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Abstract
This article seeks to explore the relationships between heritage and identity by drawing on analytical discussions of material culture and historical consciousness and focusing on an empirical case of ‘undesirable heritage’, that is, a heritage that the majority of the population would prefer not to have. The case is that of the Nazi or fascist past in Germany, with specific reference to the former Nazi Party rally grounds in Nuremberg. By looking at some aspects of the ways in which this vast site of Nazi marching grounds and fascist buildings has been dealt with post‐war, the article seeks to show both the struggle with the materiality of the site and changing forms of historical consciousness. It focuses in particular on some of the post‐war dilemmas associated with the perceived agency of architecture, the sacralising and trivialising of space, the role and implications of musealisation, and the growth of a more reflective identity‐health form of historical consciousness.
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. I am grateful to staff in the Institut für Soziologie at the University of Erlangen‐Nürnberg, especially Professor Elizabeth Beck‐Gernsheim, for hosting the research and discussing it with me; to participants in the European Historical Consciousness research group, especially Professor Jörn Rüsen; and to staff at the Documentation Centre of the former Nazi Party rally grounds, the Stadtarchiv, the city council and other organisations in Nuremberg for considerable assistance with the research. Versions of this paper have been presented at an ESRC seminar on ‘Heritage and Identity’ in Stirling, and the ‘International Congress on Heritage and Identity’ in Lisbon. I am grateful to the organisers of these events for having invited me and to participants for so many useful comments. I also thank the anonymous referees for constructive suggestions.
Notes
[1] This field is represented especially by the Journal of Material Culture begun in 1995. For an overview, see also Miller, Material Cultures.
[2] See especially the work of Susanne Küchler, e.g. ‘The Place of Memory’.
[3] For discussion and illustration of the term ‘objectifying’ see Handler, Nationalism and the Politics of Culture in Quebec; and for ‘materialising’ see Macdonald, ‘Museums and Identities’.
[4] Tunbridge and Ashworth, Dissonant Heritage.
[5] M. Davidson, ‘A World of Evil and Hope amid the Dark Pines’, The Observer, 13 March 2005.
[6] See, for example, Niven, Facing the German Past, chap.1; Reichel, Politik mit der Erinnerung; and for a detailed study of one case, Marcuse, Legacies of Dachau.
[7] Some of the key works in German are Jeismann, Geschichte als Horizont der Gegenwart and books by Rüsen listed in the reference list. Some of Rüsen's work has recently been translated into English: Western Historical Thinking; and Macdonald, Approaches to European Historical Consciousness, contains an essay by Rüsen and other key contemporary contributors to the debates on historical consciousness.
[8] E.g. ‘Introduction’ to Western Historical Thinking.
[9] See Crane, Collecting and Historical Consciousness, and ‘Memory, Distortion, and History in the Museum’. See also Kansteiner, ‘Finding Meaning in Memory’, whose perceptive discussion draws on German‐ and English‐language discussions of collective memory, though he does not especially elaborate the notion of ‘historical consciousness’ or suggest it as a means of moving beyond some of the dilemmas as does Crane. See Olick, ‘Introduction’, States of Memory, for an interesting, though unelaborated, note on historical consciousness.
[10] See Crane, ‘Memory, Distortion’, and Kansteiner, ‘Finding Meaning’. See also Radstone, Memory and Methodology, especially the introduction.
[11] See, for example, Winter and Sivan, War and Remembrance. There are, however, problems in the tendency for such discussions to simply transpose psychological notions of memory from the discussion of individual memory to that of collective memory; see Kansteiner, ‘Finding Meaning’.
[12] The latter focus intersects with the focus on material culture discussed above. Texts exploring the relationship between memory and materiality include Kwint et al., Material Memories, and Hallam and Hockey, Death, Memory and Material Culture.
[13] See Kansteiner, ‘Finding Meaning’, for a useful summary.
[14] Olick, ‘Introduction’, 8.
[15] Ibid.
[16] It might be noted here too that this also avoids the psychologising tendency of memory studies, in which concepts from the study of individual memory—such as trauma or suppression—are applied to collective memory. An emphasis on historical consciousness is more concerned to explore when and where psychologising constructions are employed in practice, a matter that I discuss in relation to the case of post‐war Germany in S. Macdonald, Difficult Heritage (in preparation).
[17] See references in note 7.
[18] For a discussion of this term and the debates and events that have come to be seen as symptoms of it, see Maier, The Unmasterable Past.
