Cultures of History Forum (Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena)
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In October 2019, a new memorial was opened in the former family house of Jan Palach in the small Czech town of Všetaty. With an impressive architecture and a small exhibition, the memorial commemorates the student who, in January 1969, set himself on fire to protest the communist regime. The article places its review of the memorial in the wider history of Palach commemoration in the Czech Republic.
The Museum of Soviet Occupation in Georgia’s capital Tbilisi, which opened in 2006, is a site of mnemonic contestation where the Soviet past is being displayed in a manner meant to reflect current disputes over politics and memory. This article discusses some of the discourses behind the museum’s current permanent exhibition linking it to Georgia’s geopolitical mission to become European, to mend relations with Russia and overcome internal political friction.
The identity of Germany’s Ruhr area has been shaped by industrialisation, which transformed the former rural landscape and small towns into a centre of the industrial revolution on the continent. However, the history of civilization in the Ruhr stretches back to the early middle ages. All this is examined at the Ruhr Museum Essen, including the preconditions for and the serious consequences of industrialisation in in terms of the environment, as well as the long and largely unknown history of the Ruhr area before industrial times.
The ‘House of Fates’, the future Holocaust memorial museum in Budapest, stands empty. Efforts to realize this project have divided the Hungarian Jewish community and have been widely criticized as an attempt by the Orbán government to re-write the history of the Holocaust in Hungary. The article reconstructs the main trajectories of this highly politicized conflict by focusing on the key actors, their political maneuverings and motives in this ongoing power struggle over the representation of Hungary’s past.
The Sered' Holocaust Memorial Museum is the only one of its kind in Slovakia. Located on the original site of the former labour and concentration camp, it tells the story of persecution, exploitation and murder of Slovak Jews during the war. While recognizing the difficulties of presenting the history of the Holocaust in Slovakia, this review reveals many shortcomings in the current permanent exhibition, which misses the chance of truly informing its visitors and raising critical historical awareness.
Against the backdrop of rampant racism and xenophobia in both public life and the social media, the 'Racism'-exhibition in Dresden came at the right time. It gave interesting insights into how 'race' as a category was invented as well as into the Hygiene Museum's own history in promoting racialized thinking. The article provides a critical review of the exhibition and its uses of media, interventions and other didactic tools in presenting a most sensitive issue.
The complex history of Silesia with its shifting political, cultural and geographic boundaries and its current location spanning across three state borders, poses a challenge to anyone trying to define it. Associations of what constitutes ‘Silesian identity’ can vary considerably depending on the national context of the viewer. The article reviews three museums in Görlitz (Germany), Katowice (Poland) and Opava (Czech Republic) and evaluates how they present the region’s shared past to express Silesian identity.
When the German historian and politician, Hans-Gert Pöttering, from the Christian Democratic Union/European People’s Party (EPP) became the President of the European Parliament in 2007, he immediately announced in his inaugural speech that he would like to see a museum of European history in Brussels. After ten years of preparation, the House of European History was finally opened at the beginning of May 2017. The purpose of the museum is to communicate to the public Europe’s common story, which stands above the 28 national histories, and to be a place for exploring and creating a European identity in the future. Can it successfully achieve its mission?
An Engaged Narrative: the Permanent Exhibition of the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk
(2017)
In recent years, no other museum exhibition in Poland has been disputed to a similar extent as the one in the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk. The dispute seemingly concerned the main storyline of the exhibition but, in fact, it had little to do with history and more with current Polish politics. The article takes a sober look at the exhibition and analyses the extent to which it goes beyond merely presenting a selection of historical issues and allows visitors to experience history in different ways.
On 22 November 2014 a multi-level underground bunker from the Cold War was opened in Tirana. Constructed during the country’s socialist period in the 1970s to house the heads of state in the event of a nuclear attack on the nation, the bunker today serves as a combination museum and art installation space and is one of the most fraught and complex attempts on the part of the Albanian government to come to terms with the nation’s recent history.