This article examines two chapters from Martin Sabrow's 2009 edited volume Erinnerungsorte der DDR, one on antifascism and one on Buchenwald. These two case studies exemplify the complexities of the contemporary German memorial landscape. In particular, they thematize the remembrance of the Nazi past in the German Democratic Republic and how this GDR past has, in turn, been tendentiously remembered since unification. By examining the layering of memories in these two chapters, we argue that the theoretical models which often underpin contemporary German memory work, Sabrow's volume included, serve to obscure the role of the state as carrier of official memory. On the basis of this study, we show that concepts dominant in today's Germany promote a unified national narrative. In particular, terms such as the “culture of memory” (Erinnerungskultur) and cultural memory (kulturelles Gedächtnis) downplay conflicting, contentious and diverse memories relating to the GDR past. As such, the article provides a timely note of caution for memory studies and memory work, which increasingly applies these models to wider, non-German contexts.
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Tendentiousness and Topicality: Buchenwald and Antifascism as Sites of GDR Memory
Helmut Peitsch and Joanne Sayner
In German Politics and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2015
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 100–118 (18 total)
Conceptual Explorations around “Politics”
Thematizing the Activity of Politics in the Plenary Debates of the German Bundestag
Kari Palonen
dedicated to the illocutionary uses that thematize the concept, to use Austinian 9 terms. The focus on thematizing uses of the concept, furthermore, allows us to reduce the range of the items in the corpus and to direct the main attention to more original
In Contributions to the History of Concepts
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2021
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 16–39 (24 total)
A Few Bad Apples or the Logic of Capitalism?
Neoliberal Globalization in the Economic Crime Drama Since the Millennial Turn
Sabine von Dirke
thematized the socio-economic and political transformations subsumed to the shorthand neoliberalism. It is predicated upon the following observations. First, two socio-political issues have recurred in public discourse since the 1990s: the debate on Standort
In German Politics and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2021
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 8–24 (17 total)
Sounds German?
Popular Music in Postwar Germany at the Crossroads of the National and Transnational
Kirkland A. Fulk
politics.” 7 This increased prevalence of the popular also coincided with the rise of Popliteratur for instance in the work of Rolf Dieter Brinkmann and Hubert Fichte that contested the divide between high and low, thematized the experiences of the
In German Politics and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2017
- Article Type:
- Introduction
- Pages:
- 1–6 (6 total)
Brand of Brothers?
The Humboldt Forum and the Myths of Innocence
Jonathan Bach
humanizing aura of a “poetics of failure” with which people could identify. 14 And since Andrea Wulf's 2015 best-selling book about him, Humboldt has become the original climate activist, being arguably the first to directly thematize how human action is
In German Politics and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2021
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 100–111 (12 total)
Empowering Critical Memory Consciousness in Education
The Example of 22 July 2011 in Norway
Alexandre Dessingué and Ketil Knutsen
writing about. 21 History can also explicitly become part of the present and shape who we are. Such a phenomenological approach to history has been thematized in particular in Scandinavia via the concept of the “uses of history,” which are understood as
In Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2021
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 95–113 (19 total)
News and Miscellanea
Monika Rudaś-Grodzka, Katarzyna Nadana-Sokołowska, Anna Borgos, and Dorottya Rédai
partial, of self-affirmation, expression of self-respect, and expression of interest in oneself. Still, as Harriet Blodget, a scholar of women’s diaries, has noted, keeping a diary by women was often a form of silence: on the level of thematization the
Gender Tutelage and Bulgarian Women’s Literature (1878–1944)
Valentina Mitkova
the infant child was viewed as a part of the woman’s love for herself. Such thematizing, unusual for its time, had to wait several years to be adequately evaluated. 17 Nencheva’s literary searches that were ahead of her time and the unfamilar female
German Colonial Rule in Present-day Namibia
The Struggle for Discursive Shifts in History Education
Patrick Mielke
way, the authors make it clear that in discussing imperialism, their aim is not to thematize European colonialism but rather to embed the topic in the context of European history. The term “seminal catastrophe” is also used to refer to the central
In Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2021
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 53–71 (19 total)
Introduction
Places of Progress? Technology Museums, Memory, and Education
Christian Kehrt and Daniel Brandau
respond to this challenge, museums can reflect upon their own history, thematize collective memories concerning objects and collections and explain how practices of displaying tanks, rockets, cars, or railways relate to national, regional, local, and
In Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2022
- Article Type:
- Introduction
- Pages:
- 1–13 (13 total)