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Abstract
This paper looks at how historical museums in Germany that are not Holocaust or Jewish museums represent Jews. It examines the permanent and temporary exhibitions, as well as their visitors’ experiences, at the two largest national and state-sponsored historical museums: the House of History in Bonn and the German Historical Museum in Berlin. I first analyze the ways in which Jewish symbols and images of Jews tell the story of the Holocaust’s aftermath in those museums. The article then focuses on a temporary exhibition, ‘Shalom: Three Photographers See Germany,’ at the Bonn House of History (August 2015–June 2016). I suggest that the exhibitions create directed viewing, whereby the visitors look at Jews and project the experience of viewing Holocaust images. I argue that as they are presented and viewed in the ‘Shalom’ exhibition, Jews undergo temporal displacement whereby their subject position and possible roles both in remembering and in being remembered are limited. I conclude by showing that Jews, as well as other Holocaust victim groups and migrant groups in Germany today, are not equal subjects of memory, meaning both that their subjectivity as participants in the public sphere is limited to specific roles, times and spaces, and that inter-subjective communication about their representation is limited.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 ‘Shalom’ was curated by the museum’s director Dr Jürgen Reiche. It features the photographers Holger Biermann, Rafael Herlich, Benyamin Reich. Mr Herlich was born in 1954 in Tel Aviv and has lived in Frankfurt am Main since 1975. His photographs of Jews in Germany were exhibited and have been featured in many German and German-Jewish newspapers. Mr Reich was born in Bnei Brak in 1976 and grew up Ultra-Orthodox. He has lived in Berlin since 2010, and his work was exhibited in the Jewish Museum Berlin, in other German and European cities, and in Tel Aviv. Mr Biermann was born in 1973 in Bremen and is a Berlin-based photographer focusing on urban scenes. His work has been exhibited in Germany, France, and elsewhere in Europe and the U.S. The exhibition ran from 21 August 2015 to June 2016. Entry to the Bonn temporary exhibition was free of charge, as is entry to the permanent exhibition and the two other House of History institutions (in Leipzig and Berlin).
2 See Sharon Macdonald and Gordon Fyfe, (eds.), Theorizing Museums: Representing Identity and Diversity in a Changing World (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 1998). See also George E. Hein, Learning in the Museum (London: Routledge, 2002).
3 Sharon Macdonald, (ed.), A Companion to Museum Studies (West Sussex: Blackwell, 2011).
4 Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, “Education, Communication and Interpretation: Towards a Critical Pedagogy in Museums,” in Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, (ed.), The Educational Role of the Museum, 2nd edition (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 3–27.
5 Macdonald, Museum Studies, p. 3.
6 Tony Bennett, “Civic Seeing: Museums and the Organization of Vision,” in Sharon Macdonald, (ed.), A Companion to Museum Studies (West Sussex: Blackwell, 2011).
7 Michael Rothberg and Yasemin Yildiz, “Memory Citizenship: Migrant Archives of Holocaust Remembrance in Contemporary Germany,” Parallax 17:4 (2011), pp. 32–48.
8 Dan Diner, “Nation, Migration, and Memory: On Historical Concepts of Citizenship,” Constellations 4: (1998), pp. 293–306; Esra Ozyurek, “Export-Import Theory and the Racialization of Anti-Semitism: Turkish and Arab-Only Prevention Programs in Germany,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 58:1 (2016), pp. 40–65; Damani Partridge, “Holocaust Mahnmal (Memorial) Monumental Memory Amidst Contemporary Race,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 52:4 (2010), pp. 820–850.
9 Eric Langenbacher and Friederike Eigler, “Introduction: Memory Boom or Memory Fatigue in 21st Century Germany,” German Politics and Society 23:3 (2005), pp. 1–15.
10 Throughout the article, I use the English transliteration ‘Shalom.’ I later reflect on the relevance of the titling of the exhibition using the German transliteration, ‘Schalom.’
