scholarly journals History and Politics and the Politics of History: Poland and Its Museums of Contemporary History

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Etges ◽  
Irmgard Zündorf ◽  
Paweł Machcewicz
Keyword(s):  
Exhibition Design ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
World War ◽  
Nationalist Party ◽  
History Museums ◽  
Politics Of History ◽  
Founding Director ◽  
Law And Justice ◽  
Second World

AbstractThe Polish museum landscape has turned into a battleground between politicians and historians. Much of that has focused on the highly praised Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk which opened in March 2017. Its founding director Pawel Machcewicz was dismissed when the conservative-nationalist party “Law and Justice” came to power. The article and the interview with Machcewicz discuss that story, the founding and exhibition design of other Polish history museums as well as the politics of history in Poland and beyond.

Rethinking the Place of the Second World War in the Contemporary History of Albania

Südosteuropa ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gentiana Kera
Keyword(s):  
Military History ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
Master Narrative ◽  
World War ◽  
History Writing ◽  
History Of ◽  
Previous State ◽  
Second World ◽  
State Socialist

AbstractThe Second World War in Albania was a central topic of socialist historiography because of the importance laid upon the National Liberation War for the legitimation of the establishment of communist rule in 1944. History writing was a very centralized process, controlled by party institutions responsible for safeguarding the implementation of Marxist‒Leninist principles and party lines. Since the 1990s, the history of the Second World War has been revised in the framework of a general revision of Albanian national history. History writing developed as an open process and now included historians from countries other than Albania, as opposed to the previous state socialist isolation. The extent to which the war history had been distorted and manipulated during socialism has influenced the subsequent process of rewriting that first focused on adjusting the existing narratives. Thus, despite an increasing variety of research topics, the historiography on wartime Albania has remained dominated by political and military history, and by the national master narrative.

scholarly journals Looted Art and Restitution in the Twentieth Century – Towards a Global Perspective

2017 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 491-518
Author(s):  
Bianca Gaudenzi ◽  
Astrid Swenson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
Global History ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
World War ◽  
Global Networks ◽  
History Of ◽  
Second World

Introducing the Journal of Contemporary History Special Issue ‘The Restitution of Looted Art in the 20th Century’, this article proposes a framework for writing the history of looting and restitution in transnational and global perspective. By comparing and contextualizing instances of looting and restitution in different geographical and temporal contexts, it aims to overcome existing historiographical fragmentations and move past the overwhelming focus on the specificities of Nazi looting through an extended timeframe that inserts the Second World War into a longer perspective from the nineteenth century up to present day restitution practices. Particular emphasis is put on the interlinked histories of denazification and decolonization. Problematizing existing analytical, chronological and geographical frameworks, the article suggests how a combination of comparative, entangled and global history approaches can open up promising new avenues of research. It draws out similarities, differences and connections between processes of looting and restitution in order to discuss the extent to which looting and restitution were shaped by – and shaped – changing global networks.

The Politics of History and the “War of Monuments” in Estonia

2008 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 425-448 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karsten Brüggemann ◽  
Andres Kasekamp
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
World War ◽  
Baltic State ◽  
Politics Of History ◽  
Red Army ◽  
Second World

After darkness fell over the provincial town of Lihula on 2 September 2004, youths pelted riot police with stones. Nothing like this had ever happened before in the peaceful and orderly small Baltic State of Estonia. The police were protecting a crane and its driver sent by the Ministry of the Interior to remove a monument honouring those Estonians who fought on the German side against the Red Army during the Second World War. In the evening of 26 April 2007 demonstrators in Tallinn pelted riot police with stones and went on a rampage of smashing windows and looting. The Estonian capital had never experienced anything like this. The police were protecting the site of a monument honouring Soviet soldiers who had fought against Nazi Germany. At night, when the rioting had ceased, a crane ordered by the Ministry of Defence removed the monument.

scholarly journals ‘Lines of Becoming’ Misha Black and Entanglements through Exhibition Design

