For Whom Does One Remember?: Autobiographical Perspectives on Fascism in German Literature

Joanne Sayner’s paper deals with texts by three women writing about their autobiographical experiences of German fascism and the Second World War. Questions of gender, memory and reception are central to Sayner’s examination of the ways in which a former member of the Hitler Youth, a resister and a Jewish survivor have positioned themselves in relation to ongoing debates over guilt, responsibility and collective identity in the aftermath of the Nazi era. Sayner, firstly, addresses Melita Maschmann’s Taking Stock: No Attempt at Justification (1963). She points to the narrative focus on collective identities and the narrator’s and protagonist’s construction of an elite German generation of youth leaders based on clear national and racial lines. Such a universalising tendency, highlighting tropes of victimhood, contradicts precisely the text’s subtitle ‘no attempt at justification’ and Sayner argues persuasively for an ‘exonerating effect’ in a textual fascination with fascism. Alongside this text produced in the then West Germany is Greta Kuckhoff’s From the Rosary to the Red Orchestra (1972). Kuckhoff’s text too is explored in the light of the specific historical context of the 1960s and 1970s but this time from the perspective of an East German writer who was an antifascist resister during the Nazi era. Sayner shows how Kuckhoff is concerned to present a more diverse image of antifascism than was commonly portrayed in East Germany at the time but that this comes into conflict with a ‘unifying political teleology’, characteristic of the politics of the Cold War period. Finally, Sayner turns to the case of Hilde Huppert’s autobiographical work, variously titled but in its most recent 1997 incarnation called Hand in Hand with Tommy: an Autobiographical Report 1939-1945. The changing uses and re-constructions of Huppert’s memories as a Jewish survivor are charted through the complex publishing history of the text and the different addressees intended for succeeding editions of the memoirs. In conclusion, Sayner discusses how the three texts, in different ways, demonstrate the debates in Germany and elsewhere over the memory of the Nazi era and who is allowed to speak on behalf of whom. Sayner’s concentration on the intended addressees of her texts and the books’ publishing histories opens up a space to reconsider the gender politics of a predominantly male canon of autobiographical writing and the war years in German-language writing

Unthinking remembrance? Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red and the significance of centenaries

On 4 August 2014, the now iconic evolving work by Paul Cummins and Tom Piper, Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red, opened at the Tower of London. Each of the 888,246 poppies in the Tower's moat represented one British life lost in the First World War (FWW). This article uses a unique dataset of 1488 responses to the installation in order to probe the impacts of this high profile intervention. Systematic analysis of that data allows us to explore the centenary as a catalyst for remembrance activity, focusing on the kinds of “unthinking remembrance” that our research made visible. We detail how visitor responses activated a series of familiar tropes about past conflict, which often neglected recent work that has attempted to diversify perspectives about the past. This calls into question the extent to which policy objectives associated with pluralising narratives about the FWW during this centenary had been successful at this early stage in the commemoration and are likely to be successful in the future. As the “cult of the centenary” becomes ever more embedded within education and policy frameworks, and refracted within the programming of national media and cultural organisations, we contend that much can be learned about how to usefully frame commemorative activities from the unprecedented case of Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red

For Whom Does One Remember?: Autobiographical Perspectives on Fascism in German Literature

Joanne Sayner’s paper deals with texts by three women writing about their autobiographical experiences of German fascism and the Second World War. Questions of gender, memory and reception are central to Sayner’s examination of the ways in which a former member of the Hitler Youth, a resister and a Jewish survivor have positioned themselves in relation to ongoing debates over guilt, responsibility and collective identity in the aftermath of the Nazi era. Sayner, firstly, addresses Melita Maschmann’s Taking Stock: No Attempt at Justification (1963). She points to the narrative focus on collective identities and the narrator’s and protagonist’s construction of an elite German generation of youth leaders based on clear national and racial lines. Such a universalising tendency, highlighting tropes of victimhood, contradicts precisely the text’s subtitle ‘no attempt at justification’ and Sayner argues persuasively for an ‘exonerating effect’ in a textual fascination with fascism. Alongside this text produced in the then West Germany is Greta Kuckhoff’s From the Rosary to the Red Orchestra (1972). Kuckhoff’s text too is explored in the light of the specific historical context of the 1960s and 1970s but this time from the perspective of an East German writer who was an antifascist resister during the Nazi era. Sayner shows how Kuckhoff is concerned to present a more diverse image of antifascism than was commonly portrayed in East Germany at the time but that this comes into conflict with a ‘unifying political teleology’, characteristic of the politics of the Cold War period. Finally, Sayner turns to the case of Hilde Huppert’s autobiographical work, variously titled but in its most recent 1997 incarnation called Hand in Hand with Tommy: an Autobiographical Report 1939-1945. The changing uses and re-constructions of Huppert’s memories as a Jewish survivor are charted through the complex publishing history of the text and the different addressees intended for succeeding editions of the memoirs. In conclusion, Sayner discusses how the three texts, in different ways, demonstrate the debates in Germany and elsewhere over the memory of the Nazi era and who is allowed to speak on behalf of whom. Sayner’s concentration on the intended addressees of her texts and the books’ publishing histories opens up a space to reconsider the gender politics of a predominantly male canon of autobiographical writing and the war years in German-language writing

Introduction: Toward an Engaged Feminist Heritage Praxis

We advocate a feminist approach to archaeological heritage work in order to transform heritage practice and the production of archaeological knowledge. We use an engaged feminist standpoint and situate intersubjectivity and intersectionality as critical components of this practice. An engaged feminist approach to heritage work allows the discipline to consider women’s, men’s, and gender non-conforming persons’ positions in the field, to reveal their contributions, to develop critical pedagogical approaches, and to rethink forms of representation. Throughout, we emphasize the intellectual labor of women of color, queer and gender non-conforming persons, and early white feminists in archaeology