Museification of Holocaust Memory - Review

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K. Pieper: Musealisierung des Holocaust 2007-2-071

Pieper, Katrin: Musealisierung des Holocaust.Das Jdische Museum Berlin und das U.S. Ho-locaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C.Ein Vergleich. Kln: Bhlau Verlag 2006. ISBN:3-412-31305-X; 368 S.

Rezensiert von: Andrew Gross, John-F.-Kennedy-Institut fr Nordamerikastudien,Freie Universitt Berlin

Taking Holocaust commemoration as her casestudy, Katrin Pieper has written a compar-ative history with the intent of demonstrat-ing the importance of national contexts. Inthis she is responding to the thesis put for-ward by Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider,among others, that commemorating the Holo-

caust has developed into a global memoryculture, global in this sense referring to atriangular relation between Germany, Israel,and the United States.1 Piepers transat-lantic response to the globalization thesis fo-cuses on the United States Holocaust Memo-rial Museum (USHMM) and the Jewish Mu-seum Berlin (JMB). She describes but is notprimarily interested in their obvious overlapsin subject matter, theme, architecture, person-nel, and artefacts, all of which are signifi-cant. Her main interest is rather the differ-

ences between the two museums, both in in-stitutional structure and architecture, and shetakes these differences to reveal the contoursand conflicts of contemporary identity poli-tics specific to both nations. In other words,Pieper reads architecture to elucidate diver-gent histories of Jewish integration (p. 17).Her assumption is that the spatial form of ar-chitecture can tell us something about socialand cultural forms of behavior. In her anal-ysis, museums have a doubly symbolic rela-tion to society, serving as projection screens

for national myths and ideals and as sed-imentary records of the conflicts and com-promises leading up to their construction:Nationale Mythen und Ideale sowie politis-che und reprsentative Bedrfnisse sedimen-tieren sich in den architektonischen und in-haltlichen Konzepten bzw. werden auf denOrt des Museums projiziert. (p. 12)

1 Levy, Daniel; Sznaider, Natan, Erinnerung im globalenZeitalter: Der Holocaust, Frankfurt am Main 2001, pp.9-11.

While the two museums are often com-pared (reviewers disclaimer: in a forthcom-ing article I compare them myself), eventheir names indicate substantial historical andphilosophical differences. While the Wash-

ington D.C. museum sets out to commemo-rate the Holocaust, the Berlin museum seeksto provide a record of Jewish life in a dis-tinct geographical region from 2000 years agoto the present. However, distinguishing be-tween the two museums is not so simple.The JMB, as many have pointed out, is a his-tory museum but also a Holocaust memo-rial, symbolizing, through its fragmented ordeconstructive architecture, the difficulty ofsubscribing to coherent historical narrativesafter the Holocaust, especially in regard to

the German Jewish community (pp. 239-249).Daniel Libeskinds architecture deliberately some would say heavy-handedly disruptsthe possibility of presenting Jewish history asa coherent historical narrative. His famousvoids non-functional spaces designed intothe building and intended to remain empty are attempts to evoke the palpable absence ofJewish-German history, namely the murderedand exiled Jewish citizens whose lives, con-tributions, and property no museum can everreplace.

The exhibit at the JMB, arranged as a nar-rative or storyline by some of those respon-sible for the exhibit at the USHMM, tends towork against the deconstructive elements inLibeskinds architecture. It is precisely thiscontradiction between narrative and architec-ture that Pieper takes to be representative ofthe paradoxical position of Jews in contem-porary German society (p. 306, p. 319, p.323). The debates and political manuvringssurrounding the construction of the JMB sug-gest that politicians sometimes have an eas-

ier time commemorating murdered Jews thancommunicating with living ones to put itperhaps too crassly. A trend that has contin-ued through construction of the Berlin Memo-rial to the Murdered Jews of Europe involvesconsulting American Jewish experts as a wayof invoking the Jewish eye, as James E.Young once strangely put it, while bypass-ing the extremely heterogeneous and not al-ways compliant Jewish German community.2

2 Young, James E., At Memorys Edge. After-Images of

H-Net, Clio-online, and the author, all rights reserved.


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While Pieper tends to agree with Youngs as-sessment of the counter-monumental func-tion of the JMB, i.e. calling traditional Ger-man national narratives into question, she isright to counter his optimism with the obser-

vation that even counter-national narrativescan serve national purposes. The JMB, asshe puts it, is primarily a monument for non-Jewish Germans (p. 218, pp. 321-322).

