The Forgotten Jew in the City of Youth
- Submitting institution
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University of Aberdeen
- Unit of assessment
- 26 - Modern Languages and Linguistics
- Output identifier
- 69098046
- Type
- Q - Digital or visual media
- Publisher
- -
- Month
- March
- Year
- 2016
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- Yes
- Additional information
- This project explores the hidden history and ‘difficult heritage’ (Macdonald, 2009) associated with the Bavarian town of Landsberg am Lech which formerly achieved notoriety as the place Adolf Hitler was imprisoned while writing his memoir Mein Kampf. The project was researched, filmed and post-production completed over a three-year period from 2013-2016. Archival and photographic research was conducted at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., KZ Gedenkstatte Dachau, the Dachauer Stadtarchiv and the Stadtarchiv Landsberg am Lech. As the film reveals, the scenic town located west of Munich on the heavily touristed Romantische Strasse became a popular site of ‘Hitler Tourism’ in the 1930s, supporting the development of a Fuhrer cult. The landscape, punctuated by church spires, masks former concentration camps and twelve mass gravesites containing the remains of 15,000 Jewish victims who perished during 1944-45. In an example of a ‘history of omission’, the camps have been removed, with few markers in evidence to indicate the former ‘architecture of oppression’ (Jaskot, 2000). The film utilizes a counter narrative device in the form of a local tourism brochure, which allows the project to pose questions about the nature of ‘past presencing’ and Geschichtsbewusstein -- ‘how past, present and future are understood in relation to one another’ (Macdonald, 2013). The film addresses the town’s hidden heritage by juxtaposing a survivor’s testimonial with the contemporary setting frequented by tourists, prompting questions about the textures of memory and role of memoralization. The visual and narrative approach adopted in this project uses physical forms and metaphors to investigate multi-layered meanings embedded in the site.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -