Material After-Lives Between the Attic and the Archive

Abstract

The longest chapter of ‘Exhibiting the Nazi Past’ acknowledges that for most exhibition-makers, what happened after 1945 is as important as what happened in the years 1933–45. Nearly all history exhibitions on this topic devote a final chapter to the after-effects of the Nazi era for victims and for members of the non-persecuted majority. By focussing on the continued storage and circulation of objects dating from 1933–45 in the post-war years, exhibition-makers can criticise Germany’s and Austria’s failure to deal quickly and adequately with the crimes and immorality of the Nazi era. At the same time, they can show how Germany and Austria began to face up to their past through the preservation of material traces. In some cases, they can view even this process of enlightenment critically in retrospect.