Remembrance to Repression

Abstract

In his influential work ‘On collective Memory’, French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs described an intrinsic relationship between the past and present, a reconfiguration of the perceived past through the lens of its current generation’s ideas and experiences. This represents an increasing challenge in the urban realm due to the growing amount of historized fragments left within its fabric as a result of the modern societal obsession of leaving traces behind. This thesis therefore investigates what influence commemorative architecture has today as integral parts of our city and the negotiation necessary to work this historized palimpsest. To do this, the city of Vienna, Austria will be investigated as the turbulent decades following WWII led to a first reconstruction of national memory based on a founding lie in its ‘Opferthese’. Once that mythos crumbled in the 1980s, it resulted in palpable shifts of its collective memory which were materialised in a tangible form through monuments around the city. Through an excursion to Vienna, the circumstances leading to the construction of three prominent monuments, their performance and the broader developments of Vienna’s memory politics were studied. Local and foreign papers on Vienna’s past century and collective memory, historical photographs, newspaper reports, vocal reactions to the unveiling of the monuments, personal writings as well as archival research formed a supplementary background to the excursion for this study. The thesis investigates it through three parts, foremost, it creates an overview of the events shaping memory politics in Vienna post WWII. This historical understanding will be accompanied by a theoretical framework on the concept of collective memory based on predominantly on the theories of Maurice Halbwachs and Pierre Nora. The second portion will include thorough case studies of three important Viennese memorials: ‘Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial’ (2000), ‘Memorial against War and Fascism’ (1988) and ‘Deserter Monument’ (2014). This chapter will connect them to the context of their realisation, historical site context, design, and spatial performance. Thereby, understanding how collective memory forms public space and its perception through physical edifices. Lastly, the paper forms a connection between the theoretical ideas and their physical manifestations. Through a broader view of urban effects, the findings of the research and the dialogue between them, it hypothesises on the increasing historicization of our cities, its memorial landscape and the constant negotiation architects and inhabitants face in the context of our palpable past.