ABSTRACT
This chapter is based on the observation that the approach of the “lieux de mémoire” (sites of memory), first tested out in France on the initiative of Pierre Nora in the early 1980s, represents a convincing attempt to take up as a historian the challenge of the everywhere present memory boom. It shows under which conditions, and with which consequences for a better understanding of German history, étienne Franéois and Hagen Schulze have adapted this approach to the German case (Deutsche Erinnerungsorte, 3 vol., Munich 2001). This case study is a plea for a transnational exploration of the European memories and the “presence of the past” in the representations and behaviors of Europeans today.
