Following the tumultuous events of the twentieth century, many communities were left devastated and in a state of national confusion. In the resulting aftermath of unresolved trauma, the memory museum was destined, henceforth, to guide wounded communities to a place of collective memory to achieve a clearer sense of national self. This essay explores the ways in which memory museums communicate their programs and the ethical, social and political issues they encounter in their approaches. This first part of the essay deals with key issues facing memory museums and whether their approach is ethical and historically nuanced or a diluted, emotional and performative measure to approach trauma. The essay’s second part provides a detailed analysis on the communication methods employed by memory museums and how effective they are through the examination of two supporting case studies. The case studies look at two European memory museums- the Jewish Berlin Museum (Berlin, Germany) and the House of Terror (Budapest, Hungary)- which opened within six months of each other between September 2001 and February 2002, responding and dealing with the conflicting events of the twentieth century. The House of Terror was specifically chosen as a lesser known memory museum to contrast against the more iconic Jewish Berlin Museum, exemplifying that memory museums do not solely deal with the Holocaust- a common misconception in memory museum theory- as Europe is also coming to terms with difficult memories of Communist rule. In the effort of consistency, museums dealing with the topics of social and historical trauma have been referred to uniformly as “memory museums” (rather than “memorial museums” or “Holocaust museums”) throughout this essay, taken from Arnold-de Simine’s idea that this terminology implies their reliance on the framework of memory rather than historical events[1].
Museums that deal with topics of social and historical trauma facilitate the creation of collective memory to foster positive national identity with strategic programming that provokes numerous issues. In the context of this essay, the abstract terms of memory and trauma relate to how museums are a resource for communities remembering, interpreting and making meaning of a past that was inflicted with socially and politically distressing events[2]. This can be understood in terms of how museums have been used to respond to the memory of Nazi and Communist occupations in Germany and Hungary. While attempting to navigate memory, museums are subject to pressures from communities and governments, causing their programs to oversimplify and biasedly represent history. Moreover, the memory museum faces ethical issues through endorsing human rights by staging intimate experiences of trauma, creating artificial performative interactions to help the wounded group achieve one version of the past, present and future. This de-academized, highly socially focused presentation of history is effectively systemized and communicated through evoked bodily experiences, architecture, artefacts, exhibitions and strict ideological frameworks. In recognition of the broadness and many implications of this topic, this essay will be limited to critically analyzing the social, historical and political subtexts of memory museums and the nature of their programs’ connection to trauma, memory and national identity.
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Common Issues facing Museums Dealing with Topics of Social/Historical Trauma
Memory museums have the social and political responsibility of supporting the memorialisation process that aims to reconfigure the national identity of a culture that has experienced traumatic events. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 signalled a need for European countries to remember their past and define their future, triggering the “opening season of commemoration”. [3] Moreover, a global movement began toward creating memorials in remembrance of the victims of years of terror and suffering[4]. This was prompted by the anxiety that the dwindling number of living witnesses equated to the disappearance of memories integral to national identity[5]. As trauma became a defining characteristic of the twentieth century and an increasingly tender symbol inseparable from national identity, cultural institutions began to play an imperative role to guiding cultures through memories of terror and violence.[6]
Moreover, museums guide communities through trauma to create collective memory through passing on the stories of the first generation of witnesses; a challenging but rewarding responsibility.[7] The memory museum, as a gatekeeper of history and preserver of national identity[8], serves as a tangible place where memories are embodied to negotiate relationships between the past and present.[9] For instance, the Jewish Berlin Museum is a powerful Holocaust memorial due to its architectural design[10] which, according to the architect, Daniel Libeskind, filled a deep void in Berlin in processing their ever-elusive difficult past.[11] Similarly, the House of Terror was initiated to help a public understand their past which had been distorted by a totalitarian Socialist government. [12] Memory museums actively recognise that with a change of political power, which occurred throughout Europe at the end of the twentieth century, there is the need for a change of symbolic power. [13] Moreover, the memory museum assumes the responsibility of being invested in by communities as a tool for redefining nationhood through coming to terms with a traumatic past.
