Krieg dem Kriege: The Anti-War Museum in Berlin as a Multilayered Site of Memory

Museums are prominent sites of memory in contemporary cultures (Nora, 1989). They make memory sensible, collectible and transferable through the objects, documents and images on display along with the discursive practices attending their exhibition (Katriel, 1997). According to Tony Bennett, museums give rise to particular forms of ‘civic seeing’ in which ‘the civic lessons embodied in those arrangements are to be seen, understood and performed by the museum’s visitor’ (2011, p. 263). In their conserving and conservative capacity for showing what is precious (or abominable) in cultural legacies (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 2000), they can also give voice to an explicitly mobilizing agenda, turning the museum into a tool for social advocacy. As such, they do not only provide knowledge about the past but also promote a sense of ‘epistemic responsibility’ (Linell and Rommetveit, 1998) whereby knowledge prefigures action.