Essays looking at heritage practices and the construction of the past, along with how they can be used to build a national identity.

Essays looking at heritage practices and the construction of the past, along with how they can be used to build a national identity.

The preservation of architectural monuments has played a key role in the formation of national identities from the nineteenth century to the present. The task of maintaining the collective memories and ideas of a shared heritage often focused on the historic built environment as the most visible sign of a link with the past. The meaning of such monuments and sites has, however, often been the subject of keen dispute: whose heritage is being commemorated, by whom and for whom?
The answers to such questions are not always straightforward, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, the recent history of which has been characterized by territorial disputes, the large-scale movement of peoples, and cultural dispossession. This volume considers the dilemmas presented by the recent and complex histories of European states such as Germany, Greece, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. Examining the effect ofthe destruction of buildings by war, the loss of territories, or the "unwanted" built heritage of the Communist and Nazi regimes, the contributors examine how architectural and urban sites have been created, destroyed, or transformed, in the attempt to make visible a national heritage.

Matthew Rampley is Professor of History of Art at the University of Birmingham.

Contributors: Matthew Rampley, Juliet Kinchin, Paul Stirton, SusanneJaeger, Arnold Bartetzky, Jacek Friedrich, Tania Vladova, George Karatzas, Riitta Oittinen

Contested Histories: Heritage and/as the Construction of the Past: an Introduction - Matthew Rampley
'Caught in the Ferris-wheel of History': Trianon Memorials in Hungary - Juliet Kinchin
Public Sculpture in Cluj/Kolozsvár: Identity, Space and Politics - Paul Stirton
Interrupted Histories: Collective Memory and Architectural Heritage in Germany 1933 - 1945 - 1989 - Susanne Jaeger
History Revised: National Style and National Heritage in Polish Architecture and Monument Protection - Before and After World War II - Arnold Bartetzky
Polish and German Heritage in Danzig/Gdansk: 1918, 1945 and 1989 - Jacek Friedrich
Heritage and the Image of Forgetting: the Mausoleum of Georgi Dimitrov in Sofia - Tania Vladova
Athens: the Image of Modern Hellenism - Georgios Karatzas
Cosmopolitan versus Nationalist Visions: Rem Koolhaas' ExhibitionThe Image of Europe - Riitta Oittinen
List of Contributors