However, the memory museum’s responsibility to negotiate the shaping of national identity and navigation of trauma effectually displaces historical accuracy for the sake of memory. While museums traditionally have prioritised the systematic categorisation and classification of history[14], programming evolved through the rising focus on memory and human rights.[15] Furthermore, the aim of museums focussed on memory is to utilise historical events to empower visitors to envision their future.[16] However, when the museum undertakes the additional roles of monument and memorial, it faces contradiction between the evolving nature of memory and the authoritative agency of history.[17] This becomes problematic as the visitor moves through a space they believe signifies the past on the assumption of historical authenticity, whilst they are witnessing an oversimplification of the past.[18]
As memory museums deal with recent events, they undermine historical accuracy due to governmental anxiety about social cohesion following a period of instability. Additionally, memory museums, for reasons including cultural policy and funding requirements, must answer to government initiatives which result in compromised accounts of the past[19]. Fidesz, the Hungarian right-wing party, desired to rewrite history to create a post-Communist national identity and redefine community through the House of Terror, exemplifying the political subjectivity prevalent in dealing with recent events.[20] However, despite memory museums not objectively presenting history, they provide a ritualised space for citizens to shape their national identity.[21] Furthermore, while the House of Terror’s mission is politically subjective, it helps address the imbalance between a Communist government’s historical narrative and the Hungarian national identity under a new conservative government[22]. Therefore, the role of the memory museum is not to primarily be the guardians of knowledge but providers of cultural memory and community[23]; actively educating and relating to communities of social trauma.[24] However, whilst this supports the aim to reconfigure damaged national identities, history is not efficiently recorded, explained and resolved to global communities wanting to make sense of a recent past.[25]
Memory museums will critically assess the past through the difficult task of marrying collective memory and national identity. Whilst the rise of memory museums reflects an evident cultural need to commemorate years of terror, they are heavily subjected to the need to appeal to cultural bias and sensitivities.[26] The Jewish Berlin Museum, for instance, does not want to inflict guilt in its German visitors who have “Holocaust fatigue” and orientates their exhibitions to reflect the broader history of Jewish heritage in Germany.[27] This reflects trends in memory museums to focus on celebration rather than confronting negative aspects of the past[28]. Libeskind resisted this notion, however, through his architectural concepts that convey that the memory of the Holocaust must be integrated into the consciousness of Berlin.[29] Similarly, this complication persists in Budapest as the nature of the House of Terror does not encourage subjective memory work but instrumentally controls memory for political ends, leaving the past unmastered.[30] Evidently, cultural predispositions cause conflicts between collective memory and national identity, an issue battled within memory museum programs. To combat this issue, memory museums distinctly drift from historical accuracy to shape collective memory culturally. However, this causes the visitor’s commitment to draw lessons from the past to be diluted according to cultural and political undertones.
Memory museums straddle ethical lines in their predisposition to deal with sensitive topics of trauma and human rights. Through accepting the responsibility to memorialise social trauma, the memory museum’s priority should be ethical remembrance and promoting a culture of human rights.[31] Arguably, museums centred on the Holocaust are essential to the worldwide movement for human rights through their portrayal of the worst moments of human experience to start conversations about civil liberties protectionism.[32] Additionally, with ethics at the forefront, the museum can successfully educate current generations on the past atrocities of mankind to assist in coming to terms with a negative national legacy and articulate cultural lessons learnt.[33] The Jewish Berlin Museum’s exploration of Jewish history in Berlin teaches multicultural tolerance which can be extended to the minority Turkish communities living in contemporary Germany, illustrating how memory museums can communicate applicable didactic messages.[34]
However, the memory museum’s portrayal of violence and trauma can be associated with “dark tourism”.[35] The memory museum, arguably, aims to appeal to the postmodern need to search for meaning through sensory experience by staging emotionally evoking environments, which have been dubbed “theme parks of death.”[36] The dilemma of memory museums gravitating from educational and history centred motives to make tragedy an interactive and stimulative tourist experience is largely problematic.[37] The House of Terror’s overtly theatrical focus on visitor experience over authenticity led Jones to argue that this practise ethically debunks its status as a museum all together.[38] Moreover, whilst the intention to educate visitors on past atrocities to raise awareness for human rights is viable, the means of initiating intimate experiences to teach lessons about the power of violence is questionable.
Memory museums, through allowing performative social action for people wanting to access the past in an experiential format, do not effectively confront underlying social guilt which is instrumental in dealing with the past. The visitor’s use of memory museums to promote feelings of nationhood effectively minimises the confrontation of underlying problematic ideas that have historically, and still are, perpetrated against minorities. In her cultural ethnography, Kendzia argued that German attitudes still function prejudices against minorities.[39] Moreover, she argues that the Jewish Berlin Museum is merely utilised as a public memorial to portray socially correct Germaness under the illusion of a shared memory.[40] The public are active performers in the Jewish Berlin Museum, visiting to promote their own citizenry and evading feelings of guilt through passively absorbing knowledge that is not constructively applied to their lifeworld.[41] Furthermore, the memory museum is used as a social practise in which communities interact and interpret the past according to their preferred vision of the future.[42] Moreover, memory museums are being utilised to create the illusion of a standardised community but battle the issue of not effectively dealing with trauma.[43]