The USHMM, on the other hand, is unde-niably central to Jewish American construc-tions of identity, as the heavy lobbying andfundraising by various Jewish interest groupsrevealed. However and this is the para-dox that interests Pieper in its representa-tion of Jewishness it becomes emblematicallyAmerican (p. 319). Hence its presence on

the Mall in Washington DC near the monu-ments and memorials so central to Americanself-fashioning, and hence the overwhelmingproportion (90 percent) of non-Jewish visitors(p. 89). The museum qualifies the Holocaustas an American event and represents Jews asexemplary citizens, and this in three relatedways: first by figuring the United States asa liberator nation in a noble war between theforces of good and evil; second by represent-ing Jewish survivors as model immigrantswho left the ruins of the old world to prosper

in the new; third by providing the survivors,and by extension the Jewish community, witha credible tale of suffering, which has an im-portant currency in the increasingly victim-oriented discourses of contemporary multi-culturalism. In her reading of the USHMMPieper largely follows the work of historianslike Peter Novick and Tim Cole who begandrawing attention to the Americanizationof the Holocaust a decade ago.3

Piepers primary and secondary research is,for the most part, excellent. I suspect her

monograph will serve as a source book andcompendium for other historians and culturaltheorists for years to come. The book is, at

the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture,New Haven 2000, p. 196 (in German: Nach-Bilder desHolocaust in zeitgenssischer Kunst und Architektur,Hamburg 2002).

3 Novick, Peter, The Holocaust in American Life, NewYork 2000 (in German: Nach dem Holocaust. Der Um-gang mit dem Massenmord, Stuttgart 2001; Cole, Tim,Selling the Holocaust from Auschwitz to Schindler.How History is Bought, Packaged, and Sold, New York2000.

times, repetitive, and would have benefitedfrom editorial pruning. Also, the frame ar-gument is largely a rehearsal of the familiardebates between theorists like Young, whoare committed to the national context in their

understanding of how Holocaust memori-als can inscribe counter-nationalist narratives,and those like Sznaider and Levy who ad-vocate understanding Holocaust commemo-ration from a more overtly post-national per-spective. Piepers comparison between thetwo museums serves mainly to illustrate herassumption that integration means some-thing different in the United States and Ger-many. On the one hand Pieper treats inte-gration as a synonym for Americanization,and on the other hand as shorthand for a

whole complex of difficulties social, institu-tional, political, and representational havingto do with both the uncomfortable position ofthe Jewish community in Germany, and theresultant difficulty of fitting the Jewish Mu-seum into Berlins network of regional mu-seums. I feel that both her characterizationof the American Jewish community and heranalogy between institutional and social inte-gration are open to debate.

Piepers account of memory culture isalso rather provisional (p. 327). The emer-

gence of memory in historical discourse isa hotly debated phenomenon.4 What ulti-mately renders the JMB and USHMM compa-rable is their common commitment to mem-ory, and their common application of spe-cific design and architectural features to pro-duce memory as a form of visitor experience.The fragmented architecture, narrative storylines, biographical emphasis, display of per-sonal artefacts, and use of interactive exhibits common to both museums all encouragevisitors to place themselves in the victims

shoes. What we have witnessed in recentyears is not so much the Americanization asthe personalization of the Holocaust.

A term that invariably appears in scarequotes in Piepers book is authenticity, de-noting the intensity or believability of per-sonal experience. However, Pieper does notdevote enough space to explaining how cer-

4 A good introduction to the issue is Kerwin Lee KleinsOn the Emergence of Memory in Historical Dis-course, in: Representations 69 (2000), pp. 127-150.



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K. Pieper: Musealisierung des Holocaust 2007-2-071

tain architectural and design techniques pro-duce authentic memories for visitors whoare often several generations removed fromthe Holocaust. National differences are stillimportant in history and architecture, and ac-

counts of the demise of the nation-state havebeen greatly exaggerated. However, the in-creasingly migratory nature of museum ex-perts and designs suggests that authenticity considered as a designed experience hasgone global, especially when connected todisaster tourism. One enduring legacy ofthe Holocaust might be the Diasporic charac-ter of its commemoration, the need to memo-rialize it everywhere. Pieper is more inter-ested in examining the importance of nationalcontexts, but she tacitly acknowledges the

Diasporic nature of memory culture in herselection of examples hence the focus onAmerican and German and not Israeli muse-ums, which are more closely linked to nation-building narratives (see p. 161, fn. 443).That Holocaust commemoration means some-thing different in different national contextsis beyond question. However, we should notdownplay its international character, which isone of the most significant and ironic de-velopments of our time. What used to be de-rided by anti-Semitic nationalists as rootless

cosmopolitanism is now praised, at least inacademic and touristic circles, as authenticity.

HistLit 2007-2-071 / Andrew Gross ber Pie-per, Katrin: Musealisierung des Holocaust. Das

Jdische Museum Berlin und das U.S. HolocaustMemorial Museum in Washington D.C. Ein Ver-gleich. Kln 2006. In: H-Soz-u-Kult 07.05.2007.


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Museification of Holocaust Memory - Review