“Tragic Narratives and Traumatic Histories
-
Multimedia Usage in Museums of
Twentieth Century Trauma”
Supervisor—Mirjam Hoijtink
Keywords – Multimedia, Technology, Trauma, Memory, National Identity
Word Count—23,000
11385820
Supervisor—Mirjam Hoijtink
THIS THESIS IS SUBMITTED IN PART FULFILMENT OF THE
REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF M.A. MUSEUM STUDIES AT
THE UNIVERSITY
OF AMSTERDAM — 2017
Keywords – Multimedia, Technology, Trauma, Memory, National Identity
Cover Images –
Left – “Revisited”, Permanent Exhibition, Berlin, Gedenkstätte Berlin-Hohenschönhausen, Photograph, *****, 15th November 2017
Right – Witness testimonies, Permanent Exhibition, Museo Diffuso della Resistenza, Photograph, ******, 8th October, 2017
Acknowledgements
This thesis could not have been completed without the grateful assistance of:
Mirjam Hoijtink and Ihab Saloul for their guidance,
Tim Streefkerk and Guido Vaglio, for their time, insight and access,
and James Fixter for his help with German linguistic elements.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
- ……….5
CHAPTER I
– THE SHADOW OF THE REPUBLIC: MODERN GERMANY AND THE
GDR………16
CHAPTER II
– “CIVIL WAR”, “CLASS WAR” AND THE IMAGE OF POPULAR UPRISING
IN POST-WAR ITALY………..40
CHAPTER III
- THE DEMOCRACY AND MORTALITY OF MEMORY IN THE
NETHERLANDS……….61
CONCLUSION
- ………82
INTRODUCTION
“the only memory worth talking about… is the memory of trauma.”1
It is increasingly apparent, as museums and their collections further progress into the twenty-first century, that multimedia elements are coming to form an inseparable part of their display strategies. In the public eye, these elements are expected, and held to be an essential part of the museum “experience.”2 This idea functions across all genres of museum, and is expected of them, be it merely as an audio guide in the sacralised space of an art gallery, or in fully interactive multimedia
experience in a museum of science and technology. The most interesting for me, and which shall be the subject of the following study, is that of multimedia’s place in those museums which focus on traumatic history and violence perpetrated during the twentieth century, specifically those which cover the Second World War and the ensuing Cold War, in Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. For these nations, their experience of the century termed by Niall Ferguson as “the age of hatred”,3 was uniquely traumatic and left an indelible mark on their national identity in this current century. For Germany, that is the experience of being a divided nation, and the problems of commemorating that in a reunified state. For Italy, the legacy of the resistance to fascism, which has been used and misused in decades since. And for the Netherlands, it is the legacy of occupation and liberation which holds interest.
When commemorating in the 21st Century, one tends to think of the great pomp and solemnity of public occasions, with military regalia and minutes of silence. In the words of Pierre Nora “one
1 Paul Antze and Michael Lettner, “Introduction: Forecasting Memory” in Tease Past: Cultural Essays in Trauma
and Memory, New York, Routledge, 1996, p. 56
2 Danny Birchall and Mia Ridge, “Post-web technology: what comes next for museums?”, The Guardian, 3 October 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/culture-professionals-network/culture-professionals-blog/2014/oct/03/post-web-technology-museums-virtual-reality
3 Niall Ferguson, “The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West”, Penguin Press HC, 2006
attends them rather than visits them”4 and there is no interactivity, no dialogue, and very little empathy experienced on the personal level, given the broad scope of the focus in such events. Trauma museums therefore, represent something of an alternative to this process, providing the opportunity to directly involve the visitor on the individual level in the remembrance process; to touch them emotionally, to challenge their prejudices and to take a direct hand in their making as a citizen.
These go by many names, such as “trauma sites”,5 “memorials”6 and “lieux de mémoire”7 (places of memory). They are often located at the very site whose trauma they are memorialising; be it a prison, a concentration camp, the site of a massacre, or a place of significance to an authoritarian past, and such is the case with the museums chosen for this thesis. For Italy that is Museo Diffuso della Resistenza in Turin, which was opened in 2003. In Germany, Stasimuseum, opened in 1990, DDR Museum, opened in 2006, and the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial, opened in 1994. Finally, for the Netherlands, the Airborne Museum Hartenstein in Oosterbeek, opened in 1978. However, though the attachment to the concrete and the physical of such history, as epitomised by Pierre Nora’s “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire”, is an indispensable part of preserving such historical trauma; it is not the only way of doing so. The museums selected are also
representative of the “memory boom”8 , a product of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, in which memory became increasingly significant both academically and societally. Along with the accompanying technological acceleration of the last several decades, memories now have
4 Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire”, Representations, No.26, Special Issue: Memory and Counter Memory, Spring, 1989, p.23
5 Patrizia Violi, “Trauma Site Museums and the Politics of Memory: Tuol Sleng, Villa Grimaldi and the Bologna Ustica Museum”, Theory, Culture and Society, Vol. 29, Issue 1, 2012, p.36
6 Robin Ostow (ed), (Re)visualising National History: Museums and National Identity in Europe in the New
Millenium, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2008. p.6
7 Nora, “Between Memory and History”, p.7
8 Silke Arnold de-Simine, Mediating Memory in the Museum: Trauma, Empathy, Nostalgia, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, p.14
manifold technological methods which can be employed to display them, which offer more possibilities for “mental and physical interaction” as a part of education. 9
Therefore, it shall be the purpose of this study to analyse how museums of 20th Century History utilise technology for both experience of, and reflection upon, traumatic narratives. Within this focus, the question of whether certain methods and practices can be said to be generally applicable or intrinsically linked and habitual to a single nation of 20 Century commemorators will also be assessed. The umbrella terms of “experience” and “reflection” must be broken down into the constituent practises to be analysed. In the experiential school of thought, the additions to the museum which champion empathy, interactivity and prosthetic memory (the method of allowing the visitor to experience a recreation of the trauma for themselves in a controlled environment) shall be the key practices to be analysed. Whilst, in the reflective school, elements such as nostalgia,
citizenship and memory preservation shall be the focus of analysis. The national narrative in each of the three countries to be discussed, and indeed the narratives of the cities in which the museums are located, are also of paramount importance. As Patrizia Violi points out in her own studies on sites of trauma, “close reading of these sites must be carried out in parallel with close readings of the specific political conditions”10 and therefore it must not, and shall not, be neglected. Through appreciation of this reality and the discourse surrounding each form of trauma-technology
interaction it shall be assessed whether or not they utilise the same techniques, how such practices differ depending on politics and national identity, and what can be expected from multimedia as the twenty-first century’s passage ushers in a generation with no direct experience of the conflicts and traumas of the twentieth. The six forms of trauma technology that shall be studied here are taken directly from the case studies involved, but are also well recognised by the academic community. This will allow for a broader discussion of each of these terms and their effects, linking each case study to the wider field.
