Exhibiting the German Past: Museum, Film, and Musealization ed. by Peter M. McIsaac and Gabriele Mueller (review)
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Exhibiting the German Past: Museum, Film, and Musealization ed. by Peter M. McIsaac and Gabriele Mueller
This fine collection of essays is built on the premise that museums and films share common strategies and that "both engage in processes of representation, interpretation, and canonization that … are necessary to render ephemeral forms of social memory into more durable symbols and practices, thus shaping collective remembering and contributing to the construction of institutionalized top-down memory and historical master narratives" (5). Of primary concern to both museums and films are questions of authenticity, the tension between education and entertainment, and modes of seeing. The first two chapters focus in particular on modes of seeing. Simon Ward applies his theory of the "urban museal gaze" to film and finds examples specifically in Wim Wenders's Himmel über Berlin (1987). Mark W. Rectanus argues that "civic seeing" can help visitors understand the very different intentions and strategies between two museums: the BMW Welt complex including the BMW Museum, and the Jewish Museum Munich, specifically the installation "Speaking Germany" by Sharone Lifschitz. These two articles, both rich with theory, serve as an introduction to the many case studies that follow.
The next pair of very engaging articles focuses on film. In her excellent article, Alice Kuzniar closely examines the documentary Unser täglich Brot (2005), which documents various aspects of European factory farming. While Kuzniar finds that the film "participates in a musealization to the extent that it documents … what would otherwise remain invisible and unarchived" (72–73), she wonders whether the film techniques (characterized predominantly by long shots and the absence of narration) tacitly condone the "technologization at work in this industry" (65). Catriona Firth compares the book Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex (1985) by Stefan Aust and the eponymously named film by Uli Edel and Bernd Eichinger, considering [End Page 701] the consequences of representing history through a "testimonial mode" (in the case of the book) versus an "experiential mode" (in the case of the film).
The next articles by Anne Winkler and Jonathan Bach engage with museums of East German everyday life. Winkler, a sociologist, is especially interested in the amateur museums that are privately funded, thereby escaping aspects of museum tradition (e.g., didactic panels) and the official policy of understanding the East German past within the framework of life under dictatorship. Bach's more theoretical article, which focuses on the authenticity and tactility of objects in museums of GDR Alltagskultur, is less interested in distinguishing among types of such museums—a difference that I would argue is still quite important.
The following three articles do not limit themselves to one type of media but consider how memory of the National Socialist past is remediated using a variety of genres and techniques. Stephan Jaeger looks at popular representations of World War II in museum exhibits and documentary/docudrama films. Annika Orich and Florentine Strzelczyk's very well-researched and contextualized article traces the difficulty in discussing the National Socialist film Jud Süß (1940) in a museum exhibit, a documentary, and a feature film. Kathryn M. Floyd considers questions of authorship and narration by examining exhibition photographs, specifically those of the Nazi-era exhibit Entartete Kunst taken by photographer Arthur Grimm, and ties exhibition photography to still photography taken on the set of films.
Christine Sprengler considers Harun Farocki's 1995 installation Arbeiter verlassen die Fabrik in elf Jahrzehnten, in conversation with the Lumière brothers' film Workers Leaving the Factory (1895) and Farocki's one-screen installation by the same name from 1996. This stand-alone article (i.e., not grouped with others in the volume) nonetheless engages with many of the red threads that link all the articles together: archiving (here, via film), the creation of space for the viewer to enter, the intersection of film and museums, and the didactic function of museum exhibits.
The final two essays in the book bring the perspectives of museum curators to the chorus—a wise choice that helps...