In this, it can be suggested that memory museums invite the community to collaborate in feelings of victimhood and minimise the social sins of their ancestors. The House of Terror’s emphasis on Hungary’s innocence under two dictatorships avoids the question of their complicity and longstanding anti-Semitic attitudes contributing to the Hungarian authority’s deportation of half a million Jews. [44] The museum also attributes the atrocities suffered under socialism as the total responsibility of the occupying state.[45] The Jewish Berlin Museum, whilst avoiding the totalising feeling of perpetrator’s guilt, continues to harbour damaging beliefs, such as the Holocaust resulting from Hitler’s actions alone and not being symptomatic of the complicity and anti-Semitism of his supporters.[46] Moreover, the visitor avoids the guilt of cultural complicity intrinsic to the trauma that are remembering, revealing how memory museums are predominantly sociological practises rather than academized systems.[47]
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Analysis of Memory Museums Communication Methods
Memory museums manage the visitor’s bodily responses to capitalise on experiencing history through the senses to convey memories that do not actually belong to the visitor.[48] This is underpinned by trauma’s physical relationship with the body[49] in order to recreate an element of the victim’s lived experience to help visitors resonate and create an empathetic relationship with the past.[50] For instance, Libeskind’s architectural play of full and empty, functional and non-functional space plays with the visitor’s bodily feelings as they interpret the spaces according to the narrative of the Holocaust.[51] However, induced bodily responses can be problematic. For instance, some Jewish Berlin Museum visitors felt trapped in the Holocaust Tower, taking the symbolic meaning of the space literally and were agitated by the unwelcome feelings of physical panic.[52] The House of Terror similarly relies on bodily experiences to educate young people on the horrors of totalitarian dictatorships through evoking a feeling of a deep memory of the past.[53] For instance, in an elevator travelling down to the basement of the museum, the visitors are forced to listen to an audio-description of the execution of political prisoners that occurred in the space they are about to enter.[54] This, reportedly, causes an intense bodily reaction that induces a prosthetic memory associated with torture and fear.[55] Moreover, memory museums effectively communicate through bodily responses to trigger memory work based on feelings of shock, fear and grief to identify with the witnesses and contextualise the past.
Memory museums effectually utilise the communicative power of architecture to encourage the interpretation of the past through space and emotion rather than through historiographic terms[56]. For example, the House of Terror’s building site being the 1937 headquarters of the Arrow Cross and the base of the Communist secret police from 1945 confronts the community with their dark past.[57] The Fidezs government sought to redefine Hungarian identity through monumental building and symbolic streetscape[58] and used the House of Terror’s physical witness to the orchestration of torture and death under socialist and fascist regimes to convey the horrors of totalitarianism.[59] Architecture is also utilised by the Jewish Berlin Museum to communicate impactful messages. Libeskind’s architectural design, chosen through a competition announced by the Berlin Senate in 1989, highlighted the inseparable nature of Jewish history from the Holocaust.[60] The windows, the zig-zag orientation of the broken Star of David, the three axes and the voids all exist to communicate issues of Jewish ethnic identity, their suffering under the Holocaust and the resulting wound in Berlin culture.[61] Moreover, the architecture encourages the memory of the Holocaust through presenting meaning, questions and challenges to the public.[62] The House of Terror and the Jewish Berlin Museum both illustrate how museum architecture can function as cultural ‘heterotopias’, a space which communicates to a culture about itself, used effectively to respond to the cultural shift throughout Europe following the fall of the Berlin Wall.[63]
The memory museum’s use of the artefact’s symbolic power powerfully conveys their manufactured historical narratives and evokes emotional responses that lead to collective memory. Artefacts, moments of the past removed from their original context and institutionalised, are seen by the visitor as historical evidence and a symbolic nexus of the trauma.[64] Furthermore, the artefact is used to complete the visitor’s memory work and negotiation of identity and politics.[65] For instance, the House of Terror’s artefacts- such as a cucumber can and Vodka bottle in a reconstructed USSR Office- are not historically authentic or accurate and have been likened to “stage props”[66] in their fictive context.[67] However, they are significant to the visitor as a symbolic relation to the past.[68] Moreover, artefacts are a physical link to the victim’s experience as the visitor attempts to create memory and empathy.[69] The relationship between artefact and empathy is evident in the Jewish Berlin Museum’s installation of Menashe Kadishman’s Shalechet (Fallen Leaves) in the Memory Void. The 10,000 faces cut from iron plates scattered throughout the room evoke the gestural viewer-activity of walking over Holocaust victims, which induces memory transcendence to understand, in personal terms, the perpetration of violence in a past, present and future tense.[70] Moreover, artefacts, when the institution has a grasp upon their collections in relation to social memory, have the power to negotiate the past through creating a visible link to trauma.[71]
Exhibition spaces contextualise and amplify the artefact’s communication power to present a selective historical narrative in line with current political and cultural ideologies. Despite Libeskind’s 1989 design that focussed on Holocaust remembrance, the Jewish Berlin Museum’s exhibition spaces were shaped by contemporary cultural, political and economic concerns relevant to its opening in 2001.[72] Curatorial decisions were informed by visitor surveys which concluded that the public wished to learn more about the Jewish community in Berlin, rather than focus on the Holocaust.[73] The permeant exhibition, therefore, exhibits a comfortable museology approach; Two Millennia of German Jewish History chronologically tells the story of Jewish life in Berlin through an object controlled path.[74] Contrastingly, the House of Terror’s curatorial classification depends on a theatrical hyper reality that relies on the artefact’s power to shock to convey that dictatorships caused the twentieth century to be a period of total terror and oppression.[75] The exhibition’s blockbuster overdramatization was orchestrated by Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s political agenda, opening the museum in the last moments of his electoral campaign[76] in hopes that it would increase political engagement.[77] However, while the museum dedicates twenty-five rooms to the tyranny of Communist rule, only two and a half rooms explore the atrocities of the Nazi occupation; minimising the Holocaust’s horrors in an attempt to demonise Socialism.[78] Moreover, exhibition and curatorial decisions biasedly convey the history of violence and terror as the memory museum is used as a tool for official politics and national identity.
