Structures of Memory: Understanding Urban Change in Berlin and Beyond (Cultural Memory in the Present) - Softcover

Jordan, Jennifer A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 080475277X ISBN 13: 9780804752770

Publisher: Stanford University Press, 2006

Synopsis

In many different parts of the world people cordon off sites of great suffering or great heroism from routine use and employ these sites exclusively for purposes of remembrance. The author of this book turns to the landscape of contemporary Berlin in order to understand how some places are forgotten by all but eyewitnesses, whereas others become the sites of public ceremonies, museums, or commemorative monuments. The places examined mark the city’s Nazi past and are often rendered off limits to use for apartments, shops, or offices. However, only a portion of all “authentic” sites―places with direct connections to acts of resistance or persecution during the Nazi era―actually become designated as places of official collective memory. Others are simply reabsorbed into the quotidian landscape. Remembering leaves its marks on the skin of the city, and the goal of this book is to analyze and understand precisely how.

About this title

About the Author

Jennifer A. Jordan is Professor of Sociology and Urban Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

From the Back Cover

"This is an original and fascinating work that will be a welcome addition to the ever-growing conversation on the cultural functions of memorialization, official and vernacular memorial processes, and the relation between remembering and forgetting. Jordan reminds us, as well she should, that what does not gain a place in the landscape is as revealing as what does finally gain the prestige of a public site."--Edward T. Linenthal, Indiana University

From the Inside Flap

In many different parts of the world people cordon off sites of great suffering or great heroism from routine use and employ these sites exclusively for purposes of remembrance. The author of this book turns to the landscape of contemporary Berlin in order to understand how some places are forgotten by all but eyewitnesses, whereas others become the sites of public ceremonies, museums, or commemorative monuments. The places examined mark the city's Nazi past and are often rendered off limits to use for apartments, shops, or offices. However, only a portion of all "authentic" sites--places with direct connections to acts of resistance or persecution during the Nazi era--actually become designated as places of official collective memory. Others are simply reabsorbed into the quotidian landscape. Remembering leaves its marks on the skin of the city, and the goal of this book is to analyze and understand precisely how.

Edition details

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 080475277X
• ISBN 13: 9780804752770
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304