to Trauma after WWII

Since the 1980s, there has been a resurgence of interest in the scholarship of cultural memory, primarily motivated by the remembrance of the Holocaust in Germany and Austria. The idea of cultural memory, or Gedächtniskultur in the original German, is the intersection between history and cultural identity. Cultural memory is structured around collective narratives of victimhood and genocide in our current “posttraumatic age.”1 Both World Wars and the Holocaust have become prevalent among historians of cultural memory in European nations.

As with any cultural movement, collective memory is not created in a vacuum, but is “created, established, communicated, continued, reconstructed, and appropriated” throughout time.2 Memory on the cultural or national scale is cultivated in hegemonic narratives, artwork, monuments, and museums, to name a few. It is enacted through public representations of loss or victory. As a cultural construction, the idea of public remembrance becomes subject to the following questions: what is important or unimportant? How is the important preserved against forgetting?

Decades removed from the Second World War, the emotional dissonance created by such widespread violence cannot be ignored: we live in “the shadow of a past that continues to affect the present in many different ways and haunts those born after it.”3 As we cope with this trauma, cultural memory becomes an institution, anchored in monuments and places that promote remembrance or forgetting. Place-based memory can be demonstrated in a variety of ways, most popularly in public monuments and museums. Several tensions emerge from cultural memory: opposing memories of the time, identity politics, consequences of these interactions at the national and international levels, and the “‘languages’ and cultures through which disputes about memory and identity” occur.4 Memory involves every level of culture and nationhood.

How do we witness the past? Global injury inflicted during the Second World War and the Holocaust has left physical places marked with both visible and invisible scars. People and places were obliterated, some never recovered. What is required now is “a superhuman effort to preserve the gaps and wounds that are left by destruction.”5 Mnemonic devices such as museums and memorials to the Holocaust and the Second World War have become “public venues for negotiating interpretations of the past,”6 places in which a narrative is formed around the events of history. Memorial places often elicit conflicting emotions by intensifying the past; they are very public ways of breaking a cultural silence and replacing it with cultural memory. Monuments or memorials are essential forms of cultural memory because they “not only proclaim and embody history, [they have] repeatedly become the scene of history, again in traumatic and triumphal moments.”7

Cultural memory is constructed around the narrative that is culturally and politically perpetuated. Vienna provides an interesting case study for researchers of cultural memory because of its annexation by Nazi Germany (Anschluss). Until the last thirty years, the

dominant cultural narrative remembered in Austria was one of victimization, and the government “officially stressed the absence of Austria’s fault and share of responsibility” for the Holocaust.8 These divergent identities provided an alternative to cultural memory, an enforced cultural forgetting. Within the framework of a victim narrative, the predominant culture of public commemoration was embodied in monuments to Austrian soldiers who served in World War II but resisted Nazi command. The memory of resistance perpetuated their identity as victims. Even the Mauthausen Concentration Camp was, until the 1960s, a place commemorating the Austrian fight for fr against the Nazis, when in reality only a small number of prisoners had been Austrian, and Austrians made up most of the camp guards.9

Recently, a survey revealed a significant increase in memorials to Holocaust remembrance erected in Vienna from 1945 to 2015, publicly denouncing the Austria-as-victim myth and assuming its share of responsibility for Nazi crimes.10 The idea of Gedächtniskultur implies an individual or individuals interacting with history. The German use of Gedenkstätte or Denkmal (memorial) refers to “a particular place that may or may not contain monuments”; this is different from the German use of Mahnmal, which refers to a memorial built specifically “as a warning to future generations.”11 While many war memorials are considered Gedenkstätte, memorials to the Holocaust and concentration camp sites such as Mauthausen are Mahnmal. To the Austrian people, they “preserve the relics of that past and serve as a place of learning.”

