War and its collateral effects – destruction of living environments, flight, displacement and death – are among the most haunting experiences of humanity. Every war produces images such as works of art, caricatures, photographs and films by artists or professional photographers as well as by amateurs. These are produced in order to cope with traumatic experiences, to bear witness to the destruction of war, and to escape from the reality of war into the world of art, at least for a short time. They can, in addition, also be used for the subsequent prosecution of the guilty.
Visual media are also used to glorify war and to promulgate the boasts and propaganda of the victorious – on pamphlets of the early modern period as well as in memes or videos on today’s globalized social media.
The thematic complex of "art and war" also includes the intergenerational memory and the interpretation of these experiences in visual media, monuments, memorials and museums.
Beyond its bilateral context, the Working Group of German and Polish Art Historians and Monument Conservators defines itself as a forum for art and visual history, and for the issues around the protection of cultural heritage in Eastern Europe. The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine is the context for our annual conference in 2023, and will focus on the production of images in times of war and on the cultures of remembrance in post-war periods. The conference will concentrate on the theatres of war in Eastern Europe – on the "bloodlands" of the First, and especially the Second, World War: some of which are now combat zones again. However, the period under consideration also stretches back to the Nordic Wars in the Baltic region and the Thirty Years' War, not least in order to suggest comparisons of pictorial topoi and to question images of history that can have an impact right up to the present day.
There will be a focus on the following themes:
- The role of art and visual media during the war:
- Documentation of violence and destruction
- Instrumentalization of art for political and propaganda purposes
- Anti-war art
- Exile art
- Coming to terms with the past: cultures of remembrance on war, flight and expulsion:
- Individual interpretations and attempts to cope with traumatic experiences in artistic works
- Public commemoration through visual media, monuments, memorials and museums: discourses, competitions, realizations
- Cultural prerogatives such as the power of determination for the victorious
- Artistic reflections of the subsequent generations
- Iconographic patterns in transition:
- "Reframing” off-topic pictorial topoi
- New media – old topoi and/or new pictorial formulas?
- Anthropological patterns and their impact on visual perception and artistic approaches
Please send a summary of your (unpublished) contribution (2,400 characters), a short curriculum vitae and information on your current activities by 15 May 2023 to
Kati Scholze – kscholze@schlesisches-museum.de
In addition to the thematic presentations (speaking time max. 20 min.), the conference will provide a forum for short presentations (max. 10 min.) of currently ongoing, individual or institutional research projects on issues of shared cultural heritage in Eastern Europe.
Conference languages will be German and English (possibly also Polish, if funds are available for simultaneous translation).
Conference organizers:
Dr. Agnieszka Gąsior, Silesian Museum/Schlesisches Museum, Görlitz
Julita Zaprucka, Muzeum Karkonoskie, Jelenia Góra
PD Dr. Beate Störtkuhl, Federal Institute for Culture and History of the Germans in Eastern Europe, Oldenburg