9 Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, Museums and the Interpretation of Visual Culture, London and New York, Routledge, 2000, p.6/7
To further break down the terms under scrutiny in each case study they shall be explained more fully here, along with an explanation of where each fits into the field of trauma in museums more
generally, beginning with the terms of the experiential school. Empathy represents the use of technology as a tool to stimulate an emotional and introspective reaction in the visitor, a so-called pathemic restoration.11 This is often the most common of effects upon visitors at sites of trauma. Indeed, it is a greatly desirable effect from the perspective of the museum; as most often they seek to create this feeling to challenge preconceptions and shape the ethical outlook of the visitor,12 forging a connection between them and a shared set of ethical values.13 Technology’s place in this creation is significant and is continuing to grow as technology advances. Museum based holograms are currently being experimented with through the Shoah foundation at the University of Southern California, recording the witness statements of Holocaust survivors and make them available in a personal, interactive format. 14 Holograms aside, museums have been experimenting with empathy technologies for the last decade, as seen at Ypres’ In Flander’s Fields, which opened in 1998. Through their microchipped bracelets, and their own distinguishing characteristics such as gender, age and nationality, the section “Peers in the War” created an individual experience in which visitors would come face to face with genuine historical characters who shared those characteristics, spawning a feeling of similarity and, ultimately, empathy. However, this field is a bone of great contention with some memory studies scholars. Silke Arnold de-Simine, who used IFF as a case study in her own work, bemoaned the fact that the “Peers in the War” section, whilst technically and empathically impressive, only served to reinforce national and cultural differences, rather than hold the First World War as a shared European tragedy across national boundaries.15 Furthermore, Anne Rothe, an East German born academic, who specialises in the study of the Holocaust in popular culture, fears that trauma museums risk visitors “indulging their own sentimental arousal” rather than exercising
11 Violi, “Trauma Site Museums”, p.44
12 De-Simine, Mediating Memory in the Museum, p.77 13 Ibid, p.120
14 Lauren Goode, “ARE HOLOGRAMS THE FUTURE OF HOW WE CAPTURE MEMORIES?”, The Verge, 7 November, 2017, https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/7/16613234/next-level-ar-vr-memories-holograms-8i-actress-shoah-foundation
their “critical distance” to judge the past and learn from it. Oren Baruch Stier typifies this point of view when he states: “History is what we need, memory is what we desire.”16 The anxiety is that, if that perceived gulf between the study of memory and the study of history continues, the two disciplines will become polarised beyond reconciliation; setting up a false and oversimplified polarisation which equates history with knowledge acquisition and memory to a simple cognitive process.17 Both are required for the creation of empathy, and that will be of great significance in the case studies to follow.
Interactivity is perhaps the most appealing aspect of technology to museum visitors and it is utilised in a number of ways to have visitors feel a sense of agency in the trauma on display. Either simply by choosing a testimony to listen to from a touch-screen selection, or by placing themselves in the shoes of a historical persona. It caters to the need to feel historically transplanted in to the events on display. This method has also evolved out of the same debate which influenced the notion of
environment recreation and empathy, through the understanding that traditional means of producing and disseminating knowledge are no longer sufficient to equip a contemporary visitor.18 With this in mind, some museums have become labelled as “performing museums” in which tropes more familiar to film, television and the theatre are used19 in order to acclimate the institution to the changing tastes of the modern visitor.20 This change is particularly clear in the case of private
museums, as shall be seen in the DDR Museum case study, as such museums feel the need to conform to “customer” standards in order to survive, rather than challenge them beyond their comfort zones.21 Eilean Hooper-Greenhill recognises this, stating that museums must match the evolution of broader educational trends, which are “less formal” and offer more opportunity for
16 Oren Baruch Stier, in De-Simine, Mediating Memory in the Museum, p.2 17 De-Simine, Mediating Memory in the Museum, p.18
18 Kate Gregory and Andrea Witcomb, “Beyond Nostalgia: The Role of Affect in Generating Historical Understanding at Heritage Sites”, in Sheila Watson et al (eds), Museum Revolutions: How Museums Change
and are Changed, London, Routledge, p.263
19 Paul Williams, in De-Simine, Mediating Memory in the Museum, p.12
20 Colin Sorensen, “Theme Parks and Time Machines”, Peter Vergo, The New Museology, London, Reaktion Books, 1997, p.61
“mental and physical reaction”.22 To the average visitor, of most age brackets, interactive education is a commonplace feature in their everyday lives, and is much more accessible than other forms of display and knowledge transmission. Though she expresses a desire to integrate such methods, the great fear that museums are “dumbing down” their displays is not lost on Hooper-Greenhill. She points out that “’visual culture’ as a concept and as a methodology refuses to accept the distinction between high and mass culture.”23 Nor is she alone. In their study of visual trauma in Hong Kong, E. Ann Kaplan and Ban Wang noted that there was a risk of interactive trauma being “pushed in to the mystified circle of the occult.”24 A great stigma remains against interactivity, and games in particular, in a museum context, even in the 21st Century, something which journalist Charlie Brooker states stems from the interpretation of any form of interactive game as being “a children’s toy.”25 Despite such perceptions, their potential as an educational platform is widely accepted academically, as evidenced by recent studies conducted by Stanford University, where they were used as “platforms for deeper learning”.26
The idea of “prosthetic memory”27 is the final experiential practice under observation. This is most often seen as an attempt to recreate the traumatic environment for the visitor in a controlled manner, often to aid the creation of empathy, yet it can also be utilised for the purposes of thrilling, horrifying or educating. Each of these choices can be seen in the examples of this thesis; to thrill and entertain at DDR Museum, and to create a sense of confusion at Hartenstein. This format for
technology has a diverse academic debate surrounding it, and is also termed “vicarious trauma”28
22 Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, Museums and the Interpretation of Visual Culture, London and New York, Routledge, 2000, p.6
23 Ibid, p.14
24 E. Ann Kaplan and Ban Wang, Trauma and Cinema: Cross-Cultural Explanations, Hong Kong University Press, 2004, p.3
25 Charlie Brooker, Gameswipe, Documentary, Directed by Charlie Brooker, Zeppotron, London: Endemol UK, 2009
26
R.F. Mackay, “Playing to learn: Panelists at Stanford discussion say using games as an educational tool provides opportunities for deeper learning”, Stanford News, March 1, 201327 Alison Landsberg, Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass
Culture, New York, Columbia University Press, 2004, p.5
and “postnostalgia”.29 Examples of this strategy can be found in many different museums, from the museums of the First World War, such as In Flanders Fields or the Imperial War Museum, in which a trench or battlefield may be recreated, or the Stasimuseum in Berlin, in which technology is used to recreate the bureaucratic atmosphere of a government office. Though writers like Dominick LaCapra and Silke Arnold de-Simine embrace this notion of memory transplanting and re-living the
experiences of others as simply “new practices of historical remembrance” and guards against future reoccurrences of the trauma on display30, there are some who disagree.31 There is a concern, as voiced by Dipesh Chakrabarty, that institutions which focus too heavily on this feature only make it easier for visitors to arrive with “no prior historical knowledge” and leave in the exactly the same state.32 Moreover, the motives of those creating the experience are subtly different to the actual experience, as James Berger points out, and the “ideological conditions” of the audience
undoubtedly play a role in determining what can be shown or experienced, limiting the amount of actual historical reality portrayed, as shall be seen at DDR Museum.33 The effectiveness of this kind of experiential memory transaction is also debated. Colin Sorensen believes this merely satisfies an immediate desire for “confrontation” with the traumatic past, and does not even require an interest in history, meaning the wider meaning of the experience is lost without context.34 Cathy Caruth also follows this idea, stating that such prosthetic memories “cannot be wholly possessed” and that trauma, even recreated trauma, has a capacity to overload the senses, preventing the visitor from fully understanding the nature of what has occurred.35 In the case of this technological interaction with trauma, the definitions of “representation” and “re-presentation” are essential. A museum which focuses on the nature of the historic site to the trauma, and which transforms itself so much as to be less recognisable, yet more accessible to visitors, becomes a reproduction of itself, rather
29 De-Simine, Mediating Memory in the Museum, p.54 30 Ibid, p.1
31 Dominick LaCapra, in De-Simine, Mediating Memory in the Museum, p.1 32 Dipesh Chakrabarty, in Robin Ostow, (Re)visualising National History, p.1 33 James Berger, in De-Simine, Mediating Memory in the Museum, p.34/35 34 Colin Sorensen, “Theme Parks and Time Machines”, p.61
than a faithful conservation.36 Examples of this can be seen particularly clearly at chthonic sites in the UK, in the contrast between the Edinburgh Dungeon, heavily tourist-centric, look at the city’s trauma and the Greyfriar’s Kirkyard itself, the relatively unchanged site of Presbyterian incarceration and murder.