11 The House of History in Bonn was established as a foundation of the German Federal Republic in 1990 under the leadership of Helmut Kohl and receives about 750,000 visitors per year. The German Historical Museum in Berlin receives about 900,000 visitors per year. It was reopened under Kohl as well, as a national historical museum.
12 See Irit Dekel, Mediation at the Holocaust Memorial Berlin (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
13 Anna Reading, “Making Memory Work for Feminist Theory,” in Mary Evans, (ed.), The Sage Handbook of Feminist Theory (London: Sage, 2014), pp. 196–214.
14 Ulrich Baer, Spectral Evidence: The Photography of Trauma (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002).
15 Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer, “What’s Wrong with This Picture? Archival Photographs in Contemporary Narratives,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 5:2 (2006), p. 237.
16 Silke Arnold-de Simine, Mediating Memory in the Museum: Trauma, Empathy, Nostalgia (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 45–46.
17 See, for instance, a collection of articles from 19 January 2016 on anti-Semitic attacks in the German national news report, Tagesschau: https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/juden-sicherheit-101.html, accessed 17 June 2016; on the event of International Holocaust Memorial Day on 27 January 2016, the Berlin Tagespiegel published a piece entitled “How Dangerous Is Antisemitism in Germany?” This piece added to the fear expressed by Josef Schuster, the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany that the arrival of refugees from Arab countries would lead to rising antisemitism in Germany, which was criticized by Jews on the left.
18 Nadine Blumer, “From Victim Hierarchies to Memorial Networks: Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial to Sinti and Roma Victims of National Socialism,” PhD diss., University of Toronto, Toronto, 2012.
19 The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was opened in May 2005, the Memorial to the Homosexuals Persecuted under the National Socialist Regime in May 2008, the Memorial to the Sinti and Roma of Europe Murdered under the National Socialist Regime in October 2012, and the Memorial and Information Point for the Victims of National Socialist ‘Euthanasia’ Killings in September 2014. All are managed by the Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.
20 Dekel, Mediation at the Holocaust Memorial Berlin.
21 Franziska Becker, Karen Körber, and Richard Gardner, “Holocaust-Memory and Multiculturalism: Russian Jews in German Media after 1989,” New German Critique 92 (2004), pp. 5–20.
22 See Jeffrey K. Olick and Daniel Levy, “Collective Memory and Cultural Constraint: Holocaust Myth and Rationality in German Politics,” American Sociological Review 62 (1997), pp. 921–936. See also A. Dirk Moses, “Stigma and Sacrifice in Postwar Germany,” History and Memory 19:2 (2007), pp. 139–180.
23 Joachim J. Savelsberg and Ryan D. King, “Institutionalizing Collective Memories of Hate: Law and Law Enforcement in Germany and the United States,” American Journal of Sociology 111:2 (2005), pp. 579–616.
24 Lisa Jenny Krieg, “‘It’s a Real Totschlag-Argument’: The Attribution of Agency to the Holocaust among Contemporary Young German Adults in a Discourse of Remembering and Forgetting,” Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale 23 (2015), pp. 314–329.
25 Jackie Feldman and Anja Peleikis, “Performing the Hyphen: Engaging German-Jewishness at the Jewish Museum Berlin,” Anthropological Journal of European Cultures 23:2 (2014), pp. 43–59.
26 Stuart Taberner, “Philosemitism in Three Recent German Films,” German Life and Letters 58:3 (2005), pp. 357–372.
27 Disintergration: Congress about contemporary Jewish Positions. Artistic Directors: Max Czollek, and Sasha Marianne Salzmann. Maxim Gorki Theater 6-8.5. 2016.
28 Published in Hebrew by Afik Books and in German by S. Fischer Verlag. The book was published with the support of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Berlin and the Federal Center for Political Education.
