Dear Colleagues,
please find below details of a forthcoming talk by Dr. Anna Saunders at Nottingham Trent next Tuesday. Everyone welcome!
Best wishes
Bill Niven
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Tuesday 21 February 2012 (5pm, Clifton Campus, George Eliot E121)
Memorialising 1989 in eastern Germany: The growth of the participatory monument?
Anna Saunders (Bangor University)
The twentieth anniversary year of the ‘peaceful revolution’ in 2009 saw much attention focused on Berlin, with images of the 9 November celebrations transmitted across the globe. In the eastern German regions, however, commemorative activity was no less vigorous, with many towns staging their own events of remembrance. Indeed, unlike Berlin – which has been witness to long and controversial debates surrounding the future Freiheits- und Einheitsdenkmal (monument to freedom and unity) – many regional centres have long since erected concrete symbols of remembrance to the demonstrations of 1989 (such as Leipzig, Magdeburg, Halle, Plauen and Dessau).
By examining the biographies of some of these regional monuments – often funded through public donations – this paper seeks to investigate a number of questions relating to the memory dynamics of 1989. First, to what extent do emerging regional narratives represent a response to dominant national narratives centred on Berlin, and what images of the ‘peaceful revolution’ are being remembered – or forgotten – over 20 years on? Second, who are the initiators of these monuments, and how do their biographies relate to the events of 1989? What might this tell us about the workings of collective memory, and the overlap between communicative memory and more ritualised, cultural forms of memory? Third, what do these case studies tell us about the changing role and function of monuments in united Germany? Over past decades, the concept of the counter-monument has gained widespread recognition with reference to the commemoration of victims – primarily those of the Holocaust. To what extent, however, have attempts to monumentalise the events of 1989 – often in celebratory fashion – moved away from this tendency?
This paper will demonstrate that monuments to 1989 are bound up in a complex web of hopes, desires and expectations about the futures of their communities, in which the values of 1989 are brought to the fore once again; seeking moral and aesthetic impetus in mass participation, such projects also suggest the rise of the ‘participatory monument’ in the eastern German regions.
For further information, please contact Bill Niven ([log in to unmask]).
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