Difficult Pasts provides a wide-ranging discussion of contemporary Germany's rich memorial landscape. It discusses the many memorials to German losses during the Second World War, to the victims of National Socialism and to those of GDR socialism. With up-to-date coverage of many less well-known memorials as well as the most publicised ones.

Autorentext
BILL NIVEN is Professor of Contemporary German History at Nottingham Trent University, UK. He is author of Facing the Nazi Past and is currently preparing a book called A Post-Holocaust History of Germany, 1945-2010 , and editing a volume on the history and memory of the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff.

CHLOE PAVER is Senior Lecturer in German at the University of Exeter, UK. Recent publications include Refractions of the Third Reich in German and Austrian Fiction and Film and a series of articles on historical exhibitions about the National Socialist era. She was a Humboldt Fellow at the University of Konstanz in 2006-07.

Inhalt
List of Illustrations Notes on Contributors Introduction; B.Niven & C.Paver PART I: REMEMBERING GERMAN LOSSES The Volkstrauertag (People's Day of Mourning), from 1922 to the Present; A.Kaiser Beyond Usable Pasts: Rethinking the Memorialisation of the Strategic Air War in Germany, 1940 to 1965; J.Arnold Roads to Revision: Disputes over Street Names Referring to the German Eastern Territories after the First and Second World War in the Cities of Dresden and Mainz, 1921-1972; C.Lotz Monuments and Commemorative Sites for German Expellees A Memorial Laisser-Passez? Church Exhibitions and National Victimhood in Germany; D.Sandler Remembering on Foreign Soil: The Activities of the German War Graves Commission; D.Livingstone Neither Here nor There? Memorialisation of the Expulsion of Ethnic Germans; D.Kift PART II: REMEMBERING NAZI CRIMES, PERPETRATORS AND VICTIMS Memorialisation Endeavours of the Regional Offices for Political Education (Landeszentralen für Politische Bildung); D.K.Buse Memorialisation of Perpetrator Sites in Bavaria'; M.Urban Pieces of the Past: Souvenirs from Nazi Sites The Example of Peenemünde; U.Dittrich Remembering Euthanasia: Grafeneck in the Past, Present and Future; S.C.Knittel Remembering Prisoners of War as Victims of National Socialist Persecution and Murder in Post-War Germany; J.Nagel (In)Visible Trauma: Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset's Memorial to the Homosexuals Persecuted under the National Socialist Regime; T.O.Haakenson Memorialising the White Rose Resistance Group in Post-War Germany; K.Rickard The Role of German Perpetrator Sites in Teaching and Confronting the Nazi Past ; C.Pearce PART III: REMEMBERING JEWISH SUFFERING Memorialisation through Documentation: Holocaust Commemoration among Jewish Displaced Persons in Allied-Occupied Germany; L.Jockusch Memorialising Persecuted Jews in Dachau and Other West German Concentration Camp Memorial Sites ; H.Marcuse Remembering Nazi Anti-Semitism in the GDR; B.Niven Rosenstraße: AComplex Site of German-Jewish Memory; H.J.Potter The Counter-Monument: Memory Shaped by Male Post-War Legacy?; C.Tomberger Stumbling Blocks: A Decentralised Memorial to Holocaust Victims; M.Imort Affective Memory, Ineffective Functionality: Experiencing Berlin's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe; B.Sion From Monuments to Installations: Aspects of Memorialisation in Historical Exhibitions about the National Socialist Era; C.Paver PART IV: SOCIALIST MEMORY AND MEMORY OF SOCIALISM Heroes and Victims: The Aesthetics and Ideology of Monuments and Memorials in the GDR; S.Scharnowski Beating Nazis and Exporting Socialism: Representing East German War Memory to Foreign Tourists; L.Fallwell Memorialising Socialist Contradictions: A 'Think-Mark' for Rosa Luxemburg in the New Berlin; R.Bavaj Challenging or Concretising Cold War Narratives? Berlin's Memorial to the Victims of 17 June 1953'; A.Saunders Mia Lee (University of Warwick): 'GDR Monuments in Unified Germany; M.Lee Memorialisation of the German-German Border in the Context of Constructions of Heimat; G.Knischewski & U.Spittler The Fight in the Prison Car Park: Memorialising Germany's 'Double Past' in Torgau since 1990; A.Beattie PART V:MEMORIALISING GERMANY'S AMBIVALENT LEGACIES Martin Luther Rebel, Genius, Liberator: Politics and Marketing 1517-2017; U.Zitzlsperger Building Up and Tearing Down the Myth of German Colonialism: Colonial Denkmale and Mahnmale after 1945; J.Verber Remembering the Battle of Jutland in Post-War Wilhelmshaven; G.Götz The Memorialisation of 9 November 1918 in the Two German States; A.Segelke A Democratic Legacy? The Memorialisation of the Weimar Republic and the Politcs of History of the Federal Republic of Germany; S.Ullrich Memorialising the Military: Traditions, Exhibitions, and Monuments in the West German Army from the 1950s ; J.Echternkamp The Legacy of Second German Empire Memorials after 1945; B.Niven Notes