Colonial Memories and National Memories. An Uneasy Encounter between Africa and Europe. By C. Muñoz

Celeste Muñoz Martínez, Lecturer in the History of Africa, University of Barcelona Cover picture: View of the room Rituals and Ceremonies, Musée royal de l’Afrique centrale | © MRAC, Tervuren, photo Jo Van de Vijver In 2006, then British Prime Minister Tony Blair caught the world by surprise when he issued an unprecedented apology for …

The art project as a tool for reflection on historical memory and genocide. By M. Morcate

Montse Morcate , PhD, artist, researcher and lecturer of photography at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Barcelona Cover picture: Christian Boltanski. Réserve des Suisses Morts, 1991 The contemporary photographic art project has incontrovertible value as a tool for transmitting and reflecting on historical memory and genocide. In this respect, teaching in …

Can memorials heal the wounds?

All images by Ana Milošević   By Ana Milošević, a researcher at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven), Belgium, affiliated with the Faculty of Social Sciences and the LINES Institute (Leuven International and European Studies).   In 2014, the Swedish artist Jonas Dahlberg won a competition for a memorial to the victims of the Utøya …

The one who sows wind, reaps storms. Validity of the Damnatio memoriae

Picture: Detail of the penitentiary file of Celestino García Moreno, peasant of Morata de Tajuña, shot on June 14, 1939, in the walls of the East Madrid cemetery | quieneseran.blogspot By Fernando Hernández Holgado, associate professor at the Department of Contemporary History of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid   A historical note Madrid was one …

Re-Use of Nazi symbols in Germany after 1945. By Stefanie Endlich

Stefanie Endlich Honorary Professor of the Faculty of Fine Arts, Berlin University of the Arts (Universität der Künste Berlin) Cover picture: Imperial Eagle with Swastica at the “Führer’s Building” in Munich; picture taken in the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism (picture: Stefanie Endlich   Right after the capitulation of Nazi Germany, …

History will liberate. By Pavel Tychtl

Pavel Tychtl Representative of the European Commission There are two stories that illustrate well the many complex issues connected with memory. Both of them are linked to one place with a very specific role in the memory of the 20th century. The place is the concentration camp of Buchenwald and the first story is from …