Memory Studies

""At the end of the First World War, Germany appeared to have lost everything: the lives of millions of soldiers and civilians, control over borderland territories, and, above all, a sense of national self-worth in the international political arena. But it also lost almost three million square kilometres of land overseas in the form of colonies and concessions in Africa, China, and the Pacific. Allied powers declared Germany unfit to rule over overseas populations, and it was forcibly decolonized. It thus became the first ‘postcolonial’ European nation that had participated in the ‘new imperialism’ of the modern era.

The end of colonialism was the beginning of a memory culture that has been remarkably long-lived and dynamic. This book traces the evolution of the collective memory of German colonialism, stretching from the loss of the colonies across the eras of National Socialism, national division, and the Cold War to the present day. It shows to what extent this memory was intimately bound to objects of material culture in the former colonial metropole, from tropical fruit sold at colonial balls, to state gifts handed to the former colonies at independence, to ethnological items kept as family heirlooms.

The study draws on a wide range of sources, including popular literature, oral history, and previously unexplored archival holdings. It marks an important shift in historical methodology, considering the significance of both material culture and private memories in constructing accounts of the past. Above all, it raises important questions about the public responsibilities of postcolonial nations and governments in Europe and their relationship to the private legacies of colonialism.
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Ferðandi av evropeiska meginlandinum lýstu í 19. øld Føroyar sum ein romantiskan tíðarlumma við ongum moderniteti. Hesa ímyndina tóku føroyingar til sín og marknaðarføra enn Føroyar við. Kortini  vilja vit ikki, at onnur lýsa okkum á so einfaldan hátt, tí nú halda vit okkum eisini vera modernað. Kim Simonsen, granskari, greinar her fyribrigdið

Born in Beeston in 1937 and educated at the University of Leeds, the poet, translator, and dramatist Tony Harrison has based many of his poems in and around the North of England. Traditionally championed as a resolutely working class poet, Harrison’s writing often focuses on the public and private lives of his family and Leeds neighbours - a focus epitomised by his aptly named first full collection ‘The Loiners’ (1970) and his second collection ‘The School of Eloquence’ (1978). However, whilst the gaze of the poet seemingly focusses upon the post-War Leeds cityscape, this paper will argue that far from being simply concerned with class inequality and issues of local heritage, the two collections are in fact profoundly shaped by the poet’s keen awareness of both the Holocaust and England’s dark Colonial legacy. Drawing upon Harrison’s published work I will explore how ‘The Loiners’ and ‘The School of Eloquence’ together map a new, transnational landscape of violence and barbarity upon the streets of Leeds. Connected by their shared dark histories, Europe, Central Africa, and the North of England are compressed together within the tight form and often taboo subject matter of the poems, as Harrison breaks down the geographical, imaginative, and ethical boundaries that might have otherwise kept these diverse landscapes apart.