2pack: Dissonant heritage +Memorylands

Sharon Macdonald’s book offers a comprehensive overview of the processes of remembering and commemorating, analysing hundreds of examples of historical and war heritage. This collection of essays focuses on the memory and identity of the post-war period, collecting examples from different parts of Europe. Tuscany, France, Germany, Estonia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Poland – these areas are freely traversed by the author who discusses the rules that structure our memory and the paradoxes of heritage. She examines concepts relating to psychology and identity, as well as social and political ideas, from the inheritance of family memory to EU regulations on regional heritage.

In “Dissonant Heritage? Architecture of the Third Reich in Poland”, the authors of 20 texts reconstruct “the plans for a new German Europe”, which architects implemented in the Reich itself from 1933, some of which after the war were left within Polish borders. They describe not only the large-scale reconstruction projects for individual cities and areas, but also show how the Germanisation campaign of the occupied areas was carried out – however, they focus on dissonant heritage, i.e. places that have survived to this day, and whose origins have often been forgotten.