As the new capital city of reunified Germany, Berlin has inevitably been subjected to intense scholarly attention over the past three decades. Above all, the city’s architectural and memorial landscape has provoked complex debates around historical locations, public space, aesthetic demands, national values and political priorities – to name but a few. Imke Girßmann’s monograph, a dissertation in Cultural Studies at the University of Oldenburg, thematises many of these debates through the comparison of two very different projects: the (as yet unbuilt) Monument to Freedom and Unity1 and the Memorial to the Homosexuals Persecuted under National Socialism.2 This initially surprising juxtaposition reveals some interesting commonalities relating to notions of centrality, expectations around artistic form and assumptions around gender, but above all a common desire to build a strong sense of belonging and nationhood.

Hauptstadtmitte als Ort nationaler Erinnerungskultur? draws on a wealth of extant scholarship relating to Berlin’s contemporary memorial landscape, and the first two chapters cover well-trodden terrain, preparing the reader first with an overview of theoretical understandings of nation, memory and space, and second with an outline of memorial politics in Berlin since unification. In particular, Girßmann draws on the debates surrounding both the rededication of the Neue Wache as “Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany to the Victims of War and Tyranny” in 1993 and the development of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (opened in 2005) as important precursors to her own case studies. Brief histories of other contemporary memorials in Berlin (for example those dedicated to other groups of victims under National Socialism, to resistance fighters, and to the Bundeswehr) are also introduced, with the aim of demonstrating that the German memorial landscape has become increasingly centralised since unification. As Girßmann argues, the process of Berlin concomitantly becoming a global metropolis and a capital city has evoked the dual desire to demonstrate plurality and cosmopolitanism on the one hand, but also to embed a strong sense of national identity on the other.

While these first two chapters rehearse familiar concepts, the following two present insightful new findings; what makes Girßmann’s study particularly interesting here is her detailed analysis of the publications, online materials and events that resulted from the two initiatives, as a way of comparing their desires, motivations and trajectories. Chapter three, which focuses on the Monument to Freedom and Unity, thus provides a history of the initiative from its beginnings in 1998 to the Bundestag vote in 2017, before examining the framing, presentation and content of the three public “hearings” in 2006 and 2007, as well as the use of images in publications and on the dedicated website. Chapter four then turns to the Memorial to the Homosexuals Persecuted under National Socialism, presenting a similar historical overview from its beginnings in 1993 to its inauguration in 2008 (and beyond), before analysing key preparatory publications and the 2005 colloquium linked to the competition launch. Both chapters contain useful analysis of documentary material, but it is the comparative aspect that warrants particular attention. It should be noted, however, that this comparison – while fruitful – is asymmetric; the Memorial to the Homosexuals Persecuted under National Socialism was built at considerably lower cost (budgeted at 600,000 Euros, versus an initial 10 million Euros – now over 17 million – for the Monument to Freedom and Unity) and at a more peripheral city centre location (at the edge of the Tiergarten, versus the conceptually central Schlossfreiheit). While Girßmann draws our attention to the commonalities of both projects, as discussed below, these are nonetheless significant differences worth keeping in mind.

The key starting point for viewing both initiatives is understanding them in relation to previous memorial projects. In particular, both see themselves as “correctives” (p. 239) to the rededication of the Neue Wache, whether in terms of challenging blind spots in the established commemoration of the victims of National Socialism or attempting to redress the balance of a national memorial culture that is weighted towards remembering victimhood. Both projects are also bound directly to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, in the sense that they both present responses – albeit different ones – to this central memorial. These understandings are nothing new but provide an important link to Girßmann’s central conclusion that both projects display a strong desire to write themselves into a narrative of freedom, unity and national belonging. While the emphasis in each case is different – with one choosing to show continuity with the battle for freedom in the nineteenth century and with the Prussian state, and the other drawing rather on narratives of modern democracy and enlightened social movements from the Weimar period – both seek to show lines of continuity between past and present. In each case, the act of physical inscription in a central location thus becomes paramount. Indeed, despite the initial hopes placed in the communicative and – in the case of the initiative to remember homosexual victims – subversive power of art, calls for visible, enduring and centrally-located monuments ultimately underlined more traditional understandings of memorial form.

Other strategies to inscribe these structures into national memorial discourse were also deployed by both initiatives, such as the strategic choice of historical anniversaries or commemorative dates on which to promote their cause. The most enlightening aspect of Girßmann’s comparative analysis, however, is her focus on gender, which leads her to conclude first that male figures continue predominantly to shape and narrate national or collective histories, and second that normative understandings of “couples” and “family” narratives persist. Although it is significant that both projects began with four male initiators, the gendered nature of each initiative took different pathways. The movement for a Monument to Freedom and Unity, for instance, drew not only on historical male personalities, but visualisations of the winning design and metaphorical references to the project displayed heteronormative understandings of marriage and partnership. In contrast, gender debates relating to the Memorial to the Homosexuals Persecuted under National Socialism resulted in the memorial including also the memory of lesbians, a compromise driven by equality concerns which not only saw the “pairing” of male and female, but also had the effect of preventing a differentiated interrogation of the historical persecution of gay men and lesbians. Girßmann also identifies in this project the continuation of patrilineal structures, through the creation of an “’Ahnengalerie’ schwuler Väter und Großväter” (p. 240). Questions of inclusion and exclusion are thus highlighted throughout and lead us to question not only the type of unity that is achieved through such memorial structures, but also whether such unity is possible at all.

This study provides detailed and illuminating readings of two contemporary memorial projects against the critical backdrop of united Berlin’s fast-evolving and often controversial memorial landscape. While documenting the key stages of each project, this monograph also demonstrates the ways in which memorial projects become highly entangled in their past and present surroundings, as well as in the broader societal values from which they emerge. Girßmann draws out these entanglements very clearly in her conclusion but shies away from addressing the bigger picture. How, for example, do these two case studies enrich our understanding of memorial culture more broadly? What should we conclude about the power or limitations of representative art? How should we interpret the findings around gender more broadly? These are all, without doubt, studies in their own right but some initial reflections in the conclusion would have been interesting in this respect. All in all, however, this is a valuable read, with detailed, insightful and clear analysis, which will appeal to those working specifically on Berlin and/or collective German identities, as well as more broadly to scholars of memory studies, cultural geography and gender studies.

Notes:
1 See https://www.freiheits-und-einheitsdenkmal.de (02.04.2021).
2 See https://www.stiftung-denkmal.de/denkmaeler/denkmal-fuer-die-im-nationalsozialismus-verfolgten-homosexuellen/ (02.04.2021).