Abstract
The introduction to ‘Exhibiting the Nazi Past’ justifies the book’s focus on objects as a key medium in history exhibitions about National Socialism, the Holocaust and their legacies in Germany and Austria today. While one response from exhibition-makers to the topic of the Nazi past has been to use either documents, video testimony or empty space in place of objects, museums have, at the same time, collected many thousands of examples of material culture, often with personal narratives attached. The introduction also surveys the range of history exhibitions on show in Germany and Austria today and identifies key preoccupations of scholarship in this field.
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Notes
- 1.
Hanno Loewy and Anika Reichwald (eds), Übrig. Ein Blick in die Bestände – zum 25. Geburtstag des Jüdischen Museums Hohenems (Hohenems, Vienna and Vaduz: Bucher, 2016).
- 2.
Ines Reich (ed.), Vom Monument zur Erinnerung. 25 Jahre Stiftung Brandenburgische Gedenkstätten in 25 Objekten (Berlin: Metropol, 2017).
- 3.
A series of exhibitions entitled ‘Ein gewisses jüdisches Etwas’ (‘A Certain Jewish Something’), for which members of the public brought in a single object relating to Judaism and told its story, provides another example. The Frankfurt version was packaged as another anniversary publication: Jüdisches Museum Frankfurt am Main (ed.), Geschenkte Geschichten. Zum 20-Jahres-Jubiläum des jüdischen Museums Frankfurt am Main (Frankfurt am Main: Societätsverlag, 2009). I draw on this catalogue in Chapter 2. See also the catalogue for the exhibition ‘Von da und dort’, discussed further in Sect. 4.3, in which writers were asked to pick an object and respond to it imaginatively: Jutta Fleckenstein and Tamar Lewinsky (eds), Juden 45/90. Von da und dort – Überlebende aus Osteuropa (Berlin: Hentrich und Hentrich, 2011).
- 4.
As long ago as 2004, Elaine Heumann Gurian suggested that objects are no longer the defining characteristic of museums. Elaine Heumann Gurian, ‘What is the Object of this Exercise? A Meandering Exploration of the Many Meanings of Objects in Museums’, in Reinventing the Museum: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on the Paradigm Shift, ed. by Gail Anderson (Lanham, NY, Toronto, and Oxford: Altamira Press, 2004), pp. 269–83.
- 5.
Axel Drecoll, ‘NS-Volksgemeinschaft ausstellen. Zur Reinszenierung einer Schreckensvision mit Verheißungskraft’, in Die NS-Volksgemeinschaft. Zeitgenössische Verheißung, analytisches Konzept und ein Schlüssel zum historischen Lernen? ed. by Uwe Danker and Astrid Schwabe (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 2017), pp. 105–22 (p. 113).
- 6.
- 7.
The DHM’s as yet incomplete object database returns 21,259 hits for the search term ‘Nationalsozialismus’, though this includes both documents and objects.
- 8.
Steffi de Jong, The Witness as Object: Video Testimony in Memorial Museums (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2018). De Jong’s account of the very controlled framing and positioning of the speaking body (pp. 101–04) bears interesting comparison with the conventions relating to busts that I discuss in Sects. 3.3 and 4.2. De Jong also discusses the semantics of the German term Zeitzeuge, or historical witness (she prefers ‘witness to history’, pp. 32–34).
- 9.
de Jong, p. 5.
- 10.
Silke Arnold-de Simine, Mediating Memory in the Museum: Trauma, Empathy, Nostalgia (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
- 11.
The New Dimensions in Testimony project, on permanent display at the Illinois Holocaust Museum from 2017, is one of several projects aimed at creating holograms of survivors giving testimony . This represents the newest generation of testimonial technology. However, as a remediated version of the USC Shoah Foundation testimony that de Jong studies, it is directorially conservative, using a standardized question-and-answer format.
- 12.
Bill Niven ’s introduction to a volume of essays on the suffering of the non-persecuted majority of Germans can stand for many such arguments: ‘The end of the Cold War […] made possible not just a more open and frank confrontation with the Holocaust, it also prepared the ground for a less politicised confrontation with the theme of Allied bombing ’. Bill Niven, ‘Introduction: German Victimhood at the Turn of the Millennium’, in Germans as Victims: Remembering the Past in Contemporary Germany, ed. by Bill Niven (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), p. 4.
