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Twenty-first-century views of historical violence have been immeasurably influenced by cultural representations of the Second World War. Within Europe, one of the key sites for such representation has been the vast array of museums and memorials that reflect contemporary ideas of war, the roles of soldiers and civilians, and the self-perception of those who remember. This volume takes a historical perspective on museums covering the Second World War and explores how these institutions came to define political contexts and cultures of public memory in Germany, across Europe, and throughout the world.
“Without a doubt, this expertly edited volume with its comparative approach offers a significant contribution to the academic research on museums and memorials representing the violent past of the Second World War in the twenty-first century. The collection of essays provides ample evidence of the contested shifts in the contemporary European memory culture and ongoing challenges in establishing a ‘shared culture of remembrance’ of the traumatic war years of 1939-45.” • Monatshefte
“Surrounding us are the material, cultural, social and political manifestations of the Second World War. Views of Violence provides guidance on how to act with and against these sites and sights of conflict to promote visions of peace… Through the work of the authors in this volume, we are reminded of the great duty of care needed to remember this past and its relationship to the present.” • International Journal of Military History and Historiography
“With the conceptually convincing, in the quality of his contributions far above average edited volume, the participants have succeeded admirably in giving an exemplary inventory of the current state of the debate with reference to public war commemoration.“ • Neue Politische Literatur
“…makes an important contribution to memory studies because it focuses on the memory of war and its millions of civilian victims, regardless of their identity.” • The German Quarterly
“Scholars can modestly contribute to a shared culture of remembrance through solid comparative research, an example of which is this volume.” • Journal in Cold War Studies
“This is a very impressive collection that brings together a series of strong, substantial case studies arranged into two thematic sections that – in their strength and consistent quality – constitute a significant contribution to the field.” • Gabriel Moshenska, University College London
List of Illustrations
Preface
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: Representing the Second World War in German and European Museums and Memorials
Jörg Echternkamp and Stephan Jaeger
PART I: MUSEUMS
Chapter 1. Multi-Voiced and Personal: Second World War Remembrance in German Museums
Thomas Thiemeyer
Chapter 2. The Experientiality of the Second World War in Twenty-First-Century European Museums (Normandy, Ardennes, Germany)
Stephan Jaeger
Chapter 3. Exhibiting Images of War: The Use of Historic Media in the Bundeswehr Military Museum (Dresden) and the Imperial War Museum North (Manchester)
Jana Hawig
Chapter 4. In the Eye of the Beholder: Gaze and Distance through Photographic Collage in the Topography of Terror and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights
Erin Johnston-Weiss
Chapter 5. The Challenging Representation of National-Socialist Perpetrators in Exhibitions: Two Examples from Austria and Germany
Sarah Kleinmann
Chapter 6. “Warschau erhebt sich”: The 1944 Warsaw Uprising and the Nationalization of European Identity in the Berlin Republic
Winson Chu
PART II: MEMORIALS AND MEMORIAL LANDSCAPES
Chapter 7. A Culture of Remembrance, Memorials and Museum in the Hürtgenwald Region
Karola Fings
Chapter 8. Contested Heroes, Contested Places: Conflicting Visions of War at Heldenplatz/Ballhausplatz in Vienna
Peter Pirker, Magnus Koch, and Johannes Kramer
Chapter 9. Commemorating Flight and Expulsion vor Ort: Local Expellee Monuments in Central and Eastern Europe
Jeffrey Luppes
Chapter 10. Local Battlefields as “Cultural Landscape” of Global Value? Views of War in Normandy and the Classification as World Heritage
Jörg Echternkamp
Afterword: The Memory Boom and the Commemoration of the Second World War
Jay Winter
Index