The first of the terms of the reflective school is perhaps the most controversial form of trauma-multimedia interaction. Nostalgia is often present in trauma museums, particularly those dedicated to a unique national experience, as shall be seen in the case of the DDR Museum, and is further enhanced by the presence of interactive technologies. The associated notion of “Dark Tourism” emerged at the end of the 1990s, in the work of Glasgow Caledonian academics Malcolm Foley and J. John Lennon, and has since taken on a key role in the tourist industry of many cities in Europe and elsewhere.37 According to De-Simine, the appeal comes from the ability of institutions to allow the visitor to experience suffering “at a temporal distance” and also represent, in some cases, a
compulsion to return to a familiar past, even one that was never directly experienced by the visitor. This area is of key significance for the first chapter of this thesis, in examining the methods employed by museums in Germany to portray its own traumatic past, that of the divided Cold War decades.38
Citizenship is not a new notion to any museum given their generally nationalistic origins. Museums have served as a method for political consolidation since their inception, and for modern trauma museums this mission is expanded. But, require a far broader concept of citizen-making than in the times of their origins. Furthermore due to the legacy of the Second World War, particularly in Germany, citizen-making has taken on a repentant, apologetic approach, reinforcing their support for the principles of democracy, and twenty-first century concepts such as multiculturalism, rule of law, human rights, peacekeeping and the free-market economy.39 In essence, trauma museums have
36 Violi, Trauma Site Museums, p.42
37 Malcolm Foley and J. John Lennon, “JFK and Dark Tourism: A Fascination With Assassination”, International
Journal of Heritage Studies, Vol. 2, Issue 4, 1996, p.1
38 Paul Kubicek, “The Diminishing Relevance of Ostalgie 20 Years After Unification”, Gerstenberger K., and Braziel (eds), After the Berlin Wall, Germany and Beyond, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, p.88 39 Ostow, (Re)visualising National History, p.i
become something of a vindication of modern society. Tony Judt sums this up well in his work on the holocaust, stating: “the recovered memory of Europe’s dead Jews has become the very definition and guarantee of the continent’s recovered humanity.”40 Such museums provide a decipherment of what we are in the light of what we are no longer41 and this continuity in citizenship will be a point of great interest in chapter two of this study, as the reactions of Italian museums of trauma to this idea are perhaps unique amongst European nations, a fact which greatly influenced Italy’s inclusion in this study.
Finally, memory preservation refers to the mission commonly undertaken by museums to preserve the recollections and experiences of those who endured trauma for the betterment of future generations. This is something of particular significance to museums of twentieth century trauma, given the advanced ages of the last living witnesses, and the subsequent loss of memory which shall occur when the last of them has died. This goes some way to explaining why my case studies are purely museums of 20th Century traumatic history, as these institutions now stand at a crossroads in their own history. They will soon have to make a choice between increased technology to display witness testimonies visually, as a Jean Baudrillard-esque method of cheating death, or fall back on a more memorialised display, devoid of such sympathies, and focused on historical fact rather than memory. This was embodied most vividly in the works of Pierre Nora, who inspired many of the memory boom academics who followed him. To him, a balance between historiography and memory was essential as, without that balance, history would be presented as a literal reconstitution of the past without lacunae or faults.42 For most, the presence of technology is an accepted part of the practice of preservation, given that “modern memory” is so focused upon the visual and the tangible.43 Hayden White terms this “historiophoty”; the use of “filmic discourse” as opposed to older text-based methods of display.44 However, the overall nature of such features is still debated,
40 Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, New York, Random House, 2011, p.804 41 Nora, “Between Memory and History”, p.18
42 Nora, “Between Memory and History”, p. 9 43 Nora, “Between Memory and History”, p.13
with some feeling it more accurate to label some of them “art installations”, rather than informative pedagogical tools, as shall be seen in the Italian case study of Museo Diffuso. 45 A further
complication for memory preservation is that the problems inherent with this area embrace debates and discourses in virtually every field of ethics.46 In terms of museum ethics, trauma is often less “object-centric” and thus flies in the face of older standards of museum display, in which large collections of objects form context for historical knowledge.47 Politically, there is great division amongst academics about the reliability of memory-centric displays, and the effect of the
“democratising”, bottom-up, nature of such memory-focused interactions. Anne Rothe, for example, holds that overly democratising risks evolving trauma into “trauma kitsch”, in which the individual may gain empathy, but no action is taken against the systems, political or social, which allowed such trauma to take place.48 Ethically, museums must ask if they are providing a framework which works well for those they seek to represent, the trauma witnesses themselves, or if it is as Violi describes; that museums have moved to a point where witnesses are no longer “the ideal visitor”, if indeed they ever were.49 Finally, historically, there is no consensus about the reliability of such memory sources. Geoffrey Hartman speaks of witness memories allowing a view “inside a situation, rather than from outside in an objectifying manner”50 whilst Oren Baruch Stier sees them as merely representative tools, a mediatory window onto the past, not an absolute truth.51
In terms of methodology, each case study shall be analysed against the forms of trauma technology described above and linked through them to the wider museum world. As previously described, each museum selected presents a useful microcosm of one or more particular effects or areas of the academic debate. In the case of Italy, the focus is on how contemporary citizen making suffers from
45 De-Simine, Mediating Memory in the Museum, p.98
46 Steven Hoelscher and Derek H. Alderman, “Memory and Place: Geographies of a Critical Relationship”,
Social and Cultural Geography, Vol.5, No.3, 2004, p.348
47 Ibid, p.10
48 Anne Rothe, Popular Trauma Culture: Selling the Pain of Others in the Mass Media, New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 2011, p.42
49 Violi, Trauma Site Museums, p.43
50 Geoffrey Hartman, in De-Simine, Mediating Memory in the Museum, p.98 51 Baruch Stier, in De-Simine, Mediating Memory in the Museum, p.101
the inability to successfully conclude a historical relationship with authoritarianism. In the case of Germany, the key element is how the legacy of a dictatorship not toppled and demonised by the international community can still create a sense of harmless nostalgia, despite the crimes it committed. Finally, for the Netherlands, the key points for trauma are how the unique local “bubbles” of remembrance which typify Dutch commemoration reflect the continuing democratisation of that process and how the field will cope once the last witnesses die.
