The Politics of Memory in Berlin’s Freiheits- und Einheitsdenkmal

Abstract

Since the mid-1990s, Berlin has often been diagnosed as suffering from an acute case of ‘monumentitis’, an affliction which relates to both the number of monuments being constructed, and the protracted and controversial debates which accompany their construction and reception. On the one hand, this trend can be witnessed internationally as part of the contemporary ‘memory boom’; on the other, Berlin proves to be an extreme example, as demonstrated by a plethora of recent publications about the role of memory in this city (e.g. Ladd, 1997; Till, 2005; Jordan, 2006; Verheyen, 2008; Webber, 2008). Indeed, as the capital of a new, united Germany, Berlin has become a national ‘theatre of memory’ (Samuel, 1994) in which new cultural and political symbolism is being staged, and where the reconfiguration of a ‘normalised’ identity has — in the wake of two dictatorships and a divided Germany — challenged politicians and artists alike. Although the role of monuments has changed considerably during the twentieth century, from overt expressions of power to more ambiguous or subversive forms (Mittig, 1987), they continue to act as ‘symbols and repositories of memories’ (Ladd, 1997: 4), and play an important role in the construction — or rejection — of collective identities.