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? Difficult Heritage focuses on the case of Nuremberg – a city whose name is indelibly linked with Nazism – to explore these questions and their implications. Using original archival, interview and ethnographic sources, it provides not only fascinating new material and perspectives, but also more general innovative 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 significant others, in Nuremberg and elsewhere. In doing so, Difficult 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, Difficult Heritage provides a rich in-depth account of this most fascinating of cases. It also engages in comparative reflection 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 ‘difficult heritages’ have been dealt with elsewhere. By doing so, the author offers an informed perspective on ways of dealing with difficult 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 For my mother Because not all heritage is difficult 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 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. © 2009 Sharon Macdonald 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 Macdonald, Sharon. Difficult heritage : negotiating the Nazi past in Nuremberg and beyond / Sharon Macdonald. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Postwar reconstruction – Germany – Nuremberg. 2. Nuremberg (Germany) – Buildings, structures, etc. 3. National socialism – Psychological aspects. 4. Collective memory – Germany – Nuremberg. 5. Cultural property – Germany – Nuremberg. 6. Nuremberg (Germany) – History – 20th century. I. Title. DD901.N92M34 2008 943’.324086 – dc22 2008018739 ISBN 0-203-88866-9 Master e-book ISBN ISBN10: 0–415–41991–3 (hbk) ISBN10: 0–415–41992–1 (pbk) ISBN10: 0–203–88866–9 (ebk) ISBN13: 978–0–415–41991–8 (hbk) ISBN13: 978–0–415–41992–5 (pbk) ISBN13: 978–0–203–88866–7 (ebk) Contents Acknowledgements vi 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 difficult heritage 164 9 Unsettling difficult heritage 186 Notes 193 References 212 Index 225 v ACKnowLedgements I am grateful to the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Arts and Humanities Research Council for financial support for this research; and to colleagues in Sociological Studies at the University of Sheffield 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 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 Kulturwissenschaftliches 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, and for illuminating discussions with him and other members of the project. As this research has been underway, I have published vi 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 profited 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, Sheffield, 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, Sheffield, 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 benefited from many friends and colleagues who have talked and sometimes walked difficult 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, Gunther Kress, Fiona MacLean, Morgan Meyer, Danny Miller, Clive Norris, Elsa Peralta, Nuno Porto, Regina Römhild, Alexander Schmidt, John Urry, Gisela Welz, members of the Erlangen Runde; and students at the universities of Sheffield, Manchester, the Humboldt University in Berlin and, especially, at the Sociology Institute in Erlangen-Nürnberg. I also thank Juliane Günther and Anita Littmann for research assistance. 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, Germany and difficult 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 difficult 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,