CHAPTER I – THE SHADOW OF THE REPUBLIC: MODERN GERMANY AND THE GDR
Trauma, in the German context, represents a unique blend of victim and perpetrator, and this is well represented by how museums deal with the history of the German Democratic Republic, or GDR. Wolfgang Nowak, former minister in the provincial Saxon government, summed up the problem well when he stated: “we may be the first country which has, by unifying, created two peoples”0. This concept, which was subsequently named “the wall in the mind”, is one that is a constant problem for the cause of memorialisation in Germany and is a consistent force for disunity even in the modern day. Surveys conducted by Der Spiegel in 1995 showed that, in seven out of nine listed societal areas, those polled rated the GDR superior. These areas included prevention of crime, education, gender equality, social security and job training0 and were mirrored by results in more specific surveys in 2007, aimed at ascertaining which age groups felt most strongly towards the former socialist state. It was revealed that although the concept of “Ostalgie”, nostalgia for elements of East German life, was present in younger generations of Germans who never experienced life under socialism, it was more from a “kitsch” and “retro-cool” viewpoint, rather than that expressed by those in the 35-50 age group, who overwhelmingly believed East Germany was stronger in the aforementioned areas, a full fifteen years after reunification. This chapter will deal with three separate case studies in Berlin which attempt to reconcile the traumatic period of division. They are the Stasimuseum, located in the former Stasi headquarters at Ruschestraße 103, the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial, located in the former Stasi prison at Genslerstraße 66, and finally DDR Museum, located at Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 1.
0 Paul Kubicek, The Diminishing Relevance of Ostalgie 20 Years After Reunification, in Gerstenberger K., and Braziel J. (eds), “After the Berlin Wall, Germany and Beyond”, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, p.86 0 Ibid, p.90
CONTEMPORARY PRACTICES, HISTORICAL POLITICS –
Today’s German government, being the successor of the two divided states, has a vested interest in seeing that the commemoration of the GDR is undertaken in a manner which does not undermine its own political position. The problems of linking the two communities’ memorialisation of German history was incredibly complex at the outset, given that each marked the last unified German state, under National Socialism, as something akin to a spiritual successor for each other’s governments. For contemporary government though, the aufurbeitung (reappraisal) of the GDR is seen as too important to German national identity to be excluded from government concern.0 Nor is this a new realisation in Germany. From as early as 1998, during the administration of the SPD-Green coalition government, a government commission recommended that the government take a hand in the “examination and reappraisal” of the GDR. The so-titled resultant organisation, Bundesstiftung zur Aufurbeitung de SED Dikatatur, was called upon to submit recommendations for cultural institutions aimed at “[furthering] the anti-totalitarian consensus within our society as well as strengthen democracy and German unity.”0 The clearly political bent to its purpose was further reinforced by its 2006 report, which caused ripples amongst the cultural sector by recommending that independent museums and memorials fall under three distinct types. Firstly, those which covered the methods with which the regime oppressed East German society, secondly, the methods of control and persecution it employed and, thirdly, the division of country as a whole. Whilst most museums in German comply with this recommendation, either by their links to the government or their own wishes, it is no surprise that it met with resistance from independent institutions and organisations. Hubertus Knabe, the director of the Stasimuseum was particularly vocal, stating that such an approach risked making the GDR appear as “a social experiment on a grand scale, instead of an inhuman dictatorship.”0 Subsequent German governments also distanced themselves from the 2006
0 Anselma Gallinat, “Memory Matters and Contexts: Remembering for Past, Present and Future”, in Anna Sanders and Debbie Pinfold (eds), Remembering and Rethinking the GDR: Multiple Perspectives and Plural
Authenticities, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, p.152
0 “Die Stiftung”, Erinnerung als Auftrag, Bundesstiftung Aufurbeitung, 2017, https://www.bundesstiftung-aufarbeitung.de/die-stiftung-1074.html
report, fearing that focus on a desire to show “everyday life” in the GDR risked trivialising the dictatorship, and upsetting victim associations. The greatest difficulty, from a German perspective, was that the prevailing historical doctrine utilised by museums, and still used today, was Alf Lüdtke and Hans Medick’s notion of alletagesgeschichte (everyday history). This doctrine based itself on the importance of material culture to both the individual and the society, with the story of the individual told against the backdrop of a larger political context. How then would this be possible without sanitising the cruelty and crimes of a former dictatorship?
With this in mind, German museums must tread very carefully. Whilst the 1995 survey safely announced that only 15% of those polled wished there had been no reunification, it still showed a remarkable fondness for some aspects of the former dictatorship, and greatly muddied the waters of any attempt to display that history in a German museum. The museums which shall here be used as examples of this troubled past are all located in Berlin: the DDR Museum, The
Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial and the Stasimuseum. Multimedia in these cases takes on several dominant forms, as a tool to criminalise perpetrators and pillory accomplices; as a method of demonstrating how well the sites have been preserved; to preserve the testimony of those still living and, most tellingly, as a means by which the guilty can incriminate themselves.
