Twentieth Century Wars in European Memory

Józef Niznik is Professor and the head of European Studies Unit at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences. He studied philosophy and sociology at the University of Warsaw. His work contains over 90 major publications in Polish and English in the area of philosophy, sociology of knowledge and European integration.

In various European countries the two world wars are remembered in very different ways, although everywhere one can find monuments which serve as material objectification of the memory of war. However, such objectifications not only determine certain patterns of remembrance and a specific perception of the past: they also contribute to local and/or national identity and create the basis for attitudes toward the other participants of war. As it happens, instruments of memory live their own life and the meanings they attach to particular events may be changed by historical and political processes. The question remaining in the background of this publication is whether we can "make Europeans" without European collective memory transgressing national perspectives. The memory of war, which inevitably shows the overall absurdity and tragedy of war no matter where and against whom fought, may be the primary candidate for such Europeanization.

The book presents different aspects of the memory of twentieth century wars in Europe, its material objectifications and their social and political role. At the background of the presented studies there is a question whether memory of war can become a part of transnational European memory.

Exklusives Verkaufsrecht für: Gesamte Welt.

Contents: Józef Niznik: The Social Instruments of European Memory - Jay Winter: Places and Traces - Bertram M. Gordon: «Defensive Architecture» and World War II: The Maginot Line in Memory and Tourism - Sílvia Correia: Forgotten Places of Memory: First World War Memorials in Portugal, 1919-1933 - Helen E. Beale: Resonant Commemoration and the Trope of the Wall: Time and Memory Echoes in 20th-Century French Resistance War Memorials - Julia Winckler: War, Memory and Photographic Traces - Marjorie Gehrhardt: Walking Reminders of the War: The Case of Facially Disfigured Veterans - Karina Dilanian-Pinkowicz: Visualizing the Armenian Genocide: Photographic and Cinematographic Representation - Vicky Davis: Memory for Sale: Local and National Interpretations of Brezhnev's Malaia zemlia - Urszula Jarecka: War Tourism in Poland and Germany - Karen Shelby: History, Memory or Propaganda: The Great War, the Martyred Soldier and 21st-Century Flemish Politics - Petra Svoljsak: Slovenian Historiography and Collective Memory of World War I in the First Yugoslavia (1918-1941) - Katja Skrlj: «Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning» or Landmarks: the Case of WWI Memory on the Border of Slovenia and Italy - Malgorzata Karczewska: Cuius regio, eius memoria. World War I Memorials in the Territory of Former East Prussia, Now within Poland - Malgorzata Wloszycka: Representation of the Memory of Jews in Physical Space as an Element of Polish Identity. A Case Study of a Town in Southern Poland - Jana Buresová: «From a Far Away Country»: Some Aspects of Czechoslovak Cultural Life in Britain During WWII - Barbara Szacka: Memory of War and Sex Differences.