Memorial Museums for the Victims of State Socialism Controversies and Conflicts

Abstract

This chapter seeks to explain conflicts between heritage professionals and historians, on the one hand, and victims’ organizations on the other. Analysing heritage organizations in systems theory terms as organizations of the scientific system, it shows how heritage professionals in the post-unification period came to define standards of museology for memorial museum sites that came into conflict with the desire of victims to see their suffering given a more central role. The chapter considers two memorial museums where this conflict was particularly pronounced (the Berlin Wall Memorial Museum and the Leistikowstrase Memorial Museum in Potsdam), before showing how a victims’ organization, the Human Rights Center Cottbus, has sought to present its own memorial museum in such a way that it addresses both victims’ needs for recognition and the museological standards required by funders.