects from recent history. The invention of photography in the 1820s, and of film in the 1890s, has allowed for the reproduction of real events by using data carriers. The powerful effects of those images to evoke emotions are widely known. Images of war in particular are able to polarize, galvanize, legitimize, or shock. The Second World War is documented in numerous pictures, making its visual heritage accessible to us today, and our contemporary view of it is arguably determined by that heritage. On this account, the commemoration of the Second World War in museums is especially applicable for an analysis of museum usage of historic images. Curators regularly employ image material of that time to convey the complex and sometimes disturbing processes of the war. By doing so, they seem to bring history closer to the visitor, and their work can even be considered as a matter of contemporary politics of remembrance. The aim of this chapter is to shed light on the form and function of historic images in modern war exhibitions in Germany and Britain. The method applied consists of an object-based, structural

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exhibition analysis to reveal national differences in dealing with the history of the Second World War. At the same time, this case study shows different possibilities that media practices in modern museums hold. The objects under study are the Militärhistorisches Museum der Bundeswehr (Bundeswehr Military History Museum, MHM) in Dresden (reopened in 2011) and the Imperial War Museum North (IWMN) in Manchester (opened in 2002).

Historic Images in Second World War Exhibitions: Challenges and Chances Historic image material tells complex and sometimes unheard-of stories as part of a wider exhibition narrative on display. Before analyzing its use in exhibitions, it is worth looking at its background and characteristics, to highlight some possibilities and challenges faced in displaying it. There has been a growing interest both in visual material as a source for historians and in visual culture in the social sciences, which can be referred to as the “visual turn.”2 Images are subject to various methods of analysis, including their influence on institutions such as museums. Gillian Rose presents a list of key questions dealing with the production of visual objects,3 which indicates the complexity of interpreting visual material. She concludes: “Visual imagery is never innocent; it is always constructed through various practices, technologies and knowledges.”4 Issues of interpretation derive from the nature of photographs and film. Photographs depict “reality,” meaning objects or persons that existed at a specific moment in that shape. Therein lies the danger, since spectators “[assume] that a photograph is an unmediated medium with a direct, uncomplicated authenticity and which provides straightforward evidence of the thing photographed.”5 Gareth Griffiths and Gaby Porter claim that photographs “are always, at some level, true. They are fundamentally connected to some prior object or event and bear the physical traces of a past reality.”6 However, this statement omits the level of influence and interpretation put into images during their production. Apart from the possibility of active manipulation, photographs naturally only show parts of their environment and may leave out important pieces of information, such as details about content, persons, or producers. Exhibiting images in museums takes the level of manipulation one step further: the photograph is removed from its original context, which means it is “separate[d] . . . from its terms of legibility.”7 Furthermore, when displayed in exhibitions images even “borrow from the credibility and authority of the museum in the process of becoming visual evidence for museum narratives.”8 At the same time, film is subject to these same problems. Additionally, film also contains the dimension of time, which has the effect of making it appear significant in the museum context.9 Film material loses its original context in museums by

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being transferred into a digital format and being shown in multimedia stations. In changing the technical format and rearranging the content, the original purpose of historic media material is changed. The amount of manipulation of film is therefore significant. Both world wars marked a significant change in the relationship between media and war. Because of technological developments and an increase in war reporting that was maintained by the government, the Second World War is illustrated by a wealth of images. The introduction of the miniature camera in 1924 in particular allowed professionals and amateurs more flexibility.10 In terms of reconstructing the origins of visual material, the relationship between governments and the media motivated the production of audiovisual material. Many countries were involved in the production of state propaganda. Nazi Germany is characterized by the Gleichschaltung (forcible coordination) of all aspects of society, including the media. The National Socialist Propagandakompanien (propaganda companies), responsible for photo and film material from the front, understood that they were producing historical sources for the future.11 They even operated with clear orders to create appropriate scenes if necessary.12 The governmental influence on image production at the front affected all stages of production, selection, and execution. However, these procedures, whether derived from the Weimar Republic or conforming to international standards, cannot be attributed solely to the Nazi regime.13 Britain was more reactionary in dealing with media control from 1935 on. Censorship was based on the participation of voluntary journalists rather than governmental control. Susan Carruthers points out the main difference between German and British strategies as the “‘Big Lie’ versus the ‘Strategy of Truth.’”14 The latter was “to enhance the home front’s sense of participation” but “the very worst was neither always told openly nor without delay.”15 However, the totalitarian National Socialist regime in Germany brought control to another level. Death and atrocities are part of the history of the Second World War, with its governmentally organized genocide, executions, and millions of war victims. Objects and texts often cannot fully convey these concepts. On the one hand, contemporary image material may fill this gap. Besides their significance to historical research, pictures that depict atrocities also provoke powerful and emotional experiences in exhibitions.16 On the other hand, the moral issues inherent to these materials make it challenging for curators to decide whether to display them, not only because they might have either a fascinating or a blunting effect but also because critical reactions from victims or relatives can occur. The greatest risk in exhibiting historic media is in underestimating their diverse layers of meaning, which is associated with the danger of misinterpreting visual images by not providing the appropriate information. In addition, all images are difficult to “read,” and many visitors presumably do not attentively decode what they see when looking at an image.

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Museums that do not name their media sources are furthermore at risk of misleading visitors. If displayed in a carefully considered way, however, world war images can be valuable precisely because the material bears propagandistic and governmental motivations. The significance of the comprehensive source of images is demonstrated by the 1990s traveling exhibition Vernichtungskrieg: Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941 bis 1944 (War of Annihilation: Crimes of the Wehrmacht 1941 to 1944) in Germany and Austria. Photographs depicting Wehrmacht atrocities on the Eastern Front during the Second World War generated a societal uproar surrounding the questions of guilt and concealment. Because of minor but significant errors in the source material, the exhibition was renewed and some photos removed, before it reopened in 2001 with a different title. The display’s critical media analysis is explained in the second exhibition catalog, which provides profound insight into the different uses of archival photo material.17 In summary, the challenges of using historic material cannot be neglected. Visitors are at the mercy of what they see in exhibitions and rely on the information provided by the museum to understand the meaning of their visual impact. Wartime material is exceedingly politically motivated. Yet, pictures from the wars shape visitors’ perception of it. They are accustomed to seeing them in mass media and likely expect them to be displayed in war exhibitions. A challenge in the interpretation of visual materials is that visitors must be made aware of its origins; pictures and film sequences must be questioned for their purpose, production, and circumstances.

War Exhibitions in Germany and Britain Exhibiting the Second World War in museums is challenging. Besides the spatial complexity of impersonal warfare, confronting this topic is delicate because “memory of war often forms part of a nation’s self-image.”18 Difficult heritage is connected to victims’ and perpetrators’ interests, or society’s consensual forms of remembrance. Places devoted to difficult history can be disturbing, but they also serve as a platform to examine difficult heritage. Sharon Macdonald pleads for “continual unsettlement” through revealing hidden pasts layer by layer in order to deal critically with their different facets. This can be achieved by “providing more (artistic and educational) ‘accompaniment’ to help visitors to reflect further . . . rather than leaving this to potentially slip into ready-formed, or even misinformed accounts.”19 There are different cultures of remembrance in German and British museums. According to Hans-Ulrich Thamer, Britain tends toward enactments and experience in museums, and Germany toward austere and impersonal transmission.20 Thomas Thiemeyer concludes that these countries form “two poles

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of the museum handling of the Second World War”: valor and pride on the British side; politicization, criminalization, and the focus on victims on the German side.21 Thiemeyer reveals, in addition to local differences, factors that changed war exhibitions in Europe during the 1980s and 1990s, such as an expanded audience against the background of a transformed public historical culture, as well as the reshaped nature of exhibitions through increased funding and professionalization.22 This chapter will directly compare one museum from either country, assuming that those differences are also reflected in the use of historic image material.23 The object of investigation is still24 and moving images, as well as negative and digital material in the permanent exhibitions “1914–1945” (MHM, Dresden) and “Timeline” (IWMN, Manchester).25 To underline the museums’ profiles and their motivations behind the use of historic images, two guided interviews with experts of each museum were conducted. The museums’ similar characteristics, especially their focus on humans’ relation to war, were among the reasons for their selection. I will first compare examples from both museums before describing the characteristic features of their use of media. The following six categories are used to sum up their different medial practices. (1) Main Object: the image, whether exhibited in a display case or as part of a multimedia station, is being used to present or discuss the historic image as a medium. Curators try to do justice to the original context of the image by treating it as a historic source and shedding light on it from different angles to avoid “politically and ideologically charged one-sided narratives.”26 The aim is to look beyond its illustrative or visual aspects. From the visitors’ point of view, however, consuming the object in this way requires significant attention. (2) Topic Contribution: images contribute a new thematic aspect to other exhibition media. This means that only the image addresses this subject, which gives its content a higher significance. It usually implies that the image is reduced to one meaning that fits into the overall narrative. (3) Illustration: historic images serve illustrative purposes by depicting events, processes, persons, or places that often cannot be displayed with threedimensional objects. Illustrative media is a main tool in war exhibitions, incorporating the wide variety of on-site and propaganda material produced during the wars. Illustration is typically used when displaying suffering and death as “the massing of photographs of victims creates a history of the collective. . . . The traumatized, obliterated and massacred victims stare back at the museums visitor, almost an accusing returned gaze, as both testimony of their existence and then their absence.”27 However, images in categories 2 and 3 “remain interlocked with the museum’s specific curatorial choices, narratives and economies of truth.”28 (4) Visualization: images accompany a three-dimensional object that is depicted by the picture. It shows a scene with the object involved, for example, an

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image of soldiers wearing the uniform that is exhibited. Rose explains that this is a method of asserting authenticity; the museum uses the image as “proof ” of the real lives of objects.29 Film is especially suitable for this function, allowing the static object to come to life. (5) Emotionalizing: this category focuses on the effect on visitors. War exhibitions especially use this concept to evoke a range of reactions, depending on visitors’ backgrounds, age, nationality, and so on. These reactions are hard to grasp, since they rely on the responses of individual visitors. (6) Symbolization: this refers especially to images without any explanation but with strong emotional content. This reveals similarities to the previous category. However, emotionalizing images can retain their effect or even deepen it when detailed information is given. Naturally, these categories are not exclusive, and they often overlap. Importantly, they indicate a certain direction that curators or designers follow through the use of the material. All categories are understood in interaction with the context they are exhibited in. They also consider what visitors are able to deal with during the exhibition experience. Category 1 focuses on the study of the image itself and implicates a rather academic approach, whereas images in categories 2, 3, and 4 bear relation to the overall topic and accompanying exhibition media. Categories 5 and 6 aim to provoke certain visitor reactions and become increasingly incorporated into interior design in order to create a certain atmosphere. These latter two especially leave room for visitors to create their own meanings from the images. A different approach to categorize the use of images of death in museums was recently applied by Elena Stylianou and Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert, who defined several museological approaches. One is that of “Evidencing the Past,” which “uses photography as a form of evidence for predetermined narratives that are ideologically and politically charged.” Categories 2, 3, and 4 can be located within “Evidencing the Past.” Another approach is “Museums as Agents of Change,” which “sees the museum as a space for critical reflection and tries to challenge ideological structures by proposing new readings of both the past and the present.”30 Category 1 (Main Object) tends toward this direction. However, the authors emphasize the multiplicity and complexity of meaning, production, and implementation of image material especially in the museum context.31 This comparison helps to understand the diversity of the use of image material.

Militärhistorisches Museum der Bundeswehr, Dresden The MHM has seen four major political changes since its foundation in 1894. The Second World War led to a break in West German war museums and to a “marginalization of . . . military history,” which continues to influence contem-

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porary war displays.32 In contrast, war exhibitions in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) did not decrease; rather, they served a new political agenda.33 Because of the politically motivated Soviet memory politics, the museum in Dresden became the key exhibition for military history in the GDR in 1972.34 After reunification, the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) selected the MHM as its flagship museum and reopened it in 2011 following a major refurbishment. The museum’s permanent exhibition consists of two parts: a thematic course including sections such as “War and Play” and “War and Memory,” and a chronology following the history of German military actions from 1300 to today. The chronology is characterized by many cabinets with display cases containing objects and media stations. The development of the MHM is interwoven with Germany’s past. This unique and troublesome history has presumably led to a particular public understanding of war and has influenced how conflict is displayed: through a focus on ambivalence and human violence, rather than a mere “drums and trumpet” history with a narrow emphasis on battles and campaigns. Instead, museum staff see themselves as a “forum for a critical, nuanced and honest debate about the military, war and violence in past and present.”35 The museum’s aim to move beyond the basic description of the history of war is demonstrated in another two core themes of the museum: confronting the visitors’ own potential for aggression, and the concept of the ambivalence of objects.36 The MHM uses many historic films and photos, both in display cases alongside objects and in media stations. Display cases mostly use photos when depicting death, weapons, or atrocities. It is striking that the MHM displays dead bodies, executions, and mutilations in high volume. The two cases with the most image material are “Barbarossa” (forty-two photos) and “Death and Captivity” (thirty-two photos). The museum seeks to combine its content with knowledge about historic media in itself. Its aim is to provide possibilities for a “historical-critical handling”37 of media, exemplified through film. The museum uses clearly identified propaganda material such as the media station “Film Propaganda of the National Socialist Takeover,” which corresponds to category 1, Main Object. It offers additional material to the display case but still centers around film as source material. Divided into five topics, films of different events connected to the Nazi takeover are compared and explained. They show various perspectives and restaged recordings. One is about the boycott of Jewish shops in April 1933. The terminal shows footage of a German newsreel from 1933, which downplays the impact of the boycott and enforces an illusion of public peace. It also displays another film of the same event, rearranged by Allied forces for the Nuremberg trials in 1945, which soberly depicts violence against Jews. This comparison sheds light on the possibilities of manipulating film material. Interestingly, the IWMN’s media station “Archive Film Showing the Rise of the Nazi Party in Germany” uses film material of the same event.

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The IWMN employs it as part of a rearranged compilation for the exhibition alongside other footage of different times and places, for example, a speech by Adolf Hitler. This compilation does not offer any explanations on the film sequences and instead corresponds to category 5, Emotionalizing. A striking example of category 2, Topic Contribution, is the MHM display case “Barbarossa,” which addresses the German invasion of the Soviet Union during the Second World War, characterized by ideological warfare. Three-quarters of the objects shown consist of historic images, depicting a broad variety of themes: destroyed Soviet tanks and aircraft, German guns firing on Leningrad, Soviet prisoners of war, the exhumation of concentration camp victims, German soldiers searching the possessions of victims, Ukrainian civilians, a POW camp, the burial of Soviet prisoners of war, and the hanging of Jews by the SS. This variety demonstrates that images are a key contribution to the case’s content. All photographs are accompanied by labels describing the photographer, place, and year, as well as including short explanations of what the photos depict. This compilation of images provides visitors with visual snippets within the superior topic of ideological warfare. Working further with this particular example of category 2, Stephan Jaeger identifies the MHM’s ap-

Figure 3.1. Cabinet “Barbarossa.” Chronological exhibition “1914–1945.” Permanent exhibition. Militärhistorisches Museum der Bundeswehr (MHM), Dresden. Photo by Stephan Jaeger, 2013.

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proach as to “[put] the visitor in a temporalized situation, one that transcends the mode of documenting war to understand past atrocities.”38 Visitors must connect the images to other parts of the exhibition to understand these events and their implications; however, this allows visitors to “experience the interwovenness of the different components that allow war to happen.”39 The MHM often uses images in combination with three-dimensional objects, which correlates to category 4, Visualization. A media terminal showing several films on the topic “Panzer III on Film” accompanies the display case exhibiting the Wehrmacht’s western campaign. They show the Panzer III in various settings: “A demonstration of the A version of Panzer III,” “Mussolini in 1937,” and “Panzer III crossing a Soviet anti-tank ditch on the Eastern Front in 1942.” The closing credits name all sources of the film material including years of production and the producers (Heeresfilmstelle, Deutsche Wochenschau GmbH). Behind the terminal, a small model of the tank is exhibited alongside an original tank gun. The MHM is shaped by the development of German museums on war history during the twentieth century. The museum attempts to become a “forum” for German society, allowing for an “involvement” with war and violence. Accordingly, the MHM’s historic images do not turn the topic into an exciting experience. The unadorned display of atrocities and death as part of the Second World War is associated with the non-glorification of war. This difficult engagement is reflected in the MHM’s use of historic images. Besides categories 3 and 4, Illustration and Visualization, they deliberately draw on categories 1 and 2, Main Object and Topic Contribution. In doing so, the museum selectively treats images in exhibitions as historical sources reminding visitors of Germany’s difficult history, in addition to providing substantial information.

Imperial War Museum North, Manchester The Imperial War Museums (IWM) are the UK’s centers of museum war commemoration. After the First World War, the Ministry of Information handed its entire collection of photographic material (about two million photographs) to the IWM.40 The museum was dedicated to the commemoration of the “lost generation,” and Gaynor Kavanagh describes its origins as “partly a propaganda move, partly a sincere attempt to record the war.”41 The Second World War does not create a caesura in British commemoration of war in museums but is instead characterized by the British people’s successful resistance movement during the air war. For this reason, war displays still consider the Second World War “the Good War,” and Germany is characterized as the unchallenged antagonist, with defense acting as the core of British exhibitions.42 According to a Museums and Galleries Commission from 1990, war museums “have the func-

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tion . . . of acting as memorials, not simply to the wisdom or folly of particular foreign or domestic policy decisions, but also to individual courage, suffering and death.”43 British museums set the benchmark for displaying the world wars with their mixture of history, entertainment, and narratives of personalized war.44 Therefore, the IWM has even been called “the most important war museum in the western world.”45 The IWMN can only be understood as a part of the Imperial War Museums. It shares their extensive collection and shares similarities in the depiction of war, such as the underrepresentation of suffering compared with other European museums, a strong heroization of the Second World War, and hardly any illustrations of victims.46 The IWMN opened in 2002 with the slogan “War shapes lives.” The aim was to focus on the impact of war on the people in contrast to the traditional and rather technology-based displays in London. The museum’s permanent exhibition is divided into two parts: a chronological “Timeline” exhibiting wars from 1914 to the present, and content-related silos such as “Women and War.” “Timeline” mostly consists of display cases and two-dimensional panels showing photographs and texts. The “Big Picture Shows” are a main characteristic of the IWMN: once an hour, the whole exhibition space is turned into a projection area, using sound and image to provoke a cinema-like atmosphere. Those shows have different themes such as Children in War or War at Home. According to IWM Assistant Director Ann Carter, their purpose is “to make use of the wide variety of visual and audio material within our collections and to give it a significant ‘voice’ within the gallery.”47 Gaynor Bagnall and Antony Rowland summarize this strategy as an “[attempt] to draw visitors with little or no knowledge of historiography into a more reflective response to the exhibits.”48 They defend the museum’s unusual approach and “argue that the IWMN accommodates a wider audience than historians by presenting history . . . in the form of personal testimony rather than hardcore facts.”49 The “Big Picture Shows” belong to category 5, Emotionalizing. For example, different weaponry is introduced in the show Weapons of War. During a segment that focuses on bombs, the voice of an elderly woman describes her childhood experiences during the bombings (presumably in Britain). At the same time, a large-scale projection at least twenty feet (six meters) in height shows a photograph of different aircraft dropping bombs. Since visitors sit right underneath it, it looks like the bombs are falling onto their heads. One can hear sirens in the background and the woman saying: “The sky was black with aircraft. Not just one—wave after wave.” Photographs are used to give still impressions matching the narrative of sound, music, and voices, merging into a fully emotional, immersive, and sensual experience. No information is given on what the pictures show or where they come from. The IWMN displays a balance of different types of exhibition media. Here, too, display cases mostly use photos to depict death, weapons, or atrocities.

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The case “Genocide” uses the most photos (fifty-five), followed by far less in “1939–1941” (nine photos). It is also the display case with the most original photographs and one of the few with textual labels accompanying photographs in the exhibition. This case contains the only photograph vaguely depicting an execution in the IWMN; no bodies are visible. The museum generally abandons displaying pictures of cruelty, murder, and corpses. The IWMN’s panels fit into category 3, Illustration. The images (replicas) are not explained, and spectators must presume they depict the events described. The panel “1941–1943,” with a heading that quotes Franklin D. Roosevelt (“We are all in the same boat now”), consists of five photographic replicas, one main text and four smaller texts below the photos: “The Desert War—The Axis Offensive,” with a picture of three men in uniforms; “War at Sea,” with a photo of several submarine boats and an explosion in water; “War in Russia,” accompanied by a picture showing soldiers in a town running and shooting; and “War in the Pacific and Far East,” with an image depicting several presumably Asian soldiers and one Western soldier talking to each other. In this example, none of the images feature any sources, and the texts only vaguely reference the pictures. In the IWMN, freestanding, large-scale objects often have a digital image from the same time period, placed on the text label to exemplify the object in real life, or its potential effects (category 4, Visualization). Unlike the ones in the display cases, these images are explained. The panel “1919–1939” in the IWMN shows a large-scale image depicting a weeping woman. This is not explained either. The only information given is the sign in the image’s background reading “Modewaren” (millinery), indicating a German-speaking area. The IWM guidebook explains the image as “A woman weeps while giving the Nazi salute at the start of the German occupation of the Sudetenland.”50 Even this short piece of information is valuable and helps visitors to understand the context behind the photo. Displayed without it, the woman’s emotions indicate a surely negative event within this time that remains unknown to the visitors. In this exhibition context, the picture is a symbol of the pain the Nazi regime brought to people even before the war. It therefore correlates to category 6, Symbolization. With regard to the Second World War, history is a narrative of success in Britain. The IWMN does not have to deal with its own difficult heritage, which leads to a rather simplified dealing with war exhibitions. This is reflected in the selection of visual material by prioritizing categories 5 and 6, Emotionalizing and Symbolization. Also, they do not expect visitors to scrutinize historic sources when considering British memory culture, which explains the lack of object labels. Another reason for this is found in the dominant characteristics of British war museums, such as the combination of history and entertainment. The IWMN’s “Big Picture Shows” reveal the intention behind the use of images. Large images supported by narratives and immersive sound tell

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personalized stories, provoking an emotional reaction in the visitor. The focus on personalized stories to capture visitors’ attention in the IWMN meets visitor-friendly expectations by providing accessible information and avoiding the depiction of suffering.

Conclusion The intermingling of social and military history offers both museums new perspectives on the use of images. Nevertheless, they show typical elements of commemoration that are prevalent in their respective countries. The museums apply different strategies: the MHM curators try to mediate the power of images by providing information and treating images as historic sources. Source accuracy and the revelation of propaganda material both point toward a more reflexive and balanced commemoration of war. The IWMN uses the emotional power of images to offer a visitor-friendly exhibition experience that conveys personal stories. But the differences are even more profound: the MHM confronts visitors with their own potential for aggression and even reminds them of the horrors that originated in their country by displaying the victims’ “accusing returned gaze” in the many images of atrocities. The connection to Germany’s engagement with its difficult past is too complicated to be understood in a straightforward manner. However, an indication of its influence lies in the avoidance of an exciting experience equivalent to the “Big Picture Shows.” This approach comes at a price: grasping the range of material and information at the MHM can only be undertaken with much time and effort (although they use other forms of visitor engagement in the thematic course). On the other hand, the IWMN focuses on the visitor’s emotional experience by allowing straightforward access, indicating a less painful relationship to the subject without causing disconcertment. However, the theoretical background of the study demonstrates that background information of war images should be provided, regardless of museal context, so that visitors have a chance to reveal and contextualize the layers of interpretation they hold. In summary, the main differences in the museums’ use of historic images are the emphasis on source accuracy and critical reflection on the one hand and the focus on the overall experience and emotional representation without the depiction of suffering on the other. These differences can be narrowed down to this juxtaposition: learning from media in the MHM versus the emotional effect of media in the IWMN. However, following the British new museology debate, “all exhibitions—even those devised principally as entertainment—are educational, in a wider and more profound sense,”51 which once again explains the IWMN’s experience-oriented approach.

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The limitations of this analysis lie in the lack of in-depth investigation of the image material used in the exhibitions. Neither their provenience (who produced this material and why) nor their deeper meaning in the exhibition (anthropological, sociological, etc.) was studied, and additional insights could be gained by conducting further research. Moreover, the visitors’ expectations and reactions would add the recipients’ view of the use of image material in war exhibitions. A first step was undertaken using the “design thinking” approach.52 An inspiring experiment could be a joint exhibition on the subject, curated by museum staff from both countries. A successful middle course could probably be created through this kind of collaboration, as the museums’ similarities in their approach to humanity and the content-related exhibitions practices indicate. A project like this allows us to look beyond prevalent political narratives and to focus on personal experiences and suffering that are more reflective in order to make the war more relevant to visitors today while simultaneously giving them access to carefully curated image material. As the MHM seems less accessible than the IWMN from the visitor’s point of view, the question arises of the purpose of museums in general: learning through entertainment or learning through academic accuracy. A defining museum debate about the museum’s role in society is about the museum as temple (consolidating established elitist narratives) or as a forum (allowing multiperspectivity in a social function). To conclude with Duncan Cameron’s pioneering article from 1971: “From the chaos and conflict of today’s forum the museum must build the collections that will tell us tomorrow who we are and how we got there. After all, that’s what museums are all about.”53 Jana Hawig is Curator at the DASA Working World Exhibition in Dortmund, Germany, where she combines museum content with interaction and entertainment. She is also a PhD student at the University of Würzburg. Her current research focuses on storytelling in exhibitions, as well as exhibition evaluation and analysis. She received her master’s degree in museum studies from the International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies at Newcastle University, UK.

Notes 1. See Tony Bennett, “Civic Seeing: Museums and the Organization of Vision,” in A Companion to Museum Studies, ed. Sharon Macdonald (Malden, MA, 2011), 263–81. 2. Gerhard Paul, Visual History: Ein Studienbuch (Göttingen, 2006), 7. 3. Gillian Rose, Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Researching with Visual Materials (London, 2012), 346–47. 4. Ibid., 17. 5. Richard Howells, Visual Culture (Malden, MA, 2003), 158.

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6. Gareth Griffiths and Gaby Porter, “Photographs and Films,” in Social History in Museums: A Handbook for Professionals, ed. David Fleming, Crispin Paine, and John G. Rhodes (London, 1993), 158. 7. Justin Court, “Picturing History, Remembering Soldiers: World War I Photography between the Public and the Private,” History and Memory 29, no. 1 (2017): 96. 8. Elena Stylianou and Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert, “Approaches to Displaying Death in Museums: An Introduction,” in Museums and Photography: Displaying Death, ed. Elena Stylianou and Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert (London, 2017), 3. 9. Howells, Visual Culture, 171. 10. Thomas Thiemeyer, Fortsetzung des Krieges mit anderen Mitteln: Die beiden Weltkriege im Museum (Paderborn 2010), 149. 11. Bernd Boll, “Das Bild als Waffe: Quellenkritische Anmerkungen zum Foto- und Filmmaterial der deutschen Propagandatruppen 1938–1945,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 54, no. 1 (2006): 995. 12. Company order no. 18, 1940, cited in ibid., 992. 13. Peter Zimmermann and Kay Hoffmann, “Von der Gleichschaltungs- und Propaganda-These zur differenzierten Erforschung dokumentarischer Genres,” in Geschichte des dokumentarischen Films in Deutschland, Bd. 3: “Drittes Reich” (1933–1945), ed. Peter Zimmermann (Ditzingen, 2005), 147–56. 14. Susan L. Carruthers, The Media at War: Communication and Conflict in the Twentieth Century (Basingstoke, 2000), 56. 15. Ibid., 89. 16. For a discussion of empathy, distanciation, and photography in museums of war and atrocities, see also Erin Johnston-Weiss, this volume. 17. Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung, Verbrechen der Wehrmacht: Dimensionen des Vernichtungskrieges 1941–1944 (Hamburg, 2002), 107–27. 18. Andrew Whitmarsh, “‘We Will Remember Them:’ Memory and Commemoration in War Museums,” Journal of Conservation and Museum Studies, North America 7 (2001), 11–15. 19. Sharon Macdonald, Difficult Heritage Negotiating the Nazi Past in Nuremberg and Beyond (London, 2009), 192. 20. Hans-Ulrich Thamer, “Krieg im Museum: Konzepte und Präsentationsformen von Militär und Gewalt in historischen Ausstellungen,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtsdidaktik 5 (2006): 33–34. 21. “Pointiert gesagt, bilden England und Deutschland zwei Pole des musealen Umgangs mit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg.” Thomas Thiemeyer, “Zwischen Helden, Tätern und Opfern: Welchen Sinn deutsche, französische und englische Museen heute in den beiden Weltkriegen sehen,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 36, no. 3 (2010): 482. All translations are my own unless otherwise noted. 22. Thiemeyer, Fortsetzung des Krieges, 103; cf. Thomas Thiemeyer, this volume. 23. The exhibitions were examined by applying a comparative case study in 2012. In this chapter, image material from the First World War was excluded in contrast to the original case study. 24. “Still images” include photographs, replicas of photographs, postcards, photo albums, folded leaflets, and photographs in published media (e.g., newspapers, magazines). 25. The effect on spectators is based on the author’s judgment; visitor opinions were not evaluated. 26. Stylianou and Stylianou-Lambert, “Approaches to Displaying Death,” 5.

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27. Elizabeth Edwards and Sigrid Lien, “Museums and the Work of Photographs,” in Uncertain Images: Museums and the Work of Photographs, ed. Elizabeth Edwards and Sigrid Lien (Farnham, Surrey, 2014), 12. 28. Stylianou and Stylianou-Lambert, “Approaches to Displaying Death,” 8. 29. Rose, Visual Methodologies, 246. 30. Stylianou and Stylianou-Lambert, “Approaches to Displaying Death,” 2. 31. Ibid., 14. 32. “Marginalisierung . . . der Militärgeschichte.” Thamer, “Krieg im Museum,” 40. Cf. Jörg Echternkamp, “Wandel durch Annäherung oder: Wird die Militärgeschichte ein Opfer ihres Erfolges? Zur wissenschaftlichen Anschlußfähigkeit der deutschen Militärgeschichte seit 1945,” in Perspektiven der Militärgeschichte: Raum, Gewalt und Repräsentation in historischer Forschung und Bildung, ed. Jörg Echternkamp, Thomas Vogel, and Wolfgang Schmidt (Munich, 2010), 1–38. 33. Thamer, “Krieg im Museum,” 40. 34. Matthias Rogg, “Der historische Ort,” in Das Militärhistorische Museum der Bundeswehr: Ausstellungsführer, ed. Gorch Pieken and Matthias Rogg (Dresden, 2011), 7–8. 35. “Forum für eine kritische, differenzierte und ehrliche Auseinandersetzung mit Militär, Krieg und Gewalt in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart.” Ibid., 13. 36. Gorch Pieken, “Konzeption und Aufbau der Dauerausstellung,” in Pieken and Rogg, Das Militärhistorische Museum der Bundeswehr, 22–23. For the MHM’s techniques to create structural experientiality, see Stephan Jaeger, this volume. 37. “historisch-kritischer Umgang.” Jan Kindler, “Machen Sie sich ein Bild: Medieneinsatz im Militärhistorischen Museum der Bundeswehr,” in Militärhistorisches Museum der Bundeswehr: Ausstellung und Architektur, ed. Gorch Pieken and Matthias Rogg (Dresden, 2011), 62. 38. Stephan Jaeger, “Temporalizing History toward the Future: Representing Violence and Human Rights Violations in the Military History Museum in Dresden,” in The Idea of a Human Rights Museum, ed. Karen Busby, Adam Muller, and Andrew Woolford (Winnipeg, 2015), 242. 39. Ibid., 238. 40. Thiemeyer, Fortsetzung des Krieges, 298. 41. Gaynor Kavanagh, “Museum as Memorial: The Origins of the Imperial War Museum,” Journal of Contemporary History 23, no. 1 (1988): 94. 42. Thiemeyer, “Zwischen Helden,” 473. 43. Cited in Whitmarsh, “We Will Remember Them,” 3. 44. Thiemeyer, Fortsetzung des Krieges, 321. 45. Kavanagh, “Museum as Memorial,” 77. 46. Thiemeyer, “Zwischen Helden,” 473–74. 47. Ann Carter, email interview, 13 July 2012. 48. Gaynor Bagnall and Antony Rowland, “The Imperial War Museum North: A Twenty-First Century Museum?” in The Future of Memory, ed. Richard Crownshaw, Jane Kilby, and Antony Rowland (New York, 2010), 61. 49. Ibid., 62. 50. Imperial War Museum London, Guidebook (Northampton, 2011), 30. 51. Peter Vergo, “The Reticent Object,” in The New Museology, ed. Peter Vergo (London, 1989), 58. 52. Cf. Suzanne MacLeod, Jocelyn Dodd, and Tom Duncan, “New Museum Design Cultures: Harnessing the Potential of Design and ‘Design Thinking’ in Museums,” Museum Management and Curatorship 30, no. 4 (2015): 314–41.

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53. Duncan Cameron, “The Museum, a Temple or the Forum (1971),” in Reinventing the Museum, ed. Gail Anderson (Lanham, MD, 2004), 73.

Bibliography Bagnall, Gaynor, and Antony Rowland. “The Imperial War Museum North: A TwentyFirst Century Museum?” In The Future of Memory, edited by Richard Crownshaw, Jane Kilby, and Antony Rowland, 51–76. New York, 2010. Bennett, Tony. “Civic Seeing: Museums and the Organization of Vision.” In A Companion to Museum Studies, edited by Sharon Macdonald, 263–81. Malden, MA, 2011. Boll, Bernd. “Das Bild als Waffe: Quellenkritische Anmerkungen zum Foto- und Filmmaterial der deutschen Propagandatruppen 1938–1945.” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 54, no. 1 (2006): 974–98. Cameron, Duncan, “The Museum, a Temple or the Forum (1971).” In Reinventing the Museum, edited by Gail Anderson, 61–73. Lanham, MD, 2004. Carruthers, Susan L. The Media at War: Communication and Conflict in the Twentieth Century. Basingstoke, 2000. Court, Justin. “Picturing History, Remembering Soldiers. World War I Photography between the Public and the Private.” History and Memory 29, no. 1 (2017): 72–103. Echternkamp, Jörg. “Wandel durch Annäherung oder: Wird die Militärgeschichte ein Opfer ihres Erfolges? Zur wissenschaftlichen Anschlußfähigkeit der deutschen Militärgeschichte seit 1945.” In Perspektiven der Militärgeschichte: Raum, Gewalt und Repräsentation in historischer Forschung und Bildung, edited by Jörg Echternkamp, Thomas Vogel, and Wolfgang Schmidt, 1–38, Munich, 2010. Edwards, Elizabeth, and Sigrid Lien. “Museums and the Work of Photographs.” In Uncertain Images: Museums and the Work of Photographs, edited by Elizabeth Edwards and Sigrid Lien, 3–20. Farnham, Surrey, 2014. Griffiths, Gareth, and Gaby Porter. “Photographs and Films.” In Social History in Museums: A Handbook for Professionals, edited by David Fleming, Crispin Paine, and John G. Rhodes, 158–65. London, 1993. Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung. Verbrechen der Wehrmacht: Dimensionen des Vernichtungskrieges 1941–1944. Hamburg, 2002. Howells, Richard. Visual Culture. Malden, MA, 2003. Imperial War Museum London. Guidebook. Northampton, 2011. Jaeger, Stephan. “Temporalizing History toward the Future: Representing Violence and Human Rights Violations in the Military History Museum in Dresden.” In The Idea of a Human Rights Museum, edited by Karen Busby, Adam Muller, and Andrew Woolford, 229–46. Winnipeg, 2015. Kavanagh, Gaynor. “Museum as Memorial: The Origins of the Imperial War Museum.” Journal of Contemporary History 23, no. 1 (1988): 77–97. Kindler, Jan, “Machen Sie sich ein Bild: Medieneinsatz im Militärhistorischen Museum der Bundeswehr.” In Militärhistorisches Museum der Bundeswehr: Ausstellung und Architektur, edited by Gorch Pieken and Matthias Rogg, 56–65. Dresden, 2011. Macdonald, Sharon. Difficult Heritage: Negotiating the Nazi Past in Nuremberg and Beyond. London, 2009. MacLeod, Suzanne, Jocelyn Dodd, and Tom Duncan, “New Museum Design Cultures: Harnessing the Potential of Design and ‘Design Thinking’ in Museums.” Museum Management and Curatorship 30, no. 4 (2015): 314–41.

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Paul, Gerhard. Visual History: Ein Studienbuch. Göttingen, 2006. Pieken, Gorch, “Konzeption und Aufbau der Dauerausstellung.” In Pieken and Rogg, Das Militärhistorische Museum der Bundeswehr, 21–38. Pieken, Gorch, and Matthias Rogg, eds. Das Militärhistorische Museum der Bundeswehr: Ausstellungsführer. Dresden, 2011. Rogg, Matthias. “Der historische Ort.” In Pieken and Rogg, Das Militärhistorische Museum der Bundeswehr, 7–14. Rose, Gillian. Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Researching with Visual Materials. London, 2012. Stylianou, Elena, and Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert. “Approaches to Displaying Death in Museums. An Introduction.” In Museums and Photography: Displaying Death, edited by Elena Stylianou and Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert, 1–18. London, 2017. Thamer, Hans-Ulrich. “Krieg im Museum: Konzepte und Präsentationsformen von Militär und Gewalt in historischen Ausstellungen.” Zeitschrift für Geschichtsdidaktik 5 (2006): 33–43. Thiemeyer, Thomas. Fortsetzung des Krieges mit anderen Mitteln: Die beiden Weltkriege im Museum. Paderborn, 2010. Thiemeyer, Thomas. “Zwischen Helden, Tätern und Opfern: Welchen Sinn deutsche, französische und englische Museen heute in den beiden Weltkriegen sehen.” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 36, no. 3 (2010): 462–91. Vergo, Peter. “The Reticent Object.” In The New Museology, edited by Peter Vergo, 41–59. London, 1989. Whitmarsh, Andrew. “‘We Will Remember Them:’ Memory and Commemoration in War Museums.” Journal of Conservation and Museum Studies, North America 7 (2001): 11–15. Zimmermann, Peter, and Kay Hoffmann. “Von der Gleichschaltungs- und Propaganda-These zur differenzierten Erforschung dokumentarischer Genres.” In Geschichte des dokumentarischen Films in Deutschland, Bd. 3: “Drittes Reich” (1933–1945), edited by Peter Zimmermann, 45–56. Ditzingen, 2005.

CHAPTER 4



In the Eye of the Beholder

Gaze and Distance through Photographic Collage in the Topography of Terror and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights ERIN JOHNSTONWEISS

T

he past few decades have seen a major boom in museal Holocaust representations. In some cases, this involves the creation of new museums that serve a memorialization function, such as Yad Vashem’s Holocaust History Museum (added to the World Holocaust Remembrance Center and opened in 2005), or those that create an experiential Holocaust representation, such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington, DC (opened in 1993). Still other new museums integrate the Holocaust into a broader narrative of mass atrocities, human rights violations, or an examination of violence in a philosophical or historical sense, such as the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR, opened in Winnipeg in 2014) or the Militärhistorisches Museum der Bundeswehr in Dresden (Bundeswehr Military History Museum, MHM, reopened with a new permanent exhibition in 2011).1 Although these contemporary Holocaust representations are diverse, they nevertheless center on victims and survivors of the Holocaust. If the majority of museal Holocaust representation tends to focus on victims rather than perpetrators or bystanders, the Topographie des Terrors (Topography of Terror), a documentation center located in Berlin, is somewhat of an outlier. Through a case study of the Topography of Terror, this chapter details the ways in which contemporary museums may subvert traditional Holocaust portrayal by using empathy and distanciation, which will be defined later, in unexpected ways. In particular, the Topography’s use of photography in relation to these two concepts is examined in detail and contrasted with the use of photography in the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

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The Topography’s three central exhibitions focus in different ways on Holocaust perpetration. The central indoor space houses a permanent exhibition documenting the rise of Nazism and crimes of the National Socialist (NS) government, the SS, and the Wehrmacht (as well as other nonmilitary institutions such as the German police force). The outdoor exhibition, located in an empty moat overlooked by a large stretch of the Berlin Wall, focalizes the role of Berlin in Nazi Germany, and the specific effects of the NS government on both the city and its inhabitants. The grounds also feature an architectural thematic tour with various signposts elaborating on the location and function of various NS-affiliated buildings formerly housed on the site, especially the Albrecht Street House Prison, the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Main Security Office), and Gestapo headquarters. The Topography’s atypical focus on perpetration (compared to most Holocaust museums) provides an opportunity to bring more depth to the theories of museal empathy and distanciation brought forth in this chapter. This is especially relevant for the continued study of museal empathy, which, though well developed by other scholars, nevertheless tends in the current literature to focus on victims or morally ambiguous historical actors rather than on perpetrators themselves.2 Additionally, the Topography makes an ideal case study for the specific application of theories of empathy and distanciation through photography since, as a documentation center, most of its content are not objects or artifacts but rather photographs and facsimiles of documents. As will be discussed later, the particular collage effect created by the Topography’s large collection of photographs as its central representational method has complex implications for the role of collective and perpetrator gaze in the study of museal Second World War representation. First, I outline the challenges and traditions that are inherent to photographic Holocaust representation, and their relationships to broader Second World War representations; this is followed by a discussion of the concepts of empathy and distanciation, a close reading of several sections of the documentation, and a comparison with the CMHR. Finally, I suggest that these case studies may be abstracted in future analyses of genocide and mass atrocities in museums on a global scale.

Challenges of Holocaust Photography: Empathy and Distanciation One of the hallmarks of museal Holocaust representation is the use of photographs. While many representations of other genocides and mass atrocities also include photographs and visual documentation, Holocaust photography is especially prolific and has its own, well-defined field of scholarship. The proliferation of academic study of Holocaust photography can in part be attributed

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to the sheer bulk of extant photography both from the Eastern Front (which often depicted the actions of Einsatzgruppen, such as public hangings and mass graves of murdered Jews, communists, and other “enemies” of the Third Reich)3 and from the rush to document the liberation and aftermath of concentration and death camps by Allied forces (especially via British, American, and Canadian soldiers).4 The subsequent public dissemination and display of these photographs—often with the intention of forcing German civilians to recognize their culpability in the Holocaust—had the effect of both preserving them and solidifying certain images as iconic in the public eye. One major challenge, therefore, in using Holocaust photography in the museum setting for purely documentary purposes is the fact that these photographs have a long history of being used as propaganda. This phenomenon of photography as propaganda therefore means that many of these photographs, or types of photographs,5 often have their own, iconic meaning outside the museum setting. Museums that use photography as a central means of depicting the “truth” of the Holocaust must bear in mind that these photographs may already have an imbedded meaning for the visitor6 that may or may not be conducive to the goals of a specific exhibition. This can especially be the case when museums attempt to depict Holocaust survivors and victims with dignity, since many of the extant photographs of victims were taken either with the express purpose of dehumanizing them, or by parties who viewed them as less than human.7 When displaying historic photographs, museums must be cautious to not reobjectify victims.8 Although empathy is typically understood as a feeling established between museum visitors and historical victims (or “ordinary” citizens), the concept also has important applications for understanding how visitors may relate to representations of perpetrators. It is not necessarily easy for an exhibition to provoke empathy for historical persons; the generation of museal empathy often entails in-depth representation of groups or individuals in order to give visitors enough information to actually empathize with them. At first glance, the Topography of Terror may appear to be the last place in which one would search for the possibility of empathy, since it neither emotionalizes aspects of German Holocaust history nor fully allow the visitor to immerse themselves in the perspective of any single individual through text or experiential installations. However, empathy is present in the documentation center in how it allows the visitor to take on the gaze of perpetrator and bystander through photography. This understanding of “gaze as empathy” requires a slight alteration of traditional theories, so it uses a hybrid concept of empathy adapted from the writings of Dominick LaCapra, Silke Arnold-de Simine, and Alison Landsberg, combining LaCapra’s concept of empathic unsettlement,9 Arnold-de Simine’s emphasis on depth of understanding of experience—rather than emotional response to victimhood—as a criterion for

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empathy, and Landsberg’s focus on the concept of prosthetic memory.10 Empathy within this context can be understood as the ability of a visitor, when presented with a historical person(s) or situation, to imagine themselves in a similar scenario and reflect realistically on the choices they themselves may have made while understanding the actions taken by said historical person(s).11 While this definition may seem straightforward, it is also integral that empathy be defined as such, since it is often conflated with emotionalization on the part of the observer. This is to say not that empathy must exist without other feelings (e.g., of sadness, anger, or frustration) but rather that these emotions are not a necessary part of historical or museal empathy. In this way, empathy distinguishes itself from feelings of pathos or sympathy for the historical subject. Explaining the depth of representational possibilities in the Topography of Terror is possible through the use of Mark Phillips’s concept of distanciation. Although his concept was developed in order to examine historical texts, with some adjustments it can nevertheless be adapted for museum analysis. Originally established as a means to analyze historical text (i.e., secondary rather than primary sources), Phillips created a sliding scale of distance and proximity to counter contemporary ideas about “appropriate” historical distance. On the one hand, Phillips soundly rejects the idea that the greater distance at which a writer remains from the subject matter, the more objective they can be.12 While this concept is largely a relic of the mid-twentieth century, Phillips also rejects, on the other hand, the turn toward microhistory as a solution to the seeming impossibility of historians presenting an “objective truth”: he denies that it is possible to gain “truth” in historical writing by ignoring the wider picture and focusing on quotidian, personal recollections and interpretations of historical event.13 For Phillips, recognizing the veracity of a given historical text depends on the reader’s ability to evaluate the relative distance between writer and subject. The concept of distanciation, however, is more complex than a simple evaluation of scale; Phillips also suggest that different types of distance or proximity can be used simultaneously in a single representation in order to create a layered effect. To tailor the concept of distanciation for the specific use of photography in the museum, distance and/or proximity in this context can exist under the categories of emotional, psychological, historical, and structural distanciation. Given the importance of physical space, inclusion of structural distance here is especially relevant to a study of museums; architecture and proximity to other artifacts or installations have a significant impact on the visitor’s experience. Additionally, structural distanciation as a category is integral to an analysis of photography, since it can account for framing and other visual techniques that are inherent to this medium. In this case, structural distanciation refers to the physicality of a given object and how this physicality allows a visitor to interact (or not) with it. Structural distanciation can therefore refer to the size of an

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object, its proximity or distance from other objects (including museal para- or hypertext), its accessibility (whether one can directly approach it or must view it from a considerable distance), and the context in which is it encountered (e.g., if it is near the beginning or end of an exhibition).

The Topography of Terror Opened in 1987, the Topography of Terror stands at the intersection of some of the most iconic spaces of Nazism. The center itself, which opened in its most recent incarnation with a new building and permanent exhibition in 2010,14 is located on the former grounds of the Gestapo headquarters, the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, the Albrecht Street House Prison, and various other administrative buildings of the NS government. Since these buildings were destroyed by bombs during the war, no effort was made to reconstruct them; the only remaining original architecture is the entrance to the former SS parking garage, which serves as a backdrop for the outdoor exhibition, and the foundations of the Albrecht Street House Prison, which are enclosed by a fence, allowing visitors to look into but not enter them. Compounding the mixture of past and present at the Topography is the presence of the largest, non-repurposed15 extant section of the Berlin Wall. As such, the Topography physically blends various points of Berlin’s past in a contemporary museal setting. The Topography’s goals are straightforward, if not somewhat unusual for a Holocaust museum. The Topography is explicitly not a museum that seeks to memorialize Holocaust victims, or even focus primarily on them. In this sense, the Topography distinguishes itself from memorial museums, since its lack of focus on victims means that it does not fulfill Paul Williams’s criterion of being shaped by moral guidelines.16 Using extensive photographic exhibitions and quotations from historians and historical persons, the museum focuses almost exclusively on perpetration, tracing the historical evolution of anti-Semitism in Germany and culminating in the postwar era in West and East Germany. The museum apparently has no interest in creating empathy for victims or allowing the visitor to have an immersive or emotional experience. Through a direct analysis and close reading of the interior permanent exhibition and its photographs, it is in fact possible to state that empathy does exist in the Topography, albeit perhaps not in places where visitors might anticipate it. As discussed earlier, empathy in museal Holocaust representations is most commonly found for victims and survivors, rather than for perpetrators. Upon entering the Topography, it is clear that in this sense the museum’s representations and curatorial goals are aligned. The fact that the center does not primarily focus on victims is also enforced by the physical space of the museum itself. Although photographs of victims are visible throughout the interior ex-

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hibition, they are only focalized in the exhibition’s third section, “Terror, Persecution and Extermination on Reich Territory”; elsewhere in the museum, photographs of victims are included only to highlight certain historical phenomena such as the increasing anti-Semitism of the German police force or the enforcement of discriminatory laws and violence. If visitors should not expect to experience empathy toward victims and survivors, they may be more inclined to believe that empathy may exist in the museum’s representation of key perpetrators of the Holocaust. The indoor exhibition in particular focalizes the life and work of Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, and Adolf Eichmann as vital organizers, originators, and enforcers of a variety of atrocities, including the creation of ghettos, the deployment of Einsatzgruppen, and the establishment and enforcement of concentration camps. Large sections of the permanent exhibition are dedicated to photographs and texts related to these men, among which are long quotes by them, as well as significant biographical details. Despite the sheer amount of space dedicated to depicting Himmler, Heydrich, and Eichmann, however, the Topography surprisingly does not allow visitors to empathize with them. It is difficult for the visitor to view events or historical circumstances through their perspective. This lack of empathy is especially evident in how the museum uses historical quotes in its biographical representations. While the museum contains extensive quotations about Nazi ideology and political strategy (especially from Himmler) in large text in each man’s individual section, this text is cut through with quotations from historians that either emphasize the fanaticism of these ideas or, in some cases, their inaccuracy or proof that they are logistically unsound. This means that quotations, and thus the perspectives, of high-ranking NS officials are never left on their own and are constantly interrupted by contemporary texts. As such, the visitor is not able to properly immerse themselves in these perspectives, since they are continually reminded of the ramifications of the philosophy and ideas expressed by them. Strongly subverting typical empathetic representation, the situations in which visitors are able to experience some empathy for historical persons are those with minimal textual intervention (e.g., through the inclusion of biographical details). Empathy in the Topography is in fact primarily created with photographic collages. Arguably, the Topography’s best example of representational empathy can be found in one of the largest of these collages, located in the section of the museum dedicated to victims of the NS regime. Unlike the more iconic photographs of concentration camp survivors or corpses in mass graves, which are typically focalized in museums, this collage is dedicated to the victims of the Albrecht Street House Prison (Figure 4.1). The photos in the collage are comprised of a series of two or three mug shots of each victim, with an inch or so of white space separating them. At first glance, a series of small mug shots might not appear to induce empathy, nor is the small text

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written about each victim enough to give the visitor enough of their perspective to empathize with them. What the collage does do, however, is force the visitor to look at the group as a whole. The collage is several meters wide, and because of the size of the mug shots and the small amount of space between them, it is impossible to look at each person individually even from very close up. The framing of the collage is compounded by the physical space in the gallery; since there are several meters of empty space between the collage and the wall behind it, the visitor is naturally inclined to take a step back and view the photographs from a distance. In so doing, the museum creates an unusual and interesting kind of empathy. Visitors are in a position to see the (forcibly detained and often tortured) inmates in a mass. The spatial layout of the collage forces the visitor to assume the gaze of the perpetrator, whether willingly or not, and thus the collage definitionally performs of museal empathy; the visitor sees historical events literally from the perspective of historical persons, even though the vast majority of typical museumgoers would arguably not choose to empathize with the perpetrators of the Holocaust in such a way. This kind of empathy might seem almost accidental were it confined to this single collage. However, this kind of “empathy through gaze” is replicated frequently, albeit on a smaller scale, within the center’s interior exhibition. The Topography’s collages of the Eastern campaign in particular tend to combine photographs of atrocities with regular military life, which can create an effect of seeing the Eastern campaign through the gaze of the participants. These types of photographic collages not only evoke empathy in unpredictable ways but also allow the visitor to experience a complex layering of different types of distanciation, which in some ways support the possibility for empathy while simultaneously disturbing it. The fact that the visitors are led to view the photographs of the inmates, and thus the inmates themselves, as a collective is a straightforward example of structural distance. The physical setup of the exhibition space, as well as the relatively small size of the photographs compared with others in the surrounding area, creates a literal distance between visitor and victim, and does not compel visitors to approach the photographs once it is clear that their captions contain little biographical information; one can only get a sense of the collage and its meaning from a significant distance. Likewise, the positioning and framing of the photographs themselves can be read as keeping the visitor at an emotional distance. Simultaneously, however, there is a certain amount of historical proximity inherent in adopting the gaze of a historical person. While the link between the visitor’s present and the victims’ past might by tenuous, the German past is indirectly brought closer to the visitor, since their gaze essentially replicates the gaze of historical bystanders and perpetrators. Were this the museum’s only example of historical proximity between visitor and subject, one could argue that it is not substantial enough to merit serious examination. However, as will be discussed later, historical

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Figure 4.1. Partial view of Albrecht Street House Prison mug shots. Permanent interior exhibition. Topographie des Terrors, Berlin. Photo by Erin Johnston-Weiss, 2016.

proximity reasserts itself in the outdoor exhibition, making it a noteworthy phenomenon in the Topography of Terror.

Comparative Views: The Canadian Museum for Human Rights The Topography of Terror is notable not only for its priority of photography and text over objects and artifacts, but also because it encapsulates a particularly German view of the representation of the crimes of the NS government and associated institutions.17 That is to say, a museum such as the Topography

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simply cannot exist currently outside Germany. To an extent, this is dependent on the documentation center’s exact location within Berlin. The fact that the museum lies directly between the Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas (Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe) and the Jüdisches Museum Berlin ( Jewish Museum Berlin) means that, in a matter of speaking, Berlin has “sufficient” representation of victims and survivors of the Holocaust. As such, the Topography’s focus on documenting and representing perpetrators does not come at the expense of the representation of victims; someone visiting Berlin cannot argue that the representation of Holocaust victims is neglected because of the Topography’s more singular and unusual focus. German museums in general also have a much longer history of Holocaust representation than international museums do, beginning with the public display of concentration camp liberation photography in the immediate aftermath of the war. As such, German museal Holocaust representation has in certain ways evolved to a point where it tends to take a primarily documentary approach, rather than emotionalizing history or tending toward more experiential representation styles. International museums, on the other hand, are somewhat more constrained in their Holocaust representation. One tends to see the Holocaust used as an educational tool about broader issues within these museums.18 This is somewhat the case in the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. The Winnipeg-based ideas museum is dedicated to the representation of both human rights successes and violations within and without Canada. As a part of its representation of human rights violations and mass atrocities, the museum dedicates substantial floor space to Holocaust representation, primarily in the “Breaking the Silence” gallery (dedicated to representing the silencing of those who expose and stand up to human rights violations) and the “Examining the Holocaust” gallery, which focuses on state machinations of violence against its own citizens. At first glance, one might assume that a museum like the CMHR would tend toward a more emotionalizing approach to the representation of Holocaust victims. It stands to reason that if the goal of the museum were to create an understanding of human rights violations in order for visitors to take positive future actions to support human rights, then empathy would be an ideal tool with which to accomplish this. Likewise, one might also assume that at least emotional and historical distance between visitor and historical subject— especially when that subject is a victim—would be significantly collapsed in order for the visitor to better incorporate the subject’s past into their understanding of the present and thus change their future actions for the better.19 Interestingly, just as the Topography strongly subverts visitor expectations by creating space for them to empathize with perpetrators rather than victims, so too does the CMHR make empathy with victims of the National Socialists through photography20 almost an impossibility, albeit for radically different

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reasons. This lack of empathy in the CMHR is primarily because of its use of photographs as documentation, and of the Holocaust as an exemplary genocide. Visitors are supposed to take lessons from the Holocaust and apply them to other genocides and mass atrocities. As such, any empathy generated for victims is secondary to an understanding of the mechanics of state violence.21 Like the Topography’s indoor exhibition, the “Examining the Holocaust” gallery in the CMHR is object-poor and dominated by photographs and text. Three of the gallery walls include collages of smaller photographs, large individual photographs, embedded videos (used primarily to fill in historical details not otherwise provided by the exhibition and generally in the form of survivor testimony), and hypertext providing a general time line of the rise of the NS government and the implementation of the Holocaust. Despite the similarities in using photography as the primary media in both museums, the CMHR’s Holocaust gallery is almost the physical antithesis of the Topography’s indoor exhibition. Whereas the latter is essentially a neutral space (with white backgrounds for the photographs, glass walls, a neutral temperature, and no diegetic noise emerging from the exhibits), the CMHR is designed to evoke a particular mood that heightens the psychological experience of the visitor. As one emerges from the ramp leading up to the gallery, one hears looped sounds that alternate between mournful violin music, confused human voices, and a train moving across rails, all of which are associated with either life in Jewish ghettos or the deportation of Jews to concentration camps. Upon entering the gallery proper, one immediately notes the unusually high ceilings, the darkly colored and sloping walls, and a central theater that is covered in shards of glass and meant to invoke the images of Kristallnacht. The darkness of the outer walls and the reflective nature of the glass in turn direct the visitor’s gaze immediately to the oversized photographs, which are backlit and sit under illuminated captions that split the gallery into chronological sections highlighting the rise of National Socialism and the development and implementation of the Holocaust. Whereas the Topography draws the visitor’s gaze to collections of photographs and collages, the CMHR emphasizes individual, oversized photographs that represent a given topic in Holocaust history.22 The first of these, and one of the most remarkable, is a photograph of a young girl performing a Hitler salute at a Nazi rally (Figure 4.2). At first glance, this type of photograph may be considered capable of creating empathy between visitor and historical subject. Similar photographs—especially those of children—are often used within the context of Holocaust representation to explain NS propaganda’s deliberate manipulation of children into becoming unwitting and unwilling agents of persecution and oppression. This is, however, decidedly not the case in the “Examining the Holocaust” gallery. Rather than drawing the visitor to empathize with the child, the effect of the photograph is one of repulsion, in part

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because the photograph enforces emotional and intellectual distance between visitor and subject. The effect of the size and the subject—particularly since the child at once embodies physical indicators of innocence (she is wearing a white dress and a floral crown, and looks to be four to six years old) while simultaneously representing fascism—is partially surreal. In this sense, while the photograph grabs the visitor’s gaze, it nevertheless creates significant historical and emotional distance. Because of this distance, the possibility for empathy with the German public is nonexistent. In this sense, the CMHR’s photography is demonstrably different than that of the Topography, since the possibility of empathy-through-gaze established in the latter is simply not possible in the former. This lack of empathy is also replicated in the next oversized photograph, which is located beside the photo of the girl: that of a German citizen walking barefoot in public with a sign reading, “Ich werde mich nie mehr bei der Polizei beschweren” (translated in the caption of the photograph). 23 Again, like the photograph of the young girl, this picture’s size and content also produce a mildly surreal effect and thus maintain distance between visitor and subject. This distance, and the fact that the photograph itself is not given sufficient

Figure 4.2. Oversized photographs of young girl at a Nazi rally and lawyer with bare feet and sign (smaller photograph included in internal caption). In section “Abuse of State Power,” “Examining the Holocaust” gallery. Permanent exhibition. Canadian Museum for Human Rights, Winnipeg. Photo by Stephan Jaeger, 2016.

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context via explanatory text for the visitor to adopt the subject’s positionality, enforces the idea that the visitor is not meant to empathize with the subject.24 In contrast to the photograph of the girl, however, the photograph of the lawyer goes some way to collapsing structural distance by literally drawing the visitor in. Any visitor with only cursory knowledge of NS persecution of political dissidents or who cannot read German is naturally drawn closer to the photograph in order to read the caption and understand its context. Unlike the iconic photograph of a child at a Nazi rally—inasmuch as the Nazi salute is instantly recognizable to a North American audience, even if the context of the specific rally or city is not immediately clear to most visitors—the photograph of the lawyer requires a (literal) closer look.

