The Nation as a Community Born of War? Symbolic Strategies and Popular Reception of Public Statues in Late Nineteenth-Century Western European Capitals

The genesis and development of Western European nationalism is widely connected to the notion of the nation as emerged from war. This paper focuses on that cultural combination in terms of the symbols and programmatic rhetoric employed in commemorative rituals surrounding public statues—mainly in honour of military personnel—in late nineteenth-century Paris, London and Berlin. As the experience of a total war lay still ahead, the national heroes elevated on plinths besides existing war memorials were not intended to express personal mourning or to manage bereavement. They were erected as morally charged expressions of specific national ideals. Based on a sample of some twenty public statues in Paris, London and Berlin, this paper identifies three strategies of intentional manipulation: compensating for military defeat by alternative interpretive patterns in France, overwriting the competing claims of different conceptions of nationhood in Prussia-Germany, and legitimising the nation-state on an imperial scale in Britain. Comparison of these three cases substantiates the claim that there were three ‘special paths’ for legitimising the nation through war, each dependent on historical contingencies (such as the trauma of defeat or experiences of victory). In all three cases, however, the experience of war served as a means of justifying national claims to power while omitting all reference to the inner make-up of each nation. At the same time, adequate historical assessment of metropolitan public statuary requires that public reception as well as official symbolism and rhetoric be taken into account. Responses to the statues indicate that the widespread popular appeal of national war myths was far from automatically achieved. Instead of fostering cohesion, the reception of cult figures occasionally came up against political controversies that served as factors limiting national propaganda.     

Ancient DNA insights from the Middle Neolithic in Germany

Genetic studies of Neolithic groups in central Europe have provided insights into the demographic processes that have occurred during the initial transition to agriculture as well as in later Neolithic contexts. While distinct genetic patterns between indigenous hunter-gatherers and Neolithic farmers in Europe have been observed, it is still under discussion how the genetic diversity changed during the 5,000-year span of the Neolithic period. In order to investigate genetic patterns after the earliest farming communities, we carried out an ancient mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis of 34 individuals from Wittmar, Germany representing three different Neolithic farming groups (ca. 5,200–4,300 cal bc) including Rössen societies. Ancient DNA analysis was successful for six individuals associated with the Middle Neolithic Rössen and observed haplotypes were assigned to mtDNA haplogroups H5, HV0, U5, and K. Our results offer perspectives on the genetic composition of individuals associated with the Rössen culture at Wittmar and permit insights into genetic landscapes in central Europe at a time when regional groups first emerged during the Middle Neolithic.     

From Dionysus to the Anti-Christ

Abstract

This essay is a reconstruction of Rene Girard's Christian apology in “I saw the Devil fall like Lightening.” It develops Nietzsche's antithesis between Christ and Dionysius which Girard identifies as the antithesis of modernity as such. Against Girard's own alliance with Carl Schmitt the essay adopts the Trinitarian point of view suggested by the author, in order to show that it is Erik Peterson's “Trinitarian” critique of Carl Schmitt's political theology of sovereignty which could fulfill the “true” aim of the author in fact much better.     

Difficult heritage and digital media: ‘selfie culture’ and emotional practices at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

ABSTRACT

This article sheds light on the entanglements of difficult heritage and digital media through an ethnographic analysis of digital photography and social media practices at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin. After a discussion of the project ‘Yolocaust’, through which an artist publicly shamed the ‘selfie culture’ at the memorial, the article argues that the sweeping condemnation of digital self-representations in the context of Holocaust remembrance remains simplistic. Instead, many visitors explore and enact potential emotional relationships to the pasts that sites of difficult heritage represent through digital self-representations. This observation raises critical questions about the role of digital media in current transformations of touristic memory cultures.     

Production technology and knowledge transfer of calcite-tempered grey ware bowls from 2nd- to 5th-century ce Noricum (Austria)

Aspects of 2nd- to 5th-century ce Roman production technology and knowledge transfer in southern Austria (known as Noricum) were examined. With no evidence for workshops identified in the study area, 44 grey ware bowls from two sites at Aguntum and Lavant were studied macroscopically, and combined with optical microscopy, X-ray powder diffraction, prompt gamma activation, neutron activation and scanning electron microscopy, in order to understand whether one (large) workshop supplied these bowls, or whether the bowls were produced by several (small) workshops nearby. Combined with information from the geological background, the results were used to tentatively indicate the production location. The results indicate that the grey ware bowls from Aguntum and Lavant were produced by local workshops nearby. The bowls were manufactured with similar clay sources, tempered with crushed calcite-marble rocks from the Tauern Window, their surface smoothed and burnished, and fired between 800 and 850°C in a reducing atmosphere of an open fire. This is taken to suggest that Roman potters, who were located at Aguntum and Lavant, shared strategies of raw materials selection, paste preparation, finishing and firing, and transferred technological knowledge through time.