COLD WAR POLITICS AND THE EFFECT ON GERMAN MUSEUMS TODAY –
After Nazisim was defeated in 1945, Germany became the melting pot for the early days of the Cold War and was exposed to the ideologies of others, rather than being left to form their own, as had been the case in 1918. Each half of the country was formed in its occupier’s image, both politically and materially, and each set against the other. GDR propaganda frequently used the image of National Socialism to brand the West as the bulwark of fascism; even as late as 1989 during General Secretary Erich Honeker’s speech to celebrate the GDR’s 40th anniversary. He referred to the GDR as the “western boundary of the socialist countries in Europe… firm as a dam against Neo-Nazism and
chauvinism” and was adamant that “…there is obviously a considerable amount of common ground between the revanchists in Bonn and the increasingly strong Neo-Nazis”when faced with the concept of reunification. 0
That level of ill-feeling, which was practiced daily by the political elements of both German nations, meant that common ground for post-unification memorials and the resolution of national traumas would have to be found elsewhere, and the method of doing so bring us, slowly, into contemporary German commemorations of trauma. Today’s museums have, for the most part, adopted the German historical tendencies of verfassungspatriotismus (constitutional patriotism) and alltagesgeschichte (everyday history) in relation to the history of Germany’s division and national trauma. The notion of everyday history had been popular in West-German historiography since the end of the Second World War, as its emphasis on individuality within a larger political context helped to undermine the idea of universal German responsibility for crimes during the war as well as to demonstrate a commitment by regular German citizens to the principles of democracy and the rule of law, an essential element in the 21st Century museum.0 The doctrine of “everyday history”, in the
memorialisation of the GDR, was first seen at the documentation centre for the study of the GDR in Eisenhattenstadt, the first of the GDR museums to open in the 21st Century. To that museum, everyday history represents “…the things that accompany its daily activities and its sources of remembrance… and is at the same time proof of the realities, ideas and actions of a society.”0 This practice, in turn, allows the political system to be damned, yet not the people who lived under it. They can instead be welcomed, as fellow Germans and citizens of a new unified state, provided they are not amongst “The Perpetrators.”0
0 “Erich Honeker on the Fortieth Anniversary of the GDR”, Documents: Democratic Awakening, GHDI (German History in Documents and Images), last modified 22 November 2017,
http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/docpage.cfm?docpage_id=3223
0 Robin Ostow, (Re)Visualising National History: Museums and National Identity in Europe in the New
Millenium, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2008, p.4
0 Andreas Ludwig, “Everyday Life: GDR: Permanent Exhibition, Eisenhattenstadt, Documentation Centre Everyday Life of the GDR, 2012
However, the practice of nostalgia can be a great problem in the commemoration of East Germany and museums covering the GDR have often been seen to fall into one of two categories, either as a memorial, with a focus on the criminality of the SED, or as a nostalgia site, plugging into the feelings of Ostalgie felt by elements of contemporary German society, further increasing the gulf between the “two Germans” of the contemporary joke. Whilst nostalgia in the face of trauma can be divisive, it is seen by de-Simine as two sides of the same coin. “What trauma and nostalgia have in common is that they are both reactions to spatio-temporal displacements and the recognition of loss. They speak of the desire or compulsion to return to the familiar that which has become alienated.”0 However, such accidental affiliation must be closely supervised in Germany, as they are of greater significance as the 21st Century’s second decade draws to a close; and right-wing political elements criticise the Liberal government of the Christian Democrats for failing to prevent terrorist activities in the wake of the Migrant Crisis. Parallels with authoritarian methods of crime prevention in Germany are inevitable in such a debate, with Liberal commentators reminding Germany of the cost of such policies.0 They also function as touchstones for political campaigns, as successive German political parties reaffirm their pledge to democracy.0.
TODAY’S DIVIDE: NOSTALGIA VS CITIZENSHIP -
0 Ibid, p.201
0 Andrew Green, “The Politics of Security in Germany”, The Atlantic, February 6, 2017,
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/02/germany-merkel-terrorist-berlin-stasi-security/515778/
0 Reuters Staff, “Merkel, Visiting Ex-Stasi Jail, Defends Freedom and Democracy”, Reuters, August 11, 2017, https://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idAFKBN1AR16C
Berlin’s Stasimuseum, as the first of the examples in this case study, utilises a reflective narrative to form a damning, memorialising narrative of the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, (Socialist Unity Party of Germany), or SED, and its instrument of societal oppression, the Ministry for State Security, or Stasi. The whole system is utterly vilified throughout, with memory preservation, citizenship and interactivity playing a role of great significance in this strategy. There is no shortage of judicial elements to their narrative style, from the use of words such as “perpetrators” to the use of line-up style displays of the various persons involved, which leave the visitor in no doubt of the criminal light the museum wishes to cast upon the East German political system as a whole. This comes as no surprise given the museum’s origins, via the widespread demonstrations following the fall of the Berlin Wall. The building complex which houses the museum (Fig.1) was stormed on January 15th 1990 by activists, to prevent the Stasi from destroying its documents and archives, in order to prevent the possibility of subsequent criminal prosecutions. The organisation
Antistalinistische Aktion Berlin-Normannenstraße (Anti-Stalinist Action), or ASTAK, which currently runs the museum was formed from those first dissenters, whose goal of preservation of documents now entails preserving the rest of the building, whose interior (Fig.2), curator Jörg Drieselmann proudly states are “all still genuine East German.”0 Drieselmann himself was imprisoned by the Stasi in Erfurt when he was a teenager, and individualism is not lacking in the exhibition either. Former Stasi informers are named-and-shamed by mugshots in the displays and their actions on behalf of the ministry are laid bare. These 189,000 mitarbeiters (“unofficial collaborators”) and their history of larceny, espionage and “psychological harassment measures” against “diversive elements” are made distinct by the multimedia elements.
0 Wiebke Hollerson, “Fighting Over the Past: Former Stasi Headquarters Provide Headache for Berlin”, Der
Spiegel, June 3, 2010,
Figure 1 – The Stasi Headquarters as it appears today, still preserved in its original East German style, both inside and out. The temporary exhibition “Revolution Mauer: The Fall of the Wall” can be seen in the bottom right of the photo.
Photograph, *****, November 14th 2017.
Figure – The most common use for technology in Stasimuseum, to emphasise the good job done in conserving the interiors. In this particular case, the memory
preservation undertaken is that of the environment itself rather than the people who worked there. This adds to the overall condemning narrative of the site, that the memory of the people there is not worthy of preservation, yet their victim’s memories are.
Photograph, *****, 14th November, 2017
Whilst the trauma multimedia employed melds elements of both the experiential and reflective schools, in that they employ a small degree of empathy and interactivity they, above all, focus upon citizenship. Video, audio and interactive touchscreen displays are utilised to support this focus yet are kept deliberately sparse to preserve the museum’s interior. In the first case, Stasi training videos are shown on multiple occasions in the aforementioned strategy of allowing the culprits to
incriminate themselves. The videos bluntly show the methods “employees”0 would utilise to search a residence, alongside the plethora of electronic surveillance devices, some even concealed in
furniture. It is here that memory preservation forms a key element of the evidence displayed, with witness testimonies having been committed to video. They are available throughout the exhibition; primarily to describe the personal effect of being the target of “psychological harassment measures” employed by the Stasi. Such measures were more subtle than simple arrests, involving months or even years of home invasions whilst the home was empty. Possessions would be moved around to unnerve the residents and rumour-mongering in the building would criminalise the target in the eyes of their neighbours, making them easier to control, or even forcing their emigration from the GDR. But the museum does more than simply describe their tactics, the testimonials in one section utilises the alltagesgeschichte of the individual to tell of the experiences of Karin Ritter, whose systematic harassment by the Stasi eventually lead to her suicide. This use of an personal exemplar allows for a greater empathic effect, and reflects the value of such memory preserving techniques. Luc Boltanski has written on an unwanted effect this strategy can cause, in which museums of trauma get caught up in stoking the empathy of their visitors, resulting in a “selfish way of looking, which is wholly taken up with the internal state’s arousal by the spectacle of suffering.”0 Stasimuseum avoids this by using this sole example and maintaining its criminalising narrative based on reflection, in which the effect is to demolish the idea of surveillance as a bloodless crime, something which the multimedia
0 “Excerpts from the MfS training film on Operational Case ‘Revisor’, 1985”, “The Perpetrators”, Permanent Exhibition, Berlin, The Stasi Museum, 2010
elements succeed admirably at. This creates a sense of empathy whilst not detracting from the criminalisation of those responsible.