Conclusion As discussed in this chapter, one of the central points of the study of both empathy and distanciation is that there is no ideal amount of either that should be present in a museum. This is to say, museums that do not produce empathy are not necessarily failing, and those that do, for example, collapse emotional, intellectual, historical, or structural distance between visitor and subject are not necessarily successfully educating their audiences or even meeting their goals. For this reason, an analysis of the Topography’s and the CMHR’s use of empathy and distanciation should be not a competitive exercise but rather a comparative one; the fact that empathy is present in the Topography but not in the CMHR does not mean that the Topography is necessarily the better museum. What this comparison can illuminate, however, is the way in which national narratives can contribute to whether and how empathy and distanciation are present in these museums. These case studies could be used to draw tentative conclusions about Canadian and German Holocaust representation. Some of these conclusions are obvious—clearly, a documentation center dedicated to the crimes of the Third Reich only makes sense when it can exist in a place that is somehow relevant to this history. As such, the Topography is an extremely effective documentation center, because its location on the grounds of the SS and Gestapo headquarters can collapse the historical distance between the past and the visitors present. This is especially true of the outdoor exhibition, which places its clear placards displaying photographs and text about Berlin’s role in the war directly in front of remnants of the Berlin Wall, suggesting continuity between past and present. In contrast, a Canadian museum would have difficulty justifying a mandate of exclusively representing the Holocaust, since, despite the number of Jewish refugees who were (eventually) accepted into Canada, it cannot function as a stand-alone event in Canadian history. For this reason, the Holocaust is typi-

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cally put into the wider context of Canada’s role in the Second World War25 or, in the case of the CMHR, into the context of the development of human rights in Canada and globally. Likewise, the lack of empathy in its Holocaust representation, and the maintenance of historical and emotional distance between visitor and subject, is not necessarily a negative. The goal of the “Examining the Holocaust” gallery is simply to present the Holocaust as a particularly strong example of the mechanics of state violence. By so doing, the visitor can abstract the information they learn within the gallery and apply the same framework to other human rights violations and mass atrocities, and thus come to a fuller understanding of how these events may come to pass so that they may resist them in the future. Likewise, the development of empathy—intentional or not— within the Topography of Terror for the perspective, if not the actions, of the perpetrators of the Holocaust and other NS crimes can be seen as evidence of a particularly German variety of Holocaust representation that could arise only as a late stage of the German “working through the past.” It is only now becoming possible to begin to empathize with perpetrators rather than merely memorializing victims, distancing oneself from perpetrators, and accepting the idea of collective guilt at face value. While these case studies make for interesting comparisons on both individual and national levels, they also indicate wider trends within the discipline of museum studies and analysis. One of these trends is the increased representation of “difficult knowledge / difficult heritage”26 in national institutions. In this context, difficult knowledge/heritage refers to the representation of events that present challenges for visitors because they contradict widely held national, regional, or group narratives. Generally, the concept applies to events such as state-perpetrated violence, the participation of states or state institutions in war crimes and human rights violations, and the persecution of minority or “outside” groups. Often, difficult knowledge directly contradicts previously held positive narratives and social discourses. The idea that Canada is a nation without racial discrimination, for example, is clearly contradicted by the CMHR’s representation of the horrors of the Indian residential school system. While the Holocaust may no longer be considered “difficult knowledge” in Germany, the incorporation of the Holocaust and German perpetration could only be integrated into the framework of accepted knowledge after decades of changing representational techniques and museal and popular discourse, a process currently underway in many nations.27 As more and more nations come to terms with their “difficult” pasts, and as more groups demand recognition for their suffering through, for example, the establishment of truth and reconciliation commissions (such as in Canada, Chile, and South Africa), understanding how and why museums can use empathy and distanciation to work with difficult knowledge and increase visitors’ understanding of these events can prove to be a valuable tool to future curators, historians, and cultural critics alike.

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Erin Johnston-Weiss received her BA and MA in German studies at the University of Manitoba. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Germanic languages and literatures at the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on empathy and distanciation in the museum setting, and on the representation of Holocaust and mass atrocities in German and Canadian museums.

Notes 1. For the exhibition techniques of the MHM, see Stephan Jaeger, this volume. 2. In particular, Alison Landsberg’s concept of prosthetic memory—that is, that memory can be experienced secondhand through media under the right conditions, concerns itself primarily with victims. Conversely, Silke Arnold-de Simine’s concept of empathy is significantly more open, relies less on the emotional connection between visitor and subject, and thus can be applied to perpetrators, although in her work itself she tends to draw examples of victims or bystanders rather than perpetrators. Alison Landsberg, Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture (New York, 2004), 130; Silke Arnold-de Simine, Mediating Memory in the Museum: Trauma, Empathy, Nostalgia (Basingstoke, 2013). 3. Brad Prager, “On the Liberation of Perpetrator Photographs,” in Visualizing the Holocaust: Documents, Aesthetics, Memory, ed. David Bathrick, Brad Prager, and Michael L. Richardson (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2008), 20. 4. For an in-depth examination of the dissemination of Holocaust photography in the immediate postwar years, see Dagmar Barnouw, Germany 1945: Views of War and Violence (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996); David Bathrick et al., Visualizing the Holocaust. 5. E.g., photographs of mass graves or of starving prisoners in newly liberated concentration camps. 6. For an analysis of the different functions of photography in war museums, see Jana Hawig, this volume. 7. For an in-depth survey and discussion of the challenges of displaying photographs of atrocities, murder, and genocide, especially as pertains to the objectification, aestheticization, and fetishization of victimhood, suffering, and images of death, see Carolyn J. Dean, The Fragility of Empathy after the Holocaust (Ithaca, NY, 2004). 8. Ibid., 21. 9. This refers to the fact that visitors should feel a certain amount of discomfort in experiencing empathy with any historical person, whether they agree or disagree with their particular viewpoint and whether or not the person in question is a victim, perpetrator, or some combination thereof. Dominick LaCapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma (Baltimore, 2001): 39–41; for a discussion of LaCapra’s term as it relates to museal empathy and the Holocaust, cf. Erin Johnston-Weiss, “Empathy and Distanciation: An Examination of Holocaust Video and Photography in the Topography of Terror, the German Military History Museum and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights” (MA thesis, University of Manitoba, 2016), https://mspace.lib.umanitoba.ca/handle/1993/31672, 46–47. 10. Arnold-de Simine, Mediating Memory; LaCapra, Writing History; Alison Landsberg, Engaging the Past: Mass Culture and the Production of Historical Knowledge (New York, 2015).

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11. Arnold de-Simine, Mediating Memory, 43. 12. Mark Phillips, “Rethinking Historical Distance: from Doctrine to Heuristic,” Historical Distance: Reflections on a Metaphor 50, no. 4 (2011): 14. 13. Ibid., 13 14. The most recent of which is the current building that houses the permanent interior exhibition. After a failed architectural competition in 2004, a design was finally decided on in 2005. The building itself opened with its new permanent exhibition in 2010; the exterior moat exhibition has been operational since 1997 and has been home to several temporary exhibitions. This current building is a notable contrast to structures such as the Jewish Museum Berlin and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin since its design is inherently neutral. This neutrality of design is further reinforced by the building’s careful control of light and temperature, ensuring that visitors inside the museum space are able to essentially ignore the building itself, rather than having the architecture act as a statement on its own. The evolution of the grounds of the Topography, and the public knowledge about the grounds as the headquarters of the Nazi regime and its various institutions, as well as debates about what to do with them, is elaborated in Karen. E. Till, The New Berlin: Memory, Politics, Place (Minneapolis, 2005), 63–105. For further details on the architecture of the Topography in contrast to other contemporary museal design, see Johnston-Weiss, “Empathy and Distanciation,” 91–94; Thomas Lutz, “Zwischen Vermittlungsanspruch und emotionaler Wahrnehmung: Die Gestaltung neuer Dauerausstellungen in Gedenkstätten für NS-Opfer in Deutschland und deren Bildungsanspruch” (PhD diss., Technical University Berlin, 2009); Stiftung Topographie des Terrors, Site Tour Topography of Terror: History of the Site, exhibition catalog, translated by Pamela Selwyn and Toby Axelrod (Berlin, 2010), 91–101. 15. In the sense that, unlike the pieces of the wall comprising the East Side Gallery, the Berlin Wall here is neither used as a monument in and of itself nor as an art piece. 16. In his writing on memorial museums and memorial sites, Paul Williams clarifies the following in regard to the different between them and traditional history museums thusly: “More than almost any other institution, memorial museums purport to be morally guided. They invariably cherish public education as it is geared toward the future avoidance of comparable tragedies.” While the Topography does have some basic pedagogical goals, its primary focus is on documentation and is significantly less morally driven than museums such as the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, which is discussed in detail later. Paul Williams, Memorial Museums: The Global Rush to Commemorate Atrocities (Oxford, 2007), 131. 17. One can in this way somewhat distinguish the Topography from other institutions that primarily represent only the crimes of the Holocaust, since the documentation center also contains detailed information about a huge range of crimes, including those committed by the Gestapo against not just Jews but also “asocial” elements, the Sinti and Roma, communists, the mentally disabled and infirm, and political opponents of the regime. In the section “Terror, Persecution and Extermination on Reich Territory,” the oppression of and violence against German and European Jews is equally focalized with other kinds of persecution. Cf. Stiftung Topographie des Terrors, Topography of Terror: Gestapo, SS and Reich Security Main Office on Wilhelm- and Prinz-AlbrechtStrasse—A Documentation, exhibition catalog, translated by Pamela Selwyn (Berlin, 2010). 18. The major exception to this being the USHMM.

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19. Dirk Moses, “Protecting Human Rights and Preventing Genocide: The Canadian Museum for Human Rights and the Will to Intervene,” in The Idea of a Human Rights Museum, ed. Karen Busby, Adam Mueller, and Andrew Woolford (Winnipeg, 2015), 41 (this and the previous sentence). 20. It is important to note here that the lack of empathy in the CMHR’s Examining the Holocaust gallery primarily applies to the museum’s use of photography; the video segments embedded on the walls of the gallery somewhat create the possibility for empathy, although this varies from video to video. For an in-depth discussing of empathy in the CMHR, see Johnston-Weiss, “Empathy and Distanciation,” 51–68. 21. Karen Busby, Adam Muller, and Andrew Woolford, “Introduction,” in Busby et al., The Idea of a Human Rights Museum, 16–18. 22. Like the Topography, the CMHR also contains photographic collages. However, as they are less well lit than the larger photographs and are generally kept to their original size (or at least something approximating a normal size for a photograph), they are dramatically de-emphasized compared with the Topography’s collage of victims of the Albrecht Street House Prison, for example, as discussed earlier. 23. “I will never again complain to the police.” 24. The caption of the photograph does contain some background information and explains that the man is a lawyer who took a formal complaint to the police on behalf of a Jewish client who was experiencing persecution and discrimination. However, cursory information alone is not necessarily enough to create the possibility for empathy. For Arnold-de Simine in particular, in order to create the possibility of empathy, text must provide enough information for a visitor to truly place themselves in the position of the subject and realistically consider the consequences of the decisions they themselves would make. This particular example fails because it is overtly didactic; the museum obviously indicates that the lawyer is in the right: visitors are not permitted to make up their own minds, since they are clearly being led to one, morally correct conclusion. Arnold-de Simine, Mediating Memory, 43. 25. Which in and of itself is often focalized in Canadian museums, since it is part of the national narrative of Canada both as an independent and a victor nation, and tends to be a part of wider narratives of Canada’s later development into a “peacekeeping” nation. 26. Cf. Angela Failler and Roger I. Simon, “Curatorial Practice and Learning from Difficult Knowledge,” in Busby et al., The Idea of a Human Rights Museum, 166; Sharon Macdonald, “Is ‘Difficult Heritage Still ‘Difficult’? Why Public Acknowledgement of Past Perpetration May No Longer Be So Unsettling to Collective Identities,” Museum International 67, nos. 1–4 (2016): 6–7. 27. See Thomas Thiemeyer, this volume.

Bibliography Arnold-de Simine, Silke. Mediating Memory in the Museum: Trauma, Empathy, Nostalgia. Basingstoke, 2013. Barnouw, Dagmar. Germany 1945: Views of War and Violence. Indianapolis, 1996. Bathrick, David, Brad Prager, and Michael L. Richardson, eds. Visualizing the Holocaust: Documents, Aesthetics and Memory. Rochester, NY, 2008.

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Busby, Karen, Adam Mueller, and Andrew Woolford, eds. The Idea of a Human Rights Museum. Winnipeg, 2015. ———. “Introduction.” In Busby et al., The Idea of a Human Rights Museum, 1–24. Dean, Carolyn J. The Fragility of Empathy after the Holocaust. Ithaca, NY, 2004. Failler, Angela, and Roger I. Simon. “Curatorial Practice and Learning from Difficult Knowledge.” In Busby et al., The Idea of a Human Rights Museum, 165–79. Johnston-Weiss, Erin. “Empathy and Distanciation: An Examination of Holocaust Video and Photography in the Topography of Terror, the German Military History Museum and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.” MA thesis, University of Manitoba, 2016. https://mspace.lib.umanitoba.ca/handle/1993/31672. LaCapra, Dominick. Writing History, Writing Trauma. Baltimore, 2000. Landsberg, Alison. Engaging the Past: Mass Culture and the Production of Historical Knowledge. New York, 2015. ———. Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture. New York, 2004. Lutz, Thomas. “Zwischen Vermittlungsanspruch und emotionaler Wahrnehmung: Die Gestaltung neuer Dauerausstellungen in Gedenkstätten für NS-Opfer in Deutschland und deren Bildungsanspruch.” PhD, diss., Technische Universität Berlin, 2009. Macdonald, Sharon. “Is ‘Difficult Heritage still ‘Difficult’? Why Public Acknowledgement of Past Perpetration May No Longer Be So Unsettling to Collective Identities.” Museum International 67, nos. 1–4 (2016): 6–22. Moses, Dirk A. “Protecting Human Rights and Preventing Genocide: The Canadian Museum for Human Rights and the Will to Intervene.” In Busby et al., The Idea of a Human Rights Museum, 40–69. Phillips, Mark. “Rethinking Historical Distance: From Doctrine to Heuristic.” Historical Distance: Reflections on a Metaphor 50, no. 4 (2011): 11–23. Prager, Brad. “On the Liberation of Perpetrator Photographs in Holocaust Narratives.” In Bathrick et al., Visualizing the Holocaust, 19–45. Stiftung Topographie des Terrors. Topography of Terror: Gestapo, SS and Reich Security Main Office on Wilhelm- and Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse—A Documentation. Exhibition catalog. Translated by Pamela Selwyn. Berlin, 2010. Stiftung Topographie des Terrors. Site Tour Topography of Terror: History of the Site. Exhibition catalog. Translated by Pamela Selwyn and Toby Axelrod. Berlin, 2010. Till, Karen. E. The New Berlin: Memory, Politics, Place. Minneapolis, 2005. Williams, Paul. Memorial Museums: The Global Rush to Commemorate Atrocities. Oxford, 2007.

CHAPTER 5



The Challenging Representation of National Socialist Perpetrators in Exhibitions Two Examples from Austria and Germany SARAH KLEINMANN

T

he memorials with exhibitions on former National Socialist (NS) crime sites in Europe were established to commemorate the countless victims and to conserve these crime scenes as evidence. In addition to honoring the victims, the main focus was to create educational tools in order to learn from the NS past. In West Germany and Austria, these processes took decades.1 Survivors, relatives, and friends of the victims mainly initiated the memorials, despite opposition from state policy and widespread public opinion. There was substantial international pressure to initiate memorials for these crimes, yet, fifteen years later, the only memorial addressing NS crimes in Austria and West Germany was the Mauthausen Memorial, which was inaugurated in Austria in 1949, with the support of the Soviet occupying power. Although its opening was relatively early on, the memorial gained little attention in the following years. The first memorial site on a former crime scene that included an exhibition, library, and museum collection in West Germany was opened in Dachau in 1965. In East Germany, state memorials on former concentration camp sites, such as the Buchenwald Memorial, were implemented as early as the 1950s and 1960s. However, these memorials focused strongly on political communist prisoners and neglected, for instance, the fate of Jewish or homosexual inmates, as well as the “euthanasia” killings.2 While the establishment of memorial sites against National Socialism has been a long-term and contested process, intensive institutional debates and systematic reflections about how to adequately represent Nazi perpetrators began only twenty-five years ago.3 The first scholarly article in German regarding the

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museal representation of NS perpetrators in depth was published in 1995.4 New permanent exhibitions that reflect exclusively on perpetrators have only recently been opened at memorial sites such as Ravensbrück (2004 and 2010), Neuengamme (2005), and Sachsenhausen (2017).5 Despite many earlier studies, research concerning NS perpetrators only became a separate branch of historiography in the 1990s.6 These early studies severely neglected to include women perpetrators. Only some historians (mostly women) mentioned them in their roles as concentration camp guards, nurses, physicians, police officers, and administrative employees of the Gestapo and SS.7 As women were still considered “the second sex,” their participation in crimes and acts of violence seemed unthinkable for many people. In Simone de Beauvoir’s classic yet still relevant analysis from the second half of the 1940s, she states that a man is always the “subject,” the “absolute,” whereas a woman is meant to be “the other,”8 on Earth to be a piece of jewelry for men’s eyes but not to be an active subject. We can reasonably conclude, in accordance with Beauvoir, that this gender hierarchy also hindered an appropriate acknowledgment of women’s role in NS crimes. This ignorance concerning gender also plays a role when it comes to Nazi victims. The gender-specific dimensions of persecution and imprisonment in concentration camps are still undervalued and only marginally examined. In addition to the aforementioned historical gender bias, one reason for this omission is, as Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer suggest, “the fear of thereby detracting attention from the racializing categorizations that marked entire groups for persecution and extermination.”9 I also maintain that a gender-sensitive approach offers more information about what actually happened and how it is remembered. This is exemplified in the case of the NS euthanasia killings: the long-standing lack of public attention to these crimes in the postwar period is possibly connected to the gender-specific dimensions of the crime—many perpetrators were women, and victims were killed because they were seen as too “weak,” which is a typical binary code for femaleness. However, there are many other reasons for this lack of attention, as nearly no one survived to tell their story. This chapter focuses on the representation of male and female NS perpetrators in using the examples of the Gedenkstätte Grafeneck Dokumentationszentrum (Grafeneck Documentation and Memorial Center) in Germany and the Lern- und Gedenkort Schloss Hartheim (Hartheim Castle Learning and Memorial Site) in Austria.10 Both memorial exhibitions were established on former crime scenes of NS euthanasia killings. The current Grafeneck exhibition was opened in 2005, and the Hartheim exhibition in 2003. In Grafeneck and Hartheim, tens of thousands of people were gassed to death because they were regarded as disabled and ill, and therefore seen as nonproductive, “disturbing factors” of the NS Volksgemeinschaft (people’s community). Prisoners of war,

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forced laborers, and (other) concentration camp inmates were also murdered there. Perpetrators were mainly physicians, nurses, caregivers, and administrative employees, but also police offers and members of the SS. The exhibitions allow us to compare representational choices, possibilities, and challenges as depictions of similar historic events in two different nation-states post– National Socialism. My analysis of these two exhibitions presented herein will show that gender as a category is neglected when it comes to the representation of NS perpetrators. The exhibitions are typical compared to similar ones of other institutions, and deserve respect and financial support for their work, yet there are shortcomings due to specific discourses, decisions, and the lack of funding. Moreover, exhibitions like the ones analyzed here rely heavily on factbased public education. The broader public has commonly accepted historical facts in recent decades. But if facts increasingly depend on certain points of view considering the current “post-truth” political and media discourse, then the fact-based documentation of NS crimes could also lose persuasiveness and legitimacy. I will further address this topic in the conclusion.

The Hartheim Memorial Exhibition The Renaissance castle Schloss Hartheim in Alkoven, close to Linz, in Austria served as care home for mentally and physically disabled persons starting in the early twentieth century. After the German annexation of Austria, the castle was requisitioned to become one of the central locations of the NS euthanasia killings.11 About thirty thousand disabled and ill people, including incapacitated concentration camp prisoners, were killed between 1940 and 1944. During Aktion T4 (T4 Program), named after the location of its administrative seat, Tiergartenstraße 4 in Berlin, approximately 18,269 people were murdered between May 1940 and August 1941.12 The first transport, comprising fifty women from Baumgartenberg, arrived in the killing facility on 10 May 1940.13 Once Aktion T4 was stopped, the killings did not: they continued in several local care homes. Furthermore, about twelve thousand prisoners from the concentration camps Mauthausen, Gusen, Dachau, and Ravensbrück, as well as forced laborers, were killed in Hartheim. These killings were part of Aktion 14f13,14 which refers to file number “14” as the code for deaths in concentration camps, and “13” as a cipher for killing with gas.15 The initial phase of the Aktion 14f13 in Alkoven took place in 1941 and 1942. The first victims were Jewish prisoners from Mauthausen, and other inmates from Mauthausen, Gusen, and Dachau were subsequently murdered.16 After a preliminary halt in the killings, the Aktion T4 Zentralverrechnungsstelle Heil- und Pflegeanstalten (Central Accounting Office for State Hospitals and Nursing Homes) was moved to Hartheim because Tiergartenstraße 4 was se-

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verely damaged by bombings.17 Between April 1944 and December 1944, a second phase of Aktion 14f13 was carried out, and inmates from various concentration camps were once again murdered.18 The killings were stopped on 12 December 1944; any traces and documents were destroyed purposefully, and killing devices were removed from the crime scene.19 From the beginning of 1945, schoolgirls and supervisors of a Gauhilfsschule (school for disabled children; gau refers to the regional branches of the Nazi Party) were housed in the castle.20 In the early summer of 1945, Major Charles H. Dameron led a US investigative commission to examine the murders.21 Those responsible for the killings have been relatively well researched in recent years. The exhibition mentions numerous names to illustrate the range of involvement of men and women and to show the range of possibilities regarding who could be represented in a contemporary exhibition: Rudolf Lonauer and Georg Renno were SS Obersturmführer (senior storm leaders) who worked as physicians in Hartheim killing facility, which means they supervised the murders. The facility employed seventy people, most of whom were Austrian.22 The US investigative commission was searching for four men who worked as office supervisors in Hartheim: Christian Wirth, Franz Reichleitner, Franz Stangl, and Hans-Joachim Becker. The commission was also trying to locate the crematorium crew of Otto Schmidtgen, Josef Vallaster, Kurt Bolender, Hubert Gomersky, Vinzenz Nohel, and Paul Groth.23 Other known employees include Helene Hintersteiner,24 Hans-Heinrich Lenz, Marianne Lenz, and Annelies Gindl—who all worked in the administration—as well as Heinrich Barbl, Johann Anzinger, and the launderer Rosa Haas.25 The staff was recruited or drafted by Stefan Schachermayr, an NS Gauinspekteur (regional inspector).26 Additionally, several SS Unterscharführer (a paramilitary rank of the Nazi Party) are known to have deported concentration camp inmates from Mauthausen and Gusen to Hartheim: Alois Mallerschitz, Herbert Fullgraf, Georg Blöser, and Emil Gerbig.27 Interestingly, the local population lived in close range to the killing center, so the murders happened in direct proximity to potential witnesses. Nevertheless, legal persecution of all employees was unsuccessful, including the physician Georg Renno, who has never been sentenced.28 After the end of Second World War, people who lost their homes through aerial bombings were housed in Hartheim Castle, which was used as a residential building until the end of the twentieth century.29 There was no memorial or exhibition at this time. However, French survivors from Mauthausen placed a memorial stone outside the castle in 1950. Throughout the following two decades, relatives of killed concentration camp inmates and members of victims’ associations visited the castle repeatedly and erected memorial plaques in the courtyard on their own initiative.30 The charitable association Oberösterreichischer Landeswohltätigkeitsverein (Upper Austrian State Welfare Society) established the first memorial

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site in 1969. In the mid-1990s, the Verein Schloss Hartheim (Hartheim Castle Society) was founded and remains responsible for the current memorial site today. In 1997, the castle was no longer to be used as residential housing, and an exhibition was created.31 The current permanent exhibition of Lern- und Gedenkort Schloss Hartheim attempts to demonstrate how “human life has been valued in the past, present, and future and that the only fundament of our society is human dignity.”32 The permanent exhibition contains two areas: a memorial exhibition and an exhibition entitled “Wert des Lebens” (Value of Life). The memorial exhibition displays the systematic killings under National Socialism, is located on the ground floor, and is divided into three main themes: “NS-Euthanasie” (NS Euthanasia), “Spuren” (Traces), and “Täter und Opfer” (Perpetrators and Victims). The exhibition includes objects, drawers, and media stations; all texts are written in German, but introductory information is translated into English. Additionally, there are several tactile elements for people with visual impairment. The first room of the exhibition, named “Organisation des Massenmordes” (Organization of Mass Murder), gives an overview concerning the euthanasia crimes, their dimensions, and subsequent postwar trials, with focus on Austria. Motives for the mass killings are presented in an introductory text, which highlights certain pragmatic, economic, and social-Darwinist-based considerations such as saving on social costs like hospital beds, hospital personal, aliments, medications, and so on. Furthermore, this room charts the relationship between euthanasia killings and anti-Semitic mass murders. A large portion of the room is dedicated to legal provisions of euthanasia before and after 1945. Perpetrator biographies and the often-insufficient judicial prosecutions in the postwar period are also exhibited. However, the main theme of this first exhibition room is not the perpetrators who worked and killed in Hartheim. Rather, it mostly focuses on the Nazi leaders of the euthanasia killings, including Austrians, and provides an ideological and political background of this killing center. Portrait photos of Gerhard Wagner, Philipp Bouhler, Heinrich Gross, Franz Stangl, Viktor Brack, and Wilhelm Beiglböck, for instance, are shown.33 As a result of these portraits, the whole exhibition room suggests that only men were responsible for the murders: there are no portraits of female perpetrators, not even the physicians Herta Oberheuser, Margarethe Hübsch, or Marianne Türk.34 The second room of the exhibition is much smaller than the first, in which a huge photograph of the Hartheim Castle during the NS period strongly influences visitor reception. The source of the ominous chimney smoke in this photo is the victims’ burning bodies. The information plaque next to the entrance informs visitors that the following section is entitled “Die Tötungsanstalt” (The Killing Facility). In this room, the killing process as well as its investigation and documentation are displayed, presenting Hartheim Castle as a crime scene. In

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contrast to the first room of the exhibition, where men visually dominated, the processes and actions of perpetration now become the focus. This is evident in the titles of the exhibition displays, such as “Verwaltung” (Administration) and “Tarnung” (Camouflaging). Only a few names of male and female perpetrators are presented, and only one photo of a male perpetrator is shown. The displays on the left side of the second exhibition room present a well-organized killing process. This is done, for example, by exhibiting the methods of its administration and the purposeful deconstruction of the building. The right side of the room focuses on the postwar reception of the crimes committed at the castle, with particular attention given to the US “War Crimes Investigation Team 6824,” which questioned former employees of the killing facility. In the following three displays, the central spaces of the killings—the gas chamber, technical installations room, and crematorium—are shown in current pictures, supplemented by descriptive text. These displays give an impression of very detailed archaeological and criminological work. Photos of excavations in 2001 and 2002, for instance, clearly document material traces of the crime to provide empirical evidence and contradict any attempts at denial. The exhibitions’ third section is installed in the next room, entitled “Opfer und Täter” (Victims and Perpetrators). From here, visitors can pass through to the former killing rooms. A small plaque provides introductory information explaining that approximately thirty thousand people were killed in Hartheim. Rudolf Lonauer and Georg Renno are named as “main perpetrators.” The left side of the room presents the male and female perpetrators as “ordinary” people employed at the killing facility. They are exhibited via three-dimensional displays in two cabinets and one cabinet shelf, with the aid of photo displays, drawers, and several historical documents. The most prominent threedimensional display is a small former library belonging to the perpetrators, which highlights their educational backgrounds, ideological positions, and perspectives about euthanasia. Numerous photos prominently exhibit both male and female perpetrators from lower hierarchical positions who were directly involved in the killings. Visually, male perpetrators are once again highlighted, but female perpetrators are also represented: not only men committed these crimes. At the same time, such depictions in the exhibit do not make gender a topic of discussion as a social category. Moreover, how the denazification process differed for men and women after 1945 is not mentioned,35 and almost no information is given on the wives or girlfriends of the male perpetrators. Additionally, NS concepts of masculinity and femininity are not a subject of discussion. The right side of the room presents the Hartheimer Statistik,36 in addition to documents and pictures, as well as biographies of the victims. Furthermore, the exhibition displays different scenarios of people whose actions and choices stood out in these particular historical circumstances. For example, it depicts

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the caregiver Franz Sitter, who successfully refused to participate in the killings. This highlights that there was a choice over whether to become a perpetrator. These examples also illustrate that people held another normative frame of reference outside NS ideology. In summary, the exhibition in Hartheim aims to remember the victims and to document the crimes committed there based on documents, photos, and other information. Perpetrators, decision makers, and observers are highlighted; their behavior can be better illustrated by representing these people as “ordinary” men and women, not as “aliens” or “monsters,” and by placing their actions within the framework of specific structures and institutions. One can only understand the reasons behind such crimes by examining the perpetrator perspective. The representation of “ordinary” people fits in with the normality paradigm, widely accepted in the area of perpetrator research since Christopher Browning’s study Ordinary Men was published in the early 1990s.37 The ways in which the Hartheim memorial exhibits the killing facility’s female staff has been influenced by contemporary perpetrator and memory studies, but compared to other memorial sites, women in the exhibition are depicted to a much larger degree, despite the previously mentioned omissions. The Lern- und Gedenkort Schloss Hartheim would like to renew its memorial exhibition to fill these gaps. However, sufficient funds were not available at the time of the research.38

Grafeneck Memorial Exhibition Grafeneck Castle is located in a mountainous, rural area, the Swabian Alps, in the western German state of Baden-Württemberg. In the 1930s, the ecclesiastical Samariterstiftung (Samaritan Foundation) owned the castle and ran a residential facility for men. In October 1939, the building was confiscated “for purposes of the Reich”39 and become the Grafeneck Euthanasia Centre. Between January and December 1940, at least 10,654 people were killed there.40 Between eighty and one hundred men and women were responsible for the killings. The staff of the killing facility consisted of physicians, police officers, office employees, caregivers, nurses, transportation and housekeeping staff, guard units, and a cremation crew, who normally came from the SS.41 Medical managerial staff volunteered for their positions, whereas the services of a large number of employees lower in the hierarchy were detailed or drafted.42 The first medical director of Grafeneck was Horst Schumann, who was followed by his deputy, Ernst Baumhardt. Günther Hennecke became Baumhardt’s deputy, and Christian Wirth established the office and became the chief of administration.43 The first head of the special registry office was Jacob Wöger, also a detective superintendent,44 and his deputy, Hermann Holzschuh—a police officer

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as well—who later took up the position. In turn, the commercial clerk Kurt Simon became the deputy of Holzschuh. The chemist August Becker transported carbon monoxide from IG Farben in Ludwigshafen to the Swabian Alps, in addition to instructing the staff on its use.45 Hans-Heinz Schütt worked as a purchaser for Grafeneck and did the shopping for the kitchen. Within the scope of his duties, he brought urns to the postal office that contained the ashes of the victims to be sent to their relatives.46 In December 1940, the killing facility ceased operations, and staff members, including the physicians Baumhardt and Hennecke, were transferred to another site of the NS euthanasia killings called Hadamar.47 Afterward, former staff members of Grafeneck participated in the German war of annihilation in occupied Eastern Europe and organized the deportation of Jews and partisans in Trieste, Italy; Susanne Knittel reflects on this fact in her analysis of the memorials Grafeneck and Risiera di San Sabba.48 After the end of the Second World War, Grafeneck became a care home for disabled people once more in 1947.49 In the early summer of 1949, eight people were brought before the Tübingen Regional Court in relation to their participation in the Grafeneck killings.50 During the second half of the 1940s, the Samariterstiftung built two graves on the grounds of Grafeneck that contained urns with ashes of the victims. Since the 1970s, small commemoration ceremonies have been held there. In 1982, the first memorial plaque was placed for the victims. In 1990, a small part of the grounds, which had previously been transformed artistically into an open chapel, was inaugurated as a memorial. The memorial association Gedenkstätte Grafeneck, founded in 1994, is the responsible body for the Gedenkstätte Grafeneck Dokumentationszentrum located near the castle in a small building specifically converted for its use. The institution regards itself as a documentation, research, and education center. Additionally, Grafeneck is now the location of a disability assistance and social psychiatry facility. The artistically designed exterior area containing the gravesite does not depict the perpetrators, so a new exhibition was created.51 The exhibition is entitled “Grafeneck 1940: Krankenmord im Nationalsozialismus—Geschichte und Erinnerung” (Grafeneck 1940: The National Socialist Mass Murder of the Sick—History and Remembrance). It has not been reconceptualized since opening in 200552 and is located on the ground floor of the small, converted building. It is divided into two areas, which are located in two different rooms. The first area focuses on the murders in Grafeneck in 1940 and is “mainly a perpetrator section”53; the second, smaller area deals with the consequences of the killings after 1945. There are no three-dimensional exhibits, because the institution regards itself not as a museum54 but rather as a historical documentation center. For the same reason, no original objects such as historical photos are displayed. There are no drawers or media stations, and the exhibition consists exclusively of large displays containing texts and images. The texts

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are written in German, and the narration is chronological. In the first display, the exhibition charts the political developments leading up to the Nazi euthanasia killings and the Shoah. The following displays inform the visitor about social Darwinism in the Nazi state and Aktion T4 (T4 Program). The eighth and ninth displays are central to the exhibition and represent the perpetrators who were in Grafeneck. The eighth display is entitled “Grafeneck 1940: Transport—Ankunft—Tötung” (Transport—Arrival—Killing). Here, a nurse is quoted: “The sick arrivals were received, undressed, measured, photographed, weighed by the nursing staff, and brought to a medical examination. Arrivals from every transport were examined and immediately gassed, regardless of the time of day.”55 There is no photo or name of the nurse being quoted, or of other nurses in the exhibition, the justification being that they were required to work in Grafeneck and therefore had little autonomous agency.56 The ninth display in the exhibition is entitled “Grafeneck: ‘Tötungsbürokratie’” (Grafeneck: “Bureaucracy of Killing”). The perpetrators directly involved are represented here via exhibition texts and reproductions of historical documents. The display includes the text: The staff of Grafeneck facility—about 100 men and women—were recruited beginning in late 1939. . . . While the perpetrators belonged to all social classes, there were considerable differences in the way they were recruited. . . . Today we cannot investigate how many of these perpetrators participated with deepest conviction in the murder of the sick. Fear of repression or persecution seems to have played an underlying role. . . . Surely many motives were decisive factors in the participation of the perpetrators and their helpers, such as career, promotion, earning prospects, belief in state authorities, National Socialist propaganda, as well as psychological abuse and habituation.57

This text attempts to thematize the motivations of perpetrators in a multifaceted way by expressing their heterogeneity: there were different factors and situations that led to participation in the killings in Grafeneck, and the murderers had various social backgrounds. However, how the staff related to and communicated with each other remains unknown. Also, the names of the perpetrators are not listed, and what they did after the killing facility was shut down is not mentioned. The topic of perpetrators is highlighted again in display thirteen. The heading “Grafeneck und Auschwitz: ‘Euthanasie’ und ‘Endlösung’” (Grafeneck and Auschwitz: “Euthanasia” and the “Final Solution”) draws connections between the murder of the sick and the Shoah. This display corresponds with the first display in the exhibition, which also finds linkages between both crimes. Similarly, the first section of the exhibition states: The subsequent deployment of “euthanasia” perpetrators and usage of gassing facilities as a method of murder for exterminating the European Jewry show a

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direct connection between the “euthanasia” murders and the “final solution to the Jewish question” . . . . Only a small number of perpetrators were brought before a court and sentenced. Most of them returned to the society from which they emerged.58

A picture of the gatehouse and railway lines of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp visually underlines this statement, highlighting the continuities between both crimes. They are further contextualized with the mention of the perpetrators’ broad impunity. Several pictures are placed on the right side of the text: two photos depicting a pair of male perpetrators, Horst Schumann and Christian Wirth, and the aforementioned photo of Auschwitz-Birkenau. In the second room of the exhibition, information concerning the period after 1945 is displayed, for example, regarding trials, neglected memories, and the evolution of the Grafeneck memorial: here, one can learn that Grafeneck remained in state hands between 1941 and 1945, and was used as residential home for the Kinderlandverschickung (evacuation of children during the aerial bombings of German cities). Overall, the exhibition employs a factual documentation style. Essential information is conveyed in a structured and concise format. Grafeneck is depicted as a site of governmental, organized crime. The exhibition displays the political willingness to kill, its ideological basis found in state institutions, and the structures and institutions responsible for the killings. The exhibitions’ explanation for murder is based in the social Darwinist and racist motives of the perpetrators. Referencing Auschwitz-Birkenau at the beginning and end of the exhibition frames the killings as targeted actions within a greater context of extermination. Perpetrators are portrayed in various parts of the exhibition, but female perpetrators are only marginally represented. Furthermore, the term Täter (perpetrator) is used several times, as is Gehilfe (assistant), whereas the term Täterin (female perpetrator) is not used. The staff members of the killing facility are represented not by their individual personality traits in the exhibition texts but by their function and motives. By not offering interpretative descriptions of their personality, the museum avoids demonizing them. The staff ’s behavior is explained instead by providing information on the contemporary political and ideological contexts, and by illustrating their careerism, authoritarianism, and political opinions, as well as their incapacity for empathy on an individual level. The exhibition judges the behavior of the staff as morally wrong but does not psychologize it. The following six perpetrators are displayed in photos: Philipp Bouhler, Heinrich Himmler, and Karl Brandt on the Reich level; Jonathan Schmid on the federal level; and Christian Wirth and Horst Schumann on the local level. By using these photos, the exhibition represents various political levels that perpetrators belonged to.59 The perpetrator photos on display are almost all taken from NS personnel files, with

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the exception of two photos taken in court after 1945.60 No photos of female perpetrators are displayed. Despite the exhibitors’ intention to document the crime, many aspects of euthanasia killings have remained vague because of the state of research when the exhibition was conceptualized. Furthermore, the exhibition does not discuss gender roles, or define “perpetrator” and address the debates surrounding it. As mentioned, exhibitors do not use the term Täterin, and the exhibitions’ photos depict only male perpetrators. If visitors read the exhibitions’ text carefully, they can notice that women are presented as accomplices and not as perpetrators or agents. The curators aimed to exhibit the facilities’ managerial staff in leading positions to point out the state-driven character of the murders. Therefore, the exhibition does not show female or male perpetrators who were low in the hierarchy. Furthermore, the exhibition could generate discussion regarding the reasons for the absence of women in managerial positions, the contemporary gender-specific division of labor, and gendered behavioral expectations. The exhibition could show women such as Ruth B. from Fellbach and Lydia E. from Waiblingen61 who worked in the administration or kitchen in Grafeneck, as well as women who belonged to the nursing staff, like Pauline Kneissler.62 The exhibition also does not include the actions and behavior of perpetrators insofar as their group dynamics, daily work routines, range of personal choices available, and personal initiatives. Although the one hundred men and women who worked in the killing facility are known by name to the memorial, there is a lack of information concerning where they came from and what they did after the war. The exhibition could also address the reasons for the insufficient prosecution of NS perpetrators after the downfall of the Nazi state and even shed new light on the role of the police in the context of state crimes. Additionally, only a single photo of a victim—Theodor K., who was killed in Grafeneck—accompanies those of perpetrators. Although it is the largest portrait and therefore has a strong effect, it inadequately depicts the victim perspective because of its singularity in the exhibition.63 In summary, both the Grafeneck and Hartheim memorials represent male perpetrators as ordinary members of society who were surrounded by specific structures and institutions that influenced their behavior. This representation is generally accepted in the area of perpetrator research. However, there are serious deficits in the Grafeneck Memorial Museum concerning the ways in which female staff of the killing facility is exhibited: women are almost absent in the exhibition despite the contemporary perpetrator and memory research available at the time of the exhibition’s conception. The memorial wishes to modify the exhibition, and if public funds were made available for a reconceptualization, an altered approach to representing women could be supplemented. Additionally, cases of people who declined to participate in murder, like one SS

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man from Mannheim who obtained a reassignment, could be shown. However, public funding would be obligatory for the realization of an extensive enlargement of the exhibition.64

Conclusion Both exhibitions analyzed in this chapter are rather small compared to larger memorials like Mauthausen or Sachsenhausen. Concerning the representation of perpetrators, the exhibition in Hartheim includes three further elements than that in Grafeneck: photos of female perpetrators, three-dimensional objects, and in-depth drawer displays. Furthermore, male and female perpetrators are shown through historical group photos. There is no analogous representation in the exhibition in Grafeneck, where only photos of several male perpetrators are exhibited. Weapons and other killing instruments are not shown in either exhibition; both also underline the relevance of NS ideology and present it as a normative frame for the “euthanasia”-killings. This argument seems convincing because of historical sources, as well as the neglect faced by murdered disabled and ill people in public memory for years. Thus, the importance of remembrance and recognition of the victims is emphasized by strengthening the exhibitions’ representation of the ideological perspectives leading to the brutal killings. It can be further concluded that both exhibitions lack gender sensitivity: women as perpetrators and National Socialists, and contemporary gender roles are neglected. Although the Hartheim and Grafeneck memorials are located in different countries and use different design elements in their exhibitions, there are no serious differences in how they represent NS perpetrators. Despite the various memory debates and historical developments in Austria and Germany since 1945, there are analogous patterns of interpretation between the two exhibitions. This suggests the relevance of international exchange within the field of perpetrator research, curatorial practice, and memory politics. Although there are deficits in both exhibitions, they both display strong attempts to adequately represent perpetrators based on research, facts, and the demands of victims’ relatives. NS crimes, meanwhile, are widely recognized as such in Austria and Germany—although victim groups are overlooked, and many aspects of these crimes remain underresearched. In both countries, the euthanasia killings have gained broad public awareness over the past two decades. In Austria, the killings were interpreted as a German crime for a long time. This led to a lack of discussion about Austria’s role in the killings throughout Austrian universities and state administration, as well as among physicians.65 Until recently, there have been few regional or municipal studies concerning the euthanasia killings conducted in Germany.66

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In the post-truth era, successful Austrian or German far-right movements do not place the revision of remembrance policy at the center of their campaigns. The migration of refugees, jihadism, and socioeconomic issues are much more popular topics. Nevertheless, there are repeated attempts within these movements to influence modern narratives of national histories, as exemplified by the prominent German Alternative for Germany politician Björn Höcke’s use of the term dämliche Bewältigungspolitik (stupid coping policy), in a 2017 speech given in Dresden.67 Furthermore, museums are not only products of commemorative culture and of the politics of history: they can also transform commemorative cultures.68 This has to do with the fact that museums enjoy great trust from the public, because they can, for instance, physically authenticate the public’s interpretations of history. Museums use scholarly authority to convey their representations of history and are therefore suitable as political instruments.69 Consequently, we should be wary of two future developments: first, facts could be rearranged in the museum to create a consistent narrative of national success. A contemporary example can be found in Poland: the conservative government has aimed to transform the perspective of Muzeum II Wojny Światowej (Museum of the Second World War) in Gdańsk from a pro-European narrative into a heroic Polish one.70 Second, there is a growing danger of ignorance to facts, or at least facts that disturb national success stories. All these developments could influence the representation of National Socialist perpetrators, despite the fact that the interpretations and facts represented by the analyzed memorials are widely accepted in German and Austrian memory culture and scholarship today. But even if the exhibition style does not change, the ways of perception could: NS perpetrators could be perceived as ordinary people in a world full of subjective points of view. The act of exhibiting NS perpetrators is always incomplete, through the ways in which it simultaneously evokes distance and proximity. This is also what makes it the most challenging. However, this differs from ignoring or rearranging facts. We should fear the growing distance between facts and the depiction of perpetrators, because the current political climate is beginning to mirror some of the worst aspects of the European past. Contemporary political and social desires and conditions are always echoed in the ways that history is exhibited. Consequently, it is important, now more than ever, that we reflect on the challenges of exhibiting historical events, guilt, and perpetration. Sarah Kleinmann is Research Associate at the Institute of Saxon History and Cultural Anthropology in Dresden. She researches contemporary representations of National Socialism, as well as the Czech-Polish-German border region as a contact zone. Her publications include two monographs—Nationalsozialistische Täterinnen und Täter in Ausstellungen: Eine Analyse in Deutschland und

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Österreich (2017) and “Hier ist irgendwie ein großes Stillschweigen”: Das kollektive Gedächtnis und die Zwangsarbeit in der Munitionsanstalt Haid in Engstingen (2011)—and one coedited volume, Occupation—Annihilation—Forced Labour (2017). Currently, she is examining the perception of crime and deviance and how it has been dealt with in the Polish-German border region since 1945.

Notes I would like to thank Whitney F. Garner for her proofreading of this chapter. 1. Marc Schwietring, “Konkretionen des Erinnerns: Der Wandel des Gedenkens an historischen Stätten der NS-Verbrechen,” in Erinnern, verdrängen, vergessen: Geschichtspolitische Wege ins 21. Jahrhundert, ed. Michael Klundt, Samuel Salzborn, Marc Schwietring, and Gerd Wiegel (Giessen, 2007). For the relation of Second World War and Holocaust exhibitions in Germany since 1945, see Thomas Thiemeyer, this volume; for the general Austrian memory context, see Peter Pirker, Magnus Koch, and Johannes Kramer, this volume. 2. The depiction of homosexual inmates and the euthanasia killings were neglected in Austria and West Germany as well. The same holds true for the persecution of Sinti and Roma or “antisocial” and “work-shy elements.” 3. For the Austrian context of representing perpetrators, see also Pirker et al., this volume; for the German context, see Thiemeyer this volume; Fings, this volume. 4. Wulff E. Brebeck, “Zur Darstellung der Täter in Ausstellungen von Gedenkstätten der Bundesrepublik—eine Skizze,” in Praxis der Gedenkstättenpädagogik: Erfahrungen und Perspektiven, ed. Annegret Ehmann, Wolf Kaiser, and Thomas Lutz (Opladen, 1995). 5. Christine Eckel, “‘Täterausstellungen’: Vergleichsaspekte der Ausstellungen in den KZ-Gedenkstätten Neuengamme und Ravensbrück,” in Die Erinnerung an die nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager: Akteure, Inhalte, Strategien, ed. Andreas Ehresmann, Phillip Neumann, Alexander Prenninger, and Régis Schlagdenhauffen (Berlin, 2011); Jana Jelitzki and Mirko Wetzel, Über Täter und Täterinnen sprechen: Nationalsozialistische Täterschaft in der pädagogischen Arbeit von KZ-Gedenkstätten (Berlin, 2010). 6. Gerhard Paul, “Von Psychopathen, Technokraten des Terrors und ‘ganz gewöhnlichen’ Deutschen: Die Täter der Shoah im Spiegel der Forschung,” in Die Täter der Shoah: Fanatische Nationalsozialisten oder ganz normale Deutsche? ed. Gerhard Paul (Göttingen, 2002). 7. Elissa Mailänder, “Unsere Mütter, unsere Großmütter: Erforschung und Repräsentation weiblicher NS-Täterschaft in Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft,” in Nationalsozialistische Täterschaften: Nachwirkungen in Gesellschaft und Familie, ed. Oliver von Wrochem (Berlin, 2016). 8. Simone de Beauvoir, Das andere Geschlecht: Sitte und Sexus der Frau, trans. Eva Rechel-Mertens and Fritz Montfort (Reinbek, 1968), 11. 9. Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer, “Testimonial Objects: Memory, Gender, and Transmission,” Poetics Today 27, no. 2 (2016): 356, https://doi.org/10.1215/0333 5372-2005-008. 10. The two exhibitions are part of a larger sample that was analyzed for my doctoral dissertation, Sarah Kleinmann, “Nationalsozialistische Täterinnen und Täter in Aus-

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12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

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stellungen: Eine Analyse in Deutschland und Österreich” (PhD diss., University of Tübingen, 2017). Brigitte Kepplinger, Hartmut Reese, and Josef Weidenholzer, “Alle Menschen sind frei und gleich an Würde und Rechten geboren: Das Konzept der Ausstellung,” in Wert des Lebens: Begleitpublikation zur Ausstellung des Landes Oberösterreich in Schloss Hartheim 2003, ed. Landeskulturdirektion Oberösterreich and Institut für Gesellschafts- und Sozialpolitik at the Johannes Kepler University Linz and Oberösterreich Landesarchiv (Linz, 2003), 10. Brigitte Kepplinger, “Die Tötungsanstalt Hartheim 1940–1945,” in Tötungsanstalt Hartheim, ed. Brigitte Kepplinger, Gerhard Marckhgott, and Hartmut Reese (Linz, 2008), 86. Ernst Klee, “Euthanasie” im Dritten Reich: Die “Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens” (Frankfurt, 2010), 162. Florian Schwanninger and Irene Zauner-Leitner, “Vorwort der HerausgeberInnen,” in Lebensspuren: Biografische Skizzen von Opfern der NS-Tötungsanstalt Hartheim, ed. Florian Schwanninger and Irene Zauner-Leitner (Innsbruck, 2013), 9. Hans-Walter Schmuhl, Rassenhygiene, Nationalsozialismus, Euthanasie: Von der Verhütung zur Vernichtung “lebensunwerten Lebens” 1890–1945 (Göttingen, 1987), 217. Pierre Serge Choumoff, Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen durch Giftgas auf österreichischem Gebiet 1940–1945 (Vienna, 2000), 56–66. Kepplinger, “Die Tötungsanstalt Hartheim,” 105–8. Choumoff, Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen, 67–79. Schwanninger and Zauner-Leitner, “Vorwort der HerausgeberInnen,” 9. Kepplinger et al., “Alle Menschen,” 14. Brigitte Kepplinger and Irene Leitner, eds., Dameron Report: Bericht des War Crimes Investigating Teams No. 6724 der U.S. Army vom 17.07.1945 über die Tötungsanstalt Hartheim (Innsbruck, 2012). Kepplinger et al., “Alle Menschen,” 14. Andrea Kammerhofer, “Einleitung zur Edition,” in Kepplinger and Leitner, Dameron Report, 44–45. Tom Matzek, Das Mordschloss: Auf den Spuren von NS-Verbrechen in Schloss Hartheim (Vienna, 2002), 250. Brigitte Kepplinger, “Die Tötungsanstalt Hartheim 1940–1945,” unpublished manuscript, accessed 21 August 2018, http://www.eduhi.at/dl/lande sanstalt_hartheim.pdf, 3. Matzek, Mordschloss, 251. See testimonies in Kepplinger and Leitner, Dameron Report. Kepplinger et al., “Alle Menschen,” 14. Choumoff, Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen, 70–75. Rudolf Lonauer killed his wife, his two daughters, and himself in May 1945. Irene Leitner, “Lern- und Gedenkort Schloss Hartheim: Lernen über Geschichte und Gegenwart,” in Gedenkstätten für die Opfer des Nationalsozialismus in Polen und Österreich: Bestandsaufnahme und Entwicklungsperspektiven, ed. Boguslaw Dybas, Tomasz Kranz, Irmgard Nöbauer, and Heidemarie Uhl (Frankfurt, 2013), 309. Kepplinger et al., “Alle Menschen,” 17. Matzek, Mordschloss, 274. “der ‘Bewertung’ des Lebens in Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft nachzugehen und gleichzeitig zu zeigen, dass allein die Wahrung der Menschenwürde die Grundlage unseres gesellschaftlichen Lebens sein kann.” Kepplinger et al., “Alle Menschen,” 9.

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33. They all were in the Nazi State either high-ranking responsible for the euthanasia killings or directly involved by murdering the helpless victims. Beiglböck carried out human experiments in Dachau concentration camp. 34. Herta Oberheuser carried out human experiments in Ravensbrück concentration camp; Hübsch and Türk were involved in the euthanasia murder of children. 35. On this topic, see Gabriele Pöschl, “Frauen als Täterinnen in der NS-Zeit? Ausgewählte Beispiele von Verfahren gegen Frauen nach dem Kriegsverbrechergesetz,” in Kriegsverbrecherprozesse in Österreich: Eine Bestandsaufnahme, ed. Heimo Halbrainer and Martin Polaschek (Graz, 2003), 149–60; Massimiliano Livi, “Die Bedeutung der Kategorie Geschlecht für die Bewertung politischer Rollen im NS-System: der Fall der Entnazifizierung von Gertrud Scholtz-Klink,” in Nationalsozialismus und Geschlecht: Zur Politisierung und Ästhetisierung von Körper, ‘Rasse’ und Sexualität im ‘Dritten Reich’ und nach 1945, ed. Elke Frietsch and Christina Herkommer (Bielefeld, 2009), 327–37. 36. The NS document in which the T4-killlings were counted was found by the US investigative commission in Hartheim. 37. Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York, 1992). 38. Brigitte Kepplinger, interview, 13 February 2013. 39. “für Zwecke des Reichs.” Franka Rößner, “Im Dienste der Schwachen”: Die Samariterstiftung zwischen Zustimmung, Kompromiss und Protest 1930–1950 (Nürtingen, 2011), 91–92. 40. Thomas Stöckle, Grafeneck 1940: Die Euthanasie-Verbrechen in Südwestdeutschland (Tübingen, 2012), 17. 41. Ibid., 155 (this and the previous sentence). Four-fifths of the names are known today, but staff members are no longer alive. Among them were about forty women. Thomas Stöckle, interview, 24 June 2013. 42. Stöckle, Grafeneck 1940, 115–16. 43. Volker Rieß, “Christian Wirth—der Inspekteur der Vernichtungslager,” in Karrieren der Gewalt: Nationalsozialistische Täterbiografien, ed. Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Gerhard Paul (Darmstadt, 2004), 239–51. 44. Franka Rößner and Thomas Stöckle, “Christian Wirth und Jakob Wöger. Polizeibeamte und ihr Einsatz beim Massenmord in Grafeneck,” in Stuttgarter NS-Täter: Vom Mitläufer bis zum Massenmörder, ed. Hermann G. Abmayr (Stuttgart, 2009). 45. Stöckle, Grafeneck 1940, 116–23. 46. Ibid., 130–36. Some more (female) perpetrators are known to have worked in Grafeneck, for example, the nurses Zielke and Margot Räder-Großmann, as well as the office workers Elise Freudenberg, Lina Gerst, and Gertrud Kurz. Klee, “Euthanasie,” 134–54. 47. Stöckle, Grafeneck 1940, 159. Landeswohlfahrtsverband Hessen, ed., “Verlegt nach Hadamar”: Die Geschichte einer NS-”Euthanasie”-Anstalt (Kassel, 2009), 80. 48. Susanne C. Knittel, “Uncanny Homelands: Disability, Race, and the Politics of Memory” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2011). 49. Stöckle, Grafeneck 1940, 178. 50. The public prosecutor’s office in Tübingen investigated against twenty-seven persons. Rößner and Stöckle, “Christian Wirth und Jakob Wöger,” 87. The people brought before court were the detectives Hermann Holzschuh and Jakob Wöger, the nurse Maria Appinger, and the nurse Heinrich Unverhau, the physicians Max Eyrich and Alfons Stegmann, the psychiatrist Martha Fauser, and Otto Mauthe, former administrator in the Ministry of the Interior in Württemberg. Except Stegmann, Fauser and Mauthe, all

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51. 52. 53. 54. 55.

56. 57.

58.

59. 60. 61. 62. 63.

64. 65. 66.



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defendants were acquitted. Jörg Kinzig, “Der Grafeneck-Prozess vor dem Landgericht Tübingen: Anmerkungen aus strafrechtlicher Sicht,” in 60 Jahre Tübinger Grafeneck Prozess: Betrachtungen aus historischer, juristischer, medizinethischer und publizistischer Perspektive, ed. Jörg Kinzig and Thomas Stöckle (Zwiefalten, 2011), 38–41. Stöckle, interview, 24 June 2013. Stöckle says that he would nowadays change details of the exposition, for example, specifying some terms. Ibid. “weitgehend ein Täterteil.” Ibid. Ibid. “Die ankommenden Kranken wurden von dem Schwesternpersonal in Empfang genommen, ausgezogen, gemessen, fotografiert, gewogen und dann zur Untersuchung gebracht. Jeder ankommende Transport wurde ohne Rücksicht auf die Tageszeit sofort untersucht und die zur Euthanasie bestimmten sofort vergast.” Ibid. “Das Personal für die Vernichtungsanstalt Grafeneck—ungefähr 100 Männer und Frauen—wird ab Ende 1939 von Berlin nach Stuttgart aus rekrutiert. . . . Was ihre soziale Herkunft betrifft, gehören die Täter allen sozialen Schichten an. Jedoch ist ein beträchtlicher Unterschied in der Art und Weise der Rekrutierung unübersehbar. . . . Wie viele der Täter und Gehilfen sich aus tiefster Überzeugung am Krankenmord beteiligen, kann heute nicht mehr in jeder Hinsicht erschlossen werden. Angst vor Repression oder Verfolgung scheinen eine untergeordnete Rolle gespielt zu haben. . . . Ausschlaggebend für die Mitwirkung von Tätern und Tatgehilfen ist mit Sicherheit ein ganzes Bündel von Motiven wie Karriere und Aufstiegschancen, gute finanzielle Verdienstaussichten genauso wie Obrigkeitsdenken und Staatsgläubigkeit, nationalsozialistische Propaganda, seelische Verrohung und Gewöhnung.” “Der spätere Einsatz der ‘Euthanasie’-Täter und der Tötungstechnologie der Gasmordanstalten zur Vernichtung der europäischen Juden zeigen den direkten Zusammenhang zwischen den ‘Euthanasie’-Verbrechen und der ‘Endlösung der Judenfrage’ . . . Nur ein kleiner Teil der Täter wird nach dem Krieg vor Gericht gestellt und bestraft. Die meisten kehren in die Gesellschaft zurück, aus der sie gekommen sind.” For the conception of the exhibition, it was an aim to integrate the relevance of federal and provincial level for the crimes and to show that they were not exclusively organized in Berlin. Stöckle, interview, 24 June 2013. Ibid. Stöckle, Grafeneck 1940, 62. Ibid., 119. In contrast, Knittel writes: “While the large photo of Theodor K. clearly constitutes the focal point of the exhibition (not only does the visitor’s gaze immediately gravitate toward it, he is also the only one whose biography is reconstructed), the much smaller portrait photos of the perpetrators frame the exhibition.” Knittel, “Uncanny Homelands,” 236–37. For a general discussion of Holocaust photography in exhibitions, see Erin Johnston-Weiss, this volume. For a discussion of photography’s functions in Second World War exhibitions, see Jana Hawig, this volume. Stöckle, interview, 24 June 2013. Kepplinger et al., “Alle Menschen,” 15. Gudrun Silberzahn-Jandt, Esslingen am Neckar im System von Zwangssterilisation und “Euthanasie” während des Nationalsozialismus: Strukturen—Orte—Biographien (Ostfildern, 2015).

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67. Cornelia Siebeck, “Dies- und jenseits des Erinnerungskonsenses. Kritik der postnationalsozialistischen Selbstvergewisserung,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 42–43 (13 October 2017), http://www.bpb.de/apuz/257666/kritik-der-postnationalsozial istischen-selbstvergewisserung?p=all. 68. Katrin Pieper, “Das Museum im Forschungsfeld Erinnerungskultur,” in Museumsanalyse: Methoden und Konturen eines neuen Forschungsfeldes, ed. Joachim Baur (Bielefeld, 2010), 200. 69. Thomas Thiemeyer, Fortsetzung des Krieges mit anderen Mitteln: Die beiden Weltkriege im Museum (Paderborn, 2010), 17. 70. Reinhold Vetter, “Das Schicksal des Danziger Weltkriegsmuseums: Die polnische Regierung und die europäische Ausrichtung des Projekts,” Polen-Analysen 192 (2016): 2–7, http://www.laender-analysen.de/polen/pdf/PolenAnalysen192.pdf; Daniel Logemann, “Streit um das Museum des Zweiten Weltkriegs in Gdańsk: Wie soll man ‘polnische Geschichte’ zeigen?” Zeitgeschichte-online, 6 April 2017, http://www.zeitge schichte-online.de/geschichtskultur/streit-um-das-museum-des-zweiten-weltkriegsgdansk. See also the introduction and Winson Chu, this volume.

