Unwanted and Conflictual Inheritance

Management: Prof. Dr. Cordelia Heß, Prof. Dr. Annelie Ramsbrock

Project team: Prof. Dr. Claus Dieter Classen

Disciplines: General History of the Modern Era, Nordic History, Eastern European History, Legal Studies, Modern European History

Political upheavals and crises, if nothing else, ensure an uncertain status of cultural heritage. After a political downfall, heirs often show neither historical awareness nor interest in the architectural and ritual legacies of the previous states. Often arise from this conflicts between the legal framework on protecting of monuments and claiming appropriation or negotiation of institutionalised and non-institutionalised groups of preservation or redefinition of heritage. Thus, the focus of the project is on examining the perception and rejection of this unwanted heritage and the related question of identities, practices, and politics to elaborate common and divisive aspects of this heritage. A particular focus will be placed on processes of destruction, decay as a neuralgic point of preservation and transformation. The sub-project aims is to understand forgetting, destroying, sorting out, re-evaluating or decaying unwanted and conflicting legacies as a reverse side of common heritage practices and an expression of incipient conveying the meaning of new memory cultures. Therefore, forms of staging historical assets and events, architectural ensembles and monuments are comparatively examined in order to more precisely grasp the institutional sovereignties of interpretation and claims to authenticity, their scope and limits, which are sometimes in contradiction with economic and social demands.

Two central areas will be examined: on the one hand, how Soviet industrial and military legacies were dealt with in the wake of the political downfall of 1989; on the other hand, the current topic of toppling monuments will be addressed.