Memorialising the German Democratic Republic

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Since unification, numerous public spaces in eastern Germany have been freed from Cold War narratives and been reinvested with meaning, thus making them available for new types of public remembrance. Eastern Germany's fast-changing landscape of monuments and memorials is central to the shaping of collective identities and memories, particularly in light of Germany's two twentieth century dictatorships. While much research has hitherto been carried out on memorials relating to the Holocaust and the National Socialist past, there has been very little detailed work on the way in which the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the legacy of socialism feature within this landscape - despite extensive historical research on the GDR, as well as a number of recent works on 'Ostalgie' and manifestations of east German identities in literature, film and consumer culture. The proposed project aims to fill this gap by producing a monograph which will examine a selection of in-depth case studies of monuments and memorials in eastern Germany. The focus on the urban landscape is particularly significant on the territory of former East Germany, for the GDR regime placed great importance on monuments and urban space in order to promote a collective socialist consciousness and a cohesive East German identity. In contrast to numerous recent studies of non-spatial 'sites of memory', the focus of this project returns to the principal physical meaning of the term 'site', underlining the primary importance of the relationship between the built environment and memory. As a focused study of lesser-known monuments relating to key events and themes in the GDR (e.g. socialist icons, Soviet special camps, 17 June 1953, the Berlin Wall and the events of 1989/90), it will be the first of its kind in the field, and will move away from the well-documented focus on national narratives in Berlin. The key areas of investigation relate to four areas: a) the role of the GDR past in shaping both the physical landscape of eastern Germany and the construction of national and regional identities; b) the agents of memory and the identification of key patterns in the memorialisation process;c) the relationship between time and memory, in order to test the categorisation of different 'types' of memory and to assess the impact of past memory cultures on present structures of memory;d) the restrictions and challenges of memorial form and the impact of form, location and authenticity on the production of memory. In order to investigate these issues, the project will 'read' the selected monuments and associated debates in three ways. First, it will test the motives of key interest groups by examining documentary records from the planning stages of monuments; second, it will examine the reception and understanding of monuments through local newspaper coverage, the activities of citizens' groups, and the observation of public interaction with the monuments; third, it will investigate the interplay between conflicting types of collective memories through interviews with artists, local activists and politicians. These methods will ensure that case studies are examined from the perspectives of both the participants and the institutions/groups which are responsible for creating the monuments, thus highlighting the interaction between 'top down' and 'bottom up' memories.This project is a timely investigation of memorialisation processes in contemporary Germany, for it will be able to reflect on the twentieth anniversary celebrations of the fall of the Berlin Wall and of unification, both of which have significantly shaped the narratives within which memorial structures are embedded. It is also a significant time to build on public interest in this sphere, as is the aim of the broader impact of this project, which intends to engage teachers and learners of Germanand contemporary history, as well as practioners in the field of public art.