Editorial

Abstract

Free AccessEditorialPriv. Doz. Mag. Dr. phil. Heidemarie UhlPriv. Doz. Mag. Dr. phil. Heidemarie UhlAuthors email:[email protected] Austrian Academy of Sciences Institute for Culture Studies and History of Theater/Cluster “Sites of Memory”, Austria https://www.oeaw.ac.at/en/ Senior researcher at the Austrian Academy of SciencesSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:Jul 2019https://doi.org/10.14220/zsch.2019.46.2.177SectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail AboutEditorialThe collapse of the communist states is regarded as the starting point of the new Europe. With this turning point, historical narratives have had to be rewritten in the post-socialist countries. While the destruction of Communist monuments is imprinted on European collective memory as a visual icon reflecting this caesura, the much more complex process of opening up and diversifying the writing of history has drawn little attention. This also holds true for the nationalist and revisionist backlash in dealing with traumatic historical events, which tends to be highlighted only in the context of specific, particularly dramatic political interventions and measures, such as the marginalization of the Holocaust by the House of Terror in Budapest or the Polish Memory Laws.Focusing on the little known case of Slovenia, this issue of zeitgeschichte offers a comprehensive survey of the transformations affecting collective memory and the writing of history in one post-communist country. We are very pleased to have won Oto Luthar, arguably the most distinguished Slovenian exponent of a form of memory history that meets international scholarly standards, as guest editor. His introduction and the essays in this issue analyze the ways in which Slovenian society has grappled with traumatic historical events. The authors pointedly probe the fields of history politics, memorial culture and the writing of history against the background of the Europe-wide changes in the construction ofmemory. Specific microhistories allow for an analysis of relevant controversies and political interventions in the struggle over the interpretation of Slovenia’s past. Given the proliferating illiberal tendencies in the political culture of numerous European countries, which threaten to curtail critical scholarly discussions of the dominant versions of national history, the strategies of historical revisionism described in this issue are likely to be of considerable interest not only to scholars interested specifically in the case of Slovenia. Next article FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Download book coverVolume 46Issue 2July 2019 ISSN: 0256-5250eISSN: 2569-5304HistoryPublished online:July 2019 PDF download