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harriet Atkinson
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Exhibition Design ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World's Fair ◽  
Multiple Relationships ◽  
World War ◽  
New York World's Fair ◽  
Festival Of Britain ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
Second World

Abstract In many historical accounts exhibitions are considered in isolation, in relation to specific political or cultural events. This article instead interrogates exhibitions as interlinked sites of personal and professional ‘entanglement’, connected entities that have capacity to sustain and develop multiple relationships, in this case across the career of a single designer, Misha Black (1910–1977). Through successive commissions, Black developed ideas about exhibitions as communication and propaganda, as well as developing his network and modelling formations for professional design practice. Exhibitions Black worked on which are discussed here included The Ibero-American Exhibition, Seville, 1929–1930; MARS Group Exhibition, 1938; Glasgow Empire Exhibition, 1938; New York World’s Fair, 1939–1940; Ministry of Information exhibitions mounted during the Second World War and the Festival of Britain, 1951.

scholarly journals Contemporary History in Europe: From Mastering National Pasts to the Future of Writing the World

2011 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 506-530 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristina Spohr Readman
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
World War ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Conceptual Problems ◽  
Second World

Debates surrounding the approach to and distinctiveness of contemporary history qua history that had been simmering ever since the professionalization of history in the late nineteenth century re-emerged with vigour after 1990. This article attempts to identify what characterizes and distinguishes (the history of) our present time, by comparing the evolution of what has been labelled ‘contemporary history’ in France, Germany and Britain over the last 90 years. In discussing some of the conceptual problems and methodological challenges of contemporary history, it will be revealed that many in Europe remain stuck in an older, ‘national’ (and transnational) fixation with the second world war and the nazis’ atrocities, although working in medias res today appears to point to the investigation of events and phenomena that are ‘global’. The article will seek to make a fresh suggestion of how to delimit ‘contemporariness’ from the older ‘past’ and end with some comments on the significance of the role of contemporary history within the broader historical discipline and society at large.

The Unifying Element? European Socialism and Anti-Fascism, 1939–1945

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 687-706 ◽  
Author(s):  
JENS SPÄTH
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
Mutual Aid ◽  
World War ◽  
Resistance Movements ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Post War ◽  
Set Up ◽  
General Aspects ◽  
Second World

Far too often studies in contemporary history have concentrated on national stories. By contrast, this article analyses wartime discourses about and practices against fascism in France, Germany and Italy in a comparative and – as far as possible – transnational perspective. By looking at individual biographies some general aspects of socialist anti-fascism, as well as similarities and differences within anti-fascism, shall be identified and start to fill the gap which Jacques Droz left in 1985 when he ended hisHistoire de l'antifascisme en Europewith the outbreak of the Second World War. To visualise the transnational dimension of socialist anti-fascism both in discourse and practice different categories shall be considered. These include historical analyses and projects for the post-war order in letters, newspapers, periodicals, pamphlets and books, acts of solidarity like mutual aid networks set up by groups and institutions and forms of collaboration in resistance movements.

scholarly journals Debating the Greek 1940s: histories and memories of a conflicting past since the end of the Second World War

HISTOREIN ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 8
Author(s):  
Manos Avgeridis
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
First Century ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Politics Of History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Core Issue ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Second World

The article examines aspects of the long history of a major field of public debate in the second half of the twentieth century, that of the Greek 1940s, taking as its starting point the recent “history war” in Greece. It attempts to trace histories and memories from the immediate postwar years and to place them within a broader process: the historisation of the Second World War in Europe. In that context, the article begins by exploring one part of the initial efforts to form a European history of the resistance, from the perspective of the Greek case. Then, the focus is transferred to Greece, and to the mapping of a constellation of different memory and history communities, and the practices of history of the same period: the activities of veteran partisans and eye-witnesses with regard to their contribution to the formation of the first narratives on the war is a core issue at this level. Last, by following the developments in the academy and the politics of history during the Metapolitefsi, the focus returns to the current discussion, attempting a first approach to the subject through the strings that connect it with the past and, at the same time, as a debate of the twenty-first century. 

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