Beyond Berlin: Twelve German Cities Confront the Nazi Past. Edited by Gavriel D. Rosenfeld and Paul B. Jaskot. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. 2008. Pp. x+321. Cloth $70.00. ISBN-13: 978-0-472-11611-9.

摘要

Since 1945, the work of confronting or coming to terms with the Nazi pastnin Germany has taken legal, political, literary, psychological, and other forms.In the last two decades it has also become a focus of building projects in manynGerman cities. While the prominence of Berlin as the capital of reunifiednGermany and of Germany during the Nazi Dictatorship has led to a greatnnumber of monuments, restoration projects, and new commemorative exhibitnspaces there, many important and contested sites also exist in other Germanncities. In response to the large amount of scholarship already devoted tonBerlin’s urban landscape, the present volume looks “beyond Berlin” to answernthe question of whether the types of commemoration and memory work thatnhave taken place in Berlin are unique to the capital city or are nationally repre-nsentative. On a related note, the volume attests not only to diversity withinnGermany, but also to the wide range of disciplines participating in the studynof urban landscapes to understand better the activity and processes of memorynconstruction. Paul Jaskot and Gavriel Rosenfeld have assembled an excellentncollection of twelve essays, an introduction, and an epilogue written by (includ-ning themselves) five historians, a Germanist/comparatist, a cultural anthropolo-ngist, a cultural studies scholar, four art or architectural historians, and onenjournalist/critic/architect. The collective product is indeed evidence of thenbenefits of crossing traditional disciplinary boundaries.