Troubling Memories?: The German-American Heritage Museum of the U.S.A. and the Memory of the Holocaust

Year 2020, Issue: 53, 7 - 33, 01.05.2020

Julia Lange

Abstract

The recognition politics of German-American activists and
their ethnic organizations have been marked by significant successes since the late 1980s. The opening of the German-American Heritage Museum of the U.S.A. (GAHM) in Washington, D.C. in 2010
is a symptom and continuation of these intensified visibility politics
aimed at raising the symbolic capital of German-American ethnicity.
By closely examining the representations of National Socialism and
the Second World War in the GAHM’s permanent exhibition and its
wider cultural programs, including its temporary exhibitions, this paper sheds light on the museum’s problematic memory politics which
stand in direct competition with the one pursued by the nearby United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Whereas attempts at confronting the German National Socialist past have been intensified by the
museum’s leadership in more recent years, the existence of pro-Nazi
German-American groups still remains silenced in the museum. German-American identity politics and the dynamics of Holocaust memory are intricately interrelated, I argue, with the latter not impeding but,
paradoxically, rather catalyzing the former’s strength.

Keywords

German Americans, Ethnic Museums, Identity Politics, World War II, Holocaust Memory

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