Selection of Museums Analyzed - The Second World War in the Twenty-First-Century Museum

The Second World War in the Twenty-First-Century Museum

1.4 Selection of Museums Analyzed

This study performs a detailed analysis of twelve permanent exhibitions in six countries that opened in the twenty-first century. The typical military or army museum representing military weaponry, technology, heraldry, etc. without a strong cultural narrative, which represents war as heroic or at least uncritically, is not discussed in this study.⁴² Reconstructive museums that put the visitor in

 See chapter 2.2.

 The Military History Museum (Heeresgeschichtliches Museum) in Vienna and Royal Army Museum of Military History (Musée royal de l’Armée et d’Histoire militaire) in Brussels still 32 1 The Second World War in the Twenty-First-Century Museum

the passive position of observing and admiring a reconstructed scene, an au-thentic artifact, or a collection of original artifacts do not develop a strong po-tential for experientiality.

The twelve museums and their most recent permanent exhibitions analyzed in study are as follows: in Germany, the Bundeswehr Military History Museum (Militärhistorisches Museum der Bundeswehr) in Dresden (MHM) from 2011,⁴³ the Topography of Terror (Topographie des Terrors) in Berlin (ToT) from 2010, and the German-Russian Museum (Deutsch-Russisches Museum) in Berlin-Karl-shorst (DRM) from 2013; in Belgium, the Bastogne War Museum in Bastogne (BWM) from 2014 and, as a European example, the House of European History in Brussels (HEH) from 2017; in Poland, the Warsaw Rising Museum (Muzeum Powstania Warszawskiego) in Warsaw (WRM) from 2005, the Oskar Schindler Factory (Fabryka Emalia Oskara Schindlera) in Kraków (OSF) from 2010, and the Museum of the Second World War (Muzeum II WojnyŚwiatowej) in Gdańsk (MIIWŚ) from 2017; in Britain, two branches of the Imperial War Museum, the Im-perial War Museum in London (IWML) from 2000 to 2014 and the ImIm-perial War Museum North in Manchester from 2002; in Canada, the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa (CWM) from 2005; and in the United States, the National WWII Muse-um in New Orleans from 2000 to 2018. The Mémorial de Caen in France, which was founded in 1984 and considerably revised in 2009 and 2010 serves as a backdrop, particularly in the chapters on the representation of the Holocaust and the Air War.

All exhibitions analyzed in this study function as regional or national focal points for Second World War narration, although their actual numbers of visitors vary widely between roughly 40,000 a year in the German-Russian Museum and 1.3 million in the Topography of Terror. Most institutions are either publicly fund-ed or, if they are privately fundfund-ed like the New Orleans WWII Museum, function

are predominantly designed as exhibitions fully based on assembling and displaying original military artifacts. The Brussels museum uses modern museum design techniques to depict the Second World War in itsHalle Bordiau–the exhibition is currently being expanded–, however, it still looks like a traditional war museum that does not tell a story but mainly displays histor-ical war scenes and focuses on equipment, with a certain emphasis on heroic commemoration.

Another example is the International Museum of World War II located in Natick, Massachusetts.

Its permanent exhibition, currently being redeveloped (a move to Washington, D.C. is under dis-cussion), is fully based on its collection of authentic military documents, artifacts, and memo-rabilia.

 Note that the dates provided in this list are the opening years for the new or redesigned per-manent exhibitions. Several institutions are constantly redesigning parts of their perper-manent ex-hibition or expanding it, especially the Imperial War Museum in London and the National WWII Museum in New Orleans.

1.4 Selection of Museums Analyzed 33

as a national hub for telling a national or transnational story as well as reflecting and influencing cultural memory. Each exhibition constructs and simulates human experiences of war within different memory contexts. All exhibitions an-alyzed have been either redesigned in the twenty-first century or opened in new museum institutions and buildings since 2002, the large majority since 2010.

Half of the permanent exhibitions are the inaugural exhibitions for a new insti-tution or museum sub branch (in Brussels, Gdańsk, Kraków, Manchester, New Orleans, and Warsaw), another four have a new building (in Bastogne, the Top-ography of Terror in Berlin, Dresden, and Ottawa), even if the actual institution had preceding permanent exhibitions.