Interactivity is an intrusive force in the opinion of Jörg Drieselmann however0, so interactive elements are kept to the bare minimum. Audio multimedia therefore, being non-visual, fits in with Drieselmann’s desire have less intrusive technology in the museum. It is implemented in suitably subtle ways to reinforce the authenticity of the visitor’s surroundings. These techniques range from simple typewriter noises, to emphasise the building’s bureaucratic purpose, to audio testimonies furthering the effect of the memory preservation on display. The bulk of the memory-preserving elements are dedicated, in large part, to ASTAK’s cause of environment preservation, which is unique in that instead of memorialising solely witness memories, it memorialises the surroundings instead. Accessible in each of the main rooms of the building’s third floor allow the visitor to sample pictures taken in 1990, when the building was seized. The rooms are still clearly recognisable, though
elements of the detritus accumulated during the Stasi’s occupation and hurried withdrawal are clearly no longer present. This is reflective of Hoelscher and Alderman’s work on “Memory and Place”, in which the preservation of urban landscapes is a method by which the current political system can bolster their political order.0 This form of citizenship through trauma is also bolstered by the recent inclusion of a temporary exhibition outside the main building, Revolution Mauer: Fall of the Wall. This exhibition emphasises the political corruption of East Germany and the process which led to reunification. Multimedia finds a key place in this environment, with interactive testimonials from former GDR citizens accessible on each of the dozen text panels in the area. Each funnels the individual stories into a larger contextual whole, exactly in keeping with the classic model of German historicism. Here however, the point is the same as the museum’s main focus, to praise the East German people for their role in reunifying the country. Technology is used to show their opinions and their opposition to the SED and the Stasi. They are continuously painted as the driving force behind
0 Tony Paterson, “Why Berlin Cannot Forget the Stasi”, The Independent, June 16, 2010,
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/why-berlin-cannot-forget-the-stasi-2002600.html 0 Steven Hoelscher and Derek H. Alderman, “Memory and Place: Geographies of a Critical Relationship”, Social
the eventual “revolution”, even those groups amongst them that, in the West, were seen as subversive or threatening, such as the punks. Phrases such as “In January 1990 the East Germans conquered the Office for National Security” paint the struggle as a military victory of the people, instilling a sense of pride in people of East Germany. 0 This struggle is contextualised and justified by the other panels, which lay out the history of violence employed in the name of socialism, including electoral fraud, denial of human rights, imprisonment, torture and execution. Its position outside the main museum is twofold, firstly preserving the curator’s vision for a time-capsule museum of
authentic décor and furnishings and, secondly, serving as a primer for the discussions to follow inside between the institution and the visitor. The memory preservation it embodies is used to aid the visitor in seeing the difference between the anonymous people of East Germany and the individuals who oppressed them for decades, as well as to legitimise their “revolution”.
This temporary exhibition also represents the newest phase in the museum’s lifespan, and the recent history of the institution lays bare the still-present fissures in East-West commemoration in Germany. Until 2010, ASTAK had run the museum as an independent organisation, but the increased pressure, both on the museum by the Federal government and the local Lichtenburg district government, has forced a re-think over the museum’s position in the city. In 2010, the Federal Government
announced its intention to take over the running of the museum, which was greeted with a defiant response, demonstrating clearly the divisions first seen in the surveys conducted by Der Spiegel. Dreiselmann was quoted as saying “one government agency should not be replaced with another”0 and that “it will be another example of the West taking over the East.”0 The local government was equally defiant, with their emphasis being on the need for renovation of the area, beginning with the demolition of “the Stasi, neo-Nazis, and Soviet-era tower blocks.”0 Their argument was that the museum’s preservation of the area had left as many as 1.1 million square feet of office space
0 The lived descendant of the Ministry for State Security implemented by Erich Honeker’s equally short-lived successor, Egon Krenz. It is frequently painted inside the Museum as an attempt to show reform within the SED, as a last ditch attempt to salvage the government.
0 Wiebke Hollerson, “Fighting Over the Past”
0 Tony Paterson “Why Berlin Cannot Forget the Stasi” 0 Wiebke Hollerson, “Fighting Over the Past”
unoccupied and vulnerable to vandalism. Although the museum was ultimately saved, and the much-debated interactive elements seen today were ultimately included in a government funded
renovation, the dispute shows clearly how the site still has the potential to stoke controversy. Overall, the multimedia is not intrusive, and the museum retains its true, socialist, form; with the multimedia enforcing a national pride whilst steering away from jingoism, choosing instead to mock such flag-waving and highlight its use as a feature of the socialist government, praising instead the quiet patriotism of the revolutionaries. This, in turn, sends a strong message about the citizenship the museum wishes to proselytise; that “constitutional patriotism” and respect for the rule of law marks out legitimate protests from anarchic mobs.
The second of Berlin’s former Stasi landmarks to be examined is the the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial, which focuses itself on memory preservation in a similar way to Stasimuseum. It also mirrors the former’s use of multimedia, to preserve the memory of the victims and demonise the perpetrators, whilst preserving the physical site itself (Fig.3).
Figure – The exterior of the Memorial as it appears today. Visitors must still enter through the main gate, in the same way the prisoners had to. Source – rottenplaces.de,
Formerly a prison for political enemies under the Nazis, it was subsequently taken over by the Soviet occupation forces. Control over it was transferrd to the newly formed Ministry for State Security in 1951 and In 1990, as with the Stasimuseum, former victims of the regime were the ones to institute the memorialisation of the site. However, unlike Stasimuseum, the Memorial was unable to save the vast majority of records from destruction, which has a great impact upon the nature of its
criminalising narrative, making it one of neutered anger, rather than successfully judicial, as seen at Stasimuseum. However, although the Ministry was able to dispose of the evidence of its cruelty to the prisoners, the relatively recent nature of the crimes and the rapid collapse of the GDR after the fall of the Berlin Wall, means that many witnesses to the crimes remain alive and are active with the memorial as tour guides and witnesses for its massive array of testimonies in the galleries.
The usual arguments against the inclusion of technology in memorials such as this speak of
disrespect to the dead, a phenomenon seen recently in the response to selfies at Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial.0 Yet, in this case the victims are still living and willing to testify in a trial within the court of public opinion, in a museum strategy whose creation is often credited to Germany; that of Zeitzeuge (“witness to history”).0 The importance of this can hardly be overstated, as it allows for what can otherwise be seen as an intrusive and disrespectful medium to have a key place in a trauma site, helping to form the debate surrounding the crimes whilst, at the same time, continuing its memorialising purpose.
To begin with, both experiential and reflective multimedia are utilised. The first rooms provide a wealth of memory-preserving elements, with singular audio testimonies from any of the inmates pictured on the walls immediately enforcing the personal nature of the trauma. Coupled with this, the prison’s veil of secrecy is immediately drawn back, as an interactive table display shows the development and various stages of habitation at the site across its four decades of operation.
