Expressions of Experience and Experiences of Expression: Museum Re-Presentations of GDR History

Abstract

SUMMARY This article interrogates the production of historical memory in the former GDR. It addresses the politics of memory and museum representations in terms of the ongoing complex and often contradictory struggles over the production of knowledge about the East German past, the contexts of this production, and the ways in which the struggles themselves shed light upon larger social and political processes within reunified Germany more generally. I am concerned with the politics of memorymaking and the various domains in which memory is constructed and deployed. I also consider the cultural implications and effects of such memory-making practices.