Eastern European museums represent traumatic events of World War II, such as the Siege of Leningrad, the Warsaw Uprisings, and the Bombardment of Dresden, in ways that depict the enemy in particular ways. This image results from the interweaving of historical representations, cultural stereotypes and beliefs, political discourses, and the dynamics of exhibition narratives. This book presents a useful methodology for examining museum images and provides a critical analysis of the role historical museums play in the contemporary world. As the catastrophes of World War II still exert an enormous influence on the national identities of Russians, Poles, and Germans, museum exhibits can thus play an important role in this process.
Describes how Eastern European museums represent traumatic events of World War II in ways that depict the enemy in particular ways based on the interweaving of historical representations and cultural stereotypes and beliefs.
Presents a useful methodology for examining museum images.
Provides a critical analysis of the role historical museums play in the contemporary world.
"...the book highlights the fascinating issue of displaying war, and, through display, defining and exposing certain concepts of national and local identity. In that sense the volume is an important contribution to the growing literature on Central and East European museums in particular, and the issue of presentation of war in museums in general." · Canadian Slavonic Papers
"The study contains a multitude of interesting details and observations pertaining to various regimes of collective memory, the specifics of national and local commemorations, and the inclusion of contested past into the fabric of museum exhibitions." · Laboratorium: Russian Review of Social Research
"Certain key passages make very important and significant points about the depiction of the past in the recently 'museified' Eastern European countries. The focus on Dresden, Warsaw, and Leningrad/St. Petersburg works very well as each thematically driven case study complements each other and offers new ways of understanding images of the enemy in historicized museum depictions." · Keir Reeves, Monash University