All six countries in which the museums are located have recently founded or reopened major state-sponsored permanent exhibitions about the Second World War, attracting considerable national and international media attention. One could theoretically include a large number of countries that participated in the Second World War and consider other regions such as Asia-Pacific,⁴⁴the Middle

 There is obviously endless material on the memory debates about the Second World War in the Asian-Pacific theater, particularly in East Asia and South-East Asia, and regarding the rela-tionship of Japan to China, Korea, and the Philippines, and the American campaign in Asia. Spe-cific Japanese atrocities such as the Nanjing Massacre and the fate of the‘comfort women’in Japanese-occupied territories have received worldwide attention. The British and Allied Cam-paign in Burma and the colonial past of Western powers in general could have been further top-ics. I decided to only include the Asian-Pacific theater in the discussion in this book if it was crucial to understand the exhibition designs and representations in Europe and North America, such as in the discussion of the American master narrative of the war or in the discussion of the depiction of aerial warfare and nuclear bombing in the museums (see chapters 4.1 and 8 in par-ticular).Whereas several well-known museums such as the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanj-ing Massacre by Japanese Invaders (founded 1985, renovated 1995) have been redesigned in the late twentieth century, there is also a larger number of smaller or more local museums that opened in the twenty-first century such as, in Japan, the Shokeikan Museum for Wounded Sol-diers in Tokyo (2006) and the Okinawa Prefectural Peace Park (2000; see Allen and Sakamoto 2013, 1051–1053). In 2019, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum (founded 1955, renovated 1994) reopened its Main Building and redesigned permanent exhibition (the East Building with parts of the permanent exhibition was reopened in 2017); the museum focuses, however, clearly on the aftermath of the bombing, the universal destruction of nuclear bombs, and on commemorating the victims, not on understanding the historical context of the war. Scholars reflect in particular on the political discourses, cultural memory, and master narratives purport-ed by museums in Japan, China, and South Korea (see e.g. Allen and Sakamoto 2013; Denton 2014; Hatch 2014; Yoshida 2014; Lee 2018). Jooyoun Lee demonstrates in her analysis of major Japanese war and peace museums that these“not only produce knowledge of the nation’s past, but also trigger the emotions of contemporary people to connect them to the war dead, by exhibiting personal stories, photographs, and belongings of the deceased and thereby gener-ating an affective identity that transcends time and space”(2018, 8). The debates about victim-34 1 The Second World War in the Twenty-First-Century Museum

East, Australia (see e.g. Allen 2015), Scandinavia (see e.g. Kjeldbæk 2009; Stugu 2011), or other Eastern European countries besides Poland⁴⁵to discuss represen-tational techniques; however, the close reading of the different exhibition spaces and their potentialities for an‘ideal visitor’⁴⁶requires concentrating on a reason-able number of museums. First, this prevents this study from getting lost in gen-eralities that simply repeat the museums’curatorial and architectural mission statements. Second, it allows for a focus on the intricacies of a specific set of na-tional and transnana-tional variations on cultural memory of the war.

The six countries in this study were selected for specific structural reasons that could be transferred to other arenas of memory and explain similar repre-sentational techniques and variations in other regions and countries. They func-tion as models for the analysis of Second World War exhibifunc-tions due to their spe-cific roles in the war. European memory is the core of this study; the comparison to North America is needed to demonstrate the markedly different memory of a continent that did not experience the war directly on its own soil. The European Union has tried to define a shared collective memory and identity coming out of the Second World War, which has been contested in national memory frame-works. Germany is the aggressor or perpetrator nation, dealing with questions of collective guilt and how, simultaneously, to represent its own suffering.

Great Britain is a victor and survivor country for which war in general and more recently the Second World War, has been an important identifier for the na-tion as defenders and liberators of the world. Poland perceives itself as a country in a victim position (albeit with issues of collaboration and antisemitism) that was able to begin the redevelopment of a national master narrative only after the Soviet dictatorship, which had partly overshadowed the memory of the Sec-ond World War. It has become the model for countries in which memory politics, particularly related to the Second World War, have become a highly debated part of national identity between a more European-oriented model and a nationalist narrative. Belgium functions as example of a victim and occupied country that relied on others for its survival as a state.

Canada is a victor/savior from outside of Europe in which post-war represen-tation and collective memory have led to the formation of a strong national iden-tity, including Canada’s post-war role as an international peacekeeper and dip-lomatic mediator. The United States has a similar master narrative, but the narrative emerges from an already self-affirmed perspective of identity and

hood, suffering, and perpetration provide for interesting comparative insight if one juxtaposes the memory battles of Japan and Germany.

