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Arts-Based Approaches to Transitional Justice
Thesis · August 2020

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.16314.00966
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ARTS-BASED APPROACHES TO TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE 2
Abstract
In light of the growing number of hate crimes, anti-Semitism and a rise in xenophobia
in Germany over the past decade, many scholars and practitioners believe that remembrance
culture in Germany is fading. Errinerungskultur, or how societies deal with their historic
pasts, is particularly important in Germany because of its ongoing reckoning with the events
of the Holocaust. One way of dealing with the societal aftermath of such conflict is the
process of transitional justice, which seeks to correct the wrongdoings of the past and actively
build better social, cultural and reconciliatory processes into post-conflict societies. These
processes can encompass a number of projects including war crimes trials, victim reparations
and memorialization efforts.
This research examines how arts-based memorialization projects impact
errinerungskultur in Germany. An exploratory case study was conducted, in which primary
and secondary data were collected from four different German, arts-based memorialization
projects. Using the Aesthetic Perspectives framework (2017), the projects were analyzed by
their ability to meet three selected criteria for arts-based change. The most significant results
showed that projects that strategically implemented stakeholder and participant-oriented
processes in the development phase were more impactful than those that did not.
These results suggest that while there are a plethora of memorialization projects
seeking to reach goals of transitional justice, those which can be developed with transparent
and open collaboration among diverse groups of stakeholders lead to more impactful
outcomes.
Keywords: errinerungskultur, remembrance culture, memorialization, transitional justice,
arts-based peacebuilding
Kurzfassung
Angesichts der wachsenden Zahl von Hassverbrechen, Antisemitismus und einer
Zunahme der Fremdenfeindlichkeit in Deutschland im letzten Jahrzehnt glauben viele
Wissenschaftler und Praktiker, dass dies mit dem Verblassen der Erinnerungskultur in
Deutschland zusammenhängen kann. Der Errinerungskultur kommt in Deutschland wegen
der anhaltenden Auseinandersetzung mit den Ereignissen des Holocaust eine besondere
Bedeutung zu. Eine Möglichkeit, mit den gesellschaftlichen Nachwirkungen solcher
Konflikte umzugehen, ist der Prozess der “transitional justice”, der darauf abzielt, das
Fehlverhalten der Vergangenheit zu korrigieren und aktiv bessere soziale, kulturelle und
versöhnliche Prozesse in Nachkriegsgesellschaften aufzubauen.
Diese Forschung untersucht, wie sich kunstbasierte Memorialisierungsprojekte auf die
Errinerungskultur in Deutschland auswirken. Es wurde eine explorative Studie durchgeführt,
in der Primär- und Sekundärdaten von vier verschiedenen deutschen, kunstbasierten
Memorialisierungsprojekten gesammelt wurden. Unter Verwendung des Rahmens
Ästhetische Perspektiven wurden die Projekte daraufhin analysiert, inwieweit sie Kriterien
für einen kunstbasierten Wandel erfüllen. Die wichtigsten Ergebnisse zeigten, dass Projekte,
die in der Entwicklungsphase der Projekte strategisch stakeholder- und teilnehmerorientierte
Prozesse implementierten, wirkungsvoller waren als Projekte, die dies nicht taten.
Diese Ergebnisse deuten darauf hin, dass es zwar eine Fülle von
Memorialisierungsprojekten gibt, die auf die Erreichung von Zielen der Übergangsjustiz
abzielen, dass aber diejenigen, die in transparenter und offener Zusammenarbeit zwischen
verschiedenen Gruppen von Interessengruppen entwickelt werden können, zu
wirkungsvolleren Ergebnissen führen.
Stichworte: Errinerungskultur, Memorialisierung, Übergangsjustiz, kunstbasierte
Friedensförderung
Acknowledgements
I would first like to thank Professor Solveig Richter for her mentorship, guidance and overall
support of my vision and research throughout my time at the Willy Brandt School and in the
course of my masters thesis process. I am incredibly thankful that I was able to start my
chapter in the public policy field under the purview of her tutelage.
A warm thank you to Dr. Friederike Meier-Menzel for her interest in my research and open-
mindedness to a multidisciplinary approach to global connectivity.
