Institute for RemembranceCulture

Remembering is a process that helps us – by looking back into history – to understand our present better. It is up to us to make this remembering also fit for future remembrance.

In everything and everyone, National Socialism was rooted in the tradition of “occidental” thought. Confronting it – especially because of the singularity of the Holocaust – seems suitable to sharpen a critical way of thinking in order to recognise corresponding signals at an early stage and thus to intensify our democratic culture.

Holocaust, Shoah are synonyms for the rupture, indeed for the collapse of our occidental (enlightened) civilisation. Synonyms for loss, absence, emptiness – for something universal. Therefore, this topic concerns us all, affects us all, makes us concerned. Together^[1] we as a society – in the sense of a European community of values and norms – bear responsibility for an enduring Holocaust remembrance: through inclusive as well as discursive remembering, where divided memories also have their place.^[2]

The further the events of the Holocaust move away from us, the closer its memorials come to us. Thus, it is important for us to think of new forms of remembering, to look for dynamic and creative (especially digital) approaches, to develop a different (= non-fossilised) culture of remembrance in order to prevent a “historicisation” of the Holocaust – especially now, with the death of the last eyewitnesses, with the transition from a communicative to a cultural memory.

The future of remembering the Shoah will probably take place primarily in the digital realm, and thus require new aesthetic concepts as well as interdisciplinary^[3] approaches (creative memory processes).

Instead of letting the past freeze monumentally, it is important to keep Holocaust memory alive – in its continuing non-closure – through shared memory experience (interaction as well as participation). This is to be done by means of our Digital Holocaust Memorial.

^[1] Whether we had victims, perpetrators, resistance fighters or conformists (people who willingly participated and others who had to participate in order to survive) in our family histories or have a migration background, it is up to all of us to counteract an erosion of liberal democratic values in Europe.

^[2] cf. also: Richard Sennett, Disturbing Memories, in: Patricia Fara/Karalyn Patterson (Ed.), Memory, Cambridge 1998, S. 10ff.

^[3] cf. Aleida Assmann, Die Last der Vergangenheit, in: Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History 4, Göttingen 2007, S. 375ff.

Areas of Activity | Goals of the Institute

Development of creative forms (= new qualities) of participatory, inclusive remembrance – Digital Holocaust Memorial
Pedagogical modules: for moderated Digital Holocaust Memorials in educational institutions
Ongoing psychological research and documentation of the deliberative developments of the Digital Holocaust Memorials
Development of research-based recommendations for innovative strategies against and for the prevention of antisemitism and racism
Teaching based on current research
Development of creative forms of dealing with “burdened” monuments and sites
The Institute is interdisciplinary and internationally oriented

Questions on Dealing with »Difficult Heritage«

As early as ancient Greece, free citizens met in the agora, the ancient equivalent of the marketplace and characteristic of the polis, to discuss governmental, philosophical and cultural matters. Works of art were placed in the agora. The public interest was – already in antiquity – expressed directly through art, as if it were on an open stage. In contrast to the majority of works of art that are in museums, galleries or private collections, art in the public space is thus encountered by, and addressed to, all of us^[1] (including those not interested in art). In this way, art in the public sphere produces a very special opportunity and has a responsibility that goes far beyond art per se, especially since it has to open itself up to recipients without the need for major art-theoretical explanations.

Austria – like every other nation – has to live and deal with historically “burdened” monuments / statues / places, i.e. with a “difficult heritage”. Up to now, this approach has mainly taken the form of ideas for their removal, concealment or recontextualisation.

But isn’t the removal, the putting away of “burdened” statues and monuments (Cancel Culture) simply pushing them away, and ultimately displacing them? Isn’t this an attempt to conceal history? Wouldn’t covering also be a form of preservation and wouldn’t this even lead to a revaluation of the covered? With regard to recontextualisation: Robert Musil said in his essay “Denkmale” (Prague Press, 1927) that ultimately there is nothing more invisible than monuments. And yet, there is something even more “invisible”: the memorial plaques^[2]with their explanatory notes (by well-meaning contemporary historians) on a monument.

Yes, and then there is the possibility of recontextualising “difficult heritage” through art intervention. Conceptual art – decisively shaped by Sol LeWitt in the 1960s – shows us the way here. The origins of Conceptual Art and Post-Conceptual Art with its proximity to the digital, lie in Minimalism; with it, theories and tendencies of non-representational (i.e. concrete) art were further developed. The concept of a work of art is at the centre: primacy of the idea (ideas implement the concept) in all artistic activity. Ideas for works of art take the place of the finished work: sketches, studies, models (of course also digital), photographs, notes (artistic research – concept development), plans, instruction texts and much more. The recipients are frequently involved in the process of the possible execution of the work. Associations and context are always important for the development of conceptual art. The artwork, defined by its concept, is thus “dematerialised”. The idea is more essential than its realisation.^[3] Art takes place in the mind. Sol LeWitt concludes his “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art” (1967) with the succinct sentence: “Conceptual art is only good when the idea is good.” And he opens his “Sentences on Conceptual Art” (1969) with the words: “Conceptual artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach.”

What if we thus succeeded – by means of conceptual art (digital as well as real) – in truly reinterpreting “burdened” monuments, statues and places into places of memory, into places of remembrance (for the respective groups of victims)? Could this not even lead to a meaningful way of dealing with “difficult heritage”?

^[1] The famous sentence by Joseph Beuys “Every human being is an artist” (1967) means that every human being as a social being has the creative power to change himself, society and thus the world. Beuys understood art primarily not as individual works but as events, debates and thought processes: creative processes of creation.

^[2] cf. also: Alex von Tunzelmann, Heldendämmerung, Munich 2022, p. 332.

^[3] cf. on this already Spinoza in his “Treatises on the Rectification of the Understanding. Ethics”: “For if a craftsman properly conceives a work, then, if such a work has never existed nor ever will, yet the thought of it is true, and the thought remains the same whether the work is there or not.” (Spinoza, Opera. Werke, Lateinisch und Deutsch, ed. by Konrad Blumenstock, vol. 2, 1967, p. 53). And Joseph Beuys: “Thinking is already a sculpture” (Idee der Sozialen Plastik).