United city, divided memories? : Cold War legacies in contemporary Berlin / Dirk Verheyen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Verheyen, Dirk.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Memorials.

Collective memory.

Berlin (Germany)--History--1945-1990.

Berlin (Germany).

Collective memory--Germany--Berlin.

Memorials--Germany--Berlin.

Germany (East). Ministerium für Staatssicherheit.

Germany (East).

Berlin Wall, Berlin, Germany, 1961-1989.

Germany--Berlin.

Physical Description:

viii, 301 pages, 10 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Lanham, MD : Lexington Books, [2008]

Summary:

United City, Divided Memories? focuses on the basic question of how Berlin today deals with three specific Cold War-era legacies: the presence of the four Great Powers, the East German Stasi, and the Berlin Wall. Dirk Verheyen looks at monuments, museums, and memorial sites as illustrations of Berlin's struggle to craft an effective shared identity that ties together its western and eastern halves. Verheyen's comprehensive and critical analysis is considered against the broader background of Germany's efforts at coming to grips with its dual twentieth-century totalitarian past. This book demonstrates that important elements of east-west contrast linger and complicate the city's efforts at crafting a more definitively future-oriented united identity. United City, Divided Memories? will stimulate debate among German studies scholars, as well as among those interested in German history and cultural studies.

Contents:

1 A City and a Nation Between Memory and Future 1

2 Capturing Memory and Crafting Identity 23

Part I Victors and Adversaries: The Legacy of the Great Powers

3 Occupation, Confrontation, Departure: The Great Powers in Postwar Berlin 61

4 Soviet Traces 75

5 The Western Allies: A Vanishing Legacy? 91

6 Great Powers on Display: A Brief Tale of Two Museums 101

Part II Beyond Files and Trials: Public Remembrance and the Legacy of the Stasi

7 Bureaucratic Shield and Repressive Sword: Rise and Demise of the Stasi 139

8 Tyrannical Banality on Display: The "Stasi-Museum" 155

9 The Commemoration of Persecution in Hohenschonhausen 163

10 Coming to Terms with the "Second" German Dictatorship 175

Part III The Berlin Wall: Meaning and Memory

11 Monumental Schizophrenia: The Berlin Wall and Concrete Closure 205

12 Commemorating a Vanishing Monument 219

13 Checkpoint and Watchtower Museums 233

14 Painting and Tracing the Wall 247

Conclusion: History, Memory, Symbolism 255.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 279-294) and index.

ISBN:

9780739118399

0739118390

OCLC:

182553050