How Can States Possess History via Memorials?

Abstract

(Series Information) European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2020 5(3), 1225-1229 | Article | (Abstract) The story recounted in Budapest in the Shadow of Dictatorships (K. Ungváry, G. Tabajdi, Budapest a Diktatúrák Árnyékában: Titkos Helyszínek, Szibolikus Terek és Emlékhelyek - Budapest in the Shadow of Dictatorship: Secret Places, Symbolic Spaces and Places of Memory, Budapest: Jaffa, 2013) points out how those who constructed the memorial must have known all these details but did not consider it necessary to mention them. Consequently, the authors ask: what exactly is the intention of this memorial, and how is history instrumentalised by States? While the book does not wholly answer this question, a reply could be hypothesised by reviewing it in tandem with the Palgrave Handbook of State-Sponsored History after 1945 (B. Bevernage, N. Wouters (eds), The Palgrave Handbook of State-Sponsored History after 1945, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). Due to the differing nature of the two books, this Article focuses on questions relating to the instrumentalization of memorials - the claiming of places of memory.

Keywords

• historical memory
• instrumentalisation of history
• age of commemoration
• dictatorship
• hungarian history
• historical accuracy