The summer school looks at the tangible, material heritage of violence in two German cities: Bremen and Berlin, examining the imprint of “difficult heritage” on the urban space. Concentrating on the themes of the Holocaust, forced labour and imprisonment, we will confront the questions of commemoration, but also erasure and repurposing of former sites of atrocity. A special focus of this edition are also the links, transfers and tensions between the German memorial culture and Eastern Europe.

With visits to different sites and institutions, talks with experts and hand-on workshops, we wish to inspire a conversation about the possibility of a common European language of memory as well as the limits of contemporary memorial formats in addressing displacement and transnational aspects of trauma.

Our Summer School is open to PhD re-searchers and post-doc scholars from the fields of history, ethnography, Eastern European Studies and related disciplines. Accommodation, visa costs and a travel allowance are covered by the organizers.

Applicants are invited to send their CV and a cover letter describing their area of in-terest by March 30th 2017 to:
difficult.heritage@gmail.com