The memory museum’s exhibitions crucially use tone to increase emotional connection to the past and restrict reflective responses from the visitor. Exhibitions are shaped within ideological frameworks which communicate a monolithic national identity and underplay the complexity of collective memory through tightly orientated exhibitions underlined with emotive appeal[79]. The Jewish Berlin Museum, aiming to minimise the cliché of Jewish history being exclusive to 1939-45, effectively challenge preconceptions[80]. Through aiming to avoid negative emotions, the museum delivers an upbeat permanent exhibition to create a more cohesive co-existence between Germans and Jews.[81] Visitors are reported to be delightfully challenged by the broad history of Jewish culture in Berlin.[82] However, prioritising emotional response places an onus on visitor satisfaction to maximise the museum’s popularity through creating an idealised image of Germany’s past rather than confronting the Holocaust[83]. Similarly, the House of Terror’s strict philosophy instigates feeling of hatred toward Communism without dealing with more difficult memories, such as remembering their complicity within the Holocaust. Installations, such as the railway carrier in the “Gulag Room” in which the visitor feels as if they are trapped within on their way to a communist work camp, rely on emotional response rather than critical thinking.[84] The House of Terror’s exhibitions are based on an emotional experience of history which targets the visitor’s feelings rather than their reflective thoughts.[85] Moreover, instead of activating authentic memory work, outrage and hate is kept burning in the national spirit[86].
Moreover, while memory museums successfully communicate their central messages in impactful ways, it is achieved at the expense of employing strict ideological frameworks. Memory museums function within and communicates to cultures that have undergone immense trauma and struggle to situate their negative past within their future. Thus, the visitor experience is carefully manufactured according to a limited idea that ensures cohesive collective memory and national identity. However, within this strict process, the museum alienates those who do not identify with the specific narrative of history being presented, replaces individually nuanced understanding and universalises the memory of witnesses[87]. In particular, the House of Terror’s dogmatic interpretations of the past limits communicative rationality[88] due to its totalising and totalitarian ideologies.[89] Arguably, the intellectually-targeted visitor feels relieved to leave once the visit is over.[90] The memory museum’s isolation of their visitors through emotionally driven lessons in the box of museum resources is a demanding ideological standpoint characteristic of the fascist structures they morally oppose.[91] Memory museums do not depend on rational calculations but rely on the effectiveness of resources, such as the visitor’s body, architecture, artefact and exhibition, to instil a singular narrative of history.[92]
In conclusion, the memory museum serves justifiable and merited cultural purposes but presents several ethical compromises within its approaches. The main issues facing memory museums is how they deal with topics of memory, trauma and national identity against the opposing forces of historical accuracy, cultural sensitivities and political pressures. The obnoxious incompatibility of these forces results in simplified and inaccurate representations of the past understood through ritualised visitor experiences that avoid underlying cultural guilt. However, memory museums do serve beneficial social purposes through effective programs for their respective communities. Memory museums enable memory transmission and access to the past through the use of architecture, artefact and exhibition. However, the communication methods which rely on evoked bodily and controlled emotional responses according to limited ideologies restrict a fluid visitor experience. Moreover, the memory museum exists as a space that addresses didactic messages in response to a difficult past but, however, its shortcomings derive from the impact of political, cultural and social subjectivities of the trauma it is remembering.
Annotated Bibliography
Arnold-de Simine, Silk. Mediating memory in the museum: empathy, trauma, nostalgia. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
This monograph supported many of the main concerns articulated in this essay, including the recurring idea that memory museums are a social construct to communicate memory to help current generations negotiate a difficult past. Arnold-de Simine’s terminology of “memory museum” was used to refine the essay’s language.
Apor, Péter. “An epistemology of the spectacle? Arcane knowledge, memory and evidence in the Budapest House of Terror.” Rethinking History 18, no. 3 (2014): 328-44.
Apor’s argument was useful in understanding how the House of Terror uses their exhibition spaces to produce a biased historical narrative for political ends in a post-dictatorial country. The clear curatorial analysis helped frame and justify the essay’s arguments around the problematic nature of historical inaccuracy in memory museums.
Bassanelli, Michela , and Gennaro Postiglione. “Museography for Traumatic Memories: Re-enacting – the Past.” Interventions/Adaptive Reuse: Int/AR 4 (2003): 6-13.