 See also Kurilo 2007; Makhotina et al. 2015; Bogumiłet al. 2015, among others.

 See chapter 2.1.

1.4 Selection of Museums Analyzed 35

strength in fighting the‘good’war to save the world from evil. The analysis of US American and Canadian museums also allows for the discussion of whether there is a unique North American perspective in Second World War museum rep-resentation and in which ways the North-American memory has been more sta-ble throughout the last seventy years than its European counterpart.

This study focuses on permanent exhibitions since they are the better reflec-tions of the long-term processes of cultural memory and group narratives that shape the representation of the Second World War on a national or transnational level. The study excludes explicit Holocaust memorial museums and Holocaust educational centers as well as memorial sites, as discussed above as type (4), which create exhibitions through the lens of a historic place and its events.

The Topography of Terror has been included to serve as an example of an insti-tution that is almost exclusively focused on the depiction of perpetration. It also works as a model for generating structural experiences of the war. The twelve museums analyzed include five museums in which the Second World War is prominently displayed but as part of a more all-encompassing history, including four military history museums–the Bundeswehr Military History Museum, the Canadian War Museum, the Imperial War Museum in London, and the Imperial War Museum North–and one history museum–the House of European History.

The other seven museums exclusively represent the Second World War, even if this is done in numerous forms and from various thematic angles.

In sorting the twelve museums by the main typology to which each museum adheres, only the Bundeswehr Military History Museum and German-Russian Museum primarily function as object-based history museums, although they also have narrative and experiential qualities. The Gdańsk Museum of the Sec-ond World War, the Warsaw Rising Museum, the Canadian War Museum, the House of European History, and the Bastogne War Museum are predominantly narrative history museums. Whereas the New Orleans WWII Museum is first and foremost a‘memorial museum’for United States veterans and the collective effort of the USA in the war, it also features elements of an object-based and a narrative history museum with strong experiential components. Similarly, the Warsaw Rising Museum and the Canadian War Museum partially function as me-morial museums for the insurgents of the Warsaw Uprising and Canadian war veterans respectively. The House of European History is on the borderline be-tween an object-based and a narrative history museum, while the Bastogne War Museum and the Warsaw Rising Museum both also feature strong experien-tial aspects. In addition to the Oskar Schindler Factory, the Imperial War Muse-um in London and Imperial War MuseMuse-um North could also be described as ex-periential with regard to their Second World War sections. Both branches of the Imperial War Museum also have elements of object-based and of narrative 36 1 The Second World War in the Twenty-First-Century Museum

history museums. The most comprehensive museums are the Gdańsk Museum of the Second World War, the Bundeswehr Military History Museum with its Ger-man-based but universally anthropological focus, and–although more restrict-ed to the American point of view–the New Orleans WWII Museum. The German-Russian Museum focuses on the German-Soviet war. Three museums–the Oskar Schindler Factory, the Warsaw Rising Museum, and the Bastogne War Museum– focus on a specific place, event, or battle, but all represent an overarching story that seems to surpass the official local focus in different ways. The Warsaw Ris-ing Museum creates a national narrative out of the local historical event. The Oskar Schindler Factory produces a microcosm of the German occupation of Po-land through its spatial representation of Kraków between 1939 and 1945. The Bastogne War Museum in particular combines local, national, and global as-pects of the war. Finally, the Topography of Terror deals with the whole range of atrocities committed during the Second World War, but with a focus on Ger-man perpetration.

Thomas Thiemeyer has differentiated between the three layers of the exhibi-tion creators, the actual exhibiexhibi-tion, and the museum visitor (2010b, 82; Heine-mann 2017, 57–60). He also differentiates between the analysis of current and past exhibitions. For Thiemeyer, the latter is based on the study of sources and empirical research in the field (2010b, 82). For the former, I talked to muse-um staff, researchers, and curators and used libraries and archives when appro-priate.⁴⁷ Planning papers and protocols, institutional annual reports, reviews and interviews in the press, and museum websites have been analyzed and are discussed / referenced when they contribute to the representational and aes-thetic analysis of the resulting museum and its effects on the visitor. For the fieldwork component, to select the twelve museums in question and to have a sufficient comparative insight into the design, representational, narrative, and remembering techniques, and the experiential effects in Second World War mu-seums, I visited 157 different museums and independent exhibitions on both world wars, the Holocaust and other genocides, human rights, and war and mili-tary history (and some more general history museums and exhibitions) in fifteen countries between July 2010 and August 2019. All twelve core museums for the project were visited on at least two different research trips, for a minimum of five days and a maximum of twenty-one days; the average was nine days of

field- These were not formal interviews; when an oral or non-published comment or information is cited in this study, it is explicitly referenced and I have received permission to do so.

