Institutionalizing Knowledge in Transition. An ethnographic research on NS-Memorial Sites as Arenas and Actors of Knowledge Exchange (InWiWa)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Nicolas Engel
• Subject Area: General Education and History of Education
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 497134399

Today, memorial sites of national-socialist (NS) crimes are important parts of Germany’s culture of remembrance and they are conceived, addressed, and perceived as state funded places of learning. They are regarded as essential components and central actors of the culture of remembrance and, in this role, are confronted with complex dynamics of social transformation. The discussion about inclusion, about transnationalization and migration, about the death of the last survivors, and a growing presence of right wing (memory-)politics is challenging the work of memorial sites today. With these developments, it is increasingly obvious that self-evident aspects of the German culture of remembrance is politically, globally, historically, and socially (re-)negotiated. NS-memorial sites are in a tension between conveying historical-political knowledge on the one hand and commemorating the victims of National Socialism on the other. Focusing on the question of an 'Education after Auschwitz' under transforming conditions, the proposed research project addresses NS-memorial sites as arenas and actors of knowledge exchange, or more precisely: with an organizational educational perspective, it focuses on NS-memorial sites as pedagogical organizations that each produce their own practice of knowledge transfer, due to their own organizational history and culture. In order to trace the NS-memorial sites as arenas and actors in the field of remembrance culture, the focus on organizational education is combined with pedagogical perspectives on dealing with knowledge in the context of an 'Education after Auschwitz'. The project specifically examines the question: What is the role and function of NS-memorial sites as organizational arenas and actors between commemoration and knowledge exchange and transfer? The interest in organizational practices of dealing with knowledge constitutes the organizational ethnographic research design which pursues three main goals: 1. On the basis of ethnographic studies, different organizational practices of dealing with the tension between commemoration and knowledge transfer will be made empirically visible and contrasted as institutionally-specific forms of an 'Education after Auschwitz'. 2. In the course of this ethnographic research, it aims for a theoretical-empirical condensation of the concept of knowledge exchange as a contribution to the virulent question of an "Education after Auschwitz" under transforming conditions. 3. According to the concept of knowledge exchange, a forum for the exchange about the relevance of organizational educational knowledge for an 'Education after Auschwitz' is to be generated in cooperation with existing network structures at the Goethe University. This is also a place for the development of potential research network perspectives on this topic.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants