The statue park in the Budapest, showing cleared-away memorials from the Communist era

Department

Culture and Imagination

This department is devoted to analysing cultural patterns and processes of societal change as articulated in art, literature and architecture, including various fields of popular culture and knowledge production. It is concerned with images and the imagination in a broad sense as well as with the significance of culture for the formation of societies. This endeavour centres around visual material and narrative sources but also comprises performative practices. With this profile, the department offers a framework for interdisciplinary studies across a broad spectrum of cultural and historical subjects. 

Its current research has three main strands: »Heritage and Canon«, »Knowledge and Truth«  and »Visions for the Future«, all building on current societal debates. They are closely interwoven with the GWZO’s main themes and connected to the Leibniz Research Alliance »Values of the Past« in which several of the department’s employees are involved.

The department is headed by Prof. Dr. Arnold Bartetzky.

Research

Subject areas and research topics

Heritage and Canon

Cultural heritage is not a constant, essential property, but rather a social construct subject to continuous change. This subject area focuses on heritage construction and canon formation in art, literature, music and architecture.

Ausstellung zum 30-jährigen Krieg Bellum et Artes

BELLUM ET ARTES. Cooperation and exhibition projec

Edited by: Susanne Jaeger

András Felvidéki: Illustration of the last stanza of Lajos Parti Nagy’s poem ‘Petőfi Barguzinban’ (Petőfi in Bargusin), 2003, © A. Felvidéki 2009

Canon Constructions

Edited by: Stephan Krause

Reconstruction of the Serbian Orthodox church in Mostar

Heritage without Inheritors

Edited by: Arnold Bartetzky

The Project of the Uralmash Socialist City Stadium. 1930s. Arch. P.V. Oranskij.

Re-thinking Socialist Architectural Legacy

Edited by: Mikhail Ilchenko

Feuer im Mikrorajon 531 in Charkiw nach russischem Beschuss 03.03.2022. Foto: Serhij Petrow Dateiname: Foto 1

Reevaluation and Reconstruction

Edited by: Anastasiia Bozhenko

The Lost City of Ani

Edited by: Karen Jallatyan

Knowledge and Truth

In the face of current controversies over knowledge production and credibility, this subject area examines the entanglements of different cultures of knowledge and truth regimes at the intersection of the public arena and expert discourse.

Ljubow Piddubna (zweite von links), befreit aus den Gulag-Lagern, mit Freunden, Magadan, 1956. Quelle: Privatarchiv von Ljubow Pohonjuk (Piddubna). Digitalisiert von der NGO "After Silence".

Experience and Memory of Soviet Deportations (1944-1955)

Edited by: Daria Reznyk

Figurations of Truth Telling

Edited by: Alexander Mionskowski

Re-enactor with the rune tattoo  ‘warrior of truth’ at the Slavic and Viking Festival in Wolin 2017. Photo: Jakub T. Jankiewicz, © Wikimedia Commons

History as Ancestor Worship

Edited by: Karin Reichenbach

Holocaust Memorial at Drohobitsky Yar, »Tree of life«

Holocaust Memory in Ukraine after February 24, 2022

Edited by: Svitlana Telukha

Fotoalbum, Buchenlanddeutsche

Institutionalized Memory and its Limits

Edited by: Alexander Weidle

‘Communism tour’ by Warsaw’s Palace of Culture and Science, 2016. © Sabine Stach

Tracing Communism

Edited by: Sabine Stach

Visions of the Future

Rooted in a growing interest in social utopias, this subject area adopts a long-term historical perspective to examine radical concepts for a comprehensive redesigning of society and ways of life.

The ‘Koldom’ collective housing project

Architecture for New Ways of Life

Edited by: Arnold Bartetzky

The Care Side of Work

Edited by: Lisa Füchte