I’m grateful for the exchange of ideas and amazing support of our thesis cohort group, aptly
named, “Mitgehangen, Mitgefangen!” In addition, I would not have had the drive or depth of
focus in my research if not for our accountability group, not-so-aptly named, “Thesis Title
TBD: Settle for Less.”
Thank you to Tatuś, Mama, and Landon who are my home no matter where I go and who
make everything possible for me. And another thank you to Dr. Mama (i.e. Dr. Judith
Weisinger) for her direction, support, and (fun!) proofreading on this project.
A special thank you to Koen, who witnessed the “behind-the-scenes” of my research process
and still likes me anyway.
Lastly, I’d like to dedicate this research to my Polish family who personally endured German
labor camps, fought in combat in WWII and bore witness to the murder of their family
members. Their history does not go unforgotten and I seek to honor their memory in my
work.
Table of Contents
Abstract .................................................................................................................................................................. 2
Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................................ 4
Table of Contents ................................................................................................................................................... 5
Introduction ........................................................................................................................................................... 6
Theoretical Background ..................................................................................................................................... 10
Transitional Justice ........................................................................................................................................ 10
Memorialization .............................................................................................................................................. 20
Art Based Approaches to Memorialization .................................................................................................. 29
Examples of Arts-based Transitional Justice Projects ................................................................................. 37
Methodology ......................................................................................................................................................... 46
Projects ............................................................................................................................................................ 52
Project 1: The Memory Void ....................................................................................................................... 53
Project 2: The Place of Remembrance ......................................................................................................... 56
Project 3: Die Suche..................................................................................................................................... 60
Project 4: Yolocaust ..................................................................................................................................... 63
Analysis ................................................................................................................................................................. 67
Key Findings: .................................................................................................................................................. 70
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................ 73
Bibliography ......................................................................................................................................................... 79
Appendix .............................................................................................................................................................. 89
Interview Transcript Summary..................................................................................................................... 90
Project Photos ................................................................................................................................................. 94

Introduction
In October 2019, a shooting in a synagogue in Halle, Germany occurred on the Jewish
holiday of Yom Kippur. Federal investigators categorized the attack as a far-right crime and
an act of anti-Semitism. The attack left two people dead and two injured. In 2020 a shooting
in a predominantly Turkish neighborhood in Hanau, Germany resulted in 9 people dead.
Prosecutors called this case an act of terrorism, with authorities and Chancellor Merkel citing
the attack as having racist and xenophobic motives. These major events in Germany represent
a growing rhetoric of anti-Semitism, racism and xenophobia. In 2018 anti-Semitic hate
crimes in Germany increased by 10% from the previous year and violent attacks also rose
from 37 to 62 attacks in 2018 (BBC News, 2019).
After 14 years serving as German chancellor, Angela Merkel made her first visit to
the Auschwitz-Birkenau Holocaust memorial in 2019, vowing to fight the rise in racism and
anti-Semitism in Germany and across Europe. “This site obliges us to keep the memory alive.
We must remember the crimes that were committed here and name them clearly,” she said
during her visit (Connolly, 2019). However, against the backdrop of the rise in anti-Semitism
and hate crimes across Germany, the memory of the events of the Holocaust and the
relationship to everyday life and society seems to be fading. Errinerungskultur, or
remembrance culture, is the essence of German social memory of the crimes against
humanity committed during the second World War and, more importantly, the cultural
commitment to the act of “never forgetting” these events in the promise to never repeat them.
As an important facet of German sociopolitical identity, errinerungskultur has been
embedded into public identity through research, education, and memorial sites. Against the
growing visibility of contemporary anti-Semitism, racism and xenophobia is an ongoing
movement of memory preservation and institutionalization. These efforts are processes of
memorialization, and for all intents and purposes, are collectively part of a transitional justice
effort. Many projects that aim at memorialization goals have focused on efforts such as
prosecuting war criminals and providing reparations to war victims. But another major facet
of transitional justice is the focus on memorializing events and the impacts of war or conflict.
A number approaches can be used to memorialize, but this research will specifically focus on
arts-based approaches. As this is an emergent focus within the overarching peacebuilding
field, this research seeks to strengthen the theory around how the arts impact significant post-
conflict processes.
