The city-text, the street names and statues, in Budapest demonstrate the emergence of unity and again conflicts over different levels and contents of postcommunist politics. The city-text works in the articulation of communities, the ‘people’ and ‘space’, and the developments between fragmentation and unity, which are characteristic to political development in Hungary since the late …
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Wie gehen Gesellschaft und Politik mit dem toten Bösen um? Die Leiche des rumänischen Diktators Nicolae Ceausescu wurde buchstäblich auf Eis gelegt, und der Umgang mit seiner Leiche ist bis heute ein „Un-Thema“ geblieben. Sind die Erinnerungen an ihn, seine Ära und seinen Tod nun heiß oder kalt? Eine unvollendete Erzählung mit europäischer Moral und …
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Erzwungene Wege ["Forced journeys"] is the title of the newly opened exhibition at the German Historical Museum in Berlin on the history of forced migration in Europe. It has been organized by the German League of Expellees, which represents Germans forced to migrate after WWII, and is a step towards the League’s goal to set up a permanent exhibition in the German capital. The exhibition has been the source of ongoing diplomatic conflict between Germany and its eastern neighbours – above all Poland – since the League called on Poland to pay compensation to former German owners of Polish property and even opposed Poland’s accession to the EU. Philipp Ther outlines the background of the historical conflict between Germany and Poland, the reasons behind the paradigm shift from culprit to victim in the German view of its history, and the enduring and very different memory in Poland of the German occupation.
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