[19] Sources concerning the history of the Nazi Party rally grounds include: Burden, The Nuremberg Party Rallies; Doosry. ‘Wohlauf, laßt uns eine Stadt …’; Geschichte für Alle, Geländebegehung; Jaskot, The Architecture of Oppression; Ogan and Weiß, Faszination und Gewalt; Zelnhefer, Die Reichsparteitage.
[20] Benton, ‘From the Arengario’.
[21] See, for example, Scobie, Hitler's State Architecture and also the writings of Albert Speer: Architektur and Inside the Third Reich.
[22] Beer et al., Bauen in Nürnberg.
[23] For discussion of the post‐war history of the site see: Dietzfelbinger, Der Umgang der Stadt Nürnberg and ‘Reichsparteitagsgelände Nürnberg’; and Weiß, ‘“Ruinen‐Werte”’. The account here also relies on primary historical sources held mainly in the Stadtsarchiv Nürnberg.
[24] See Speer, Architektur and Inside the Third Reich.
[25] See Burden, The Nuremberg Party Rallies; chapters in Ogan and Weiß, Faszination und Gewalt, especially Reichel; and Zelnhefer, Die Reichsparteitage.
[26] On Nazi notions of ruin see references in note 21 and Weiß, ‘“Ruinen‐Werte”’.
[27] See Jaskot, The Architecture of Oppression, especially chap. 2.
[28] CSU is the Bavarian wing of the Christian Democratic Party. For the debate and quote, see Stadtrat Protokollen, Sitzung des Stadrats 15.07.1987, Rathaus Nürnberg.
[29] This echoes through many of the city council records and is particularly clear, for example, in debates about repairing the main roof of the Congress Hall in 1958. A report of these debates in the Nürnberger Nachrichten, 25 April 1958, states that the key word involved is ‘amortisation’—the requirement that any money spent is recouped; and all of the letters from readers in the following weeks focus on questions of economics and practical use, only one making tangential mention of the possible symbolic dimensions of restoration.
[30] Laws themselves, of course, may be expressions of forms of historical consciousness that are more or less nationally distinctive. For an interesting discussion of differences between English and German ideas and practices about conservation, see Soane, ‘Agreeing to Differ?’
[31] See reports of debates of the Building Committee for 1973 and 1974; Nürnberg Stadtarchiv, refs. C85/III 479–485.
[32] Building Committee report 25.6.1973, Nürnberg Stadtarchiv, ref. C85/III 479.
[33] See debates listed for note 31. My understanding of these matters also rests on helpful discussions with officials at Nuremberg's office for monument protection and the head of the department of buildings.
[34] E.g. letters to and articles in Nürnberger Nachrichten, 13–16 November 1973.
[35] Ibid.
[36] See, for example, Maier, The Unmasterable Past; Niven, Facing the German Past; Fulbrook, German National Identity.
[37] Ibid.
[38] See Moeller, War Stories.
[39] Ibid.
[40] A published version of this idea—though not with the specific term—Hermann Glaser, ‘Rumpelkammern im deutschen Kolosseum’, Rheinischer Merkur, 16 June 1989. I am also grateful to Hermann Glaser for information. Many other interviewees engaged in ‘history work’ in Nuremberg told me about this idea and credited it to Glaser.
[41] See, for example, F. S. ‘Hitler im Hinterzimmer’, Nürnberger Nachrichten, 3 July 1986.
[42] Glaser, ‘Rumpelkammern’.
[43] I have also discussed this issue and some of its wider implications, as well as some of this example, in ‘Enchantment’.
[44] Museen der Stadt Nürnberg Projekt, n.p.
[45] This is based on Svetlana Alpers' notion of the ‘museum effect’ as discussed below and in Alpers, ‘The Museum as a Way of Seeing’.
[46] Cf. Urry's notion of the ‘tourist gaze’.
[47] This is the term given to the Nazi attempts to enchant. The exhibition in the Documentation Centre is called ‘Fascination and Violence’.
[48] Greenblatt, ‘Resonance and Wonder’.
[49] See Gable, ‘Maintaining Boundaries’, for a fascinating discussion of the politics and cultural assumptions of ‘documentation’ in a different heritage context.
[50] Hoelscher, Heritage on Stage, 166; Lowenthal, Possessed by the Past.
[51] Alpers, ‘The Museum as a Way of Seeing’, 26.
[52] Ibid., 27.
[53] Important anthropological sources of this idea are Barth, Ethnic Groups and The Voice of Prophecy, chaps. 3, 14.
[54] Lowenthal, Possessed by the Past; Huyssen, Twilight Memories and Present Pasts. See also Walsh, The Representation of the Past, for a critique of this idea.
[55] Kirshenblatt Gimblett, Destination Culture, 159.