Bibliography Beauvoir, Simone de. Das andere Geschlecht: Sitte und Sexus der Frau. Translated by Eva Rechel-Mertens and Fritz Montfort. Reinbek, 1968. Brebeck, Wulff E. “Zur Darstellung der Täter in Ausstellungen von Gedenkstätten der Bundesrepublik—eine Skizze.” In Praxis der Gedenkstättenpädagogik: Erfahrungen und Perspektiven, edited by Annegret Ehmann, Wolf Kaiser, and Thomas Lutz, 296–300. Opladen, 1995. Browning, Christopher. R. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. New York, 1992. Choumoff, Pierre Serge. Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen durch Giftgas auf österreichischem Gebiet 1940–1945. Vienna, 2000. Eckel, Christine. “‘Täterausstellungen’: Vergleichsaspekte der Ausstellungen in den KZGedenkstätten Neuengamme und Ravensbrück.” In Die Erinnerung an die nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager: Akteure, Inhalte, Strategien, edited by Andreas Ehresmann, Phillip Neumann, Alexander Prenninger, and Régis Schlagdenhauffen, 190– 203. Berlin, 2011. Hirsch, Marianne, and Leo Spitzer. “Testimonial Objects: Memory, Gender, and Transmission.” Poetics Today 27, no. 2 (2016): 353–83. https://doi.org/10.1215/0333 5372-2005-008. Jelitzki, Jana, and Mirko Wetzel. Über Täter und Täterinnen sprechen: Nationalsozialistische Täterschaft in der pädagogischen Arbeit von KZ-Gedenkstätten. Berlin, 2010. Kammerhofer, Andrea. “Einleitung zur Edition.” In Kepplinger and Leitner, Dameron Report, 39–64. Kepplinger, Brigitte. “Die Tötungsanstalt Hartheim 1940–1945.” In Tötungsanstalt Hartheim, edited by Brigitte Kepplinger, Gerhard Marckhgott, and Hartmut Reese, 63– 116. Linz, 2008. ———. “Die Tötungsanstalt Hartheim 1940–1945.” Unpublished manuscript. Accessed 21 August 2018. http://www.eduhi.at/dl/landesanstalt_hartheim.pdf.

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Kepplinger, Brigitte, and Irene Leitner, eds. Dameron Report: Bericht des War Crimes Investigating Teams No. 6724 der U.S. Army vom 17.07.1945 über die Tötungsanstalt Hartheim. Innsbruck, 2012. Kepplinger, Brigitte, Hartmut Reese, and Josef Weidenholzer. “Alle Menschen sind frei und gleich an Würde und Rechten geboren.” Das Konzept der Ausstellung. In Wert des Lebens: Begleitpublikation zur Ausstellung des Landes Oberösterreich in Schloss Hartheim 2003, edited by Landeskulturdirektion Oberösterreich and Institut für Gesellschaftsund Sozialpolitik at the Johannes Kepler University Linz and Oberösterreich Landesarchiv, 9–18. Linz, 2003. Kinzig, Jörg. “Der Grafeneck-Prozess vor dem Landgericht Tübingen: Anmerkungen aus strafrechtlicher Sicht.” In 60 Jahre Tübinger Grafeneck Prozess: Betrachtungen aus historischer, juristischer, medizinethischer und publizistischer Perspektive, edited by Jörg Kinzig and Thomas Stöckle, 35–53. Zwiefalten, 2011. Klee, Ernst. “Euthanasie” im Dritten Reich: Die “Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens.” Frankfurt, 2010. Kleinmann, Sarah. “Nationalsozialistische Täterinnen und Täter in Ausstellungen: Eine Analyse in Deutschland und Österreich.” PhD diss., University of Tübingen, 2017. Knittel, Susanne C. “Uncanny Homelands: Disability, Race, and the Politics of Memory.” PhD diss., Columbia University, 2011. Landeswohlfahrtsverband Hessen, ed. “Verlegt nach Hadamar”: Die Geschichte einer NS”Euthanasie”-Anstalt. Kassel, 2009. Leitner, Irene. “Lern- und Gedenkort Schloss Hartheim: Lernen über Geschichte und Gegenwart.” In Gedenkstätten für die Opfer des Nationalsozialismus in Polen und Österreich: Bestandsaufnahme und Entwicklungsperspektiven, edited by Boguslaw Dybas, Tomasz Kranz, Irmgard Nöbauer, and Heidemarie Uhl, 305–26. Frankfurt, 2013. Livi, Massimiliano. “Die Bedeutung der Kategorie Geschlecht für die Bewertung politischer Rollen im NS-System: der Fall der Entnazifizierung von Gertrud Scholtz-Klink.” In Nationalsozialismus und Geschlecht: Zur Politisierung und Ästhetisierung von Körper, ‘Rasse’ und Sexualität im ‘Dritten Reich’ und nach 1945, edited by Elke Frietsch and Christina Herkommer, 327–37. Bielefeld, 2009. Logemann, Daniel. “Streit um das Museum des Zweiten Weltkriegs in Gdańsk: Wie soll man ‘polnische Geschichte’ zeigen?” Zeitgeschichte-online, 6 April 2017. http:// www.zeitgeschichte-online.de/geschichtskultur/streit-um-das-museum-des-zwei ten-weltkriegs-gdansk. Mailänder, Elissa. “Unsere Mütter, unsere Großmütter. Erforschung und Repräsentation weiblicher NS-Täterschaft in Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft.” In Nationalsozialistische Täterschaften: Nachwirkungen in Gesellschaft und Familie, edited by Oliver von Wrochem, 83–101. Berlin, 2016. Matzek, Tom. Das Mordschloss: Auf den Spuren von NS-Verbrechen in Schloss Hartheim. Vienna, 2002. Paul, Gerhard. “Von Psychopathen, Technokraten des Terrors und ‘ganz gewöhnlichen’ Deutschen: Die Täter der Shoah im Spiegel der Forschung.” In Die Täter der Shoah: Fanatische Nationalsozialisten oder ganz normale Deutsche? edited by Gerhard Paul, 13–90. Göttingen, 2002. Pieper, Katrin. “Das Museum im Forschungsfeld Erinnerungskultur.” In Museumsanalyse: Methoden und Konturen eines neuen Forschungsfeldes, edited by Joachim Baur, 187–212. Bielefeld, 2010.

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Pöschl, Gabriele. “Frauen als Täterinnen in der NS-Zeit? Ausgewählte Beispiele von Verfahren gegen Frauen nach dem Kriegsverbrechergesetz.” In Kriegsverbrecherprozesse in Österreich: Eine Bestandsaufnahme, edited by Heimo Halbrainer and Martin Polaschek, 149–60. Graz, 2003. Rieß, Volker. “Christian Wirth—der Inspekteur der Vernichtungslager.” In Karrieren der Gewalt: Nationalsozialistische Täterbiografien, edited by Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Gerhard Paul, 239–51. Darmstadt, 2004. Rößner, Franka. “Im Dienste der Schwachen”: Die Samariterstiftung zwischen Zustimmung, Kompromiss und Protest 1930–1950. Nürtingen, 2011. Rößner, Franka, and Thomas Stöckle. “Christian Wirth und Jakob Wöger: Polizeibeamte und ihr Einsatz beim Massenmord in Grafeneck.” In Stuttgarter NS-Täter: Vom Mitläufer bis zum Massenmörder, edited by Hermann G. Abmayr, 82–88. Stuttgart, 2009. Schmuhl, Hans-Walter. Rassenhygiene, Nationalsozialismus, Euthanasie: Von der Verhütung zur Vernichtung “lebensunwerten Lebens” 1890–1945. Göttingen, 1987. Schwanninger, Florian, and Irene Zauner-Leitner. “Vorwort der HerausgeberInnen.” In Lebensspuren: Biografische Skizzen von Opfern der NS-Tötungsanstalt Hartheim, edited by Florian Schwanninger and Irene Zauner-Leitner, 9–13. Innsbruck, 2013. Schwietring, Marc. “Konkretionen des Erinnerns: Der Wandel des Gedenkens an historischen Stätten der NS-Verbrechen.” In Erinnern, Verdrängen, Vergessen: Geschichtspolitische Wege ins 21. Jahrhundert, edited by Michael Klundt, Samuel Salzborn, Marc Schwietring, and Gerd Wiegel, 137–73. Gießen, 2007. Siebeck, Cornelia. “Dies- und jenseits des Erinnerungskonsenses: Kritik der postnationalsozialistischen Selbstvergewisserung.” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 42–43 (13 October 2017). http://www.bpb.de/apuz/257666/kritik-der-postnationalsozial istischen-selbstvergewisserung?p=all. Silberzahn-Jandt, Gudrun. Esslingen am Neckar im System von Zwangssterilisation und “Euthanasie” während des Nationalsozialismus: Strukturen—Orte—Biographien. Ostfildern, 2015. Stöckle, Thomas. Grafeneck 1940: Die Euthanasie-Verbrechen in Südwestdeutschland. Tübingen, 2012. Thiemeyer, Thomas. Fortsetzung des Krieges mit anderen Mitteln: Die beiden Weltkriege im Museum. Paderborn, 2010. Vetter, Reinhold. “Das Schicksal des Danziger Weltkriegsmuseums: Die polnische Regierung und die europäische Ausrichtung des Projekts.” Polen Analysen 192 (2016): 2–7. http://www.laender-analysen.de/polen/pdf/PolenAnalysen192.pdf.

CHAPTER 6



“Warschau erhebt sich”

The 1944 Warsaw Uprising and the Nationalization of European Identity in the Berlin Republic WINSON CHU

T

he Warsaw Uprising lasted sixty-three days in the summer and fall of 1944. The Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa), the leading armed organization in the Polish Underground State with some thirty thousand volunteer soldiers in the capital, planned for a rapid attack that would seize key buildings from the Germans. The fighting and massacres claimed the lives of some two hundred thousand Poles and ended in the devastation of Warsaw. Regarded as a “national trauma,” the anniversary of the uprising has steadily become more of a national holiday in postcommunist Poland.1 At 5 p.m. on 1 August—the start of the uprising known as Godzina “W”—sirens are played across the nation while government leaders and the opposition lay wreaths at the Gloria Victis memorial at Powązki Military Cemetery in Warsaw. The stopping of traffic, street demonstrations, and the lighting of flares have become a mainstay in commemorating this event. In the summer of 2014, the Warsaw Rising Museum in Poland staged a special exhibition on the grounds of the Topographie des Terrors (Topography of Terror) in Berlin. Standing on the site of the former Gestapo and SS headquarters, the documentation center now functions as an indoor/outdoor museum that focuses on the crimes of National Socialism. In this sense, the special exhibition fit the mission of the Topography of Terror by making Polish resistance better known to a German and international audience. What is notable, however, is that the exhibition used the Warsaw Uprising to portray a half-century of Polish victimization at the hands of two totalitarian regimes, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. This chapter argues that the 2014 Berlin exhibition promoted an exceptionalist view of Polish history that on the one hand actually dehistoricizes the Warsaw Uprising and on the other temporarily obscures the

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Topography of Terror’s significance for Soviet victims of German aggression. I suggest that the exhibition was hardly an outlier among European museum projects and was instead embedded in the context of German-Polish and European Union politics, which have been supportive of universalizing narratives of totalitarianism among East-Central European countries.2

The Warsaw Uprising and “Historical Policy” Since August 1944, the Warsaw Uprising has been a topic of much controversy in Poland. Especially acrimonious have been the disputes over whether leaders made the right decision to initiate the uprising and whether the struggle was worth the bloodshed.3 In the communist period, authorities downplayed the role of the Home Army in the Polish resistance in favor of the communist underground; at the same time, the communist government held the Home Army responsible for the disastrous consequences of the uprising. After the regime change of 1989, it appeared to many veterans, victims, and their relatives and supporters that the true story—and an appropriate commemoration—of the uprising and the Home Army could finally be heard. Many politicians and institutional gatekeepers have seen it as an opportunity to display Polish patriotism and unity.4 Yet, many voices from across the political spectrum have been critical of the uprising. Piotr Zychowicz, the editor of a major conservative weekly, considered it a reckless waste of human lives.5 Since 1989, many scholarly works have explored Polish society during the Second World War and the postwar period, with increasing focus on placing Soviet policies alongside Nazi ones.6 As Piotr Madajczyk points out, this development in Polish academia matched collective memory in seeing both occupation regimes as equally bad.7 Historical policy (polityka historyczna) in postcommunist Poland has been becoming more contentious in recent years and has embroiled several museums that engage the Second World War. In 2016, the recently elected government led by the national-conservative Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS) party decided on a major organizational and thematic change to the Muzeum II Wojny Światowej (Museum of the Second World War), which was still being finished in Gdańsk (formerly Danzig). The museum’s team designed the exhibitions to show “total war” in its local, regional, and global dimensions. PiS now wanted to merge this museum with another planned museum in Gdańsk, the Museum of Westerplatte, which focused on Polish resistance to the German invasion in 1939.8 This move to promote a more “Polish point of view” in the museum sparked critical reaction in and outside Poland.9 Despite the international outcry, the new cultural and educational gatekeepers succeeded in firing the founding director, Paweł Machcewicz, and changing most of the research staff of the museum soon after its opening in March 2017. While PiS

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has done much to support a flattering picture of Poland through “historical policy,” it is important to note that similar views are often supported by a broad spectrum of politicians—including many in the liberal-conservative Civic Platform (Platforma Obywatelska), which was in government from 2007 to 2015. Various plans for a museum on the Warsaw Uprising had existed since July 1945, but not until 2003 did the mayor of Warsaw, Lech Kaczyński (cofounder of PiS), give a decisive push for its establishment.10 In 2004, on the sixtieth anniversary of the uprising, the Warsaw Rising Museum was opened. Its mission has been to make the uprising a “center of patriotic convictions about Poland and its independence.”11 Even “Rising” rather than the more commonly used “Uprising” was picked for the museum’s English name in part because the former connotes a broader struggle for freedom.12 The title of a 2016 interview by the conservative newsweekly magazine Do Rzeczy with the director of the Warsaw Rising Museum, Jan Ołdakowski, readily summed up the institution’s philosophical mission: “As a nation, we were on the side of good.” Ołdakowski said that Poland should “articulate everything abroad” to counter the widespread ignorance about Polish history, which he and many others claim to be the cause for historically false references to “Polish death camps.” Comparing postcommunist Poland to Israel in the 1950s, Ołdakowski said it was Polish institutions’ obligation to coerce (wymusić) others “to a certain degree” to listen to “our” version of history.13 Yet, this decidedly national-conservative view of the event and of Poland in the Second World War has often been criticized, especially since it says very little about the Jews and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943.14 Still, the Warsaw Rising Museum has been enormously popular because of its experiential and interactive displays. Above all, the museum plays on the sociocultural upbringing and symbolic resources of Poles to appeal to them emotionally.15 The landscape of symbolic resources for remembering the Warsaw Uprising is different in Germany, where there has been increasing concern that a focus on German suffering from the bombing campaigns and expulsions has encouraged Germans to forget about the earlier Polish campaign and occupation.16 This asymmetrical memory applies especially to the Warsaw Uprising. Many people in Germany—often political leaders—mix up the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising with the 1944 one.17 Indeed, the former overshadows the 1944 uprising in German history: after all, the plaque commemorating German Chancellor Willy Brandt’s Kniefall (genuflection) at the Warsaw Ghetto Heroes Monument in 1970 has become an iconic image around the world. In addition, Christoph Kleßmann and Matthias Barelkowski have argued that the Warsaw Uprising lacked a footing in the German imagination because it had little military significance, but its symbolic resonance was nonetheless instrumentalized by West German cold warriors to show Soviet perfidy while downplaying German crimes.18 This widespread ignorance about the Warsaw

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Uprising in Germany, however, would allow the museum to narrate an unchallenged national narrative of the uprising abroad. For the seventieth anniversary in 2014, the Topography of Terror Foundation invited the Warsaw Rising Museum to install a temporary exhibition in Berlin. The exhibition was simply called “Der Warschauer Aufstand / Warsaw Rising 1944”—leaving out the title in Polish but including a stylized “W” as an emblem. The exhibition lasted from 30 July to 26 October 2014, roughly corresponding to the sixty-three days of the actual Warsaw Uprising from 1 August to 2 October 1944. The presidents of Poland and Germany were project patrons, and both spoke at the opening ceremony. The exhibition contained about ninety items, most of which were informational and graphic panels, each in German and English. There were also two viewing booths showing hospital scenes, as well as a German soldier’s account of the fighting. On one end was a small cabin for a short film called “The City of Ruins.” Although it lacked much of the Warsaw Rising Museum’s interactive displays, the special exhibition in Berlin replicated the same uncritical celebration of both the Warsaw Uprising and the Polish Home Army. The educational program was expressed on the exhibition website: The exhibition presents the history of Warsaw after 1918—a vibrant metropolis whose development was brutally interrupted by the Second World War. Special emphasis is placed on the 63 days of the Warsaw Uprising. The end of the exhibition shows pictures of Warsaw in the years after it was subjected to totalitarianism. The exhibition was shown at the site where from 1933 to 1945 the central offices of Heinrich Himmler’s SS state had been located. It was here that the fate of Warsaw and its residents was sealed: Hitler ordered the city to be completely destroyed after the start of the uprising.19

As promised in the announcement, the physical exhibition at the Topography of Terror began with a short history of Warsaw as a center of industry. It suggested that a quarter of a million Jews lived in a modern world, but there was no word about faltering democracy or the increasing presence of anti-Semitism in political life. Instead, the danger to Polish democracy was always externalized: the exhibition made it known that interwar Germany did not recognize the western border and waged a trade war against Poland. In his analysis of the historiography on the German occupation in Poland, Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg has shown that research in the past twenty years has gone beyond a simplistic depiction of a continuous German expansionism in the east, a so-called Drang nach Osten.20 The message of the museum appeared to recycle tropes from the communist period, however, including the nationalist propaganda that promoted an idea of eternal Polish resistance against the Germans.21 Yet, Germany was not Poland’s only enemy, and the crucial caesura for the exhibition was not the beginning of the war itself but rather the Nazi-Soviet

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Pact (or Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) of 23 August 1939 that would lead to invasion, dismemberment, and occupation for the next fifty years. “Poland was left to fight alone,” according to one exhibition panel. The boards then unpacked how the two vicious systems implemented the treaty’s provisions. The statistics from the September campaign combined German and Soviet firepower to show more starkly the overwhelming odds that Poland faced. In any case, the exhibition’s focus was less on the military defeat and more on the ensuing double occupation that would be the context for the uprising. It told the history of Germany’s mass shootings of Polish intelligentsia and snatching of Polish children who were somehow deemed German, as in this exhibition text: Hatred towards the Slavs was an important element of Nazi ideology. “We will absorb or drive away ridiculous hundred millions of Slavs”—Adolf Hitler said in August 1942. In addition the Poles were blamed for living in harmony with their Jewish neighbours for ages. Now they were to be reduced to uneducated labourers, while representatives of the Polish elites were murdered. People with German roots could put their names on the so-called Volkslist [sic].[22] These actions were aimed at total elimination of the Polish nation. Extermination of the Jews was a priority for the Germans, but genocide of the Slavs was the next step.

Here, the destruction of Poland and the brutal subjugation of the Polish people were evident. But the suggestion that Poles or Slavs more generally were the next target on the list for serial genocide after the extermination of Jews discounted their very different positions in the Nazi racial hierarchy. German leaders could be quite flexible with Slavs and sought political collaboration with countries such as Croatia and Slovakia, as well as the assimilation of those deemed racially acceptable. In contrast, Nazi racial ideology and practice proved uncompromising regarding the racial-biological threat of Jews.23 Yet, highlighting Germany’s brutal policies toward Poles maintains Poland’s heroic narrative while downplaying historical tensions between Poles and Jews.As Piotr Forecki and Anna Zawadzka have pointed out in their analysis of controversies over “historical policy,” the symmetry of Polish and Jewish suffering has been important for those who seek to protect Poland’s good image.24

To Rise or Not to Rise Most significantly, the exhibition did not at all question the Home Army’s decision for launching a major military operation in a densely inhabited city. The support of the city residents and the Polish nation for the uprising was instead depicted as universal. The phrase “Warsaw rises” (Warschau erhebt sich) captured this totalizing and essentializing language and was the title for one prominent board depicting cheerful and well-armed youth: child soldiers were to

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Figure 6.1. Beginning of section “01.08.1944: Warsaw Rises.” Special exhibition Warsaw Rising of 1944. Warsaw Rising Museum, hosted by Topographie des Terrors, Berlin. Photo by Stephan Jaeger, 2014.

be accepted if the cause is just enough.25 The accompanying caption read: “On 1 August, 1944 at 5 p.m. Warsaw stood up to fight for freedom. . . . ‘Everyone is fighting. The streets of Warsaw are fantastic’—reported insurgent press on 6 August, 1944.” After five years of German terror, “Warsaw” was eager to fight. Research has shown that the position of Varsovians was hardly monolithic and unchangingly supportive. Many were afraid of the fate that would await them if they stayed in the insurgent areas, and there are some reported incidents of Polish insurgents shooting at those trying to flee across barricades to the German side.26 In one case, a Home Army commander fired into civilians who were trying to remove the barricades at Krasiński Square (Plac Krasińskich), resulting in several dead and wounded.27 While four hundred to five hundred Jews served with the insurgents, lingering anti-Semitism may have contributed to the killing of about thirty Jews by members of the Home Army.28

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Unity for the operation was also lacking among resistance leaders in Poland and abroad. The exhibition omitted the dissent among Home Army officers for staging the uprising in the city at this time. Warsaw had originally been taken out of plans to seize territory from the Germans (Operation Burza, in English Operation Tempest) because of the low chance for success and the risk to civilians there. This decision meant that arms, including several hundred submachine guns, had been moved out of the city to supply operations elsewhere.29 In the exhibition itself, however, there was no mention of how the Home Army leadership had thereby exacerbated the asymmetry of arms during the uprising. Given the scale of the undertaking, Home Army Commander Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski reported to the Polish government-in-exile in London in mid-July 1944 that he thought an uprising in the city would likely be unsuccessful and great losses would be incurred.30 The fact that the German army appeared to be on the verge of collapse was an argument against, not for, an uprising that would require the storming of German strongholds. Even General Władysław Anders, the famous commander of the Polish II Corps fighting with the Allies in Italy, wrote at the time that he thought the decision for the uprising was a misfortune.31 Decades later, the poet Czesław Miłosz, an authority for many anticommunist cold warriors, called the uprising “a blameworthy, lightheaded enterprise.”32 Yet, these voices were not heard in the exhibition, since they would put the appearance of necessity and unity of the uprising in danger.

The Price of Freedom The uprising was both a military operation directed against the Germans and a political maneuver directed against the Soviets.33 Home Army leaders hoped that fighting the Germans would propel the Allies to take a harder stand on the Polish question vis-à-vis Stalin.34 As noted earlier, the developments on the front put the military necessity of an uprising in doubt, especially since the danger of provoking German resistance and of reprisals was real. In the end, the political prerogative to control the city before the Soviets arrived outweighed any military misgivings.35 The exhibition justified this decision with the trope of an uncompromising quest for Polish freedom: When on 1 August, 1944 a rising broke out in the capital, there were no doubts that freedom of the entire country was at stake. Independence had to be won from the Germans and defended against Soviet aggression. During WW II [sic] two totalitarian regimes—the Third Reich and the Soviet Union—aimed to destroy Poland as a political entity. The Warsaw Rising was an act of opposition against this policy and a sign of how much the Poles valued their freedom. [emphasis added]

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While there may have been “no doubts” that freedom was at stake for Poland in 1944, there was concern about whether the uprising in the capital was the best way of achieving it. As Justyna Krzymianowska’s study of the symbolism of the Warsaw Uprising points out, honor is seen as an absolute good whose sense cannot be questioned; making the uprising about Polish honor rather than about politics shuts down any discussion.36 This rhetoric creates a vicious circle, for there is honor in insisting that honor was the motivation. Stephan Jaeger, who has compared the Berlin exhibition to other exhibitions on the Second World War in Polish and German museums, has shown how tenuous the connection was between the uprising and a “moral and spiritual freedom” that was transferable to all of Europe.37 The famous Polish motto “For our freedom and yours” was validated in a panel devoted solely to a 1984 quote by US President Ronald Reagan: “All of us who share their passion for freedom owe the heroic people of Warsaw and all of the valiant people of Poland a profound debt.” The Berlin exhibition thus tended to conflate (national) freedom with (liberal) democracy and thereby constructed a narrative that linked the Warsaw Uprising, the Solidarity movement, and the end of the Cold War. Above all, the exhibition sought to show that the bloodshed accomplished a moral victory, ending with the motif of a dynamic Warsaw today as a phoenix that had risen from the ashes: “thanks to preserving the memory of the Warsaw rising, the capital retains its old spirit—the love for freedom.” Subordinating the uprising to this narrative of an eternal Polish search for independence preempted any discussion about the causes or consequences for the Warsaw Uprising.38 It also elides the political motivations of the Home Army leaders while projecting these onto the Soviets.

(Selective) Totalitarianism as Narrative The broader lesson of the exhibition was not just the uprising or the search for freedom, however, but also the connection of two disparate regimes at war with one another. In his analysis of the Warsaw Rising Museum’s permanent exhibition in Warsaw, James Mark observes that the tenor of the museum of an uprising against the Germans was at its heart anti-Soviet.39 Yet, place matters, and the uprising’s significance in Warsaw could not be the same as in Berlin. The exhibition later moved to other sites in Germany, including the newly opened (2015) Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism (NS-Dokumentationszentrum München), on the site of the headquarters of the Nazi Party.40 Wherever the special exhibition went in Germany, however, the message was unmistakable: the apparent similarities of the two powers, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, indicate an inherent sameness of the two regimes.

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As Markus Krzoska has remarked, “totalitarianism theory” played an outsized role in the Berlin exhibition.41 The conceptual framework provided cohesion to Poland’s fate under Hitler and Stalin, and the exhibition devoted a good third of its panels to Soviet repression. These included the seminal event of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, as well as the Katyń massacre of more than two hundred thousand Polish officers in 1940. The exhibition section “In Stalin’s Grip” began with a full-panel image of rows of exhumed bodies and was followed almost immediately by the section “The Butchers of Warsaw,” which also opened with a large color photo of dead civilians—prominently including a girl in a red dress and red shoes. This history through juxtaposition provides the visitor with a framework to understand later Soviet crimes, including the failure to assist Warsaw in 1944: When the Warsaw Rising broke out, the Germans launched a successful counter-attack on the outskirts of the capital. This, however, was not the reason for halting the Red Army’s offensive. The order to stop near Warsaw was issued on 2 August 1944 by Stalin himself, as he decided that victory of the Warsaw Rising would not benefit him. No calls for assistance from the Western Allies or the Polish Government in Exile were successful. Communist propaganda attacked the rising, and Soviet airbases remained closed to aircraft dropping weapons and food over Warsaw. Hitler and Stalin cooperated again to deprive Poland of independence. [emphasis added]

Here, the exhibition provides as undisputed fact that Stalin gave the order to halt the Red Army’s offensive because he wanted the Germans to destroy the Polish underground for him. Stalin’s action is explained as inherently political. Indeed, it appears as a continuation of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, despite Germany and Poland being locked in a death struggle at this stage in the war. In his remarks during the opening ceremony, President Bronisław Komorowski, of the liberal-conservative Civic Platform party, even referred to this act as “collaboration.”42 In this continuum of two totalitarian regimes that were similar in kind and purpose, such words lend intellectual coherence and historical causality. Although Stalin likely saw a great opportunity in having the Germans destroy the Home Army for him, to refer to the Soviet failure to take Warsaw at this time as “cooperation” or “collaboration” with Hitler is an overstatement. Several historians have shown that political reasoning was not the only or even the main motivation for Stalin to stop his offensive in early August.43 On 1 August, a successful German counterattack by Field Marshal Walter Model on already extended Soviet lines had severely mauled the Soviet 2nd Guards Tank Army. The military historian Karl-Heinz Frieser, who is sympathetic to the Home Army’s decision to launch the uprising, compares the magnitude of Model’s success to the German victory at Tannenberg in 1914.44 Andrzej

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Sowa’s massive volume on the Warsaw Uprising concludes that there was no proof that Stalin had halted the move for political reasons, noting that Stalin had already moved away from taking Warsaw nine days before the uprising began.45 Likewise, Włodzimierz Borodziej concludes that there was likely no halt order from Stalin around 1–2 August, and Stalin’s decision on 8 August not to attempt a new offensive on 24 August had little impact on the bleak situation for the Warsaw insurgents.46 Still, the collaboration thesis allows for the resolution of a basic tension in the traditional Warsaw Uprising narrative: Stalin is faulted for not coming to rescue a Polish insurrection that was in fact directed politically against him.47 Focusing on Stalin and Hitler as collaborators deflects attention from this decision-making process of Polish leaders and from discussing if other avenues of maneuver may have resulted in fewer casualties, especially among the civilian population. In the exhibition, these questions were sacrificed for a quasiconspiratorial narrative that gave the Poles little agency: they had no other choice than the uprising, and there was no other conclusion than a catastrophe. As Bömelburg has rightly noted, the Warsaw Uprising was a key event between the Second World War and the Cold War.48 Yet, the static interpretative framework of totalitarianism makes the uprising both less significant and ahistorical by placing it in a continuum stretching from the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact to Katyń to postwar repression. In this grand story, the Warsaw Uprising itself was unimportant in determining Poland’s fate. Not surprisingly, the exhibition’s panels on the uprising itself were relatively few, making up less than a third of the exhibition. The narrative of the Berlin exhibition was the same as the one of the Warsaw Rising Museum, but the location at the Topography of Terror made a significant difference for the exhibition’s content. The site is supposed to document German crimes against the nations of Europe, including the peoples of the Soviet Union but especially against the Jews. Unlike the Warsaw Rising Museum, the Berlin exhibition faced the challenge of being visited by many tourists who were less familiar with Polish martyrology and more familiar with the Holocaust. The exhibition did have a display on the Warsaw Ghetto, but it preceded the information on the Polish Underground State. This spatial configuration averted the need to discuss why there was little help from the Polish underground for the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943.49 The information that was present on the topic suggested that Polish resistance was absolute: hating the German occupation was equivalent with love for Jewish neighbors. Paradoxically, the exhibition stressed how little there was that Poles could do. One panel explained that Poles who helped Jews risked their entire families’ lives, but it failed to mention that Poles could be killed for a variety of “offenses” that they all too willingly risked—including circumventing food delivery quotas and sheltering members of the Home Army.50

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An attempt to raise hard questions of collaboration might be expected in a special exhibition hosted at a site devoted to understanding National Socialism and especially how the Holocaust developed and unfolded in the occupied territories. Instead, one display demonstrated how German instruments of terror seamlessly became Soviet ones: In Poland communist totalitarianism revealed its most sinister nature between 1944–1956. In those years approximately 50 thousand people died as a result of round-ups, court approved murders and tortures. One of the NKVD [People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs] camps, from which prisoners were mass deported to the East, was located in Majdanek near Lublin, on the site of the former German concentration camp.

This juxtaposition reminds the viewer that Poles were victims of not only both camp systems but also of the totalitarian commonality of the two regimes. Notably, the exhibition applied the totalitarianism narrative in a more selective manner when it came to victims. The displays made no mention of how Nazis had enslaved and killed millions of Russians, although the exhibition did include Poles in reference to Nazis exterminating Slavs. There was nothing said of socialist or communist victims, Polish or otherwise, in German concentration camps, nor was there any reference to the Soviet citizens who suffered and died under Stalin’s brutal regime. The enemy on display was universalized totalitarianism, but the victims on display were selectively Polish.

The European Division of Memory Labor While the particularly national perspective might seem to work against better German-Polish relations or European integration, these selective narratives of totalitarianism reflect deeper developments. Tony Judt has observed how the increasing focus on victims rather than winners in European historiography has led to increasing divisions in European memory projects.51 For example, the European Network of Reconciliation and Solidarity, established by the ministries of culture of Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia in 2005, has promoted 23 August—the day the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed—as the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism.52 A similar organization is the Platform of European Memory and Conscience, which was established in 2011 in Prague.53 Lidia Zessin-Jurek has examined how new Eastern European Union countries have promoted the experience of life in Soviet camps—the Gulag—as a way to emphasize their own victim status and thus deflect any perceived complicity in wartime crimes. While ostensibly transnational, these historical initiatives in turn propagate national narratives, often with EU funding.54 The selective application of the totalitar-

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ianism narrative allows the new memory work to be both pan-European but also distinctly nationalizing.55 In the interest of reconciliation, the Berlin Republic not only ignores but paradoxically encourages the reassertion of national identity among its neighbors, as was apparent in the statements of Joachim Gauck, the president of Germany and the co-patron of the 2014 exhibition. Gauck himself had an important role in the post-1989 German reckoning with the totalitarian past as the first head of the Stasi Records Agency. In a 2016 interview with a Polish correspondent, Gauck remarked on his position as a “translator” to help Western Europeans understand the special concerns of Eastern Europeans who had grown up in socialism.56 Yet, the Second World War, initiated and radicalized by the Germans, became an entangled web of victims and perpetrators across Europe. The opening ceremony of the Berlin exhibition on 29 July 2014 revealed Gauck’s advocacy but also the limits of what he could say. For his part, Gauck remained on track with high words of reconciliation and reminded the guests that Poland had been instrumental in the fall of the Berlin Wall, since the events there had given East Germans “hope when we were still without courage.” He concluded: At Topography of Terror today, we are opening an exhibition that recalls one of the many topographies of terror with which other Germans once ruined this continent. In so doing, we are shining a light on the importance of the Poles’ struggle and of the coalition against Hitler—the importance of resisting tyranny, yearning for and achieving liberty, and thus laying the foundations for the Europe that was to come. That Europe is our Europe today: a European topography of peace, freedom, and human dignity in which Poland and Germany share.57

While Gauck emphasized German crimes, he did not directly mention the Soviet Union’s role in suppressing Polish resistance. The introductory remarks to the exhibition catalog by Andreas Nachama, the director of the Topography of Terror, related the suffering inflicted by the Germans and did not raise the issue of totalitarianism that was so prominent in the exhibition.58 The media followed suit: a report on the exhibition’s opening by Germany’s ARD television station focused on German destruction and later German-Polish friendship but showed nothing of Poland’s fate under Soviet hegemony.59 It was up to the speech by Polish President Komorowski and the catalog introduction by Jan Ołdakowski, the director of the Warsaw Rising Museum, to take on the delicate task of turning communist victims into Stalinist perpetrators at an iconic site of Nazi criminality: millions of Soviet soldiers and citizens killed as Slavs and communists by the Germans had now become a horde of ruthless aggressors against Poland and the Polish people.60

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Such was the division of labor in the German-Polish effort to work through the Warsaw Uprising. The Germans provided the intellectual and political cover for the Polish guests to advocate for themselves, but it was apparent that they were talking past one another. Indeed, bilateral projects between Germany and Poland that need to navigate difficult historical issues could easily have unintended consequences. Gauck’s “topography of freedom” presented a strange juxtaposition that obscured the Topography of Terror in favor of an overly rosy view of the European present. Likewise, the Warsaw Uprising exhibition’s totalitarianism narrative unhinged the Topography of Terror from its past: during the summer of 2014, the site was no longer just about terror by Germans.

Conclusion The Warsaw Uprising in 1944 was undertaken in large part to show political defiance toward the Soviet Union, but the plan actually depended on Soviet military success. The 2014 exhibition in Berlin on the Warsaw Uprising conveyed the position that the plan’s failure was a result of Nazi-Soviet cooperation. By focusing on external, totalitarian forces for the uprising’s eventual failure, scant attention was paid to how the decision among Polish military and political leaders came about. The presentation in the exhibition elided these questions in a universalizing narrative that emphasized Soviet crimes on the very terrain devoted to reflecting on German responsibility for an inhumane war that included tens of millions of Soviet victims. The ostensible enemy in the exhibition, Germany, became interchangeable with a Soviet one. German museum exhibitions with international partners, especially Poland, play an important role because they educate the German population from a different point of view. Yet, the domestic politics of the partner countries and their impact on the European Union continue to influence these cultural missions. The 2014 Berlin exhibition on the Warsaw Uprising gives us the opportunity to question the basis of the shared European identity often propagated in German-Polish projects. Although it was supposed to be an opportunity to teach Germans about German crimes during the Second World War, the sponsors used it instead to relate Polish heroism in the context of Nazi and Soviet totalitarianism. Recently, more museums with a similarly heroic narrative, such as the Ulma Family Museum of Poles Saving Jews in World War II, have opened.61 Yet, as this chapter has shown, such trends in museum work were only exacerbated, not started, by the election of a Polish national-conservative government and president in 2015. The continuing nationalization of history writing and the

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division of memory labor across Europe today ensures that even when there is transnational cooperation on projects, visitors seeing the same exhibition will come away with little to change their own national viewpoints. Winson Chu is Associate Professor of modern Central European history at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. His monograph, The German Minority in Interwar Poland (Cambridge University Press, 2012), received a Wiener Library Ernst Fraenkel Prize commendation. He has published widely on interethnic relations during the world wars and the Holocaust and is currently working on a history of the Polish city of Łódź, with a focus on the competition between German, Polish, and Jewish nationalisms from 1880 to 2009.

Notes I would like to thank Daniel Logemann and Anna Muller for their generous time in providing thoughtful insights on earlier drafts of this chapter. All translations are mine unless otherwise indicated. 1. Włodzimierz Borodziej, Geschichte Polens im 20. Jahrhundert (Munich, 2010), 249. 2. Although there is a printed catalog that accompanied the exhibition, this chapter focuses on the actual displays—the exhibition’s text was presented in German and English—seen by the vast majority of casual visitors to the Topography of Terror. Excerpts from the catalog’s introduction are cited later. 3. Zuzanna Bogumił, Joanna Wawrzyniak, Tim Buchen, Christian Ganzer, and Maria Senina, The Enemy on Display: The Second World War in Eastern European Museums (New York, 2015), 66. 4. Borodziej, Geschichte Polens im 20. Jahrhundert, 249; Dariusz Gawin and Anita Czupryn, “Dariusz Gawin: Niech pamięć o Powstaniu Warszawskim łączy Polaków,” Polska Times, 31 July 2016, http://www.polskatimes.pl/historia/a/dariusz-gawinniech-pamiec-o-powstaniu-warszawskim-laczy-polakow-wywiad,10459546. 5. Piotr Zychowicz, Obłęd ’44: Czyli, Jak Polacy zrobili prezent Stalinowi, wywołując Powstanie Warszawskie (Poznań, 2013). The title translates as “Madness ’44: Or, how Poles, by starting the Warsaw Rising, gave Stalin a present.” 6. Krzysztof Ruchniewicz, “Polen: Abschied von der Martyrologie?” in Politische Erinnerung: Geschichte und kollektive Identität, ed. Harald Schmid and Justyna Krzymianowska (Würzburg, 2007), 199; Stefan Troebst, “Postkommunistische Erinnerungskulturen im östlichen Europa: Bestandsaufnahme, Kategorisierung, Periodisierung,” in Europa, Polen und Deutschland: Willy-Brandt-Vorlesungen 2003–2005, ed. HansJoachim Gießmann (Baden-Baden, 2005), 163. 7. Piotr Madajczyk, “Experience and Memory: The Second World War in Poland,” in Experience and Memory: The Second World War in Europe, ed. Jörg Echternkamp and Stefan Martens (New York, 2010), 74–76, 79. 8. Anna Muller, “Objects Have the Power to Tell History,” Political Critique, 4 November 2016, http://politicalcritique.org/cee/poland/2016/museum-of-the-war. Another overview of the debates can be found in Daniel Logemann, “On ‘Polish History’: Disputes over the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk,” trans. Benjamin Robbins, Cultures of History Forum, 21 March 2017, http://www.cultures-of-history

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10.

11. 12.

13. 14.

15. 16.

17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

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.uni-jena.de/debates/poland/on-polish-history-disputes-over-the-museum-of-thesecond-world-war-in-gdansk. Paweł Machcewicz and Adam Leszczyński, “Prof. Paweł Machcewicz, dyrektor Muzeum II Wojny Światowej: Zniszczyć—O to im chodzi?” Gazeta Wyborcza, 25 June 2016, http://wyborcza.pl/magazyn/1,153011,20299704,prof-pawel-machcewicz-dyrektor-muzeum-ii-wojny-swiatowej.html?disableRedirects=true. Bartosz Korzeniewski, “Przemiany obrazu drugiej wojny światowej w polskich muzeach po roku 1989,” in Druga wojna światowa w pamięci kulturowej w Polsce i w Niemczech: 70 lat później (1945–2015), ed. Jerzy Kałążny, Amelia Korzeniewska, and Bartosz Korzeniewski (Gdańsk, 2015), 110–11. Justyna Krzymianowska, “Der Warschauer Aufstand zwischen Tabuisierung und Heroisierung,” in Schmid and Krzymianowska, Politische Erinnerung, 211. Erica Fontana and Monika Żychlińska, “Museal Games and Emotional Truths: Creating Polish National Identity at the Warsaw Rising Museum,” East European Politics and Societies and Cultures 30, no. 2 (2016): 264n1. The works of Norman Davies, a notable British historian of Poland, might have influenced the English name for the museum. See Norman Davies, Rising ’44: The Battle for Warsaw (London, 2003). Jan Ołdakowski with Piotr Zaremba, “Jako naród byliśmy po stronie dobra,” wSieci, 25 July 2016, 61–62. See, e.g., Monika Heinemann, “Die Musealisierung des Ghettos: Die Verfolgung von Juden während des Zweiten Weltkriegs in Warschauer Museen,” in Geschichtspolitik in Europa seit 1989: Deutschland, Frankreich und Polen im internationalen Vergleich, ed. Étienne François, Kornelia Kończal, Robert Traba, and Stefan Troebst (Göttingen, 2013), 478–81; Monika Heinemann, “Das Museum des Warschauer Aufstands,” Zeitgeschichte-online, 31 July 2014, http://www.zeitgeschichte-online.de/geschichtskultur/ das-museum-des-warschauer-aufstands. Fontana and Żychlińska, “Museal Games and Emotional Truths,” 261–62. Klaus Ziemer with Róża Romaniec, “Niemiecki historyk: ‘1 września wielu Niemcom nic nie mówi,’” Deutsche Welle, 1 September 2014, http://www.dw.com/pl/niemieckihistoryk-1-wrze percentC5 percent9Bnia-wielu-niemcom-nic-nie-m percentC3 perce ntB3wi-wywiad/a-17058416. Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg and Eugeniusz C. Król, “Einleitung,” in Der Warschauer Aufstand 1944: Ereignis und Wahrnehmung in Polen und Deutschland, ed. Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg, Eugeniusz C. Król, and Michael Thomae (Paderborn, 2011), 11. Matthias Barelkowski and Christoph Kleßmann, “Die Wahrnehmung des Warschauer Aufstands in den deutschen Öffentlichkeiten,” in Bömelburg et al., Der Warschauer Aufstand 1944, 247. Stiftung Topographie des Terrors, “Special and Temporary Exhibitions,” accessed 21 August 2018, http://www.topographie.de/en/exhibitions/special-exhibitions. Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg, “Die deutsche Besatzungspolitik in Polen 1939 bis 1945,” in Die polnische Heimatarmee: Geschichte und Mythos der Armia Krajowa seit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, ed. Bernhard Chiari (Munich, 2003), 51–52. Two studies on this topic are Marcin Zaremba, Komunizm, legitymizacja, nacjonalizm: Nacjonalistyczna legitymizacja władzy komunistycznej w Polsce, 2nd ed. (Warsaw, 2005); Joanna Wawrzyniak, ZBoWiD i pamięć drugiej wojny światowej, 1949–1969 (Warsaw, 2009). The Volksliste was a list for naturalizing former Polish citizens deemed to be German and racially valuable.

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23. John Connelly, “Nazis and Slavs: From Racial Theory to Racist Practice,” Central European History 32, no. 1 (1999): 1–33. 24. Piotr Forecki and Anna Zawadzka, “Reguła złotego środka: Kilka uwag na temat współczesnego dominującego dyskursu o ‘stosunkach polsko-żydowskich,’” Zagłada Żydów: Studia i Materiały 11 (2015): 411, 428. 25. John Connelly, “Those Streets over There,” review of Davies, Rising ’44, London Review of Books 26, no. 12 (24 June 2004): 19–20. 26. Ibid.; Włodzimierz Borodziej, Der Warschauer Aufstand 1944 (Frankfurt, 2001), 199. 27. Janusz Marszalec, “Leben und Sterben der Warschauer Zivilbevölkerung,” in Bömelburg et al., Der Warschauer Aufstand 1944, 113. 28. Borodziej, Der Warschauer Aufstand 1944, 199; Joshua D. Zimmerman, The Polish Underground and the Jews, 1939–1945 (New York, 2015), 404–7. 29. Borodziej, Der Warschauer Aufstand 1944, 94, 103. 30. Ibid., 94–95. 31. Andrzej Sowa, Kto wydał wyrok na miasto? Plany operacyjne ZWZ-AK (1940–1944) i sposoby ich realizacji (Kraków, 2016), 447. 32. Czesław Miłosz, Native Realm: A Search for Self-Definition, trans. Catherine S. Leach (Berkeley, 1981), 248, 257, 263. 33. Barelkowski and Kleßmann, “Die Wahrnehmung,” 252–53; Jan Ciechanowski, “Die Genese des Aufstandes: Zum Entscheidungsprozeß und den Zielsetzungen auf polnischer Seite,” in Bömelburg et al., Der Warschauer Aufstand 1944, 107; Stanisław Jaczyński, “Die Rote Armee an der Weichsel: Politischer oder militärischer Attentismus,” in Der Warschauer Aufstand 1944, ed. Bernd Martin and Stanisława Lewandowska (Warsaw, 1999), 208–9; see also Jan Ołdakowski’s remarks in the exhibit catalog, Paweł Ukielski, Katarzyna Grabowska, and Tomasz Stefanek, eds. Der Warschauer Aufstand 1944 = Warsaw Rising 1944 (Warsaw, 2014), 8. 34. Borodziej, Der Warschauer Aufstand 1944, 96–97. 35. Barelkowski and Kleßmann, “Die Wahrnehmung,” 247. 36. Krzymianowska, “Der Warschauer Aufstand,” 222. 37. Stephan Jaeger, “Between the National and the Transnational: European Memories of World War II in the Twenty-First-Century Museum in Germany and Poland,” in The Changing Place of Europe in Global Memory Cultures: Usable Pasts and Futures, ed. Christina Kraenzle and Maria Mayr (Cham, 2017), 43–44. 38. Ibid., 44. 39. James Mark, The Unfinished Revolution: Making Sense of the Communist Past in Central-Eastern Europe (New Haven, CT, 2010), 12–17. 40. NS-Dokumentationszentrum München, “Der Warschauer Aufstand 1944: Vom 29. Oktober 2015 bis zum 28. Februar 2016,” accessed 21 August 2018, https:// www.ns-dokuzentrum-muenchen.de/sonderausstellung/archiv/warschauer-aufsta nd-1944/?amp percent3BL=0. 41. Markus Krzoska, “Bilder einer Ausstellung,” 22 November 2014, Powstanie1944, https://powstanie1944.wordpress.com/2014/11/22/bilder-einer-ausstellung. 42. Ukielski et al., Der Warschauer Aufstand 1944, 37. 43. Borodziej, Der Warschauer Aufstand 1944, 127; Martin Winstone, The Dark Heart of Hitler’s Europe (London, 2015), 229–30; see also Barelkowski and Kleßmann, “Die Wahrnehmung,” 252.

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44. Karl-Heinz Frieser, “Ein zweites ‘Wunder an der Weichsel’? Die Panzerschlacht vor Warschau im August 1944 und ihre Folgen,” in Bömelburg et al., Der Warschauer Aufstand 1944, 54. 45. Sowa, Kto wydał wyrok na miasto, 677. 46. Borodziej, Der Warschauer Aufstand 1944, 96–97. 47. Barelkowski and Kleßmann, “Die Wahrnehmung,” 252–53. 48. Bömelburg and Król, “Einleitung,” 12. 49. For an examination of how the Historical Museum of Warsaw engages the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, see Bogumił et al., The Enemy on Display, 69–74. 50. Winstone, The Dark Heart of Hitler’s Europe, 181–84; Jan Grabowski, Judenjagd: Polowanie na Żydów 1942–1945—Studium dziejów pewnego powiatu (Warsaw, 2011), 154. 51. Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 (New York, 2005), 828. 52. European Network Remembrance and Solidarity, “Remember: August 23,” accessed 21 August 2018, http://www.enrs.eu/en/projects2016/1374-remember-august-23. 53. European Network Remembrance and Solidarity, “About the Platform,” 1 December, http://www.memoryandconscience.eu/about-the-platfor/about-the-platform. 54. Lidia Zessin-Jurek, “The Rise of an East European Community of Memory? On Lobbying for the Gulag Memory via Brussels,” in Memory and Change in Europe: Eastern Perspectives, ed. Małgorzata Pakier and Joanna Wawrzyniak (New York, 2016), 142, 144, 146. 55. See also the introduction and Peter Pirker, Magnus Koch, and Johannes Kramer, this volume. 56. Joachim Gauck with Adam Krzemiński, “Prezydent Gauck o 25 latach dobrych stosunków polsko-niemieckich,” Polityka, 14 June 2016, 21–23, published in Joachim Gauck, “Interview mit dem polnischen Nachrichtenmagazin Polityka,” Der Bundespräsident, 14 June 2016, http://www.bundespraesident.de/SharedDocs/Reden/DE/ Joachim-Gauck/Interviews/2016/160614-Polityka-Interview.html. 57. Ukielski et al., Der Warschauer Aufstand 1944, 27; see also Christoph von Marschall, “Topographie der Freiheit: Gauck und Komorwoski [sic] eröffnen Ausstellung zum Warschauer Aufstand,” Tagesspiegel, 1 August 2014, www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/ topographie-der-freiheit-gauck-und-komorwoski-eroeffnen-ausstellung-zum-warsch auer-aufstand/10266140.html. 58. Ukielski et al., Der Warschauer Aufstand 1944, 14–19. 59. ARD Mittagsmagazin, “Warschauer Aufstand 1944—‘Topographie des Terrors,’” video, 2:39, posted 29 July 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDxKepXIZv8. 60. Ukielski et al., Der Warschauer Aufstand 1944, 6–13, 28–40. My thanks to the anonymous reviewer for helping me to clarify this point. 61. Muzeum Polaków Ratujących Żydów podczas II wojny światowej im. Rodziny Ulmów w Markowej, http://muzeumulmow.pl/pl.

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Bogumił, Zuzanna, Joanna Wawrzyniak, Tim Buchen, Christian Ganzer, and Maria Senina. The Enemy on Display: The Second World War in Eastern European Museums. New York, 2015. Bömelburg, Hans-Jürgen. “Die deutsche Besatzungspolitik in Polen 1939 bis 1945.” In Die polnische Heimatarmee: Geschichte und Mythos der Armia Krajowa seit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, edited by Bernhard Chiari, 51–86. Munich, 2003. Bömelburg, Hans-Jürgen, and Eugeniusz C. Król. “Einleitung.” In Bömelburg et al., Der Warschauer Aufstand 1944, 9–21. Bömelburg, Hans-Jürgen, Eugeniusz C. Król, and Michael Thomae, eds. Der Warschauer Aufstand 1944: Ereignis und Wahrnehmung in Polen und Deutschland. Paderborn, 2011. Borodziej, Włodzimierz. Der Warschauer Aufstand 1944. Frankfurt, 2001. ———. Geschichte Polens im 20. Jahrhundert. Munich, 2010. Ciechanowski, Jan. “Die Genese des Aufstandes: Zum Entscheidungsprozeß und den Zielsetzungen auf polnischer Seite.” In Bömelburg et al., Der Warschauer Aufstand 1944, 100–117. Connelly, John. “Nazis and Slavs: From Racial Theory to Racist Practice.” Central European History 32, no. 1 (1999): 1–33. ———. “Those Streets over There.” Review of Davies, Rising ’44. London Review of Books 26, no. 12 (24 June 2004): 19–20. Davies, Norman. Rising ’44: The Battle for Warsaw. London, 2003. European Network Remembrance and Solidarity. “About the Platform.” Updated 1 December 2017. http://www.memoryandconscience.eu/about-the-platfor/about-theplatform. ———. “Remember: August 23.” Accessed 30 December 2016. http://www.enrs.eu/en/ projects2016/1374-remember-august-23. Fontana, Erica, and Monika Żychlińska. “Museal Games and Emotional Truths: Creating Polish National Identity at the Warsaw Rising Museum.” East European Politics and Societies and Cultures 30, no. 2 (2016): 235–69. Forecki, Piotr, and Anna Zawadzka. “Reguła złotego środka: Kilka uwag na temat współczesnego dominującego dyskursu o ‘stosunkach polsko-żydowskich.’” Zagłada Żydów: Studia i Materiały 11 (2015): 408–28. Frieser, Karl-Heinz. “Ein zweites ‘Wunder an der Weichsel’? Die Panzerschlacht vor Warschau im August 1944 und ihre Folgen.” In Bömelburg et al., Der Warschauer Aufstand 1944, 45–64. Gauck, Joachim. “Interview mit dem polnischen Nachrichtenmagazin Polityka.” Der Bundespräsident, 14 June 2016. http://www.bundespraesident.de/SharedDocs/Reden/ DE/Joachim-Gauck/Interviews/2016/160614-Polityka-Interview.html. Gauck, Joachim, with Adam Krzemiński. “Prezydent Gauck o 25 latach dobrych stosunków polsko-niemieckich.” Polityka, 14 June 2016, 21–23. Gawin, Dariusz, with Anita Czupryn. “Dariusz Gawin: Niech pamięć o Powstaniu Warszawskim łączy Polaków.” Polska Times, 31 July 2016. http://www.polskatimes.pl/ historia/a/dariusz-gawin-niech-pamiec-o-powstaniu-warszawskim-laczy-polakowwywiad,10459546. Grabowski, Jan. Judenjagd: Polowanie na Żydów 1942–1945—Studium dziejów pewnego powiatu. Warsaw, 2011. Heinemann, Monika. “Das Museum des Warschauer Aufstands.” Zeitgeschichte-online, 31 July 2014. http://www.zeitgeschichte-online.de/geschichtskultur/das-museumdes-warschauer-aufstands.

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———. “Die Musealisierung des Ghettos: Die Verfolgung von Juden während des Zweiten Weltkriegs in Warschauer Museen.” In Geschichtspolitik in Europa seit 1989: Deutschland, Frankreich und Polen im internationalen Vergleich, edited by Étienne François, Kornelia Kończal, Robert Traba, and Stefan Troebst, 470–90. Göttingen, 2013. Jaczyński, Stanisław. “Die Rote Armee an der Weichsel: Politischer oder militärischer Attentismus.” In Der Warschauer Aufstand 1944, edited by Bernd Martin and Stanisława Lewandowska, 195–209. Warsaw, 1999. Jaeger, Stephan. “Between the National and the Transnational: European Memories of World War II in the Twenty-first-Century Museum in Germany and Poland.” In The Changing Place of Europe in Global Memory Cultures: Usable Pasts and Futures, edited by Christina Kraenzle and Maria Mayr, 23–47. Cham, 2017. Judt, Tony. Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945. New York, 2005. Korzeniewski, Bartosz. “Przemiany obrazu drugiej wojny światowej w polskich muzeach po roku 1989.” In Druga wojna światowa w pamięci kulturowej w Polsce i w Niemczech: 70 lat później (1945–2015), edited by Jerzy Kałążny, Amelia Korzeniewska, and Bartosz Korzeniewski, 105–38. Gdańsk, 2015. Krzoska, Markus. “Bilder einer Ausstellung.” Powstanie1944, 22 November 2014. https:// powstanie1944.wordpress.com/2014/11/22/bilder-einer-ausstellung. Krzymianowska, Justyna. “Der Warschauer Aufstand zwischen Tabuisierung und Heroisierung.” In Schmid and Krzymianowska, Politische Erinnerung, 211–22. Logemann, Daniel. “On ‘Polish History’: Disputes over the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk.” Translated by Benjamin Robbins. Cultures of History Forum, 21 March 2017. http://www.cultures-of-history.uni-jena.de/debates/poland/onpolish-history-disputes-over-the-museum-of-the-second-world-war-in-gdansk. Machcewicz, Paweł, with Adam Leszczyński. “Prof. Paweł Machcewicz, dyrektor Muzeum II Wojny Światowej: Zniszczyć—O to im chodzi?” Gazeta Wyborcza, 25 June 2016. http://wyborcza.pl/magazyn/1,153011,20299704,prof-pawel-machcewicz-dyrek tor-muzeum-ii-wojny-swiatowej.html?disableRedirects=true. Madajczyk, Piotr. “Experience and Memory: The Second World War in Poland.” In Experience and Memory: The Second World War in Europe, edited by Jörg Echternkamp and Stefan Martens, 70–85. New York, 2010. Mark, James. The Unfinished Revolution: Making Sense of the Communist Past in CentralEastern Europe. New Haven, CT, 2010. Marschall, Christoph von. “Topographie der Freiheit: Gauck und Komorwoski [sic] eröffnen Ausstellung zum Warschauer Aufstand.” Tagesspiegel, 1 August 2014. www.tages spiegel.de/politik/topographie-der-freiheit-gauck-und-komorwoski-eroeffnen-ausste llung-zum-warschauer-aufstand/10266140.html. Marszalec, Janusz. “Leben und Sterben der Warschauer Zivilbevölkerung.” In Bömelburg et al., Der Warschauer Aufstand 1944, 89–128. Miłosz, Czesław. Native Realm: A Search for Self-Definition. Translated by Catherine S. Leach. Berkeley, 1981. Muller, Anna. “Objects Have the Power to Tell History.” Political Critique, 4 November 2016. http://politicalcritique.org/cee/poland/2016/museum-of-the-war. NS-Dokumentationszentrum München. “Der Warschauer Aufstand 1944: Vom 29. Oktober 2015 bis zum 28. Februar 2016.” Accessed 21 August 2018. https://www .ns-dokuzentrum-muenchen.de/sonderausstellung/archiv/warschauer-aufstand-194 4/?amp percent3BL=0.

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Ołdakowski, Jan, with Piotr Zaremba. “Jako naród byliśmy po stronie dobra.” wSieci, 25 July 2016, 60–62. Ruchniewicz, Krzysztof. “Polen: Abschied von der Martyrologie?” In Schmid and Krzymianowska, Politische Erinnerung, 196–210. Schmid, Harald, and Justyna Krzymianowska, eds. Politische Erinnerung: Geschichte und kollektive Identität. Würzburg, 2007. Sowa, Andrzej. Kto wydał wyrok na miasto? Plany operacyjne ZWZ-AK (1940–1944) i sposoby ich realizacji. Kraków, 2016. Stiftung Topographie des Terrors. “Special and Temporary Exhibitions.” Accessed 21 August 2018. http://www.topographie.de/en/exhibitions/special-exhibitions. Troebst, Stefan. “Postkommunistische Erinnerungskulturen im östlichen Europa: Bestandsaufnahme, Kategorisierung, Periodisierung.” In Europa, Polen und Deutschland: Willy-Brandt-Vorlesungen 2003–2005, edited by Hans-Joachim Gießmann, 153–91. Baden-Baden, 2005. Ukielski, Paweł, Katarzyna Grabowska, and Tomasz Stefanek, eds. Der Warschauer Aufstand 1944 = Warsaw Rising 1944. Warsaw, 2014. Wawrzyniak, Joanna. ZBoWiD i pamięć drugiej wojny światowej, 1949–1969. Warsaw, 2009. Winstone, Martin. The Dark Heart of Hitler’s Europe. London, 2015. Zaremba, Marcin. Komunizm, legitymizacja, nacjonalizm: Nacjonalistyczna legitymizacja władzy komunistycznej w Polsce. 2nd ed. Warsaw, 2005. Zessin-Jurek, Lidia. “The Rise of an East European Community of Memory? On Lobbying for the Gulag Memory via Brussels.” In Memory and Change in Europe: Eastern Perspectives, edited by Małgorzata Pakier and Joanna Wawrzyniak, 131–49. New York, 2016. Ziemer, Klaus, with Róża Romaniec. “Niemiecki historyk: ‘1 września wielu Niemcom nic nie mówi.’” Deutsche Welle, 1 September 2014. http://www.dw.com/pl/niemieckihistoryk-1-wrze percentC5 percent9Bnia-wielu-niemcom-nic-nie-m percentC3 percent B3wi-wywiad/a-17058416. Zimmerman, Joshua D. The Polish Underground and the Jews, 1939–1945. New York, 2015. Zychowicz, Piotr. Obłęd ’44: Czyli, Jak Polacy zrobili prezent Stalinowi, wywołując Powstanie Warszawskie. Poznań, 2013.

