Cultures of History Forum (Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena)
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In early 2021, the Director of the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre (GRRC) in Vilnius was replaced provoking a wide-ranging debate on the inner workings and public mandate of the nation’s leading memory institution. The article discusses the Centre's past performances between conducting historical research and engaging in memory activism and it reflects on the new appointment's potential to strike a better balance.
Since gaining independence, Kyrgyzstan has struggled to reconcile its imperial and Soviet history with a post-imperial historical narrative that would be able to unite contemporary Kyrgyz society in a nation-state. No memorial site embodies this more than the Ata-Beyit Memorial Complex near Bishkek. The grave sites and memorials assembled here represent three periods of Kyrgyzstan's 20th century history all at once. The article traces their history and discusses their changing meaning over time.
The Stench of Pigs and the Authority of Historians: Czech Debates About the Lety Concentration Camp
(2022)
For thirty years, Romani and other memory activists have struggled to get a pig farm that stood on the site of the former concentration camp for Czech Roma in Lety removed. This is now going to happen, and a new memorial museum will be set up on the site. The article reconstructs the debates that evolved around the site since the mid-1990s and sheds light on some of the misconceptions and controversies in Czech society about the Romani Holocaust.
Cinematic attempts to tell the story of historical mass violence and trauma in former Yugoslavia are often steeped in political controversy. The article discusses two recent films – ‘Dara of Jasenovac’ (Serbia, 2020) and ‘Quo vadis, Aida?’ (Bosnia-Herzegovina, 2020) – and the public reactions to them. While both films share certain features such as looking at historical horrors and inter-ethnic violence from a female perspective, they differ remarkably in style as well as in how they were received in Serbia and beyond.
In April 2021 a Czech researcher stumbled over a file card that identified Prime Minister Andrej Babis as a former agent of the StB. This new piece of evidence, however, was barely discussed in the Czech public. The article tries to explain this non-existing debate about the Prime Minister’s StB past and finds answers in the changing significance of anti-communism as a driving force of Czech public debate and memory politics.
For many decades Soviet and post-Soviet collective memory of the Second World War has been closely tied to the song 'Bukhenval'dskii nabat' (Alarm Bell of Buchenwald), performed at both official and private commemorations across the former Soviet Union. The article traces the origins of the song and critically discusses the various transformations it undertook from being an anti-nuclear peace song to becoming a central element of the antifascist 'Great Patriotic War'-memory.
Thirty years have passed since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In Russia's public sphere today, the decade that followed is remembered with ambivalence while politically, negative narratives of the 'rowdy nineties' dominate. The article examines how the 1990s are being represented on social media platforms, in particular on TikTok and Instagram, and to what extent the platform-generated grassroot memory practices differ from, or even oppose the official narrative about this period.
What has been the role of historical symbols and images for both mobilizing anti-government protests in Belarus and coping with the state-inflicted violence against peaceful protesters? This is the main question guiding this exploration of the dynamics of memory-related images and symbols during the 2020 protests. It discusses the power of historical symbolism and its parallels in earlier revolutions in the region, yet also emphasises key differences in the Belarusian case.
Official commemorations of the end of the Second World War in Estonia take place on May 8 and they focus on the victims of what is perceived as the most traumatic event in recent national history. A day later, another commemoration takes place that celebrates the war's end as victory and is attended by many Russian-speakers of Estonia. These two events epitomize the mnemonic landscape of Estonia characterized by two memory regimes that exist as parallel universes.
In May 1985, Yugoslav Slovenia celebrated Victory Day and the 40th anniversary of liberation. In May 2015, independent Slovenia celebrated the 70th anniversary of the war’s end as if it had been a kind of a natural process that ended, just like summer ends. What happened to the victory celebration? This article argues that the discursive differences between the two state celebrations reflect the deep crisis of official state/national ideology.
A year ago, the documentary film 'Kolyma – Birthplace of Our Fear' was uploaded to YouTube. Made by the blogger Yury Dud, it has received over 20 million views today, despite the fact that it addresses one of the darkest chapters of recent history in Russia - the Gulag. The article analyses the film and its popular appeal, not least among young audiences. It identifies three key phenomena of present-day Russia that the documentary addresses: fear, ambivalent attitudes towards Stalin and an ahistorical form of patriotism.
