History, Memory, and Trauma in Heiner Müller’s Theatre

Abstract

In On Revolution, Hannah Arendt offers an analysis of the vicissitudes of the French and American Revolutions, mourning what she calls the “lost treasure” of the revolutionary tradition (1963: 284). According to Arendt, the revolutionary spirit is not available to our discussions of possible futures. Neither in the French Revolution nor in the American revolutions did that spirit — the promise of a better world — find an appropriate institutional form. While the lost treasure of revolution may never be found, it could be partially compensated through memory and recollection: “What saves the affairs of mortal men from their inherent futility is nothing but this incessant talk about them, which in turn remains futile unless certain concepts, certain guideposts for future remembrance, and even for sheer reference, arise out of it” (1963: 222). Since it is our poets who save the memory of past actions from oblivion and ravages of time and make them a source of inspiration for political action in the present and future, it is to them, according to Arendt, that we must turn “in order to find an approximate articulation of the actual content of our lost treasure” (1963: 284).KeywordsCollective MemoryGerman Democratic RepublicFrench RevolutionOriginal EmphasisAmerican RevolutionThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.