PART II

 Memorials and Memorial Landscapes

CHAPTER 7



A Culture of Remembrance, Memorials, and Museum in the Hürtgenwald Region KAROLA FINGS

F

or a long time, only a few outsiders knew of the war history associated with the Hürtgenwald region, aside from a small number of insiders and specialists. “Hürtgen Forest” is the name given to the densely forested hilly area surrounding Hürtgen village by the US soldiers who reached this area during their advance from the German Reich’s western border to the Rhine on 11 September 1944. At that time, the units involved had no idea that it would take until 6 March 1945 to liberate Cologne on the left bank of the Rhine from Nazi rule, or that it would take yet another day for the Rhine to be crossed at Remagen. For almost half a year, the campaign of conquest, which had begun with the successful Normandy landing in June 1944, was stuck in the forests between Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle), Monschau, and Düren.1 The reasons for this were manifold: supply problems; strategic differences between the Americans and the British; fierce last-ditch attempts at resistance from German soldiers, focused on the Battle of the Bulge; and the terrain, against which the technological superiority of the Allies was no match. In this setting, Ernest Hemingway wrote, “There was snow, or something, rain or fog all the time and the roads had been mined as many as fourteen mines deep in certain stretches, so when the vehicles churned down to a new string deeper, in another part of the mud, you were always losing vehicles and, of course, the people that went with them.”2 As a war correspondent, Hemingway had previously covered the Normandy landing, the liberation of Paris, and the reaching of the Siegfried Line—called the Westwall by the Germans. However, the losses Hemingway saw among US soldiers in Hürtgen Forest, from midNovember to early December 1944, were unprecedented. For example, fighting at a bridge in the area resulted in a company losing all its officers and 70 percent

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of its enlisted men in the course of one day.3 In sight of these enormous losses, Hemingway sarcastically wrote in his novel Across the River and into the Trees: “We got a certain amount of replacements but I can remember thinking that it would be simpler, and more effective, to shoot them in the area where they detrucked, than to have to try to bring them back from where they would be killed and bury them.”4 What would turn out to be one of the longest and costliest battles of the Second World War for the Americans was also a costly and tenacious struggle from the German perspective: each square meter of native soil was fought for under conditions similar to those of trench warfare in the First World War. Clashes like the All Souls’ Day Battle of 2 November 1944 have been committed to memory, both by the German soldiers involved in the war and in the American memoir genre. Civilians, on the other hand, remembered being evacuated from their homes in the fall of 1944, and the destruction caused by the fighting and bombing raids of Operation Queen on 16 November 1944, resulting in the devastation of the towns Düren and Jülich. They also remembered the months of hardship they faced upon their return in the spring of 1945, and the danger that mines continued to pose in the forests and fields for years following VE Day. The impact that the war experience had on regional identity is demonstrated by the appropriation of “Hürtgen Forest,” the American name for this theater of battle after 1945: in 1969, the formerly independent municipalities of Bergstein, Brandenberg, Gey, Großhau, Hürtgen, Kleinhau, and Straß united into the Hürtgenwald municipality as a result of local government reorganization. In 1972, Vossenack, as another theater of the 1944–1945 battles, was added to the municipality. Over the decades, a memory landscape emerged on the former battlefield with what was by German standards an extraordinary density of memorials. These memorials represented people, places, and events of the war and postwar periods in different ways. This chapter will first describe the important elements of this remembrance landscape and its development after 1945. It will then highlight three aspects that gave rise to criticism of the region’s politics of history in the past decade: an increasing presence of extreme right-wing persons and associations, a one-sided view of history glorifying the Wehrmacht.5 In conclusion, it will present initiatives that have recently made efforts to achieve a pluralization, professionalization, and democratization of this culture of remembrance.

Development of the Memory Landscape in the Hürtgenwald Region In Hürtgenwald, as elsewhere, the earliest forms of Second World War– related memorialization emerged in the context of the recovery and burial of

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war dead.6 To this day, there is no reliable data on the number of dead in the Battle of Hürtgen Forest. According to the latest research, up to five thousand US soldiers and at least twelve thousand German soldiers died during this series battles in and around Hürtgen Forest.7 Only some of the bodies were recovered during the war, and in those cases, they had often been buried in cemeteries or churchyards near their place of death. Many of the dead, however, could not be recovered during the hostilities. After 1945, there was still a large number of bodies, especially in the wooded areas; some remained unburied and some had been given a makeshift burial. True to the adage that no US soldier was to be interred in former enemy territory, members of the US military, immediately after seizing Hürtgen Forest, took the majority of bodies of US military personnel to a newly established Belgian cemetery in Henri-Chapelle. Because of a lack of infrastructure, no large-scale coordinated recovery of bodies took place on the German side immediately following the war; initially, bodies were individually recovered by returning residents. Systematic efforts were made beginning in 1946, on the initiative of the former military engineer Captain Julius Erasmus (1895–1971), who recovered dead bodies from mined forests and meadows, often risking his own life, with support from other volunteers. The bodies he recovered were buried in a free space in Vossenack, on Höhe 470 (Hill 470), which had been a fiercely contested battle site. Allied and German mine-clearing parties recovered further corpses in the initial postwar years. Eventually, the reestablished German War Graves Commission (Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge) took over the recovery of the dead in Hürtgen Forest. Since 1949, the commission has established two “cemeteries of honor” in close vicinity to each other for the districts of Düren and Jülich. A central cemetery was established in Hürtgen, which remains part of the district of Düren; it was primarily used to bury the war dead that had been interred in several smaller burial plots throughout the district. Vossenack in the former district of Monschau—today also part of the district of Düren— became the main cemetery in which the dead from the Battle of Hürtgen Forest were buried, thanks to the previous recovery efforts of Erasmus. As a result of competition between the two districts—both expected the military cemeteries to boost tourism—two cemeteries with a total of 5,887 burial places (as of 2008) were inaugurated in 1952.8 However, the recovery of dead bodies was by no means completed with the establishment of these military cemeteries. It is a peculiarity of the former battle site that its woods and meadows continued to be dangerous for the locals, even after 1945. Children at play, ramblers, forestry workers, and deminers repeatedly fell victim to the remnants of the war, namely unexploded mines. Additionally, a devastating forest fire in the summer of 1947 had been caused by phosphorus ammunition and could not be stopped before October. Although

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large parts of the landscape and villages of the Hürtgen Forest region had already been destroyed during the war, the fires of 1947 created the images of gigantic areas of charred trunks that became a symbol of the suffering in that region for many years to come. Therefore, it is not surprising that the locals saw themselves as particularly affected victims of war and that their political representatives depicted the region accordingly. A memorandum titled Hürtgenwald und Rurlandnot, published in May 1947, features the district authorities of Düren and Jülich appealing to “all German agencies and authorities for assistance in this time of need,” asking for more support for reconstruction and highlighting that the region had suffered disproportionately “because of having been positioned at the front for months.”9 Two years later, the district authorities of Düren and Jülich published another memorandum in German and English, drawing attention to the consequences of the war with full-page photographs. With the title Verbrannte Erde (Scorched earth), the region even compared itself to places in German-occupied countries that the Wehrmacht had razed to the ground upon their withdrawal on Hitler’s orders. At the same time, they claimed a prominent position among the most significant theaters of the Second World War.10 Through private initiatives or the commitment of unions and associations, more than forty memorials have been erected in the region since the 1950s, commemorating individuals or events from the Second World War.11 Among them is a pietà column depicting the Virgin Mary with the body of her dead son: in 1955, an inhabitant of Brühl arranged for it to commemorate her son who had died in Norway, as well as German and US soldiers who had died in the part of Hürtgen Forest where the column is located. In another place, a stone cross with a sculpture of Jesus, privately donated in 2002, commemorates a man who was killed in an accident while doing forestry work in 1946. Crosses are still frequently set up for dead bodies discovered decades after the battle, for instance, those set up in 2004 to commemorate a US soldier and in 2012 to commemorate a German soldier. Furthermore, German and American veterans have left various memorial plaques or stones for their units’ casualties.12 In addition to these memorials dedicated to specific persons or events are objects in Hürtgenwald that reflect certain phases in Germany’s culture of remembrance. This is true, for example, of the stone with the inscription Gedenkt unserer Toten im Osten (Remember our dead in the East), which the German War Graves Commission set up at the Vossenack military cemetery in 1959. When the division of Germany seemed to be final, families in the West whose relatives had been buried behind the Iron Curtain were given a place for mourning. Similar stones were also set up in other places in Germany and are a typical example of the commemorative rhetoric during the Cold War period. Appeals for peace were also typical in the 1950s: they enabled the commemoration of war dead, and possibly included war criminals as well. This abstract

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peace rhetoric meant that even former wartime adversaries could be immortalized together on one stone, such as in Schmidt (Nideggen). Here, the insignia of a Wehrmacht infantry division and a US tank battalion were engraved on a memorial plaque in 1999 with the following line: “They have not died in vain for they have won peace between our nations.”13 Between death and destruction, as well as recovery of the dead and reconstruction, a commemoration of victims emerged that avoided scrutinizing its historical context, such as questioning how the war came to be, who waged the war, what military objectives were pursued, what crimes were committed by the Nazi regime, and what responsibility individuals held. In this respect, Hürtgenwald is not much different from other regions of Germany, particularly those destroyed by the war. It is striking, however, that there is a particular density of such symbols of remembrance in Hürtgenwald, and that they were set up continually since the 1950s without any of the critical debate that occurred in other parts of Germany concerning the type, content, and neutral “blank spaces” of such memorials. In the postwar period, every stakeholder in the culture of remembrance was apparently left to erect a memorial on their own initiative. Before 2014, there had been no debate in the Hürtgenwald region around which institution in a democratic society should decide on the conception of history in public space, and additionally on what basis these decisions should be made.

Place of Remembrance of a Veterans’ Association One of the reasons for this lack of debate is that the culture of remembrance in the Hürtgenwald region has been established for decades not only in the form of memorials but also in the various commemorative practices cultivated through a network of cultural memory stakeholders. In Hürtgenwald, the memory of the 116th Panzer Division, also known by its members as the Windhund (Greyhound) Division, sticks out as a long-term reference point for commemorative practices. This division had been created from the remains of the 16th Motorized Infantry Division, which had been deployed in Yugoslavia from 1941, then on the Eastern Front, and finally in France in the spring of 1944. From 12 September 1944 until April 1945, the 116th Panzer Division had been active in Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle), Hürtgen Forest, and the Battle of the Bulge, until its surrender in the area referred to as Ruhr Pocket.14 According to division legend, its name and emblem—a greyhound flying across a stylized steppe—are derived from a stray hound that came to the unit in the spring of 1943 and had served as a mascot ever since. Since the 1950s, Hürtgen Forest has developed into the central commemoratory region for the Windhunde.15 Their commemoration is centered on the

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parish church of Vossenack, as well as a memorial close to the Vossenack military cemetery, and on the Museum Hürtgenwald 1944 und im Frieden (literally Hürtgenwald 1944 and in Peace Museum, but known in English as the 1944 Hürtgen Forest Museum), also in Vossenack. In 1951, on Volkstrauertag, the German national day of mourning, former members of the 116th Panzer Division went on a pilgrimage to the cemetery in Vossenack for the first time. Since then, more and more Windhunde and their widows have traveled with relatives to Hürtgen Forest on Volkstrauertag. They formed the Familienverband der ehemaligen Angehörigen der Windhund-Division (116. Panzer-Division) (Family Association of the Former Members of the Windhund Division [116th Panzer Division]), and worked toward the setup of memorial sites, which gradually expanded from a single room in a church into further public space. The most active and influential local protagonist of the Windhunde was Baptist Palm: According to Palm himself, he was born in Vossenack in 1924, joined the Windhunde as a young soldier, and was then deployed to his home region in 1944. As the mayor of Vossenack from 1961 to 1994, he not only contributed considerably to the establishment of Windhund Division commemoration in the region but, with his publications, also shaped the rather dramatizing view on the war history of Hürtgenwald (“The Verdun of the Second World War”).16 Baptist Palm was probably one of the first to initiate building the stone of the Mahnmal der Windhund-Division (Memorial of the Windhund Division) that is closely connected to the Sühnekirche St. Peter (St. Peter Atonement Church) in Vossenack. According to division legend, the church changed hands thirty times during the Battle of Hürtgen Forest. Here, too, an undisclosed number of youths and soldiers are said to have died in the battle. The Family Association donated funds to the church’s reconstruction and to the bell acquired in 1958, and donated a church window, which was inaugurated on Volkstrauertag in 1961. The window depicts a pelican feeding its chicks with its blood—a well-known symbol of Christian iconography for Jesus Christ, who sacrificed his life—below a tree of life. The lower part displays the Windhund Division emblem. This and other elements equate the death of the Windhunde with the self-sacrifice of Christ. A cross and three bronze plaques with the following inscriptions are mounted below the window: Death is the window to life. This window was donated by the former members of the Windhund Division, the 116th Panzer Division, the former 16th Mechanized Infantry Division, and the 16th Motorized Infantry Division to commemorate their fellow soldiers who were killed in action or went missing in the campaigns in Western and Eastern Europe. Let their self-sacrifice be an admonitory appeal for peace, here in the hallowed place where soldiers of the Windhund Division fought and died in the fall of 1944.17

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This narrative of victimhood continues in pictures and words on the church door. A bronze relief depicts “the procession of the redeemed and discarded” with a dragon-slaying Saint Michael above. The inscription reads: “To commemorate the 68,000 German and American victims of the battles in the area of Vossenack.”18 This demonstrably wrong and extremely inflated number is also given on the church door. Under the aegis of Palm, the Windhund Division site was set up in the direct vicinity of Vossenack’s war cemetery, to which the district administration of Düren provided a piece of land; it was inaugurated in 1966 and consists of a piece of turf enclosed by a low wall with a metal gate adorned with a Windhund Division emblem (see Figure 7.1). On the right and left sides of the gate, an inscription is engraved in stone: “Memorial of the Windhund Division. Enter in awe of the self-sacrifice of the soldiers of all nations who died in Hürtgenwald”19 and “Let this memorial here, where in the fall of 1944 soldiers of the Windhund Division / the 16th Rhenish-Westphalian Infantry Division / the 16th Motorized Infantry Division / the 16th Mechanized Infantry Division fought and died, be an admonitory appeal for peace to the world.”20 At the back of the premises, there is a pedestal holding a sculpture made by Annemarie Suckow von Heydendorff (1912–2007), an artist held in high regard among Germans expelled from their home countries after the Second World War. It depicts a soldier holding another wounded soldier who appears dead (see Fig-

Figure 7.1. Mahnmal der Windhund-Division, with emblem at the gate, Vossenack. Photo by Karola Fings, 2010.

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ure 7.2). The inscription on the plaque attached to the pedestal reads: “Dead soldiers are never alone because loyal comrades will always be with them.”21 The opening ceremony for the site took place on Volkstrauertag on 13 November 1966 with the broad participation of former members of the 116th

Figure 7.2. Sculpture by Annemarie Suckow von Heydendorff, showing a soldier dying in the arms of his comrade, 1966. Memorial of the “Windhund Division.” Photo by Jörg Echternkamp, 2016.

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Panzer Division and their families, local and regional politicians, and officials and representatives of the Christian churches.22 The course of these events warrants a more detailed description in order to illustrate the participants, the character of the event, and its message, particularly since these events were formative for the following decades in terms of commemoration policy.23 In front of an audience of 1,500, the honor detachment of Army Noncommissioned Officer School II (Heeresunteroffizierschule II) in Aachen positioned itself to the left of the memorial; on the right stood the Eschweiler miners’ choir and the guests of honor, including Aachen District Commissioner Hubert SchmittDegenhardt, Chief District Director Georg Stieler from Monschau, Düren Mayor Heinz Kotthaus, Pastor Matthias Hegger of Aachen’s St. Josef Church (who had already been awarded the “Golden Windhund Pin”), the sculptor Annemarie Suckow von Heydendorff, Vossenack’s Mayor Baptist Palm, and former Windhund Division Commander Gerhard Graf von Schwerin.24 Additional deputations of other soldiers’ associations, including the 6th Panzer Division, guards of honor of the Siegburg Wachbatallion (Guard Battalion), and several Bundeswehr officers and former generals, dignified the event militarily. The musical framework—Gebet (Prayer) by Händel, Ich bete an die Macht der Liebe (I pray to the power of love), Der gute Kamerad (The good comrade), Zapfenstreich der Infanterie (Tattoo of the infantry)—was followed by several speeches. Chair of the Family Association Johannes Puppe praised the implementation of the site: “Let what we often invoked out there in the field, at the front in the north and the south, in the east and the west—loyalty beyond the grave—be manifest here as a sign to the world. May it know, soothingly, that the dead are connected with us who live.”25 Puppe—like all the other speakers— attributed a peacemaking character to the memorial. “Long live a peace-loving Germany, our fatherland. Long live Europe in a world of peace and freedom.”26 An address delivered by former General der Panzertruppe Schwerin, known as “father of the family,” followed. He referred to the dedication text below the sculpture, praising it as symbol of soldierly comradeship, loyalty, and willingness for self-sacrifice. What was important, he said, was not fame and glory in war but the “fortitude of man in his readiness to fulfill his duties to the very end and at the cost of his own life.”27 Baptist Palm unveiled the sculpture; afterward, the pastors Hegger and Alleweldt said their prayers.28 The district commissioner of Aachen, who also represented the state government of North Rhine-Westphalia, expressed his attachment to the Windhunde as follows: “We all in this room feel particularly attached to the units that fought, suffered, and bled here. They wanted to protect our landscape and mustered all the bravery that can be expected of man to fulfill their duty. Therefore they are entitled to everlasting honors and remembrance.”29 According to him, with their contribution to the erection of the church in Vossenack, the Windhunde had also “acquired a certain right of domicile.” Aachen Mayor

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Hermann Heusch, reminded the audience of “the bravely consistent and humane conduct” of Schwerin, who had not carried out the order to defend Aachen to the last—a myth30 that has since been disproved. He purportedly said that Aachen had not only named a street after Schwerin but also had him and his Windhunde at heart. Afterward, there was a prayer meeting in the Sühnekirche, where Hegger once again described the region’s attachment to the Windhunde as a project of several generations: “These dead were killed on the field of duty, and we stand on their shoulders now: we may continue to build on what they begun.” Following the prayer “For People and Fatherland” and the song “Praise the Lord,” the attendees assembled in the town hall of Vossenack “for a hearty pea soup,” and Schwerin honored Mayor Palm with the “Golden Windhund Pin” for his merits. In subsequent years, this celebration organized by the Family Association took place in this style on Volkstrauertag, and then on the second Sunday in October. These celebrations have taken place with participation of local and regional politicians, as well as members of the Bundeswehr and Church, all of whom were representatives of the democratic Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). For more than forty years, the site functioned as a place of commemoration for the Windhunde veterans. When it became apparent in the 1990s, that the Family Association was about to disappear in the near future because of the advanced age of its members, an opportunity to historicize the site and abolish or at least change the commemoration practice in Hürtgen Forest presented itself. Instead, the association Windhunde mahnen zum Frieden (Windhunde Call for Peace) was founded in 2000, to take up the baton from the Family Association, which was dissolved in 2005. There was close cooperation and personnel overlap between the municipality, the new Windhunde association, and the Geschichtsverein Hürtgenwald (Hürtgen Forest Historical Society), especially in the first years after this “changing of the guard.” This historical society is responsible for numerous memorials in the region and their sometimes-problematic messages. Members of this society and its managing committee also participated in the activities surrounding the Memorial of the Windhund Division site, and they run the 1944 Hürtgen Forest Museum (see Figure 7.3). For years, the museum has been criticized for its fixation on the military, its one-sided account of history, and its lack of knowledge, in particular regarding the part of the exhibition about the Windhunde.31 Regarding the presentation and orientation of the museum, it might be a surprise to know that the permanent exhibition Hürtgenwald 1944 und im Frieden is relatively new. The museum was opened on 15 September 2001 by Düren District Commissioner Wolfgang Spelthahn and future Hürtgenwald Mayor Axel Buch: both members of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) party and still in office today. Most of the exhibits come from a collection of

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Figure 7.3. Interior of the Museum Hürtgenwald 1944 und im Frieden, opened 2001 in Vossenack (Hürtgenwald, North Rhine-Westphalia). Photo by Karola Fings, 2010.

documents and military memorabilia that a private collector in the region had been compiling since the late 1950s. Part of the collection was acquired by Hürtgenwald municipality and was provided to the historical society, together with two barrack-like pavilions, free of charge. Members of the historical society maintain the museum on a voluntary basis and open it on Sundays from March to November, as well as on the request of groups. The collection has been continuously expanded with private donations, consisting mostly of uniforms, weapons, medals, identification cards, and several commonplace items. The museum primarily attracts military tourists, some five thousand per year according to the operators. A large part of the exhibition is dedicated to the Windhunde; however, it does not provide a historical and critical context, as would be expected of a museum run by experts. The presentation is exclusively based on extremely subjective, abridging, and distorting personal testimonials of the unit’s members. The museum shows personal memorabilia, division stories written by Windhund Division members, emblems, flags, and other similar items. Kurt Wendt compiled this part of the exhibition and had been the member of the Windhund Division that designed its emblem. After 1945, he had worked as a designer and staged the history of the Windhunde in his spare time. He died

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in March 2012, aged ninety-two.32 The model and large-size photograph of the aforementioned Windhunde site in the museum also convey, above all, the suffering of the soldiers of this division. This has the effect of emphasizing their alleged spirit of sacrifice. The overall presentation is charged with sacral connotations, for instance, through the large-size replication of the dedication on the memorial in Gothic type (“Dead soldiers are never alone because loyal comrades will always be with them.”) A brief history of the division, presented in large font with white letters on a signal red ground, once more underlines the motive of self-sacrifice: “The weapons are silent but the losses of the division speak for themselves, speak of the hardship of the operations: In the period Yugoslavia 1941 / Russia 21 June 1941–May 1944 / France June 1944 until the end in the Ruhr Pocket on 16 April 1945 . . . Overall number of losses of the 116th Panzer Division: 43,504.” The only ones being commemorated here are the soldiers of this division who were killed during the war. There is no mention whatsoever of the people whom the members of this division killed throughout Western and Eastern Europe.

Controversial Cultivation of Tradition The commemorative culture in Hürtgen Forest can be characterized as a case in point for the self-victimization of German postwar society after 1945. Memorials and commemoration practices drew on the collective civilian and military experience of the Nazi period without questioning its ideological underpinnings, their patterns of social inclusion and exclusion, or their criminal practices. It is no surprise that Hürtgenwald has been a magnet for reactionaries and right-wing extremists for years: the museum, military cemetery, and Windhunde site in Vossenack are particularly popular. The military cemetery is also very popular in these circles because the remains of General Field Marshal Walter Model were reburied there by his family’s request in 1955. During the war against the Soviet Union, Model had been responsible for the “scorched earth” tactics in his area of command and had worked closely with the death squads from the special mobile units of the Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police) and Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service). This is why he was on the Soviet Union’s list of wanted war criminals. A loyal follower of Adolf Hitler, Model had been deployed on the collapsing Western Front from 16 August 1944, and for a short time commanded the forces there as Oberbefehlshaber West (Commander-in-Chief West). In April 1945, US forces encircled him and his subordinate Army Group B in the Ruhr area. Model refused to surrender, and shot himself on 21 April 1945 near Duisburg.33 Model’s loyalty to the Nazi regime, expressed by his suicide, made him a hero and martyr in the eyes of his followers. In recent years, souvenir hunters

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have repeatedly stolen his tombstone. It is not rare for meetings of right-wing extremists to take place at the military cemetery: for instance, on 9 March 2008, when the illegal organization Kameradschaft Aachener Land (Aachener Land Fellowship) held a “hero commemoration celebration” and laid wreaths together with the Düren branch of the National Democratic Party of Germany. In response to the neo-Nazi march, the district council of Düren made fundamental changes to the regulations for cemeteries in Hürtgen and Vossenack in June 2008. Since then, it is forbidden to hold events that “draw on forms and content of Nazi hero commemoration or on statements of the High Command of the Wehrmacht or certain customs and practices typical of Nazi organizations,”34 events where the “injustice of the war of aggression, tyranny, genocide, crimes against humanity, or war crimes are denied or partially denied, approved, or downplayed,”35 or events in which “the participation, in a responsible position or otherwise, in this injustice or in the preservation of the Nazi tyranny and arbitrary rule is displayed as honorable or otherwise exemplary, even if only with regard to soldierly performance.”36 No permission is required for events organized by the Düren district, the German War Graves Commission, and the Windhunde Call for Peace.37 Although these new cemetery regulations provide the district with better means to take action against certain unwanted events, it is impossible to prevent the actions of right-wing or extremist groups, which are often well staged, as examples of recent years show: on Volkstrauertag in 2014, wreaths were laid at the central cross of Vossenack military cemetery by Hürtgenwald municipality, the district, the German War Graves Commission, and the Federal Ministry of Defence. At the same time, a wreath of the Kriegsgräberstiftung “Wenn alle Brüder schweigen” (War Graves Foundation “When All Brothers Are Silent”) lay on the reverse side of the cross. This organization was founded in the early 1990s, as a successor of the former Hilfsgemeinschaft auf Gegenseitigkeit der Angehörigen der ehemaligen Waffen-SS (Mutual Assistance Association of Former Waffen-SS Members). Another example occurred in August 2015: a video that was uploaded to YouTube shows Johann Thiessen, the chair of ARMINIUS: Bund des deutschen Volkes (ARMINIUS: League of the German People), speaking at Vossenack military cemetery.38 Among other things, Thiessen said the Battle of Hürtgen Forest “can only be compared to the Battle of Stalingrad” and bemoaned that critics were often calling Wehrmacht soldiers criminals although they had only followed the orders of their government (“The value of each people depends on how it honors its dead”39). The cemetery served as the backdrop to his racist slogans such as warnings against Überfremdung (excessive immigration, literally “over-foreignization”) in Germany. Another controversial subject of recent years is the historical perspective that the Hürtgen Forest Historical Society continues to cultivate in the museum in cooperation with the Windhunde association, which has resulted in

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the fostering of traditions that do not correspond with the democratic FRG’s official policy of remembrance. In addition to the museum, the Windhund Division site has been a focal point for several recent controversies, concerning an exhibition consisting of wooden panels, and the practice of the annual “commemoration” event. In view of the dissolution of the Family Association, the aforementioned Kurt Wendt, with the support of the new Windhunde association, had designed an open-air exhibition at the Windhund Division site to serve as the legacy of the war generation. The exhibition was presented to the public in 2006.40 Although the panels were criticized early on, the criticism fell on deaf ears. In 2009, the Windhunde site was redesigned as the result of collaboration between the Düren district, the German War Graves Commission, and Windhunde Call for Peace. At the expense of the district, the site was made barrier-free with a paved walkway. The appearance of the new panels— wooden showcases in a rustic style—was adapted to mirror the information panels at the Vossenack and Hürtgen military cemeteries. The content of the panels was closely based on the first version of the exhibition panels. The present chair of the Hürtgen Forest Historical Society, Rainer Valder, participated in designing the project.41 The appearance of the site had been modernized, but its content remained the same. The five panels—an introductory panel in the entrance area and four others on the premises—did not provide well-researched and factual historical information, but rather continued to present the one-sided narrative of the Windhund Division as victims and heroes.42 The following texts illustrate this point: the second passage of the introductory panel reads that the memorial was meant to commemorate the forty-three thousand men “who died, went missing, or were crippled or wounded on the long way of the division from Augustdorf to Yugoslavia, across Russia to the steppe of Kalmykia at the Caspian Sea and back, into the hell at the Mius River, the boiling heat of Zaporozhye, in Normandy, in the Argentan-Falaise Pocket, near Arnhem, near Aachen, in the Lower Rhine area and in Hürtgen Forest.”43 It presents the participation of the troops in the Nazi war of annihilation as self-sacrifice and ignores the barbaric warfare that devastated entire regions, especially in Eastern and Southeastern Europe, and involved extreme brutality against the civilian population. These victims of the war do not appear in the Windhund Division narrative. Instead, it suggests that the unit had always “kept their hands clean” and even put up resistance: “The soldiers of the Windhund Division showed courage and responsibility, as Lieutenant General Graf Gerhard von Schwerin and the division with him acted against the express orders of Hitler on multiple occasions.”44 Once more, a myth that had been dispelled many years ago was presented. In other text passages, the soldiers are presented as innocent tools, if not victims of the Nazi regime (“misused and deceived by an inhuman Nazi regime, for a cause they did not understand themselves”).45

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Another passage presents Wehrmacht soldiers and US soldiers as comrades in suffering: “This memorial is also meant to commemorate the many thousands of German and American soldiers who were killed in Hürtgenwald. Let this be an admonitory appeal for peace to future generations that such pointless death must never happen again.”46 This device obscures the fundamental difference between the warring parties. On the one hand, there were the Americans who fought for a just cause, defeating the German Reich at great sacrifice and thus liberating it from the Nazi regime. On the other hand, there were the Wehrmacht soldiers who participated in the Nazi regime’s war of conquest and whose operational readiness until the last days of the war unnecessarily prolonged the war on the Western Front. As part of the German Wehrmacht, they thus shared the responsibility for the death of millions of people in the last months of the war. The other four panels are written from the same perspective, each focusing on a specific topic: “Employment of the division in the east,” “6 June 1944: Invasion of Normandy,” and “Fight of the Windhunde in Hürtgenwald.” This choice of words alone shows how the panels reflect the style of the Nazi propaganda: “east” instead of the specific names of the countries, and “invasion” instead of “Allied landings.” The last panel lists the final stations of the Windhunde: from the “Battle of the Bulge 1944” to the “surrender in the Ruhr Pocket” on 16 April 1945, and the “captivity in the Ruhr Pocket and in Remagen” to the creation of the Windhunde site in 1966. The panels contain mostly photographs, the origin of which is not revealed, as well as several documents and newspaper clips. For several years, these panels stood unchallenged in public space despite the criticism expressed by both the German War Graves Commission and people interested in history. Only in 2012 did Members of Parliament Dietmar Nietan (Social Democratic Party of Germany) and Oliver Krischer (Alliance 90/The Greens) convince the factions of the Düren district council to task the German War Graves Commission academic advisory council with providing an expert opinion.47 The advisory council concluded that the history of the division had been glorified and that a critical approach to the division’s role in the Second World War was missing. The bottom line was that this form of presentation in public space was unacceptable.48 As far as the annual event at the Windhunde site is concerned, it had been customary for many years for members of the Bundeswehr, as well as local and regional dignitaries, to speak at the event. This was partly owed to the fact that Wehrmacht veterans maintained close contacts with the Bundeswehr.49 Some of them had been high-ranking officers of the Windhund Division who had continued their careers in the Bundeswehr; there were also regular joint events of veterans and active personnel, including younger Bundeswehr personnel, and various units sponsoring the Family Association. Only thanks to the debate triggered by the Wehrmacht exhibition50 about the role of German

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soldiers in the Nazi war of annihilation did the Bundeswehr disassociate itself more clearly than ever before from any references to the Wehrmacht. According to the Guidelines on Tradition and the Cultivation of Tradition in the Bundeswehr from 1982, the cultivation of tradition in the Bundeswehr should explicitly preserve only those “testimonies, attitudes, and experiences” that are “exemplary and worth remembering as ethical, constitutional, liberal, and democratic traditions.”51 However, the 116th Panzer Division hardly had such an exemplary tradition. It is thus all the more questionable that, in this context, military personnel in uniform and active reservists have been participating in the Windhunde celebrations on a regular basis, delivering speeches, and, for many years, organizing a “Hürtgen Forest march.”

Outlook For decades, the intense debates around the appropriate form of remembering the Nazi period and the Second World War, which took place mainly in German cities and larger communities since the 1980s, did not take place in Hürtgenwald. The generation that experienced the war continued to shape the culture of remembrance, assigning it with an affirmative meaning. Since many local players took on this “legacy” with the support of politicians—who were mostly members of the CDU, including mayors and district commissioners— the survival of practices in opposition to the official consensus on commemoration policy in the FRG was made possible. It took the commitment of civil society and the expertise of historians to challenge positions that had been convenient and long standing. One of the first people to introduce other views was the cabaret artist Achim Konejung. He held an interest in history, and, since 2004, he and his Konejung Stiftung: Kultur (Konejung Foundation: Culture) have followed the remains of US soldiers in Hürtgen Forest based on new source material. His bus tours set new standards for dealing with regional history, as did his widely viewed documentary in German and English,52 as well as his hiking trails dedicated to history and literature. Konejung initiated and financially supported numerous other projects. Various conferences, university seminars and papers, expert opinions, events, and publications increased the number of people moved by the necessity to change the culture of remembrance in Hürtgenwald. The symposium “Hürtgenwald: Perspektiven der Erinnerung” (Hürtgenwald: Perspectives of remembrance), which took place in September 2014 in the direct vicinity of the Vossenack military cemetery, was another important step in developing this culture. It included the participation of both the municipality and the district, together with experts from different institutions, including the Centre for

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Civic Education of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, the German War Graves Commission, the RWTH Aachen University, and the NS Documentation Centre of the City of Cologne. This symposium explicitly addressed the question of how to approach the modernization and democratization of the culture of remembrance in Hürtgenwald. One result of this was that the district had the panels at the Windhunde memorial removed and new information panels, developed by students and edited by experts, set up at the Vossenack military cemetery in 2015.53 Another result of the symposium was the creation of the goal to explore the potential of a Hürtgenwald Erinnerungslandschaft (memory landscape) and develop possible approaches during a two-year moratorium. Various panel discussions and lectures were held during the moratorium, in the names of the Hürtgenwald municipality and the Düren district, and with the support of several institutions and experts. On 8 June 2017, the panel of experts conducting the moratorium presented recommendations for a reorientation of the culture of remembrance in the region. These include, among others, the demand to (a) establish a clear positioning of political leaders against the glorification and/or trivialization of National Socialism and the Wehrmacht, (b) align the history of the region and its representation in public space with current scientific and ethical standards, and (c) historicize the objects of remembrance in the region and set up new objects based on uniform professional criteria in a transparent process. All recommendations, a final report, and a list of all activities under the moratorium have been published on the Hürtgenwald website.54 On 8 September 2017, the municipal council of Hürtgenwald decided to “actively influence the organization of the culture of remembrance”55 based on these recommendations. Since March 2018, the idea of a “Landscape Museum” has been developed as part of a project funded by the Centre for Civic Education of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, intending to achieve a visible change by 2020. Meanwhile, the symbol of the backward-looking remembrance culture in the region, which would have been useful as a central object in a museum-like landscape of memories, has disappeared. During the night of 9–10 May 2017, it is alleged that metal thieves stole the 2.1-meter-high bronze statue from the Memorial of the Windhund Division.56 How this void is dealt with will be a touchstone for the further development of the remembrance culture. Whether new forms of remembrance culture can prevail will also depend on the commitment of those in civil society who are dissatisfied with the current memory culture: their silence leaves the field open to those who are unwilling to give up their reactionary positions. Furthermore, it would require that the aforementioned political officials, who contributed to these problematic developments in the past, change their way of thinking.

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Karola Fings is a historian, and Deputy Director of the NS Documentation Centre of the City of Cologne. Her main research interests are National Socialism and its aftermath, as well as the history of the Sinti and Roma. She has examined the culture of remembrance in the German-Belgian-Dutch border region (i.e., the Siegfried Line) and was one of the initiators of a moratorium on the current representation of the Second World War in Hürtgenwald. She coedited, with Frank Möller, the proceedings Hürtgenwald: Perspektiven der Erinnerung (Metropol, 2016). Most recently, she published the overview Sinti und Roma: Geschichte einer Minderheit (C. H. Beck, 2016).

Notes 1. To this day, there is no recommendable academic overall presentation of the Battle of Hürtgen Forest. For a brief summary of its background and progression, see Christoph Rass, Jens Lohmeier, and René Rohrkamp, “Der Hürtgenwald als Schauplatz massenhaften Tötens und Sterbens,” Geschichte in Köln 56 (2009): 302–10; Charles B. MacDonald, The Battle of the Huertgen Forest (Philadelphia, 1963). 2. Ernest Hemingway, Across the River and into the Trees (New York, 1950), 255. 3. Achim Konejung, Historisch-literarische Wanderwege, Nr. 5: Hemingway-Trail, ed. Hürtgenwald Municipality (Hürtgenwald, undated [2009]). 4. Hemingway, Across the River, 255. 5. For an overview and criticism of the remembrance landscape in Hürtgenwald, see Frank Möller, Erinnerungslandschaft Hürtgenwald: Kontroverse Kriegs- und Nachkriegsdeutungen 70 Jahre nach Ende der Kriegshandlungen in der Eifel, ed. ARKUM (Arbeitskreis für historische Kulturlandschaftsforschung in Mitteleuropa) (Bonn, 2016); Karola Fings and Frank Möller, eds., Hürtgenwald: Perspektiven der Erinnerung (Berlin, 2016). 6. Significant research on this subject matter was completed by Jens Lohmeier, “Totenruhe: Die Toten der Schlacht im Hürtgenwald” (MA thesis, RWTH Aachen University, 2008). A summary can be found in Jens Lohmeier, “‘Ruhet in Frieden’: Die Toten der Schlacht im Hürtgenwald auf den Kriegsgräberstätten Hürtgen and Vossenack seit 1945,” in Fings and Möller, Hürtgenwald, 58–78. 7. Cf. Jens Lohmeier, “‘Ruhet in Frieden’: Erinnerungskultur an die Schlacht im Hürtgenwald und ihre Toten nach 1945,” in Kriegserfahrung im Grenzland: Perspektiven auf das 20. Jahrhundert zwischen Maas und Rhein, ed. Christoph Rass and Peter M. Quadflieg (Herzogenrath, 2014), 252–53. 8. Lohmeier, “Totenruhe,” 137–44. 9. Josef Niederau, Hürtgenwald und Rurlandnot: Denkschrift der Kreise Düren und Jülich (Düren, 1947), 22. All translations are my own unless otherwise indicated. 10. Hermann Claasen, Verbrannte Erde: Eine Denkschrift der Kreise Düren und Jülich zum Thema “Hürtgenwald und Rurlandnot” (Cologne, 1949). On page 5, Hürtgenwald is explicitly equated with such theaters of war as Stalingrad, Normandy, and the Abbey of Monte Cassino. 11. For an incomplete and sometimes incorrect overview, cf. Robert Hellwig, Gedenken und Mahnen: Mahnmale im Hürtgenwald, ed. Geschichtsverein Hürtgenwald (Hürtgenwald, 2007); see also Wolfgang Wegener, “Beispielhafte Kriegsrelikte und Erin-

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13. 14.

15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20.

21. 22.

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nerungsobjekte im Hürtgenwald,” in Fings and Möller, Hürtgenwald, 182–202; as well as the other photographs of memorials in Hürtgenwald, this volume. For an overview of the representation of Second World War soldiers in German museums, see Thomas Thiemeyer, this volume; for the remembrance culture of Second World War soldiers in Austria, see Peter Pirker, Magnus Koch, and Johannes Kramer, this volume. “Sie starben nicht vergeblich / denn sie gewannen den Frieden / zwischen unseren Völkern.” After 1945, the members of the division themselves largely authored portrayals of this division. So far, there is no research study on the history of this division. Cf. Christoph Rass, René Rohrkamp, and Peter M. Quadflieg, General Graf von Schwerin und das Kriegsende in Aachen: Ereignis, Mythos, Analyse (Herzogenrath, 2007), 22–27, 55–66; Peter M. Quadflieg “‘Windhunde’ im Hürtgenwald. Vossenack als Lieu de Mémoire für einen Veteranenverband der Wehrmacht,” in Fings and Möller, Hürtgenwald, 18–19. Cf. Quadflieg, “‘Windhunde’ im Hürtgenwald”; Karola Fings, “Erinnerungskultur entlang des Westwalls: Das Problem affirmativer Praktiken und der Sonderfall Hürtgenwald,” Geschichte im Westen 27 (2012): 37–52. Cf. Baptist Palm, Hürtgenwald: Das Verdun des Zweiten Weltkrieges (Oldenburg, 1953). “Der Tod ist das Fenster zum Leben. / Dieses Fenster wurde gestiftet von den ehem. Angehörigen der Windhund-Division 116. Panzer- vormals 16. Panz.-Grenadier u. 16. Inf.-Division mot. Zum Gedenken an ihre Gefallenen und vermissten Kameraden in den Feldzügen in West- und Osteuropa. / Möge ihr Opfertod die Überlebenden hier an geheiligter Stätte, wo im Herbst 1944 Soldaten der Windhund-Division kämpften und starben, zum Frieden mahnen.” “Zum Gedenken an die 68.000 deutschen und amerikanischen Opfer der Schlachten in der Umgebung von Vossenack.” “Mahnmal der Windhund-Division. Tritt ein mit Ehrfurcht vor dem Opfertod der Soldaten aller Nationen, die im Hürtgenwald starben.” “Möge diese Gedenkstätte hier, wo im Herbst 1944 Soldaten der Windhund-Division 16. rhein-westf. Inf. Div. 16. Inf. Division (mot.) 16. Panzer-Grenadier-Division 116. Panzer-Division kämpften und starben, die Welt zum Frieden mahnen.” These plaques were probably attached later. The dedication in the founding document of 13 November 1966 displayed in the museum reads: “To commemorate their fellow soldiers who were killed or went missing in the campaigns in Western and Eastern Europe in 1939– 1945. Let their self-sacrifice here at this site, where soldiers of Windhund Division fought and died in the fall of 1944, be an admonitory appeal for peace for posterity” (Zum Gedenken an ihre gefallenen und vermißten Kameraden in den Feldzügen in West- und Osteuropa 1939–1945. Möge ihr Opfertod die Nachwelt hier an dieser Stätte, wo im Herbst 1944 Soldaten der Windhund-Division kämpften und starben, zum Frieden mahnen). “Tote Soldaten sind niemals allein, denn immer werden treue Kameraden bei ihnen sein.” The inauguration is documented on a plaque in the exhibition of the Hurtgenwald Museum, from which all quotations in this paragraph are taken. Cf. also “Volkstrauertag 1966: Einweihung unseres eigenen Ehrenmals in Vossenack-Hürtgenwald,” Der Windhund 15, no. 4 (1966): 3–15. A very vivid presentation of the events of 2012 and 2013 is given in the radio feature by Frank Möller, “Heldengedenken mit Erbsensuppe: Der Hürtgenwald als Schlachtfeld

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26. 27. 28. 29.

30.

31. 32.

33. 34. 35. 36.

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der Erinnerungen” [Commemoration of heroes with pea soup: Hürtgenwald as a battlefield of memories], Deutschlandfunk, 11 October 2013, http://www.deutschland funk.de/heldengedenken-mit-erbsensuppe.1247.de.html?dram:article_id=259394. On Schwerin, cf. Peter M. Quadflieg, Gerhard Graf von Schwerin (1899-1980): Wehrmachtgeneral—Kanzlerberater—Lobbyist (Paderborn, 2016). “Das, was wir da draußen im Felde an den Fronten in Nord und Süd, in Ost und West, so oftmals beschworen: die Treue über das Grab hinaus, mag hier ihr äußeres Zeichen für die Welt finden. Sie mag wohltuend wissen, dass die Toten mit uns Lebenden verbunden sind.” “Es lebe ein friedliebendes Deutschland, unser Vaterland. Es lebe Europa in einer Welt von Frieden und Freiheit.” “innere Größe des Menschen in seiner Bereitschaft zur Pflichterfüllung bis zum Äußersten und bis zum Einsatz des eigenen Lebens.” Probably Dieter Allewelt, Protestant pastor in Monschau. “Wir alle in diesem Raum fühlen uns den Truppenteilen, die hier gekämpft, gelitten und geblutet haben, besonders verbunden. Sie haben unsere Landschaft schützen wollen und alle Tapferkeit, die Menschen zumutbar ist, aufgebracht, ihre Pflicht zu erfüllen. Deshalb gebührt ihnen ein immerwährendes ehrendes Gedenken.” Cf. Rass et al., General Graf von Schwerin; Christoph Rass, René Rohrkamp, and Peter M. Quadflieg, “Ein ‘Kampfkommandant der Menschlichkeit’? Gerhard Graf von Schwerin im kommunikativen Gedächtnis Aachens,” Geschichte im Westen 24 (2009): 99–134. Cf. the summary of an expert opinion of 2010 by Karola Fings and Peter M. Quadflieg, “Das Museum ‘Hürtgenwald 1944 und im Frieden’ in Hürtgenwald-Vossenack: Eine Bestandsaufnahme aus dem Jahr 2010,” in Fings and Möller, Hürtgenwald, 162–81. Cf. Kurt Wendt ed., Warum? Windhunde: Ein Bildband der 116. Panzer-Division (Halstenbeck1976); Kurt Wendt, ed., Finale der Invasion: Bildband der 116. PanzerDivision, vormals 16. Panzer-Grenadier-Division, 16. Infanterie-Division (mot) (Rellingen, 1985). After 1945, Wendt was primarily known as a movie poster painter; cf. Jürgen Lossau, “‘Mach mir da ‘ne schöne Fläche hin!’ Über den Hamburger Kinoplakatmaler Kurt Wendt,” Hamburger Flimmern: Die Zeitschrift des Film- und Fernsehmuseums Hamburg e.V. 14 (2008): 4–7. Cf. Samuel W. Mitcham Jr. and Gene Mueller, “Generalfeldmarschall Walter Model,” in Hitlers militärische Elite, Bd. 2: Vom Kriegsbeginn bis zum Weltkriegsende, ed. Gerd R. Ueberschär (Darmstadt, 1998), 153–60. “an Formen und Inhalte nationalsozialistischen Heldengedenkens oder an Verlautbarungen des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht oder an bestimmte kennzeichnende Gebräuche und Gepflogenheiten nationalsozialistischer Organisationen.” “Unrecht des Angriffskriegs, einer Gewaltherrschaft, von Völkermord, von Verbrechen gegen die Menschlichkeit oder den Kriegsverbrechen auch nur teilweise geleugnet, gebilligt oder verharmlost wird.” “die verantwortliche oder auch nur tatsächliche Mitwirkung an diesem Unrecht oder an der Aufrechterhaltung der nationalsozialistischen Gewalt- und Willkürherrschaft, auch nur in Ansehung soldatischer Leistungen, als ehrenhaft oder sonst vorbildlich dargestellt wird.” Cf. Kreis Düren, “Friedhofsordnung für die Ehrenfriedhöfe Hürtgen und Vossenack,” 23 June 2008, http://www.kreis-dueren.de/service/recht/ordnung/Friedhofsordnung .pdf.

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38. Cf. Die Russlanddeutschen Konservativen, “ARMINIUS-Bund | J. Thießen—Eine Ansprache vor dem Ehren-Soldatenfriedhof in Vossenack,” video, 7:44, posted 5 August 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xsg5b6n9Hkw. On the Arminius Bund, cf. Uwe Wagschal, “Arminius—Bund des deutschen Volkes (Arminius— Bund),” Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 19 February 2016, http://www.bpb .de/politik/wahlen/wer-steht-zur-wahl/ba-wue-2016/46031/arminius-bund. 39. “Jedes Volk ist so viel wert, wie es seine Toten ehrt.” 40. These panels were presented for the first time on 6 October 2006; cf. “Die ‘Windhunde’ mahnen zum Frieden: Traditionelle Gedenkfeier am Mahnmal in Vossenack,” Aachener Zeitung, 10 October 2006. They are shown in a picture on the website World War Tours, “Mahnmal Windhund Division,” accessed 21 August 2018, http://www .worldwartours.be/mahnmal-windhund-division.html. 41. Cf. “Schautafeln halten die Schrecken des Krieges wach,” Aachener Zeitung, 6 November 2009. 42. The pictures and text of these panels can be viewed at the Verwehte-Spuren website, “Hürtgenwald-Vossenack,” https://verwehte-spuren.de.tl/H.ue.rtgenwald_Vossenack .htm. 43. “die auf dem weiten Weg der Division von Augustdorf nach Jugoslawien, quer durch den Süden Russlands bis hin zur Kalmückensteppe am Kaspischen Meer und zurück, in der Hölle am Mius, in die [sic] Gluthitze von Saporohsje, in der Normandie, im Kessel von Argentan, bei Arnheim, bei Aachen, am Niederrhein und im Hürtgenwald starben, bis heute noch vermisst sind, zum Krüppel geschossen und verwundet wurden.” 44. “Die Soldaten der Windhund-Division haben auch Mut und Verantwortungsbewusstsein bewiesen, denn Generalleutnant Graf Gerhard von Schwerin und mit ihm die Division hat mehrfach gegen die ausdrücklichen Befehle Hitlers gehandelt.” 45. “von einem menschenverachtenden NS-Regime missbraucht und betrogen, für eine Sache, die sie selber nicht durchschauten.” 46. “Dieses Mahnmal soll auch an die vielen tausend im Hürtgenwald gefallenen deutschen und amerikanischen Soldaten erinnern und möge der Nachwelt Mahnung zum Frieden sein, dass es nie wieder ein so unsinniges Sterben geben darf.” 47. Note by the central facility management office of the district of Düren to Karola Fings, 20 September 2016. 48. Cf. “Infotafeln über die ‘Windhund-Division’ sind umstritten,” Aachener Zeitung, 14 November 2013. 49. This and the following passage draws on Quadflieg, “‘Windhunde’ im Hürtgenwald,” 26–27. 50. Cf. Christian Hartmann, Johannes Hürter and Ulrike Jureit, eds., Verbrechen der Wehrmacht: Bilanz einer Debatte (Munich, 2005). 51. The German version can be found at Maja Báchler, “Traditionen in der Bundeswehr,” Bundeswehr, updated 17 April 2018, http://www.bundeswehr.de (under Streitkräfte > Grundlagen > Geschichte > Tradition). 52. Aribert Weiss, dir., and Achim Konejung, screenwriter, You Enter Germany: Hürtgenwald—Der lange Krieg am Westwall (Bloody Huertgen and the Siegfried Line), documentary film, DVD (Konejung Stiftung: Kultur, 2007), http://www.konejung-stiftung .de/You_Enter_Germany_EN.htm; You Enter Germany 2: Das Archivmaterial (The Archival Material), documentary film, DVD (Konejung Stifung: Kulur, 2010), http:// www.konejung-stiftung.de/You_Enter_Germany2_EN.htm.

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53. Cf. Karola Fings and Frank Möller, “Der Tafelstreit im Hürtgenwald: Hintergrund, Lösungsvorschläge, Ergebnis,” in Fings and Möller, Hürtgenwald, 203–25. 54. “Moratorium Hürgenwald,” Gemeinde Hürtgenwald, accessed 21 August 2018, http://www.huertgenwald.de/de/tourismus-geschichte/moratorium-huertgenwald. 55. “Weiterer Umgang mit dem Thema ‘Hürtgenwald 1944/45,” Politik bei uns, updated 12 September 2017, https://politik-bei-uns.de/paper/5a42442c44875ce977aeeb7f. See Frank Möller, “Schlachtfeld zwischen Bäumen: Die Erinnerungslandschaft Hürtgenwald auf dem Prüfstand,” in Naturschutz am ehemaligen Westwall: NS-Großanlagen im Diskurs, ed. Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Hochschule Geisenheim (Geisenheim, 2016), 152–73. 56. “Windhunde-Mahnmal ist spurlos verschwunden,” Aachener Zeitung, 11 March 2017, http://www.aachener-zeitung.de/lokales/dueren/windhunde-mahnmal-ist-sp urlos-verschwunden-1.1621824.

Bibliography Claasen, Hermann. Verbrannte Erde: Eine Denkschrift der Kreise Düren und Jülich zum Thema “Hürtgenwald und Rurlandnot.” Cologne, 1949. Die Russlanddeutschen Konservativen. “ARMINIUS-Bund | J. Thießen—Eine Ansprache vor dem Ehren-Soldatenfriedhof in Vossenack.” Video, 7:44. Posted 5 August 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xsg5b6n9Hkw. Fings, Karola. “Erinnerungskultur entlang des Westwalls: Das Problem affirmativer Praktiken und der Sonderfall Hürtgenwald.” Geschichte im Westen 27 (2012): 25–52. Fings, Karola, and Frank Möller. “Der Tafelstreit im Hürtgenwald: Hintergrund, Lösungsvorschläge, Ergebnis.” In Fings and Möller, Hürtgenwald, 203–25. ———, eds. Hürtgenwald: Perspektiven der Erinnerung. Berlin, 2016. Fings, Karola, and Peter M. Quadflieg. “Das Museum ‘Hürtgenwald 1944 und im Frieden’ in Hürtgenwald-Vossenack: Eine Bestandsaufnahme aus dem Jahr 2010.” In Fings and Möller, Hürtgenwald, 162–81. Hartmann, Christian, Johannes Hürter and Ulrike Jureit, eds. Verbrechen der Wehrmacht: Bilanz einer Debatte. Munich, 2005. Hellwig, Robert. Gedenken und Mahnen: Mahnmale im Hürtgenwald. Edited by Geschichtsverein Hürtgenwald. Hürtgenwald, 2007. Hemingway, Ernest. Across the River and into the Trees. New York, 1950. Konejung, Achim. Historisch-literarische Wanderwege, Nr. 5: Hemingway-Trail. Edited by Hürtgenwald Municipality. Hürtgenwald, undated [2009]. Kreis Düren. “Friedhofsordnung für die Ehrenfriedhöfe Hürtgen und Vossenack.” 23 June 2008. http://www.kreis-dueren.de/service/recht/ordnung/Friedhofsordnung.pdf. Lohmeier, Jens. “‘Ruhet in Frieden’: Die Toten der Schlacht im Hürtgenwald auf den Kriegsgräberstätten Hürtgen and Vossenack seit 1945.” In Fings and Möller, Hürtgenwald, 58–78. ———. “‘Ruhe in Frieden’: Erinnerungskultur an die Schlacht im Hürtgenwald und ihre Toten nach 1945.” In Kriegserfahrung im Grenzland: Perspektiven auf das 20. Jahrhundert zwischen Maas und Rhein, edited by Christoph Rass and Peter M. Quadflieg, 249–74. Herzogenrath, 2014. ———. “Totenruhe: Die Toten der Schlacht im Hürtgenwald.” MA thesis, RWTH Aachen University, 2008.

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Lossau, Jürgen. “‘Mach mir da ‘ne schöne Fläche hin!’ Über den Hamburger Kinoplakatmaler Kurt Wendt.” Hamburger Flimmern: Die Zeitschrift des Film- und Fernsehmuseums Hamburg e.V. 14 (2008): 4–7. MacDonald, Charles B. The Battle of the Huertgen Forest. Philadelphia, 1963. Mitcham Samuel W., Jr., and Gene Mueller. “Generalfeldmarschall Walter Model.” In Hitlers militärische Elite, Bd. 2: Vom Kriegsbeginn bis zum Weltkriegsende, edited by Gerd R. Ueberschär, 153–60. Darmstadt, 1998. Möller, Frank. Erinnerungslandschaft Hürtgenwald: Kontroverse Kriegs- und Nachkriegsdeutungen 70 Jahre nach Ende der Kriegshandlungen in der Eifel. Edited by ARKUM (Arbeitskreis für historische Kulturlandschaftsforschung in Mitteleuropa). Bonn, 2016. ———. “Heldengedenken mit Erbsensuppe: Der Hürtgenwald als Schlachtfeld der Erinnerungen.” Deutschlandfunk, 11 October 2013. http://www.deutschlandfunk.de/ heldengedenken-mit-erbsensuppe.1247.de.html?dram:article_id=259394. ———. “Schlachtfeld zwischen Bäumen: Die Erinnerungslandschaft Hürtgenwald auf dem Prüfstand.” In Naturschutz am ehemaligen Westwall: NS-Großanlagen im Diskurs, edited by Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Hochschule Geisenheim, 152–73. Geisenheim, 2016. Niederau, Josef. Hürtgenwald und Rurlandnot: Denkschrift der Kreise Düren und Jülich. Düren, 1947. Palm, Baptist. Hürtgenwald: Das Verdun des Zweiten Weltkrieges. Oldenburg, 1953. Quadflieg, Peter M. Gerhard Graf von Schwerin (1899–1980): Wehrmachtgeneral—Kanzlerberater—Lobbyist. Paderborn, 2016. ———. “‘Windhunde’ im Hürtgenwald: Vossenack als Lieu de Mémoire für einen Veteranenverband der Wehrmacht.” In Fings and Möller, Hürtgenwald, 17–39. Rass, Christoph, Jens Lohmeier, and René Rohrkamp. “Der Hürtgenwald als Schauplatz massenhaften Tötens und Sterbens.” Geschichte in Köln 56 (2009): 299–332. Rass, Christoph, René Rohrkamp, and Peter M. Quadflieg. “Ein ‘Kampfkommandant der Menschlichkeit’? Gerhard Graf von Schwerin im kommunikativen Gedächtnis Aachens.” Geschichte im Westen 24 (2009): 99–134. ———. General Graf von Schwerin und das Kriegsende in Aachen: Ereignis, Mythos, Analyse. Herzogenrath, 2007. “Volkstrauertag 1966: Einweihung unseres eigenen Ehrenmals in Vossenack-Hürtgenwald.” Der Windhund 15, no. 4 (1966): 3–15. Wagschal, Uwe. “Arminius—Bund des deutschen Volkes (Arminius—Bund),” Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 19 February 2016. http://www.bpb.de/politik/wahlen/ wer-steht-zur-wahl/ba-wue-2016/46031/arminius-bund. Wegener, Wolfgang. “Beispielhafte Kriegsrelikte und Erinnerungsobjekte im Hürtgenwald.” In Fings and Möller, Hürtgenwald, 182–202. Wendt, Kurt, ed. Finale der Invasion: Bildband der 116. Panzer-Division, vormals 16. PanzerGrenadier-Division, 16. Infanterie-Division (mot). Rellingen, 1985. ———, ed. Warum? Windhunde: Ein Bildband der 116. Panzer-Division. Halstenbeck, 1976.

CHAPTER 8



Contested Heroes, Contested Places

Conflicting Visions of War at Heldenplatz/Ballhausplatz in Vienna PETER PIRKER, MAGNUS KOCH, and JOHANNES KRAMER Translated by Tim Corbett

I

n a major media event, Austrian Minister of Defense and Social Democrat Norbert Darabos struck Josef Vallaster’s name from the book of the dead for Austrian soldiers of the Second World War on 22 May 2012; Vallaster was a former Austrian SS guard at the Sobibór death camp. The book was on display in the crypt of the Heldendenkmal (Heroes’ Memorial), located in the Äußeres Burgtor (Outer Castle Gate, hereinafter Burgtor) on Vienna’s Heldenplatz. The Heroes’ Memorial was created in 1934, under the patronage of the Austrofascist regime in honor of the Habsburg military and the fallen soldiers of the First World War, and was later appropriated by the National Socialist (NS) regime. It has served the Second Republic as a central memorial for the fallen soldiers of the Second World War since 1955, and as a site for honoring the resistance against the Nazi regime since 1965. The Heroes’ Memorial was incorporated into the Burgtor in 1934, a victory monument for the Habsburg imperial army built in 1824, tying this structure on the Heldenplatz even closer to the construction of Austrian identity. The state doctrine, established in 1945, claimed that Austria had fallen victim to an occupation from Nazi Germany in violation of international law and that its citizens had been forced against their will into the German army, the Wehrmacht. Nevertheless, the Second Republic honored Austrian soldiers’ fulfillment of duty in the Second World War without question, even of those who had evidently been willing executioners of the Nazi politics of extermination.1

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The Heroes’ Memorial is not only dubious about the meaning attributed to it by the political elite of the Second Republic, concerning the Second World War and National Socialism. It also brings up the fundamental problem of how a democratic republic should deal with the inheritance of a nondemocratic regime’s politics of memory surrounding the military, as well as its views on military violence. In the case of Austria, this relates to the Habsburg Monarchy, as well as the Austrofascist and NS regimes. This also brings up important questions for democratic politics: How should the political and legal relationship between state and citizen, past or present, be interpreted? Which symbols should it be represented by? Which narrative should be disseminated? These questions are particularly relevant regarding the military realm of government activity, where citizens’ lives are at stake. Heldenplatz, in the center of Vienna, has become the theater for this incisive transformation process in the politics of history. Therefore, this urban space lends itself particularly well to an analysis of the shifts in memory culture relating to the World Wars. Heldenplatz has maintained its significance because Vienna, “in contrast to most other big cities with nodal structures . . . has remained a city with a center.”2 It has been a site representative of political and social power since it was constructed in front of the imperial Habsburg palace, the Hofburg. It is bordered by the buildings of the Hofburg to the east and the south, and by the Burgtor to the southwest. On its opposite side, Heldenplatz opens onto Ballhausplatz, marking the start of the government quarter with the Austrian Federal Chancellery and the Office of the Federal President. On 24 October 2014, the City of Vienna inaugurated a memorial on this site, located only a few hundred meters away from the Heroes’ Memorial, also dedicated to the armed forces of the NS German Reich, but in this case commemorating the disobedient soldiers of these institutions. The Memorial for the Victims of Nazi Military Justice (Denkmal für die Verfolgten der NS-Militärjustiz) represents the pinnacle of a social and political debate surrounding the question of the Wehrmacht soldiers’ behavior, viewed from the opposite angle, since the end of the 1990s (see Figure 8.1). While previous research on military memory and commemoration at Heldenplatz has focused above all on interpreting the memorial’s symbolism,3 this contribution explores the actors in these politics of remembrance, as well as their power to shape Heldenplatz in accordance with their interpretations of past wars and contemporary interests. The political balance of power on both the social and governmental level is critical in deciding which publicly articulated experiences and interpretations of wartime find their way into state representation. The central question of this chapter therefore relates to the ways in which social actors have influenced the state politics of remembrance at Heldenplatz. In our investigation of the social and political practices that have

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Figure 8.1. Heldenplatz, Vienna. Image Landsat/Copernicus, Google Earth, https://earth .google.com/web. Legend: (1) Heroes’ Memorial; (1a) Crypt; (1b) Memorial Room; (2) Balcony, Neue Hofburg; (3) Federal Chancellery; (4) Office of the Federal President, Hofburg; (5a) Statue of Prince Eugen; (5b) Statue of Archduke Karl; (6) Parliament; (7) Memorial of the Republic; (8) City Hall, (9) Memorial for the Victims of Nazi Military Justice, Ballhausplatz.

shaped its memorial landscape, we focus on the fabrication and transformation of national narratives of the Second World War. We will draw on Timothy G. Ashplant, Graham Dawson, and Michael Roper’s theory of war memory, from their seminal work “The Politics of War Memory and Commemoration.”4 They distinguish between two levels of analysis: narratives of war memory, and the arenas and agency of these narratives’ articulation. The state and/or government are often regarded as central actors in the design of memorials and landscapes of memory, especially concerning political centers of capital cities.5 The approach by Ashplant and colleagues introduces the concept of sectional narratives, meaning “those memories which, though they have achieved the level of open public articulation, have not yet secured recognition within the existing framework of official memory.”6 In doing so, their approach avoids a functionalist reduction of public memories as the results of top-down state action. Furthermore, they propose that sectional narratives can exist as subordinate, marginalized, suppressed, or oppositional memories in relation to official memories. However, it is important to be aware of the plurality of sectional memories in society and to consider their interrelation. The analysis of the politics of memory in democratic societies may remain superficial when not

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enough attention is paid to the competition, the opposition or the coexistence of sectional narratives in civil society, or what form the articulation of sectional and official narratives can or do take. With this focus, we aim to explore social and political frameworks, as well as identify the driving forces behind transformative agency in a cycle of war memorialization.7 This cycle has run through imperial, postimperial, fascist, NS, and democratic constructions and appropriations. Only recently profound changes seem to have concluded this process.

