Memory, History, and Nostalgia in Berlin’s Jewish Museum

Investor logo

Warning

This publication doesn't include Faculty of Sports Studies. It includes Faculty of Social Studies. Official publication website can be found on muni.cz.
Authors

SODARO Amy

Year of publication 2013
Type Article in Periodical
Magazine / Source International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Social Studies

Citation
Doi http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10767-013-9139-6
Field Sociology, demography
Keywords Jewis Museum Berlin Holocaust Museum Nostalgia German Jewish History Daniel Libeskind
Description The Jewish Museum in Berlin is devoted to telling the 2,000-year history of Jews in Germany in a stunning building designed by Daniel Libeskind. It is Germany’s premier museum devoted to Jewish history and memory, but it is expressly not a Holocaust museum and most reference to the Holocaust is architectural. In its interactive and sophisticated exhibitions, the Jewish Museum represents contemporary international trends in museology and in many ways resembles the many Holocaust and other memorial museums around the world, one of the most prominent and striking international museological trends. However, in rejecting the categorization as a memorial museum and in focusing on a celebration of German–Jewish culture and history rather than the tragedy of the Holocaust, the Jewish Museum is what we might call a countermemorial museum. As such, it challenges the new norms around the creation of memorial museums and other sites of memory to be self-reflexive meditations on the negative past and its trauma. If memorial museums emerge from a particular orientation toward the past that Jeffrey Olick calls the “politics of regret” and claims is a major characteristic of our age, then the Jewish Museum might represent a parallel trend that we can call a “politics of nostalgia.” The museum serves, in many ways, as a screen upon which present-day Germany can project an idealized image of its past, masking some of the present tensions around German national identity and ideas of German multiculturalism. At the same time, the museum often seems to be in conflict with Libeskind’s building, which is infused with Holocaust symbolism and meaning.
Related projects:

You are running an old browser version. We recommend updating your browser to its latest version.

More info