REASSEMBLING NUREMBERG, REASSEMBLING HERITAGE

Abstract

This article explores the reassembly of the city of Nuremberg, Germany, through its heritage post- World War II. It does so primarily through consideration of two aspects of post-War heritage assembly and reassembly. First, it looks at the reconstruction of the city in the aftermath of bombing, with particular attention to the reassembling of historically significant architecture, though also in light of debates about reconstruction (of former buildings) versus construction (new build). Second, it investigates the making of Nazi architecture into heritage, initially through legislation and later through other accoutrements of heritage, such as information panels and guided tours. It is concerned, both for this specific case and also more widely, with what work the distinctive assemblage known as 'heritage’ can perform, including assembling and reassembling other entities, such as place, temporality, moralities and citizenship. In this way, the article seeks to explore the contribution that an assemblage perspective might make to the understanding of heritage as well as to consider some of its limitations.

Keywords:

• heritage
• architecture
• assemblage
• citizenship
• Nazi
• Germany

Acknowledgements

A first version of this article was presented at the Australian Cultural Researchers Network, CRESC, and Ian Potter Foundation workshop, Assembling Culture, University of Melbourne, December 2007. I thank the participants and especially Tony Bennett and Chris Healy for comments; and I also thank the anonymous referees. The research on which the paper is based has received financial support from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Arts and Humanties Research Council. A fuller list of acknowledgements and a fuller account of the research is presented in Macdonald (2009) from which some parts of this article draw.

Notes

1. For a useful account of directions in heritage research see, for example, Kockel and NicCraith 2007.

2. Latour distinguishes between the intermediaries, which ‘transport … meaning or force without transformation’ and ‘mediators [which] transform, translate, distort, and modify the meaning or the elements they are supposed to carry’ (2005a, p. 39).

3. What constitutes an ‘assemblage perspective’ has itself to be assembled from various sources and the introduction to this volume gives a fuller account. I draw on Latour (especially 2005a), Deleuze and Guattari (especially 1987), DeLanda's exposition (2006), and Bennett (2007). It might also be noted that Latour points out that anthropology often uses such an approach without naming it as such (2005a, p. 68).

4. E.g. Nürnberg c.1950, NCA ref: AV2708; Mittenhuber et al. 1995, p. 25.

5. It was categorized as such, for example, at the Great German Building Exhibition in 1949. See Ausstellungszeitung (exhibition newspaper) NCA AV Pe 10 2, 4.9.1949.

6. Nürnberg: Wieder ein Schatzkästlein, NCA 5070a8, n.d. See also Kosfeld (2001) and Hagen (2006).

7. Rosenfeld's translation (2000, p. 260), from Bayerisches Staatsministerium für Unterricht und Kultus (1974, p. 7). The reason for the 1945 cut-off was in order to exclude post-War redevelopment.

8. Quoted in ‘Ein sündhaft teures Denkmal’, Nürnberger Nachrichten, 13 November 1973.

9. See Macdonald (2009, pp. 60–61) for discussion of ways in which economic calculations could be made.

10. I have discussed this also in Macdonald (2009). The scaling to the global that articulation in terms of Human Rights allowed is in many respects similar to that involved in UNESCO World Heritage listing. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett's characterization of the way in which ‘World heritage lists arise from operations that convert selected aspects of localized descent heritage into a translocal consent heritage – the heritage of humanity’ (2006, p. 170) could apply equally well to the process of linking Nuremberg's Nazi heritage to a Human Rights assemblage. Moreover, a similar process of removing ‘volition [and] intention’ (p. 179) from those whose heritage is listed can be seen in the Nuremberg case, though to very different political effect.

11. It is evident, for example, in the attention to representation in Latour's discussion of ‘Making Things Public’ (2005b) – where there is also much authorial play with etymology. Yet it does not seem to be fully extended into any critique of the politics of attributions of agency or of the assemblage perspective itself, especially its emphasis on materiality.