- 13.
Chloe Paver, ‘Exhibiting the National Socialist Past: An Overview of Recent German Exhibitions’, Journal of European Studies, 39.2 (2009), 225–49.
- 14.
‘Zerstörte Vielfalt. Berlin 1933 – 1938’ (‘Diversity Destroyed: Berlin 1933–1938’), 2013 at the Deutsches Historisches Museum .
- 15.
‘Das “Hausgefängnis” der Gestapo -Zentrale in Berlin . Terror und Widerstand 1933-45’ (‘The “Private Prison” at the Gestapo Headquarters in Berlin: Terror and Resistance, 1933–45’), 2005 at the Topographie des Terrors .
- 16.
Norbert Winding, Robert Lindner, and Robert Hoffmann, ‘Geschichtsaufarbeitung als Ausstellung. Das Haus der Natur 1924–1976 – die Ära Tratz’, Neues Museum, 14.4 (October 2014), 62–67.
- 17.
‘Das Gleis. Die Logistik des Rassenwahns’ (‘The Rails: the Logistics of Racial Persecution’), 2010 at the Dokumentationszentrum Reichsparteitagsgelände , and ‘Verdrängte Jahre. Bahn und Nationalsozialismus in Österreich 1938–1945’ (‘Years of Repression: The Railways and National Socialism in Austria, 1938–1945’), 2012 in the foyer of ÖBB Infrastruktur.
- 18.
‘Mit den Veranstaltungen [präsentieren sich] die Österreichischen Bundesbahnen […] als modernes Unternehmen mit Tradition und hohem Zukunftspotential’ (‘These events are intended to present ÖB as a modern company with a tradition and high potential for the future’), https://www.ots.at/presseaussendung/OTS_20120621_OTS0195/oebb-feiern-175-jahre-eisenbahn-mit-neun-bahnhofsfesten [accessed 29 May 2018].
- 19.
Robin Ostow writes that when Munich celebrated its 850th anniversary the city’s institutions made ‘mostly celebratory programs’ and that only the Jüdisches Museum explored ‘The Dark Side of Munich History’ (as its exhibition was subtitled). If that was the case (and the report at https://www.muenchen-transparent.de/dokumente/1626915/datei [accessed 29 May 2018] seems to paint a more nuanced picture) then it was highly unusual. Robin Ostow, ‘Creating a Bavarian Space for Rapprochement: The Jewish Museum Munich’, in Space and Spatiality in Modern German-Jewish History, ed. by Simone Lässig and Miriam Rürup (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2017), pp. 280–97 (p. 289).
- 20.
Volkhard Knigge, Rikola-Gunnar Lüttgenau, and Jens-Christian Wagner, ‘Einleitung’, in Zwangsarbeit. Die Deutschen, die Zwangsarbeiter und der Krieg, ed. by Volkhard Knigge, Rikola-Gunnar Lüttgenau, and Jens-Christian Wagner (Weimar: Stiftung Gedenkstätten Buchenwald und Mittelbau-Dora, 2010), pp. 6–11 (p. 6).
- 21.
These included police exhibitions in Hamburg (1998), Lübeck (2002), Cologne (2002), Mainz (2003), Hannover (2003), and Jena (2009).
- 22.
- 23.
Papers from the Innenministerkonferenz record only the decision, but one of the organizers has given an account: Detlev Graf von Schwerin, ‘Die deutsche Polizei im 20. Jahrhundert – Dreimal Freund und Helfer?’ in Oranienburger Schriften. Beiträge aus der Fachhochschule der Polizei des Landes Brandenburg 1 (May 2015), 7–11.
- 24.
http://www.dhpol.de/de/hochschule/Departments/fost_1_6/01_projekt.php [accessed 29 May 2018].
- 25.
Bremen showed ‘Polizei. Gewalt. Bremens Polizei im Nationalsozialismus’ at the same time as ‘Ordnung und Vernichtung’ in 2011; this was followed, in 2012, by a version expanded to include Bremerhaven. Police exhibitions also appeared in Munich and Hamburg in 2012.
- 26.