Today, the streets of Vienna are home to hundreds of monuments, plaques, street signs, and even pavement stones that commemorate violence against Jews and other Nazi victims. The Steine der Erinnerung, or Stones of Remembrance, are small gold plaques placed in the cobblestones or walls of buildings throughout the city to remember the individuals victimized by the “Aryanization,” or ethnic cleansing of the Jews, in Vienna’s neighbourhoods. The Stones of Remembrance fuse together people and place, relating “people’s memory to sites where victims had their apartments, made their living, received their education, practiced cultural activities, or were detained shortly before deportation.”

Steine der Erinnerung (Stones of Remembrance): Holocaust Survivors gather around plaques bearing their names. City of Vienna, Press and Information Services,Remembering for the Future. Fair use.

dominant cultural narrative remembered in Austria was one of victimization, and the government “officially stressed These divergent identities provided an alternative to cultural memory, an enforced cultural forgetting. Within the framework of a victim narrative, the predominant culture of public commemoration was embodied in monuments to Austrian soldiers who served in World War II but resisted Nazi command. The memory of resistance perpetuated their identity as victims. Even the Mauthausen Concentration Camp was, until the 1960s, a place commemorating the Austrian fight for freedom against the Nazis, when in reality only a small number of prisoners had been Austrian, and Austrians made up

Recently, a survey revealed a significant increase in memorials to Holocaust remembrance erected in Vienna from publicly denouncing the Austria-as-victim myth and assuming its share of responsibility for Nazi implies an individual or individuals interacting with history. The German use (memorial) refers to “a particular place that may or may not contain monuments”; , which refers to a memorial built specifically “as a warning to memorials to the Holocaust and To the Austrian people, they “preserve the relics of that past and serve as a place of learning.”12

Today, the streets of Vienna are home to hundreds of monuments, plaques, street signs, and even pavement stones that commemorate violence against Jews Steine der , or Stones of Remembrance, are small gold plaques placed in the cobblestones or walls of buildings throughout the city to remember the individuals victimized by the “Aryanization,” or ethnic cleansing of the Jews, in Vienna’s neighbourhoods. The Stones of Remembrance fuse together people and place, relating “people’s memory to sites where victims had their apartments, made their living, received their education, practiced cultural activities, or were detained shortly before deportation.”13

Close up of the Servitengasse Keys. Sydney Dvorak, 2016.

Another example of place-based memory is a project known in English as the Servitengasse Keys. This memorial is a small glass box set into the street, containing the keys of 377 Jewish people that were “cleansed” from their homes and businesses in the Servitengasse community after the annexation of Austria in 1938. It was found that of these 377 people, 133 were captured and sent to concentration and extermination camps, 150 were likely able to immigrate or escape abroad, and 21 people died in Vienna.14 Only 5 people survived to stay in Vienna, and the fates of 68 people are still unknown. Since its installation in 2008, the Servitengasse Keys has become a meeting place for survivors and the relatives of victims. As it is located on a street populated with grocery stores and shops, visitors to and residents of the neighbourhood pass the memorial going about their daily lives. It brings the history of this neighbourhood to the present.

The political negotiation of memory means that there is a constant reshaping and revision of narrative. Symbolizing the contradictions of Austria’s historical response to their involvement in the Nazi regime is Square. Originally built to honour the Habsburg victory in the Napoleonic Wars, national demonstrations in Austria. In 1934 it was re-dedicated to the fallen soldiers of World War I.

With the surrender of the Wehrmacht in 1945, Austria’s official culture of remembrance was centred on remembrance of soldiers who fought in both World Wars, with emphasis on the myth that Austria was Hitler’s first victim. Austria remained a Catholic country and in the 1950s, All Souls’ Day became the official day for remembering Austrian Wehrmacht soldiers at the Heroes’ Monument in the The public remembered Austrian soldiers’ commitment to the homeland. In these spaces, “narratives of genocide confront narratives of victimhood.”

Inauguration of the Heroes’ Monument at the Burgtor in Vienna,1934. Paula Witsch, 1934, Österreichisches Nationalbibliothek. Fair use.

Austrian Soldiers rally at Heldenplatz in Vienna, 1934. Österreichisches Nationalbibliothek,1934. Fair use.

