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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Cultural Memory Through Spaces: An Analysis Of A. Mitgutsch’S House Of Childhood And J. Erpenbeck’S Visitation, Rachel Lynch
Cultural Memory Through Spaces: An Analysis Of A. Mitgutsch’S House Of Childhood And J. Erpenbeck’S Visitation, Rachel Lynch
Selected Undergraduate Works
Anna Mitgutsch’s House of Childhood (2000) and Jenny Erpenbeck’s Visitation (2008) use places as holders of cultural memory and historical witnesses. House of Childhood follows Max Berman as he returns to his childhood village to reclaim his Jewish family’s house. Visitation offers snapshots of German life in the same house in different time periods. Cultural memory, in Jan Assmann’s theory, is memory rooted in objectivized culture. When culture is crystallized into texts, images, buildings, landscapes, etc., these objects hold the history of a group and inform the group’s unity and self-image. Assmann outlines six characteristics of cultural memory: concretion of …