Holocaust Monuments And National Memory Cultures In France And Germany Since 1989

Since 1989, two sites of memory with respect to the deportation and persecution of Jews in France and Germany have received intense public attention: the Veĺ d'Hiv in Paris and the Monument for the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin. Why is this so? Both monuments, the author argues, are unique in the history of memorial projects.

Since 1989, two sites of memory with respect to the deportation and persecution of Jews in France and Germany during the Second World War have received intense public attention: the Vélo d'Hiver (Winter Velodrome) in Paris and the Monument for the Murdered Jews of Europe or Holocaust Monument in Berlin. Why is this so? Both monuments, the author argues, are unique in the history of memorial projects. Although they are genuine "sites of memory", neither monument celebrates history, but rather serve as platforms for the deliberation, negotiation and promotion of social consensus over the memorial status of war crimes in France and Germany. The debates over these monuments indicate that it is the communication among members of the public via the mass media, rather than qualities inherent in the sites themselves, which transformed these sites into symbols beyond traditional conceptions of heritage and patriotism.

Studienarbeit aus dem Jahr 2009 im Fachbereich Theologie - Historische Theologie, Kirchengeschichte, Note: 1,0, Universität Bielefeld, Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: Denkmäler haben eine elementare Funktion in einer Gesellschaft. Sie sind vermittelnde Medien zwischen der Vergangenheit und der Gegenwart. Denkmäler repräsentieren einerseits neutral die Geschichte einer Kultur, andererseits implizieren sie auch evident die Bedeutung des Vergangenen für eine Gesellschaft. Bereits die Diskussionen um ihren Bau oder Nicht-Bau symbolisieren die „politischen und mentalen Transformationen einer Gesellschaft“ . Ein Denkmal spiegelt nicht nur ein erinnerungswürdiges Ereignis der Vergangenheit wider, sondern auch den Umgang eines Volkes mit seiner Vergangenheit. Peter Carrier formuliert es ähnlich: „It is necessarily a product and reflection of its time, derived from the initiative of an individual, group or state.“ Mahnmäler lassen Schlüsse über den Grad und die Intensität der Ereignisverarbeitung zu, da die Darstellungsweise den Erinnerungsmodus widerspiegelt. Eine wissenschaftliche Untersuchung, basierend auf der Interpretation von Denkmälern, führte auch Janet Jacobs, Professorin für Soziologie an der Universität von Colorado, durch. Sie untersuchte die Erinnerungskultur zum Holocaust in Deutschland unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Betrachtung der Rolle der Synagogen und heiligen Kultgegenstände. Ihre Forschungsarbeit basiert auf Feldarbeit an fünfzig Gedächtnisstätten zur Kristallnacht. Ihre Forschungsergebnisse legte Janet Jacobs im Jahr 2008 in der „Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion“ dar.

The Holocaust Memorial Museum reveals and traces the transformation of ancient Jewish symbols, rituals, archetypes and narratives deployed in these sites. Demonstrating how cloaking the 'secular' history of the Holocaust in sacred garb, memorial museums generate redemptive yet conflicting visions of the meaning and utility of Holocaust memory.

Analyzing action at the Holocaust memorial in Berlin, this first ethnography of the site offers a fresh approach to studying the memorial and memory work as potential civic engagement of visitors with themselves and others rather than with history itself.

Over a half a century after World War II, Germany and France still struggle to understand the Holocaust and to confront their roles in the tragedy. Through an interpretation of a wide array of contemporary cultural texts--including memorials and memorial sites, museums and exhibits, national commemorations, books, and films--Caroline Wiedmer traces the evolution of an often conflicted postwar politics of memory in these two nations. Her analyses of sites of memory and of policies and national debates reveal the two countries' deep-seated ambivalence in the face of a desire to forget the horrors of the Holocaust and the need to remember them. Among the issues Wiedmer examines are France's emerging sense of accountability and the fierce conflicts generated by the "Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe" to be built in Berlin. In her detailed account of how the Nazis took over a ready-made system of internment camps built by the French before World War II, and in her discussion of the uses to which the Sachsenhausen concentration camp was put by both the Soviet and the East German governments after the war, Wiedmer uncovers disturbing patterns of recurrence that painfully complicate France's and Germany's relationships to the Holocaust itself and to the act of commemoration. The author also examines Art Spiegelman's Maus and Michael Verhoeven's film The Nasty Girl.

"The Second World War was a common experience of cultural and historical rupture for many European countries, but studies of this period and its after-images often remain locked in national frameworks. Jones' comparative study of national memory cultures argues for a more nuanced view of responses to shared issues of remembrance. Focusing on the 1960s and 1970s, two decades of great change and debate in French and German discourses of memory, it investigates literary representations of the Second World War, and in particular the Holocaust, from France and both Germanies. The study encompasses thirteen works representing a variety of genres and divergent perspectives, and authors include Jorge Semprun, Peter Weiss, Georges Perec and Bernward Vesper. Addressing the underlying theme of travel as a means of exploring the past, it contrasts the journeys made by deportees and post-war visitors to the camps with the use of the journey as a literary device."

This text constructs a framework in which to examine the subject of German collective memory, which for more than half a century has been shaped by the experience of Nazism, World War II and the Holocaust. Beginning with national unification in 1870-71 it follows through to reunification in 1990.