Difficult Pasts provides a wide-ranging discussion of contemporary Germany's rich memorial landscape. It discusses the many memorials to German losses during the Second World War, to the victims of National Socialism and to those of GDR socialism. With up-to-date coverage of many less well-known memorials as well as the most publicised ones.

"Focussing on German responses to the Holocaust since 1945, Postwar Germany and the Holocaust traces the process of Vergangenheitsbewl̃tigung ('overcoming the past'), the persistence of silences, evasions and popular mythologies with regards to the Nazi era, and cultural representations of the Holocaust up to the present day. It explores the complexities of German memory cultures, the construction of war and Holocaust memorials and the various political debates and scandals surrounding the darkest chapter in German history. The book comparatively maps out the legacy of the Holocaust in both East and West Germany, as well as the unified Germany that followed, to engender a consideration of the effects of division, Cold War politics and reunification on German understanding of the Holocaust. Synthesizing key historiographical debates and drawing upon a variety of primary source material, this volume is an important exploration of Germany's postwar relationship with the Holocaust. Complete with chapters on education, war crime trials, memorialization and Germany and the Holocaust today, as well as a number of illustrations, maps and a detailed bibliography, Postwar Germany and the Holocaust is a pivotal text for anyone interested in understanding the full impact of the Holocaust in Germany."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

Beyond Berlin breaks new ground in the ongoing effort to understand how memorials, buildings, and other spaces have figured in the larger German struggle to come to terms with the legacy of Nazism. The contributors challenge reigning views of how the task of "coming to terms with the Nazi Past" (Vergangenheitsbewältigung) has been pursued at specific urban and architectural sites. Focusing on west as well as east German cities—whether prominent metropolises like Hamburg, dynamic regional centers like Dresden, gritty industrial cities like Wolfsburg, or idyllic rural towns like Quedlinburg—the volume's case studies of individual urban centers provide readers with a more complex sense of the manifold ways in which the confrontation with the Nazi past has directly shaped the evolving form of the German urban landscape since the end of the Second World War. In these multidisciplinary discussions of important intersections with historical, art historical, anthropological, and geographical concerns, this collection deepens our understanding of the diverse ways in which the memory of National Socialism has profoundly influenced postwar German culture and society. Scholars and students interested in National Socialism, modern Germany, memory studies, urban studies and planning, geography, industrial design, and art and architectural history will find the volume compelling. Beyond Berlin will appeal to general audiences knowledgeable about the Nazi past as well as those interested in historic preservation, memorials, and the overall dynamics of commemoration.

Unresolved tensions in German postwar memorials

This book analyzes postwar Germany to show how social movements shape public memory and influence democratization through cooperation and conflict with government.

More than 800,000 German women were victims of the sexual violence perpetrated by Allied troops at war’s end, however, rape victims have not been the dominant image in public memories of the German wartime experience. Instead, memorials, ceremonies, speeches, and books lauded women as post-war Trümmerfrauen, “rubble women” who worked to reconstruct war-torn cities after 1945. This thesis sits at the intersection of changing perceptions of German victimhood and theories of memorialization, and examines, through a gendered lens, wartime diaries such as A Woman in Berlin, novels, newspaper articles, documentary films, and stone memorials, including the Soviet War Memorial in Berlin’s Treptower Park, and statues erected in honour of Trümmerfrauen. Both the German Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany instilled female wartime experiences into the public memory landscape of their nations; however, they did so in limited and intentional ways, in an effort to construct histories that aligned with their political goals. German memory politics shifted throughout the Cold War, and changed again after reunification, to reflect new nation-building projects.