Heldenplatz, Burgtor, and the Ringstraße: Sites of an Urban Memorial Landscape In contrast to many other European cities, the inner city of Vienna contained massive fortifications until the mid-nineteenth century.8 In addition to these fortifications, a broad green belt separated the suburbs from the city. Against the will of the military, Emperor Franz Joseph gave the liberal bourgeoisie the chance to build on this glacis. Carl Schorske pointed out the historical irony of the fact that the potential for modernization available to the liberal bourgeoisie was a direct consequence of the enduring backwardness of the city. The city walls were ultimately razed, and the Ringstraße (Ring Road) opened in their place in 1865. The string of new monumental buildings constructed on the Ringstraße, such as the parliament (Reichsrat), City Hall, the university, several museums, and the opera house, continue to represent the highest values of nineteenth-century liberal culture to this day. Within the city walls, a large square had already been erected in front of the Hofburg between 1819 and 1824 for military parades celebrating the victories of the imperial army.9 Dedicated entirely to the self-reflection of state power, the square was named Heldenplatz (Heroes’ Square) in 1878. Two monumental equestrian statues placed the military commanders Archduke Karl von Habsburg and Prince Eugen of Savoy center stage, and invoked the unity between the dynasty, military, bureaucracy, and church.10 The Burgtor was a piece of the city walls bordering this site. Created under the patronage of the military, its symbolism was twofold: as a victory monument, it commemorated the Battle of Leipzig in 1813 and extolled the army for its services to the Habsburg Monarchy. As a gate to the Hofburg, its five equally proportioned passageways reminded subjects, irrespective of their social standing and background, of their duty toward the state, for which they were to be rewarded “with honor and love.”11 In October 1848, revolutionary soldiers and workers fought here unsuccessfully against troops loyal to the emperor.12 By the end of the nineteenth century, a tension-filled memorial landscape had emerged in the center of the city, which was first characterized by two divided sites of memory in parallel existence: first, Heldenplatz, with its dynas-

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tic, militaristic, Austrian, Catholic signification; second, the Ringstraße, with its liberal, bourgeois, German, secular signification.13 As a third element, one could add the Burgtor—a freestanding monument since the removal of the city walls—which at the end of the nineteenth century embodied the agony of the relationship between the state and its subjects. From the 1890s, the Social Democratic Workers’ Party marched on the Ring for suffrage and social legislation. In the aftermath of the failure of bourgeois liberalism, it represented a new form of power, whose identity was not grounded on Catholicism and monarchism. In a municipal context, the Social Democratic counterculture challenged Christian Social rule but remained largely shut out of real political power because of limited class enfranchisement.14 During the First World War, the Burgtor witnessed its first renaissance as a militaristic “fatherland” monument and became a central site for the mobilization of the home front. The Imperial-Royal Austrian Military Widows’ and Orphans’ Fund conducted a large-scale patriotic relief effort here, at which “laurel wreaths for our heroes” were sold to aid of the soldiers on the front and to the families of the fallen. In 1916, the Burgtor received a new inscription. The watchword Laurum militibus lauro dignis (laurels to the soldier who is worthy of laurels) brought the admonition of obedience and the fulfillment of duty.

The Untouched Heldenplatz: Sectional Memories in the First Postwar Democracy The Burgtor appeared antiquated following the collapse of the Habsburg military, the loss of the First World War, the end of the monarchy, the revolution of 1918, and the proclamation of a democratic republic. The executive of the First Republic occupied the Hofburg and its adjacent buildings. On a national level, the Social Democrats first built a coalition with the Christian Social Party (Christlichsoziale Partei, CS), but went into opposition in 1920. After this, the Christian Socials ruled together with various right-wing and extreme right-wing parties, before they eliminated the parliament in 1933 and established an authoritarian regime. On the municipal level, the Social Democrats moved into City Hall, continuously achieving the absolute majority of the popular vote, and until 1933 built up a brand of democratic socialism in what was called “Red Vienna.” The struggle between Social Democrats and Christian Socials did not only take place in the parliament. Vienna’s public spaces were also transformed into arenas of antagonistic politics between the federal and municipal governments. Following the expulsion of the Social Democrats from the army, the veterans’ associations of the former imperial army began agitating for the construction of a central Heroes’ Memorial in Vienna. Their aim was the public rehabilitation of the former imperial army in the capital city

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and the resumption of the maintenance of a heroic tradition at Heldenplatz. Their demand for a central Heroes’ Memorial came in 1925, following the inauguration of a large war memorial by the City of Vienna. The city’s war memorial was located in the Vienna Central Cemetery (Wiener Zentralfriedhof ) outside the city and represented the war from a Social Democratic perspective: the sculptor Anton Hanak created a mighty sculpture of a mourning woman; the memorial also contained the pacifist inscription “Never war again” (Nie wieder Krieg) and stood as a clear counter-design against the heroic commemoration of soldiers. It did not confer any post hoc meaning onto the dying of the soldier, but rather deplored suffering and senseless sacrifice. Thereby, it also acknowledged defeat in the war to a certain degree.15 Unlike heroic war memorials with their exclusively masculine codification, it symbolically incorporated women into memory as social albeit entirely passive actors. As long as the Social Democrats remained in power in Vienna, and the republican democratic state constitution remained active, the attempts by the right-wing veterans’ associations and the high military command to create a central Heroes’ Memorial remained a social-sectional phenomenon. Various parties used Heldenplatz pluralistically in the first postwar democracy, but, because of the massive conflicts surrounding the memory and interpretation of the First World War, its contents remained unchanged.

Austrofascism and National Socialism: The Creation of the Heroes’ Memorial and Damnatio Memoriae The movement toward fascism in the 1930s provided momentum to the plans for the creation of a Heroes’ Memorial in the city center, in opposition to (Social) Democratic commemorative practice. When Guido Jakoncig, a representative of the fascist Home Guard (Heimwehr), was appointed minister for trade and traffic in Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuß’s government, he granted permission to the proponents of the memorial to realize their project at the Burgtor. In January 1933, the two major proponents, the Union of Officers of the Federal Army (Verband der Offiziere des Bundesheeres) and the Union of Comrades and Soldiers of the Empire (Reichskameradschafts- und Kriegerbund), united to form the Association for the Creation of an Austrian Heroes’ Memorial (Vereinigung zur Errichtung eines Österreichischen Heldendenkmals). However, there was no financial support from state institutions. In early June 1933, the association was about to throw in the towel, disappointed at the “scant interest in the creation of an Austrian Heroes’ Memorial.”16 Ultimately, the federal government, which had been practicing authoritarian rule since March 1933, and the new Christian Social municipal administration of Vienna, appointed by Dollfuß, saved the project from failure. Dollfuß regarded the project as an

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opportunity to propagate a new national identity in accordance with the traditional catholic and authoritarian values of pre-1918 Austria (Altösterreich). Thus, he adopted it as one of the first prestige projects of his regime. From this point onward, things progressed quickly. Following a competition, the architect Rudolf Wondracek received the commission to design the memorial. The decision was made in February 1934, the month when the Federal Army and the Heimwehr violently crushed an armed insurrection from parts of the Republikanischer Schutzbund, after which the Social Democratic Party was banned and democracy was brought to an end. Wondracek installed two memorial sites inside the Burgtor: an open-air hall of honor above the main passage dedicated “to the memory of the glorious imperial army 1618–1918” and its commanders; and a Catholic crypt in honor of the fallen soldiers of the First World War in the ground floor of the right wing, which was dominated by a mighty recumbent figure of a soldier made from red marble. In addition, so-called books of the dead were on display, which contained the names of all those who fell in the war. Spatially separated, in the left wing of the Burgtor, a “general room of worship” for other religions was planned but never realized.17 Photographs of the inauguration show a ceremony that stretched over wide areas of Heldenplatz: the political, military, and clerical elite of the Austrofascist regime had assembled alongside representatives of the Habsburg Monarchy on an honorary stage; they stand in front of columns of the Federal Army, veterans’ associations, marching bands, and members of the public. Colonel General Viktor Dankl von Krasnik, protector of the memorial committee, made a speech in which he directly addressed the struggle over memory in Vienna, and said the day had arrived when the imperial army could appear once more on the world stage with its head held high. He continued: “The enemies of the army, however, who not only brought about its downfall but also wish to force upon it the stigma of shame with the lowest and most reprehensible methods, have disappeared, a black veil has descended over them like over the image of Marin Falier in the Doge’s Palace in Venice.” The reference to the execution of Falier, the doge of the Republic of Venice, in 1354 because of a plot against the patricians, falling only a few months after the execution of Social Democrats, is very revealing. The Austrofascists rehabilitated the imperial army in the center of the state and in the capital city by the Heroes’ Memorial. They glorified their belligerence and praised the death of the soldier. However, they also understood the Heroes’ Memorial as a tool for a damnatio memoriae,18 the extinction of the memory of political opponents, “traitors,” and “enemies of the state.” This was the fate of the Memorial of the Republic (Republikdenkmal) located nearby, as it was at first covered up and then finally dismantled.19 In their speeches, Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg and Cardinal Theodor Innitzer paid homage to Chancellor Dollfuß, murdered by Nazis in June 1934,

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and called for the willingness to fight and sacrifice “when the hour comes.” These statements, however, had already been undermined, even if surreptitiously so: the sculptor and member of the illegal Nazi party, Wilhelm Frass, embedded a capsule in the statue of the Dead Soldier with a message invoking unification with Nazi Germany.20 His employer did not wish him to create an “‘Unknown Soldier’ according to Western models.”21 Frass understood his sculpture as a “symbol of the primordial notion of the soldier” consisting of the “final fulfillment of duty,” “innermost obedience,” and the “blazing flame of loyalty, of comradeship, of devotion, and of boundless sacrifice.”22 Against the oath it had sworn in 1934, the Federal Army offered no resistance to the German Wehrmacht when it marched into Austria on 12 March 1938. Many men in the officer corps had been Nazis for several years. Schuschnigg placed the defense of the fatherland, as he put it, in the hands of a higher community. No “German blood” was to be spilled. The officers and soldiers of the Austrian army, with very few exceptions, swore an oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler.23 On 15 March, a Wehrmacht military parade took place on Heldenplatz, and Hitler announced the Anschluß from the balcony of the Hofburg in front of a cheering crowd of an estimated 250,000 Austrians. That same day, Hitler laid a wreath at the Heroes’ Memorial. In the following weeks, the Nazi regime conducted several commemorative events there. With the exception of the removal of a memorial plaque for Dollfuß, no changes to the Heroes’ Memorial have been identified. During the Second World War, the Wehrmacht and various other Nazi organizations used Heldenplatz for grand militaristic displays, such as the presentation of looted weapons and an exhibition about the Wehrmacht itself.24 On the annual Heroes’ Memorial Day (Heldengedenktag) in March, large celebrations took place in front of the Ehrenmal (cenotaph) for the fallen soldiers of both world wars.25 As other Nazi plans for the honoring of fallen soldiers also remained unrealized, such as Hitler’s idea of combining Rathausplatz and Heldenplatz and recreating them as a closed and imposing parade ground,26 the Burgtor remained the central site for state military commemoration in Vienna—including during the reception of foreign armed forces or political delegations allied to the Third Reich.27 Claims that the Burgtor forfeited its significance during the Nazi era as a military site of memory therefore need to be relativized.28 Because of the Anschluß and the liquidation of Austrian sovereignty, Vienna as a whole, not the Heroes’ Memorial, lost its significance, relatively speaking. The last heroes’ commemorative celebration with a wreath-laying ceremony took place here as late as 12 March 1945.29 Under Nazi rule, the damnatio memoriae that had been practiced since 1934 toward politically deviant or disobedient civilians and soldiers was severely radicalized. Sentences passed down by Nazi civil and military courts involved loss of honor and, in the case of execution, complete erasure from memory: obituaries and death announcements were strictly pro-

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hibited, and the bodies were buried at the edge of cemeteries, including Section 40 of the Vienna Central Cemetery.

Reappropriating the Heroes’ Memorial: The Early Years of the Second Postwar Democracy During the Second World War, 1.3 million Austrians (40 percent of the male population) served in the Wehrmacht. Thirty thousand to fifty thousand Austrian soldiers (3 to 4 percent) deserted their service, most of them during the last stage of the war. Approximately 1,200 to 1,400 Austrian deserters from the Wehrmacht were put to death.30 One recent study offers, once again, that there was no indication that the morale and discipline in soldiers of Austrian decent were less pronounced than that of other German soldiers.31 The liberation of Vienna from National Socialism at the beginning of April 1945 was exclusively the achievement of the Red Army. The only cohesive fighting unit of Austrian anti-Nazi resistance, the Austrian Freedom Battalions (Österreichische Freiheitsbataillone) that formed a part of the Yugoslav army, only arrived in Vienna from Slovenia after war’s end. Not until 12 May did they march over the Ring, through the Burgtor, and onto the Heldenplatz, to assemble, waving red-white-red flags.32 These images did not become icons of resistance for the Austrian nation. The Austrian Freedom Battalions consisted mainly of Communists who had fought as volunteers for the Spanish Republic, who had under Nazi rule gone into Soviet exile or deserted from the Wehrmacht; in any case, these were men who under Austrofascism and National Socialism had succumbed to the damnatio memoriae. The resistance fighters did not consider an Antifascist appropriation or recreation of the Heroes’ Memorial, in contrast to what had happened with the Neue Wache in Berlin. Furthermore, the Red Army did not interfere with the contents of Heldenplatz and instead created its own mighty heroes’ memorial on the Schwarzenbergplatz. The Burgtor, just like after the First World War, remained untouched after the Second World War. The veterans of the resistance located the commemoration of their fallen or murdered comrades primarily at the peripheral Vienna Central Cemetery, in municipal housing blocks, and in working-class neighborhoods in the Soviet occupation zone. Vienna Mayor Theodor Körner did announce the intention “to erect a monumental memorial for all the fighters for freedom in the heart of the city” in 1945.33 However, this never came to pass, because of the conflict between the parties that had founded the state: the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ), the successor to the 1934 banned Social Democratic Workers’ Party and the illegal Revolutionary Socialists of Austria; the Austrian People’s

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Party (ÖVP), the successor to the CS; and the Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ). The conflict revolved, first, around the question of who counted as fighters for freedom and what “freedom” referred to. In these discussions, the Nazi era was not the most controversial issue. The parties had already agreed on a collective national victim status vis-à-vis Nazi Germany in the Declaration of Independence of 27 April 1945, which also defined the soldiers of the Austrian Wehrmacht as victims of compulsory military service imposed by a foreign power.34 In contrast, the Austrian dictatorship, in place from 1933 to 1938, was a heavy point of contention in the politics of memory between the SPÖ and ÖVP. Moreover, the fact that Communists were predominant in the resistance movement against the Nazi regime influenced the SPÖ and ÖVP’s decision not to allow the resistance to become a central theme in national memory culture. These multilateral conflicts first came to the fore with plans to design a memorial room in the Vienna Künstlerhaus, dedicated to the Austrians who fell in the fight against fascism and inspired by the exhibition framework “Never forget” (Niemals vergessen). The parties could not agree on whether Dollfuß should be commemorated as a victim of National Socialism or whether the Social Democrats executed under his regime in February 1934 should be individually named as victims of fascism. The parties only reached consensus by agreeing not to mention any names at all, while they buried the original plans to institutionalize the documentation of the resistance in the city center.35 Instead, the City of Vienna created a Memorial to the Victims for a Free Austria 1934–1945 at Vienna Central Cemetery, where municipal and federal politicians held official commemorative celebrations on All Saints’ Day. These were followed by simple commemorative celebrations at the war graves of fallen Wehrmacht soldiers.36 Sectional memory cultures regarding National Socialism and the Second World War began emerging in civil society from the later 1940s onward. If resistance fighter organizations were still the dominant actors in the 1940s, they increasingly lost this position to the newly formed veterans’ associations. The relative decline of antifascist politics of memory was crucially related to political power relations. On the municipal level, the SPÖ reconstructed the political power of “Red Vienna” through a system of patronage and loyalty from a population that had been highly integrated in the Nazi state and had benefited considerably from the deprivation and expulsion of the Jewish population.37 After 1949, it became increasingly difficult to address National Socialism in the public sphere through new signs of remembrance. The veterans’ associations, in contrast, engaged in military commemoration with increasing intensity. In cooperation with the Catholic Church, they frequently adapted existing war memorials from the First World War or created new ones. The umbrella organization of veterans’ associations, the Austrian Union of Com-

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rades (Österreichischer Kameradschaftsbund, ÖKB), founded in 1951, was promoted by the coalition government of the ÖVP and SPÖ and benevolently tolerated by the Western occupation powers. The Cold War more generally, and the rearmament of West Germany and its integration into NATO in particular, caused the Wehrmacht to be whitewashed by the Allies, in order to rehabilitate and encourage military virtues in West Germany and Austria.38 In the center of Vienna, this process manifested itself in the gradual social and political reappropriation of the Heroes’ Memorial. First, the Catholic Church claimed the ceremonial room in the crypt in 1950. Through the consequent religious services, the veterans’ associations also found entry into the Heroes’ Memorial. While reappropriation of the memorial for the purposes of mourning and commemoration went smoothly, the ÖKB failed in its early efforts at political reappropriation; it called for a grand celebration in front of the Heroes’ Memorial in 1954 to mark the twenty-year anniversary of its creation. However, the police forbade the event on the grounds of security following protests by the KPÖ and the danger of counterdemonstrations. The SPÖ also welcomed the ban, and the justification for their support clarifies their views on the Heroes’ Memorial: the party condemned its inauguration in 1934 as a “victory celebration” of the authoritarian regime over the Social Democrats. The memorial celebration of the ÖKB would therefore be “understood by broad segments of the population as a glorification of violence and of the injustice of fascism” and would “not be worthy of the Republic.”39 While the SPÖ rejected the Heroes’ Memorial, former resistance fighters in the KPÖ simultaneously demanded from the federal government that they also be allowed to commemorate the dead of the resistance in the memorial. The governing parties rejected the petition based on anti-Communist motives.40 Both bans, however, raised the question about the future of the Heroes’ Memorial on a governmental level, and the coalition had immense difficulties finding common ground in the politics of memory. On 27 April 1955, in preparation for the ten-year anniversary of the reestablishment of the Republic of Austria, the cabinet created a committee consisting of Federal Chancellor Julius Raab (ÖVP), Vice Chancellor Adolf Schärf (SPÖ), State Secretary Ferdinand Graf (ÖVP), and State Secretary Bruno Kreisky (SPÖ). The committee agreed on the construction of two new memorial sites: the “creation of a consecrated site to the memory of Austria’s dead in the Burgtor,” an elaborate recreation of the Heroes’ Memorial; and the creation of a memorial next to the parliament for the deceased federal president and twice founder of the Republic, the Social Democrat Karl Renner. The political and spatial distribution between the ÖVP (Burgtor, Heldenplatz) and the SPÖ (parliament, Ring) is unmistakable and typical of the established political culture of proportional representation. Neither project, however, was realized in the following decade.

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A National Memorial? Patriotic Pacification of Sectional Narratives up to the “Waldheim Debate” Instead, the practical treatment of the Heroes’ Memorial in 1955—the year in which Austria achieved full sovereignty, neutrality, and saw the reestablishment of the Federal Army—revealed how deep the schism in the politics of memory ran between the two governing parties. Only one year after the ÖKB’s ceremony had been banned, Ferdinand Graf (ÖVP), the first federal minister of defense, called on the Federal Army and the veterans’ associations to hold the first state memorial service for the fallen Wehrmacht soldiers in front of the Heroes’ Memorial on All Souls’ Day. The ÖVP thus completed the political reappropriation of the Heroes’ Memorial, which had previously been pursued by the ÖKB. No changes to the symbolic character of the memorial were undertaken. While Graf wanted the Heroes’ Memorial to have the character of a “national memorial for all Austrians,”41 the SPÖ shunned this site of memory based on its monarchist, fascist, and Nazi background. Similar to the period following the First World War, questions of tradition and leadership personnel remained points of conflict: the leadership cadre of the second Federal Army was largely composed of former officers of the Wehrmacht, who, moreover, determined the further staffing choices. Unlike in 1918, however, the SPÖ took exception not to the reactionary attitudes of high-ranking officers of the war but rather to their overwhelming integration into the ÖVP.42 The SPÖ boycott of the first state memorial event at the Heroes’ Memorial was therefore a rejection of continuity less with National Socialism than with Austrofascism. For the time being, the SPÖ maintained the old democratic tradition of commemorating the dead at Vienna Central Cemetery.43 Thus, through the first half of the 1950s, the reappropriation of the Heroes’ Memorial ran a similar course to the one it had run after its creation twenty years previous: the initiative came from the veterans’ associations and the Catholic Church, with support from conservative factions in the government, and was finally adopted politically and proclaimed as a matter of national significance for the whole state. If the purpose for creating a Heroes’ Memorial in 1934 was the propagation of a new state consciousness, then its reappropriation by the state in 1955 stood entirely within the context of rearmament and conscription. This context of reappropriation also explains the exclusively masculine form of memory politics surrounding the Heroes’ Memorial until the 2010s. On the level of memory narratives, Graf ’s commemorative speech in front of the Heroes’ Memorial, articulated official recognition for the thesis that the Wehrmacht’s actions had been a patriotic fulfillment of duty. As an argumentative bridge, Graf constructed an ahistorical military community consisting of the soldiers of both world wars, the officers of the gendarmerie, the customs guard, the police, and the soldiers of the new Federal Army who had fallen

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in duty since 1945. He also argued that the veterans’ associations were their legitimate social representatives. Regardless of differences in state and government, he emphasized the fulfillment of duty by citizens called to arms as a unifying bond: the executive officers of the Second Republic had taken it “just as seriously . . . as the soldier on the front.”44 As a second bridge for the positive interpretation of service in the Wehrmacht, he constructed a historical continuity from the Habsburg Monarchy to the Second Republic, in which he praised all the aforementioned groups as members of a “small but brave Volk” who “gave their lives for Austria.” The interpretation of service in the Wehrmacht as a service rendered for Austria became characteristic of the Austrian Heroes’ Memorial after 1955, as evident in official brochures of the memorial until 2011. In certain ways, the “fulfillment of duty” thesis was at odds with the “all-encompassing victim” thesis formulated by the founders of the state in the Declaration of Independence. According to the previous state doctrine, the Austrian Wehrmacht soldiers were presented not as duty-conscious soldiers but rather as unwilling participants whose service had been forced on them by Nazi Germany. It is difficult to ascertain whether the relationship between the fulfillment of duty and the victim theses constitutes a contradiction, as has often been claimed.45 From a democratic perspective, a contradiction between forced service and its duty-conscious fulfillment might be apparent. In contrast, from an authoritarian standpoint, the fulfillment of duty by unwilling soldiers represents an especially honorable virtue, since they are offering the state a greater, more heroic sacrifice. Graf may not have exactly invoked the selfempowerment of the anti-Nazi resistance in opposition to the fulfillment of duty. However, in his community of good Austrians, the resistance fighter was not explicitly included. Graf was surely taking into account the sensitivities of the newly formed army and of the veterans’ associations, who made no secret of their negative attitude toward resistance fighters and deserters. Graf ’s speech, aside from its strongly authoritarian character, displayed significant shifts in the official narrative of the Second World War. Similarly to 1934, sectional memories in 1955, of heroic fulfillment of duty and honorable conduct in war, were elevated to the status of an official state narrative—this time under democratic auspices—even if these memories were only recognized at first by the conservative side of the government. From this point onward, a state and civil society coalition consisting of the governing conservative party, the Federal Army, the Catholic Church, and the veterans’ associations, practiced a heroic-militaristic memorial culture on the municipal and regional levels. The deutschnational (modern Austrian variant of German nationalism) Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) was also involved in this memorial culture. On the regional and local level, an increasing number of SPÖ politicians also entered this network. The governing parties thus

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faced the challenge of containing the FPÖ while simultaneously popularizing a Wehrmacht-friendly narrative, which could also be interpreted as Austrianpatriotic.46 Former resistance fighters, however, heavily rejected these developments. Their criticism was not directed against the commemoration of soldiers per se but was above all concerned with contesting the monopoly held by the ÖKB over the commemoration of soldiers. In the second half of the 1950s, intense conflicts concerning the “true” Austrian identity exploded between former resistance fighters on one side and the veterans’ organizations and members of the Federal Army on the other.47 The pacification of this antagonistic constellation became a matter of national policy for the federal government. In 1958, the twentieth anniversary of the “occupation” of Austria, resistance fighters from all political camps once again demanded that a memorial for resistance be erected in the center of the capital city. In response, the government decided to affix an appropriate plaque on the Heroes’ Memorial.48 The associations of former resistance fighters and concentration camp victims greeted this decision as recognition of the actual “heroes” of Austria.49 Which “heroes” are addressed here nevertheless remains vague. The text reads: “In memory of the victims of the struggle for Austria’s freedom—the Austrian federal government.”50 Both dates and concrete signifiers were avoided. Similarly to the memories of the “fulfillment of duty” in 1955, the memories of resistance were now also leveled and reconciled within a patriotic motif related to the present day: the “belief in Austria,” as Federal Chancellor Raab announced at the unveiling.51 The memorial plaque further transformed the Heroes’ Memorial into a rallying point for resistance associations, which united from across the political spectrum to form the Austrian Resistance Movement (Österreichische Widerstandsbewegung) as an antipode to the ÖKB.52 The first litmus test for reconciliation between memories of resistance and the fulfillment of duty occurred in 1965. In the context of an upcoming election, the Second Republic undertook its first great commemorative year: twenty years since the Declaration of Independence (27 April), ten years since the signing of the State Treaty (15 May), and ten years since the Declaration of Neutrality (26 October). The first months were characterized by almost unparalleled controversy over the politics of history in the Second Republic to date—the “Borodajkewycz affair.” Taras Borodajkewycz, professor at the University of Economics and a prominent figure in the anti-Semitic and deutschnational camp, had characterized antifascist memory culture as a reprehensible moral and spiritual position “that upended the previous code of honor of humanity and praised cowardice, desertion, and betrayal as the true virtues of the Austrian man.”53 A series of demonstrations on 31 March, for and against Borodajkewycz, turned violent and resulted in an extreme right-wing activist fatally wounding the former Communist resistance fighter Ernst Kirchweger.

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This violent escalation leading up to the celebrations of the Republic forced the government to take action: shortly after the conflict began, it announced that the commemoration of the resistance fight at the Burgtor would be upgraded.54 In place of the memorial plaque, the chapel for non-Catholic religions in the left wing of the Burgtor, which had hitherto been occupied by a police guardhouse, was to be transformed into a “memorial room [Weiheraum, literally “consecrated space”] for the victims of the fight for Austria’s freedom.” The government thereby attempted to create a kind of symbolic parity between the commemoration of resistance fighters and fallen soldiers respectively. At the inauguration, Minister of Transport and Electricity Otto Probst, a survivor of the Buchenwald concentration camp and a punitive unit of the Wehrmacht, spoke on behalf of the SPÖ; the ÖVP was represented by the Minister of Commerce and Reconstruction Fritz Bock, a former Dachau inmate. Both speakers aspired to construct the broadest and most inclusive possible Austrian community of victims. Probst included the political prisoners of Austrofascism, the enemies of the Nazi regime, the victims of the concentration camps and Gestapo prisons in countries under occupation, the murdered Jews, the “380,000 Austrians who did not return from the forced war service for Hitler,” and the victims of aerial bombing. Bock drew an even broader circle by including the victims of the executive from 1933 to 1938, and—aside from the fallen soldiers who “unquestioningly . . . had to fulfill their duty”—those Austrians who had fought on the side of the Allies. Both politicians called for a rejection of the politicization of memory in the present, and a patriotic attitude. In 1965, Probst and Bock invoked a community of victims who had fulfilled their duty that was far more inclusive than only those proclaimed by Graf in 1955. Through state regulation, both pillars of social memory were now represented in the Heroes’ Memorial.55 In decreeing the integration of the separate pillars of memory, the state also demanded the enforcement of specific forms of forgetting, the first of which involved the negotiation of inner contradictions. In the pillar of resistance, the SPÖ and ÖVP began to bury existing party and national political differences over the years 1934 to 1938.56 In the pillar of the Wehrmacht, the Federal Ministry of Defense and the Federal Army covered up the fact that the duty for the protection of Austria had gone unfulfilled. Paradoxically, this was the only way to represent service in the Wehrmacht as a fulfillment of duty for the Austrian people. Second, the emphasis on persons who had the potential of igniting conflict was eschewed at the Heroes’ Memorial, as was the naming of political regimes. Third, both pillars—to varying degrees—suppressed the memory of political violence against social groups that had the potential to undermine positive self-assessments. This related above all to the discrimination and persecution of Jews and other victims of Nazi racial politics. Fourth,

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this construction required strong (self-)discipline on the part of the respective memory subcultures in order to avoid publicly delegitimizing the other pillar. This was the greatest potential for conflict. Successive governments promoted the pillar of resistance but simultaneously limited activities strictly to historical research and repressed issues holding a direct bearing on the present, such as the employment of former Nazi judges in the Second Republic. Minister of Justice Christian Broda (SPÖ), a former resistance fighter, paradigmatically expressed this prescriptive forgetting57 in a statement claiming that the Republic had drawn a line (Schlussstrich) under the past.58 Chancellor Bruno Kreisky acted similarly in the 1970s and 1980s: while the former political prisoner and anti-Semitically persecuted exile had promoted the Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance (DÖW), as an incumbent politician he sent strong signals of integration to the camp of former Nazis and Wehrmacht soldiers.59 Public commemorations became indicative of uncontested parallelism. Unlike in September 1954, the ÖKB received permission to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the Heroes’ Memorial without any contestation in 1974, while the Social Democrats celebrated the forty-fifth anniversary of the Karl-Marx-Hof and the opening of an exhibition on Austrofascism in the Austrian State Archive the same weekend.60 With this integrative strategy, Kreisky achieved an all-encompassing state hegemony for social democracy for the first time in the 1970s. Finally, both anti-Nazi memory and the memory of the soldiers were shaped by strong exculpations.61 The resistance fighters favored placing the blame for the early expansion of power of Nazi Germany on the Western democracies, while the Wehrmacht soldiers insisted that they had remained “decent.” With its expansion in 1965, the Heroes’ Memorial became the site of routine political rituals revolving around the commemorative calendar of the Republic. In contrast to its manifestations from 1955 to 1965, the memorial consequently lost the attention of the broader public. One can safely say that the memorial ossified into a little-regarded symbol for the representational government’s fragile memory politics, which were now untouchable. Even though the politically cultivated and broadly accepted coexistence of the resistance and fulfillment of duty narratives had been strongly challenged for the first time—by external critics, as well as sections of civil society during the 1980s “Waldheim affair”—no changes were made to the commemorative rituals at the Heroes’ Memorial: contemporary radical criticism was ignored. This criticism emerged from the confrontational, and therefore socially marginal, subculture of Viennese Actionism. As early as 1962, the depth psychologist Josef Dvorak had already pointed out the fascist origins and hidden NS character of the sculpture of a soldier in the crypt in the journal Die Blutorgel. In 1988, he once again broke this taboo in the journal Forum and the news magazine Profil—without any

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reaction.62 Nobody was interested in a further memorial dispute alongside the running conflict over the creation of the Memorial against War and Fascism by Alfred Hrdlicka on the nearby Albertinaplatz. In 1994, the architectural critic Jan Tabor renewed the call to excavate the sculpture of the soldier in order to remove the Nazi message, and suggested for the first time “deconsecrating” the memorial. Then Speaker for Federal Chancellor Franz Vranitzky (SPÖ) and future City Councilor for Cultural Affairs and Science Andreas MailathPokorny wanted to remove this problem “once and for all” in the run-up to the planned Gedenkjahr (commemorative year) in 1995.63 However, the substantial conflicts surrounding the exhibition War of Annihilation: Crimes of the Wehrmacht (Vernichtungskrieg: Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941–1944)—herineafter referred to as the “Wehrmacht Exhibition” (Wehrmachtsausstellung)64—and the creation of a memorial for the Austrian Wehrmacht soldiers in Stalingrad eliminated interest among the governing parties for a debate about the Heroes’ Memorial. Those conflicts over the politics of history were especially useful for the opposition parties: while the FPÖ, led by Jörg Haider, exploited the ostensible defamation of the “war generation” for the mobilization of voters, the Austrian Green Party was able to profile itself as a pioneer for the critical reappraisal of the history of National Socialism.

On the Way to Change Political conditions like these may be unfavorable for decision-making, but they can favor social mobilization and thus prepare the ground for future changes. The two most significant elements of the political-historical reinterpretation of Heldenplatz thus far—the transformation of the Heroes’ Memorial and the erection of the Memorial for the Victims of Nazi Military Justice (aka Deserters’ Memorial)—cannot be traced back to partisan politics or state initiatives. We argue that political-historical initiatives and their engagement with civil society since the late 1980s prepared the ground for political decisions on the state level. In order to understand recent changes, we must take a closer look at the engagement with (1) the rehabilitation of Wehrmacht deserters and (2) the meaning of 8 May 1945.

Social Debates about the Appraisal of Desertion The first initiatives for the rehabilitation of Wehrmacht deserters emerged from the peace movement in the context of the NATO Double-Track Decision of 1979 and of the conflicts surrounding military service and alternative civilian service (Zivildienst). Beginning in the 1980s, West German peace activists established memorials for deserters, some of which related directly to

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the disobedient soldiers of the Wehrmacht.65 In their justification for creating these memorials, the initiators—often representatives of the recently founded Green Party—employed certain characterizations of the Wehrmacht as early as the 1980s—characterizations that are reminiscent of the much later Wehrmachtsausstellung, as well as of the speeches made by governing politicians at the inauguration of the Deserters’ Memorial at Vienna’s Ballhausplatz. In 1981, the Green Party in Kassel’s city hall demanded the creation of a memorial plaque for Wehrmacht deserters. They argued that because the Second World War had been a destructive and criminal war of conquest, everyone “who attempted to withdraw from the war by escaping” had acted “properly and decently.”66 The new actors of memory were looking back at the past under the conditions of intensifying tensions between the Eastern and the Western Bloc. In West Germany, as well as Austria, protests were directed against the military as such, with public appearances of veterans’ organizations being perceived as glorification of war. In this conflict, the protestors pointed to a gap in the politics of history: the disobedient soldiers who had been prosecuted and convicted by Nazi military justice had not been sufficiently legally rehabilitated in West Germany or Austria and additionally had been subjected to discrimination as a minority in the veterans’ communities of both countries.67 Returning to Austria, the increased involvement of antimilitarist actors and the peace movement in the realm of the politics of history is evident from the 1980s onward: for example, the conscientious objectors to military service demanded that they be allowed to conduct their alternative civilian service at concentration camp memorial sites from 1980 onward, and protests took place on 12 February 1984 against a swearing-in ceremony of the Federal Army at the Karl-Marx-Hof, where, exactly fifty years previously, the Federal Army had crushed a socialist uprising against Austrofascism.68 Further protests were directed against the honorable commemoration of the former Austrian general of the Luftwaffe and convicted Nazi war criminal Alexander Löhr within the Federal Army.69 Antimilitarist activists also used Heldenplatz as a political stage. In October 1989, a strike was staged by conscientious objectors to military service, together with the Green Party, who shut the gates of the Burgtor and demanded that the Heldenplatz be renamed “Platz des Ungehorsams” (Square of Disobedience).70 Just weeks later, protests erupted in opposition of a memorial plaque for Austrian members of the general military staff in the Hofburg, which included the name Artur Phleps alongside that of Löhr. Activists used fliers to criticize continuities with National Socialism in Austria: they referred to, among others, former Minister of Justice Otto Tschadek (SPÖ), a naval judge who had handed down death penalties to deserters during the Second World War.71 Antimilitarists also erected the first temporary Deserters’ Memorial on Heldenplatz in July 1989. The Group for Total Refusal (Gruppe für Totalverwei-

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gerung) honored “the unknown shirkers.” As had been done in West Germany in previous years, these counter-memorials did not refer to any specific army or war. Only a few months later, the Green Party petitioned to rename a square in Vienna’s second district after an “unknown deserter.” In doing so, they not only referred to the Wehrmacht but also to the conflicts occurring around the collapse of the Soviet Union at the time.72 All parties, including the KPÖ, rejected the petition. These examples portray an activist cluster consisting of antimilitarists, pacifists, conscientious objectors to military service, and the Green Party, which had entered parliament in 1986 and combined contemporary criticism with historical-political criticism. In the 1980s, antimilitarist activists and Green Party politicians pointedly referenced the lines of continuity between the Federal Army and the Wehrmacht. Attempts by a younger generation of officers to disrupt these continuities through the introduction of political education in the course of the modernization of the army were hardly acknowledged in the antimilitarist narrative. For example, the army conducted an internationally recognized swearing-in ceremony in 1983 at the former concentration camp in Mauthausen. This was done in order for the army to position itself demonstratively “on the side of the victims of National Socialism” and emphasize the safeguarding of democracy as one of the military’s central tasks. The aforementioned swearing-in ceremony at the Karl-Marx-Hof was driven by similar historical-political intentions.73 In 1984, the Federal Ministry of Defense was also involved with the DÖW in creating the first memorial for the victims of Nazi military justice in Vienna. The memorial stone’s inscription, on the site of the former military shooting range in Kagran on the outskirts of Vienna, commemorates the “numerous freedom fighters from the ranks of the Wehrmacht” who were executed there.74 The growing historical-political interest in desertion from the Wehrmacht began in the late 1980s and was accompanied by comprehensive scholarly studies that laid bare the extent of the violence committed by Nazi military justice. In 1990, former Wehrmacht deserters in Germany founded the Federal Association of Victims of Nazi Military Justice (Bundesvereinigung Opfer der NS-Militärjustiz), which advocated for the legal annulment of sentences handed down by the Wehrmacht judiciary. This soon also led to a transfer of knowledge and experience from Germany to Austria. An early thread of transmission was the first Wehrmachtsausstellung. At the exhibition’s 1995 showing in Vienna, antimilitarist groups organized a discussion with the Wehrmacht deserter Ludwig Baumann, the speaker of the aforementioned association.75 Three years later, a group of students participating in a research seminar led by the political scientist Walter Manoschek, one of the first Wehrmachtsausstellung’s cocreators, used the intense discussion in the German Bundestag as an opportunity to pose similar questions in Austria.76 They found a sympathetic

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political ear in the Green Party, which generally advocated on behalf of the “forgotten victims of National Socialism.” In 1999, the Green Party submitted a petition for a resolution to the National Council, demanding the “earliest possible historical engagement with the conviction of Austrians by the NS military judiciary.”77 This was followed by a research project by the Federal Ministry of Science and Research on the history and aftermath of Nazi military justice in Austria, which was assigned to Manoschek in 2001. He produced the first empirical study on the historical and present-day situation of Wehrmacht deserters in Austria, together with his students and young scholars in 2003. Simultaneously, these academics came together with the former Wehrmacht deserter Richard Wadani to found an interest group called the Personenkomitee Gerechtigkeit für die Opfer der NS-Militärjustiz (Committee for Justice for the Victims of Nazi Military Justice), hereafter referred to as the Personenkomitee. Henceforth, this interest group lobbied intensively for a rehabilitation law in Austria, in part with the aid of the Green Party, to which some Personenkomitee members also belonged.78 Ultimately, the cluster of memorial activism, scholarly expertise, political advocacy, and Wadani’s authenticity in the media was able to produce a shift in public opinion. In two stages, the discrimination in social security regulation was ended in parliament: first in 2005, under the right-wing conservative coalition government of ÖVP and FPÖ; and then in 2009, when the sweeping rehabilitation of deserters was finally achieved under an SPÖ and ÖVP coalition government against the votes of the right-wing Alliance for the Future of Austria (Bündnis Zukunft Österreich) and FPÖ, as well as an extra-parliamentary protest of the ÖKB.79 An analysis of the narratives of these two decision-making processes demonstrates that, under the right-wing conservative parliamentary majority, the actors were able to reach a sufficient consensus recognizing the victimhood of those persecuted by Nazi military justice. In contrast, the legal text of 2009 explicitly named the deserters for the first time, under the Social Democrat and conservative grand coalition of SPÖ and ÖVP. The ÖVP now approved the recognition of soldiers’ agency against the fulfillment of duty prescribed by the Nazi regime. Notably, for the first time, the political process of 2009 produced a center-left coalition in the politics of memory regarding the assessment of the Wehrmacht and the service of Austrian soldiers: this coalition came from the governing parties, SPÖ and ÖVP, as well as the oppositional Green Party. This fundamental change to the official narrative, however, was hardly noticed.80 This is among the reasons why the Personenkomitee lobbied for a lasting memorial for Wehrmacht deserters at a central square in Vienna. Heldenplatz was high on the list, as memorial activists demonstrated by placing a mobile monument for deserters there in September 2009, with support of the Personenkomitee and Green politicians such as city council member David Ellensohn.81

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8 May 1945 The debate on treason versus resistance referred to individual behavior. Meanwhile, on a collective and social scale, defeat versus liberation developed into antagonistic views on the outcome of the war. Engagement with the meaning of 8 May only began in Austria in 1995, ten years later than in West Germany.82 A watershed in West Germany was the widely noted speech of German President Richard von Weizsäcker in front of the German Bundestag on 8 May 1985, in which the Christian Democrat spoke of a “day of liberation.” In Austria, however, the radical left-wing coalition Against Forgetting and Repressing (Gegen das Vergessen und Verdrängen) announced a demonstration in the commemorative year (Gedenkjahr) of 1995 at the Heroes’ Memorial of the Red Army on the Schwarzenbergplatz as a pointed provocation. The call proclaimed: “Official Austria cannot bring itself to celebrate 8 May . . . for many in Austria—veterans’ organizations, active Nazis, but also parts of the military—8 May is still a day of their own defeat. It is precisely this defeat that we want to celebrate!”83 One year later, several right-wing student fraternities (deutschnationale Burschenschaften) began commemorating 8 May by holding a public ritual on Heldenplatz in front of the Heroes’ Memorial, honoring Wehrmacht soldiers who had died in battle.84 Previously, academic fraternities organized by the “Vienna Corporation Ring” (Wiener Korporationsring, WKR) had staged their annual commemorative ritual on a different date in November and at a different location, in the University of Vienna’s assembly hall at a controversial memorial that the anti-Semitic German Student Union (Deutsche Studentenschaft) had erected in 1923. In the wake of antifascist protests in 1996, the university administration had the memorial removed, and banned the commemorative events surrounding it. At this time, the Burschenschaften gathered for commemorations at the Heroes’ Memorial on 8 May. According to police reports, no major altercations took place, although counterdemonstrations of the Austrian Students’ Association (Österreichische Hochschülerschaft) were documented.85 After the ÖVP had entered into a federal coalition with the FPÖ under Jörg Haider, this hitherto marginal engagement developed into the most important historical-political conflict of the 2000s. Two factors were decisive here: the FPÖ’s entry into government provided political influence and self-confidence to the right-wing Burschenschaften because of the ties between the two groups. The Burschenschaften attempted to exploit these circumstances in order to propagate their historical-political ideas more powerfully to the public. However, until 2002, the Burschenschaften faced no criticism, except from some minor left-wing antifascist groups. This changed in April 2002, when the second edition of the Wehrmachtsausstellung was shown in Vienna with the support of the City Council. On 13 April 2002, the Federal Ministry of the Interior allowed a

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group of neo-Nazis to protest the exhibition on Heldenplatz. Simultaneously, a counterdemonstration by antifascist groups was expelled from Heldenplatz to the Ring on the opposite side of the Heroes’ Memorial. Over the course of that day, the city witnessed neo-Nazis marching through shopping streets and praising the German Wehrmacht, while thousands of counterdemonstrators tried to break through police blockades to occupy Heldenplatz and stop the neo-Nazi rally. The right-wing Burschenschaften had announced that their commemorative service for the Wehrmacht soldiers was to be held at the Heroes’ Memorial on 8 May, three weeks later. Several left-wing groups quickly announced counterdemonstrations on Heldenplatz. To prevent clashes, police authorities declared Heldenplatz an exclusion zone for most of the day. The second important factor was the conflict between the ÖVP-FPÖ federal coalition and Vienna’s regional SPÖ government, which also spilled over into the politics of memory in public spaces. In his speech on the traditional celebration of 1 May 2002, Vienna Mayor Michael Häupl primarily attacked the “commemoration of the dead” by the Burschenschaften, expressing support for the protests and thereby considerably expanding the arena of confrontation.86 While the Social Democrats and the Green Party held a “Celebration of Democracy” on 8 May and demonstratively visited the Wehrmachtsausstellung, National Council Member Wolfgang Jung and the public ombudsman Ewald Stadler of the governing FPÖ stood up as speakers on behalf of the Burschenschaften.87 Within the Federal Army, the decision over whether the Burschenschaften could rally in front of the Heroes’ Memorial was also contested. Military Commander of Vienna Karl Semlitsch had originally revoked his permission for the Burschenschaften to lay a wreath in front of the sculpture of a soldier in the crypt, the reasoning being that this constituted a political demonstration.88 However, Federal Minister of Defense Herbert Scheibner (FPÖ) reversed this decision and allowed the commemorative ceremony to take place. In the same year and under the administration of Scheibner, the crypt was renovated entirely in keeping with the tradition of 1955. To the right of Frass’s sculpture of a soldier, a memorial plaque was added by the Federal Army for its “soldiers who had died, fallen, or been killed accidentally in service.” To emphasize the comprehensive character of commemorating Imperial and Royal Army soldiers, Wehrmacht soldiers, and Federal Army soldiers, a new and monumental inscription was affixed over the portal to the crypt, which read: “In fulfillment of their duty they left their lives.” Thus, the fulfillment of duty, regardless under which political circumstances and regardless of purpose, was proclaimed as the main virtue of the soldier. It is noteworthy that politicians of the governing coalition did not publicly intervene in the ongoing debate on the meaning of 8 May. Overall, federal politicians left the handling of the conflict to the police. Thus, the image of a heavily guarded, empty Heldenplatz may emblematically reflect the unwillingness

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Figure 8.2. View into the crypt in the right wing of the Heroes’ Memorial in Vienna with the sculpture of the recumbent soldier, March 2012. Photo by Mathias Lichtenwagner.

of the official Austrian culture of remembrance to engage in political discourse on the meaning of 8 May. The course was set for a conflict, which was to last for about ten years. While left-wing groups continued to celebrate the “Day of Liberation” in the broadest sense and to emphasize other features of the day, such as demanding a “Monument to Defeat,” the Burschenschaften continued to commemorate “our dead heroes.”89 In this context, FPÖ Chair HeinzChristian Strache, positioned himself as a steadfast right-winger against Haider in the party’s internal power struggles. Later, as the head of the FPÖ, he strategically canceled appearances to distance himself from the extreme right. The protests became noticeably more powerful following the entry of the Green Party into the Viennese city government. On 8 May 2012, the civil society coalition Set an Example Now! ( Jetzt Zeichen Setzen!)—with the support of the Viennese SPÖ and Green Party—was granted permission by the police to hold a rally after laying a wreath in the room dedicated to resistance in the left wing of the Heroes’ Memorial for the first time since the beginning of the conflict. While the Burschenschaften commemorated their dead with torches in front of the crypt, a large-scale counterdemonstration took place on the side of the resistance room. The “Day of Defeat” and the “Day of Liberation” confronted each other face to face, and Heldenplatz was divided in two by a police cordon.90 Thus, a diverse coalition of actors had emerged over the years, consisting of radical left-wing groups, student unions, victims’ and resistance

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fighters’ associations, youth organizations, intellectuals, and politicians of the Green Party and the SPÖ. This coalition had driven the conflict so public that an official narrative of 8 May was necessitated. While these two opposed memorial events were occurring in the public sphere, the first official government commemorative event for 8 May was held vis-à-vis in the Federal Chancellery. Here, Federal Chancellor Werner Faymann (SPÖ) and Vice Chancellor Michael Spindelegger (ÖVP) declared the day as a “Day of Liberation” and rejected the memorial practice of the Burschenschaften in front of the Heroes’ Memorial as an “uncritical and in part belittling” portrayal of the Second World War.91 Nevertheless, the partition of the Heldenplatz, with approximately 2,000 protesters trying to drown out the commemorative rally of the Burschenschaften, alongside several other counter-demonstrations throughout the city under the deployment of heavily equipped police forces, produced an image which obviously did not satisfy politicians on either the municipal or the federal level. They concluded that, in 2013, an intervention into all the events of 8 May was necessary to portray a more favorable image of Austria to the rest of Europe. First, the federal minister of defense instructed the Federal Army to stage a solemn all-day vigil at the Heroes’ Memorial on 8 May, thereby completely excluding the right-wing Burschenschaften. Second, following a proposal by the NGO Austrian Mauthausen Committee, the federal and city governments decided to occupy the entire Heldenplatz on 8 May. They did so by launching a huge cultural event on the site, featuring a free concert by the Wiener Symphoniker; this was intended to attract several thousand people, thereby leaving no space for other political manifestations. This Festival of Joy (Fest der Freude) can be understood as an attempt to settle and pacify 8 May through of a sort of public-private partnership. With fifteen thousand people taking part, governing politicians portrayed the event as a successful foundation for a new tradition of remembrance that stressed the importance of European integration in times of crisis.92 The official incorporation of the “Day of Liberation” into the Second Republic’s politics of memory can be seen as a result of almost twenty years of ongoing political confrontations in various overlapping arenas, whose conjunctures depended heavily on political constellations of parties and governments on both the federal and regional level. As had already happened in the case of the rehabilitation of Wehrmacht deserters, a coalition emerged in the politics of memory and was driven by controversial initiatives on both the left and right edges of the political spectrum, consisting of the Green Party, the SPÖ, and the ÖVP, of which the former two had strong connections with actors in civil society. Ultimately, this constituted a broad coalition against the FPÖ and the Burschenschaften, drawing on a heavily pro-European narrative. At the same time, the distance the governing parties took from the memorial practice of

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Figure 8.3. Festival of Joy, Heldenplatz, 8 May 2015. Photo by BKA/Andy Wenzel.

the Burschenschaften at the Heroes’ Memorial opened up the question of state memorial practice at the site of Heldenplatz and its traditions.

Memorial for the Victims of Nazi Military Justice at Ballhausplatz Since its founding in 2002, the Personenkomitee used the peripheral memorial site for executed Wehrmacht soldiers in Kagran for its annual rallies around the Austrian National Day on 26 October to demand among other things a central memorial. In 2005, the Green Party had brought this demand before the Vienna City Council, which was not approved by any other party.93 In 2010, the Green Party had the opportunity to place the memorial for deserters into the government program through its coalition offer to the SPÖ.94 The debate thus moved from federal into municipal politics. A majority vote for the memorial was certain in the municipal council. Interestingly, the ÖVP, albeit in opposition, held consensus with the proposal of the governing parties, leaving the FPÖ as the only party not in agreement. What followed was a two-year negotiation process, held mainly by nonpublic working groups from the administration of City Councilor for Cultural Affairs and Science Andreas Mailath-Pokorny (SPÖ); these negotiations took place between the two coalition partners, experts, and Wadani’s Personenkomitee dealing with the dedication of the memorial, its educational use, and location.

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In this negotiation process, the Personenkomitee, experts, and representatives of the Vienna City Council quickly reached consensus on thematic issues. The question of the memorial’s location constituted by far the most intensely discussed aspect in this public debate. Above all, the cause for disagreement was the question of whether the memorial should be erected on Heldenplatz. When it became public that Mailath-Pokorny was considering using the framework of a previously discussed recreation of the Heroes’ Memorial for the memorial, the Personenkomitee was outraged. It argued that there had to be a clear spatial division between the Heroes’ Memorial and the Deserters’ Memorial, otherwise the “national victims’ collective of the 1980s” would be reconstructed.95 Aside from the content-related aspects of this argument, it was also relevant that Heldenplatz was the property of the federal government, and therefore a further government decree would have been necessary for the creation of the memorial. In the light of this and other complications, the Personenkomitee declared its preferences for a site at Ballhausplatz, property of the Vienna City Council, as a location for the monument. Aside from the question of its location, the process of creating the memorial was broadly shaped by public consensus, compared the earlier public debates surrounding the rehabilitation of deserters or the other large memorials such as the Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial or Hrdlicka’s Memorial against War and Fascism. Only the ÖKB and FPÖ voiced the occasional fundamental objection from the political sidelines, without intending any serious mobilization against the project. The Personenkomitee, in contrast, made clear through consistent public relations efforts that there was no alternative to realizing the memorial. When Mailath-Pokorny reached a decision in favor of the location, promoted by the Personenkomitee in October 2012, the artistic competition for transforming Ballhausplatz could begin. Notably, the call directly referenced the adjacent Heldenplatz and the crypt: “A memorial at the Ballhausplatz . . . should be understood, in this location, as a counterpoint of the compliant Austrian soldiers of the Nazi Wehrmacht, who to quote from the dedication of the crypt ‘lost their lives fulfilling what they have been ordered to do.’” The call furthermore stressed that both areas (Heldenplatz and Ballhausplatz) are inextricably linked—hence, their significance for the perennial complex of themes such as war, heroism, militarism, and the commemoration of victims.96 The references to the crypt and the militaristic values symbolized there make clear that the initiators of the new memorial conceived of it as a counter-memorial in the wake of the confrontations over 8 May and the Heroes’ Memorial. The design that came the closest to the stipulations of the competition in the eyes of the jury was that of the artist Olaf Nicolai. With his proposal of a recumbent X, which was aesthetically reminiscent of a memorial plinth, Nicolai saw “the language of traditional soldiers’ memorials taken up but counteracted.” The jury preferred this design, insofar that its content “would create a

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Figure 8.4. Opening ceremony at the Memorial for the Victims of Nazi Military Justice, Ballhausplatz, 24 October 2014. Photo by Georg Hochmuth/APA via picturedesk.com.

sufficient breadth which would also be directed at a younger generation.” In the eyes of the jury, the simple inscription “All Alone” in combination with the X was a sign pointing into the future at a place in which “most demonstrations [are] registered, the place in which a civil society forms which wants to express itself.”97 This memorial concept stands in contrast to the glorification of militaristic values, and attempts to acknowledge the decision of the individual against a problematic social consensus. The jury selected a design that was meant to offer timeless moments of identification while relating in content and form to the early universal memorials for deserters of the 1980s.

The Incomplete Musealization of the Heroes’ Memorial Although the conflicts surrounding the meaning of 8 May were closely connected to Heldenplatz, a challenging engagement with the Heroes’ Memorial only came about during the escalation of the conflict in 2012. A preliminary initiative aiming to review the commemorative rituals and the official narrative was set by a coauthor of this chapter, Peter Pirker, in late 2010. In a commentary aimed at the Federal Ministry of Defense and the Office of the Federal President, having been invited by the former as a new member of its advisory board Military-Historical Monuments Commission (Militärhistorische Denkmalkommission, MHDK), Pirker levied harsh criticism against state

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commemorative practices in the crypt and the memorial room. He referred to the “problematic tradition of the crypt” but concentrated his criticism on “the very wrong and fatal signal” that was sent through the use of both memorial sites on 26 October, Austrian National Day: while thousands of visitors streamed into the crypt, with Federal Army personnel and the military vicariate standing by to answer questions, the memorial room remained locked and unaccounted for. Pirker also described as shameful the fact that the Republic commemorated the fallen soldiers of the world wars by name, but the memorial room in contrast did not even mention to whom the nameless “freedom fighters” for Austria actually referred.98 Within two weeks, this resulted in an inspection by representatives of the Burghauptmannschaft Österreich, the office responsible for constructional questions in historical buildings of the Republic of Austria; the military vicariate, which is in charge of content-related administration of the crypt; the Office of the Federal President; and the MHDK. Over the following months, constructive measures were discussed to ensure the future accessibility of the memorial room. The MHDK recommended a “renovation wherever applicable of the memorial room and the ensuring of its public accessibility” and that this decision be taken up on the highest political levels “to ensure the visibility of an appropriate meaning also in the external impact on the population.”99 A brochure with questionable historical representations of the site was also to be revised and reprinted. However, no concrete measures were taken, and nothing tangible occurred on the political level. The official brochure for the crypt could still maintain that the Austrian soldiers of both world wars had, without distinction, “given their lives for Austria.”100 The memorial room remained closed to the public on Austrian National Day in 2011 and no changes were made in the crypt’s rituals. The conflicts surrounding Heldenplatz received another historical-political layer of meaning when the WKR fraternities decided to hold their controversial annual ball in the Hofburg on 27 January 2012: this date also fell on International Holocaust Remembrance Day. That same evening, the association Jetzt Zeichen Setzen! conducted the first public commemoration in decades in front of the Burgtor’s memorial room, a room that was dedicated not to the victims of the Holocaust per se but rather to patriotic resistance. Because of its proximity the Burschenschaften ball, it was a more appropriate rallying point for Jetzt Zeichen Setzen! than for the more distant Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial. As a result of this occasion, the need to transform the memorial room and the crypt became palpable to a range of actors throughout civil society. Since no momentum regarding a transformation was evident, Pirker repeated his criticism in the public sphere, claiming that the crypt allowed “the heads of the Republic, the Federal Army, the veterans’ organizations, the Burschenschaften right through to the neo-Nazis . . . to feel equally at home.”101

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Perhaps the most decisive move toward a transformation of the Heroes’ Memorial was taken a few weeks later by National Council Member Harald Walser (Green Party), who took a tour of the Heroes’ Memorial. Walser was especially interested in the books of the dead for the fallen soldiers of the world wars on display in the crypt. He had the idea of looking up the name of a known war criminal, SS member Josef Vallaster—which he found. Thus, the Green Party was able to reiterate its previous demand that the crypt be redesigned, to both the National Council and the public, with potentially scandalous effects. On 8 May, important mnemonic actors such as the organization Jewish Community Vienna, victims’ associations, and human rights organizations criticized the existing design and use of the crypt.102 Federal Minister of Defense Norbert Darabos (SPÖ) came under so much pressure that he suspended the entire commemorative process at the Burgtor for the time being.103 Under the watch of the media, he struck Vallaster’s name from the books of the dead and ordered the clearing of the crypt. In the course of his inspection, Darabos finally ordered the excavation of the sculpture of a soldier in order to investigate the periodically resurfacing claims of a hidden Nazi message—one that was indeed found. In the wake of the Burschenschaften ceremonies and the discovery of Vallaster’s name, the unearthing of Frass’s Nazi message signaled the final devaluation of the crypt for future state military rituals of commemoration. Along with its closure, Darabos also ordered research into the Heroes’ Memorial as part of a historical study.104 In May 2013, he further announced the appointment of an international academic advisory board, which was to suggest future usages of the Heroes’ Memorial. In September 2013, the preliminary considerations of notable international scholars including Aleida Assmann, Jörg Echternkamp, and Jay Winter, as well as Austrian historians such as Heidemarie Uhl, Dieter Binder, and Oliver Rathkolb, were presented. The results were not surprising: the experts suggested musealizing the “Heroes’ Memorial,” to allow the inventory “to speak as a site of memory for the timestamps 1934 (crypt, hall of honor) and 1965 (memorial room for the Austrian resistance)” and to make visible “the fault lines of Austrian history.” As a replacement for the crypt, the advisory board recommended creating a new memorial for the soldiers and members of the executive of the Second Republic who had died in the line of duty next to the Burgtor.105 Following publication of the report, the court of the Federal Chancellery and the ministries of economy and finance needed to react, yet at first nothing happened.106 One reason for the standstill was the amalgamation of the transformation plans with another historical-political project, which had itself failed numerous times because of the competition between the political parties: the creation of a House of the History of Austria (Haus der Geschichte Österreich) in parts of the Hofburg. The grand project was to be realized by

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November 2018, the one hundredth anniversary of the founding of the First Republic. The recalled former Federal Minister of Arts and Culture Josef Ostermeyer handed over the preparations to the historian Oliver Rathkolb, who also saw the project as part of the recoding of Heldenplatz. Most recently, the museum project was drastically downsized, meaning that the incorporation of the spaces from the Heroes’ Memorial in the House of the History of Austria is once more in question.107 In any case, the federal government buried the independent project for the recreation of the Burgtor in March 2015. What remained were two ad hoc measures that went largely unnoticed by the public and brought to an end the Federal Army’s sixty-year use of the Heroes’ Memorial by the Federal Army almost to the day: the deconsecration of the crypt and the removal of the memorial plaque for the soldiers who fell in service for the Second Republic from the inner chamber of the crypt to the exterior façade, where since 2015—presumably provisionally—the official wreath-laying ceremonies of the heads of the state have been taking place.108 Under current political conditions, the Heroes’ Memorial has dried up as a site of official memory. Most recently, Heidemarie Uhl lamented: “Nobody feels responsible for it anymore—and therefore it appears to have gone to sleep.”109 Whether this is a bad thing is certainly open to debate. The Burgtor is once again under the sole administration of the Burghauptmannschaft Österreich, which belongs to what is now officially called the Federal Ministry of Digital and Economic Affairs. That is not the worst news, as this was the exact state of affairs in the First Republic until 1933, before military heroism returned to the city center. The intervening time has opened up the space for new uses. In 2015, the Austrian Academy of Sciences (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, ÖAW) and the Department of History at the University of Graz, under the direction of Heidemarie Uhl and Dieter Binder, presented the exhibition 41 Days: The End of the War in 1945—The Consolidation of Violence (41 Tage: Kriegsende 1945—Verdichtung der Gewalt) around the Heroes’ Memorial and in the crypt. Thereby, a range of previously repressed aspects of political violence was made visible at this site, including revealing various perpetrators. On 9 November 2016, another temporary exhibition initiated by the ÖAW was presented here, entitled The Last Places before Deportation (Letzte Orte vor der Deportation), covering the persecution of Vienna’s Jews. Thus, a site of memory has emerged through social engagement, convoluted political paths in an incomplete provisional arrangement, and a situation that only a few years ago few would have thought possible: the crypt would tell the Viennese preamble to the Shoah. In December 2017, the conservative Austrian People’s Party built a coalition government with the right-wing Freedom Party of Austria. As during the first ÖVP-FPÖ coalition, the FPÖ is in charge of the Federal Ministry of Defense. At the same time, members of the Burschenschaften entered powerful positions

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within the administration, while a scandal surrounding anti-Semitism within the Burschenschaften put the party on the defensive.110 It remains to be seen which course the various projects will take of reshaping Heldenplatz under the new federal administration.

Heldenplatz and Ballhausplatz: Memorial Landscapes of Conflicting Visions of War Originally, the memorial landscape of Heldenplatz symbolized the power of the military as the basis of imperial rule, with obedience, the fulfillment of duty, and the willingness to sacrifice held as the virtues that made honorable citizens of the Habsburg Monarchy’s subjects. Military defeat, the inauguration of the first postwar democracy, and the Social Democrats as a new and powerful social force challenged the authoritarian mind-set of the military profoundly. Attempts of right-wing veterans’ associations and the military to restore reputation and determine the official memory narrative failed as long as social democracy ruled Vienna. Only after the violent abolishment of the first democracy did an opportunity present itself to establish the Heroes’ Memorial in the heart of the city and to revive pre-democratic military values for the present and future by posing them as universal or eternal values. Sectional narratives, which ran against these values, were placed under damnatio memoriae. Interestingly enough, the basic authoritarian texture of the Heroes’ Memorial remained intact through fascist, NS, and postwar democratic rule, and was even reinforced in 2002 when the Federal Army added the unifying vision “In fulfillment of their duty they left their lives.” However, post-fascist and post-NS democratic rule had to govern sectional and antagonistic narratives in the field of war memory in a more integrative way than during the First Republic. While the initiative to reappropriate the Heroes’ Memorial for commemoration and as a political stage derived from the same civil society actors as in the First Republic, namely the veterans’ organizations and the Catholic Church, the recovery of full sovereignty and the reestablishment of a Federal Army provided the political framework for the comeback of state politics in 1955—albeit, in the beginning, with only the conservative half of the federal coalition government of ÖVP and SPÖ. Historical-political conflicts between the ruling parties, as well as heavily antagonistic sectional narratives of antifascist resistance versus soldierly fulfillment of duty, led to cabinet decisions to extend the texture of the Heroes’ Memorial in 1959 and 1965. For more than twenty years, the official politics of remembrance were designed to reinforce both pillars of war memory henceforth represented in the two wings of the Burgtor in order to frame their variety within a patriotic narrative and to enforce their “peaceful” coexistence.

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The suppression of elements endangering this memory regime, such as the persecution of the Jews and the criminal warfare of the Wehrmacht, became the springboard for external and internal criticism of how Austria dealt with its Nazi past. However, even the subsequent Waldheim affair did not result in a reshaping of the Heroes’ Memorial, although no other memorial better symbolized the prevalent order of his personal as well as the official war narrative. We have argued that the origins and driving forces of the recent reconfiguration of Heldenplatz from heroic military toward post-heroic civic memory are to be found in two partly overlapping social engagements. First, the peace movement and antimilitaristic action raised the demand to rehabilitate the deserters of the Wehrmacht. Second, controversial civil engagement on the meaning of 8 May required municipal and federal governments to take a position. In both cases, initially marginal initiatives, emerging on very different tracks but in the same changing political frameworks, developed into social forces that ultimately set the scene for the first transformations of the symbolic order of Heldenplatz in fifty years. The creation of the Deserters’ Memorial at the Ballhausplatz can be regarded as the outcome of a clear-cut political campaign confined to pointing to NS persecution of Wehrmacht deserters and achieving their legal and social rehabilitation. A comparatively small group of actors with a single issue—in an intersection of party politics, scholarship, and civil society activism—managed to generate a comparatively strong public debate marked by a comparatively low level of conflict and, after more than ten years of engagement, to effect a change in the official narrative on the Second World War service of Austrian soldiers on the levels of both law and symbolism. The incomplete musealization of the Heroes’ Memorial tells a different story. After decades of turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to criticism, the Federal Ministry of Defense in 2012 decided to take action. The issue was forced onto the political agenda through effective public scandalization by the Green Party, the increased protests against commemorations by right-wing fraternities in front of the Heroes’ Memorial on 8 May, and the decisions of both the city and the federal government to adopt 8 May as an official day of remembrance and to support the Festival of Joy at Heldenplatz promoted by civil society actors such as the Austrian Mauthausen Committee. It is worth mentioning that Darabos already had a record of changing politics of remembrance in the military. Being a Social Democrat, a historian by training, and the first federal minister of defense who had carried out alternative civil service, he certainly demonstrated more sensitivity for the issue than his predecessors had. However, the setup of the intended process of transformation was rather exclusively bound to experts, with little public engagement, and, by contrast to the process of the creation of the Deserters’ Memorial, found little advocacy in civil society. The ÖKB, for decades the most important civil society actor for Second World

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War commemoration, has vanished almost completely from debates on Second World War memorialization. Within party politics, the FPÖ abandoned this field of the politics of history. With the generational change that has occurred, the decline of the strong narrative of fulfillment of duty has followed the disappearance of its framework for social transmission and loss of political weight. Thus, historians, memory experts, and activists have replaced the “authentic” actors of Second World War memory in shaping political arenas such as Heldenplatz. For them, ironically, returning to Carl Schorske, the high potential for modernization in the politics of remembrance—the erection of the Deserters’ Memorial, the winding up of the Heroes’ Memorial, and the inception of a Festival of Joy on 8 May almost all in one go—resulted from the long-lasting backwardness of Austrian politics of remembrance, which may or may not be addressed in the House of the History of Austria in 2018. Whether the public will tolerate more interventions is questionable. Recently proposed ideas about a renaming of Heldenplatz to Platz der Demokratie or Platz der Republik has already been met with rather strong disapprovals, especially on social media. Living in turbulent times, we watch not only the re-empowerment of the military in politics but also the emergence of a new complexity of national narratives running contrary to the post-heroic tendency of the early twenty-first century to “Europeanize” collective memories. Peter Pirker is Research Associate at the Department of Government at the University of Vienna. He researches National Socialist rule in Austria and the Alps-Adriatic region, transnational resistance, intelligence and exile during the Second World War, and the politics of history. His publications include four monographs, including Subversion deutscher Herrschaft: Der britische Kriegsgeheimdienst SOE und Österreich (2012); seven (co)edited books, including Wehrmachtsjustiz: Kontext, Praxis, Nachwirkungen (2011); and a digital map on the politics of remembrance in Vienna (www.porem.wien). Currently, he is working on a book about the Operation Greenup of the Office of Strategic Services and the local and transnational memories associated with it. Magnus Koch is Researcher and Curator at the Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt Foundation in Hamburg. As a freelance historian, he has recently worked on several exhibition and research projects about the history of the Second World War. At the University of Vienna, he was a member of a research team working on the politics of remembrance in Vienna during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. His publications include the monograph Fahnenfluchten: Deserteure der Wehrmacht im Zweiten Weltkrieg: Lebenswege und Entscheidungen (2008) and the coedited volume “Rücksichten auf den Einzelnen haben zurückzutreten”: Hamburg und die Wehrmachtjustiz im Zweiten Weltkrieg (forthcoming).

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Johannes Kramer is a predoctoral fellow in the Department of Contemporary History at the University of Vienna. He was previously, among others things, employed as a researcher for the Vienna Science and Technology Fund project “Politics of Remembrance and the Transition of Public Spaces: A Political and Social Analysis of Vienna” in the Department of Government at the University of Vienna. In the context of his PhD project, he is currently working on German-speaking minorities in the Wehrmacht with an emphasis on South Tyroleans in the Brandenburg Division during and after the Second World War.

Notes This chapter is an outcome of the research project “Politics of Remembrance and the Transition of Public Spaces” funded by the Vienna Science and Technology Fund and the National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism. 1. For the relation of Austrian and German memory of NS crimes and perpetration, see also Sarah Kleinmann, this volume. 2. Siegfried Mattl, “Vienna since World War II,” in Composing Urban History and the Constitution of Civic Identities, ed. John Czaplicka and Blair A. Ruble (Baltimore, 2003), 248. 3. See, e.g., Barbara Feller, “Ein Ort patriotischen Gedenkens: Das österreichische Heldendenkmal im Burgtor in Wien,” in Kunst und Diktatur: Architektur, Bildhauerei und Malerei in Österreich, Deutschland, Italien und der Sowjetunion 1922–1956, ed. Jan Tabor (Baden, 1994), 142–47; Ernst Hanisch, “Wien: Heldenplatz,” Transit 15 (1998): 122–40; Herbert Haupt, “Heldenplatz: A Chapter of European History in the Very Heart of Vienna,” in Vienna Heldenplatz Myths and Masses, ed. Alisa Douer (Vienna, 2000) 23–32; Peter Stachel, Mythos Heldenplatz (Vienna, 2002); Jörg Echternkamp, “Der Wiener Heldenplatz als Erinnerungslandschaft: Das ‘Heldendenkmal’ im Wandel des staatspolitischen Gefallenengedenkens der Zweiten Republik,” in “Verliehen für die Flucht vor den Fahnen”: Das Denkmal für die Verfolgten der NS-Militärjustiz in Wien, ed. Juliane Alton, Thomas Geldmacher, Magnus Koch, and Hannes Metzler (Göttingen, 2016), 84–103; Heidemarie Uhl, “Denkmäler als Medien gesellschaftlicher Erinnerung: Die Denkmallandschaft der Zweiten Republik und die Transformationen des österreichischen Gedächtnisses,” in Nationen und ihre Selbstbilder: Postdiktatorische Gesellschaften in Europa, ed. Regina Fritz, Carola Sachse, and Edgar Wolfrum (Göttingen, 2008), 62–89. 4. Timothy G. Ashplant, Graham Dawson and Michael Roper, “The Politics of War Memory and Commemoration,” in The Politics of War Memory and Commemoration, ed. Timothy G. Ashplant, Graham Dawson, and Michael Roper (London 2000), 3–85. 5. Jay Winter, “Sites of Memory and the Shadow of War,” in A Companion to Cultural Memory Studies, ed. Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning (Berlin, 2010), 63. 6. Ashplant et al., “The Politics of War Memory,” 20. 7. Winter, “Sites of Memory,” 70. For other memorialization processes, see also, for the German context since 1945, Thomas Thiemeyer, this volume; for the specific case study of the Hürtgenwald region, Karola Fings, this volume; and for the case of trying to make the Normandy region a UNESCO World Heritage site, Jörg Echternkamp, this volume.

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8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

Carl Schorske, Wien: Geist und Gesellschaft im Fin de Siécle (Frankfurt, 1982), 25. Feller, “Ein Ort,” 142. Hanisch, “Wien,” 127. Feller, “Ein Ort,” 142. All translations are our own unless otherwise indicated. Haupt, “Heldenplatz,” 26. Hanisch, “Wien,” 137. Wolfgang Maderthaner, “Austro-Marxism: Mass Culture and Anticipatory Socialism,” Austrian Studies 14 (2006): 24. Catherine Edgecombe and Maureen Healy, “Competing Interpretations of Sacrifice in the Postwar Austrian Republic,” in Sacrifice and Rebirth: The Legacy of the Last Habsburg War, ed. Mark Cornwall and John Paul Newman (New York, 2016), 26–27. Vereinigung zur Errichtung eines österreichischen Heldendenkmales, Gedenkschrift anläßlich der Weihe des österreichischen Heldendenkmales am 9. September 1934 (Wien, 1934), 75. Ibid., 51. Paul Connerton, “Seven Types of Forgetting,” Memory Studies 1, no. 1 (2008), 60–61. Heinz Arnberger, Herbert Exenberger, and Claudia Kuretsidis-Haider, “Gedenken und Mahnen in Wien,” in Gedenken und Mahnen in Wien 1934–1945, ed. Herbert Exenberger, Heinz Arnberger, and Claudia Kuretsidis-Haider (Vienna, 1998), 13. Völkischer Beobachter, 25 December 1938, 6. Vereinigung, Gedenkschrift, 49. Ibid., 68–69. Thomas R. Grischany, Der Ostmark treue Alpensöhne: Die Integration der Österreicher in die großdeutsche Wehrmacht, 1938–45 (Göttingen, 2015), 59. Karl Pawek, Sieghafte deutsche Waffen: Festschrift zur Wehrmachtsausstellung 1940 am Heldenplatz in Wien (Vienna, 1940); Wehrkreiskommando 17, Ausstellung “Unser Heer” (Vienna, 1944). See, e.g., Neues Wiener Tagblatt, 14 March 1939, 4; Wiener Montagblatt, 16 March 1942, 2. Stachel, Mythos Heldenplatz, 33. See, e.g., Das Kleine Blatt, 17 March 1944, 3; Kleines Wiener Tagblatt, 29 September 1942, 3. Echternkamp, “Der Wiener Heldenplatz,” 88. Neues Wiener Tagblatt, 13 March 1945, 2. Thomas Geldmacher, “Auf Nimmerwiedersehen! Fahnenflucht, unerlaubte Entfernung und das Problem, die Tatbestände auseinanderzuhalten,” in Opfer der NS-Militärjustiz: Urteilspraxis—Strafvollzug—Entschädigungspolitik in Österreich, ed. Walter Manoschek (Vienna, 2003), 188. Grischany, Der Ostmark treue Alpensöhne, 20. Friedl Fürnberg, Österreichische Freiheitsbataillone—Österreichische Nation (Vienna, 1975), 29. Arbeiter-Zeitung, 3 November 1945, 3. See, e.g., Heidemarie Uhl, “Das ‘erste Opfer’: Der österreichische Opfermythos und seine Transformationen in der Zweiten Republik,” Österreichische Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft 30 (2001): 21; for the international context, see Peter Pirker, “British Subversive Politics towards Austria and Partisan Resistance in the Austrian-Slovene Borderland, 1938–45,” Journal of Contemporary History 52, no. 2 (2017): 319–51.

15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34.

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35. Heidrun-Ulrike Wenzel, “‘Niemals vergessen!’ Die antifaschistische Ausstellung im Wiener Künstlerhaus 1946” (MA thesis, University of Vienna, 2012), 83–84. 36. See annual reports of the Arbeiter-Zeitung online archive at http://www.arbeiter-zei tung.at. 37. Matthew Paul Berg, “Reinventing ‘Red Vienna’ after 1945: Habitus, Patronage, and the Foundations of Municipal Social Democratic Dominance,” Journal of Modern History 86, no. 3 (2014): 607. 38. Steven R. Welch, “Commemorating ‘Heroes of a Special Kind’: Deserter Monuments in Germany,” Journal of Contemporary History 47, no. 2 (2012): 372–73. 39. Arbeiter-Zeitung, 3 November 1954, 3; Austrian National Council, Minutes of the 48th session of the National Council, 3 November 1954, Speech of Ernst Fischer. 40. Richard Hufschmied, “Der 20. Juli 1944 in Wien und Fallbeispiele der Widerstandsrezeption in der Zweiten Republik,” in Zeitenwende 1944, ed. Heeresgeschichtliches Museum Wien (Vienna, 2015), 228–29. 41. Austrian Press Agency, 6 November 1955. 42. Peter Barthou, Der “Obersten-paragraph”: Der Umgang mit Obersten und Generalen der Wehrmacht im Österreichischen Bundesheeer (Vienna, 2008), 187–88. 43. Arbeiter-Zeitung, 3 November 1955, 2. 44. Austrian Press Agency, 6 November 1955. 45. See, e.g., Grischany, Der Ostmark treue Alpensöhne, 278; Uhl, “Das ‘erste Opfer’,” 19–20. 46. Michael Paul Berg, “Challenging Political Culture in Postwar Austria: Veterans’ Associations, Identity, and the Problem of Contemporary History,” Central European History 30, no. 4 (1997): 518; Cornelius Lehnguth, Waldheim und die Folgen: Der parteipolitische Umgang mit dem Nationalsozialismus in Österreich (Frankfurt, 2013), 64–65. 47. See, e.g., Walter Hacker, ed., Warnung an Österreich: Neonazismus: Die Vergangenheit bedroht die Zukunft (Vienna, 1966), 85–89. 48. Österreichisches Staatsarchiv (ÖSTA), Archiv der Republik (AdR), Minutes of the Council of Ministers, 25 February 1958. See Uhl, “Denkmäler,” 76–78. 49. Der Neue Mahnruf, 11 (1958) 3, 1. 50. ÖSTA, AdR, Protokolle des Ministerrats, Minutes of the Council of Ministers, 9 November 1959. 51. Arbeiter-Zeitung, 17 July 1959, 1. 52. Verein für die Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung, Papers of Walter Hacker, Österreichische Widerstandsbewegung, Minutes of the presidium meeting, 24 October 1962. 53. Quoted in Rafael Kropuinigg, Eine österreichische Affäre: Der Fall Borodajkewicz (Vienna, 2015), 41. 54. Austrian Press Agency, 3 February 1965. 55. On the notion of pillars of memory, see Jan Kubik and Michael Bernhard, “A Theory of Politics of Memory,” in Twenty Years after Communism: The Politics of Memory and Commemoration, ed. Jan Kubik and Michael Bernhard (Oxford, 2014), 13. 56. See Brigitte Bailer Winfried Garscha, and Wolfgang Neugebauer, “Herbert Steiner und die Gründung des DÖW,” in Opferschicksale: Widerstand und Verfolgung im Nationalsozialismus, ed. Christine Schindler (Vienna, 2013), 55. 57. Connerton, “Seven Types of Forgetting,” 61. 58. Maria Wirth, Christian Broda: Eine politische Biographie (Göttingen, 2011), 301.

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59. See Margit Reiter, “Bruno Kreisky—Linker, Jude und Österreicher. Konfliktzonen und Ambivalenzen jüdischer Identität in Österreich nach 1945,” Zeitgeschichte 37, no. 1 (2010): 21–40. 60. Mitteilungsblatt Kameradschaft Heldendenkmal, June 1974, 4; Arbeiter-Zeitung, 8 September 1974. 61. See Lehnguth, Waldheim und die Folgen, 89–90. 62. Josef Dvorak, “Von Krucken-, Haken- und anderen Kreuzen,” Forum 3–4 (1988), 26; Profil, 1 February 1988, 32. 63. Profil, 4 April 1994, 31. 64. A first exhibition was inaugurated in 1995; see the catalog, Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung, ed., Vernichtungskrieg: Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941 bis—1944 (Hamburg, 1995). A second version was on display from 2001 to 2004; see the catalog, Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung, ed., Verbrechen der Wehrmacht: Dimensionen des Vernichtungskrieges 1941–1944 (Hamburg, 2002). 65. Welch, “Commemorating ‘Heroes of a Special Kind.’” 66. Stadtarchiv Kassel, Stadtverordneten Fraktion Die Grünen, Vorlage X/121, 1 September 1981. 67. Maria Fritsche, Entziehungen: Österreichische Deserteure und Selbstverstümmler in der Deutschen Wehrmacht (Vienna, 2004). 68. See e.g. Zivildienst, March 1980, 17; Gewaltfreier Widerstand, 2 (1984), 3–6 and 27–29. 69. Gewaltfreier Widerstand, 2, 1986, 12–13. 70. Zeitschrift für Antimilitarismus, 7, 1989, 5–6. 71. TATblatt, 14 November 1989, 1–2. 72. Geisterbahn: Grüne Alternative Zeitung. January 1990; see also Neue Kronen Zeitung, 5 January 1990, 2. 73. Karl Semlitsch, “‘. . . einen selbstständigen Kämpfer für die Demokratie formen,’” in 30 Jahre Milizverband Österreich: Beiträge zu einem Kulturwandel in der Landesverteidigung, ed. Peter Pirker (Linz 2011), 157–59 (this and the previous sentence). 74. Herbert Exenberger, Heinz Riedel, and Maria Fritsche, Militärschießplatz Kagran (Vienna: DÖW, 2003), 8–9. 75. Zeitschrift für Antimilitarismus 6 (1995), 6. 76. Hannes Metzler, Ehrlos für immer? Die Rehabilitierung der Wehrmachtsdeserteure in Deutschland und Österreich (Vienna, 2007), 63. 77. Ibid., 66. 78. Manoschek, Opfer der NS-Militärjustiz; Metzler, Ehrlos für immer? 96. 79. See Peter Pirker and Johannes Kramer, “From Traitors to Role Models? Rehabilitation and Memorialization of Wehrmacht Deserters in Austria,” in Traitors, Collaborators and Deserters in Contemporary European Politics of Memory: Formulas of Betrayal, ed. Eleonora Narvselius and Gelinada Grinchenko (London, 2018), 74–75. 80. Hannes Metzler, “Nicht länger ehrlos: Die Rehabilitierung der Wehrmachtsdeserteure in Österreich,” in Wehrmachtsjustiz: Kontext, Praxis, Nachwirkungen, ed. Peter Pirker and Florian Wenninger (Vienna, 2011), 290. 81. AK Denkmalpflege, “Bericht inkl. Fotos von der Aufstellung am Heldenplatz,” 11 September 2009, http://denkmalpflege.blogsport.de/denkmal/bericht-inkl-fotosvon-der-aufstellung-am-heldenplatz-11909. 82. On the neglect of 8 May, see Gerhard Botz, “Die Bedeutung des 8. Mai für die Entwicklung Österreichs,” in Kapitulation und Befreiung: Das Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs in Europa, ed. Fritz Petrig (Münster, 1997), 199–200.

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83. TATblatt, 26 April 1995, 34. 84. Die Presse, 3 May 2002, 3; Bernhard Weidinger, “Im nationalen Abwehrkampf der Grenzlanddeutschen”: Akademische Burschenschaften und Politik in Österreich nach 1945 (Vienna, 2015), 373. 85. Archiv der Sozialen Bewegungen, Austrian National Union of Students, Call for commemorative rally on 8 May 1998. 86. Die Presse, 3 May 2002, 3. 87. Kurier, 9 May 2002, 3. 88. Kurier, 7 May 2002, 3. 89. Kurier, 9 May 2011, 4; Weidinger, Im nationalen Abwehrkampf, 374. 90. Salzburger Nachrichten, 9 May 2011, 11. 91. Wiener Zeitung, 9 May 2012, 12. 92. City of Vienna, Remembrance for the Future: Vienna’s Culture of Remembrance (Vienna, 2015), 10. 93. Vienna Regional Assembly, Minutes of the 31st Meeting, 29 June 2005, 24. 94. Stadt Wien, Gemeinsame Wege für Wien: Das rot-grüne Regierungsübereinkommen 2010, 52. 95. Austrian Press Agency, 4 July 2012. 96. Kunst im öffentlichen Raum (KÖR), Briefing for A1-Stage. Invited Competition for the Artistic Realization of a Proposal for a “Memorial for the Victims of Nazi Military Law” at 1010 Vienna, Ballhausplatz, 2013, 19 (this and the previous quotation). 97. KÖR, Minutes of the competition “Denkmal für die Verfolgten der NS-Militärjusitz,” 27 June 2013, 12 (this and the previous quotations). 98. MHDK, Minutes of the 16th Meeting, 26 January 2011. 99. Ibid. 100. Republik Österreich, Ministerium für Landesverteidigung und Sport, Das Östereichische Heldendenkmal (Vienna, 2011). 101. Der Standard, 3 February 2012, 35. 102. “Tag der Befreiung, 8.5.2012,” Jetzt Zeichen setzen, accessed 21 August 2018, http:// www.jetztzeichensetzen.at/?page_id=379. 103. Austrian National Council, Minutes of the 155th Meeting, 15 May 2012. 104. At the time of finishing of this chapter, findings were not yet available. 105. Internationaler wissenschaftlicher Beirat, “Ergebnisprotokoll der Workshops vom 10.-11.7.2014 und vom 4.-5.9.2014,” accessed 21 August 2018, http://www.oeaw .ac.at/fileadmin/Institute/IKT/PDF/OEHDM_Ergebnisprotokoll_wissenschaft licher_Beirat.pdf. 106. MHDK, Minutes of the 22nd Meeting, 19 November 2014. 107. Der Standard, 25 October 2016, 2. 108. MHDK, Supplement to the agenda of the 24th Meeting, Information S9200/28-S IV/2015, 25 November 2015. 109. Der Standard, 25 October 2016, 2. 110. Falter, 24 January 2018, 13.

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Bibliography Arnberger, Heinz, Herbert Exenberger, and Claudia Kuretsidis-Haider. “Gedenken und Mahnen in Wien.” In Gedenken und Mahnen in Wien 1934–1945: Gedenkstätten zu Widerstand und Verfolgung, Exil, Befreiung—Eine Dokumentation, edited by Herbert Exenberger, Heinz Arnberger, and Claudia Kuretsidis-Haider, 11–28. Vienna: DÖW, 1998. Ashplant, Timothy G., Graham Dawson, and Michael Roper. “The Politics of War Memory and Commemoration.” In The Politics of War Memory and Commemoration, edited by Timothy G. Ashplant, Graham Dawson, and Michael Roper, 3–86. London, 2000. Bailer, Brigitte, Winfried Garscha, and Wolfgang Neugebauer. “Herbert Steiner und die Gründung des DÖW.” In Opferschicksale: Widerstand und Verfolgung im Nationalsozialismus, edited by Christine Schindler, 43–62. Vienna: DÖW, 2013. Barthou, Peter. Der “Obersten-paragraph”: Der Umgang mit Obersten und Generalen der Wehrmacht im Österreichischen Bundesheer. Vienna, 2008. Berg, Matthew Paul. “Challenging Political Culture in Postwar Austria: Veterans’ Associations, Identity, and the Problem of Contemporary History.” Central European History 30, no. 4 (1997): 513–44. ———. “Reinventing ‘Red Vienna’ after 1945: Habitus, Patronage, and the Foundations of Municipal Social Democratic Dominance.” Journal of Modern History 86, no. 3 (2014): 603–32. Botz, Gerhard. “Die Bedeutung des 8. Mai für die Entwicklung Österreichs.” In Kapitulation und Befreiung: Das Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs in Europa, edited by Fritz Petrick, 199–219. Münster, 1997. City of Vienna. Remembrance for the Future: Vienna’s Culture of Remembrance. Vienna, 2015. Connerton, Paul. “Seven Types of Forgetting.” Memory Studies 1, no. 1 (2008): 59–71. Dvorak, Josef. “Von Krucken-, Haken- und anderen Kreuzen.” Forum 3–4 (1988): 22–29. Echternkamp, Jörg. “Der Wiener Heldenplatz als Erinnerungslandschaft: Das ‘Heldendenkmal’ im Wandel des staatspolitischen Gefallenengedenkens der Zweiten Republik.” In “Verliehen für die Flucht vor den Fahnen”: Das Denkmal für die Verfolgten der NS-Militärjustiz in Wien, edited by Juliane Alton, Thomas Geldmacher, Magnus Koch, and Hannes Metzler, 84–103. Göttingen, 2016. Edgecombe, Catherine, and Maureen Healy. “Competing Interpretations of Sacrifice in the Postwar Austrian Republic.” In Sacrifice and Rebirth: The Legacy of the Last Habsburg War, edited by Mark Cornwall and John Paul Newman, 15–34. New York, 2016. Exenberger, Herbert, Heinz Riedel, and Maria Fritsche, Militärschießplatz Kagran. Vienna: DÖW, 2003. Feller, Barbara. “Ein Ort patriotischen Gedenkens: Das österreichische Heldendenkmal im Burgtor in Wien.” In Kunst und Diktatur: Architektur, Bildhauerei und Malerei in Österreich, Deutschland, Italien und der Sowjetunion 1922–1956, edited by Jan Tabor, 142–47. Baden, 1994. Fritsche, Maria. Entziehungen: Österreichische Deserteure und Selbstverstümmler in der Deutschen Wehrmacht. Vienna, 2004. Fürnberg, Friedl. Österreichische Freiheitsbataillone—Österreichische Nation. Vienna, 1975. Geldmacher, Thomas. “Auf Nimmerwiedersehen! Fahnenflucht, unerlaubte Entfernung und das Problem, die Tatbestände auseinanderzuhalten.” In Manoschek, Opfer der NS-Militärjustiz, 133–94.

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Grischany, Thomas R. Der Ostmark treue Alpensöhne: Die Integration der Österreicher in die großdeutsche Wehrmacht, 1938–45. Göttingen, 2015. Hacker, Walter, ed., Warnung an Österreich: Neonazismus—Die Vergangenheit bedroht die Zukunft. Vienna, 1966. Hanisch, Ernst. “Wien: Heldenplatz.” Transit 15 (1998): 122–40. Haupt, Herbert. “Heldenplatz: A Chapter of European History in the Very Heart of Vienna.” In Vienna Heldenplatz: Myths and Masses, edited by Alisa Douer, 23–32. Vienna, 2000. Hufschmied, Richard. “Der 20. Juli 1944 in Wien und Fallbeispiele der Widerstandsrezeption in der Zweiten Republik.” In Zeitenwende 1944, edited by Heeresgeschichtliches Museum Wien, 213–36. Vienna, 2015. Kropuinigg, Rafael. Eine österreichische Affäre: Der Fall Borodajkewicz. Vienna, 2015. Kubik, Jan, and Michael Bernhard. “A Theory of Politics of Memory.” In Twenty Years after Communism: The Politics of Memory and Commemoration, edited by Jan Kubik and Michael Bernhard, 7–34. Oxford, 2014. Lehnguth, Cornelius. Waldheim und die Folgen: Der parteipolitische Umgang mit dem Nationalsozialismus in Österreich. Frankfurt, 2013. Maderthaner, Wolfgang. “Austro-Marxism: Mass Culture and Anticipatory Socialism.” Austrian Studies 14 (2006): 21–36. Manoschek, Walter, ed. Opfer der NS-Militärjustiz: Urteilspraxis—Strafvollzug—Entschädigungspolitik in Österreich. Vienna, 2003. Mattl, Siegfried. “Vienna since World War II.” In Composing Urban History and the Constitution of Civic Identities, edited by John Czaplicka and Blair A. Ruble, 242–62. Baltimore, 2003. Metzler, Hannes. Ehrlos für immer? Die Rehabilitierung der Wehrmachtsdeserteure in Deutschland und Österreich. Vienna, 2007. ———. “Nicht länger ehrlos: Die Rehabilitierung der Wehrmachtsdeserteure in Österreich.” In Wehrmachtsjustiz: Kontext, Praxis, Nachwirkungen, edited by Peter Pirker and Florian Wenninger, 251–69. Vienna, 2011. Pawek, Karl. Sieghafte deutsche Waffen: Festschrift zur Wehrmachtsausstellung 1940 am Heldenplatz in Wien. Vienna, 1940. Pirker, Peter. “British Subversive Politics towards Austria and Partisan Resistance in the Austrian-Slovene Borderland, 1938–45.” Journal of Contemporary History 52, no. 2 (2017): 319–51. Pirker, Peter, and Johannes Kramer. “From Traitors to Role Models? Rehabilitation and Memorialization of Wehrmacht Deserters in Austria.” In Traitors, Collaborators and Deserters in Contemporary European Politics of Memory: Formulas of Betrayal, edited by Eleonora Narvselius and Gelinada Grinchenko, 59–85. London, 2018. Reiter, Margit. “Bruno Kreisky—Linker, Jude und Österreicher: Konfliktzonen und Ambivalenzen jüdischer Identität in Österreich nach 1945.” Zeitgeschichte 37, no. 1 (2010): 21–40. Republik Österreich, Ministerium für Landesverteidigung und Sport, Das Österreichische Heldendenkmal. Vienna, 2011. Schorske, Carl. Wien: Geist und Gesellschaft im Fin de Siécle. Frankfurt, 1982. Semlitsch, Karl. “‘. . . einen selbstständigen Kämpfer für die Demokratie formen.’” In 30 Jahre Milizverband Österreich: Beiträge zu einem Kulturwandel in der Landesverteidigung, edited by Peter Pirker, 145–59. Linz, 2011.

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Stachel, Peter. Mythos Heldenplatz. Vienna, 2002. Uhl, Heidemarie. “Das ‘erste Opfer’: Der österreichische Opfermythos und seine Transformationen in der Zweiten Republik.” Österreichische Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft 30 (2001): 19–34. ———. “Denkmäler als Medien gesellschaftlicher Erinnerung: Die Denkmallandschaft der Zweiten Republik und die Transformationen des österreichischen Gedächtnisses.” In Nationen und ihre Selbstbilder: Postdiktatorische Gesellschaften in Europa, edited by Regina Fritz, Carola Sachse, and Edgar Wolfrum, 62–89. Göttingen, 2008. Vereinigung zur Errichtung eines österreichischen Heldendenkmales. Gedenkschrift anläßlich der Weihe des österreichischen Heldendenkmales am 9. September 1934. Vienna, 1934. Wehrkreiskommando 17. Ausstellung “Unser Heer.” Vienna, 1944. Weidinger, Bernhard. “Im nationalen Abwehrkampf der Grenzlanddeutschen”: Akademische Burschenschaften und Politik in Österreich nach 1945. Vienna, 2015. Welch, Steven R. “Commemorating ‘Heroes of a Special Kind’: Deserter Monuments in Germany.” Journal of Contemporary History 47, no. 2 (2012): 370–401. Wenzel, Heidrun-Ulrike. “‘Niemals vergessen!’ Die antifaschistische Ausstellung im Wiener Künstlerhaus 1946.” MA thesis, University of Vienna, 2012. Winter, Jay. “Sites of Memory and the Shadow of War.” In A Companion to Cultural Memory Studies, edited by Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning, 61–76. Berlin, 2010. Wirth, Maria. Christian Broda: Eine politische Biographie. Göttingen, 2011.

CHAPTER 9



Commemorating Flight and Expulsion vor Ort Local Expellee Monuments in Central and Eastern Europe JEFFREY LUPPES

I

n a text read aloud at the dedication ceremony for a new national monument in June 2006, then Hungarian President László Sólyom wrote, “I . . . bow down before the monument of the Hungarian Germans and apologize to [them] and their families for the injustice that they experienced with the hope that they will feel at home here again.”1 Symbolizing homes no longer accessible to the former owners, the monument, a wooden door two meters tall and framed by limestone with a table-shaped altar with the engraving of a house key, called Geschlossenes Tor (Closed Gate) was erected at the old German cemetery in Budaőrs (Wudersch in German) near the capital. Interestingly, in addition to the local government and local organizations of Germans in Hungary, among the list of patrons for the monument were the Hungarian national government and the members of the Wudersch chapter of the Landsmannschaft (Homeland Association) of Germans from Hungary. The monument, designed by the sculptor Péter Menasági, also bears an inscription of a quotation from the German Hungarian poet Valeria Koch: “Stop the small hate and say stop at the right time.”2 A plaque with general information about the monument and its patrons is located nearby. It was here where the first ethnic Germans were gathered before being compelled to leave their homeland sixty years before. More than a dozen new monuments dedicated to the victims of flight and expulsion have been erected in Hungary since that day. They are part of the more than one hundred such monuments that stand in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Romania, Russia, and the successor states of the former Yugoslavia—that is, in the countries from where the ex-

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pellees originated, not where the millions of ethnic Germans, forced to leave their homes in the months leading up to the end of the Second World War and in the months and even years after the cessation of hostilities, eventually resettled.3 In those Central and Eastern European countries, the local expellee monuments are located in the formerly German communities that had flourished—in many cases—for centuries before the Germans were forced to leave. Others, like the Geschlossenes Tor, are located in cemeteries established by Germans long before the Second World War. Still others mark the actual locations where Germans suffered unspeakable brutalities, such as at internment camps in Poland, Serbia, and Croatia or at mass graves and other places associated with the retributive violent excesses committed by vengeful partisans during the “wild expulsions” of Germans shortly after the war ended. Virtually all these monuments in Eastern Europe are located vor Ort (on site, or in situ)—that is, they mark authentic sites where the events related to flight and expulsion they commemorate actually occurred. They stand in stark contrast to vast majority of the more than 1,500 local expellee monuments in Germany. There, initiators have emplaced them in cemeteries, in city halls, in parks, along bike paths, and in many other public places throughout the Federal Republic of Germany. Though most of them have been strategically positioned to sacralize their location, or to be widely seen in order to maximize their commemorative effect, few mark authentic sites. Therefore, the monuments in Germany’s neighbors in Central and Eastern Europe constitute an important subset of all expellee monuments, because they indicate how flight and expulsion has been memorialized outside Germany.4 However, these monuments make for an interesting juxtaposition for another reason. As has been widely publicized, the commemoration of flight and expulsion in Germany—particularly at the national level, for instance, over the construction of the Centre against Expulsions (Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen, ZgV) in Berlin—has been fraught with controversy. Much of the memory boom of the past fifteen years has had specifically to do with discussions and debates about whether commemoration of flight and expulsion were “taboo” and about what form is appropriate given the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany.5 While the hundreds of expellee monuments in Germany erected in all decades after the war offer convincing proof that public remembrance of flight and expulsion has never been disallowed or that the expellee organizations’ interpretations of history have in fact been met with their communities’ approval, those seeking to commemorate flight and expulsion at the local level have faced opposition and in some cases seen their monuments vandalized, changed, and even removed. Much of the debate, of course, has been inner-German and related to decades-long, larger discussions over working through the Nazi past. As these debates pertain to the commemoration of flight and expulsion, much of the

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controversy has centered on whether the commemorative efforts of the expellee organizations reflect revisionist historical understandings that foreground German suffering at the expense of other victims—what the British historian Bill Niven has called “competing discourses.”6 However, a significant amount of the most vociferous criticism of the expellee organizations and Germany’s official remembrance of flight and expulsion—particularly in the form of the ZgV—has also come from voices in the countries where these monuments vor Ort now stand. For example, Anna Jakubowska writes that the idea of the ZgV encountered “heavy criticism” in Poland, where its detractors in the media labeled it a “Monument of Misunderstanding,” the “Center of Discord,” and the “Center against Reconciliation.”7 As Maren Röger asserts, many Poles were not only skeptical about the idea of a national monument / documentation center for flight and expulsion in Germany and about what she calls the “expulsion victim boom” in general—which they viewed as a “relativization of German guilt, as a distortion of history”— but also distrustful of the ZgV’s chief proponents, the Federation of Expellees (Bund der Vertriebenen, BdV) and its ties to private organizations seeking restitution for German losses after the Second World War.8 Nevertheless, the BdV’s catalog lists forty local expellee monuments in Poland. This chapter investigates how flight and expulsion have been memorialized in this form in Poland and in the other countries that once comprised the socalled “German East.” Focusing on the notable, long-lasting debate over a simple memorial plaque in Postoloprty (Postelberg) in the Czech Republic, and on other cases, it tracks the development of this memorial architecture to highlight key commonalities and divergences between remembrance of this topic at the local level in Germany and in its eastern neighbors, whose people often also count themselves as victims of the Second World War and where, one might expect, opposition to German-centered memorialization of the Second World War would be strongest. In so doing, this chapter seeks to answer several questions. First and foremost, do the monuments vor Ort provide a different view of the violence inflicted on ethnic Germans forced to leave their homes in Central and Eastern Europe? Do the depictions reveal different understandings of what happened to the former German inhabitants of the area? Do they attempt to justify the actions taken against Germans? In a more positive light, do they offer any possibilities for a more inclusive, less contentious model for remembering flight and expulsion at the national level? In addressing these questions, this chapter offers a transnational comparison of the forms, inscriptions, and iconographies of local expellee monuments to cast light on this under-analyzed aspect of German postwar memory culture. Moreover, it aims at contributing to larger debates over German wartime suffering and the history of war and violence in the twentieth century.

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Local Expellee Monuments in Germany To properly contextualize the local expellee monuments vor Ort, it is necessary to examine briefly their more provocative counterparts in Germany. Because of their large numbers and the diversity of their forms, inscriptions, motifs, and locations, the subject has been a difficult undertaking for scholars. There have been several regional analyses and some shorter overviews, but two major studies have endeavored to analyze the monuments comprehensively.9 The first study, by me, attempts to categorize the monuments into two thematic clusters, namely “Loss of Heimat and Territorial Claims” and “The Aesthetics of Collective Innocence.” The first contains monuments that bemoan the forfeiture of German territory as a result of the Second World War and express the keen desire to reacquire it. The study contends that the monuments in this cluster are related in that they were erected in the pursuit of “concrete politics”: societal recognition and legal definitions of the expellees, material compensation for their losses, and, ultimately, the revision of the postwar territorial status quo. The monuments in the second cluster employ exculpatory iconography to address the physical suffering of the expellees and purport their collective innocence. They are indicative of the “symbolic politics” pursued by the expellee organizations in the post-Ostpolitik, post-Holocaust era. No longer about emphasizing the lost Heimat, the expellee organizations erected these monuments in the pursuit of societal acknowledgment of the expellees’ innocent suffering. Both thematic clusters consist of several categories into which the vast majority of local expellee monuments fall.10 The second study aims at being even more thorough. In it, the German historian Stephan Scholz explores the “comprehensive topography of the memory of German forced migration.”11 In addition to numerical, temporal, and geographical analysis, he examines “the specific functions of expellee monuments.”12 According to Scholz, there are four main functions with several subcategories in each: places of mourning, places of integration, places of political mobilization, and places of historical interpretation. Scholz’s study is well researched, and his argumentation is sound. Among the most interesting facts his work uncovered is that not a single year has gone by since 1945 without the erection of at least one expellee monument in Germany.13 Also, his formal analysis reveals that the three most common types of expellee monuments are commemorative stones (41 percent), crosses (25 percent), and commemorative plaques (12 percent).14 The approaches in both studies are similar. While the groupings vary somewhat, both investigations show that there are temporal divides in terms of the monuments’ themes and functions, the monuments have had a political dimension, and they have served different purposes at different times. Both show that the monuments only rarely offer any sort of historical context and almost never mention causality. As exhaustive as they have tried to be, however, neither fo-

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cuses more than briefly on the more than 130 expellee monuments located in Central and Eastern Europe.

Local Expellee Monuments vor Ort Just as the circumstances in each country surrounding the actual forced removal of ethnic Germans from Central and Eastern Europe vary widely, so do the memory cultures pertaining to the commemoration of flight and expulsion. As Monika Flacke and Ulrike Schmiegelt note, all commemorations of the Second World War in the Eastern Bloc, including memories of flight expulsion, were subject to rigid directives and bans dictated by the ruling communist parties: “Above all, what was remembered was the liberation by the Red Army and the sacrifices that one made for the ‘victory over fascism.’”15 Because of their insistence on their right to Heimat and their long-held views on the impermanence of the post–Potsdam Agreement borders, the West German expellee organizations—the chief initiators of expellee monuments in West Germany—were viewed in many of these countries before 1989 as enemies. The ruling powers worked to ensure that view was widespread. Jakubowska writes, for example, that in the case of Poland, “an important goal of communist propaganda consisted of causing fear of the German expellees.”16 As one might expect, this meant that memories of the Germans who once lived there were “reduced to the level of personal experiences and family history.”17 No longer framed by Cold War exigencies or the dictates of ruling communist parties, the people of Central and Eastern Europe have been able to craft new memory cultures as a result of the dramatic political transformations after 1989, which have included memories of the former German inhabitants of their countries. The dozens of expellee monuments vor Ort offer proof of this. Although a full exploration of the place of the forced migration of the Germans within the memory cultures of each individual country exceeds the scope of this study, what follows is an overview of the monuments by country based on the BdV’s monument register—an online list of what the organization considers expellee monuments along with (occasionally incomplete) information on the form, location, date of dedication, and inscription of each memorial—as well as some statements about monuments vor Ort in general.

Croatia, Slovenia, and Serbia There are only three local expellee monuments in Croatia. Two of them (in Valpovo/Walpach and Krndija) mark mass graves of ethnic Germans killed in internment camps. The third, located in a Catholic church in Branjina/Kisfa-

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lud, is a memorial plaque dedicated to the ethnic Germans of that community, which lists the numbers of them killed in various acts associated with the Second World War and includes soldiers who fell in combat or were missing in action. It was initiated by an expellee organization in Germany. Slovenia is also home to three expellee monuments, two of which (Strnisce/ Sterntal and Lese/Liescha) mark an internment camp (which held not only German internees) and a mass grave, respectively. The memorial site in Lese/ Liescha is particularly noteworthy. A wooden cross had already been erected here in the 1980s to memorialize the roughly three hundred civilians who were killed there—one of only two monuments emplaced before the fall of the Iron Curtain. Renovated in 2009, the cross has at its base a metal plate with the inscription: “In painful remembrance of all innocent victims of the postwar of 1945 from Carinthia and Slovenia. Their relatives and friends.”18 Of the thirteen monuments in Serbia, which have all been erected since 2001, five mark mass graves of ethnic Germans at former internment camps (in Gakovo/Gakowo, Krusevlje/Kruschiwl, and Knicanin/Rudolfsgnad). A small chapel located in a cemetery in Kačarevo/Franzfeld is worth mentioning: its official designation is Memorial and Reconciliation Church and was financed exclusively by donations from the former German inhabitants of that now Serbian town.

Romania and Russia The BdV’s online registry only lists five expellee monuments in Romania and two in Russia. Four of the monuments in Romania are the same commemorative stones that mark formerly German cemeteries. The Russian memorials are especially interesting. The first stands in a cemetery in the Siberian city Jurga, which contains the graves of 196 East Prussians who died after Soviet occupation authorities deported them to the region for forced labor. The other, in Batrationowsk/Preußisch Eylau, stands in territory that until 1945 belonged to the German Reich. Its inscription—in German and Russian—reads: “In memory of the inhabitants of Prussian Eylau who lost their lives as a result of the Second World War. Erected by the survivors and their descendants in 2008.”19

Hungary The first expellee monument of any kind erected in the countries of the former German East was in Hungary in 1979. The monument, a commemorative plaque, hangs in Murakeresztúr and bears the following inscription: “In

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memory of the 77 women, men, and children who died in the transport train in Murakeresztúr and the many uncounted who died after violent expulsion from their homeland in Lower Styria, the Abstall Basin in January and February 1946. Erected in 1979 by their family members.”20 It is the first public memorial of any kind in the Warsaw Pact, including the German Democratic Republic. No expellee monuments were erected in East Germany until after reunification. Hungary’s official commemoration of the removal of its Germans after the Second World War is unusual and unique. In addition to this early monument, leading politicians have issued public apologies for the expulsion, such as at the monument dedication in Budaőrs. The Hungarian government has also instituted an annual day of commemoration for victims of expulsion, which has taken place on 19 January since 2013. It has also offered compensation to expelled Germans from Hungary. Furthermore, a highly visible exhibition on the expulsion took place at the House of Terror museum in Budapest. In all, the BdV’s online register lists eleven expellee monuments in Hungary. Csilla Schell, who has written an article on the topic, claims there are more. In terms of location, Schell writes, the monuments in Hungary are like the others vor Ort: “Those not in sacred spaces, centrally located places or in monument parks are in locations directly linked to expulsion events: train stations, city halls, or collection/registration points.” She points out that in contrast to other monuments dedicated to significant postwar events, such as the Hungarian Uprising of 1956, there has been little centralized coordination regarding expellee monuments. As a result, they are diverse in terms of form and material because they—with a handful of exceptions—have been initiated and financed locally.21 The inscriptions on most monuments are in German and Hungarian, but Schell claims the translations do not always equate. The common term in Hungarian for the forced relocation of ethnic Germans is closer to the more benign “resettlement” (Aussiedlung), not the more potent “expulsion” (Vertreibung). She also notes that the official name for the national day of commemoration, Gedenktag der Verschleppung und Vertreibung der Ungarndeutschen (Remembrance Day of the Deportation and Expulsion of the Hungarian Germans), was questioned by the leader of the main group of Hungarian Germans, who found it a potentially misleading designation.22

Poland The BdV’s online register lists forty expellee monuments in Poland. More than half of them (twenty-three) stand in formerly German cemeteries or on church grounds. By percentage, fewer are located at actual authentic sites of expulsion, although some mark mass graves and internment camps, such as in Łambinowice/Lamsdorf.23 Interestingly, a mere three out of forty mention “ex-

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pulsion” in the inscription, which reflects the difficulties of acknowledging the suffering of Germans without upsetting the local population by contradicting long-held views on the past. So potentially upsetting was the erection of the expellee monument in Głogów/Glogau that the city government hired extra security guards for the dedication ceremony in 2000, attended by more than four hundred people, over concerns of disruptions. Fortunately, no unrest was reported.24 The main inscription of this monument, which in its first incarnation was dedicated to Friedrich Ebert in 1926, reads, in German and Polish: “To the German and Polish victims of war, violence, and expulsion.”25 The skepticism over the motives of the expellees who initiated this effort is in keeping with the views expressed by Röger that the expellee organizations were still viewed in the 1990s—that is, after the Oder-Neisse line had been formally ratified by reunited Germany—with great suspicion and as capable still of exercising great influence on the national government.26 Claudia Kraft, however, who has written about grassroots attempts at reconciliation by German expellees with the Polish inhabitants of their former homeland, counters this point. Kraft notes that expellee organizations have, in fact, sought connections and rapprochement with the Poles for a long time and have been supportive of Polish drives to restore and renovate historical (German) structures in Poland.27 Several of the expellee monuments in Poland bear indicators of compromise, and some are outright conciliatory. For example, the commemorative stone in Piotrowice/Peterwitz displays the inscription, in German and Polish: “In memory of the victims of war. The former and the current inhabitants of Piotrowice/Peterwitz.”28 In terms of reconciliation, one of the most striking expellee monuments in all of the former Eastern Bloc is the grave of honor (Ehrengrab) in Kruszwica/Kruschwitz. Its inscription reads: “We commemorate our relatives who died in Łagiewnik/Kruszwica. They are and will remain unforgotten. We want to work, pray, and live so that Polish and German people live in brotherly harmony and find a common homeland in a united Europe. For that we ask the help of God. German citizens who lived here until 1945.”29 Clearly, the tone here is completely different than the tenor of the loudest critics of the ZgV at the national level .

Czech Republic and Slovakia In 2005, Zdeněk Hojda described the situation concerning all memorials related to the Second World War in the Czech Republic, including those dedicated to the expulsion of the former German inhabitants, as a “battleground.”30 This is somewhat surprising. On the one hand, then President Václav Havel had apologized already in December 1989 for the revenge taken against ethnic

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Germans in the aftermath of Czechoslovakia’s liberation. The national governments of Germany and the Czech Republic also issued a joint declaration in 1997 that states in part, “Both sides agree that injustice inflicted in the past belongs in the past, and will therefore orient their relations towards the future.”31 On the other hand, the law granting amnesty to Czech perpetrators of crimes against Germans is still in effect, as are the (Edvard) Beneš decrees that allowed for the expropriation and expatriation of the Germans after the war. This is significant because the Czech Republic with fifty-two expellee monuments has the most of all countries in which these memorials vor Ort stand.32 The BdV’s online register lists two monuments in Slovakia, although Ľubomír Lipták puts the number at five.33 As will be shown in the case study later, the political and memory landscape in the Czech Republic pertaining to the expulsion of the Germans remains contentious, which is reflected in the diverse local monuments. Several monuments mark mass graves and other sites of atrocities carried out by vengeful partisans at the end of and in the summer after the Second World War, for example, in Nový Bar / Haida and Pohořelice/ Pohrlitz, among other locations. Many are conciliatory, for example, the commemorative plaque on the clock tower in Jacubčovice/Jogsdorf reads, in German and Czech: “This plaque originated as a sign for a new beginning of friendly German-Czech relations between old and new citizens of Jogsdorf.”34 In many cases, reflecting the recognition of the need for commemoration yet the local desire not to upset the community, several expellee monuments in the Czech Republic are also vaguely or euphemistically phrased. For example, two monuments in Brno/Brünn refer obliquely to what many expellees call the Brünner Todesmarsch (Brno death march) as “when the Germans had to leave.” The inscription on a commemorative plaque on the bridge in Ústí nad Labem / Aussig, where dozens of Germans were killed in a violent reprisal after the war, states nebulously: “In commemoration of the victims of violence from 31 July 1945.”35 Several others are memorials added to German cemeteries that had been abandoned or destroyed after the expulsion.

General Observations about Expellee Monuments vor Ort Formally, the monuments in Central and Eastern Europe resemble most of those in Germany. The majority are unostentatious commemorative stones or simple plaques. Like their German counterparts, many monuments vor Ort contain religious symbolism. Other typical iconography, however, such as maps of the former German East or the use of the female form with children to stand in for all expellees, is rare. There are no territorial claims, and they do not attempt to paint the expellees with the brush of collective innocence. In fact, few could be considered tendentious at all. The reason why, in my opinion, is

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simple: they were not erected as part of orchestrated campaigns to mobilize and decry the postwar territorial status quo, nor were they parts of efforts to highlight German suffering or paint Germans as collectively innocent. Furthermore, virtually all of them were initiated by expellee organizations from outside the country or by the organizations of the remaining ethnic Germans in the country, such as the National Self-Administration of Germans in Hungary. In either case, the initiators had to garner the support of the local populace and their political representatives. As a result, the tone has usually been milder, and many refer to reconciliation and understanding or call for cordial relations between the new and old inhabitants of a common Heimat. With but a few exceptions, the monuments are all bilingual if not trilingual, that is, in German and in the national language of each respective country. Interestingly, as we saw in Hungary, as Schell points out, the terms used to describe certain aspects of this history, such as “expulsion,” do not correspond in the two languages.36 As one might guess, that term is used regularly on monuments in Germany but is rare on monuments vor Ort, as are terms like Heimat and broad descriptors like unschuldig (innocent). Not all are clearly dedicated to German victims; some inscriptions are imprecise, but the fact that they are also in German, and that they are listed on the BdV’s online monument register, suggests that the expellees too are to be commemorated. None that I am aware of is solely in German, and only one does lack a German inscription. Besides Germany and Austria, nine countries in Central and Eastern Europe are home to local expellee monuments. None of those countries with local expellee monuments were a part of Germany in its 1937 borders, and only two are contiguous with the Federal Republic of Germany today. All these countries and the rest have their own histories of forcing their ethnic German populations to leave their homelands, and all have their own history of commemorating flight and expulsion. Nevertheless, it is probably no coincidence that the two countries with the highest numbers, the Czech Republic and Poland, are neighbors to reunited Germany. In addition, the Sudeten-German Landsmannschaften from early on have been large, especially well organized, and active, and they seem to have been far more successful in initiating monuments vor Ort than, for example, their Danube Swabian comrades.37 As a result, the numbers of monuments in each country vary significantly.