29 Y. Michal Bodemann and Gokce Yurdakul, “Learning Diaspora: German Turks and the Jewish Narrative,” in Y. Michal Bodemann, (ed.), The New German Jewry and the European Context (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 73–95.
30 Michael Rothberg and Yasemin Yildiz, “Memory Citizenship: Migrant Archives of Holocaust Remembrance in Contemporary Germany,” Parallax 17:4 (2011), pp. 32–48.
31 Matti Bunzl, “Between Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia: Some Thoughts on the New Europe,” American Ethnologist 32: (2005), pp. 499–508.
32 Diner, “Nation, Migration, and Memory.”
33 Fatima El-Tayeb, “Time Travelers and Queer Heterotopias: Narratives from the Muslim Underground,” The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory 88:3 (2013), pp. 305–319.
34 Esra Ozyurek, “Export-Import Theory and the Racialization of Anti-Semitism: Turkish and Arab-Only Prevention Programs in Germany,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 58:1 (2016), pp. 40–65.
35 Classic treatments of the definition of Jewishness in post-unification Germany with reference to the Holocaust are offered by Omer Bartov, “Victims: Germans, Jews, and the Holocaust,” American Historical Review 103:3 (1998), pp. 771–816; Michal Bodemann, In den Wogen der Erinnerung: Jüdische Existenz in Deutschland (Munich: DTV, 2002) and Olick and Levy, “Collective Memory and Cultural Constraints,” 1997.
36 Irit Dekel, “Jews and Other Others at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin,” Anthropological Journal of European Culture 23:2 (2014), pp. 71–84.
37 Jürgen Reiche, Telephone interview by author, Mar. 2, 2016.
38 Holger Biermann, Interview by author, Berlin, June 28, 2016.
39 In Germany, being a Citizen a workshop supporting materials for integration course for migrants and their parents, accompanying the permanent exhibition: German History in images and evidence. The materials were written in cooperation between the German Historical Museum, The Berlin State Center for Political Education and the Continuing education/Vocational training school (Berliner Volkshochschule).
40 Sharon Macdonald, Inside European Identities: Ethnography in Western Europe (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 1993), p. 55, cited in Eilean Hooper Greenhill and Theano Moussouri, “Researching Learning in Museums and Galleries 1990-1999: A Bibliographic Review” (Leicester, UK: Research Center for Museums and Galleries, 2002), p. 16, http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/museumstudies/rcmg/projects/researching-learning/researchinglearning.pdf, accessed July 5, 2016.
41 Terrance McDonnell, “Cultural Objects as Objects: Materiality, Urban Space and the Interpretation of AIDS Campaigns in Accra, Ghana,” American Journal of Sociology 115: 6 (2010), pp. 1800–1852, here p. 1802.
42 Yochai Avrahami, “The Mount of Hercules,” Installation, Cologne, 2014.
43 Robin Wagner-Pacifici and Barry Schwartz, “The Vietnam Veterans Memorial: Commemorating a Difficult Past,” The American Journal of Sociology 97:2 (1991), pp. 376–420 and Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi, “Commemorating a Difficult Past: Yitzhak Rabin’s Memorials,” American Sociological Review 67:1 (2002), pp. 30–51, point to the inevitability in the past four decades of addressing national pasts that are not sources of pride, but can nevertheless serve as spaces around which solidarity can be reimagined.
44 Judith Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (New York: Routledge, 1997).
45 The photographers’ personal backgrounds were not thematized in the exhibition, nor by the photographers. The curator, Dr Jürgen Reiche, reflected on this, saying,
I looked at different photographers and found these three. Two happened to be of the Jewish faith and one not, and each brings a different aspect to religion: one would be strong in the community while the other two will look more on religious aspects. Reiche, Telephone interview by author, Mar. 2, 2016.
