Difficult Heritage

DIFFICULT HERITAGE How do a city and a nation deal with a legacy of perpetrating atrocity? How are contemporary identities negotiated and shaped in the face of concrete reminders of a past that most wish they did not have? Diffi cult Heritage focuses on the case of Nuremberg – a city whose name is indelibly linked with Nazism – to explore these questions and their implications. Using an original in-depth research, using archival, interview and ethnographic sources, it provides not only fascinating new material and perspectives, but also more general original theorizing of the relationship between heritage, identity and material culture. The book looks at how Nuremberg has dealt with its Nazi past post-1945. It focuses especially, but not exclusively, on the city’s architectural heritage, in particular, the former Nazi party rally grounds, on which the Nuremberg rallies were staged. The book draws on original sources, such as city council debates and interviews, to chart a lively picture of debate, action and inaction in relation to this site and signifi cant others, in Nuremberg and elsewhere. In doing so, Diffi cult Heritage seeks to highlight changes over time in the ways in which the Nazi past has been dealt with in Germany, and the underlying cultural assumptions, motivations and sources of friction involved. Whilst referencing wider debates and giving examples of what was happening elsewhere in Germany and beyond, Diffi cult Heritage provides a rich in-depth account of this most fascinating of cases. It also engages in comparative refl ection on developments underway elsewhere in order to contextualize what was happening in Nuremberg and to show similarities to and differences from the ways in which other ‘diffi cult heritages’ have been dealt with elsewhere. By doing so, the author offers an informed perspective on ways of dealing with diffi cult heritage, today and in the future, discussing innovative museological, educational and artistic practice. Sharon Macdonald is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester. She has held Alexander von Humboldt Fellowships at the University Erlangen-Nürnberg and the Humboldt University, Berlin. Her publications include The Politics of Display (ed. 1998, Routledge). DIFFICULT HERITAGE Negotiating the Nazi past in Nuremberg and beyond Sharon Macdonald First published 2009 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2009 Sharon Macdonald Typeset in Garamond by HWA Text and Data Management, London Printed and bound in Great Britain by ?APrinter Ltd All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN10: 0–415–41991–3 (hbk) ISBN10: 0–415–41992–1 (pbk) ISBN13: 978–0–415–41991–8 (hbk) ISBN13: 978–0–415–41992–5 (pbk) ISBN13: 978–0–203–88866–7 (ebk) CONTENTS List of fi gures viii Acknowledgements x 1 Introduction 1 2 Building heritage: ‘words in stone’? 25 3 Demolition, cleansing and moving on 52 4 Preservation, profanation and image-management 80 5 Accompanied witnessing: education, art and alibis 102 6 Cosmopolitan memory in the city of human rights 123 7 Negotiating on the ground(s): guiding tours of Nazi heritage 146 8 Visiting diffi cult heritage 164 9 Unsettling diffi cult heritage 186 Notes 193 References 212 Index 225 vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Arts and Humanities Research Council for fi nancial support for this research; and to colleagues in Sociological Studies at the University of Sheffi eld and Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester for the research leave that made the work possible and for discussion that enriched it. In Germany, I was fortunate to be hosted as a guest researcher at the Institut für Soziologie at the Friedrich Alexander University of Erlangen-Nürnberg and the Institut für Europäische Ethnologie at the Humboldt University, Berlin, and I thank staff and students in these institutes for references, reminiscences, insights and companionship. Professor Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim and Professor Wolfgang Kashuba deserve particular thanks for completing the necessary bureaucratic requirements to make the visits possible, as well as for making them so enjoyable and intellectually rewarding. In Nuremberg I have received extensive assistance, as evident in the pages that follow; and I thank all of those who gave me time for interviews, many of whom are named in the pages that follow. I offer particular thanks to staff at Nuremberg City Archive, the archive of the Nürnberger Nachrichten (especially Roland Schulik), Geschichte für Alle, the City Council, including the Tourism service (especially Michael Weber), the Nuremberg Museums’ Service (especially Franz Sonnenberger), and especially the Documentation Centre of the former Nazi Party Rally Grounds. At the latter, Martina Christmeier and especially Hans Christian Täubrich and Eckart Dietzfelbinger and provided invaluable assistance and extensive materials. Hermann Glaser’s insight and experience were inspirational; and Siegfried Zelnhefer also shared extensive knowledge. Eckart Dietzfelbinger, Hermann Glaser, Franz Sonnenberger and Michael Weber were also kind enough to read parts of the manuscript and to offer comments that have helped to improve it. Formal thanks are due to the poet Fitzgerald Kusz for permission to quote his poem Bewältigung; as well as more informal thanks for his friendly discussion. Running alongside this research, I participated in a research project on European Historical Consciousness at the Kulturwissenschaftliche Institut, Essen, run by Professor Jörn Rüsen. This fed into my understanding of German historical culture and consciousness and I thank Professor Rüsen for inviting me to participate as well as for his support of my research, as well as for illuminating discussions with him and other members of the project. As this research has been underway, I have published x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS a number of papers on it, listed in the bibliography; and I thank the various editors and (often anonymous) reviewers who pushed me to improve my work. I have also profi ted from opportunities to present parts of the ongoing research at the universities of Cardiff, Durham, Edinburgh, Erlangen-Nürnberg, Frankfurt, Hull, the Humboldt University in Berlin, Lancaster, Melbourne, Oxford, Sheffi eld, Stirling, the Technical University of Lisbon, and University College London; at the European Association of Social Anthropology conference in Cracow, at the Goethe Institute, London, at a conference organised by the Centre for Tourism and Cultural Change, Sheffi eld, at the Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam, at the German Historical Museum and at the International Committee on Museums conference in Vienna. I am grateful to the organisers of these events, as well as to the many people who left me with more questions to try to answer and helpful suggestions to follow up. In addition, I have benefi ted from many friends and colleagues who have talked and sometimes walked diffi cult heritage with me. Among all of these various interlocutors, I offer particular thanks to the following: Simone Abram, Marta Anico, Stefan Beck, Rosmarie Beier, Tony Bennett, Peter Blundell-Jones, Mary Bouquet, Jeanette Edwards, Gordon Fyfe, Gottfried Gabriel, Michaela Giebelhausen, Neil Gregor, Nicky Gregson, Chris Healy, Michael Herzfeld, Richard Jenkins, Günther Kress, Fiona MacLean, Morgan Meyer, Danny Miller, Clive Norris, Nuno Porto, Regina Römhild, Alexander Schmidt, Chris Tilley, John Urry, Gisela Welz, members of the Erlangen Runde; and students at the universities of Sheffi eld, Manchester, the Humboldt University in Berlin and, especially, at the Sociology Institute in Erlangen-Nürnberg. At Routledge, Matt Gibbons and Lalle Pursglove have provided the right mix of support, patience and pressure. Mike, Tara, Thomas and Harriet Beaney have lived Nuremberg and Germany’s and other diffi cult heritages with me over these years. Thomas helped me with some technical tasks as well as reading and commenting on parts of the manuscript. Only Mike knows just how diffi cult I have found completing this book. I thank him for helping me to do so, for reading the whole manuscript with his philosopher’s attention to detail and argument, and for his reminders of the pleasures of the present and promise of the future. xi 1 INTRODUCTION During the second half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-fi rst, visible markers of the past – plaques, information boards, museums, monuments – have come to populate more and more land- and cityscapes. History has been gathered up and presented as heritage – as meaningful pasts that should be remembered; and more and more buildings and other sites have been called on to act as witnesses of the past. Many kinds of groups have sought to ensure that they are publicly recognised through identifying and displaying ‘their’ heritage. At the same time, museums and heritage sites

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