The Transfiguration of the Hero: a Memory Politics of the Everyday in Berlin and Budapest
THE TRANSFIGURATION OF THE HERO: A MEMORY POLITICS OF THE EVERYDAY IN BERLIN AND BUDAPEST by Júlia Székely Submitted to Central European University Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology In partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Supervisors: Judit Bodnár CEU eTD Collection Jean-Louis Fabiani Budapest, Hungary 2016 STATEMENT I hereby state that this dissertation contains no materials accepted for any other degrees in any other institutions. The thesis contains no materials previously written and/or published by another person, except where appropriate acknowledgement is made in the form of bibliographical reference. Budapest, February 29, 2016. CEU eTD Collection i | P a g e ABSTRACT Although after the period of the Second World War the death of the hero was loudly announced (Münkler 2006), in recent years, the academic interest in heroes has been reemerging. Authors not only established a critical understanding of the hero who came to be defined as an end-product of a careful construction (e.g., Todorova 1999, Giesen 2004a), but ―new heroes‖ also made their mass appearance (Jones 2010). Yet, in contrast to the majority of these analyses that either concentrate on one particular hero (e.g, Verdery 1999) or on one specific period (e.g., Lundt 2010), I discuss the conceptual and aesthetic transformation of the hero. Focusing on the genre of public works of art in Berlin and Budapest from 1945 up to the present time, I study various processes of the transfiguration of the hero. Besides the linguistic and cultural connections between Berlin and Budapest beginning from the 19th century, I assumed that the two cities can represent many of the dual arguments of memory studies.
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