46 Eric Gable, “Appropriate Bodies: Self Through the Other in Manjaco and Portuguese Representation 1946–1973,” Visual Anthropology Review 14:1 (1988), pp. 3–18. In his discussion of appropriated bodies in Manjaco and Portuguese photographic representations between 1946 and 1973, the anthropologist Gable discusses the process whereby Africans and Portuguese appropriated images of each other’s bodies in order to visualize themselves in late-colonial-era Guinea-Bissau.
47 Holger Biermann, Interview by author, Berlin, June 28, 2016.
48 Hagen Haas, “Intimate Moments: ‘Shalom’ Photo Exhibition in the U-Bahn Galerie,” August 15, 2015, http://www.general-anzeiger-bonn.de/news/kultur-und-medien/bonn/Intime-Momente-article1705484.html, accessed January 31, 2016.
49 Jürgen Reiche, Telephone interview by author, Mar 2, 2016.
50 Rafael Herlich, Telephone interview by author, June 10, 2016.
51 Ibid.
52 This photo by Rafael Herlich was featured in the previously mentioned newspaper article about the exhibition in the General Anzeiger as well as a cover photo for Aktion Sühnezeichen Friedensdienste quarterly bulletin of March 2014, entitled ‘Meetings with Judaism.’
53 Holger Biermann, interview by author, Berlin, on June 28, 2016.
54 Benyamin Reich, Interview by author, Berlin, January 29, 2016.
55 Tashlich, which means ‘casting off’ in Hebrew, is performed on Rosh Hashanah. It involves symbolically casting off the sins of the previous year by tossing breadcrumbs or other food into a body of flowing water. In the photo, a group of Orthodox Jews is seen from the back walking toward the Spree.
56 Benyamin Reich, Interview by author, Berlin, January 29, 2016.
57 Vikki Bell, “On Speech Race and Melancholia, an Interview with Judith Butler,” Theory, Culture & Society 16:2 (1999), pp. 163–174.
58 I conducted interviews with 10 visitors at the ‘Shalom’ exhibition in Bonn. Three conversations were with couples, the rest with individual men. I do not consider this a representative sample, which would have to be larger and more diverse, and would require longer and repeated visits to the exhibition.
59 This fascinating metaphor refers to the speaker’s knowledge that the Jew depicted is very religious and compares him to the pope because of both his religiosity and his head covering. However, the speaker recognizes that the individual pictured is not the supreme religious authority.
60 The terms ‘everyday’ and ‘the middle of the community’ were used in the exhibition’s description. However, as we spoke, we did not refer to or look at it.
61 Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009).
62 James E. Young, “Germany’s Holocaust Memorial Problem – and Mine,” The Public Historian 24:4 (2002), pp. 65–80.
63 Georg Simmel, “The Stranger,” in Donald Levine, (ed.), Georg Simmel on Individuality and Social Forms: Selected Writings (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1971 [1908]), pp. 143–149.
64 Jeffrey C. Alexander, The Dark Side of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity, 2013), p. 81.
65 Ibid., 85.
66 Jeffrey K. Olick, “Collective Memory: The Two Cultures,” Sociological Theory 17:3 (1999), pp. 333–348.
67 Konrad Jarausch, “Normalisiering oder Renationalisierung? Zur Umdeutung der Deutschen Vergangenheit,” Geschichte und Gesselschaft 21:4 (1995), pp. 571–584.
68 Ulrike Jureit and Christian Schneider, Gefühlte Opfer. Illusionen der Vergangenheitsbewältigung (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2010).
69 Aleida Assmann and Linda Shortt, “Memory and Political Change: Introduction,” in Aleida Assmann and Linda Shortt, (eds.), Memory and Political Change (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 1–16.
70 Partridge, “Holocaust Mahnmal.”
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Irit Dekel
Irit Dekel is a Visiting Professor of Israel Studies in the Jewish Studies Program, the University of Virginia. She was a Research Fellow at the Institute for Social Sciences at the Humboldt University Berlin between 2014-2016 where she co-directed a German Israeli Foundation research project on home museums in Israel and Germany.