German Culture News Tive, Raising Questions About the Heinrich Jöst in 1941
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GermanGerman CultureCulture NewsNews Cornell University Institute for German Cultural Studies Spring 2005 Vol. XIII No. II In This Issue: Visualizing the Holocaust: Conferences Visualizing the Holocaust Taboos and Potentialities ent recognition of his mother’s the narrative created by the book Aesthetics of War Erica Doerhoff Josh Dittrich face in a pseudo-documentary in which the photographs first ap- Melanie Steiner about Theresienstadt produced peared, Im Ghetto von Warschau: Colloquium Series by the Nazis. Prager suggested Heinrich Jösts Photographien, The Most Powerful This conference stemmed from a DAAD summer seminar on this that these two passages represent published in 2001. This book, Bank to the Power of Sebald’s attempts to come to which was edited by Günther the Better Argument topic led by David Bathrick in 2003 and was an opportunity for terms with the complex terrain Schwarberg, organizes the photo- seminar participants to recon- of post-memory and the aesthetic graphs and includes captions that Encyclopedic dilemmas raised by perpetrator were derived from a 1983 inter- Aesthetics vene and present papers inspired by the seminar. The conference photography. Prager argued that view with Jöst. Magilow argued explored the questions raised by by not reproducing the photo- that “by reading Heinrich Jöst’s The Terror of graph of the Lodz ghetto that photographs not simply as a cata- Reproduction visualizations of the Holocaust through four panels with the he describes in The Emigrants, logue of thematically linked but Sebald subscribed to the often- autonomous atrocity photographs Another Hidden following themes: “In the Begin- ning was the Photo: Exploring discussed “Bilderverbot” on Ho- from 1941 but instead as a heav- Dialogue: Schmitt and locaust images. Prager suggested ily mediated photo-essay [...] one Morgenthau the Power of the Indexical”; “Postmemorial Reception of the that Sebald presented a more can better understand some of the Traumatic Event”; “Mimesis and nuanced response to the problem tensions inherent to categorizing German–American of perpetrator photography in Holocaust photographs.” Ma- Relations after 9/11 Narrative”; and “Mass Cultural Representations of a Traumatic Austerlitz. Prager read Sebald’s gilow presented an interpretation Past.” description of the protagonist’s of the book as a “narrative that Also viewing of the Theresienstadt […] produces a story of an old Hannah Arendt In the Beginning film as a complex engagement man who revisits the Holocaust Symposium with the processes of identifica- and recognizes his responsibility was the Photo: tion and fantasy that are inher- for it,” while also recognizing Interview with Stefan Exploring the Power ent the viewer’s relationship to that the photo essay is an “open Beuse of the Indexical perpetrator images. work” that resists interpretive The morning session featured Daniel Magilow’s paper, “The closure. —E.D. Kluge/Müller papers by Brad Prager (Univer- Flaneuer in the Necropolis: Hein- Digitization Project sity of Missouri-Columbia) and rich Jöst’s Warsaw Ghetto Pho- Daniel H. Magilow (University tographs,” examined a collection Postmemorial of North Texas). Both papers of photographs of the Warsaw Reception of the considered the relationship Ghetto taken by the Wehrmacht Traumatic Event between photographs and narra- officer and amateur photographer The Friday afternoon session, German Culture News tive, raising questions about the Heinrich Jöst in 1941. Magilow moderated by Cornell’s Michael Cornell University IGCS status of perpetrator photography. outlined two approaches for Steinberg (History), sought to 726 University Avenue Prager’s paper, “The Anti-Nostal- reading Jöst’s photographs, both explore the role of trauma in the Ithaca, NY 14850 gic Gaze: Against Liberating Per- of which he considered to be transmission of memory. phone: 607/ 255-8408 petrator Photographs from Their problematic. He argued that read- Elke Heckner (University of email: [email protected] Holocaust Narratives,” focused ing Jöst as an innocent bystander Oregon) discussed the possi- on the relationship between nar- “comes across as at best naïve bilities and limits of second-gen- rative and image in the writings and at worst revisionist,” while eration approaches to Holocaust Peter U. Hohendahl, Director of W.G. Sebald. Prager analyzed understanding Jöst exclusively memory, stressing in particular Robin Fostel, Editor & Designer two key passages in Sebald: in as a perpetrator “too comfortably the dangers of the identificatory The Emigrants, a description of marginalizes him as an inhuman pedagogy promoted by many Ho- Sean Franzel, Photographer & a photograph of the Lodz ghetto monster