Case Study: Erecting a Local Expellee Monument in Postoloprty Because a complete picture of all these monuments is impossible, I focus the remainder of this chapter on a single commemorative plaque dedicated in 2010 by the Czech town of Postoloprty (Postelberg in German). Though certainly not “monumental” in size and quite simple in form, this hotly contested

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Figure 9.1. Gedenkstätte auf dem Friedhof in Postelberg/Postoloprty (Memorial on the Cemetery in Postoloprty), 3 October 2011. Photo by SchiDD (CC BY-SA 3.0), https://commons .wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Postelberg-Gedenkst.jpg.

memorial has received an unusual amount of scrutiny and publicity and serves as a case in point for what is at stake here: the prerogative of interpreting historical events and the memorialization of transnational memories. Whether the solution found here is ultimately the best and most appropriate remains debatable. What is not debatable is that several thousand Sudeten Germans were rounded up and hundreds of them were executed near this town northwest of Prague in one of the single largest mass killings of ethnic Germans in the weeks and months immediately after the end of the Second World War.38 Czech journalists and historians began writing about the incidents in the 1990s, but an actual historical marker was not proposed until after a commemorative ceremony jointly held by a group of former and current inhabitants of the area in 2002.39 The ceremonies brought further media attention to the historical events in Postoloprty that spawned an array of other cultural happenings—including a play, a documentary airing on Czech TV, and a traveling exhibition— that helped make the public more aware of these long-forgotten events.40 Soon thereafter, a group of Czechs and Germans formed the Förderverein der Stadt Saaz/Žatec (Friends of the City Saaz/Žatec), which made the first proposal of a monument. As has been the case of numerous local expellee monuments, it is important to note that the initiation of the monument was not alone the

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work of an expellee organization based in Germany. It is doubtful whether efforts from an organization of that kind would have been successful at all. Even this joint Czech-German effort failed twice—in 2002 and 2005—to gain the approval of Postoloprty’s local government. Most of the local population was clearly opposed to the endeavor.41 However, unrelenting media attention, the continued pressure of Czech historians, and a third attempt to initiate a monument in 2007 led the municipal government in the following year not to erect a memorial but rather to form a commission to determine the appropriateness of a monument. The city government selected representatives from groups of the most interested parties, including a city official, a representative of a Czech expellee group, a Czech historian, an elderly resident, a leader of the local Jewish community, and a member of the Czech-German group who had initiated the monument. After convening three times, the commission proposed in September 2009 a commemorative plaque with the inscription: “To the victims of the Postelberg massacre in 1945.”42 The city government—most especially, the post-communists—did not accept the proposal. According to a German account of that meeting, the officials did not approve of the suggested memorial as presented because of the word “massacre.” They were also opposed to any addition of “Deutsch” to the inscription. Although the communists had attempted to strike this topic from further discussions, the city legislature came up with the vaguely worded compromise solution of a commemorative plate dedicated in Czech and German “to all innocent victims of the events in Postelberg in May–June 1945.” The city government voted unanimously to approve with four abstentions. Noticeably, the adjective “German” is missing. Equally important, despite the offers of the monument’s initiators, the city opted to pay for the monument in its entirety. It provided the funds and the inscription, and secured the location on a wall near the entrance to the local cemetery in Postoloprty. Although a representative from the German contingent of the monument’s initiators spoke at the dedication ceremony (she voiced her regret over the fact that the monument is not dedicated unambiguously to German victims, by the way), the city clearly did not want the German expellee organizations to be involved in their planning. This, however, did not stop the national-level BdV from issuing a press release that lauded the city council’s decision but at the same time voiced displeasure at the continued validity of the Beneš decrees, which, among other things, prevented the prosecution of Czechs and Slovaks for crimes committed against Germans and Hungarians.43 Sixty-five years after the killings occurred, and almost eight years after first being proposed, the plaque was dedicated in June 2010, with the German ambassador to the Czech Republic among other local dignitaries in attendance. Both ARD and ZDF, German broadcasting companies, reported on the ceremony in their evening news.44

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Conclusion The expellee monument in Postoloprty cannot be considered “typical.” It received far more scrutiny locally than is the norm, and its unveiling attracted much more media attention than any recent expellee monument vor Ort or in Germany, with the exception of the ZgV in Berlin. Nevertheless, it offers a gentle riposte to those who claim that monuments are remnants from the past. People pay attention to what is commemorated in their communities. In this particular case, the debate surrounding this small commemorative plate shows what can happen when historical events are memorialized at the front lines of transnational memory conflicts. It also highlights the disparity between the desire for accountability and acknowledgment of suffering from the outside and a locally felt obligation to memorialize long silenced atrocities. Moreover, it shows that it is possible to publicly remember flight and expulsion with monuments even when opposition surfaces. Compromises can be reached, and gaps in historical interpretations can be bridged. Indeed, all the monuments vor Ort provide a different view of the violence meted out against ethnic Germans in Central and Eastern Europe and show that it is indeed possible to commemorate flight and expulsion in ways that do not automatically raise suspicions of Germany’s neighbors. Interestingly, when expellee groups describe the process of erecting monuments vor Ort, they do not usually write about overcoming opposition much even if skepticism vis-à-vis the monument’s initiators on the part of local Polish or Czech populations is expressed. Instead, they write about amicable relations at the grassroots level and about the support of sympathetic locals.45 Anecdotally, in fact, while conducting research on this and other projects, I heard repeatedly from members of expellee organizations that local relations are far better between Germans and their eastern neighbors than at the national level.46 Indeed, Claudia Kraft has shown that cross-border collaboration in several fields abounds.47 In the case of the commemorative plaque in Postoloprty, the local support was essential. That Czech speakers were among the initiators and had the support of some locals was also very helpful. Furthermore, as the case in Postoloprty shows, the local population did not welcome the transnational memories of others foisted upon them. Put differently, they did not want public commemoration of events that happened in their town to be hijacked by outsiders. They wanted to be involved. Only then was the monument approved. Similarly, one might argue that the early opposition to the Centre against Expulsions in Poland and the Czech Republic in particular was not so much about commemorating flight and expulsion in Germany per se but rather about the leadership of the organization’s chief proponent at the time, Erika Steinbach, and about how she and many of her supporters—in particular, conservative politicians in Germany during the 2002 election campaign—had called

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for making official recognition of the expulsion an “injustice” (Unrecht) and the annulment of laws that facilitated the expulsion a precondition for Czech and Polish accession to the European Union. The opposition stemmed from the fact that some Czech and Poles felt the past was being instrumentalized for political gain in the present. The public opinion data compiled by Thomas Petersen bears this out.48 The plaque in Postoloprty certainly did not appease everyone—some of the German advocates wanted sterner words and clearer identification of the victims, and some Czechs did not want a monument at all—but it shows that Germans can have their wartime suffering acknowledged in ways acceptable in the communities where it actually occurred. There is not just one view of the violence. Moreover, if events connected to the flight and expulsion of Germans at the end of and after the Second World War can be memorialized vor Ort, then they should also be able to be commemorated in Germany without such controversy. Jeffrey Luppes is Associate Professor of German at Indiana University South Bend. His research focuses on representations of German wartime suffering, particularly experiences of flight and expulsion. He has published numerous articles on monuments dedicated to German expellees. He was recently named a German Embassy Teacher of Excellence for his work in the classroom. His current research project examines the commemoration of flight and expulsion of Germans in Austria.

Notes 1. “Staatspräsident entschuldigt sich bei vertriebenen Schwaben,” Neue Zeitung, 23 June 2006, 1. All translations are my own unless otherwise indicated. 2. “Stoppt den kleinsten Hass und sagt rechtzeitig Halt.” 3. All these monuments are cataloged in an online register compiled by the Bund der Vertriebenen, “Mahn- und Gedenkstätten außerhalb der Bundesrepublik Deutschland,” accessed 21 August 2018, http://docplayer.org/25098388-Mahn-und-gedenkstaet ten-ausserhalb-der-bundesrepublik-deutschland.html. Unless published sources indicate otherwise (e.g., in the case of Hungary), I base my descriptions of the monuments on the information contained in the register, which, in most cases includes the name, a photograph, the location, the dedication date, and the inscription of each monument. 4. It is worth noting that the BdV’s online monument register also includes local expellee monuments that also stand outside of Germany in another country where ethnic German ended up, namely, Austria, and in farther-flung locales like Namibia, South Africa, Canada, and the United States. 5. Bill Niven, “Reactive Memory: The Holocaust and the Flight and Expulsion of Germans,” in Memory and Postwar Memorials: Confronting the Violence of the Past, ed. Marc Silberman and Florence Vatan (New York, 2013), 51–69. 6. Ibid., 51.

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7. Anna Jakubowska, Der Bund der Vertriebenen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und Polen (1957–2004): Selbst- und Fremddarstellung eines Vertriebenenverbandes (Marburg, 2012), 198. 8. Maren Röger, Flucht, Vertreibung und Umsiedlung: Mediale Erinnerungen und Debatten in Deutschland und Polen seit 1989 (Marburg, 2011), 108, 112. 9. For example, the sketch of expellee monuments in Landkreis Celle by Kathrin Panne “Erinnerungspolitik—Erinnerungsspuren: Zur Funktion symbolischer Erinnerung an Flucht und Vertreibung im öffentlichen Raum. Eine Skizze,” in Zwischen Heimat und Zuhause: Deutsche Flüchtlinge und Vertriebene in (West-)Deutschland 1945–2000, ed. Rainer Schulze, Reinhard Rohde, and Rainer Voss (Osnabrück, 2001), 201–15. Other examples are Hans-Werner Retterath, “Geschichtsbilderkampf und zwiespältige Beheimatungsversuche: Vertriebenendenkmale in Südbaden,” Jahrbuch für deutsche und osteuropäische Volkskunde 47 (2005): 83–121; Hans-Werner Retterath, “Gedenkstein und Wegweiser. Zur Symbolik von zwei Vertriebenendenkmalen in Lörrach/Südbaden,” Jahrbuch für deutsche und osteuropäische Volkskunde 48 (2006): 1–33. See also Hans Hesse and Elke Purpus, “Monuments and Commemorative Sites for German Expellees,” in Memorialization in Germany Since 1945, ed. Bill Niven and Chloe Paver (Basingstoke, 2010), 48–57. 10. Jeffrey Luppes, “To Our Dead: Local Expellee Monuments and the Contestation of German Postwar Memory” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2010). 11. Stephan Scholz, Vertriebenendenkmäler: Topographie einer deutschen Erinnerungslandschaft (Paderborn, 2015), 17. 12. Ibid., 19. 13. Ibid., 41. 14. Ibid., 73. 15. Monika Flacke and Ulrike Schmiegelt, “Mythen der Nationen: Kampf der Erinnerungen—Über die Schwierigkeiten der Musealisierung europäischer Zwangsmigrationen,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 50, no. 1 (2003): 54. 16. Jakubowska, Der Bund der Vertriebenen, 69. 17. Pertti Ahonen, Gustavo Corni, Jerzy Kochanowski, Rainer Schulze, Tamás Stark, Barbara Stelzl-Marx, eds., People on the Move: Forced Population Movements in Europe in the Second World War and Its Aftermath (Oxford, 2008), 155. 18. “In schmerzlichem Gedenken an alle schuldlosen Nachkriegsopfer von 1945 aus Kärnten und Slowenien. Die Angehörigen und Freunde.” 19. “Den Einwohnern von Preußisch Eylau, die durch den Zweiten Weltkrieg ihr Leben Verloren Haben, zum Gedenken. Errichtet von den Überlebenden und ihren Nachkommen 2008.” 20. “Zum Gedenken an 77 Frauen, Männer und Kinder, verstorben im Transportzug in Murakeresztur, und der vielen Ungezählten, unterwegs verstorbenen, nach gewaltsamer Vertreibung aus ihrer untersteirischen Heimat, dem Abstaller Becken, im Januar u. Februar 1946. Errichtet 1979 von den Angehörigen.” 21. Csilla Schell, “‘Pro Memoria’: Denkmäler als Erinnerung an die Vertreibung in Ungarn seit der Wende,” Jahrbuch für europäische Ethnologie 3 (2013): 219 (this and the previous quotation). 22. Ibid., 222. 23. For more on the commemoration of this notorious internment camp, see Rex Rexhauser, “Das Bild des Nachkriegslagers in Lamsdorf im kollektiven Gedächtnis der Deutschen,” Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung 50 (2001): 48–72.

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24. Christian Schmidt-Häuer, “Die Weisen von Glogau. In der schlesischen Stadt setzten Deutsche und Polen den Opfern der Vertreibungen ein gemeinsames Denkmal,” Die Zeit 45, 30 October 2003, http://www.zeit.de/2003/45/Glogau. 25. “Den deutschen und polnischen Opfern von Krieg, Gewalt und Vertreibung.” 26. Röger, Flucht, 115. 27. Claudia Kraft, “Beschäftigung mit der Vertreibung vor Ort: Regionale Institutionen und Initiativen der Aufarbeitung und des Gedenkens,” in Zwangsmigration und Vertreibung: Europa im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Anja Kruke (Bonn, 2006), 119–38. 28. “Zum Gedenken an die Opfer des Krieges. Die Ehemaligen und die heutigen Einwohner von Peterwitz.” 29. “Wir gedenken unserer Angehörigen, die in Lagiewnik/Kruszwica gestorben sind. Sie sind und bleiben uns unvergessen. Wir wollen dafür arbeiten, beten und leben, dass polnische und deutsche Menschen sich brüderlich vertragen und in einem einigen Europa eine gemeinsame Heimat finden. Dafür bitten wir um die Hilfe Gottes. Deutsche Bürger, die bis 1945 hier gelebt haben.” 30. Zdeněk Hojda, “Denkmäler des Krieges als Orte der Erinnerung in Tschechien nach der Wende: Lieux de mémoire oder Kampfplätze der Erinnerungen?” in Diktatur— Krieg—Vertreibung: Erinnerungskulturen in Tschechien, der Slowakei und Deutschland seit 1945, ed. Christoph Cornelißen, Roman Holec, and Jiří Pešek (Essen, 2005), 236. 31. Government of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Czech Republic, German-Czech Declaration on Mutual Relations and their Future Development of 21 January 1997, http://www.mzv.cz/file/198499/CzechGermanDeclaration.pdf. 32. About four of these Czech expellee monuments have been written by Tomas Sniegon, “Between Old Animosity and New Mourning: Meanings of Czech Post-Communist Memorials of Mass Killings of the Sudeten Germans,” in Whose Memory? Which Future? Remembering Ethnic Cleansing and Lost Cultural Diversity in Eastern, Central and Southeastern Europe, ed. Barbara Törnquist-Plewa (New York, 2016) 49–72. 33. Ľubomír Lipták, “Denkmäler des Zweiten Weltkrieges in der Slowakei nach 1989,” in Cornelißen et al., Diktatur—Krieg—Vertreibung, 237–49. 34. “Diese Tafel entstand als Zeichen für einen Neubeginn Deutsch-Tschechischer freundschaftlicher Beziehungen alter und neuer Jogsdorfer.” 35. “Zum Gedenken an die Opfer der Gewalt vom 31. Juli 1945.” 36. Schell, “Pro Memoria,” 221–22. 37. Scholz speculates that the large numbers in the Czech Republic are for this reason and for the “receptiveness” of local Czech governments. Scholz, Vertriebenendenkmäler, 366n13. As the next section shows, that does not seem to be the case. 38. Hans-Ulrich Stoldt, “Mord im Fasanengarten,” Der Spiegel 36 (2009), 66–68. 39. Andreas Kalckhoff, “Die Gedenktafel in Postelberg und ihre Geschichte,” Heimatkreis Saaz, 15 October 2013, https://saaz.info/index.php/2013/10/15/diegedenktafel-in-postelberg-und-ihre-geschichte 40. Adalbert Wollrab, “Der dornige Weg zu einer Gedenktafel für die Opfer des Postelberger Massakers,” Heimatkreis Saaz, 6 October 2010, http://saaz.info/index.php/ 2010/10/07/der-dornige-weg-zu-einer-gedenktafel-fuer-die-opfer-des-postelbergermassakers. 41. Quoted in Stoldt, “Mord im Fasanengarten,” 67. 42 “Den Opfern des Postelberger Massakers des Jahres 1945.” 43. Bund der Vertriebenen, “Denkmal für deutsche Opfer in Postelberg: Ein gutes Zeichen,” press release, 6 November 2009.

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44. ARD, “Gedenktafel erinnert an Massaker vom Juni 1945 in Postelberg,” video, 3 June 2010, http://www.tagesschau.de/multimedia/video/sendungsbeitrag53768.html. 45. Dietmar Scholz, Einweihung eines Gedenksteins auf dem Friedhof in Tschammendorf (Isernhagen, 2006). 46. This point further illustrates the multileveled nature of a nation’s memory culture, an argument that echoes the work of John Bodnar, who persuasively uncovers this inherent tension in the US context through examination of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. See John E. Bodnar, Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, NJ, 1992). Bodnar exposed the incongruities that existed in the United States on the “vernacular” and “official” levels of memory. 47. Kraft, “Beschäftigung mit der Vertreibung vor Ort,” 127–39. 48. Thomas Petersen, Flucht und Vertreibung aus Sicht der deutschen, polnischen und tschechischen Bevölkerung (Bonn, 2005).

Bibliography Ahonen, Pertti, Gustavo Corni, Jerzy Kochanowski, Rainer Schulze, Tamás Stark, Barbara Stelzl-Marx, eds. People on the Move: Forced Population Movements in Europe in the Second World War and Its Aftermath. Oxford, 2008. ARD. “Gedenktafel erinnert an Massaker vom Juni 1945 in Postelberg.” Video. 3 June 2010. http://www.tagesschau.de/multimedia/video/sendungsbeitrag53768.html. Bodnar, John E. Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century. Princeton, NJ, 1992. Bund der Vertriebenen. “Denkmal für deutsche Opfer in Postelberg: Ein gutes Zeichen.” Press release, 6 November 2009. ———. “Mahn- und Gedenkstätten außerhalb der Bundesrepublik Deutschland.” 21 August 2018. http://docplayer.org/25098388-Mahn-und-gedenkstaetten-ausserhalbder-bundesrepublik-deutschland.html. Cornelißen, Christoph, Roman Holec, and Jiří Pešek, eds. Diktatur—Krieg—Vertreibung: Erinnerungskulturen in Tschechien, der Slowakei und Deutschland seit 1945. Essen, 2005. Flacke, Monika, and Ulrike Schmiegelt. “Mythen der Nationen: Kampf der Erinnerungen—Über die Schwierigkeiten der Musealisierung europäischer Zwangsmigrationen.” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 51, no. 1 (2003): 54–58. Government of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Czech Republic. German-Czech Declaration on Mutual Relations and Their Future Development of 21 January 1997. http://www.mzv.cz/file/198499/CzechGermanDeclaration.pdf. Hesse, Hans, and Elke Purpus. “Monuments and Commemorative Sites for German Expellees.” In Memorialization in Germany Since 1945, edited by Bill Niven and Chloe Paver, 48–57. London, 2010. Hojda, Zdeněk. “Denkmäler des Krieges als Orte der Erinnerung in Tschechien nach der Wende: Lieux de mémoire oder Kampfplätze der Erinnerungen?” In Cornelißen et al., Diktatur—Krieg—Vertreibung, 229–36. Jakubowska, Anna. Der Bund der Vertriebenen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und Polen (1957–2004): Selbst- und Fremddarstellung eines Vertriebenenverbandes. Marburg, 2012. Kalckhoff, Andreas. “Die Gedenktafel in Postelberg und ihre Geschichte.” Heimatkreis Saaz, 15 October 2013. https://saaz.info/index.php/2013/10/15/die-gedenktafelin-postelberg-und-ihre-geschichte.

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Kraft, Claudia. “Beschäftigung mit der Vertreibung vor Ort: Regionale Institutionen und Initiativen der Aufarbeitung und des Gedenkens.” In Zwangsmigration und Vertreibung: Europa im 20. Jahrhundert, edited by Anja Kruke, 119–38. Bonn, 2006. Lipták, Ľubomír. “Denkmäler des Zweiten Weltkrieges in der Slowakei nach 1989,” in Cornelißen et al., Diktatur—Krieg—Vertreibung, 237–49. Luppes, Jeffrey. “To Our Dead: Local Expellee Monuments and the Contestation of German Postwar Memory.” PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2010. Niven, Bill. “Reactive Memory: The Holocaust and the Flight and Expulsion of Germans.” In Memory and Postwar Memorials: Confronting the Violence of the Past, edited by Marc Silberman and Florence Vatan, 51–69. New York, 2013. Panne, Kathrin. “Erinnerungspolitik—Erinnerungspuren: Zur Funktion symbolischer Erinnerung an Flucht und Vertreibung im öffentlichen Raum. Eine Skizze.” In Zwischen Heimat und Zuhause: Deutsche Flüchtlinge und Vertriebene in (West-)Deutschland 1945–2000, edited by Rainer Schulze, Reinhard Rohde, and Rainer Voss, (Osnabrück, 2001) 201–15. Petersen, Thomas. Flucht und Vertreibung aus Sicht der deutschen, polnischen und tschechischen Bevölkerung. Bonn, 2005. Retterath, Hans-Werner. “Gedenkstein und Wegweiser: Zur Symbolik von zwei Vertriebenendenkmalen in Lörrach/Südbaden.” Jahrbuch für deutsche und osteuropäische Volkskunde 48 (2006): 1–33. ———. “Geschichtsbilderkampf und zwiespältige Beheimatungsversuche: Vertriebenendenkmale in Südbaden.” Jahrbuch für deutsche und osteuropäische Volkskunde 47 (2005): 83–121. Rexhauser, Rex. “Das Bild des Nachkriegslagers in Lamsdorf im kollektiven Gedächtnis der Deutschen.” Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung 50 (2001): 48–72. Röger, Maren. Flucht, Vertreibung und Umsiedlung: Mediale Erinnerungen und Debatten in Deutschland und Polen seit 1989. Marburg, 2011. Schell, Csilla. “‘Pro Memoria’: Denkmäler als Erinnerung an die Vertreibung in Ungarn seit der Wende.” Jahrbuch für europäische Ethnologie 3 (2013): 213–30. Schmidt-Häuer, Christian. “Die Weisen von Glogau: In der schlesischen Stadt setzten Deutsche und Polen den Opfern der Vertreibungen ein gemeinsames Denkmal.” Die Zeit 45, 30 October 2003. http://www.zeit.de/2003/45/Glogau. Scholz, Dietmar. Einweihung eines Gedenksteins auf dem Friedhof in Tschammendorf. Isernhagen, 2006. Scholz, Stephan. Vertriebenendenkmäler: Topographie einer deutschen Erinnerungslandschaft. Paderborn, 2015. Sniegon, Tomas. “Between Old Animosity and New Mourning: Meanings of Czech Post-Communist Memorials of Mass Killings of the Sudeten Germans.” In Whose Memory? Which Future? Remembering Ethnic Cleansing and Lost Cultural Diversity in Eastern, Central and Southeastern Europe, ed. Barbara Törnquist-Plewa, 49–72. New York, 2016. “Staatspräsident entschuldigt sich bei vertriebenen Schwaben.” Neue Zeitung, 23 June 2006. Wollrab, Adalbert. “Der dornige Weg zu einer Gedenktafel für die Opfer des Postelberger Massakers.” Heimatkreis Saaz, 6 October 2010. http://saaz.info/index.php/2010/ 10/07/der-dornige-weg-zu-einer-gedenktafel-fuer-die-opfer-des-postelberger-mas sakers.

CHAPTER 10



Local Battlefields as “Cultural Landscape” of Global Value?

Views of War in Normandy and the Classification as World Heritage JÖRG ECHTERNKAMP

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ever before had Courseulles-sur-Mer, a Norman seaside village, seen so many prominent guests in just one week: Winston Churchill landed on Monday, 12 June 1944; General Charles de Gaulle, who had called on the French to resist the German occupiers via the BBC in 1940, stepped onto French soil on Wednesday. The British King George VI arrived on Friday to congratulate his soldiers personally. A few days before, at dawn on 6 June 1944, 150,000 soldiers from Great Britain, the United States, France, Poland, Canada, and other nations had landed along the French coast of the English Channel after embarking from England with 1,200 warships and 7,500 airplanes. Movies such as Saving Private Ryan (Steven Spielberg, 1998) and The Longest Day (Darry Zanuck, 1962) have seared these scenes into the memory of the postwar generation. The landing itself, Operation Neptune, was just the first episode of the much larger Operation Overlord. But, contrary to popular belief, Operation Neptune was not the largest amphibious operation in the history of the Second World War. This superlative must be reserved for the Anglo-American landing in Sicily on 10 July 1943, when even more people and equipment were put ashore during Operation Husky. From a strategic point of view, however, the Normandy landing was more significant. The engagements in Normandy, during which the cities of Caen, Lisieux, and Le Havre were utterly destroyed, lasted for twelve weeks—not three, as the Allies had calculated. Nevertheless,

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by 25 August, the Allied troops had advanced to Paris; by the next day, the city was in Allied hands.1 No doubt, the coastal area has had significant influence on the operation and the manifestations of military violence, but the opposite is also true: these battles left lasting marks on the area, turning it into a “landscape,” the term of Germanic origin taken here in its etymological sense of human-made (“shaped”) spaces across the land. The Normandy region is thus a strong subject of study for historians of environmental history, who study the changing relationship between humans and environment over time. Because of the overall interest in perspectives of war in the early twenty-first century, however, this chapter will approach this topic from a different angle. To further analyze this particular space, in which authenticity interplays with symbolic and museal representations of war (and peace), the concept of “cultural landscape” will be carefully examined. What are its theoretical and practical implications? This concept has become all the more important since 1992, when the World Heritage Committee (WHC) of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (most commonly known by its acronym, UNESCO) introduced the category in the WHC Convention. Included in the Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention of 2002, “cultural landscape” became a key category used by the United Nations to qualify properties as UNESCO World Heritage sites. According to UNESCO, this vague term describes cultural assets that represent “the ‘combined works of nature and of man’ . . . . They are illustrative of the evolution of human society . . . under the influence of the physical constraints and/or opportunities presented by their natural environment and of successive social, economic and cultural forces, both external and internal.’”2 Whether this concept can be applied to the coastal area will have palpable implications for its conservation, representation, and reputation: on 7 April 2014, the Permanent Mission of France to the United Nations filed an application with UNESCO, requesting that the landing beaches of Normandy be added to the World Heritage List.3 Therefore, this chapter will offer a closer look at the area under discussion, systematically distinguishing between the different historical “layers” that presently exist there: first, the material relics, and second, the symbolic forms and their meaning for remembrance of the past. Third, I will look at the meaning of “cultural landscape” in the context of UNESCO World Heritage in relation to the Normandy beaches. I will argue that defining the beaches in this way would afford a particular political meaning to (this part of ) the Second World War and therefore influence popular perception of it. Indeed, the relationship between natural and human-made forms would be transformed into an expression of political ideals that ultimately could serve the economic needs of the region. In accordance with UNESCO’s categories, politicians have propagated a narrative of universal freedom that provides historical causality linking

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the landing of 1944 to twenty-first-century interpretations of past violence in relation to peace.

Testimonies of Defense and Attack Utah Beach, Omaha Beach, Gold Beach, Juno Beach, and Sword Beach: these were the names of the five landing beaches. Even today, signs with these names show tourists the way from the coastal road D514 to the landing beaches, leading them past farms, churches, and cows in the départements of Calvados and Manche. However, visitors are not fascinated with the beaches alone. The military operation left many traces that have continued to shape the eightykilometer stretch of coast to this day. Some of them can be seen from afar, while others, such as the munitions bunker whose concrete surface breaks through the verdant green of a fenced-in meadow, must literally be stumbled across or can only be seen through binoculars. “The landing beaches” (les plages du débarquement) therefore describes much more than the coastline itself. Which military-historical traces of the war can be found today and why? On the one hand, there are the massive, striking remnants of the Atlantic Wall (Atlantikwall). From 1942 to 1944, the German Wehrmacht and Organisation Todt planned and partially built this defense system, which reaches from northern Norway to southern France and was supposed to protect the Third

Figure 10.1. Remains of a bunker integrated in a residential building at Colleville-Montgomery. Photo by Jörg Echternkamp, 2016.

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Reich from an Allied invasion.4 Canadian troops’ failed attempt to land near Dieppe on 18–19 August 1942 made the risk of invasion apparent. Only here in Normandy was the Atlantic Wall, which military historians consider a prime example of coastal fortifications, put to the test. The Nazi propaganda term Wall implies a continuous and solid barrier (Wall meaning “rampart” or “bulwark,” not “wall” as in English). In actuality, it was a more or less continuous series of fortified, partly unfinished positions situated directly along the four thousand kilometers of the Atlantic coastline. The translations in English and French (Mur de l’Atlantique) are even more misleading than the German term. Between the villages of Normandy, one can visit three different elements of the defense line as open-air museums. First, about thirty batteries of shorebased artillery lie several kilometers apart between the mouths of the Seine and the Pointe rivers. The batteries consist of four to six cannons each (some of which are housed in casemates), bunkers for ammunition and personnel, and observation posts and fire direction centers—mostly aboveground bunkers made from reinforced concrete. Historically, barbed wire, mines, and antiaircraft and anti-tank guns protected the batteries. Some of the cannons were from the First World War and were already antiquated in 1944; others had been captured in Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, or France. Second, some two hundred Widerstandsnester (literally “nests of resistance”) were near the beaches. These lightly armed strongpoints were equipped with anti-tank guns and machine guns that were often operated from an underground concrete building, only the upper part of which rose above ground level and which contained a circular hole for the gunner. In allusion to the Libyan seaside town that was heavily besieged in the Second World War, the French call the nests “Tobruks”. Third, there were so-called fortresses in Normandy: heavy artillery and antiaircraft guns were deployed in Cherbourg and Le Havre to prevent the Allies from capturing the ports for logistical reasons. In contrast to objects on display in a traditional museum, many of the military artifacts can be walked into. If you do not suffer from claustrophobia, and are not afraid of dark tunnels, you can look at the horizon of the English Channel through a slit in meter-thick concrete, as the German soldiers did in June 1944. As the positions did not all suffer the same amount of destruction, they remain in varying condition. The Longues-sur-Mer battery, for example, is the only fortification of its kind in which the German-made cannons have been preserved. The height of the surrounding hillock, however, according to an employee of the regional council, was reduced to keep tourists from climbing onto the casemates, which makes the silhouettes of the bunkers even more prominent. Even though metal railings were installed and platforms built in other places for the sake of visitor safety (for example, at Pointe du Hoc), the landing beaches have overall lost little of their historic authenticity.

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Figure 10.2. The Longues-sur-Mer battery. Photo by Jörg Echternkamp, 2016.

The bunkers cower between the dunes. The fortified positions are so perfectly adapted to the geographical conditions that they seem to blend into the natural environment. What was a matter of cover and camouflage in 1944 may still cause surprise today. For example, the access hole of an underground munitions bunker is virtually invisible unless viewed from above. The battles, and the heavy bombings in particular, left trails of destruction that are still visible today. The ruins of the church in Saint-Manvieu-Norrey, where Allied air raids fended off the counterattack from the German troops of 12th SS Panzer Division, have long been a stark reminder of the hostilities. Seeming like a moonscape, covered with bomb craters and the debris of destroyed bunkers, Pointe du Hoc is also a place that reflects the massive impact of the air raids in June 1944. On the other hand, in addition to the German defense facilities are artifacts from Allied logistical structures. Mulberry A and B are the names of the two artificial supply ports at Omaha Beach and Gold Beach, where transport ships were to dock at any tide after the landings. Built in June 1944, the enormous pontoons of the harbor at Arromanches, which stretches over an area of almost one thousand hectares, are a testimony to the tremendous efforts the Allies made to bring people and matériel to shore. Not much seems to have changed here since the end of the war. Many of the historic relics of the site’s military

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past are now underwater and can only be viewed with diving goggles, which is one reason why diving clubs are popular at these sites. In contrast to concrete artifacts, digital technology provides insight into the area of battlefield archaeology. These artifacts from German and Allied troops are still in place not because of their value or because they served any purpose in the postwar years. Quite the contrary: they had lost their usefulness but were too heavy to be destroyed and removed. Today, the artifacts of military history make the landing beaches a cultural landscape. However, they are not the only factor.

Commemoration and Reconciliation There is another level of historic significance that is ever present along the entire coast. Since the 1950s, a vast number of memorials have been set up to mark these historic sites. Each reminds us of the fate of a particular group of soldiers. The tall Cross of Lorraine in Courseulles-sur-Mer, for example, was erected to commemorate the aforementioned return of de Gaulle on 14 June 1944. In the collective memory of Jour J, as D-Day is called in France, the involvement of French troops is of great symbolic importance. In particular, the men of the Philippe Kieffer’s Commando who landed near Colleville along with the British are considered heroes. One of the rather unusual, more recent monuments is the Canadian Inukshuk Memorial in Bernières-sur-Mer, an Inuit symbol made from stones piled up in the form of a human figure. The vast war cemeteries are among the memorial sites with the greatest historical-political significance. Who does not know the image of the endless rows of white crosses and Stars of David on a perfectly green lawn that is so characteristic of the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in Colleville-sur-Mer? This is where the mortal remains of some 9,400 soldiers were gathered in 1956—among them the brothers of Frederick Niland, on whom Steven Spielberg modeled his famous private, James Ryan. The German military cemetery in La Cambe is different: the austere graveyard with its dark crosses and tombstones stands in contrast to the cemeteries of the victorious powers. It is the final resting place of more than twenty-one thousand members of the German Kriegsmarine, Luftwaffe, and Waffen-SS. Since the 1954 Franco-German Treaty on War Graves , the German War Graves Commission has been responsible for the La Cambe cemetery. In 2015, the theft of the late SS tank commander Michael Wittman’s tombstone hit the headlines. Finally, visitors will find a museum in almost every village. Some are owned publicly, while others are in private hands. All these museums are located in historical areas—in this case, on battlefields—and evoke the historical events that took place in the respective regions.5 One nongovernmental house has become the leading museum in the region and has gained a nationwide reputa-

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tion: the Mémorial de Caen (Caen Memorial Museum). Officially opened by François Mitterrand on 6 June 1988, the modern concrete building rests on the remnants of a bunker, which is incorporated into the exhibition. The distinctive cleft that appears to bisect the building represents the breach that Operation Neptune created in the Atlantic Wall. School classes here learn about the history of the Second World War from its very beginnings in 1918, walking down a descending spiral into the hell of war. At the Mémorial de Caen, scientists discuss the military history of the twentieth century, and political leaders from all over the world come together to celebrate the beginnings of the liberation and reconciliation of former enemies. On entering the spacious lobby, the visitor is first faced with a large, unexpected image of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Allied landings are depicted as the beginning of a pan-European liberation process that finally led to the end of the Cold War, and the reunification of Germany in 1990—there could not be a more powerful way to summarize the simple message of the memorial. The landing beaches as we know them today are the result of decades of interaction between nature and culture that has long developed its own history. This “second-degree history” (as the French historian Pierre Nora calls it) can be examined as well, making Normandy an exciting field of research for historians. The coastal stretch gives particular evidence of the historic dynamics of the region. In 1944, the landscape was changed by incisions made into the dune scenery and newly built roads; the artificial port changed the seascape. The 1988 Mémorial de Caen; the privately funded, nine-meter-high Le Braves memorial sculpture built in 2004 at Omaha Beach; the panoramic cinema Arromanches 360 that opened in 2013: these commemorative sites exemplify the gradual reshaping of nature after 1944 and represent a change in Normandy’s commemorative culture. They present the landings as a European, if not a global, symbol of liberation. It is a different matter, of course, whether the GIs really fought for the liberation of Europe (or whether they were just doing their job by executing orders) and whether the Allies wanted to liberate the Germans as well (or whether they even wanted to disempower, demilitarize, and denazify them in the first place). In any case, the area has been and continues to be subject to change, and the natural landscape is, simultaneously, a cultural one that has been formed through the actions of humankind. The landing beaches are an excellent stage for commemoration and reconciliation ceremonies—and not only for veterans. In 2014, for example, the French and the Americans together organized festivities to mark the seventieth anniversary of the landings, which took place on the American war cemetery. This has not always been the case. The Comité du Débarquement (Landing Committee) has taken care of commemorative events since 1945. In 1947, a law was passed with the objective of keeping memory alive and promoting tourism. But after the war, de Gaulle preferred to celebrate different heroes: the resistance

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Figure 10.3. Tourists on top of a former bunker turned into a memorial at Omaha Beach. Photo by Jörg Echternkamp, 2016.

fighters and the soldiers of his exile army. Thus, not until 1984 did the festivities gain global attention, when US President Ronald Reagan visited Normandy on the fortieth anniversary of the landings. This was the first time since 1954 that the French president and the British and Belgian queens appeared in person to commemorate the landings at Normandy. In both 1994 and 2004, the number of well-known politicians in attendance at commemoration ceremonies increased. The international ceremony for the sixtieth anniversary was the first to be attended by a German representative: Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. The festivities on 6 June 2014 have so far been the culmination of global commemoration and have placed the coastal strip in Normandy in the global spotlight. The ceremonies in 2014 were the last time when veterans participated: now oral tradition will pass into cultural memory. Since the 1980s, when the German media started to be mesmerized by the concept of the contemporary witness (Zeitzeuge, literally “witness of the time”), remembrance in public domains or in the media was inextricably linked to the presence of the witness to history, often presented as a victim of circumstances. Without the appropriation of the past through immediate experience, those who remember the past will depend even more on the cultural landscape.6 Monuments, cemeteries, and museums:

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these vectors of commemorative history make the coastal strip a historic place in a double sense. Not only can the remains of a major military-historical event be viewed there, but the region is also home to countless attempts to acknowledge the historic significance of that event. If Zeitzeugen can no longer settle modern society’s longing for authenticity, the authentic site must be revaluated. Places rather than people will substantiate the past. As an authentic place, the D-Day beaches offer a wide range of possible interpretations and international approaches on both historic levels. But interpreting the coastal area of Normandy in its attempt for inclusion on the World Heritage List has been highly influenced by the cultural politics implied by this process. What holds true for Zeitzeugen can also be said about authentic places: they can be instrumentalized to provide political legitimization and collective identity, as well as for economic reasons. The memories of D-Day have become a decisive factor in Normandy’s economy. Its tourism industry is afraid of alienating visitors. Tourists in Normandy should visit not only spas like Deauville, Trouville, and Étretat. The challenge for the region will be to go beyond the former pilgrimage of veterans, to attract a younger generation on the grounds of a modern tourism of remembrance. This is why the region has invested in new museums such as the Overlord Museum, next to the American war cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer, or the Musée Airborne (Airborne Museum) at Sainte-Mère-Église, dedicated to the parachuters of the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions of the US Army. It is in this economic and political context that we must understand Normandy’s attempt to get the landing beaches on the World Heritage List. Being named on the list would hold significance beyond being a purely bureaucratic issue: “Heritage status brings hope the designation could attract more visitors at a time when their most frequent visitors, veterans and their families, are slowly dying off.”7

A Site of “Outstanding Universal Value”? Whether the Normandy beaches will be inscribed on the World Heritage List will be decided not far from the location—in Paris, at Place de Fontenoy, where the seat of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre is located. UNESCO has established the intergovernmental World Heritage Committee (WHC), composed of representatives from the twenty-one States Parties that have adhered to the World Heritage Convention.8 Based on inventories submitted by these countries, the WHC establishes the World Heritage List: an overview that is regularly updated at least every two years. UNESCO makes a basic distinction between cultural and natural heritage. The former consists of monuments or parts thereof (e.g., architectural works or works of monumental sculpture and painting), groups of buildings (separate or connected), and sites (“works of man

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or the combined works of nature and man, and areas including archaeological sites”). Both the WHC and the World Heritage Fund have been in operation since 1976. There is, however, a negative equivalent of the World Heritage List. The List of World Heritage in Danger consists of those properties that are threatened by serious and specific dangers. Properties can be deleted from the World Heritage List, if the WHC finds the value that had justified its inscription in the first place to be destroyed. The WHC makes its decisions based on “objective and scientific considerations.”9 The belief in the authority of experts is reflected in such formal requirements as documentation and evaluation provided by qualified experts, as well as the use of expert peer reviews. In 2017, the World Heritage List included 1,052 properties, with 814 of them categorized as “cultural sites,” 203 as “natural sites,” and 35 as “mixed sites.”10 Clearly, the concept of world heritage has been applied universally to categorize relics of the past, which are interpreted as “legacies.” So far, however, whole battlefields have not made it on the World Heritage List.11 In order to understand why a landscape scarred by military violence could eventually qualify for the UNESCO list, or at least why applicants think it would, we must take a closer look at the institutional framework, the application procedure, and, most importantly, the criteria for the short list. Only then will it become apparent how all this could influence the popular perspective of the D-Day beaches. In 1972, UNESCO adopted the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage.12 According to its preamble, one goal of the conservation and protection of the world’s “heritage” is to “maintain, increase and diffuse knowledge.” In view of the dangers threatening the cultural and natural heritage, and given its “outstanding universal value,” its protection is considered a matter of the international community as a whole. Collective assistance is provided as a complement to the action taken by individual States Parties. In other words, once classified as a site of “heritage,” the relevant community and/or region can profit from the support of an international organization. Cultural and natural heritage will only be considered if they are “of Outstanding Universal Value,” normally under the general categories of history, art, or science. As for the latter category of “natural heritage,” the convention (article 2) mentions three aspects. To begin, it refers to “natural features consisting of physical and biological formations . . . which are of outstanding universal value from the aesthetic or scientific point of view.” UNESCO also considers natural heritage, geological, and physiological formations, which act as the habitat for threatened species of animals and plants. Finally, the term refers to natural sites of “outstanding universal value from the point of view of science, conservation or natural beauty.” Clearly, the D-Day landing beaches cannot be categorized by either of these two categories alone, since they only partially satisfy the defini-

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tions of either cultural or natural heritage. They fall into a third category made up of “mixed cultural and natural heritage.” Precise criteria for the inscription of properties on the World Heritage List and for the provision of assistance under the World Heritage Fund are defined in the WHC’s Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention, most recently revised in 2017.13 They define “cultural landscapes” as “cultural properties” that “represent the ‘combined works of nature and of man.’” The guidelines take into account the historical dimension of culture and nature. As mentioned earlier, the WHC considers cultural landscapes “illustrative of the evolution of human society and settlement over time, under the influence of the physical constraints and/or opportunities presented by their natural environment and of successive social, economic and cultural forces.”14 Are the D-Day landing beaches “among the priceless and irreplaceable assets . . . of humanity as a whole,” as the guidelines describe? Would “the loss, through deterioration or disappearance, of any of these most prized assets constitute(s) an impoverishment of the heritage of all the peoples of the world?” The pivotal concept here is the assumption of an “outstanding universal value,” which means “cultural and/or natural significance which is so exceptional as to transcend national boundaries and to be of common importance for present and future generations of all humanity.”15 Regarding the case of D-Day beaches, the following two criteria are relevant: “be an outstanding example of a type of building, architectural or technological ensemble or landscape which illustrates (a) significant stage(s) in human history” (criterion IV); and “be directly or tangibly associated with events or living traditions, with ideas, or with beliefs, with artistic and literary works of outstanding universal significance” (criterion VI, which should preferably be used in conjunction with other criteria).16 In short, UNESCO relates the key criterion of outstanding universal value of specific “landscapes” to areas where people and nature interconnect in a process of cultural development. This historicity of space will be as crucial for the case under discussion as the emphasis on its authenticity. According to UNESCO, the authenticity and integrity of the site and its systematic protection are also vital to its classification.17 In the attempt to be as “objective” as possible and to operationalize a highly ambivalent term, the organization refers to another “official” concept: the Nara Document on Authenticity, named after a 1994 meeting of experts in Nara, Japan. The document attached to the guidelines “provides a practical basis for examining the authenticity of such properties.”18 Authenticity, it says, depends first on the knowledge provided by historical sources. This not only refers to clear-cut “technical” characteristics of the site such as materials, as well as its use and function, but also includes “spirit and feeling,” criteria that, as the guidelines concede, do not lend themselves to practical applications under the conditions of authenticity. But the spirit of a site and the feelings it evokes are nonetheless

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considered “important indicators of character and sense of place.”19 Spirit is understood as a truthful expression of the site’s cultural value, which in turn is a criterion that meets the condition of authenticity. Reconstructions are only acceptable in exceptional circumstances. Providing security for visitors would be an example of such a circumstance. The second aspect, integrity, refers to how inclusive the elements of a site are, as well as if it is an adequate size—a condition the Normandy beaches will easily meet. Moreover, the dynamics of the cultural landscape and the relationships between its components must be maintained, as is the case in Normandy. Thus, a distinction can be drawn between the D-Day beaches and the other two sites relating to war inscribed on the World Heritage List: the Hiroshima Peace Memorial and the Bikini Atoll Nuclear Test Site. Finally, the WHC has defined “cultural landscape” as, for instance, a specific type of property next to historic towns, canals, and routes.20 In accordance with the convention, it is the combination of works of nature and people that symbolize the historical development of society, which lie at the core of the interpretation. Cultural landscapes fall into three main categories. First, there are landscapes designed and created intentionally by people, such as gardens, and, second, their opposites: landscapes that “organically evolved” like relics of the past. Again, the D-Day beaches do not obviously belong to either of these categories. Third, there is the “associative cultural landscape.” To meet this criterion, the material cultural evidence itself does not matter. Rather, a landscape of this category might be considered for the World Heritage List “by virtue of the powerful . . . cultural associations of the natural element.” This meaning ascribed to cultural landscape is of utmost significance to the case of Normandy’s battlefields. The relics of military defense and attack do not matter, but the meanings attached to them over time do. In principle, UNESCO’s definition allows for the necessary maneuvering to draw attention away from the fact that a landscape of war and violence, littered by concrete from Organisation Todt, is at stake. Wehrmacht bunkers as such would surely be considered the opposite of outstanding, universal value. Within the framework of UNESCO’s definitions, categories, and criteria, the D-Day beaches are given a meaning that allows for a differing view on violence. Rather than taking the area as an impressive reminder of Nazi occupation in Europe, the D-Day beaches can be interpreted as a “cultural landscape” because of their symbolic value as a site that reminds us of how that occupation was overcome. Two central arguments justify this. First, the landing beaches offer a prime example of both offensive and defensive military systems. The fortified positions of the Atlantic Wall and the structural measures of the Allies were closely connected to their natural environment and changed it considerably, which can still be seen today. Second, the landing beaches embody universal values. They stand for peace and liberty, remind us of the solidarity in the fight against oppression and tyranny, and are hence a perfect place for reconciliation festivities

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that enable the exchange of experiences and views between generations. For resistance fighters and inmates of concentration camps in particular, the beaches represent their hope for liberation. The successful attack on the Atlantic Wall signifies the beginning of the liberation of many European countries and the victory against totalitarianism. Parallels are drawn between the historic alliance of the states involved and the integration of states in Europe since 1945. The landing beaches are not only a symbolic representation of human rights but also a location where information on the historical events can be imparted today. These arguments are in line with the UNESCO qualification criteria IV and VI. The D-Day landing beaches can be interpreted in such a way as to be used as a vehicle for symbolic values. The image of a new Western Front opening to push back the Wehrmacht troops occupying most of Europe at the time lends itself to the retrospective interpretation as the beginning of Europe’s liberation from Nazism, irrespective of its real strategic importance.21 To strengthen the validity of this interpretation, the project points out its contemporary character; since the landings had been announced three years in advance, 6 June 1944 is described as the culmination of years of waiting. An extract from Anne Frank’s diary of that day is quoted: “The invasion has begun!! . . . Is this really the beginning of the long-awaited liberation?”22 Sadly for the Jewish girl who was murdered in Bergen-Belsen, she did not see this liberation though. But her words reflect the idea that landing and liberation were already inextricably linked to each other in contemporary expectations. Quoting a Jewish source implicitly refers to the idea of the liberation of the Jewish survivors in the concentration camps. Thus, the history of D-Day reflects the increasing symbolic significance of the landings over time. They became a symbol of peace and reconciliation, two complementary values that have been associated with the key concept of liberation since the mid-1980s. The military operation of 1944 has been transformed into the starting point for the global fight for freedom and shared values. D-Day has developed into a universal signifier. However, it symbolizes different things to different people.23 Since 2014, a metal sculpture at Utah Beach, the Freedom Tree (Arbre de la Liberté), commemorates the landings at Normandy and the ensuing battles. Its metal leaves are decorated with simple messages such as “Le secret de la liberté est le courage” (The secret of freedom is courage). The weight that this narrative has had on the former battlefield becomes particularly clear in its official presentation for the World Heritage List initiative. The four official objectives are described as follows: to “gain recognition for the values embodied by this remembrance site: liberty, democracy, peace, reconciliation”; “consolidate the preservation of this special area, the protection of which began in 1945”; “give an impetus to the territory and unite remembrance tourism stakeholders based on an ambitious project designed to boost regional

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attractiveness”; and “enhance the worldwide opening of this memorial site.”24 The appeal to the reader (and potential visitor) includes the invitation to sign an online petition: “Liberté: Je m’enscris en ton nom” (Freedom: I sign on your behalf ).25 The essentialist language overemphasizes the idea that freedom itself is at stake. Visitors of the website can also browse a virtual guest book with the names of politicians, intellectuals, and artists who “support freedom.” People of less prominence have also been invited to upload their picture and become “ambassadors” of the project, in order to spread the news of the site’s “outstanding value,” implicitly reflecting the jargon of the UNESCO convention.26

Toward an Idealizing View of Violence In conclusion, the remnants of the German defense system, the Atlantic Wall, and the artifacts from Allied logistic structures in the French region of Normandy have borne witness to one of the largest military operations of the Second World War. Since then, various vectors of memory, such as monuments, museums, and memorials, have been built. Especially since the mid-1980s, the area has been transformed into a site of commemoration and reconciliation, an authentic place where former soldiers, the Zeitzeugen, promised direct access to war experiences. Key categories and concepts of world heritage have strongly shaped the “official” representation of the landing beaches. The representation refers to the D-Day beaches as a “landscape” bearing the traces of a war that for its part is interpreted as a “fight for freedom.” Thus, the landscape is associated with universal ideals in compliance with UNESCO’s central criterion, the outstanding universal value of the former battlefield. The landscape is unique in the sense that the military operation leading to its formation is incomparable to other conflicts throughout history. The underlying historical narrative is based on a causal linkage between the extraordinarily total and global character of the military conflict on the one hand and the unique significance and universality of values associated with it on the other. The landscape in Normandy is imagined as a symbolic catalyst of postwar promises of freedom, democracy, and peace—ideals associated to the landing, long before it took place, by those who longed for liberation in occupied Europe. The international ceremonies from 1984 onward, especially the most recent, in commemoration of the seventieth anniversary on 6 June 2014, are perceived as further steps in this unfolding of freedom; the same applies to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. This interpretation of the military operation is not self-evident. First of all, it suggests that the dominant view of landscapes is “an inscribed surface, akin to a map or a text, from which cultural meaning . . . can simply be read.”27 Additionally, its universalizing narrative, with its emphasis on military accom-

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plishment, liberation, and peace, runs the risk of romanticizing D-Day. Further risks include depicting an incomplete, if not distorted, picture of military violence in Normandy in 1944.28 It conceals not only the ugly side of war—the killing, dying, material destruction, trauma, thefts, and rapes—but also the enduring absence of Normandy in French collective memories of war, in which the destruction caused by Allies did not fit. The universalizing narrative also overestimates the strategical importance D-Day had on the course of the war. This narrative of liberation also runs contrary to universalizing narratives of totalitarianism in Eastern European countries, such as Poland and the Baltic states, expressed in museums and traveling exhibitions on the Second World War.29 What is more, it provides a positive founding myth of Europe that is not in line with the negative narrative of the Holocaust as Europe’s common historical denominator.30 However, it perfectly matches the romanticized view of D-Day held in the United States and, most of all, the United Kingdom. The memory of 6 June 1944 has become part of an all-encompassing memory of the Second World War as a war that had to be fought and won. Within this framework, many still interpret the landings as a pivotal element of “the last good war”: an unambiguous struggle between good and evil. According to this narrative, the war was fought to protect certain values: Nazism had to be defeated by the Allies for the sake of peace and freedom. Veterans have been praised for their individual courage, sacrifice, and determination in the war effort, symbolizing the price of freedom.31 From an American perspective, D-Day has also been considered a crucial step in the US’s reluctant march to becoming a global power (while simultaneously representing the decline of Great Britain). Exhaustively documented and presented on TV, D-Day marked the starting point of American dominance via troops and matériel during the rest of the war, as well as the growing US influence and leadership among the Allies after 1945. Also, in the UK, the recent remembrance of the First World War, underlining its futility, has reinforced the myth of the good war of 1939–1945 that seemed to have achieved democracy and freedom at last. This myth of the noble war especially shields the unique nature of the Second World War, in which up to fifty million of the victims were civilians. This inclination toward an idealizing narrative in accordance with the framework of the World Heritage List criteria reflects the much more sobering logic of economy, tourism, and remembrance against the backdrop of generational change. “Heritage tourism” combines public education and commemoration of those who fought in 1944. A broad range of actors including government officials, war cemetery commissions, museum managers, and battlefield tour guides can be seen as Normandy’s “guardians of remembrance.”32 Whether the “cultural landscape” and its contribution of authenticity can make up for the loss of the Zeitzeugen, however, remains to be seen.

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Jörg Echternkamp is Research Director at the Center for Military History and Social Sciences of the Bundeswehr, Potsdam; Associate Professor of Modern History at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg; and coeditor of Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift. He has worked widely on German and European social and cultural history (nineteenth to twenty-first centuries), focusing on nationalism, National Socialism and the Second World War, postwar memories, and historiography. His publications include seven monographs, recently, Das Dritte Reich (2018) and Soldaten im Nachkrieg (2014); two edited volumes, including Germany and the Second World War, Volume IX/II: German Wartime Society 1939–1945 (2014); and eight coedited volumes, most recently, Geschichte ohne Grenzen? (2017) and Gefallenengedenken im globalen Vergleich (2013). He is currently editing a book on military and society in East and West Germany from 1970 to 1990.

Notes This chapter is partly based on Jörg Echternkamp, “Normandie, 6. Juni 1944: Eine Küste als Kulturlandschaft heute?” Militärgeschichte: Zeitschrift für historische Bildung 4 (2016): 14–17. 1. Cf. Olivier Wieviorka, Normandy: The Landings to the Liberation of Paris (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010); Antony Beevor, D-Day: The Battle for Normandy (New York, 2009); Peter Lieb, Unternehmen Overlord: Die Invasion in der Normandie (Munich, 2014). 2. UNESCO, Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention, WHC 17/01 (Paris: UNESCO World Heritage Centre, 2017), 19, https://whc .unesco.org/en/guidelines/. 3. After the inscription on the tentative national list (next to sites associated with the First World War and the city of Metz), the submission of the application was the second step in a two-stage process of the inscription request. In this context, a scientific committee, of which I am a member, was set up in 2014. 4. Cf. the guide to the remains by Anthony Saunders, Hitler’s Atlantic Wall: Fortress Europe (Strout, 2001). 5. See Stephan Jaeger, this volume; his analysis of “experientiality” includes museums in Normandy. 6. Martin Sabrow and Norbert Frei, eds., Die Geburt des Zeitzeugen nach 1945 (Göttingen, 2012). 7. Joshua Melvin, “D-Day Beaches Move Closer to UNESCO Listing,” The Local, 13 January 2014, http://www.thelocal.fr/20140113/beaches-of-normandy-landingheaded-to-unesco-list. 8. Cf. Michael Batisse and Gérard Bolla, The Invention of World Heritage (Paris, 2005). 9. UNESCO World Heritage Convention, “The Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention,” 12, updated 12 July 2017, http://whc .unesco.org/en/guidelines. 10. The relevant website shows their global distribution by country on an interactive map

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11.

12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21.

22. 23.



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and indicates—with red thumbtacks—which sites have been inscribed on the List of World Heritage in Danger. UNESCO, “World Heritage List,” accessed 21 August 2018, http://whc.unesco.org/en/list. However, landscapes such as the Dolomites, the mountain range in the northern Italian Alps, can become World Heritage natural sites. They were considered to be of outstanding universal value because of their geomorphological significance, not because of their role as a battlefield in the First World War. We find war in the context of world heritage usually when monuments of the cultural heritage have been damaged or destroyed by war, as has been the case during the civil war in Syria. Destruction of these sites is considered a war crime. In 2015, the International Criminal Court opened a case against a jihadist for the destruction of cultural heritage in Mali. UNESCO, Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, Adopted by the General Conference at Its Seventeenth Session, Paris, 16 November 1972, http://whc.unesco.org/archive/convention-en.pdf. UNESCO World Heritage Convention, “The Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention,” updated 12 July 2017, http://whc .unesco.org/en/guidelines. Since the criteria have reflected changing value systems, the guidelines have a history of their own. UNESCO, Operational Guidelines, no. 47. Ibid., no. 49. UNESCO World Heritage Convention, “The Criteria for Selection,” accessed 21 August 2018, https://whc.unesco.org/en/criteria. UNESCO, Operational Guidelines, nos. 1–16. UNESCO, The Nara Document on Authenticity, WHC-94/CONF.003/INF.008, World Heritage Committee, Eighteenth Session, Phuket, Thailand, 12–17 December 1994, http://whc.unesco.org/archive/nara94.htm. UNESCO, Operational Guidelines, nos. 82–83. Ibid., annex 3. See also UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Cultural Landscapes: the Challenges of Conservation, World Heritage Papers no. 7 (Paris: UNESCO World Heritage Centre, 2003), http://whc.unesco.org/en/series/7. The academic concept of cultural landscape has a broader meaning than UNESCO’s term. Any system of interaction between human activity and natural habitat is regarded as a cultural landscape. Cf. Jean-Luc Leleu, “Stalingrad, die Landung in der Normandie und die Befreiung Europas,” in Geschichte ohne Grenzen? Europäische Dimensionen der Militärgeschichte vom 19. Jahrhundert bis heute, ed. Jörg Echternkamp and Hans-Hubertus Mack (Munich, 2017), 89–98. Cf. Histoire Normande, “La joie d’Anne Frank pendant le Débarquement en Normandie,” 3 June 2015, http://www.histoirenormande.fr/anne-franck-bayeux-normandie-6-juin. Michael Dolski, Sam Edwards, and John Buckley, eds., D-Day in History and Memory: The Normandy Landings in International Remembrance and Commemoration (Denton, OH, 2014). For the overwhelmingly romanticizing American way of remembrance, cf. Michael R. Dolski, Remembering D-Day: The Normandy Landings in American Collective Memory (Knoxville, TN, 2016). For the contacts between GIs and French women, cf. Mary Louise Roberts, D-Day Through French Eyes: Normandy 1944 (Chicago, 2014). For the changing place of D-Day in French memory of the Second World War, see Olivier Wieviorka, La Mémoire désunie: Le souvenir politique des années sombres, de la Libération à nos jours (Paris, 2013).

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24. Liberté Normandie, “The Candidacy for the UNESCO World Heritage Committee,” accessed 21 August 2018, http://www.liberte-normandie.com/index.php/en/ 2013-05-16-18-10-14/la-candidature-au-patrimoine-mondial-de-l-unesco. 25. Liberté Normandie, http://www.liberte-normandie.com/index.php/fr. In the (partly) English version of the site, the slogan reads, “Normandie: Land of Liberty.” 26. Liberté Normandie, “Support the Candidacy > I Become an Ambassador,” accessed 21 August 2018, http://www.liberte-normandie.com/index.php/en/2013-05-16-1810-53/i-become-an-ambassador. There were more than sixty-two thousand supporters by the end of 2018. 27. Sandra Norma Pannell, Reconciling Nature and Culture in a Global Context: Lessons from the World Heritage List (Cairns: Rainforest CRC, 2006), 63. 28. Cf. Wieviorka, Normandy; Beevor, D-Day. 29. On the Polish case, see Winston Chu, this volume. See also Jörg Echternkamp and Stefan Martens, eds., Experience and Memory: The Second World War in Europe (New York, 2010); Arnd Bauerkämpfer, Das umstrittene Gedächtnis: Die Erinnerung an Nationalsozialismus, Faschismus und Krieg in Europa seit 1945 (Paderborn, 2012); Monika Flacke, ed. Mythen der Nationen: 1945—Arena der Erinnerungen: Eine Ausstellung des Deutschen Historischen Museums, Begleitbände zur Ausstellung 2. Oktober 2004 bis 27. Februar 2005. Ausstellungshalle von I. M. Pei. 2 vols. (Berlin, 2004); Kerstin von Lingen ed., Kriegserfahrung und nationale Identität in Europa nach 1945: Erinnerung, Säuberungsprozesse und nationales Gedächtnis (Paderborn, 2009). 30. For the debate, cf. Helmut König, Julia Schmidt, and Manfred Sicking, eds., Europas Gedächtnis: Das neue Europa zwischen nationalen Erinnerungen und gemeinsamer Identität (Bielefeld, 2008); Claus Leggewie and Anne Lang, Der Kampf um die europäische Erinnerung: Ein Schlachtfeld wird besichtigt (Munich, 2011); Aleida Assmann, Auf dem Weg zu einer europäischen Gedächtniskultur? (Vienna, 2012). 31. As a recent example of visual memorialization, cf. Thomas Sanders ed., The Last Good War: The Faces and Voices of World War II (New York, 2010). 32. Geoffrey Bird, Keir Reeves, and Sean Claxton, eds., Managing and Interpreting D-Day’s Sites of Memory: Guardians of Remembrance (London, 2016).

Bibliography Assmann, Aleida. Auf dem Weg zu einer europäischen Gedächtniskultur? Vienna, 2012. Batisse, Michel, and Gérard Bolla. The Invention of World Heritage. Paris, 2005. Bauerkämper, Arnd. Das umstrittene Gedächtnis: Die Erinnerung an Nationalsozialismus, Faschismus und Krieg in Europa seit 1945. Paderborn, 2012. Beevor, Antony. D-Day: The Battle for Normandy. New York, 2009. Bird, Geoffrey, Keir Reeves, and Sean Claxton, eds. Managing and Interpreting D-Day’s Sites of Memory: Guardians of Remembrance. London, 2016. Dolski, Michael R. Remembering D-Day: The Normandy Landings in American Collective Memory. Knoxville, TN, 2016. Dolski, Michael, Sam Edwards, and John Buckley, eds. D-Day in History and Memory: The Normandy Landings in International Remembrance and Commemoration. Denton, OH, 2014. Echternkamp, Jörg, and Stefan Martens, eds. Experience and Memory: The Second World War in Europe. New York, 2010.