Because Germany has a long history of investing in and exploring the role that
transitional justice plays within its society, it is important to look to the work of Susanne
Buckley-Zistel (2013) who examines and defines transitional justice as “extremely
heterogeneous, which may have prevented a common theoretical language from either
emerging or from crossing disciplinary boundaries.” Buckley-Zistel sees transitional justice
from a holistic perspective, that is to say, that it spans across disciplines and accounts for the
idea that justice processes are contextual and consistently in motion: “There is not one theory
of transitional justice. Rather approaches to conceptualize the phenomenon can be manifold
and highly diverse, and can at times be in tension with each other (2013).” Buckley-Siztel’s
work is ubiquitous across research looking at transitional justice processes in Germany after
the Holocaust making it a solid foundational work to use in this research.
Additionally, Naomi Roht-Arriaza’s (2006) work on transitional justice has developed
constructive criticism around how existing mechanisms of transitional justice do not fully
meet the needs of communities affected by conflicts, for example, noting the physical and
literal distance between tribunal cases and the populations for which they stood to bring
justice. These tribunals “made them seem more remote from the ‘target’ societies, and it was
doubtful whether the populations…accepted the facts established in their rulings as
authoritative or even knew of their work.” Roht-Arriaza characterizes transitional justice as

fluid and ever-changing in the way that it involves multidisciplinary approaches to achieve
outcomes. In this way, she sets a theoretical foundation for the implementation of arts-based
memorialization into the transitional justice framework. My research will explore the ways in
which arts-focused applications can more fully meet the needs of communities.
To this end, the arts have not been widely considered in approaches to postwar
peacebuilding because of the limited research on its methodological validity. However, a
number of conflict scholars are interested in different ways of analyzing the role art-making
has played in post-conflict reconciliation, memorialization and reconstruction in order to
make a more delineated connection to its efficacy in the field. One example looks at how the
arts have been shown to be an effective way to document victims’ trauma while providing
outlets for healing (Shrank & Schirch, 2008). Another example is the practical application of
art projects to create a dialogue between conflict groups within peacebuilding processes for
the long-term (Ramirez-Barat, 2014). Shank and Schirch (2008) provide a denser framework
for the reasoning behind arts-based methods beginning to be sought within the transitional
justice and postwar peacebuilding field. This article frames when the method is most
appropriate to use and how an arts-based approach is useful in the peacebuilding field.
Importantly, I intend to challenge my support for arts integration in the peacebuilding
process through the presentation of counterarguments or critiques. One major pushback that
scholars studying arts-integrated approaches face is the questionability surrounding
methodology and ability to measure results. Hunter and Page (2019) investigate
methodological processes that take into account more structured and evaluative mechanisms
for assessing arts-integrated peacebuilding. They construct a “set of new framework
evaluation questions that may augment (not replace) conventional logic-frame evaluation
approaches to allow for context-sensitive and humanities-inflected processes of more

appropriately assessing and communicating ‘the good’ of the arts when it comes to building
peace (Hunter & Page, 2014).”
In order to examine how the arts impact such processes of memorialization, an
exploratory case study in employed, focusing on four arts projects that were designed to meet
memorialization goals. By examining the processes of how the arts supported these goals, a
better understanding how arts-change theory can impact transitional justice process can be
reached. This analysis incorporates the Aesthetics Perspective Framework, in addition to
transitional justice theory, to serve as a guide for observing the impact of these arts-based
transitional justice projects.
In a contemporary setting that seeks to learn from shared histories and build better
futures as a result, memorialization looks at strengthening processes to do so. Even more so,
the innovative and inclusive facets of arts-based projects allow this discourse to be amplified
across more sociopolitical sectors. This research examines the ways in which arts-based
projects are currently being enacted within diverse settings and how these processes support
local and national goals.

