Cultures of History Forum (Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena)
Refine
Year of publication
- 2016 (11) (remove)
Document Type
- Article (11)
Language
- English (11)
Has Fulltext
- yes (11)
Is part of the Bibliography
- no (11)
Keywords
- Poland (5)
- Polen (4)
- Judenvernichtung (3)
- Kollektives Gedächtnis (3)
- PiS (3)
- Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (3)
- Weltkrieg <1939-1945> (3)
- Geschichtspolitik (2)
- Holocaust (2)
- Kommunismus (2)
Institute
- Imre Kertész Kolleg (11)
A small but state-of-the-art museum in the countryside of Poland’s southeast opened its doors in 2016 to commemorate Józef and Wiktoria Ulma, who shielded two Jewish families in their cottage. The twofold dedication of this museum, both to the Ulma family and to "Poles Saving Jews in World War II" opens up a window to understand 'big history' in the framework of the small. However, this approach also carries some risks.
"No more war" is the message the Yser Tower Museum in the small Belgian town of Dixmunde tries to convey. It seems as if this war museum which showcases the atrocities of the First World War at an authentic site would like to be a museum for peace. Yet by opting for a pacifist narrative the museum bypasses the complex history of the site itself. It avoids any in-depth discussion about the controversial history of the Yser Tower and its role in the efforts to construct a Flemish nation.
How does Croatia come to terms with the violent history of 20th century wars? Croatian society is deeply polarized over the narratives of the Second World War. Moreover, the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s have been framed within the imagery of the Second World War and are understood either as a continuation of that war, or as the same event conducted under new circumstances. This results in an intertwining of the memories of communism, fascism and the recent Yugoslav wars.
After bringing the constitutional court to a standstill and cleansing public television to make it conform to party-political criteria, the Polish government that dominated by the PiS party has shifted its attention to the politics of memory. The article gives a critical review of recent steps taken by the government and parliament to stir the public representation of contemporary history in a national conservative, “patriotic” direction. This "historical policy" not only comes at the expensive of pluralism, but it has also already resulted in public unrest.
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.
The article puts a spotlight on recently discovered files about Lech Wałęsa’s collaboration with the state security forces in 1970 and the political debates that followed from this discovery. Showing how the right-wing PiS party seized this opportunity to bolster its narrative of the “treacherous” roundtable talks and of the post-1989 transition as engineered by the communist authorities, the article makes the point that once again, history is being instrumentalized by the party in power.
The Past as a Source of Evil: The Controversy Over History and Historical Policy in Poland, 2016
(2016)
History plays a huge role in Polish public debates, politics, and the ideology of the ruling PiS party. "Historical policy" is now officially on the agenda of the government and its agencies. Doctrine regarding the układ and all-pervading communist agents is now the official version of history. This article examines the way history has been used under the PiS government in Poland since November 2015.
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.
The Silesian Museum opened in 2015 in a former coal mine in Katowice. The new permanent exhibition is the first attempt to exhibit the history of Upper Silesia, one of Poland’s most contested regions. The turbulent background regarding the development of the exhibition offers insights into the continuing processes of self-discovery in a post-industrial Upper Silesia in search of its place within contemporary Poland.
This is an analysis of the official initiatives, main controversies, and key scholarly activities related to the 70th anniversary of the Holocaust in Hungary in 2014. It reveals the dualistic agenda behind the official commemoration, an effort to commemorate victims without foregrounding historical responsibility. It also shows that this anniversary only reinforced the bitter societal divisions it was meant to help overcome.