Urbanities,
Vol. 3
·
No 2
·
November 2013
© 2013
Urbanities
72
The Research and Memorial Centre on Normannenstrasse – located on the premises of
the former headquarters of the East German Ministry for State Security in Berlin-Lichtenberg
– offers a contrasting reading of the past. On the one hand, it condemns the system of
domination and social control; on the other hand, it praises the opposition and resistance in
the GDR. This memorial project was proposed in 1990 by the interim government of the GDR
and was subsequently run by the ASTAK association,
4
a group of opponents and defenders of
civil rights who participated in the process of dissolution of the Stasi services in Berlin.
Lastly, I shall mention the Information and Documentation centre (IDZ) set up by the
BStU,
5
which also describes the Stasi as an instrument of power and social control by the
SED.
Many of the museums and memorials described above embody an
in situ
memory.
They evoke memory by putting visitors in places that, by virtue of their authenticity, call on
the visitors’ emotional world. ‘This concern for contact with the thing’ comes, according to
Daniel Fabre, ‘from a pedagogical formula’ which consists in ‘making the presence of the
past truly felt’ (Fabre 2001: 31). In other words, ‘the feelings of the past’ are recreated in
order ‘to be shared’ (Fabre 2001: 31). The real places, still imbued with memories of the
executioners (
Täter
), physically confront visitors with the ‘hard and repressive side of the
East German dictatorship’ (Lindenberger 2003: 33). Admittedly, visiting these places
‘directly involves the visitor’s body’, and the media that are employed in this process –
artefacts as well as witnesses – ‘do not address only the rationality of language, but [...] also
call on emotion’ (Wahnich 2005: 30). Horror and indignation are precisely the feelings on
which the transmission of the educational messages delivered by these commemorative places
is based.
As shown by the examples that I have given, the readings of the GDR in the Berlin
urban landscape are mainly formed through the evocation of the repressive and iniquitous
nature of the regime. The musealisation of the GDR, which occurred at the same time as the
process of reunification,
6
tends to represent East Germany as a negative model against which
the national model of the new Germany gains full meaning and strength. The memorial image
of the GDR – both controlled and sanctioned by past public policies from the Land and the
Bund – is thus seen as a negative national heritage.
All this points to the links between social memory and material persistence in space.
When a change occurs, a spatial modification supports the historical rupture (Connerton,
2000: 65). In the recent history of Germany the reunification was a serious symbolic and
factual rupture which gave rise to new readings of the national past. In this context, the
4
This is the
Antistalinistische Aktion Berlin Normannenstrasse
– Normannenstrasse Berlin Anti-
Stalinist Action.
5
This acronym stands for
Bundesbeauftragten für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der
ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik –
Federal Commissioner for the Records of the
Ministry of State Security in the former German Democratic Republic.
6
The first exhibitions were organised when the East German state was still in the process of
disappearing. The very first exhibit focused on the demonstrators’ placards of the autumn of 1989. In
this way, the very recent past was immediately documented and ‘cooled down’.
