Dynamics of Memory and Identity in Contemporary Europe, edited by Eric Langenbacher, Bill Niven, and Ruth Wittlinger

Abstract

Dynamics of Memory and Identity in Contemporary Europe, edited by Eric Langenbacher, Bill Niven, and Ruth Wittlinger. New York, Berghahn Books, 2013. vi, 242 pp. $75.00 US (cloth). This volume of contributions originated as a 2007 conference at Nottingham Trent University, dedicated to how memories of the past form collective identities, with particular focus on Europe. If the dynamics of memory and identity are already slippery enough in national contexts, the editors note, is there such a thing as a memory or identity? Their answer is yes and no, but mostly no. What's missing from the title of the book is the time frame, which is focused on the memory of World War II, and secondarily of the post-Cold War. The editors' overall argument is that the post-communist era requires making a place at the table for Eastern relationships to the past, if there is to be any understanding of a European identity. Despite the chapter by Helle Bjerg and Claudia Lenz, which highlights gendered memory-formation as a tool of analysis and a critical new direction for the field of memory studies, none of the other contributions in the volume consider gender in even secondary ways. In interviews with Norwegian and Danish families about World War II, Bjerg and Lenz found that women who had played direct roles in wartime events typically downplayed their participation--such as hiding domestic provisions from the enemy--or asserted that their experiences were not really history. Female and male children and grandchildren iterated similar delegitimizations of their grandmothers' roles and voices, thus demonstrating how both the content and the transmission of memories are gendered. Two empirical studies compare sites of commemoration of World War II. Looking at sites of Nazi repression (Lidice in Czech Republic, Oradour-sur-Glane in France, and Putten in the Netherlands), Madelon de Keizer argues that up until 1989, memories of Nazi horror remained localized and self-referential. After 1989, with mutually organized pilgrimages between sites and a more universalistic presentation in brochures and exhibits of their histories as a shared fate, something of a common memory of Nazi criminal acts emerged in these three places. Henning Meyer also analyzes three memorials, this time all in France: Oradour again, the Centre National Jean Moulin in Bordeaux, and the Memorial de la Paix in Caen. Expert at contextualizing the vicissitudes of each memorial's creation within French history and the politics of memory, Meyer argues that the focus of remembrance in each memorial is different: victimization in Oradour, resistance in Bordeaux, and peace in Caen. In contrast to the Oradour and Caen memorials, which are actively maintained through an agenda of transnational openness and programmatic renewal, the Centre Jean Moulin has shriveled into a site visited only by local schoolchildren on obligatory fieldtrips. Because of its representation of nationalism and attachment to old myths of a unified French resistance, the refusal to adopt a universal perspective relating to contemporary French society renders the impact of this memorial and the past negligible. …