0 Richard Hartley-Parkinson, “Powerful images that show why Holocaust Memorial selfies are so disrespectful”,
Metro, 19 January, 2017,
http://metro.co.uk/2017/01/19/powerful-images-that-show-why-holocaust-selfies-are-so-disrespectful-6391091/
0 Steffi de Jong, “Mediatized Memory: Video Testimonies in Museums”, Sharon MacDonald and Helen Rees Leahy (eds), The International Handbooks of Museum Studies, Vol. 4, p.69
Multimedia in this first case then, is used to unmake the “top secret prison”0 and lay bare the crimes perpetrated against the people. Hubertus Knabe, the Memorial’s director, plans to introduce even more interactive elements to counter deaths of the witnesses, whilst maintaining the personal bent the witnesses provide: “We are gradually starting to make preparations. Above all, we want to modernise the tours in the course of the reorganisation by equipping our guides with tablet PCs, using which the witnesses will get a chance to have their say in individual cells.”0 This intention serves to reinforce the belief that, unlike other memorials, technology certainly has a place at Hohenschönhausen, and the connection of the trauma-multimedia to the areas of trauma
themselves will be highly symbolic and deeply personal. However, these future plans may fly in the face of contemporary Germans expectations. Studies from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development reject the “overwhelming approach” of such tactics, and that even former inmates giving tours cause visitors to feel inhibited.0
The main exhibition space serves to demonstrate their commitment to Knabe’s reinvigoration of the witnesses through technology, not merely through over a dozen personal interviews arranged in the centre of the room (Fig.4) but also in the video elements which are used to historically contextualise the suffering of the interviewees. Films showing the events of the 1953 rising in East Germany, which was brutally suppressed by Soviet occupation forces, are directly linked to the environment given the statistics displayed alongside. Each such element is displayed alongside video and audio testimony, providing the personal edge to the larger events; exactly in keeping with the alltagesgeschichte doctrine, of the small individual experience of a larger event.
0 “Captured and Disenfranchised”, Permanent Exhibition, Berlin, Gedenkstätte Berlin-Hohenschönhausen, 2017
0
Paul Vorreiter, “Kritik an politischer Bildung mit Zeitzeugen”, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, August 12, 2017, translated from the German by James Fixter, http://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/gedenkstaette-berlin-hohenschoenhausen-kritik-an.2165.de.html?dram:article_id=393334As at Stasimuseum, the penchant for using multimedia to criminalise the perpetrators is also utilised. The infamous “U-boat”, the basement of the exhibition building housing the original cells, and the office spaces above it are used as a judicial platform. In the very offices where the Stasi employees worked, the employees are displayed on interactive touchscreens for public perusal. Their personal lives as well as their association with the prison are criminalised. Dr Wolfgang Dorr, former head of the prison hospital, is labelled as a drug addict and alcoholic; former Head of the Prison Department Paul Rumpelt is labelled as a bigamist; and former secretary Annie Sachse accused of being an adulteress. The personal aspect has little to do with their actions at the prison and, thus, takes the Stasimuseum’s policy of criminalisation to the next level; attacking their personal lives in the way the Stasi threatened to with former inmates. The goal is clearly to criminalise yet also to dehumanise, and is likely linked to the fact that, with the exception of forty small prison sentences, 250,000 Stasi members escaped criminal prosecution. The difference with Stasimuseum however is that the multimedia elements are taken a step further in terms of how the witnesses are utilised, by having them as a part of experiential elements. Former inmate Wolfgang Warnke for example, imprisoned at Hohenschönhausen in 1975, is used to recreate the stress position his guards kept him in for an interactive installation which the visitor has to look through the cell door’s original “spyhole” to view. In the museum’s text panel, it explains: “He is not allowed to lean against the wall, his hands are to be placed flat on the table”0. Utilising the present tense for this multimedia element feels significant, as though the museum is continuing to bitterly remind the visitor that the crimes are ongoing due to lack of prosecution.
This air of bitterness hangs over the entire memorial, in a way not present at any other, given the still-present nature of the crimes. This is further reinforced by other multimedia in an installation entitled “No Remorse”, in which the former Stasi member Siegfried Ratalzick justifies his involvement with the organisation. While Ratalzick is the only former Stasi officer to be featured in the museum’s testimonials, he is part of a wider network which still has an effect on the culture of German
0 “Revisited”, Permanent Exhibition, Berlin, Gedenkstätte Berlin-Hohenschönhausen, 2017
Figure – These three testimonies represent only a fraction of those available in the exhibition spaces. Their proximity to the contextual elements can also be seen clearly in this photo, allowing them to be backed up by historical evidence Photograph, *****, 14th November 2017.
remembrance, the Society for Legal and Humanitarian Support, or GRH. This organisation was founded by former Stasi members and employees of the East German government after the fall of the Wall and, in the eyes of the museum, constitutes the criminal element to be vilified in its exhibitions. The society’s chairman Hans Bauer was quoted by Reuters in 2009 as stating “Most of our friends would say they are not at home in this Germany.”0 GDR historian Jochen Staadt reflected upon the commonality of this attitude amongst former employees: “Either people have disappeared and don’t talk or they try to justify themselves, saying the Stasi was a security service like any other.”0 Several court cases in the last decade have defended the rights of former Stasi officers to remain anonymous, so it is unsurprising that only one living witness is identified at the Memorial. This incredible level of legal posturing demonstrates just how relevant the topic of the GDR is in today’s Germany, and how important the institutions believe their mission of preservation and presentation of trauma is. This “what happened afterwards” theme is a common feature of Berlin’s Cold War remnants, as it is also featured at the Tränenpalast (Palace of Tears) trauma site adjacent to Berlin’s Friedrichstrasse train station. The former border crossing point between east and west was erected after the Berlin Wall in 1962 and served its purpose until the wall no longer existed. In this case however, the multimedia portrays the case of the “everyman” of East Germany, the border officials who were suddenly put out of their jobs when the wall fell. Their contemporary interviews are displayed at the site alongside the joyful images of the vast majority, to demonstrate both sides of the story; not to incriminate, but to cause empathy in the visitor. “As you know, someone once said the Wall would be there one hundred years” the unnamed guard is heard to say “So we never had to worry about job security before.”0 With its far more accusatory approach, the privately run
Hohenschönhausen and Stasimuseum can be seen as much more unique, with a far more aggressive policy towards the GDR.
