Title: United city, divided memories? : Cold War legacies in contemporary Berlin /
Authors: Verheyen, Dirk.
Publisher: Lexington Books,
Year: 2008
Subjects: Germany (East).; Collective memory Germany Berlin.; Memorials Germany Berlin.; Berlin Wall, Berlin, Germany, 1961-1989.; Berlin (Germany) History
Abstract: "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."--Jacket.
Contents: A city and a nation between memory and future -- Capturing memory and crafting identity -- Occupation, confrontation, departure: the great powers in postwar Berlin -- Soviet traces -- The western allies: a vanishing legacy? -- Great powers on display: A brief tale of two museums -- Bureaucratic shield and repressive sword: rise and demise of the Stasi -- Tyrannical banality on display: the "Stasi-Museum" -- The commemoration of persecution in Hohenschönhausen -- Coming to terms with the "second" German dictatorship -- Monumental schizophrenia: the Berlin Wall and concrete closure -- Commemorating a vanishing moment -- Checkpoint and watchtower museums -- Painting and tracing the wall.