Monuments and Collective Memory
I’ve long appreciated the First World War memorials to which the Czechs have added the names of Second World War dead, victims of fascism and communism, and in one case, the dead from UN service. Makes good use of existing monuments. The Soldiers and Sailors Monument in front of the old Kane County Courthouse in …
Continue reading “Kane County, Illinois’ Multipurpose War Memorial”
I’m not a big fan of cannons or mortars–I mean how interesting can they be and no they aren’t the same thing–but I am a fan of reading historic markers. That’s how I learned that these round mortar shells, which were what originally attracted my attention at Battery Park in Charleston, were for thirteen-inch mortars. …
And in the First District at that? Why would I want it as part of my view when I’m having a Melange or a Kaiserspritzer, depending on the time of day, at Cafe Prückel on the Ring? Seems unfair to me to have to look at the anti-Semitic founder of the Christian Social Party and …
Continue reading “Why Does Karl Lueger Still Have a Platz in Vienna?”
I visited the Soviet War Memorial (Heldendenkmal der Roten Armee) on Schwarzenbergplatz (during much of the postwar occupation, Stalinplatz) again recently. It seems fair enough that the colors of the Ukrainian flag now appear as a backdrop to the columns of the colonade that partially surrounds the monument. After all, (Soviet) Ukrainian troops did help …
Continue reading “After All, the Ukrainians Did Help Liberate Vienna in April 1945”
Many monuments help their viewers remember. Plenty of monuments remember war. IMO, one of things war criminals do is try to destroy memory of all kinds. In this case, cultural. For shame.
Statues of Habsburg Emperor Joseph II, that is. I’m not sure when I first became interested in Joseph II, the statue, not Joseph II, the man. It was sometime in the early-to-mid 1990s, and I suspect in Cheb, formerly Eger, in far western Bohemia. I have a vague memory of seeing him, one armed and …
Prague has plenty of statues, some of which I like (the Pomník vojákům Rudé armády, the Red Army Soldiers Monument, near the front entrance of the main train station), some of which annoy me (I mean you, Jan Hus in Old Town Square), and some of which I simply ignore (pretty much anything later than …
I am sharing Dr. Theodora Dragostinova’s fascinating article, “Empty Fountains: Communist-Era Monuments Revisited.” The images are spectacular. For those of you who don’t know her, Dr. Dragostinova is associate professor of history at The Ohio State University. Her research focuses on nation-building, refugee movements, and minority politics in eastern Europe, particularly the Balkans. http://origins.osu.edu/connecting-history/1142014-empty-fountains-communist-era-monuments-revisited
Of Monuments and Memory