Book Review: Geschichtstheater. Formen der "Living History" by Wolfgang Hochbruck

Abstract

The dramatisation of history is ubiquitous in our postmodern everyday life: historical novels (as well as their TV adaptations, netting huge audience figures), documentaries, and stylistic references and citations evoking the past in fashion and architecture. The evening news features events such as the 2013 Voelkerschlacht re-enactment in Leipzig, and historical fairs and markets in Germany are as crowded now as regular funfairs have traditionally always been. No wonder that in recent years, German museums, too, are increasingly opening towards alternative means of presenting their content to the public, such as ”living history“ or archaeo-technology, which have long been commonplace in the didactics of museums in the English-speaking world as well as in a variety of European countries.

Keywords

• living history
• theatre
• newest era
• book
• review