Germany's Transient Pasts

by Koshar, Rudy

• ISBN13: 9780807823989
• ISBN10: 0807823988
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-06-01
• Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr

Summary

Over the course of the twentieth century, Germans have venerated and maintained a variety of historical buildings -- from medieval fortresses and cathedrals to urban districts and nineteenth-century working-class housing. But the practice of historic preservation has sometimes proven controversial, as different groups of Germans have sought to use historical architecture to represent competing versions of their nation's history. This is the first book to examine the role that the historic preservation movement has played in German cultural history and memory from the end of the nineteenth century to the early 1970s.

Focusing on key public debates over historic preservation, Rudy Koshar charts a trajectory of cultural politics in which historical architecture both facilitated and limited Germans' efforts to identify as a nation. He demonstrates that historical buildings and monuments have served as enduring symbols of national history in a country scarred by the traumas of two world wars, Nazism, the Holocaust, and political division. His findings challenge bo

Table of Contents

Preface	xi
INTRODUCTION	1	(16)
ONE DOCUMENTS OF STONE	17	(58)
Toward a National Optics	18	(11)
Preservation and National Life	29	(6)
Micropolitics	35	(9)
Scrutiny, License, and Control	44	(15)
Multiplication and Appropriation	59	(16)
TWO CITY OF THE UNBORN	75	(32)
Rules and Transgressions	76	(3)
Artifacts and War Machines	79	(8)
Toward Laudomania?	87	(12)
The Being and Force of Everyday Life	99	(8)
THREE MODERNIST CRUCIBLE	107	(44)
Mixed Blessings	108	(8)
The Vulnerable Nation	116	(12)
Only to Be Sincere	128	(23)
FOUR WHERE GERMAN HEARTS ARE MOLDED	151	(48)
The Culture of Leistung	152	(14)
Performance-Oriented Preservation	166	(4)
Privileged Marginality	170	(10)
Cultural Revolution?	180	(8)
Sodom and Gomorrah	188	(11)
FIVE COMMEMORATIVE NOISE	199	(46)
Murky Transitions	200	(9)
Archipelagoes of Memory	209	(9)
Fragments of a Nation	218	(9)
Desire and Doubt	227	(18)
SIX A NORMAL MEMORY	245	(44)
The New Past	246	(7)
Revived Institutions	253	(5)
A Nation Like Any Other	258	(15)
The New Past and the Old	273	(16)
SEVEN THE NEW CULT OF MONUMENTS	289	(40)
The New Society	290	(8)
Demand for Totality?	298	(8)
A Transformed Nation	306	(8)
Every Text, Grand or Humble	314	(9)
A Future for the Past	323	(6)
CONCLUSION WRAPPED REICHSTAG	329	(12)
Notes	341	(36)
Bibliography	377	(32)
Index	409