Inka Bertz, ‘Jewish Museums in the Federal Republic of Germany’, in Visualizing and Exhibiting Jewish Space and History: Studies in Contemporary Jewry, ed. by Richard I. Cohen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 80–112 (p. 105).
- 27.
For instance, in the exhibition ‘Forschung, Lehre, Unrecht. Die Universität Tübingen im Nationalsozialismus’ (‘Research, Teaching, Dictatorship: The University of Tübingen under National Socialism’), shown at the Museum der Universität Tübingen in 2015, exhibition-makers showed a blown-up image of the local SA brigade . The caption identified this as one of the boards from a 1983 exhibition by the University on the subject of its Nazi past. Together with more explicit statements elsewhere, this seemed designed to defend the university against any suggestion that it was only just waking up to its responsibilities in 2015.
- 28.
Notably Cornelia Brink , ‘Auschwitz in der Paulskirche’. Erinnerungspolitik in Fotoausstellungen der sechziger Jahre (Marburg: Jonas, 2000); Stephan A. Glienke, ‘Die Darstellung der Shoah im öffentlichen Raum. Die Ausstellung “Die Vergangenheit mahnt” (1960-62)’, in Erfolgsgeschichte Bundesrepublik? Die Nachkriegsgesellschaft im langen Schatten des Nationalsozialismus, ed. by Stephan Alexander Glienke, Volker Paulmann, and Joachim Perels (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2008), pp. 147–84; and Stephan Alexander Glienke, Die Ausstellung ‘Ungesühnte Justiz’ (1959–1962). Zur Geschichte der Aufarbeitung nationalsozialistischer Justizverbrechen (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlag, 2008).
- 29.
For my contribution, see: Chloe Paver, ‘“Ein Stück langweiliger als die Wehrmachtsausstellung, aber dafür repräsentativer”: The Exhibition Fotofeldpost as Riposte to the “Wehrmacht Exhibition”’, in German Memory Contests: The Quest for Identity in Literature, Film, and Discourse Since 1990, ed. by Anne Fuchs, Mary Cosgrove, and Georg Grote (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2006), pp. 107–25.
- 30.
Hans-Ulrich Thamer, ‘Die Inszenierung von Macht. Hitlers Herrschaft und ihre Präsentation im Museum’, in Hitler und die Deutschen. Volksgemeinschaft und Verbrechen, ed. by Hans-Ulrich Thamer and Simone Erpel (Dresden: Sandstein, 2010), pp. 17–22 (p. 22). See also Korff und Roth, pp. 21–22.
- 31.
For a list of Austrian museums and memorials see http://www.erinnern.at/bundeslaender/oesterreich/gedaechtnisorte-gedenkstaetten/katalog [accessed 29 May 2018].
- 32.
Ruth Ellen Gruber, Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe (Berkeley, CA, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2002), pp. 155–56.
- 33.
For similar statements see Julius H. Schoeps, ‘Memories: Enlightenment and Commemoration’, in Jewish Museum Vienna, ed. by Felicitas Heimann-Jelinek and Hannes Sulzenbacher (Vienna: Jüdisches Museum Wien, 1996), pp. 7–9 (pp. 8–9); Richard I. Cohen, ‘The Visual Revolution in Jewish Life: An Overview’, in Visualizing and Exhibiting Jewish Space and History: Studies in Contemporary Jewry, ed. by Richard I. Cohen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 3–24 (p. 17).
- 34.
Sharon Macdonald recalls a discussion with a curator at the Dokumentationszentrum Reichsparteitagsgelände who claimed that while they could not prevent the public from bringing them Nazi ‘kitsch ’ they had no intention of showing it. As Sects. 3.3 and 5.1 show, the documentation centre has since integrated such items into their exhibitions—in their capacity as historical kitsch. Sharon Macdonald, Difficult Heritage: Negotiating the Past in Nuremberg and Beyond (London and New York: Routledge, 2009), p. 124.
- 35.
For the classic division of labour in the exhibition-making process, see Faye Sayer, Public History: A Practical Guide (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2015), pp. 57–58. In small museums or amateur organisations, one or two people may fulfil these roles between them.
- 36.