0 Madeleine Chambers, “No Remorse From Stasi as Berlin Marks Fall of the Wall”, Reuters, November 4, 2009, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-wall-stasi/no-remorse-from-stasi-as-berlin-marks-fall-of-wall-idUSL118487020091104
0 Ibid
0 “Border Experiences: Everyday Life in the Divided Germany”, Permanent Exhibition, Berlin, Tränenpalast, 2017
By contrast to the previous two museums on the GDR, DDR Museum takes a completely different approach to how it deals with this traumatic history. As Werner Hanak-Lettner has described, it is a museum which adopts “modes of representation that are more familiar from the theatre, the cinema, or literature”, in that it thrives on being a performance museum.0 The stated goal of the museum is to provide geschichte zum anfassen (“living history”) yet in doing so it has been criticised for “riding the Ostalgie crest”0 and not dealing sufficiently with the crimes of the SED and the level of oppression suffered in everyday life by citizens of the GDR. Founded to fill a perceived gap in Berlin’s history of the GDR, the museum was a private venture undertaken by noted German ethnologist Peter Kenzelmann, and its location (Fig.5) in the government quarter, directly on the River Spree opposite the city’s museum island, whilst symbolic, is not a specific site of trauma. Unlike
Stasimuseum and the Hohenschönhausen, no one was killed or imprisoned there. However, the link between past trauma and present nostalgia is made patently obvious, with a surplus of multimedia-based games and activities, which, when combined with a visit to a site like the Hohenschönhausen, creates a somewhat surreal museum of the dictatorship. The greatest narrative difference between the DDR Museum and its contemporaries in Berlin is marked in its lack of witness testimony. Its head of research, Stefan Wolle, explained this choice as a reaction to the historical conclusive central points which historians have agreed upon for the history of the GDR. “The GDR was a satellite state at Moscow’s mercy. The security apparatus was the iron fist that held everything together… [But] for millions of Germans it was their life… sometimes it was quite easy to forget about politics and ideology.”0 This attitude is perfectly summed up by fellow former East German historian Anne Rothe, who states that such trauma kitsch narratives “ostensibly represent an apolitical world.”0
0 Werner Hanak-Lettner, in Silke Arnold de-Simine, Mediating Memory, p.2 0 Arnold de-Simine, Mediating Memory, p.165
0 Ibid, p.180
0 Anne Rothe, “Popular Trauma Culture: Selling the Pain of Others in the Mass Media”, New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 2011, p.45
Figure 2 – The museum’s façade, buried under the promenade above, and directly facing the stop for tourist river cruises along the Spree. Whilst its location may not have traumatic significance, it certainly doesn’t prevent it from receiving visitors, with 4,000,000 visitors between its opening in 2006 and 2015 according to the German National Tourist Board. Source: tripwolf.com,
http://www.tripwolf.com/en/guide/show/175 37/Germany/Berlin/DDR-Museum
Both Wolle, and the museum’s director Robert Rückel, also grew up in East Germany and the museum utilises prosthetic memory in abundance to recreate the environments of their youth. These range from a typical home, to the immortalised Trabi, to a rigged election; but all are
undertaken without mention of those who suffered as a part of the system, in direct contravention to the policies of the other sites. In doing so, the DDR Museum struggles to be seen as anything other than the GDR’s spiritual successor, or at least its last shrine. This whole approach, in the view of Anne Rothe, reduces the intimacy of human emotions, embracing nostalgia rather than a sense of
melancholy, and represses any chance for the visitor to view the subject from a “critical distance.”0
The first section of the museum visitors encounter is a contextual space, designed to inform the visitor on the state of the GDR in everyday life, before proceeding to experience that life for
themselves. The museum’s narrative differences with the other museums on the GDR in Berlin is laid bare from this point, as the wording in the text panels and information screens seems to be fixed somewhere between sarcasm and socialist propaganda; to the point where it can be difficult to tell if the museums is being serious or not. An example of this appears in a panel related to the
employment figures within the GDR, which states: “There was no shortage of jobs, especially for production workers… Cash bonuses bought a round of drinks for the whole shift. This was just one manifestation of collectivism, another was the worker’s habit of purloining material from their ‘nationally-owned enterprises. After all – so ran the justification – they were only taking what belonged to them.”0 As a result of the museum’s choice to not include witness testimonies from contemporary people, this sort of information is not substantiated by evidence, it comes across instead as a private joke between the East German members of staff and East German visitors (Fig. 6). It makes no mention in the contextual sections of the massive shortages suffered in East German industries, or of the shortages of goods which resulted from its isolation. Nor does it make mention of areas outside “production” or make use of measurements of economic growth beyond the classic
0 Anne Rothe, “Mass Trauma Culture”, p.43
notion of full-employment being the sign of a strong economy. It forgoes the evidence which would negate this idea, coming across as propaganda rather than educational material.
There is no empathy for the people of East
Germany to be gained from such a
one-sided narrative, and it sets the standard for
the rest of the museum’s multimedia
elements. The only witnesses in the museum are those East Berliners who
feature in a state-funded film about the
government’s housing projects in the 1970s. However, this multimedia element only serves to
Figure 3 – Another example of the museum’s curious stance on the DDR. Included amongst the contextual elements are several direct comparisons between the GDR and the FRG, such as this chart depicting the medals totals for the Olympic games between 1968 and 1990, a curiously competitive focus for a museum in a country which wants to reconcile such competitive comparisons. Photograph, *****, November 14th 2017
further reinforce the obviousness of the one-sided narrative, as each of the Germans interviewed for the film speak positively of the changes being made before adding an aside to show their continued dissatisfaction with their living arrangements. The proverbial icing on the cake being the comments of a woman who states: “I have to say I’m happy, I work for the housing commission”, perfectly summarising the nature of speaking one’s mind in the GDR, yet accidentally rather than by the museum’s design.
The second section, composed of the newest elements added in 2016, reemphasises the trauma technology the museum cares for the most, that of interactivity. In this area, the classic Eastern bloc apartment so hated by the modern council of the Lichtenburg district, as seen in the case of the Stasimuseum, is put on proud display as the centre of the GDR social sphere (Fig.7). Technology reinforces this illusion of time-travel, with screens replacing the original windows and providing a computer-generated view of the socialist state in the 1980s, from the Fernsehturm in the distance, to the Trabants parked on the street below. While the effect of the illusion is undoubtedly immersive, the technologies within try equally hard to immerse the visitors in the everyday experience of GDR citizens. However, rather than explaining the effect of the housing shortages in the GDR seriously, the museum falls back on sarcasm, describing the situation of the flat as “domestic bliss” and making light of the identical nature of each of the purpose-built buildings. A text panel in this section asks: “What happens if you wake up to find your wife has a new hairstyle and your toothpaste tastes different?” before answering “You had probably gone home to the wrong flat!”0
This attitude prevails over all of the remaining multimedia elements. Interactive games are numerous in the exhibition, with one of the most memorable being the opportunity to “participate” in a rigged election. The interactive touchscreen allows for the visitor to cast their ballot and is even provided the same information that contemporaries received from western sources of how to make your ballot a “no to all” vote by drawing a large cross across the paper. However, while this immersion creates a sense of understanding with the political plight of the average voter, that their engagement
was essentially meaningless, the only response from the multimedia if you choose to cast a “no” vote is a stern remark on the screen warning: “That could have consequences!”0 and informing briefly that “your provocative behaviour during a people’s election has been placed in your file”. It falls short of truly encouraging empathy, another of the key terms in the experiential school. Without the testimony or story of someone who suffered for such an action, there is no sense of consequence created by the choice made.
Further interactivity is seen in the prosthetic flat envrinoment, in which the TV schedule from March 5th, 1984, is available to watch in the living room. In the bedroom meanwhile, a camera-based mirror places your disembodied head onto a digital East German person, activated simply by entering the doorway. This further depersonalises any idea of the people who lived in such accommodation and promotes humour rather than introspective empathy. One of the most telling trauma-multimedia is the game to create “The New Socialist Human”, in which the visitor proves they’ve been paying
0 “Folding”, “The Elections to the Volkskamer on 8 June 1986”, Permanent Exhibition, Berlin, DDR Museum, 2017
Figure – A segment of the interactive flat, complete with original furniture. It is important to note that the
museum actively seeks out individuals with such furniture, in order to provide the level of authenticity it desires. However, this also increases its reputation as a place of nostalgia for the GDR, coming across as the private collection of an eccentric rather than a museum at times.
