How do democratic and pluralistic societies cope with traumatic events in their past? What strategies and taboos are employed to reconstruct wars, revolutions, torturing, mass killings and genocide in a way to make their contradiction to basic human rights and values invisible? This interdisciplinary volume analyzes in detail for the first time, in multiple genres, the history and image of the "GermanWehrmacht" and the debates in Austria and Germany surrounding two highly contested exhibitions about the war crimes of the GermanWehrmacht during WWII.
HANNES HEER works in Hamburg, Germany as a writer and exhibition organizer. From 1993 to 2000 he worked at the Hamburg Institute for Social Research, directing the first 'Wehrmacht exhibition'. He has written numerous publications on National Socialism, the Wehrmacht and post-war recollection.
SABINE LOITFELLNER is historian and fellow at the Austrian Research Centre for Post-War Trials, Austria, and is active in the area of art restitution in conjunction with the Holocaust Victims' Information and Support Centre of the Jewish Community in Vienna.
WALTER MANOSCHEK is professor for political science and chairs the Department for Government at the University of Vienna, Austria. His researches and publications focus on Politics of the Past, the Political System of Nationalsocialism and Holocaust Studies.
ALEXANDER POLLAK is research manager at the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia and independent scholar at the University of Vienna (Department of Government), Austria.
GUENTHER SANDNER is director of the research project "Democratising of Knowledge. Otto Neurath's Project in the Context of Different Scientific Cultures: Austria - Germany - England" at the University of Vienna, Austria.
HEIDIMARIE UHL is at the Commission for Culture Studies and History of Theatre, Austrian Academy for Sciences, Vienna, Austria
RUTH WODAK is Chair in Discourse Studies, Lancaster University, UK. She holds multiple visiting professorships (Stanford, Georgetown, Minneapolis, Uppsala, UEA); Karen Hesselgren Chair of the Swedish Parliament 2008/9. She is co-editor of Journal of Language and Politics and Critical Discourse Studies and her recent book publications include New Agenda in (Critical) Discourse Analysis (with Paul Chilton); Discourse and Discrimination, (with Martin Reisigl); Re/Reading the Past, (with Jim Martin).
SABINE LOITFELLNER is a historian and Research Fellow at the Austrian Research Centre for Postwar Trials (FS&N) GUENTHER SANDNER is Director of the Austrian Science Fund(FWF)-supported research project 'Democratisation of Knowledge: Otto Neurath's Project in the Context of Different Scientific Cultures'. HEIDEMARIE UHL is a historian and fellow in the research programme 'Places of Commemoration' at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna.