Vergangenheit, die nicht vergeht

Abstract

The publication entitled "Vergangenheit, die nicht vergeht. Das Gedächtnis der Shoah in Frankreich seit 1945 im Medium Film" (A past, that doesn't pass. Holocaust Memory in France since 1945 in the Media Film) explores the basic transformations of the Holocaust-memory in France on the basis of French fiction films that are to be identified as part of cinematography of the Holocaust. The chosen approach that can be described as a history of memory referring to models of collective memory in cultural science studies. The aim is to specify the change of collective memory at the level of the particular filmic narratives and - by doing so - to identify and to analyze the long term development and ruptures in the French culture of remembrance since 1945. The empiric part of this study is preceded by methodological reflections that on the one hand permit a clear and differentiating application of the terms used in the current cultural studies of collective memory. On the other hand this chapter should help to conceive the material of research "Fiction Film" as primal source for historical science. The investigation is divided into five chronological parts and involves altogether a sample of 50 films into the general study before electing cases for deeper analyses. The first section (1945-69) which is generally well covered by the research to date is paying particular attention to the creation and the formation of different formations of collective memory in France, a process that has left its prints in the early films about the Holocaust. The focus is laid on the complex relationship of national memory and other political collective memories as well as particular social memories which is forming the background of the creation of a Holocaust-memory in a strict sense at the begin of the 1960ies. The second - primarily concerning the 1970ies - section is dealing with a central momentum of modification of collective long term memory in France. The cinema of this period is to understand as prominent forum of discourses which does not only reflect the ongoing transformation from Résistance dominated memory into a Holocaust dominated memory but also significantly stimulating this shift. Film as one influencing value in a public-democratic sphere of collective memory is documenting on various (visual + narrative) levels the decline of the herocentric national remembrance towards a transnational victim based Holocaust memory. In the following third period which is located in the 1980ies and 1990ies this fundamental transformation is continuously specified and at the same time showing consequences. In the broader context of continuous medialization and politicization of the Holocaust on an international level the study is concentrating on three elements of the transformation in collective Holocaust remembrance: Universalization, Americanization and Victimization. The fourth section is for a moment dislocating its focus, as it turns from the production of French film to the public and intellectual reception of the most successful international Holocaust films in the 1990ies as well as the continued dispute over the appropriate representation of the Holocaust. The last part of the empiric part is locating and defining current tendencies in the filmic representation of the Holocaust in French cinema. The author is taking into account films presented until the year 2007. Besides a general description of the sometimes very divergent evolution of the cinematic-taking reference to the Shoah in France, the study continues to relate selected examples to general phenomena of social intercourse with the past, especially the "Patrimonialisation" (Pierre Nora), and the Sacralization and the Re -politicization of history. The diachronically oriented investigation - so far are sparse on the subject of research - and the wide coverage radius of empirical data prove - regarding the reconstruction and analysis of individual changes and constellations of