Abstract
Over the last few years, academic explorations of ‘European memory’ have multiplied – not only, but in particular, within German-speaking research; among the most recent contributions count notably Helmut König (2008), Kirsten Buchinger et al. (2009) and Claus Leggewie (2011). Already the various national transpositions of Pierre Nora’s lieux de mémoire had advanced a sound level of criticism of this paradigm within memory studies. The more recent supranational adaptations were promising in turning the critique into a profound theoretical and methodical renewal. Critical towards Nora’s ‘tendency to unification and canonisation and his nationally oriented side effects of myth-creating’ (p. 7), the ambitious Europäische Erinnerungsorte are part of this exploration on a European scale. This impetus puts the volume under review in line with the recent emphasis in memory studies to go beyond an essentialist understanding of culture and commemorating groups.
The series of publications goes back to a project based at the Institute for European History in Mainz. The present volume is the first of three, which in total fill more than 1200 pages. The first tome is dedicated to central features of European self-understanding, the second one illustrates them by case studies and the third tome focuses on interactions between Europe and ‘the world’. Most contributors are distinguished professors of the humanities and social sciences, German in majority and part of an academic ‘generation Europe’ influenced by the experience of growing up during or just after the Second World War. It might be worth, one day, to enquire in detail into the biographies of scholars, generational experiences of ‘being European’, and personal motivations in doing memory research.
In response to the insight of the plurality of memory, as pointed out by the critique of Nora’s lieux de mémoire, the editors elaborate a threefold conception of European lieux de mémoire. Its first condition is the reception of the remembered ‘phenomenon’ by contemporaries as a European phenomenon; the second, a transmission in a European dimension over time; and finally, the aim to determine sites of memory that are also relevant for Eastern Europe. It goes without saying, all of these criteria can be questioned with good arguments, but it is certainly the first one that is the most debateable. Why should an initial European reception be a criterion for a European site of memory? What is insufficient with including those mnemonic phenomena that have been Europeanized over time, corresponding to political circumstances and social change? The suggested approach runs the risk of neglecting dynamics of memory, changing connotations in and over time and the fact that Europeanness is as contingent as other attributes. This criticism raises doubts about the extent to which the volume can succeed in going beyond a simple inventory of European sites of memory, in particular if the attribute ‘European’ is set equal to knighting a site of memory (p. 11). As intellectually stimulating as this threefold definition remains, nevertheless many of the contributions are not entirely able to do justice to the formulated demands. For instance, the articles on ‘Islam’ and ‘Geographic Directions’ lack the proof of an initial European reception; also, the East–West overarching impetus gets lost throughout the volume when some articles, such as the one on ‘Enlightenment’ or the ‘Economic’, regrettably bypass the Eastern half of the continent by and large.
Regarding the 24 case studies, factual history prevails in the scrutiny of Europäische Erinnerungsorte, turning them into concise summaries of the topics. As an example, the exploration of the history of Christianity over 2000 years illustrates successfully the significance of the Christian faith for European culture, but ignores the interpretational appropriation of a Christian–European past that should be central for an investigation of memory. Judging by the ambitious introduction, this approach blurs the explanatory potential of memory studies as suggested by the editors. Nonetheless, at times, the volume also gives proof of this potential. Elisabeth Oy-Marra, for instance, leads the reader through the changing interpretational appropriations of ‘Europe’ in the fine arts since the Middle Ages. The article does not limit itself to a survey of depictions of the myth of Europa’s abduction by Zeus, but works out how these representations, for example, relate Europe to a positive attitude towards territorial expansion or depict the continent as rich and superior.
A second observation leads to the issue of the meaning of the ‘European’: many case studies, such as the ‘Europe of Wars’ or the ‘Separation of Powers’, lean towards being summaries of national histories. Europe is not a concept whose meaning is illuminated by the analysis and its sources, as suggested in the introduction, but serves to label the result of the exploration of different, mostly national, mnemonic frames. It is furthermore striking that the national examples are by and large situated within the triangle Germany–France–Britain and tend to be presented in an additive manner. The volume allows to sharpen and to elucidate the question to what degree European memory consist of contemporary projections. Understandably, the answers given are ambivalent, thus highlighting the complexity and current contradictions of the topic. However, from a methodological point of view, addressing questions of transfers and entanglements would have certainly benefited the volume in that respect.
The historically interested layperson – the proclaimed target audience – will find the book an inspiring read, introducing various aspects of European history in a very synthetic, at times even entertaining, manner. Some technical negligence might be regrettable, in particular the lack of an index, sometimes also of an indicative bibliography. This might be difficult to accept for the historically interested public, as some of these considerations invite for further reflection and reading of the existing literature. For those academic readers familiar with the state of the art of scholarship in memory studies, the innovations offered by the volume remains unfortunately behind the expectations raised in the introduction itself.
Nevertheless, there are notable contributions, such as the article by Pim den Boer, that succeed in bringing the debate on European memory to the level of the theoretical vanguard in memory research. In a text that can be read as a second introduction into the volume, den Boer locates the changing meaning of Europe within the waves and cycles of historiography since the end of the eighteenth century. The exploration of the different concepts of Europe that circulated after the French Revolution is most significant for the logics of the European. They illustrate for instance ‘the need of a retrospective European dimension’ to make sense of the experience of ‘1789’. In sum, the article exemplarily reflects the interrelation between the objects of memory research and its overarching theoretical horizon.
Overall, it should also be noticed that the book aims beyond the academic realm and desires to ‘to make a contribution to the specific feeling of belonging together of Europeans’ (p. 8) and Europeans’ awareness of their shared past. For memory scholars this brings up the important question of how the European or other motivations can be combined with systematically using non-essentialist analytic categories, an aim that this volume also alludes to. It is certain that this tension between one’s own context and the desire for inductive research procedure can only be assumed in a self-reflexive manner.