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.
In December 2019 Anton Drobovych, a relatively unknown historian, was appointed as new head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance. His appointment came as a surprise to many observers of Ukraine’s historical and public history scene and could mean a shift in the post-Euromaidan politics of memory in Ukraine. The article assesses first statements by Drobovych and discusses them against the backdrop of past memory-related policies and legislation.
A recent Instagramm project called 'eva-stories', in which a young girl (played by an actress) 'experiences' the Holocaust and documents it on her Insta account received much international attention, both positive and negative. Going beyond the existing critique, the article analyses the stories themselves, their uses of aesthetics as well as the accuracy of their historical representations of wartime Hungary. Based on this analysis, it discusses broader issues of Holocaust education in an age of digitalized communication.
Kurapaty, the site of Stalin-era mass executions on the outskirts of Minsk, has long been a much contested space where memories and narratives of the Soviet past clashed. Against the backdrop of a national government that blocks any more critical engagement with the Soviet history of mass crimes, the article explores the way in which Kurapaty has been the birth place of various oppositional groups and memory activists who pursue rather different mnemonic agendas.
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.
Every year in May thousands of Croats gather in the small Austrian town of Bleiburg to commemorate the so called “Bleiburg tragedy” at the end of the Second World War. Considered by some as the 'biggest neo-Nazi meeting in Europe', this event has triggered considerable controversy, not least due to its political backing from among governing parties. The article provides the historical and memory political backdrop to these controversies shedding light on Croatia's struggle with historical revisionism.
Thirty years after the American mini-series “Holocaust” was first shown on West-German television and started what has come to be seen as a major turn in German memory culture regarding the Holocaust, the Cultures of History Forum has invited five historians, experts of contemporary history of Central Europe, who had never seen the series before to watch all four episode and discuss it. This is the protocol of the discussion.
A new generation of historians and curators have taken over the former Museum of Occupations in Tallinn, Estonia. They renamed the museum and opened a permanent exhibition built less on historical facts than on 'fragments of memory'. Technologically savvy, it challenges not only previous ways of representing Estonia's history of occupations, but also more traditional modes of presenting history in the museum. How this is done and whether it is convincing is discussed in this article.
One year after the Polish parliament adopted an amendment that would criminalize certain statements about Polish involvement in the Holocaust, this article revisits both the original amendment and the political developments since. It argues that allthough the law was eventually changed to calm down concerns about freedom of speech, sanctions still exist and their longer-term effects on Polish society and public discourse are daunting.
A recently published personal story by American-Lithuanian writer Silvia Foti about her grandfather's involvement in the Holocaust in Lithuania has raised critical questions in the Lithuanain public about who has the right and authority to pronounce judgement on the nation’s history. The article reviews this debate and discusses how intimate and self-critical stories like Foti's fit within the official narrative and public celebration of the resistance nation in contemporary Lithuania.
The latest temporary exhibition by the Museum Polin in Warsaw entitled 'Estranged. March ’68 and its Aftermath' has been controversially discussed in the Polish public. The article gives a brief review of the exhibition to then analyse the subsequent debates as they provide an insight into contemporary Polish culture of remembrance and into the particularly sensitive issue of Poland's postwar Jewish-Polish relations.
What happens when the Church engages in public negotiations of history by hosting and funding a museum? “The Blessed Jerzy Popiełuszko Museum in Warsaw” poses this question as it is located in a church and presents the life of Jerzy Popiełuszko, a Catholic priest who fought against the communist regime and was murdered in 1984. Today he is perceived both as a national hero and a Catholic martyr. The article critically reviews the current exhibition and how it combines questions of history and religion.
Buchenwald Revisited
(2018)
In spring 2016, a new permanent exhibition opened at the Buchenwald Memorial near Weimar. The article provides a critical review of the exhibition against the backdrop of previous exhibitions: the first which was opened by the GDR regime in 1954 and the second one after re-unification in 1995. Compared to these, the new exhibition appears less raw and more aesthetic in appearance. Moreover, it engages more than its predecessors with stories of perpetrators in addition to those of the victims.
