Abstract
Places of Memory examines the post-war history of the site where the 1942 Wannsee Conference was held. The author analyses the different uses of the house to investigate how a site turns into a site of memory. "This book is not about just one case - the house of the Wannsee Conference - but raises fundamental questions about the axiomatic but often implicit concepts, such as space, place and authenticity, which determine our view of memory sites in general. We get a bright and frank account by a historian who dares to cross disciplinary borders and is determined to move beyond the merely descriptive level, in order to thoroughly understand what it at stake in our changing and often puzzling relation to 'places of memory'. Warmly recommended."--Dr. Berber Bevernage, Ghent University, Belgium "In this concise book Katie Digan succeeds in an exemplary way in turning her topic - the well-known Wannsee Villa in Berlin - from the familiar into the unfamiliar and back. What she arrives at is a theoretically informed understanding not only of this infamous place haunted by its Nazi-past, but of sites of memory in general."--Chris Lorenz, Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany.