Page 85 - Studia Universitatis Hereditati, vol 11(2) (2023)

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Figure 13: A wall cabinet dedicated to war and violence Figure 14: An opened drawer of the wall cabinet dedicat-
ti on the first floor of the permanent exhibition ed to sexual violence. In the way of a trigger warning,
(photo: Catherine Perron, 2015)
the drawers have to be opened before acceding to the
depiction of violence (photo: Catherine Perron, 2015)
ta pulsion”. With its withdrawn gesture and its pulsion”. However, precisely because they are not

focused solely on the flight and expulsion pro-
treatment of the objects, it in fact comes close to
cess, and because their approach is rooted in the
the documentation principle, typical for the ex-
hibitions in memorials dedicated to the Nation- long-term history of a particular territory with a visible sign with a “quiet gesture”?
di torically very constraining narrative framework ter position to give an account of the complexi-
its different population groups, they are in a bet-
al Socialist crimes in Germany. However, its his-
stands in contradiction to it.
ty of the process and provide a more detailed un-
derstanding of the mechanism that led to the
This new approach has nevertheless the po-
expulsions.
tential to transfer the topic from German com-
here municative memory to cultural memory and to in Berlin dedicated to a historical grand narra-
In fact, it is the very idea of a single place
level the “fissured landscape of memory” in re-
lation to flight and expulsion (to use the words
tive about “flight and expulsion” in general that
is biased. As historians around Martin Schulze
of historians Eva and Hans Henning Hahn
Wessel (2010) had already argued in their coun-
(2002)). In this way, the goal of memorialisa-
tion and reconciliation, namely that of the Ger-
ter project to the exhibition in 2010, “flight and
mans with themselves, could be achieved. This
said, one must mention that it is much less cer-
national, geographical, and historical context.
studiauniversitatis
tain that this Documentation Centre contrib- expulsion” cannot be grasped outside a precise
They argue that “History takes place in concrete
utes a great deal to the historical understanding places” and advocate a topographical narrative
of the phenomenon of forced migration in gen- principle rooted, for instance, in places like Bre-
eral and German forced migration in particular. slau/Wroclaw, or Usti Nad Labem/Aussig and
The existence of the §96 Regional museums has der Elbe, or Vilius/Wilna/Wilno/Wilne, which
been completely overlooked in the discussion “could be used to show exactly how interwo-
about the necessity to erect “a visible sign” in ven the numerous migration processes were in
Berlin. Of course, their location in Greifswald, the 20th century within a small area” (see also
Ulm, Görlitz, Lüneburg, etc. does not ensure the Völkering, 2011). It is at the local level and in the
same media exposure as the location at the An- long-term view that the complex histories of eth-
halter Bahn hof in Berlin and their focus is much nic identifications, assignments, coexistence and
broader than the sole episode of “flight and ex- conflict can be grasped. Thus, at its present lo-