The authors efficiently communicated the abstract notion of memory as a tool for negotiating cultural identity following traumatic national events. Bassanelli and Postiglione’s strong definitions of abstract ideas employed by museology was directly applied to the essay’s main arguments and strengthened the conceptualisation of the case examples.
Bishop Kendzia, Victoria. “Clichés Reinforced, Clichés Challenged.” In Cultural Representation of Jewishness at the Turn of the 21st Century, 43-57. Italy: Firenze: European Press Academic Publishing, 2010.
The ethnographic methodology of this article was beneficial in understanding how the Jewish Berlin Museum is culturally perceived. The author’s observations of how high school students interacted and responded to the museum was used to strengthen the Jewish Berlin Museum case study through highlighting its relationship to its local audiences.
Bishop Kendzia, Victoria. “‘Jewish’ Ethnic Options in Germany between Attribution and Choice: Auto-ethnographical Reflections at the Jewish Museum Berlin.” Anthropological Journal of European Cultures 23, no. 2 (2014): 60-70.
This self-reflective article was used to supplement Bishop Kendzia’s Clichés Reinforced, Clichés Challenged? that was used throughout the essay to support the case study of the Jewish Berlin Museum. It helped situate her experience as a researcher and provided personal insight outside of the academic research material predominantly acquired for this essay. The essay drew on Bishop Kendzia’s idea that museum rituals create collective identity as a national function but the attitudes displayed are not authentic as they contradict typical German prejudices against minorities.
Brown, Timothy P. “Trauma, Museums and the Future of Pedagogy.” Third Text 18, no. 4 (2004): 247-59.
Brown’s article was useful its analysis of how museums guide nations, who have experienced crisis, through their cultural collections. Whilst his use of case studies was not sourced in this essay, it drew from his theories about trauma’s relation to the body, the symbolic use of the artefact, the ritual of memory and the issue of reconstructed histories within museum education. His argument was pivotal in articulating the arguments concerning the social and ethical relationship between museum, memory and trauma.
Crownshaw, Rick. “Photography and memory in Holocaust museums.” Mortality 12, no. 2 (2007): 176-92.
This article was relevant to this essay in its discussion of theories and ethical issues associated with Holocaust memorial museums. Research was drawn from Crownshaw’s questioning of the effects and ethics of transmitting memories that are not the visitor’s own. Although not used within the essay, his discussion of terms such as postmemory and the focus on the United State Holocaust Museum was useful in contextualising other research.
Duffy, Terence M. “Museums of ‘human suffering’ and the struggle for human rights.” Museum International 53 (2001): 10-16.
This article was used for its background on the rise of museums which aim to commemorate tragedies and promote and protect human rights. The categorisation of holocaust and genocide museums was helpful in situating the Jewish Berlin Museum in a museum framework. However, none of her categorisations were appropriate to the House of Terror. This article was also used for its position on the appropriateness of museums of human suffering to contrast with the focus on their problematic nature in other research.
Duffy, Terence. “The Holocaust Museum Concept.” Museum International 49, no. 1 (1997): 54-58.
This article aided in contextualising the concept of Holocaust museums in the broader spectrum of human rights culture, which is not discussed extensively in other literature on this topic. This is a constructive stance on the usefulness of Holocaust museums in communicating universal human rights which helped balance out a fairly critical argument.
Feldman, Jackie, and Anja Peleikis. “Performing the Hyphen: Engaging German-Jewishness at the Jewish Museum Berlin.” Anthropological Journal of European Cultures 23 (2014): 43-59.
This article supported the Jewish Berlin Museum case study in deepening the analysis of the museum’s aim to promote a multicultural vision for Germany. The article included a useful analysis on visitors and the volunteer guides gained through participant observation and statistical segmentations of visitors which gave unique insight into the audiences and the effectiveness of the museum’s philosophies.
Jones, Sara. “Staging battlefields: Media, authenticity and politics in the Museum of Communism (Prague), The House of Terror (Budapest) and Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen (Berlin).” Journal of War & Culture Studies 4, no. 1 (2011): 97-111.
This article highlighted the relationship between exhibition, body and memory within a broader political and national context of post-socialist contemporary culture, relevant to the House of Terror case study. The section dedicated to the House of Terror, which discussed the museum’s manipulation of the visitor, was used to help support ideas the problematic nature of memory museums.
Schneider, Bernhard, Daniel Libeskind, and Stefan Müller. Daniel Libeskind: Jewish Museum Berlin: between the lines. Munich: Prestel, 2007.
This monograph was used as a research tool due to its stimulating and enlightening visual and written insight into Libeskin’s design of the Jewish Berlin Museum. The musings of Libeskind through an interview, his sketches and a self-written chapter on his rationale provided fundamental material on the Jewish Berlin Museum’s architecture.
