Picking up the pieces from the communist past : transitional heritage after 1989 in Germany and Romania

Abstract

Starting from the premises that not everything is heritage nor will acquire the official recognition as heritage, but anything has the potential to become heritage, in this research I introduce the analysis of ‘transitional heritage’. This aims to highlight heritage making processes in the context of regime change after 1989 in Germany and Romania. This research is informed by theories in political sciences which discuss regime change and transitional justice. In addition, critical heritage studies provided the basis upon which heritage-making processes were analysed in the context of transformation processes, focusing on countries in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989. Therefore this research aims to provide a better understanding of the conditions affecting heritage preservation and protection, in particular in countries emerging from authoritarian regimes of governance, and which subsequently engaged on the paths to society democratisation. Hence a critical approach to heritage-making processes and discourses emerging in former communist countries such as Germany and Romania is proposed for the analysis. This research aims to cover the gap in heritage studies by bringing to attention heritage-making processes during communism, hence adopting a long duree approach for the analysis of institutions, norms and heritage practices in former communist countries. Various case studies from Bucharest and Berlin reveal the complex mechanisms involved in the process of heritage-making when dealing with the legacies of the communist regimes. This is relevant to be highlighted in order to better understand current failures or successes of the decisions affecting heritage preservation and its protection in the aformentioned countries. In line with the discourse encouraged by critical heritage studies, this research proposes an alternative to analysing and understanding heritage mechanisms within fragile political contexts. By doing so this research is questioning the internationally established discourse on ‘socialist heritage‘.