Difficult Heritage
Negotiating the Nazi Past in Nuremberg and Beyond
Price: $35.95
Add to Cart- ISBN: 978-0-415-41992-5
- Binding: Paperback (also available in Hardback)
- Published by: Routledge
- Publication Date: 24th November 2008 (Available for Pre-order)
- Pages: 272
About the Book
How does 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 on 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.Macdonald looks at how Nuremberg has dealt with its Nazi past post-1945. In doing so, it seeks to highlight changes over time in 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.
Table of Contents
1. Negotiating difficult heritage: introduction 2. Building heritage: Words in stone? 3. Demolition, cleansing and moving on 4. Preservation, profanation and image-management 5. Accompanied witnessing: education, art and alibis 6. Cosmopolitan memory in the City of Human Rights 7. Negotiating on the ground(s): guided tours of Nazi heritage 8. Visting difficult heritage 9. Unsettling difficult heritage