After 1955, soldierly sacrifice was no longer part of the narrative surrounding former Wehrmacht soldiers and their participation in fighting under Nazism.17 Patriotism became synonymous with the disentanglement of Austrian history from their association with the German Wehrmacht. While a ceremonial laying of a wreath on the Heroes’ Monument continues as tradition, the monument has been redefined as the “only state memorial site for the fallen soldiers of both world wars and the victims of National Socialism.”18

The political negotiation of memory means that there is a constant reshaping and revision of narrative. Symbolizing the contradictions of Austria’s historical response to their involvement in the Nazi regime is Heldenplatz, or Heroes’ Square. Originally built to honour the Habsburg victory in the Napoleonic Wars, Heldenplatz has been a place of national demonstrations in Austria. In 1934 it was re-dedicated to the fallen soldiers of World War I.

With the surrender of the Wehrmacht in 1945, Austria’s official culture of remembrance was centred on remembrance of soldiers who fought in both World Wars, with emphasis on the myth that Austria was Hitler’s first victim. Austria remained a Catholic country and in the 1950s, All Souls’ Day became the official day for remembering Austrian Wehrmacht soldiers at the Heroes’ Monument in the Burgtor (Castle Gate) at Heldenplatz. 15 The public remembered Austrian soldiers’ commitment to the homeland. In these spaces, “narratives of genocide confront narratives of victimhood.”16

Austrian President Van Der Bellen lays a wreath on the Heroes’ Monument in Vienna. Bundesheer/Carina Karlovitz, 2019. Fair use.

Opposite the Heroes’ Memorial in Heldenplatz is the Memorial to the Victims of Nazi Military Justice, also known as the Deserters’ Memorial. It was installed to commemorate Austrian Wehrmacht soldiers who refused to carry out Nazi orders or deserted their military posts entirely. The display focuses on “Was damals Recht war (what was right/lawful then.)”19 This monument did much to challenge the controversial memorialisation of Nazi Wehrmacht soldiers and existing pan-German nationalist entanglements.

Cultural memory in Germany has been shaped by a desire to bring Germany into the fold of Western European anti-fascism. Immediately following the Second World War, the German narrative of remembrance was centred on rejecting blame for the Holocaust. Some even went so far as to marry German and Jewish suffering, collecting and comparing traumas. Characteristic of this is the statement “For each Jew who died in a concentration camp, dozens of Germans were killed in an [Allied] bombing.”20 While factually true, statements like this perpetuated the false narrative of German innocence. By the end of the 1950s, the word Vergangenheitsbewältigung, which translates loosely to coping with/ overcoming the past, was introduced in (West) Germany.

Vergangenheitsbewältigung largely sums up the progression in German cultural memory from immediately following the Holocaust to today. Today, memory of Nazi aggression has given way to a “self-critical memory” of the many “human rights abuses that unites former victims, perpetrators, and bystanders, and lends legitimacy to the European Union.”21 In the first several decades after the Holocaust, German Jews privately remembered those they had lost. After generational shifts in the German Jewish community, the push to tell the stories of Holocaust victims, and a renewal cultures of remembrance, it was decided Berlin would have a Holocaust memorial.

On May 12, 2005, after thirteen years of deliberation, the memorial opened next to the Brandenburg Gate. The site hosts 2700 stone steles, representative of Berlin’s murdered Jews, a symbolic cemetery. It is a large, open-air space in which one can wander among the steles and contemplate the memory of the victims. The modern stone maze fits well within the backdrop of Berlin’s modern cityscape. It is a place that introduces new generations to the truth of the Holocaust and the reconciliation narrative that characterizes German cultural memory today.

The memorial was met with mixed reactions in both Germany’s Jewish and non-Jewish community. German philosopher Jürgen Habermas wrote that there is a German obligation to the remembrance of the Holocaust, that the German people must “keep awake the memory of the suffering of those murdered by German hands.”22 Others, such as Jewish writer Rafael Seligmann, criticized the memorial for not including other victims of Nazi persecution, thus potentially erasing their histories of persecution.