Theoretical Background
Transitional Justice
The last 20 years have been witness to not only a growing number of global conflicts,
but also a marked shift from peacebuilding goals of conflict resolution to goals of conflict
transformation. In addition to the occurrence of the Holocaust, the twentieth century has
borne witness to war and oppression in severe and unfounded manners. The democratization
of states internationally and the atonement for past crimes of war and conflict have become
increasingly more significant. Being steeped in the question of how to create sustainable
peace gave rise to the concept of transitional justice. This has expanded the ability to
comprehend and document conflicts and their effects, while building multidisciplinary
approaches to transitioning into post-conflict spaces. The results of such a shift has been a
change in the mainstream political discourse, in addition to a change in how affected actors
of conflict are involved in the development of post-conflict conditions and experiences.
Further, this shift brings with it a multitude of definitions and interpretations that also have
the flexibility of changing depending upon the context of the conflict it is seeking to
rehabilitate. As a modern approach to conflict management, transitional justice concerns
itself with the rectifying of past wrongdoings.
However, further specifications pertaining to this rectification has been an ongoing
process for scholars. One traditional definition of transitional justice is the “conception of
justice associated with periods of political change, characterized by legal responses to
confront wrongdoings of repressive predecessor regimes” (Teitel, 2003, p. 69). This
seemingly rigid conception of transitional justice has more recently been deemed problematic
because of its implication that there is a specific defined amount of time after a conflict in
which transition occurs succinctly (Roht-Arriaza, 2006). In practice, this is not particularly
the case; more often than not, post-conflict transition occurs over the course of decades and
with different levels of engagement. In addition, the very concept of “transition” comes into
question if the authority overseeing the transitional effort is the same as one of the critical
actors in the conflict itself. The legal perspective also problematizes the traditional definition
because of the overwhelming focus on legislation, which can diminish the immense need for
social, cultural and economic justice in the aftershock of a conflict. Leading conflict studies
scholar Suzanne Buckley-Zistel (2007) defines transitional justice as “instruments and efforts
to deal with the past of a violent conflict or regime in order to enable the transition towards a
permanently peaceful, mostly democratic society (p. 2)”. In its conception and
popularization, transitional justice was primarily used as a tool to prosecute individuals and
institutions that committed human rights infractions during the Cold War. Since that moment,
transitional justice models and practices have been utilized through international and state
building organizations within human rights and peacekeeping projects. While transitional
justice has started as a method for addressing crimes against humanity and assigning
appropriate punishment, the concept of transitional justice encompasses a number of goals
beyond these factors.
It is this very fluidity of a definition that leads transitional justice to still be perceived
as an underdeveloped theory of peacebuilding. Buckley-Zistel investigates the role and
complexities of transitional justice, outlining a number of challenges within the global
literature’s attempts to construct a shared framework. The first challenge theorists contend
with is the heterogeneity in the transitional justice field, leading to a lack of a common theory
across disciplines. In addition to this, the field itself, as aforementioned, is fairly young and
therefore in a rapidly expanding state of flux. Another important challenge of the framework
is the more recent shift from conceiving transitional justice as a globalized process to a more
locally-focused mechanism. (Buckley-Zistel, et al., 2014, p. 2-3).
While a more comprehensive framework continues to be built, there are some
important guidelines that scholars have established in order to structure projects of
transitional justice. One such parameter is David Crocker’s (1999) set of goals for transitional
justice which define outcomes for transitional justice integrations. These eight goals include
truth-telling, creating a public platform for victims, holding perpetrators accountable through
punishment, upholding a rule of law, reparations or compensation to victims, institutional
reform, long-term involvement, and reconciliation. These goals, at their core, are often seen
as primary mechanisms of transitional justice in a contemporary sphere. There is also
research to suggest that these goals have the best chances of being reached when used in
conjunction with cross-disciplinary approaches. That is, some shortcomings of transitional
justice goals, such as those listed above can be addressed by using alternative approaches
alongside standard methods (de Greiff, 2012). These cross-disciplinary approaches shift the
focus from building strict guidelines that can be applied in all post-conflict situations, to a
system of values that can be used to define desirable situations and how to achieve them
(Buckley-Zistel, 2014). It is here where we can begin to conceptualize the intersection
between transitional justice and arts implementation.
