Remembering in Dresden 2017

The bombing of Dresden in 1945 has been interpreted as a barbarian destruction of an “innocent city” - until today. The “Monument” by the Syrian-German artist, M. Halbouni, challenges this remembrance.

The post Remembering in Dresden 2017 appeared first on Public History Weekly.

Quelle: https://public-history-weekly.degruyter.com/5201715/remembering-in-dresden-2017/

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The Downfall?! Can History Teaching Still Be Saved?

"When historical dates are meaningless in history lessons" – this is the headline of a polemic article "Die Welt" has recently published to argue against the new history curriculum in Saxony-Anhalt.

The post The Downfall?! Can History Teaching Still Be Saved? appeared first on Public History Weekly.

Quelle: https://public-history-weekly.degruyter.com/4-2016-39/the-downfall-can-history-teaching-still-be-saved/

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History on Stage: News from History Theater

 

English

History is booming – this platitude has been around for nearly 30 years. But although movies and television, exhibitions and memorial sites, reenactments and living history, history magazines and computer games have increasingly become objects of research in popular and popularized representations of history, one particular field has, until now, been omitted: history theater. Here, the simulation of the past encounters its deconstruction–therefore it should become a field of research for public history.

 

In the Third Wave

The term history theater is not used as an umbrella term for various kinds of reenactments and living history, as profoundly introduced by Wolfgang Hochbruck in his monograph, “Geschichtstheater”. Here it is understood as a specific kind of documentary theater,[1] that Hochbruck has not dealt with until now.[2] History and not “fictitious” stories have been conquering the stage since a decade in manifold ways.

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Quelle: http://public-history-weekly.oldenbourg-verlag.de/4-2016-26/history-on-stage/

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Local History Knowledge instead of Regional Folklore

English

The question about the relevance and applicability of historical knowledge becomes particularly urgent in the context of local history and regional history. Learners are currently not very motivated to occupy themselves with local and state history as far as centralised examinations are concerned. Life designs based on migration und multiple localities also give rise to the very practical, everyday problem of transferring what has been learned.

 

 

No Place for Local History

Centralised examinations and performance measurements have led to a marginalisation of contents related to local and regional history[1] because, as is well known, these are hard to generalise and their specifics run contrary to the trend towards standardisation in educational policy. Locations that have Roman ruins or medieval buildings offer a variety of starting points that differ from those in towns and villages that have contemporary monuments or a memorial site dedicated to the history of the 20th century. If, nevertheless, local or regional history does make an appearance in the textbooks or syllabi of the 16 German states, then it usually serves to illustrate and concretise history in general, and with the aim of strengthening the identity of the inhabitants of Saxony, Bavaria, or Brandenburg etc.

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Quelle: http://public-history-weekly.oldenbourg-verlag.de/4-2016-14/knowledge-local-history-instead-regional-folklore/

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Identity or Brand for the HPBG? “Preussen sells”

 

English

State museums such as HPBG are highest-level politico-cultural institutions. Currently, a new conceptual design for the permanent exhibition in the House of the History of Brandenburg-Preußen (Haus der Brandenburgisch-Preußischen Geschichte; HBPG) in Potsdam is being debated. The exhibition has been in place since 2003 and is therefore out-dated, at least from the perspective of exhibition technology. Museum-related didactical innovations alone do not play a role during considerations about the new concept. Instead, economic interests seem to be decisive – a trend that is currently emerging in many publicly financed museums and exhibition venues[1] in Germany.

 

 



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Quelle: http://public-history-weekly.oldenbourg-verlag.de/4-2016-7/preusen-sells/

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Historia Magistra Vitae? The Banality of Easy Answers

 

English

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) newspaper recently published an article by Berlin historian Alexander Demandt which had previously been rejected by the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, a conservative political foundation. The following republication of the article by Swiss paper Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) caused a debate. Demandt’s hypothesis: the fall of the Roman Empire provides immediate historical lessons for today’s migrant crisis which must no longer be ignored.

 

Immigrating Germanic Hordes

In his article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) from January, 21st 2016, Alexander Demandt employs the seemingly matter-of-fact tone of the chronicler to speak of the “end of the old order” without explicitly referencing present-day problems.[1] Those who know Demandt as a theorist of history[2] and as a classicist cannot help being irritated by this text. On the one hand, Demandt should be better aware than anyone else that the end of the Roman Empire was not simply caused by “Germanic hordes”, as he puts it, and by seemingly unmanageable “numbers of immigrants”, but by a number of complex and intertwined factors.

[...]

Quelle: http://public-history-weekly.oldenbourg-verlag.de/4-2016-3/historia-magistra-vitae-banality-easy-answers/

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