A living place: On the sociology of atmosphere in home museums

ABSTRACT

A darkened room, a cane, a hat on a bed: such items, former belongings of famous individuals, are presented in home museums in Israel and Germany. Such scenes are made to appear authentic through the mediation of objects and stories, which render them relatable to visitors but also strange and uncanny. Home museums are sites for the study of the sociology of atmosphere, which is constructed through what we term temporal multitude – linking stories, objects and the situatedness of visitors with historical narratives and their interpretation. Furthermore, such home museums create what we term a ‘national memory atmosphere’ in which specific national narratives are experienced as personal, thus stabilising relations between individuals and national memory. At the same time, they preserve those memories as multidimensional and open to revisiting. Here, we study the home museums of Adenauer, Brecht-Weigel, Einstein, Goethe, and Kollwitz in Germany and those of Agnon, Ben-Gurion, and Weizmann in Israel.

KEYWORDS:

• Sociology of atmosphere
• authenticity
• collective memory
• museum experience
• museum visitors
• temporal multitude

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions, and to our research assistants, Lotte Thaa in Germany, Tali (Hamutal) Jaffe-Dax, Tahel Goldsmith, and Noam Keren in Israel, for their help in collecting and coding the data. We are indebted to the museum directors, workers, and guides who offered their experience and thoughts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 In 2016, the home hosted 24,377 visitors.

2 In 2016, the home hosted 4936 visitors.

3 In 2016, the home hosted 174,467 visitors.

4 In 2016, the home hosted 7221 visitors,

5 The home hosts about 11,000 annually, including special events in town for which its grounds are opened.

6 In 2016, the home in Tel Aviv hosted 35,000 visitors and the desert home, 87,000.

7 The home hosted 30,707 visitors in 2015. The data are for 2015 since the house was closed due to renovation for major parts of 2016.

8 In 2016, the house hosted between 6000 and 7000 visitors.

9 In total, there were 133 home museums in Germany and 27 in Israel.

10 We wish to thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this helpful point.

11 In discussing Samuel Weber’s reading of Freud’s famous ‘das Unheimliche’ (2000).

12 Habsburgergelb, Kaisergelb.

13 Grusswort zur Eröffnung der Kollwitz-Gedenkstätte by Dr. Jutta Bohnke-Kollwitz 22.4.1995.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a Grant from the GIF, the German-Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and Development.