Still others criticized the memorial for its existence, that it memorializes German guilt. These claims are defended by stating that the memorial breeds negative nationalism, that it is little more than “The monumentalization of our [German] disgrace.”24 Once again, moral dissonance is created in a memory space meant to confront the erasure of the Jewish narrative. Places such as Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial are not designed to make remembrance easy, but rather to invoke the German meaning of Mahnmal (memorial), as a place designed to break cultural silence and serve as a warning for future generations.

After the defeat of Germany in 1945, the more pressing issues of rebuilding the now divided country swallowed any immediate national remembrance. In the late 1940s, some monuments to victims of fascism were erected, but eventually this gave way to the loud lamenting of German defeat and Allied occupation. By the 1950s, remembering the fallen of war became more prevalent; this created an environment of traumatic memory, “in which the psychological damage of war could go underground, explode long after the events which triggered it, and last a lifetime.”25

There are very few monuments or memorials to German Wehrmacht soldiers today. The vast majority of statues of soldiers are relics from the First World War. Though, some of those monuments have been expanded to include the names of those who fought between 1938 and 1945. There are still many Germans, most from older generations, who would like to shut their eyes to any monuments commemorating that dark period of Germany’s history. Writer Martin Walser explained “Everyone knows the burden of our history, our everlasting disgrace. There is not a day in which it is not held up before us.”26 Some see monuments to Wehrmacht soldiers and the Holocaust as memorials to German guilt.

It is more likely to find understated monuments to Wehrmacht soldiers in smaller villages and towns. For example, located in the town of Kollnau, six stone men stand in uniform guarding a fallen stone comrade. Between them are the etched names of those from the town that died in battle. Above them are the words the names of the men from Kollnau who died in the Second World War. Above their names are the dates 1939–1945, but there are no words heralding them as heroes. While the fallen soldiers of World War I may be remembered as heroes, those who fought for Hitler’s Germany may not.

It is more likely to find understated monuments to Wehrmacht soldiers in smaller villages and towns. For example, located in the town of Kollnau, six stone men stand in uniform guarding a fallen stone comrade. Between them are the etched names of those from the town that died in battle. Above them are the words “Unsere Helden” (Our Heroes) and the dates 1914-1918. Added slightly to the side are the names of the men from Kollnau who died in the Second World War. Above their names are the dates 1939–1945, but there are no words heralding them as heroes. While the fallen soldiers of World War

Historians have often been in favour of “musealizing national heroic representations of the past” as a tool for the development of cultural memory.26 Musealization occurs when something is detached from its original context and placed in a museum for exhibition. This is vastly different from representations of memory as seen in monuments and memorials because the museum is physically separated from the authenticity of the places attached to the memory. The twentyfirst century museum brings history to the visitor through first-hand accounts, objects from the past; and “experiencing a simulated authentic past through replicas and historical reenactment.”27 There are positives and negatives to the musealization of history. The challenge becomes the accurate representation of suffering, without dramatisation. Exhibits of the Second World War must balance how much to involve the visitor and “how to connect ‘difficult’ pasts to the present.”28 Museums focused on war, in particular the Second World War, often reflect the politics endorsed by the country in which the institution is located. The museum provides a space for remembrance in which questions can be asked and answered, and public representations of the losses of the Second World War and the Holocaust can be presented in factual and understandable ways. They can tell stories of heroism or defeat; they can correct or affirm national assumptions; they can honour or exclude narratives. War museums are both agents of politics and messengers of memory. In these museums, “The experiential approach to understanding war suggests, rather than induces, terror.”29

Cultural memory is just like any other form of memory: it is created and confirmed again and again. In the case of the museum, the monument, or the memorial there is no real distinction between history and myth: “What counts is not the past as it is investigated and reconstructed by archaeologists and historians but only the past as it is remembered.”30 All nations and cultures have identities informed by historical narrative: the monuments we see, the museums we visit, the history we are taught, and the stories that are left out. It is the mnemonic devices we encounter that encourage us to remember a certain way. What is important? What needs to be preserved? What needs to be warned against or learned? We are all witnesses to history as it unfolds before us, in the form of memory.

European Studies (history stream) major