Institutions of public memory: the legacies of German and American politicians
On a rainy day in November 2004, William Jefferson Clinton, convalescing from heart surgery, assembled two former presidents, the current incumbent, and several foreign statesmen and celebrities to inaugurate the twelfth presidential library, his library in Little Rock, Arkansas. It is yet another library that aspires to superlatives, certainly in regard to the quantity of its holdings, as an architectural statement, and soon, perhaps, in terms of the number of visitors.1 The opening of a new presidential library has become a showy event of major news value akin to presidential inaugurations and state funerals. It constitutes a display of power, prestige, and pride in the most visible of American political institutions but also another step in the former chief executive's battle to actively shape his presidential legacy. Yet the clamor surrounding new presidential libraries today (soon to be repeated with an edifice for George W. Bush in Texas)the fund-raising efforts, the refusal of some universities to host a library on their campus, or, conversely, the competition among communities to become presidential library sites in the hope of development fees and tourist dollars spurring economic growthhas little to do with the comparatively modest origins of the presidential library idea ...