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Flacke, Monika, ed. Mythen der Nationen: 1945—Arena der Erinnerungen, eine Ausstellung des Deutschen Historischen Museums, Begleitbände zur Ausstellung 2. Oktober 2004 bis 27. Februar 2005, Ausstellungshalle von I. M. Pei. 2 vols. Berlin, 2004. König, Helmut, Julia Schmidt, and Manfred Sicking, eds. Europas Gedächtnis: Das neue Europa zwischen nationalen Erinnerungen und gemeinsamer Identität. Bielefeld, 2008. Leggewie, Claus, and Anne Lang. Der Kampf um die europäische Erinnerung: Ein Schlachtfeld wird besichtigt. Munich, 2011. Leleu, Jean-Luc. “Stalingrad, die Landung in der Normandie und die Befreiung Europas.” In Geschichte ohne Grenzen? Europäische Dimensionen der Militärgeschichte vom 19. Jahrhundert bis heute, ed. Jörg Echternkamp and Hans-Hubertus Mack, 89–98. Munich, 2017. Lieb, Peter. Unternehmen Overlord: Die Invasion in der Normandie. Munich, 2014. Lingen, Kerstin von, ed. Kriegserfahrung und nationale Identität in Europa nach 1945: Erinnerung, Säuberungsprozesse und nationales Gedächtnis. Paderborn, 2009. Melvin, Joshua. “D-Day Beaches Move Closer to UNESCO Listing.” The Local, 13 January 2014. http://www.thelocal.fr/20140113/beaches-of-normandy-landing-hea ded-to-unesco-list. Pannell, Sandra Norma. Reconciling Nature and Culture in a Global Context? Lessons from the World Heritage List. Cairns: Rainforest CRC, 2006. Roberts, Mary Louise. D-Day Through French Eyes: Normandy 1944. Chicago, 2014. Sabrow, Martin, and Norbert Frei, eds. Die Geburt des Zeitzeugen nach 1945. Göttingen, 2012. Sanders, Thomas, ed. The Last Good War: The Faces and Voices of World War II. New York, 2010. Saunders, Anthony. Hitler’s Atlantic Wall: Fortress Europe. Strout, 2001. UNESCO. Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. Adopted by the General Conference at Its Seventeenth Session, Paris, 16 November 1972. http://whc.unesco.org/archive/convention-en.pdf. ———. Cultural Landscapes: The Challenges of Conservation. World Heritage Papers no. 7. Paris: UNESCO World Heritage Centre, 2003. http://whc.unesco.org/en/series/7. ———. Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention. WHC 08/01. Paris: UNESCO World Heritage Centre, 2008. http://whc.unesco .org/archive/opguide08-en.pdf. ———. The Nara Document on Authenticity. WHC-94/CONF.003/INF.008. World Heritage Committee, Eighteenth Session, Phuket, Thailand, 12–17 December 1994. http://whc.unesco.org/archive/nara94.htm. ———. “World Heritage List.” Accessed 21 August 2018. http://whc.unesco.org/en/list. Wieviorka, Olivier. La Mémoire désunie: Le souvenir politique des années sombres, de la Libération à nos jours. Paris, 2013. ———. Normandy: The Landings to the Liberation of Paris. Cambridge, MA, 2010.

AFTERWORD



The Memory Boom and the Commemoration of the Second World War JAY WINTER

T

his volume provides a valuable account of the evolution of commemorative practices in Germany and Austria, alongside other participants in the Second World War. This brief afterword suggests several cultural, political, economic, and technological settings in which to place these developments.

The Technology of Remembrance Today’s memory boom is, in part, a shift to the right in the demand curve for representations of many kinds of the upheaval of twentieth-century wars and warfare. Museums and other sites of memory have met this massive increase in demand in many different ways in different parts of Europe. All share the benefits of technological change, which informed the preservation and dissemination of memory objects at three points in the twentieth century and beyond. The First World War was followed by the first memory boom of the twentieth century. This side of the story was technologically driven. While both photography and film were nineteenth-century innovations, technical advances increased exponentially the exposure of mass populations to both fixed and moving visual images of war. What I have termed the Kodak revolution in the production and sale at very low prices of the Vest Pocket Kodak and other mobile cameras demolished military attempts to stop soldiers from taking their own photographs at war. States were no longer in control of what contemporaries “saw” of war. Visual documentation proliferated both the exponential increase in the destructive power of artillery and the erasure of the division between civilian and military targets. At the same time, the need to commem-

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orate the army of the dead—ten million strong—produced a demand for commemorative works of many kinds. We can still see those monuments in stone built in the 1920s and 1930s as war memorials on battlefields, and in villages and towns all over Europe and in areas of white settlement elsewhere. Some repeated earlier heroic tropes; many more adopted a more somber rhetoric, with horizontal axes undermining the vertical language of aesthetic redemption.1 Much more numerous were the books and ephemeral publications, works of art (popular and professional), photographs, and films on war created in the interwar years. Among scientists and avant-garde writers—for Sigmund Freud, as much as for Marcel Proust and Virginia Woolf—memory became a fascination, indeed an obsession, greater than ever before. In the more popular markets, the thirst for war stories and illustrated books seemed to be limitless before the outbreak of the Second World War created additional markets for them all over the world. The second memory boom of the twentieth century—starting in the 1980s— was also technologically driven. The means of recording, preserving, retrieving, and disseminating war stories altered radically in the second half of the twentieth century. Audio recorders, video recorders, and then digitization and the internet made it possible to capture and circulate images of war and the voices and faces of the victims of war as never before. Memory archives and museums proliferated in the 1980s and after, covering both world wars and their sequelae.2 By that time, many people in Western Europe, North America, and the Antipodes had come to the delayed recognition that the Shoah not only was a monstrous deformation of the practices of war, but that it was also at the heart of the history of the Second World War. This shift in perspective was not evident in the Soviet Bloc. But elsewhere, a consensus emerged that the civilian victims of the Shoah and the myriad other atrocities of post-1945 wars could not be commemorated in the same way as were the soldiers of the First World War. After 1945, remembering war’s victims, including soldiers, became a matter touching on a new category of memory—traumatic memory—in which the psychological damage of war could go underground, explode long after the events which triggered it, and last a lifetime. Other victims of violence—of sexual abuse in particular, but also civilian victims of police states—joined the ranks of those deemed to be suffering from traumatic memories, now formally recognized by the medical profession as pathological in character.3 The exponential growth of the internet and social media disseminating images of war precipitated the third memory boom of the early twenty-first century. Only in the age of miniaturization and globalization, of cell phones and instant video and photographic recall, could there have been the Abu Ghraib scandal, in which US soldiers in an Iraqi prison engaged both in recording and in promiscuously “sharing” violent pornographic images of the tortures they inflicted on their charges and the pleasure they got in inflicting them. When

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these images went “viral,” meaning uncontainable and therefore undeniable, remembering war and its cruelties entered a new phase. Viral circulation is the hallmark of the third memory boom.4 In each of these three memory booms, we can see that how we remember affected deeply what we remember. Technological change opened up new possibilities of preserving and retrieving the voices and faces not only of soldiers but also of substantial numbers of civilians in wartime. The distribution of the Vest Pocket Kodak made it possible for millions of soldiers to create their own photographic archives of war after 1914. From the 1960s, audio, video, and digital technology created the means to amass vast archives about everyone whose life was touched or deformed by war. The civilianization of the collective memory of war, and the now nearly universal recognition of crimes against people of all ages (i.e., crimes against humanity), arose when we possessed the hardware and later the software of storage, preservation, and recall of the voices and faces of men, women, and children during periods of armed conflict. To be sure, war is not the only driving force behind today’s memory boom, but it is an important element in the story. And the transformation of war from being a conflict on battlefields populated primarily by soldiers to conflicts populated overwhelmingly by civilians ensured that a certain kind of heroic imagery and literature of soldiers was complicated by other images of mass slaughter and victimhood. The Shoah was the iconic war of soldiers against civilians, but the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, whose bodies were reduced to shadows, were civilians as well. To be sure, older images of people in uniform as noble warriors did not vanish; they persist in many parts of the world. A second array of visual and verbal images of war as an unjustifiable abomination has grown alongside what Edmund Wilson once termed “patriotic gore.”5 These too have been disseminated easily and globally to become part of the digital memory boom. The juxtaposition of older, noble visions of soldiers risking their lives in the defense of their country with other images of civilian victims marks the mental furniture of those who come to museums and commemorative landscapes of the Second World War.

Memory and War “Experience” In many parts of the world, the “memory boom” has been marketed as a light consumer durable goods industry of remarkable attractiveness. One reason for this is that museums and other forms of packaged memory have come to highlight the experiential rather than the existential character of war remembrance, as analyzed in Stephan Jaeger’s discussion of “experientiality” in chapter 2. I will cite but one example, but many more are just like it. The year 2014 marked the seventieth anniversary of the Normandy landings. This is the moment when

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the region of lower Normandy decided, as Jörg Echternkamp notes, to nominate Normandy as a UNESCO World Heritage site. As it happened, world leaders including US President Barack Obama, French President François Holland, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel used the occasion for both publicity and consultations. On 6 June 2014, they met at various museums on the Normandy coast and at the American war cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer. Around these sites was a commercial penumbra of merchants selling Second World War paraphernalia including uniforms and weapons. And around them were groups of “reenactors” engaging in acts of simulation of the men who fought and died on this coast of Normandy. Some of these were middle-aged men who took great pride in landing on Omaha Beach in full kit. What they were after was the experience, the feeling of being there, at the spot where history happened. This is by no means an exclusively American phenomenon. Reenactors appeared at the opening of the Museum of the Great War in Meaux, central France, in 1911 and at the Historial de la Grande Guerre, another First World War museum further north in Péronne on the Somme, in 1917. Several German societies reenact elements of the American Civil War, many of them choosing the Confederate (losing) side as their own.6 What lies behind this phenomenon is a commercial strategy, which I term total immersion history. It entails using sophisticated technological tools to bring visitors into virtual contact with the past. The Imperial War Museum in London had for years two exhibitions on the two world wars based on this premise. The first was “the Trench experience” with plastic rats in the trenches, and the second, “the Blitz experience,” with smoke and other elements of living under aerial bombardment. They were remarkably attractive to visitors. Sound reaches visitors before they enter the museum in Meaux, and a kind of disembodied lugubrious sound accompanies visitors throughout the equally successful Flemish In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres. Those who sell “the war museum experience” today stop short at the boundary of smell and taste, but use sight and sound effectively though selectively. The images and sounds cannot be too horrible, lest the visitors be put off their trajectory. Thus, the experiential approach to understanding war suggests, rather than induces, terror. It focuses more on individuals than on groups and, as Thomas Thiemeyer shows, more on the last months of the war than on the five years that preceded it. Winson Chu confirms this observation in chapter 6 on the “experiential” approach of the Warsaw Rising Museum. Expellees’ lives also matter in this context, as Jeffrey Luppes shows in chapter 9, since they join the long army of refugees on the march in the wake of both world wars. The alternative pathway may be termed the existential mode of remembrance. By “existential,” I mean that, under conditions of extreme violence, like war, the knowledge of historical events is embodied in individuals in a way that

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may contain that knowledge and may prevent it from being technologically reproducible. Individuals can speak about their experience, but they choose what and what not to speak of. An “existential” approach to museal space or commemorative sites requires those who are responsible for them to urge readers or visitors to recognize that some elements of war cannot be represented without trivializing them. We will never know what the sound of artillery was at Stalingrad, or in the Warsaw Ghetto, or in Berlin at the end of the war. We will never know the sound of screaming horses and men eviscerated and dying alone in combat. The sound of women’s cries during the mass rapes in Berlin at the end of the war are out of our hearing, and perhaps that is the only way to present them with the compassion they deserve. Silence dignifies suffering. And so does the speech of those who suffered. That is why many Second World War museums provide audio and visual testimony of those who lived through it. In this way, many civilian victims of the Second World War can tell their own stories and thereby recover the narratives of their own lives. Soldiers’ testimonies are similarly powerful, though they tend to highlight the uncanny and the accidental rather than the heroic. In short, museums and commemorative sites of the Second World War have used both experiential and existential approaches to war remembrance. Visual and oral archives of those who survived war are available for purchase either at museums or online.

The Memory Boom and the Sacred Museums of war reflect national codes of remembrance. These codes are framed by what I term memory regimes, or, in other words, the terms in which groups of people frame their understanding of the past. These memory regimes are closely related to what Jan Assmann and Aleida Assmann term “cultural memory,” in that they go beyond direct experience to privilege the symbolic representations of events whose origins lay outside the reach of contemporaries.7 These ways of putting the past into the present do not rely on the voices of those who were there. Instead, they extend beyond the generations who sit around the dinner table and tell stories about how “I remember when.” Even after they pass away, later generations share narratives about what happened in the increasingly distant past. This move is, in the Assmanns’ terms, a shift from communicative memory (that of lived experience) to cultural memory (that of imagined experience). In some cases, these narratives both suppose and disclose a sacred presence in history. This set of narratives operates in what I term a sacred memory regime and is based on a belief that the presence of God in both the world and history is immanent. In other instances, there is no central agent operating in history: neither the benevolent hand of God nor the malevolent hand of

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a social or ethnic group is blamed for initiating the course of events, chaos, or catastrophe being retold today. I term this set of beliefs the secular memory regime.8 What distinguishes the secular memory regime is that, in it, God is absent or distracted, unable or unwilling to shape history in the way in which His will commands. It is perfectly possible for adherents of a secular memory regime to believe in God; they may well hold that the sacred is present in their societies or in all societies.9 What they do not do, though, is ascribe the course of history and its painful elements as being part of a divine plan. Martyrology has no place in a secular memory regime. The same distinction operates within what may be termed a demonic memory regime. Adherents to this way or ordering memories highlight salient groups—Jews, freemasons, gypsies, kulaks, and so on; these are targeted as intrinsically and powerfully evil, and responsible for the suffering of the ancestors of those telling the story. But while some of those who believe in a demonic presence in the past do so as part of their religious outlook, others conclude that social groups are inherently evil and must be murdered, but they do not do so as part of their belief in God or God’s presence in history. Hitler killed Jews because he believed they stood in the way of his master plan for the German race.10 God had nothing to do with it. Stalin was educated at Tbilisi Spiritual Seminary, but his attempt to exterminate the kulaks had nothing to do with their religion; he was an equal-opportunity murderer on the grand scale. He killed tens of thousands of devout Christians, whose memory regime was certainly sacred; his outlook was not. These distinctions are highly schematized. In all societies, there are alloys of all three regimes, as well as occasions when one absorbs elements of the others. Yet, preserving such distinctions helps us see some important divergences in the ways in which different populations understand their collective past, and act in the present to recall it and even occasionally to go beyond it. With this rough framework in mind, I want to start by drawing attention to a global phenomenon. Today, strikingly different memory regimes are visible in different parts of the world. They are differentiated by their approach to martyrdom. The presence of the terms “martyr” and “martyrdom,” as well as their correlates, varies over time and space, increasing in frequency and significance moving east from Western Europe. Perhaps it is best to speak of a spectrum of memory practices rather than a strict divide among them. Still, it is possible to show that, in Western Europe, with some exceptions, “martyr” has faded rapidly and irreversibly from use in the twentieth century; in Eastern Europe, the term is still alive and well, informing a host of national and religious movements; and in the Middle East, and in adjacent areas including Turkey and Armenia, “martyr” is not only present but at times radioactive. Islamic radicalism is incomprehensible without it, as are other political movements in Central Asia and the Far East.11 It is striking to see to what extent languages of martyrdom frame memory and history in different places and at different times. Memory regimes are mat-

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ters of both practice and language. Language frames memory, both in making it possible to understand the past and in limiting how we see it. The language of martyrdom, I contend, derives from a sacred memory regime, which frames the narrative in many museums of the Second World War in the Balkans, Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and other parts of the former Soviet Union. That language of martyrdom, I believe, has virtually vanished from Second World War sites of memory in Western Europe, including Germany (though there are exceptions, as demonstrated Karola Fing’s discussion in chapter 7 of Field Marshall Walter Model’s “martyrdom” in the eyes of later right-wing groups),12 and from the Anglo-Saxon world. One reason why this is so in Germany and Austria is the difficulty of locating perpetrators’ wartime lives within a sacred memory regime, where their sacrifices take on positive meanings. Another problem is the sense that many Austrians have of being the first victims of the Nazis, rather than the compatriots of many of the leaders of the Third Reich, as discussed by Peter Pirker, Magnus Koch, and Johannes Kramer in chapter 8 on the complex forms of public memory and commemoration. Perhaps equally important is the fading away of the language of martyrdom in Jewish discourse with respect to the Holocaust. In Jewish tradition, martyrdom is a choice—in extremis to be sure, but a choice. What “choice” did more than one million Jewish children have when they were en route to extermination? What “choice” did millions of nonobservant Jews, or those who came from Christian families with Jewish ancestors, make under Nazi racial laws? While some Jewish authorities stuck to the old language of dying to sanctify the name of God, others withdrew from this grammar of suffering and framed a different language of living to sanctify the holy name.13 Were the members of the German resistance martyrs? Yes and no. Dietrich Bonhoeffer made a choice in refusing to flee Nazi Germany for posts in London or New York. The White Rose group in Munich acted with full knowledge that its members thereby forfeited their right to live. Bonhoeffer wrote that no one had the right to sing Gregorian chants who did not cry for the Jews. His sacrifice was both Christian and universal.14 In this domain, we must accept that there are hybrid memory regimes, and forgo any radical distinction between sacred and secular languages of remembrance. Yet on balance, the problem today of having to deal with both the sacred and the secular in commemorative practices precludes the possibility that there is or will be in the foreseeable future a fully European site of remembrance of the Second World War. Auschwitz is such a site for many people, but not for all, and its location in Poland, where the language of the sacred is robust and palpable, inevitably makes strong differences of opinion as to how to remember in public space this traumatic period of European history. Some will see remembrance as an affirmation of faith; others will see it as an essential feature of secular society, the bedrock of a commitment to human rights. Still others will try to combine the two, in yet unforeseen ways.

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The contributors to this volume provide massive documentation of the problems imbedded in representations of the Second World War today in Europe and beyond. The only certainty is that this domain will be marked by contestation on various levels in the future. A shared memory regime in Europe is a utopian idea, as is a shared culture of remembrance of the 1939–1945 conflict. And yet, as socialists used to say, la lutte continue. Jay Winter is the Charles J. Stille Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University. He is the author or coauthor of twenty-five books, including Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (1995) and War beyond Words: Languages of Remembrance from the Great War to the Present (2017); and the editor of the three-volume Cambridge History of the First World War (2014). He holds honorary doctorates from the University of Graz, the Catholic University of Leuven, and the University of Paris.

Notes 1. See Jay Winter, War beyond Words: Languages of Remembrance from the Great War to the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, 2017). 2. See Jay Winter, “The Generation of Memory: Reflections on the ‘Memory Boom’ in Contemporary Historical Studies,” Bulletin of the German Historical Institute 27 (2000): 69–92. I believe that this usage (and my earlier usages) of “memory boom” were among the first appearances of the phrase. 3. See Jay Winter, Remembering War: The Great War between History and Memory (New Haven, CT, 2006), chap. 1. 4. Andrew Hoskins, “Media, Memory, Metaphor: Remembering and the Connective Turn,” Parallax 17, no. 4 (2011): 19–31; Andrew Hoskins, “7/7 and Connective Memory: Interactional Trajectories of Remembering in Post-Scarcity Culture,” Memory Studies 4, no. 3 (2011): 269–80. 5. Edmund Wilson, Patriotic Gore (New York, 1960). 6. I owe this reference of Ute Frevert. 7. On the their approach to communicative and collective memory, see Jan Assmann, “Collective Memory and Cultural Identity,” trans. John Czaplicka, New German Critique 65, Cultural History/Cultural Studies (1995): 125–33; Aleida Assmann, Cultural Memory and Western Civilization: Functions, Media, Archives, trans. Aleida Assmann and David Henry Wilson (New York, 2011). 8. The terms sacred, demonic, and secular are mine. On memory regimes more generally, see Samuel Moyn, “Two Regimes of Memory,” American Historical Review 103, no. 4 (1998): 1182–86; Eric Langenbacher, “Twenty-First Century Memory Regimes in Germany and Poland: An Analysis of Elite Discourses and Public Opinion,” German Politics and Society 26, no. 4 (2008): 50–81; Astrid Erll, “Locating Family in Cultural Memory Studies,” Journal of Comparative Family Studies 42, no. 3 (2011): 303–18; Richard Ned Lebow, “The Future of Memory,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 617 (2008): 25–41. 9. W. S. F. Pickering, “The Eternality of the Sacred: Durkheim’s Error?” Archives de sciences sociales des religions 69 (1990): 91–108. 10. Timothy Snyder, Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning (New York, 2015).

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11. Guy Nicolas, “Victimes ou martyrs,” Cultures et Conflits 11 (1993): 115–55; M. D. Litonjua, “Religious Zealotry and Political Violence in Christianity and Islam,” International Review of Modern Sociology 35, no. 2 (2009): 307–31; Hassan Hanafi, “Voluntary Martyrdom,” Oriente Moderno 25, no. 2 (2006): 201–10; Dominic Janes and Alex Houen, eds., Martyrdom and Terrorism: Pre-modern to Contemporary Perspectives (Oxford, 2014). 12. See also Jana Hawig, Erin Johnston-Weiss, and Sarah Kleinmann, all this volume. 13. Winter, War Beyond Words, chap. 5. 14. Jay Winter, Dreams of Peace and Freedom: Utopian Moments in the Twentieth Century (New Haven, CT, 2007), chap. 5.

Bibliography Assmann, Aleida. Cultural Memory and Western Civilization: Functions, Media, Archives. Translated by Aleida Assmann and David Henry Wilson. New York, 2011. Assmann, Jan. “Collective Memory and Cultural Identity.” Translated by John Czaplicka. New German Critique 65 (1995): 125–33. Erll, Astrid. “Locating Family in Cultural Memory Studies.” Journal of Comparative Family Studies 42, no. 3 (2011): 303–18. Hanafi, Hassan. “Voluntary Martyrdom.” Oriente Moderno 25, no. 2 (2006): 201–10. Hoskins, Andrew. “7/7 and Connective Memory: Interactional Trajectories of Remembering in Post-Scarcity Culture.” Memory Studies 4, no. 3 (2011): 269–80. ———. “Media, Memory, Metaphor: Remembering and the Connective Turn.” Parallax 17, no. 4 (2011): 19–31. Janes, Dominic, and Alex Houen, eds. Martyrdom and Terrorism: Pre-modern to Contemporary Perspectives. Oxford, 2014. Langenbacher, Eric. “Twenty-First Century Memory Regimes in Germany and Poland: An Analysis of Elite Discourses and Public Opinion.” German Politics and Society 26, no. 4 (2008): 50–81. Lebow, Richard Ned. “The Future of Memory.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 617 (2008): 25–41. Litonjua, M. D. “Religious Zealotry and Political Violence in Christianity and Islam.” International Review of Modern Sociology 35, no. 2 (2009): 307–31. Moyn, Samuel. “Two Regimes of Memory.” American Historical Review 103 no. 4 (1998): 1182–86. Nicolas, Guy. “Victimes ou martyrs.” Cultures et Conflits 11 (1993): 115–55. Pickering, W. S. F., “The Eternality of the Sacred: Durkheim’s Error?” Archives de sciences sociales des religions 69 (1990): 91–108. Snyder, Timothy. Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning. New York, 2015. Winter, Jay. Dreams of Peace and Freedom: Utopian Moments in the Twentieth Century. New Haven, CT, 2007. ———. “The Generation of Memory: Reflections on the ‘Memory Boom’ in Contemporary Historical Studies.” Bulletin of the German Historical Institute 27 (2000): 69–92. ———. Remembering War: The Great War between History and Memory. New Haven, CT, 2006. ———. War beyond Words: Languages of Remembrance from the Great War to the TwentyFirst Century. Cambridge, 2017.

 INDEX 

Note: The index refers to the main text only, not to endnotes and bibliographies. 8 May (1945), 197–98, 200, 202, 206, 210, 261 16th Motorized Infantry Division, 13, 156–57 101st Airborne Division, 56–57, 59–60, 241 116th Panzer Division, 13, 155–56, 158, 162, 166 Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle), 151, 155, 159–60, 163, 164, 167 Abu Ghraib scandal, 253 affect, 3, 11, 54 air war (Second World War in Europe), 30, 38, 83 Aktion 14f13, 111–12 Aktion T4, 111, 117 Allies (Second World War), 5, 15, 30, 33, 38, 58, 135, 137, 151, 184, 188, 233, 236–37, 239, 244, 247 Anders, Władysław, 135 Anschluß (of Austria), 181 anthropology of violence/war, 7, 66, 70 antimilitarism, antimilitarist, 191–92, 205 anti-Semitism, 36, 43, 48, 61, 66, 83, 96–97, 132–33, 134, 136, 182, 184, 186–87, 148, 194, 204, 210, 236 Anzinger, Johann, 112 archive, 34, 78, 189, 253–54, 256 ARD (Association of Public Broadcasters in the Federal Republic of Germany), 140, 226 Ardennes, 10, 52, 60, 62–63 Armeemuseum (Army Museum) Baden, 31

Bavarian (see Bayerisches Armeemuseum) GDR, 31 Armia Krajowa (Home Army) (AK), Poland, 129–30, 132–37 ARMINIUS: Bund des deutschen Volkes (ARMINIUS: League of the German People), 163 Arnhem, 164 Arnold de Simine, Silke, 4, 94 Arromanches, 58, 69, 237 Arromanches 360 Circular Cinema, 58, 69 artifact, 5, 30, 34–35, 64–66, 68, 72, 93, 95, 99, 236–38, 246. See also object (museum) Ashplant, Timothy G., 176 Assmann, Aleida, 202, 256 Assmann, Jan, 256 Atlantic Wall (Atlantikwall), 15, 235–36, 239, 244–46 atrocity, atrocities, 3, 5, 9–11, 15, 30, 54–55, 62, 64–65, 72, 77–78, 81, 83–84, 86 audio recorder, 253 Augustdorf, 164 Auschwitz, 43, 117–18, 258 Austria, 11–12, 78, 109, 111, 113, 120, 174–75, 180–88, 191–94, 197, 201–3, 205–13, 224, 228, 252, 258 Austrian Resistance, 14, 189, 202 Austrofascism, Austrofascist, 14, 174–75, 179–80, 192, 185, 188–91 authenticity, historical, 6, 9, 33, 53, 55, 58, 80, 193, 243, 236, 241, 243–44, 247 Bagnall, Gaynor, 84 Balkans, the, 258

262



Index

Ballhausplatz (Vienna), 13–14, 174–76, 191, 198–99, 204–5 Baltic states, 247 Band of Brothers, 57–8, 62–3 Barbl, Heinrich, 112 Bastogne, 54, 56, 58–63, 69 Bastogne (Sous-Lieutenant Heintz) Barracks, 56 Bastogne War Museum, 58–60, 62, 69 Battle of the Bulge, 54, 56, 59–60, 62, 151, 155 battlefield, 10, 53, 70, 152, 233, 238, 242, 245, 249, 253–54 Baumann, Ludwig, 192 Baumhardt, Ernst, 115–16 Bayerische Armeemuseum (Bavarian Army Museum), Ingolstadt, 31 Becker, August, 116 Becker, Hans-Joachim, 112 Beiglböck, Wilhelm, 113, 124 Belarus, 258 Belgium, 8, 62 Bergen-Belsen, 33, 245 Berlin, 4, 10, 12–13, 27–28, 31, 36, 92–93, 96, 99–100, 103, 111, 129, 132, 134, 136–38, 140–41, 227, 239, 246, 256 Berlin Wall, 93, 96, 103, 106–7, 140 Bernard-Donals, Michael, 8 Beutelsbacher Consensus, 5, 33 Bikini Atoll Nuclear Test Site, 244 Binder, Dieter, 202–3 Blöser, Georg, 112 Bock, Fritz, 188 Bolender, Kurt, 112 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 258 Bór-Komorowski, Tadeusz, 135 Borodajkewycz, Taras, 187 Bouhler, Philipp, 113, 118 Brack, Viktor, 113 Brandt, Karl, 118 Brandt, Willy, 131 Broda, Christian, 189 Browning, Christopher, 29, 34, 115 Brühl, 154 Buch, Axel, 160 Buchenwald, 33, 109, 188 Budaőrs (Wudersch), 125, 221

Bund der Vertriebenen (Federation of Expellees, BdV), 217, 219–24, 226, 228 Bundesgrenzschutz (Federal Border Guard), 32 Bundesvereinigung Opfer der NS-Militärjustiz (Association of Victims of Nazi Military Justice), 175, 192–93 Bundeswehr, 32, 81, 159–60, 165–66. See also Militärhistorisches Museum der Bundeswehr (MHM) bunker, 13, 55, 235–37, 239–40, 244 Burgtor, 174–82, 184, 188, 201–4 Burschenschaften (fraternities), 194–98, 201–5 bystander, 3, 11, 92, 94, 98, 105 Calvados (département), 235 Cameron, Duncan, 87 Canada, 8, 103–4, 107, 228 Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR), Winnipeg, 11, 92, 99–100, 102, 104 Carruthers, Susan L., 77 Carter, Ann, 84 Caspian Sea, 164 cemetery, 7, 15, 129, 133, 154, 156–7, 162–64, 166–67, 179, 182–83, 185, 215–16, 220–21, 223, 226, 238–41, 247, 255 censorship, 77 Central Asia, 257 Cherbourg, 236 children (in war), 28, 53, 84, 101, 112, 118, 124, 133, 153, 221, 223, 254, 258 Christlichsoziale Partei (Christian Social Party) (CS), 178 Chu, Winson, 255 Churchill, Winston, 223 cinema, 55, 58, 84, 239 Civic Platform Party (Platforma Obywatelska), 131 civilians, 3, 7, 13, 30, 39, 53, 58, 59–60, 62, 64–65, 82, 94, 135, 137, 152, 162, 164, 181, 190–91, 220, 247, 252–54, 256 closure and openness (meaning in museums), 70

Index

Cold War, 34, 131, 135–36, 138, 154, 184, 219, 239 collaboration, collaborators, 3, 38, 65, 133, 137–39 collection (of museums), 8–9, 31–32, 34, 83–84, 87, 93, 109, 160–61 collective memory. See memory: collective collector (of war memorabilia), 31, 40, 56, 161 Colleville-Montgomery, 235 Colleville-sur-Mer, 238, 241, 255 Cologne, 151, 167 combatants. See soldiers commemoration, 4–5, 8, 13–14, 16, 39, 75, 83, 86, 116, 130, 155–56, 159–60, 162–64, 179, 181–84, 187–91, 194–95, 199, 201–7, 238–40, 246–47, 252, 258 communism, communist, 94, 106, 109, 129–35, 137, 139–40, 182–84, 187, 219, 226 concentration camps, 4, 30, 33, 37, 43, 65, 82, 94, 97, 100–1, 109–12, 124, 139, 187–88, 191–92, 245 consequences of war, 5, 12, 116, 154 Coventry, 28 Croatia, 133, 216, 219 Cross of Lorraine, 238 cultural memory. See memory: cultural cultural landscape. See landscape (cultural and memorial) cultural turn, 6 curator, curatorial, 12, 27, 35, 40, 70, 75, 77, 79–80, 86, 119–20 Czech Republic, 8, 15, 215, 217, 222–24, 230 Czechoslovakia, 223, 236 Dachau, 33, 109, 111, 188 D-Day, 5, 13, 38, 40, 54, 57–58, 60–61, 69, 238, 241–47 Dameron, Charles H., 112 Darabos, Norbert, 174, 202, 205 Dawson, Graham, 176 DDR. See East Germany Deutscher Marine Bund (German Naval Federation), 32



263

de Gaulle, Charles, 233, 238–39 Dead Man’s Corner Museum, SaintCôme-du-Mont, Normandy, 57–58, 69 death commemoration of, 66–68, 156, 165, 180–81 depiction of, 80–81, 83–84 death camp, 33, 94, 131, 174 democracy, 132, 136, 178–80, 182, 189, 192, 195, 204, 245, 246–47 Denkmal, 4, 14, 100, 174–75, 179–80, 200. See also monument Denkmal für die Verfolgten der NS-Militärjustiz (Memorial for the Victims of Nazi Military Justice), Vienna, 14, 175–76, 190, 192, 198, 200 deserter, 13–14, 182, 186, 190–93, 197–200, 205–6 Deutscher Marinebund (German Naval Association), 32 Deutsch-Russisches Museum BerlinKarlshorst (German-Russian Museum Berlin-Karlshorst), 10, 36, 54, 63, 69 Deutsches Historisches Museum (German Historical Museum) (DHM), Berlin, 27 dictatorship, 4, 28 Dieppe, 236 digital, 56, 69, 77, 79, 203, 238, 254 diorama, 56 distanciation, distance, 11, 44, 88, 92–93, 95, 98, 103–5 Do Rzeczy (newsweekly), 131 documentary, 5–6, 12, 31, 39, 44, 94, 100, 225 documentation center, 4, 7, 11, 28, 92–93, 100, 103, 106, 110, 113, 129, 183 Dollfuß, Engelbert, 179–83 Drang nach Osten, 132 Dresden, 3, 10, 28, 31–32, 36, 54, 66–67, 72, 74–76, 79–82 Duisburg, 162 Düren, 151–54, 157, 159–60, 163–68 Dvorak, Josef, 189 East Germany (also GDR, DDR), 4, 9, 30–33, 81, 96, 109, 221

264



Index

Eastern Europe, 1, 14, 116, 139–40, 156, 162, 164, 215–17, 219, 223–25, 247, 257 Echternkamp, Jörg, 202, 255 Education, 5–6, 9, 16, 30, 32–33, 78, 86, 100, 109, 111, 114, 116, 130, 132, 167, 192, 198, 234, 247 Ellensohn, David, 193 emotion, emotionalization (visitor), 2, 5–6, 10, 33–34, 39, 53, 55, 57–58, 60–61, 63, 65, 70, 75, 77, 80, 82, 84–86, 94–96, 100, 102–4, 131 empathy, to empathize (as museum visitor), 11, 33, 53, 57, 62–63, 92–98, 100–5 English Channel, 57, 233, 236 entertainment, 11, 30–31, 55, 62, 69, 84–87 Erasmus, Julius, 153 Erlebnis vs. Erfahrung (experience), 55 Eschweiler, 159 Europe, Europeanization, 1–5, 7–8, 10, 12–17, 27–28, 30, 34, 52, 64, 70, 79, 84, 100, 109, 116–17, 121, 129–40, 136, 138–41, 156, 159, 162, 164, 177, 197, 206, 215–17, 219, 222–24, 227– 28, 239, 244–47, 252–53, 257–59. See also Eastern Europe; Western Europe European Network of Reconciliation and Solidarity (ENRS), 139 European Union (EU), 1, 130, 139, 141, 228 euthanasia, 11–12, 109–20 exhibition, 3–7, 9, 11–13, 27–30, 32–37, 39–40, 53, 55, 57–59, 61–70, 76, 78–87, 92–94, 96–99, 101–4, 109–21, 130, 132–40, 160–1, 164, 169, 181, 183, 189–90, 195, 203, 221, 225, 239 expellee monuments, 14–15, 215–25, 227 expellees, 28, 217–19, 222–24, 255 experientiality, experiential, 6, 9–10, 16, 33, 39, 52–60, 63, 66, 68–69, 92, 94, 100, 131, 254–56 extermination camp, 38 Falier, Marin, 180 Far East, 85, 257 Faymann, Werner, 197

Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) (West Germany), 29–31, 34, 109, 160, 184, 191–92, 194, 216, 219, 224 film, 68, 80–1, 83 Finney, Patrick, 53 First World War, 14, 16, 29, 32, 83, 152, 174, 178–80, 182–83, 185, 230, 247, 252–53, 255 Fludernik, Monika, 52 forum (as museum style), 81, 83, 87 France, 7–8, 155, 162, 234–36, 238, 255 Frank, Anne, 245 Frass, Wilhelm, 181 Fraternities. See Burschenschaften Frauenkirche, 32 freedom, 12, 38, 131, 134–36, 140–41, 159, 182–83, 180–81, 192, 201, 203, 234, 245–47 Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (Freedom Party of Austria) (FPÖ), 186–87, 190, 193–99, 203, 206 Freud, Sigmund, 253 Fullgraf, Herbert, 112 funding, 3, 79, 111, 120, 139 Gauck, Joachim, 140 Gdańsk (Danzig), 1–2, 121, 130 Gedenkstätte, 4, 11, 33, 63, 110, 116, 225. See also memorial site Gedenkstätte Grafeneck Dokumentationszentrum (Grafeneck Documentation and Memorial Center), 11, 110, 115–20 Gedenkstätte Seelower Höhen (Seelow Heights Memorial), 63 generation, generational shift, 4, 16, 29, 36, 39–40, 62, 83, 94, 164, 166, 190, 192, 200, 206, 233, 241, 247 genocide, 1, 3–4, 7, 34, 53, 77, 85, 93, 101, 133, 163 George VI, 233 Gerbig, Emil, 112 German Democratic Republic (GDR). See East Germany Germany, 9, 11–12, 14–15, 27–30, 32–34, 37–38, 54, 63, 68, 75, 77–78, 81, 83, 93, 96, 100, 104, 109–10, 120– 21, 131–32, 136–37, 39–41, 154–55,

Index

159–60, 163, 165, 174, 181, 183–84, 186, 189, 192, 216–24, 226–28, 239. See also East Germany; West Germany Geschichtsverein Hürtgenwald (Hürtgen Forest Historical Society), 160–61, 163–64 Gindl, Annelies, 112 Gloria Victis Memorial, Warsaw, 129 Godzina “W”, 129 Goldhagen, Daniel, 30, 36 Gomersky, Hubert, 112 Graf, Ferdinand, 184–86, 188 Great Britain. See United Kingdom (UK) Green Party (Austria), 190–3, 195–96, 198, 202, 205 Griffiths, Gareth, 76 Gross, Heinrich, 113 Groth, Paul, 112 guilt, 5, 27–29, 35, 37, 64, 78, 104, 121, 217 Gulag, 139 Haas, Rosa, 112 Haider, Jörg, 190, 194, 196 Halder, Franz, 64 Hanak, Anton, 179 Hansen-Glucklich, Jennifer, 8 Häupl, Michael, 195 Havel, Václav, 222 Heeresmuseum (Army Museum), Dresden, 31 Hegger, Matthias, 159–60 Heldendenkmal (Heroes’ Memorial), Vienna, l, 14, 174–76, 178–82, 184–97, 199–206 Heldenplatz (Vienna), 13–14, 174–84, 190–91, 193–206 Hemingway, Ernest, 151–52 Hennecke, Günther, 115–16 Henri-Chapelle, 153 heritage, heritage industry, 2–3, 5, 9, 11, 16, 75, 78, 85, 104, 233–34, 241–47 hero, heroic, 2, 7, 30, 66–68, 121, 131, 136, 141, 162–63, 179, 186, 205–6 “hero letters”, 66–68 Heusch, Hermann, 160 Hilfsgemeinschaft auf Gegenseitigkeit der Angehörigen der ehemaligen



265

Waffen-SS (Mutual Assistance Association of Former Waffen-SS Members), 163 Himmler, Heinrich, 97, 118, 132 Hintersteiner, Helene, 112 Hiroshima, 244, 254 Hiroshima Peace Memorial, 244 Historial de la Grande Guerre, Péronne, 255 historical distance, 8, 10, 29, 39, 53, 60–61, 63, 100 historical proximity, 8, 53, 60–61, 63, 98–99, 121 Historikerstreit, 29 historiography, 36, 39–40, 52, 54, 70, 84, 110, 132, 139 history from below, 7 of violence, 6 Hitler, Adolf, 32, 34, 37, 64, 82, 101, 132–33, 137–38, 140, 154, 162, 164, 181, 188, 257 Holland, François, 255 Holocaust, 1, 3–4, 8–9, 11–12, 30, 32–34, 37, 54, 62, 92, 93–94, 96–98, 100–4, 138–39, 199, 201, 218, 247, 258. See also Shoah Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C., 8, 92 Holzschuh, Hermann, 115–16, 124 House of European History, Brussels, 1 Hrdlicka, Alfred, 190, 199 Hübsch, Margarethe, 113, 124 human rights, 3, 11, 16, 92, 99–100, 102, 104, 202, 245, 258 humanity, 10, 33, 64, 87, 163, 243, 254 Hungarian Germans, 215, 221 Hungary, 2, 139, 215, 220–21, 224, 228 Hürtgen, 151–56, 160–64, 165, 166 Hürtgenwald (Hürtgen Forest), 13, 151–56, 160–67 identity, 5 Austrian, 174, 187 collective, 241 European, 1, 12, 129, 141 national, 1, 140, 180 regional, 152

266



Index

ideological warfare, 82 illustration, 79, 83, 85 immersion, to immerse, immersive, 58–60, 63, 66, 84–85, 94, 96–97, 255 Imperial War Museum North (IWMN), Manchester, 37, 75–76, 83 Imperial War Museum (IWM), London, 37, 55, 83, 255 In Flanders Fields Museum, Ypres, 54, 255 International Holocaust Remembrance Day, 201 internment camps, 15, 219–21 Inuit, 238 Italy, 116, 135 Jaeger, Stephan, 82, 136, 254 Jakoncig, Guido, 179 Jetzt Zeichen Setzen!, 196, 201 Jews, Jewry, Jewish, 4, 12, 34, 37, 65, 81, 82, 94, 100–1, 103, 106–7, 109–11, 116–18, 131–34, 138, 141, 188, 202–3, 205, 226, 245, 257–58 Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial (Vienna), 199 Jülich, 152–54, 168, 172–73 Jung, Wolfgang, 195 Kaczyński, Lech, 131 Kalmykia, 164 Katyń, 137–38 Kavanagh, Gaynor, 83 Kidd, Jenny, 3, 5 Kirchweger, Ernst, 187 Klemperer, Victor, 30, 36 Kneissler, Pauline, 119 knowledge, 16, 54, 76, 81, 84, 103, 160, 192, 242 difficult, 6, 11, 104 historical, 5, 8, 39–40, 55, 255–56 Koch, Magnus, 258 Koch, Valeria, 215 Kommunistische Partei Österreichs (Communist Party of Austria) (KPÖ), 183–84, 192 Komorowski, Bronisław, 137, 140 Konejung Stiftung: Kultur (Konejung Foundation: Culture), 166

Körner, Theodor, 182 Kotthaus, Heinz, 159 Kramer, Johannes, 258 Krásnik, Viktor von, 180 Kreisky, Bruno, 184, 189 Kriegsgräberstiftung “Wenn alle Brüder schweigen” (War Graves Foundation “When All Brothers Are Silent”), 163 Krischer, Oliver, 165 Kühne, Thomas, 36 KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau (Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial), 33, 109 Laboe, 32 LaCapra, Dominick, 94 landing beaches (Normandy), 234–36, 238–39, 241–46 Landsberg, Alison, 8, 54–55, 94–95 landscape (cultural and memorial), 5–8, 13–15, 131, 152, 154, 159, 167–68, 176–77, 223, 234, 236, 238, 240, 242–44, 246–47 Landser books, 30–31 Le Havre, 233, 236 Lenz, Hans-Heinrich, 112 Lenz, Marianne, 112 Lern- und Gedenkort Schloss Hartheim (Hartheim Castle Learning and Memorial Site), 11–12, 110–115, 120 liberation, 15–16, 27–28, 31, 94, 100, 151, 182, 194, 196–97, 219, 223, 239, 245–47 Libya, 236 Löhr, Alexander, 191 Lonauer, Rudolf, 112, 114 London, 3, 37, 55, 84, 135, 255, 258 Lübeck, 32 Luppes, Jeffrey, 255 MacDonald, Sharon, 78 Machcewicz, Paweł, 2, 130 Mahnmal (warning memorial), 4, 32–33, 156–57 Mailath-Pokorny, Andreas, 190, 198–99 Majdanek, 139 Mallerschitz, Alois, 112 Manche (département), 235

Index

Manoschek, Walter, 192–93 Mardasson Memorial, 59 martyrology, martyrs, 16, 138, 162, 257–58 Mauthausen, 109, 111–12, 120, 192, 197, 205 McAuliffe, Anthony, 56 Memorial against War and Fascism (Vienna), 190, 199 Mémorial de Caen (Caen Memorial Museum), 7, 37–38, 54, 239 memorial landscape. See landscape (cultural and memorial) memorial museum, 4, 7–8, 33, 96 memorial site, 4–5, 7, 9, 29, 32–34, 37, 109–10, 113, 115, 156, 180, 184, 191, 198, 201, 220, 238, 246. See also Gedenkstätte Memorial to the Victims of the German Occupation (Budapest), 2 memory collective, 1, 33, 36, 38, 130, 206, 238, 247, 250, 254, 259 communicative, 4, 9, 39, 69, 256 cultural, 4, 8–9, 39, 69, 155, 240, 256 living, 39, 53 prosthetic, 54, 95 public, 120, 258 memory boom, 16, 216, 252–54, 256 memory culture, 1–2, 7, 15, 27–28, 32, 36, 40, 85, 121, 167, 175, 183, 187, 217, 219 memory politics, 2–3, 9, 12–14, 31–33, 81, 120, 185, 189 Merkel, Angela, 255 Middle East, 257 Militärhistorische Denkmalkommission (Military-Historical Monuments Commission) (MHDK), 200–1 Militärhistorisches Museum der Bundeswehr (Bundeswehr Military History Museum) (MHM), Dresden, 3, 7, 10, 28, 30–31, 36, 39–40, 54, 66–69, 75–76, 79–83, 86–87, 92 military history, 4, 7, 9, 15, 30–32, 38, 40, 53, 81, 86, 238–39 Miłosz, Czesław, 135 mimetic, 5, 33, 54–55, 57, 69



267

Mitterrand, François, 239 Model, Walter, 137, 162, 258 Möller, Horst, 35 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (also NaziSoviet Pact), 133, 137–39 Monschau, 151, 153, 159 monument, 13–15, 177–78, 182, 193, 199, 215–27, 240–41, 246, 253. See also Denkmal Muchitsch, Wolfgang, 5 multimedia (installation), 8, 56, 61, 69, 77 multiperspectivity, multiperspectival, multi-voiced / multi-faceted narratives, 27, 29, 61, 69–70 Musée Airborne (Airborne Museum), Sainte-Mère-Église, 56 Musée de l’Armée (Army Museum), Paris, 37–38 Museum of the Great War, Meaux, 255 Muzeum II Wojny Światowej (Museum of the Second World War) (MIIWŚ), Gdańsk, 1, 7, 121, 130 Nachama, Andreas, 140 Nagasaki, 254 National Army Museum, London, 3 national narrative(s), 1, 3, 11, 103, 132, 139, 176, 206 National Socialism/National Socialist/ Nazi/Nazism, 1, 2, 4, 7, 9, 11–12, 14–15, 27–34, 36–38, 64, 68, 77, 81, 85, 93, 96–97, 100–3, 109–13, 116–17, 119, 120–21, 129–30, 132– 33, 136, 139–41, 151, 155, 162–67, 174–76, 179–83, 185–86, 188–93, 195, 198–202, 205, 216, 236, 244–45, 247, 258 Nationale Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Buchenwald (Buchenwald National Monument and Memorial Site), 33, 109 NATO, 184, 190 Nawrocki, Karol, 2 New Museology, 86 Nicolai, Olaf, 199 Nideggen-Schmidt, 155 Nietan, Dietmar, 165 Niland, Frederick, 238

268



Index

NKVD (People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs), 139 Nohel, Vinzenz, 112 Nora, Pierre, 239 Normandy, 5, 7, 10, 15–16. 54, 56–58, 61–63, 151, 164–65, 233–47, 254–55 North America, North American, 103, 253, 261 North Rhine-Westphalia, 159, 161, 167 North Rhine-Westphalia Regional Centre for Political Education, 167 Norway, 154, 235 NS Documentation Centre (Cologne), 167 NS-Dokumentationszentrum München (Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism), 136 Obama, Barack, 255 Oberheuser, Herta, 113 object (museum), 2, 4–7, 9–10, 40, 53, 55–56, 59, 65–66, 68, 75–77, 79–83, 85, 93, 95–96, 99, 101, 113, 116, 120, 154, 167, 236, 252. See also artifact occupation Nazi, 2, 64–65, 85, 130–32, 138, 174, 187–88, 244 Soviet, 4, 27, 130, 133, 182, 220 by Western Allies, 185 Ołdakowski, Jan, 131, 140 Omaha Beach, 13, 235, 237, 239–40, 255 Operation Barbarossa, 64, 81–82 Operation Burza (Operation Tempest), 135 Operation Neptune, 15, 56–57, 61, 69, 233, 239 oral history, 46, 51 “ordinary men” (as perpetrators), 29, 34, 36, 38, 115, 119, 121 Organisation Todt, 235, 244 Ostermeyer, Josef, 203 Österreich, Emperor Franz Joseph von, 177 Österreichische Freiheitsbataillone (Austrian Freedom Battalions), 182, 208, 212

Österreichische Volkspartei (Austrian People’s Party) (ÖVP), 183–85, 188, 193–98, 203–4 Österreichische Widerstandsbewegung (Austrian Resistance Movement), 187 Österreichischer Kameradschaftsbund (Austrian Union of Comrades) (ÖKB), 184–85, 187, 189–99, 205 Palm, Baptist, 156, 159 Pančevo, 37 Paris, 28, 37, 58, 151 Peace, 3, 38, 70, 81, 140, 154–57, 159–60, 164–65, 234–35, 244–47 movement, 190–91, 225 performative, 9 perpetrator, 28–30, 34, 36–38, 53, 63–65, 78, 92–94, 96–98, 100, 104, 109–11, 113–21, 140, 203, 223, 258 perpetrator research, 9, 12, 38, 115, 119–20 Personenkomitee Gerechtigkeit für die Opfer der NS-Militärjustiz (People’s Committee for Justice for the Victims of Nazi Military Justice), 193, 198–99 Phillips, Mark, 95 Phleps, Artur, 191 photography, photograph, 8, 10–11, 28, 35–36, 56, 58–59, 65, 68, 75–76, 78–80, 82–85, 92–103, 113, 117, 154, 162, 165, 180, 252–54 Pirker, Eva Ulrike, 53 Pirker, Peter, 200–1, 258 Platforma Obywatelska (Civic Platform), 131 poietic, 10, 53–54, 68–69 Poland, 2, 8, 12, 121, 129–42, 215–17, 219, 221–22, 224, 227, 233, 247, 258 polityka historyczna (historical policy), 130 Popitz, Heinrich von, 38 Porter, Gaby, 76 post-heroic, 7, 205–6 Postoloprty (Postelberg), 15, 217, 224–28 Powązki Military Cemetery, 129 Prague, 139, 225 Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (Law and Justice) (PiS), Polish political party, 130–31

Index

prisoner of war (POW), 28, 62, 64, 82 propaganda, propagandistic, 10, 30, 64, 68, 77–79, 81, 83, 86, 94, 101, 117, 132, 137, 165, 209, 236 Proust, Marcel, 253 Puppe, Johannes, 159 Putin, Vladimir, 255 Raab, Imre Párkányi, 2 Raab, Julius, 184, 187 Rathkolb, Oliver, 202–3 Reagan, Ronald, 136, 240 reconciliation, 12, 69–70, 104, 139–140, 187, 217, 220, 222, 224, 238–39, 244–46 Red Army, 13, 31, 137, 182, 194, 219 redemption, aesthetic, 253 Reemtsma, Jan Philipp, 35 reenactment, 6 Reichleitner, Franz, 112 Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Main Security Office), 93, 96 Remagen, 151, 165 remembrance, 8, 11, 13–16, 27, 30–33, 36, 38, 41, 75, 78, 120–21, 151–52, 154–55, 159, 164, 166–67, 175, 178, 196–97, 204–6, 216–17, 220, 234, 240–41, 245, 247, 252, 254–56, 258–59 Renner, Karl, 184 Renno, Georg, 112, 114 replica, 6, 85 Republikdenkmal (Memorial of the Republic), Vienna, 176, 180 resistance, resistant fighters, 3, 14, 31, 59, 64, 83, 129–30, 132, 135, 138, 140, 151, 164, 174, 182–84, 186–89, 194, 196, 201–2, 204, 236, 239, 245, 258 Rheda, 66 Rhine, 151, 164 Romania, 215, 220 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 85 Roper, Michael, 176 Rose, Gillian, 76, 80 Rotterdam, 28 Rowland, Antony, 84 Rüdiger, Mark, 53 Ruhr Pocket, 155, 162, 165



269

Russia, 85, 139, 162, 164, 215, 220 RWTH Aachen University, 167 sacred/secular, the, 16, 221, 256–58 Saint Côme-du-Mont, 57, 69 Sainte-Mère-Église, 56–57, 241 scenographic, 33, 54 scenovision, 59–62 Schachermayr, Stefan, 112 Schama, Simon, 5 Schärf, Adolf, 184 Scheibner, Herbert, 195 Schindler’s List, 36 Schmid, Jonathan, 118 Schmidtgen, Otto, 112 Schmitt-Degenhardt, Hubert, 159 Schorske, Carl, 177, 206 Schröder, Gerhard, 240 Schumann, Horst, 115, 118 Schuschnigg, Kurt, 180–81 Schütt, Hans-Heinz, 116 Schwarzenbergplatz, 182, 194 Schwerin, Gerhard Graf von, 159–60, 164 sculpture, 154, 157–59, 179, 181, 189–90, 195–96, 202, 239, 241 Semlitsch, Karl, 195 Serbia, 216, 219–20 Shoah, 37, 117, 203, 253–54. See also Holocaust Siegburg, 159 Siegfried Line (Westwall), 151 Simon, Kurt, 116 simulation, to simulate (the past), 6, 10, 16, 52–58, 60, 63–64, 66, 68–69, 255 Sitter, Franz, 115 Slovakia, 133, 139, 215, 222–23 Sobibór, 174 Social Democratic Workers’ Party, 178, 182 sociology of violence, 9, 38. See also violence soldiers, 3, 7, 13–14, 28–30, 36–40, 58, 60–62, 80, 82, 85, 92, 129, 133, 140, 151–54, 156–59, 162–66, 174–75, 177–83, 185–91, 193–95, 198–99, 201–3, 205, 220, 233, 236, 238, 240, 246, 252–54, 256

270



Index

Solidarity (Polish movement), 136, 139 Sólyom, László, 215 source (historical), 11–12, 34, 36, 52, 55, 69, 76–79, 81, 83, 85–86, 95, 120, 166, 243 Soviet Union, 7, 31–32, 35–36, 63–64, 82, 129, 135–36, 138, 140–41, 162, 192, 236, 258 Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs (Social Democratic Party of Austria) (SPÖ), 182–86, 188–89, 191, 193, 195–98, 202, 204 space concept of, 5–7, 10, 243 landscape, physical, 15, 95–96, 98, 221, 234 museum, 9, 32, 37, 53–54, 61, 68, 75, 80, 84, 93, 96, 98, 256 public, 155–56, 165–67, 178, 195, 258 urban, 175 Spelthahn, Wolfgang, 160 Spielberg, Steven, 36, 57, 233, 238 Spindelegger, Michael, 197 SS (Schutzstaffel), 12, 29, 64, 82, 93, 96, 103, 110–12, 115, 129, 132, 163, 174, 202, 237–38 SS Panzer Division, 237 Stadler, Ewald, 195 Stalin, Joseph, 135, 137–39, 257 Stalingrad, 31, 36, 163, 190, 256 Stalinism, 1, 139 Stangl, Franz, 112–13 Stasi Records Agency, 140 Stieler, Georg, 159 Strache, Heinz-Christian, 196 Stylianou-Lambert, Theopisti, 80 Stylianou, Elena, 80 Suckow von Heydendorff, Annemarie, 157–59 suffering, 2–3, 8, 13, 15, 27–29, 38 technology, technological, 76–77, 84, 238, 252–54 Thamer, Hans-Ulrich, 78 Thiemeyer, Thomas, 54–55, 58, 69, 78–79, 255 Thiessen, Johann, 163

Thomas, Georg, 64 Topographie des Terrors (Topography of Terror), Berlin, 11–12, 28, 36, 92–104, 129–30, 132–41 totalitarianism, totalitarian, 1, 7, 12, 77, 129–30, 135–41, 245, 247 tourism, 16, 153, 239, 241, 245 transference, 9, 54 trauma, traumatic, 5, 30, 54, 63, 68, 79, 129, 247, 253, 258 Tschadek, Otto, 191 Türk, Marianne, 113 Turkey, 257 Uhl, Heidemarie, 202–3 Ukraine, 258 Ulma Family Museum of Poles Saving Jews in World War II, Markowa, 141 UNESCO, 16, 234, 241–46, 255 United Kingdom (UK), 8, 11, 75, 77–78, 83–85, 233, 247 United States, 233, 247 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (Washington, D.C.), 8, 92 Unsere Mütter, Unsere Väter (Generation War), 62 Valder, Rainer, 164 Vallaster, Josef, 112, 174, 202 veterans (war), veteran organizations, 31, 40, 130, 154–55, 160, 165, 178–80, 182–87, 191, 194, 201, 204, 239–41, 247 victim(s) (of Second World War), 3–4, 7, 10–13, 28–30, 33–34, 36–38, 53, 64, 77–79, 82, 84, 86, 92–94, 96–98, 100–1, 104, 109–16, 119–20, 130, 139–41, 154–57, 164, 174, 183, 186–90, 192–93, 199, 201–2, 215, 217, 220–24, 226, 228, 240, 247, 253 victimhood, 1, 14, 34, 157, 193, 254 victimization, 12, 33, 94, 129, 162 video recorder, 253 violence, 6–7, 9, 13, 30, 38–39, 66, 68, 81, 83, 92, 100–1, 104, 110, 179, 184, 192, 203, 217, 222–23, 227–28, 234–35, 244, 246–47, 253, 255

Index

visitor (of museums), 3–6, 8–11, 13, 28–29, 33–35, 39–40, 52–69, 75, 77–87, 94–104, 113–14, 117, 119, 137, 142, 255–56 visitors (of memorials and places), 201, 235–36, 238–39, 241, 244, 246 visual turn, 76 visualization, 3, 6, 8–9, 79, 83 Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge (German War Graves Commission), 153–54, 163–65, 167, 283 Vonnegut, Kurt, 28 Vossenack, 13, 152–54, 156–57, 159–64, 166–67 Vranitzky, Franz, 190 Wadani, Richard, 193, 198 Waffen-SS, 163, 238 Wagner, Gerhard, 113 Waldheim Affair, 185, 189, 205 Walser, Harald, 202 war cemetery. See cemetery war crime, 35, 53, 61–62, 64–66, 104, 114, 163 war memorial, 4, 30, 179, 183, 253 war memorialization, 14, 177, 206 war of annihilation, 31–32, 36–37, 64–65, 116, 164, 166 Warsaw Ghetto, 131, 138, 256 Warsaw Ghetto Heroes Monument, 131 Warsaw Pact, 31, 221 Warsaw Rising Museum, 12, 129, 131–32, 134, 136, 138, 140 Wehrgeschichtliches Museum Rastatt (Rastatt Military History Museum) (WGM), formerly Badisches Armeemuseum (Baden Army Museum), 31–32 Wehrmacht, 13–15, 28, 30, 32–38, 59, 64, 66, 68, 78, 83, 93, 97, 152, 154–55,



271

163, 165–67, 174–75, 181–95, 197–99, 205, 244–45 Wehrmachtsausstellung (“Wehrmacht Exhibition”), 29–30, 34–38, 78, 165, 190–91, 194–95 Weizsäcker, Richard von, 27, 194 Wendt, Kurt, 161, 164 Western Europe, 1, 8, 10, 15, 64, 70, 140 Westerplatte, 2, 130 Wilson, Edmund, 254 Windhund Division, 155–67 Windhunde mahnen zum Frieden (Windhunde Call for Peace), 160 Winter, Jay, 5, 202 Wirth, Christian, 112, 115, 118 witness, historical/contemporary/ eyewitness / Zeitzeuge, 4, 16, 28, 34, 39–40, 59, 240–41, 246–47 Wittmann, Michael, 238 Wöger, Jacob, 115 Wolverton, Robert Lee, 57 Wondracek, Rudolf, 180 Woolf, Virginia, 253 World Heritage Committee (WHC), 234, 241–44 World Heritage Fund, 242–43 World Heritage List, 234, 241–45, 247 Young, James E., 2 Yugoslav army, 182 Yugoslavia, former Yugoslavia, 155, 162, 164, 215 Zanuck, Darry, 233 Zaporozhye, 164 Zeitzeuge. See witness, historical/ contemporary/eyewitness / Zeitzeuge Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen (Center Against Expulsions), 216–17, 222, 227 Zivildienst (alternative civilian service), 190–91, 205