Promise and challenge of European Memory

Abstract

This introduction identifies the ubiquitous, but controversial, public and academic debate on European Memory as a key for articulating assumptions and expectations about an enhanced process of European integration via references to Europe’s past. The authors outline contradictions that constitute this discourse by pointing to its inherently conflictive potential and carve out the implicit and explicit normative assumptions of European Memory. Albeit acknowledging differences in memories of twentieth-century mass violence, references to European Memory promise to overcome the conflicts inherent in the historical experiences of such violence. Confronting this bias, this special issue postulates an understanding of European Memory as a discursive reality rather than a normative ideal. European Memory becomes manifest whenever actors refer to ‘Europe’ in their interpretations of the past. Further developing an understanding of ‘entangled memory’, the contributions of this special issue share a common interest in the universalizing potential of references to European Memory. They demonstrate how mnemonic practices may lose contextual references and link or even transfer to other memories in order to articulate claims of relevance on a European level.

Keywords:

• European Memory
• entangled memory
• universalization
• European integration

Notes

1. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2012/eu-facts.html (accessed May 12, 2016); for recent EU memory politics Kaiser, “Clash of Cultures;” Plessow, “The Interplay;” Settele, “Including Exclusion.”

2. Claudi Pérez, “Un Nobel para impulsar la UE en crisis,” El País, October 13, 2012.

3. Assmann, “Europe;” Leggewie, “Schlachtfeld Europa;” Sierp, History, Memory; Bottici and Challand, Imagining Europe.

4. Nora, Les lieux de mémoire. For the subsequent national projects, see Kończal, “Erinnerungsorte.”

5. See Hudemann, “Saar-Lor-Lux;” Kolboom and Grzonka, Gedächtnisorte; Kmec et al., Lieux de mémoire au Luxembourg; Pakier and Stråth, A European Memory?; Plessow, “The Interplay” as opening the field beyond the nation-state.

6. Boer, “Lieux de mémoire;” Traba, “Wporwadzenie;” Troebst, “Konzentrische Kreise;” Bottici and Challand, Imagining Europe.

7. See, for instance, Snyder, Bloodlands.

8. Levy and Sznaider, The Holocaust, 4; for a similar understanding of Holocaust memory, Schwan, “Europäische Erinnerungskulturen.”

9. Assmann, “Europe,” 22; see also Knigge, “Zur Zukunft der Erinnerung;” Leggewie, “Schlachtfeld Europa.”

10. François et al., Geschichtspolitik.

11. Recent studies, such as Pakier and Wawrzyniak, ‘Memory and Change’, have criticized the overly normative approach of Western European mnemonic actors towards Eastern Europe and stressed that such a narrative of mnemonic backwardness is similarly reproduced within memory studies.

12. On the one hand, Salomon Korn, “NS- und Sowjetverbrechen: Sandra Kalnietes falsche Gleichsetzung,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, March 31, 2004, 13; on the other hand, Adam Krzemiński, “To odprysk niemieckiej debaty na temat odpowiedzialności i za komunizm, i za nazizm,” Gazeta Wyborcza, March 28, 2004. For a more detailed analysis see Zessin-Jurek, “Rise.”

13. Sierp, “1939 versus 1989.”

14. Jean-Claude Juncker, “State of the Union 2015: Time for Honesty, Unity and Solidarity,” http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-15-5614_en.htm (accessed May 12, 2016).

15. “Europa se atasca con los refugiados,” Diario Córdoba, September 15, 2015; see also “Recordemos Gurs,” El Periódico de Aragon, February 7, 2016; Federigo Argentieri, “Le radici storiche della durezza ungherese,” Corriere della Sera, September 16, 2015; Arno Widmann, “Abschied von der Festung,” Frankfurter Rundschau, September 7, 2015.

16. Ferdinando Camon, “La Germania chiude i conti con il passato,” La Stampa, September 9, 2015; see also Jonathan Freedland, “Mama Merkel Has Consigned the ‘Ugly’ Germany to History,” The Guardian, September 15, 2015.

17. Bernard-Henri Lévy, “I musulmani delle nostre città ora ci dicano con chi stanno,” Corriere della Sera, November 16, 2015.

18. Danilo Taino, “I profughi ospitati a Buchenwald e la necessità di insegnare l’Olocausto ai nuovi arrivati,” Corriere della Sera, September 14, 2015; Sophie Hardach, “The Refugees Housed at Dachau: ‘Where Else Should I Live?’” The Guardian, September 19, 2015.

19. Volkhard Knigge, “Deine, meine, unsere Erinnerung,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, December 11, 2015.

20. As called for by the leader of the German Green Party, Cem Özdemir. See Danilo Taino, “I profughi ospitati a Buchenwald.”

21. Feindt et al., “Entangled Memory,” 27‒9.

22. Although a new European framework can be said to emerge at the political horizon with the 2009 resolution by the European Parliament, it is nevertheless telling that no member-state of the EU 15, except for Sweden, has ratified this resolution.

23. Levy and Sznaider, “Memories of Europe.”

24. Neumayer, “Integrating the Central European Past,” 358. See also, Kattago “Agreeing to Disagree.”

25. Piotr Semka, “Wspólnota ponad krzywdami,” Rzeczpospolita, August 14, 2009; “Pamięć o roku 1939,” Rzeczpospolita, August 22, 2009; Napiórkowski, “Powstanie warszawskie.”

26. “Pamięć powstania,” Gazeta Wyborcza, August 2, 2007; Jarosław Murawski, “Walka o pamięć Europejczyków,” Rzeczpospolita, July 29, 2005; Andrzej Kaczyński, “Od ‘Solidarności’ do wolności,” Rzeczpospolita, August 30, 2005. Typically these invocations of a broader European Memory occur around anniversaries.

27. Etkind et al., “Remembering Katyn,” 96.

28. Loff, “1989;” Kraft, “Europäische Peripherie;” Boyd, “The Politics of History.” This Europeanization process was an important subject in Spanish press discourse; see Joan Saura, “Memoria antifacista,” El País, September 10, 2004; “Memoria histórica: clases de Transición para eurodiputados,” El Mundo, June 9, 2006; Roberto Rodríguez Aramayo, “Los republicanos y la memoria europea,” El País, July 29, 2009; Tomás Díez Vivas, “Opinión,” ABC, January 8, 2010.

29. Snyder, “Europe and Ukraine,” 10.

30. Ibid., 3.

31. For the recognition of Holodomor memory in post-Soviet Ukraine see Snyder, “Forum” and for the absence of knowledge about the Holodomor idem, Bloodlands, 389.

32. Idem, “Europe and Ukraine,” 5. For an analysis of this ignorance, see Feindt, “Todesspiel.”

33. Zhurzhenko, “Shared Memory Culture?”

34. Sapoval, “Lügen und Schweigen.”

35. Feindt et al., “Entangled Memory.”

36. Prominently, Moritz Csáky criticized the classical concept of national lieux de mémoire or Erinnerungsorte as too static and even homogenizing. Instead of deconstruction the polyphonic and multilayered memory beyond a single social group, such projects tended to enshrine the memory of one group. Csáky, “Die Mehrdeutigkeit von Gedächtnis und Erinnerung.” For such a hybrid understanding of memory, see also Erll, “Travelling Memory;” Feindt et al., “Entangled Memory,” 31‒3.

37. Krawatzek and Trimçev, “Eine Kritik des Gedächtnisbegriffes.”

38. The conclusion to this special issue will further spell out the concept of ‘universalizing’ memory practices and compare it to other approaches in memory studies.