Places and their pasts

• As an economic resource - Tourism

• As a memorial of past loss, disaster or atrocity

• As a form of social memory - as a way of keeping past places alive

Lecture outline:

1. The National Trust - a contested heritage

2. Understanding heritage and the heritage debate

3. Geographies of Memory

4. Memory and the new Germany

1. The National Trust

Largest ‘civil society’ organisation in Britain

25.3 million visits to historic properties in 23/24
2.6 members in 23/24
(With 0.9 million being political party members)

Owns large section of the country side such as Cooper’s hill etc. National Trust in charge of maintaining buildings of importance such as stately homes and treasured landscapes.

National Trust Act of 1937
Declining aristocratic families giving large houses and estates into the ‘Trust’ of the ‘Nation’ instead of paying inheritance tax

Preserving the past - safeguarding heritage
As well as: Celebration of a past order and buildings with great interiors and exteriors

Now as it diversifies, it has also insured the preservation of less grand areas but just as important, such as old servant quarters, house that had been unchanged since the 30s etc.

It is also in charge of hidden histories of great houses: Penrhyn Castle. It was a family who owned the castle and got rich from slave trade. National Trust bought it and made a small exhibition at the bottom of it then commissioned artwork to comemorate the slaves.

2. Understanding heritage and the heritage debate:

Nuala Johnson 2014: ‘Space, memory and identity’

Three approaches to heritage:

As a form of ‘inauthentic’ history:

Patric Wright: Argues that in England a lot is focused on the perceived history, especially royals, turning England more into a theme park history, as history of the country that is shown has been procured to be shown into a certain narrative

Invented traditions: Many rituals associated with the British monarchy, including the coronation ceremony, are made to be perceived as ancient and connected to the distant past, despite being inventions of the late 19th and 20th centuries. As well as kilts and ‘traditional’ dances.

As a form of consumption of historical meanings and practises:

Interactions with the

As a contemporary manifestation of a longer process whereby human societies activate cultivate a social memory

Places of ‘Modern’ Memory

• Places such as archives, museums, cathedrals, palaces, cemeteries and memorials;

• practises such as commemorative and rituals

• objects such as commemorative monuments, emblems, core texts and symbols

More modern movement about statues or memorials about old figures of history such as slave leaders etc.

4. Memory and the new Germany:

Karen Till: The New Berlin 2005:

‘What does it mean to say that spaces […] are haunted or that ghosts are evoked through the process of place making’ Karen argues that places are haunted by its history, and the emotions that derived from the the place’s history. For example Berlin, and the Berlin wall. Areas will be ‘haunted’ by the memory of the Berlin wall.

Sometimes a place’s history has been erased. For example: Creative destruction at Potsdamer Platz. The location being entirely eroded away and being replaced by high rise skyscrapers, with only a line of bricks where the wall used to take place.

Sometimes it is not erased and instead memorialized: The memory district, The topography of terror. An area where it highlights how Hitler rose to power as well as all the atrocities committed under him and the SS.
Also