Marahrens, Helge-Johannes. Whitewashing the Nation, the Controversial Collective Memory of the “House of Terror” in Budapest. Master’s thesis, Europa Unversitat Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), 2012/2013. Frankfurt: Centre for Interdisciplinary Polish Studies, 2014. 1-54.
This thesis provided in-depth curatorial and exhibition analyses and criticisms of the minimisation of the Holocaust in the House of Terror which supported the essay’s case study, especially in highlighting the issues prevalent in this particular memory museum.
Messham-Muir, Kit. “Dark Visitations: The Possibilities and Problems of Experience and Memory in Holocaust Museums.” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art 5, no. 1 (2004): 97-111.
Messham-Muir’s study of Holocaust museums was drawn upon throughout many main points within the essay. Fuelling many aspects of the central argument was her exploration of the rationale of Holocaust museums, the debates around dark tourism, bodily experiences evoking memory, the use of artefacts to create narrative and visitor experiences.
McDowell, Sara. “Heritage, Memory and Identity.” In The Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity, 37-54. Hampshire, England: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2008.
McDowell’s chapter was dedicated to exploring definitions within contemporary heritage discourse. Her definition of memory within a cultural and political framework and its reference to cultural relationships was used within this essay to define central terminology.
Miller, Brian Joseph. The Politics of Memory in the Judisches Museums Berlin, 1999-2004: Curatorial Strategies, Exhibition Spaces, and the German-Jewish Past. Thesis, Georgia State University, Department of History, 2005.
Miller’s thesis was used because of its insight into the curatorial decisions of the Jewish Berlin Museum which were influenced by visitor surveys that indicated that German people wanted to know more about German Jewish history and less about the Holocaust. It highlighted the importance of visitor satisfaction and the lingering notion of national identity when curating the exhibition spaces within memory museums.
Munslow, Alun. “Editorial.” Rethinking History 18, no. 3 (2015): 309-10.
While this source was not included in the essay, it was incorporated into the research for its reflection on Apor’s An epistemology of the spectacle? It was useful in pulling apart Apor’s speculation on the problematic nature of history reconstructed through a preferred vision of the past in the House of Terror. The restatement of Apor’s argument was used to articulate his line of reasoning which was used in the essay.
Palonen, Emilia. “Millennial politics of architecture: myths and nationhood in Budapest.” Nationalities Papers 41, no. 4 (2013): 536-51.
Palonen’s article gave an exclusive cultural and political examination of the architecture of the House of Terror to balance with Libeskind’s building analysis in the essay. Specifically, Palonen’s understanding of the fusion between architecture and politics to rewrite history and perpetrate a mythicised national identity, in the context of Hungary following 1989, was used to provide substance to the essay.
Pješiva, Željka . “Between Museum, Monument and Memorial: Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum in Berlin (1999).” Kultura (Skopje) 4, no. 8 (2015): 101-10.
Pješiva’s article was used for its exploration of the role of museum’s architecture in reference to the Jewish Berlin Museum. It was referenced for its in-depth interpretation of Libeskind’s design and synthesis on other themes common in Holocaust museums, such as the relationship between history and memory, defining memory, the concept of collective memory, Jewish identity and social practise.
Saindon, Brent Allen. “A Doubled Heterotopia: Shifting Spatial and Visual Symbolism in the Jewish Museum Berlin’s Development.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 98, no. 1 (2012): 24-48.
This article was solely used for its definition of Focault’s idea of ‘heterotopia’ in the context of the Jewish Berlin Museum and its audience, providing theoretical terminology for the conceptualisation of Libeksind’s architectural design.
Rady, Martyn. “Permanent Exhibition: Terror Haza.” Central Europe 1, no. 1 (2013): 104-06.
This exhibition review was used for its succinct evaluation of the permanent exhibition at the House of Terror, especially for its insightful comments on its curatorial classification in relationship to museology traditions in Eastern Europe. His comments on its architecture and exhibition spaces effectively covers many issues raised by the museology of the House of Terror. As a subjective evaluation of its messages, it provided a background to its creation without the overt criticism of other research.
Sodaro, Amy. “Memory, History, and Nostalgia in Berlin’s Jewish Museum.” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 26, no. 1 (2013): 77-91.
Sodaro’s argument was used because it opposes many popular theorisations of the Jewish Berlin Museum through positioning it as a counter memorial museum. Her illumination of how concepts of memory, nation state and identity are central to the museum in a way that doesn’t encourage negative connotation with Jewish history was very assistive in analysing its exhibition spaces.
Sik, Domonkos. “Memory Transmission and Political Socialization in Post-Socialist Hungary.” The Sociological Review 63 (2015): 53-71.
Sik’s argument was central to understanding the politicisation of post-socialist Hungary’s memory of the events of the twentieth century. Although very provocative in nature, his argument of Hungary’s memory of Nazi and Communist rule being rooted in victimhood which halts a responsible consolation of memory and a positive national identity helped highlight issues within the case study of the House of Terror.
Turai, Hedvig. “Past Unmastered: Hot and Cold Memory in Hungary.” Third Text 23, no. 1 (2009): 97-106.
This article was pivotal in understanding how memory is constituted between different European countries, with a particular focus on how memorialisation in response to Communism occurs through the House of Terror. This helped differentiate the case studies of the House of Terror and the Jewish Berlin Museum and their attempts of memorialising the events of the twentieth century. It also helped shape criticisms of the House of Terror through its analysis of its emotively controlled narrative of the past.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Silk Arnold-de Simine, Mediating memory in the museum: empathy, trauma, nostalgia (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016): 11.
[2] Sara McDowell, “Heritage, Memory and Identity,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity (Hampshire, England: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2008): 37.
[3] Michela Bassanelli and Gennaro Postiglione, “Museography for Traumatic Memories: Re-enacting – the Past,” Interventions/Adaptive Reuse: Int/AR 4 (2003): 6.
[4] Bassanelli and Postiglione, “Museography for Traumatic,” 6.
[5] Arnold-de Simine, Mediating memory in the museum, 11.
[6]Timothy P. Brown, “Trauma, Museums and the Future of Pedagogy,” Third Text 18, no. 4 (2004): 247.
[7] Bassanelli and Postiglione, “Museology for Traumatic Memories,” 7.
[8] Amy Sodaro, “Memory, History, and Nostalgia in Berlin’s Jewish Museum,” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 26, no.1 (2013): 79.
[9] Bassanelli and Postiglione, “Museology for Traumatic Memories,” 7.
[10] Sodaro, “Memory, History, and Nostalgia in Berlin’s Jewish Museum,” 87.
[11] Bernhard Schneider, Daniel Libeskind and Stefan Müller, Daniel Libeskind: Jewish Museum Berlin: between the lines (Munich: Prestel, 2007), 70.
[12] Domonkos Sik, “Memory Transmission and Political Socialization in Post-Socialist Hungary,” The Sociological Review 63 (2015): 55.
[13] Hedvig Turai, “Past Unmastered: Hot and Cold Memory in Hungary,” Third Text 23, no.1 (2009): 97.
[14] Martyn Rady, “Permanent Exhibition: Terror Haza,” Central Europe 1, no.1 (2013): 105.
[15] Terence Duffy, “The Holocaust Museum Concept,” Museum International 49, no.1 (1997): 54.
[16] Arnold-de Simine, Mediating memory in the museum, 10.
[17] Željka Pješiva, “Between Museum, Monument and Memorial: Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum in Berlin (1999),” Kultura (Skopje) 4, no.8 (2015): 101.
[18] Sara Jones, “Staging battlefields: Media, authenticity and politics in the Museum of Communism (Prague), The House of Terror (Budapest) and Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen (Berlin),” Journal of War & Culture Studies 4, no.1 (2011): 108.
[19] Arnold-de Simine, Mediating memory in the museum, 8-9.
[20] Emilia Palonen, “Millennial politics of architecture: myths and nationhood in Budapest,” Nationalities Papers 41, no.4 (2013): 536.
[21] Sodaro, “Memory, History, and Nostalgia in Berlin’s Jewish Museum,” 79-80.
[22] Palonen, “Millennial politics of architecture,” 542.
[23] Jackie Feldman and Anja Peleikis, “Performing the Hyphen: Engaging German-Jewishness at the Jewish Museum Berlin,” Anthropological Journal of European Cultures 23 (2014): 44.
[24] Brown, “Trauma, Museums and the Future of Pedagogy,” 258.
[25] Brown, “Trauma, Museums and the Future of Pedagogy,” 258.
[26] Pješiva, “Between Museum, Monument and Memorial”, 103.
[27] Sodaro, “Memory, History, and Nostalgia in Berlin’s Jewish Museum,” 77.
[28] Sodaro, “Memory, History, and Nostalgia in Berlin’s Jewish Museum,” 87.
[29] Schneider, Libeskind and Müller, Daniel Libeskind, 70-71.
[30] Turai, “Past Unmastered”, 106.
[31] Kit Messham-Muir, “Dark Visitations: The Possibilities and Problems of Experience and Memory in Holocaust Museums,” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art 5, no. 1 (2004): 98.
[32] Duffy, “The Holocaust Museum Concept,” 58.
Terence M. Duffy, “Museums of ‘human suffering’ and the struggle for human rights,” Museum International 53 (2001): 16.
[33] Sodaro, “Memory, History, and Nostalgia in Berlin’s Jewish Museum,” 80.
[34] Feldman and Peleikis, “Performing the Hyphen,” 51.
[35] Sodaro, “Memory, History, and Nostalgia in Berlin’s Jewish Museum,” 80.
[36] Jones, “Staging battlefields,” 98.
Messham-Muir, “Dark Visitations,” 98.
[37] Messham-Muir, “Dark Visitations,” 99.
[38] Jones, “Staging battlefields”, 102.
