A Matter of Time: Examining Collective Memory in Historical Perspective in Postwar Berlin

Abstract

Abstract This article examines how officially designated memorial sites marking resistance to and persecution by the Nazi regime in Berlin have changed in the postwar era. Clearly the content of memorial culture changes over time. So, however, do the political and bureaucratic channels through which memorial landscapes themselves are created, and thus the avenues through which states (in this case the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic) construct landscapes of official collective memory. Such an analysis reveals not only the changes and continuities in the form and content of official representations, but also the changing relationship between a state, its people, and the collection of officially approved objects in the urban landscape designed to convey representations of a city's and a country's past. Looking closely at these intersections also makes clear that the landscape of official memorials must not be identical with collective memory understood more broadly.