1.4 Selection of Museums Analyzed 37

work in each museum.⁴⁸The close reading of multi-dimensional museum spaces was prepared through the creation of a list with analytical research questions that allow for the comparison of these museums. This method relates to ethno-graphic research and its (self‐) reflexivity, which sees the museum as stage for

‘performances’by staff and visitors, as well as a field- or discourse-specific un-derstanding of perspectives and prejudices that accompany any production of meaning within discursive frames (Gable 2005, 2010; Bal 1996; Scholze 2004, 2010). However, this study highlights a more literary form of close reading of the potentialities of semiotic meanings and of cognitive, aesthetic, ethical, and emotional effects that an exhibition can have on different visitors. It relates to the concepts of narrative, experience, and memory in Second World War exhibi-tions, while considering the specificity of the medium of the museum in its multi-dimensional setting and addressing the visitor through multiple senses.

This methodology is further reflected throughout the second chapter of this book. In its first half, I discuss the concepts of museum space and the ideal vis-itor in relation to representational techniques such as staging and distantiation.

The second subchapter discusses the relation between historical experiences of individuals as well as constructed collective experiences from the past and the visitor experience in the present. From there I develop the concept of experien-tiality and a sliding scale between primary and secondary experienexperien-tiality. The ac-tual discussion of the twelve museums is divided into four main chapters that provide the primary theoretical angles used to understand each specific exhibi-tion: restricted experientiality (Canadian War Museum, Warsaw Rising Museum,

 Since some exhibitions, such as Gdańsk Museum of the Second World War, the New Orleans WWII Museum, and the Bundeswehr Military History Museum are constantly evolving or chang-ing, it is important to note the first and last visit for each of the twelve core museums, in alpha-betical order: Bastogne War Museum: July 2014 & June 2018 (eight days of fieldwork in three dif-ferent visits); Bundeswehr Military History Museum: March 2012 & August 2019 (twenty-one days of fieldwork in ten different visits); Canadian War Museum: August 2012 & June 2015 (eleven days of fieldwork in two different visits); Gdańsk Museum of the Second World War: July 2017

& April 2018 (seven days of fieldwork in two different visits); German-Russian Museum: July 2013 & December 2017 (eight days of fieldwork in six different visits; the previous permanent exhibition was analyzed in 2009 and 2011 as well); House of European History: June 2017 &

May 2018 (six days of fieldwork in two different visits); Imperial War Museum in London: August 2013 & August 2017 (ten days of fieldwork in four different visits; one visit before actual project started in June 2009); Imperial War Museum North: August 2013 & May 2018 (seven days of field-work in two different visits); New Orleans WWII Museum: June 2014 & May 2017 (ten days of fieldwork in two different visits); Oskar Schindler Factory: June 2010 & December 2013 (six days of fieldwork in two different visits); Topography of Terror: December 2010 & August 2019 (twelve days of fieldwork in eight different visits); Warsaw Rising Museum: July 2010 & Decem-ber 2013 (five days of fieldwork in two different visits).

38 1 The Second World War in the Twenty-First-Century Museum

Imperial War Museum in London), primary experientiality (New Orleans WWII Museum, Oskar Schindler Factory, Bastogne War Museum), secondary experien-tiality (Bundeswehr Military History Museum, Imperial War Museum North, Top-ography of Terror), and the transnational (German-Russian Museum, Gdańsk Mu-seum of the Second World War, House of European History). The second half of the book consists of three chapters on specific thematic angles of contemporary representation of the Second World War in war museums: first, Holocaust and perpetration; second, total war, aerial warfare, and suffering; and finally the use of art in Second World War exhibitions. The book closes with a synopsis

Im Dokument Stephan Jaeger The Second World War in the Twenty-First-Century Museum (Seite 46-54)