[39] Victoria Bishop Kendzia, “’Jewish’ Ethnic Options in Germany between Attribution and Choice: Auto-ethnographical Reflections at the Jewish Museum Berlin,” Anthropological Journal of European Cultures 23, no. 2 (2014): 67-68.
[40] Victoria Bishop Kendzia, “’Jewish’ Ethnic Options in Germany between Attribution and Choice: Auto-ethnographical Reflections at the Jewish Museum Berlin,” Anthropological Journal of European Cultures 23, no. 2 (2014): 67-68.
[41] Feldman and Peleikis, “Performing the Hyphen,” 44.
[42]Pješiva, “Between Museum, Monument and Memorial”, 108.
[43] Palonen, “Millennial politics of architecture”, 541.
[44] Turai, “Past Unmastered”, 106.
Sik, “Memory Transmission and Political Socialization in Post-Socialist Hungary,” 55.
[45] Turai, “Past Unmastered”, 106.
Sik, “Memory Transmission and Political Socialization in Post-Socialist Hungary,” 55.
[46] Kendzia, “Clichés Reinforced, Clichés Challenged,” 49.
[47] Péter Apor, “An epistemology of the spectacle? Arcane knowledge, memory and evidence in the Budapest House of Terror,” Rethinking History 18, no.3 (2014): 333.
[48] Apor, “An epistemology of the spectacle?”, 332.
[49] Brown, “Trauma, Museums and the Future of Pedagogy,” 250.
[50] Messham-Muir, “Dark Visitations,” 104.
[51] Pješiva, “Between Museum, Monument and Memorial”, 105.
[52] Feldman and Peleikis, “Performing the Hyphen,” 47.
[53] Jones, “Staging battlefields,” 98.
[54] Jones, “Staging battlefields,”103.
[55] Jones, “Staging battlefields,”103.
[56] Pješiva, “Between Museum, Monument and Memorial”, 108.
[57] Rady, “Permanent Exhibition”, 105.
[58] Palonen, “Millennial politics of architecture,” 538-540.
[59] Jones, “Staging battlefields,” 98.
[60] Pješiva, “Between Museum, Monument and Memorial”, 104.
[61] Pješiva, “Between Museum, Monument and Memorial”, 107.
[62] Schneider, Libeskind and Müller, Daniel Libeskind, 31.
[63] Brent Allen Saindon, “A Doubled Heterotopia: Shifting Spatial and Visual Symbolism in the Jewish Museum Berlin’s Development,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 98, no.1 (2012): 26.
[64] Pješiva, “Between Museum, Monument and Memorial,” 103.
[65] Brown, “Trauma, Museums and the Future of Pedagogy,” 248.
[66] Turai, “Past Unmastered,” 104.
[67] Apor, “An epistemology of the spectacle?”, 339.
[68] Jones, “Staging battlefields,”102.
[69] Messham-Muir, “Dark Visitations,” 104.
[70] Saindon, “A Doubled Heterotopia,” 40.
[71] Brown, “Trauma, Museums and the Future of Pedagogy,” 253.
[72] Saindon, “A Doubled Heterotopia,” 41.
[73] Brian Joseph Miller, The Politics of Memory in the Judisches Museums Berlin, 1999-2004: Curatorial Strategies, Exhibition Spaces, and the German-Jewish Past (Thesis, Georgia State University, Department of History, 2005): 52.
[74] Sodaro, “Memory, History, and Nostalgia in Berlin’s Jewish Museum,” 86.
[75] Rady, “Permanent Exhibition,” 105.
Apor, “An epistemology of the spectacle?”, 333.
[76] Jones, “Staging battlefields,”104.
[77] Arnold-de Simine, Mediating memory in the museum, 13.
[78] Helge-Johannes Marahrens, Whitewashing the Nation, the Controversial Collective Memory of the “House of Terror” in Budapest (Master’s thesis, Europa Unversitat Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), 2012/2013. Frankfurt: Centre for Interdisciplinary Polish Studies, 2014. 1-54):11.
[79] Jones, “Staging Battlefields,” 108.
[80] Kendzia, “Clichés Reinforced, Clichés Challenged,” 54.
[81] Feldman and Peleikis, “Performing the Hyphen,” 56.
[82] Kendzia, “Clichés Reinforced, Clichés Challenged,” 54.
[83] Sodaro, “Memory, History, and Nostalgia in Berlin’s Jewish Museum,” 78.
[84] Marahrens, Whitewashing the Nation, 19.
[85] Marahrens, Whitewashing the Nation, 18.
[86] Turai, “Past Unmastered,” 105.
[87] Crownshaw, “Photography and memory in Holocaust museums,” 177.
Jones, “Staging Battlefields,” 108.
[88] Sik, “Memory Transmission and Political Socialization in Post-Socialist Hungary,” 50.
[89] Turai, “Past Unmastered”, 102.
[90] Marahrens, Whitewashing the Nation, 19.
[91] Messham-Muir, “Dark Visitations,” 109.
[92] Brown, “Trauma, Museums and the Future of Pedagogy,” 259.