Page 76 - Studia Universitatis Hereditati, vol 11(2) (2023)
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Centre in the core of the German capital in the
immediate vicinity of the most important NS
memorial sites of the Federal Republic, as well
as in the monumental (interior) architecture of
the Deutschlandhaus. Both create a monument
which is in itself a “visible sign” and give it, inde-
pendently of the exhibition’s content, the status
of a memorial. They constitute a political state-
ment about the legitimacy and status given to
“flight and expulsion” in official German com-
memorations, this official legitimation of the
memory of “flight and expulsion” being rein-
76 forced by the musealisation mandate and fund-
ing by the federation.
We now need to explore how the latter
studia universitatis hereditati, letnik 11 (2023), številka 2 / volume 11 (2023), number 2
has been implemented, and how the perma- ti
nent exhibition tackles the above-mentioned
contradictions.
Loss as the Guiding Line of the Permanent ta
Exhibition
Given the choice of naming the institution Doc-
umentation Centre for Displacement, Expul-
sion, Reconciliation, and given the political and di
cultural discourses about the necessity to com-
Figure 1 : The monumental concrete staircase leading memorate the victims’ suffering that had accom-
to the first floor (photo: Catherine Perron, 2015) panied its creation, one would expect the exhi-
bition to be centred around the violence of that
process. Yet, the focus is on the dimension of loss
33
(of home – Heimat) – a very abstract notion.
Violence and injustice are addressed, but only here
marginally.
It is noteworthy that even though the direc-
34
tor Gundula Bavendamm denies it, this choice
brings the Documentation Centre for Displace-
ment, Expulsion, Reconciliation close to the nex-
35
us of museums devoted to migration (a high-
33 Cf. interview conducted by the author with one of the
main curators online, on 14 September 2022. See also the
homepage of the Documentation Centre, which explains,
under the tab “Our topic”, “understand what loss means”
(Dokumentationszentrum Flucht, Vertreibung, Versöh-
nung n.d.d).
34 In an interview with Evangelische Zeitung, a protestant
weekly magazine, she says “we do not see ourselves as a new studiauniversitatis
variety of a migration museum” (Philippi 2021).
35 The curators of the main exhibition (interviewed by the au-
Figure 2: Staircase leading to the second floor thor in December 2021 and in September 2022) admit that
(photo: Catherine Perron, 2015) the arrival of hundreds of thousands of refugees in Ger-