50 years after the 'Prague Spring' ended, Czech political leaders remain strangely silent in commemorative events. A gradual shift is taking place in the Czech national conversation about 1968, away from the strong anti-communist narrative of the first post-communist decades. However, the opportunity is missed to finally engage a wider public in discussing the political ideas and legacies of 1968 for the country today, leaving room for populists and illiberals to shape the narrative.
What is really behind the growing popularity of Stalin in contemporary Russia? The article discusses different expressions of what has been termed a new “Stalin cult” or “Stalin renaissance” in Russian public and political discourse today, despite widespread knowledge and official acknowledgment of Stalinist mass crimes. It argues that short of constituting a rehabilitation of Stalinism, this phenomenon primarily reflects on people’s desire for stability and order.
In 2015 the Serbian Supreme Court rehabilitated wartime General Dragoljub Mihailović, who had been prosecuted by a communist tribunal in 1946. The article places the protracted rehabilitation procedure into the context of both Cold War-era memory politics regarding the figure of Mihailović and post-Milošević transitional justice politics. Pointing to the highly politicized legal procedures of this case, it provides interesting insights into Serbia’s ongoing struggles over the legacies of the Second World War.
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?
A recently published travelogue by Lithuanian journalist Rūta Vanagaitė raised critical questions about Lithuanians’ complicity in the extermination of their Jewish neighbours. The book sparked vivid responses among both historians and the wider Lithuanian public. The article places the debate in the broader context of Lithuania’s post-Soviet politics of memory vis á vis the Holocaust and reflects on whether the popularity of this book constitutes a shift in public historical consciousness about this controversial period.
This article discusses the ways in which history and historical reasoning are integrated into memorialization practices in Kosovo, with a special focus on the Jashari Family Memorial. It demonstrates that as a dominant part of collective memory in Kosovo, the memorial is a site of discursive and memorial acts as well as performative cultural practices in the service of the nation. It is a staple of the ways in which the past is represented and how its meaning is maintained through commemoration.
This article explores public opinion, commemorations and debates surrounding the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War and traces commemoration-related changes since 1989 in the Czech Republic. It argues that the period of essentially ignoring the memories of the former communist narrative has come to an end: we now see a tendency to retrieve those former memories and, as a result, there is greater pluralism in the narration of the past in the public space.
There is barely a hint that the buildings across from the most popular shopping mall in downtown Belgrade once housed the biggest fascist concentration camp in Serbia. Only the attentive observer will notice the derelict tower on the banks of the Sava river with rundown modernist pavilions clustered around it. How can it be that all attempts to create an appropriate place of memory at this site of the Holocaust and brutal repression against political prisoners have failed?
Cultures of Remembrance in Sarajevo, or the Protracted Search for Multiperspectivity and Integration
(2015)
Sarajevo’s tension-laden historical culture, in particular with reference to the war of the 1990s, is the focus of this article. Some historical background information on the city’s political divisions is provided by way of an introduction. An overview of the development and implementation of initiatives for cultural remembrance follows using the example of two permanent exhibitions. Finally, a number of blind spots and points of contention are discussed with regard to official cultures of remembrance in Sarajevo.
The article gives an overview of the fragmented historical culture in Bosnia and Herzegovina, twenty years after the end of the war, which left the country deeply divided along political and ethnic lines. Parallel ethnonational narratives about the past, both recent and distant, are dominating the public sphere. Yet, the memory landscape in the country should not be reduced to its ethnonational divisions: variations within the dominating narratives and a wide range of attitudes towards them also exist.
In 2012 a debate took place among Hungarian academics about how to write the country's 20th-century history in an ethically and professionally adequate way, with a particular focus on anti-Semitism and the legacy of the Holocaust. This article summarizes the main points of the original exchange between two historians and examines which threads of the subsequent discussion were the most fruitful in terms of initiating a debate about the controversial legacies of 20th-century Hungarian history.
The "Museum of Socialist Art" in Sofia is the first state-supported museum focused on the communist period in Bulgaria. Paying attention to debatable issues regarding its concept and structure, the article outlines the anxieties of the Bulgarian public about this museum, particularly regarding the "resurrection" of socialist ideology and the "re-habilitation" of artistic production during communist rule. It shows the lack of clear principles in the selection and arrangement of the exhibited items, and the hesitation to take a critical stance on the former regime.