Alon Confino and Peter Fritzsche, ‘Introduction: Noises of the Past’, in The Work of Memory: New Directions in the Study of German Society and Culture, ed. by Alon Confino and Peter Fritzsche (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002), pp. 1–21 (p. 3).
- 37.
Ibid.
- 38.
Ibid.
- 39.
Matti Bunzl, ‘Of Holograms and Storage Areas: Modernity and Postmodernity at Vienna’s Jewish Museum’, Cultural Anthropology, 18 (2003), 435–68 (pp. 436, 439).
- 40.
Sabine Offe, ‘Sites of Remembrance? Jewish Museums in Contemporary Germany’, Jewish Social Studies, 3 (1997), 77–89 and Ausstellungen, Einstellungen, Entstellungen. Jüdische Museen in Deutschland und Österreich (Berlin and Vienna: Philo, 2000). Bernhard Purin, ‘Dinge ohne Erinnerung. Anmerkungen zum schwierigen Umgang mit jüdischen Kult- und Ritualobjekten zwischen Markt und Museum’, Österreichische Zeitschrift für Volkskunde, 47 (1993), 147–66. See also Gruber.
- 41.
Most recently, and with a good overview of previous work, Cornelia Geißler, Individuum und Masse. Zur Vermittlung des Holocaust in deutschen Gedenkstättenausstellungen (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2015).
- 42.
Frank Bösch and Constantin Goschler, ‘Der Nationalsozialismus und die deutsche Public History’, in Public History. Öffentliche Darstellungen des Nationalsozialismus jenseits der Geschichtswissenschaft, ed. by Frank Bösch and Constantin Goschler (Frankfurt am Main and New York: Campus, 2009), pp. 7–23.
- 43.
Most recently: Hannah Holtschneider, The Holocaust and Representations of Jews: History and Identity in the Museum (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2011), a comparative study of the Imperial War Museum and the Jüdisches Museum Berlin ; Angelika Schoder, Die Vermittlung des Unbegreiflichen. Darstellungen des Holocaust im Museum (Frankfurt am Main and New York: Campus, 2014), a comparative study of the Imperial War Museum and the Deutsches Historisches Museum ; Arnold-de Simine; and Jennifer Hansen-Glucklich, Holocaust Memory Reframed: Museums and the Challenges of Representation (New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London: Rutgers University Press, 2014), which compares the Jüdisches Museum Berlin , USHMM , and Yad Vashem.
- 44.
‘Compared to conventional history museums […] there is a basic difficulty with the object base of memorial museums: orchestrated violence aims to destroy , and typically does so efficiently. The injured, dispossessed, and expelled are left object-poor’. Paul Williams, Memorial Museums: The Global Rush to Commemorate Atrocities (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2007), p. 25.
- 45.
Arnold-de Simine, pp. 2, 10.
- 46.
This paragraph summarizes arguments that are explored in more detail in Chloe Paver, ‘The Transmission of Household Objects from the National Socialist Era to the Present in Germany and Austria: A Local Conversation within a Globalized Discourse’, Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences, 9 (2016), 229–52.
- 47.
Macdonald, Difficult Heritage, p. 131.
- 48.
Macdonald, p. 187.
- 49.
Macdonald, p. 4. See also p. 187.
- 50.
Sharon Macdonald, Memorylands: Heritage and Identity in Europe (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2013). For a broader discussion see Jennifer M. Kapczynski and Erin McGlothlin, ‘Introduction’, in Persistent Legacy: The Holocaust and German Studies, ed. by Erin McGlothlin and Jennifer M. Kapczynski (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2016), pp. 1–16. They argue that scholars within German Studies have missed opportunities to engage with transnational research while, in turn, international Holocaust Studies has unfairly neglected the nation-based expertise of German Studies.
- 51.
Paver, ‘The Transmission of Household Objects’, p. 236.
- 52.
Aleida Assmann, Das neue Unbehagen an der Erinnerungskultur. Eine Intervention (Munich: Beck, 2013), p. 14.
- 53.
Almost identical fox terriers have appeared in ‘Glanz und Grauen’ (an exhibition discussed in later chapters) and in the permanent exhibition at the Gedenkstätte und Museum Sachsenhausen .
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Paver, C. (2018). Introduction. In: Exhibiting the Nazi Past. The Holocaust and its Contexts. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77084-0_1
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