who shares nothing with locaust museums. In her paper, Graduate Student Coordinator taken by the German accountant his critics.” Magilow’s interpre- “Whose Trauma is it? Identifica- Casey Servais, Copy Editor Walter Genewein; and in Aus- tation avoided this dilemma by tion and Secondary Witnessing terlitz, the protagonist’s appar- providing a nuanced reading of in the Age of Post-Memory,” Visual representations of the Holocaust have proven to be an absolutely integral, but also highly contested means by which to understand and remember the Nazi atrocities of World War II. Beginning with the black and white photographic images emerging from the camps in the spring of 1945, these and later medial visualizations served for some as virtual access to knowledge of the horror; in a few cases, even preeminent verification that it actually hap- pened. Yet coincident with the evidentiary or even iconical certitude these images might seem to convey, there have also arisen intense concerns about the propriety, in some cases even the possibility of visually representing this event. This conference explored the dos and don’ts, the limits and the transgressions, the aesthetic quandaries and attempted solutions which have marked some of the discursive and artistic controversies within the area of Holocaust visual- ization. Key questions included the following: In what ways have images of the Shoah facilitated or inhibited our understanding of it? What are the potentialities Andreas Huyssen (Columbia Uni- and limitations of different visual media (photo, versity); Anson Rabinbach (Princ- film, comic book, painting, architecture, poem, eton University); & conference organizer, David Bathrick novel), aesthetic styles (realism, modernism, postmodernism), or genres (melodrama, comedy, documentary), as made ap- parent in their memorializations of the Holocaust? How have the debates about and practices of Holocaust visualization changed over the years in tandem with postme- morialization? —David Bathrick Holocaust testimony. Based on on images, often invoking the 500 hours of original documen- “unrepresentability” of the Ho- tary footage of the trial shot by locaust. In Ball’s view, however, Leo Hurwitz, Eyan Sivan’s 1999 this reaction speaks not to a de- film The Specialist communi- sire to protect the integrity of the cates the emotional dimension of victims, but rather to a desire to the trial by including the outcries distance oneself from the geno- from members of the audience cide by elevating and sacralizing that are otherwise not considered it. Ball furthermore suggested part of the trial. Although Sivan that the German embrace of this has been attacked for splicing negative aesthetic, expressed together pieces of the foot- via the notion of authenticity, is age and thereby manufacturing closely connected to the mecha- interactions that never occurred, nisms of repression. Referencing Buerkle, who does not read the the Freudian concept of the ego- film as a documentary, concluded ideal, Ball proposed the concept that the film nevertheless suc- of a memory-ideal—a super- Darcy Buerkle (Smith College) & Eric Kligerman ceeded in documenting the affec- egoic memory composite. In the (University of Florida-Gainsville) tive dimension of the trial for the case of Germans, this would be first time, thereby serving as the the “internal idealized locus of a Heckner analysed Marianne forbidding an identification with visual corollary to Arendt’s text. diffuse anticipation of how other Hirsch’s theory of “postmemo- the individual victim. In Libes- Karyn Ball (University of groups…expect Germans to ry.” Although “postmemory” is kind’s Jewish Museum in Berlin, Alberta) closed the first day of remember and mourn the Holo- distinct from original survivor Heckner suggested, identification the conference with her paper, caust.” In the case of the negative memory, the concept suggests and empathy—processes vital for “The Remediation of ‘Authen- aesthetic, then, Germans adhere the possibility of identification Hirsch—are suspended; trauma is tic’ Memory in the German to a memory-ideal that is repres- with the traumatized victim, not “built up.” Heckner conclud- Reception of Steven Spielberg’s sive insofar as it allows Germans because it involves “an affec- ed that Libeskind, unlike Hirsch, Schindler’s List”. Ball started by to view only “authentic” material tive-empathetic…interiorizing succeeds in proposing a memory describing the German public’s of the Holocaust, material that model” of transmitting Holocaust model which, because it avoids self-consciousness about the fact is in any event “unpleasurable.” memory between generations. the pitfalls of identification, is that it was being closely watched Ball concluded that this memory- Postmemorial perception of the future-oriented. Libeskind, then, by the world