Another consideration within the transitional justice literature is the difference
between the goals surrounding justice as an outcome and the goals related to transition as a
process. This can be seen in the transitional justice goals mentioned above, as some are
primarily focused on judicial and legal processes, whereas others focus more on the societal
and cultural aspects of the aftermath of a conflict. However, within either school of thought,
transitional justice brings one to a line of thinking that focuses on next steps, i.e., what should
the transition itself result in, what is the post-conflict society to look like, and how could this
process be enacted (Buckley-Zistel, 2014). This foresight, which is seemingly an inherent
requirement of transitional justice processes, leads to a spatio-temporal aspect of
peacebuilding. Transitional projects concern themselves with building a better or more
secure future for societies that have been disrupted by conflict. Within the traditional
transitional justice frame of thought, tools such as war crimes trials and truth commissions
focus largely on past events. While this is obviously an important element of transitional
justice processes, there also exists the capacity to plan and envision a future in which
elements of the conflict do not repeat (Webber, 2012). Strongly grounded within the
transitional justice literature, especially in the case of post-World War II Germany, is the
concept of past conflicts never occurring again. The concept of non-recurrence is found in
much of transitional justice literature. Linking the knowledge and understanding of the past
to a better, less conflict-ridden future also links this paradigm to memory to the concept of
forward-thinking. This paradigm relies upon evidence and documentation of the past as a
way to remind and reinforce the concept of “never again.” However, that while truth
commissions and tribunals may support the work of collecting this documentation, it is the
creative applications of passing down narrative and histories that are substantial in
reinforcing a societal acknowledgement that conflict of the past should indeed never happen
again (Barsalou & Baxter, 2007).
Thus, this research will narrow in on the aspect of the growing transitional justice
framework that concerns itself with addressing past wrongdoings within a contemporary
context and with a scope towards the future. While the theory surrounding transitional justice
suggests a broad and distanced approach, this does not detract from the impactful transitional
justice projects that have been engaged after a number of conflicts internationally.
Additionally, transitional justice projects differ depending on the goals of the project itself.
Significant types of transitional justice projects are criminal prosecution and truth
commissions, lustration, reparations, reconciliation, and memorialization. Each mechanism
has differing goals that ultimately lead to a transitional property for the post-conflict space it
serves. It is also important to reinforce the idea that the transitional justice framework
provides an outlook on systems and values, rather than a one-size-fits-all guide to dealing
with post-conflict transitions. The examples of the transitional justice types below are
outlined not as examples of replicable models or even as golden standards, but instead to
show the range and engagement of transitional justice processes.
Criminal Prosecution
This has been an essential function of transitional justice and involves the prosecution of
international crimes against humanity. A major component of such interventions are
investigations and case-building to process perpetrators and their actions during a course of
conflict. One major goal of criminal prosecution is to hold accountable the “planners and
organizers of crimes, rather than those of lower rank or responsibility” (ICTJ, n.d.). This is
seen as an effectual way of strengthening “the rule of law and send[ing] a strong signal that
such crimes will not be tolerated in a rights-respecting society.”
In the case that a nation or state cannot hold a judicial process in order to hold
perpetrators accountable and allow victims to testify, intergovernmental organizations, such
as the International Criminal Court, have jurisdiction to oversee criminal prosecution trials.
Ultimately, the overarching goal of holding such trials is to hold individuals or networks of
individuals who commit systematic and/or large-scale humanitarian crimes accountable.

Germany’s transitional justice processes began with a number of military tribunals,
held both by the Allied Forces and Soviet leaders in West and East Germany, respectively.
The Nuremburg Trials, which are often seen as trailblazing interventions, set the path for
future interventions and “represent[ed] the possibility of legal responses, rather than
responses grounded in sheer power politics or military aggression” (Minnow, 1998, p. 27).
They also signified the dawn of reliance on truth commissions. These trials heavily depended
upon documentation of evidence gathered from over 200,000 affidavits and testimonies from
not only victims, but from former SS and Nazi party members (International Military
Tribunal, 1946).
Truth Commissions
Truth commissions are employed, typically non-judicially, in order to establish
timelines, facts, causes and consequences of previous humanitarian crimes (ICTJ, n.d.).
These findings are often useful in contributing to criminal trials, but also support ongoing
transitional justice processes that rely upon knowledge of the past in order to create reforms
and rebuilding moving forward. Since the Nuremberg Trials, a number of conflict areas have
built truth commissions in order to systematically account for war crimes and crimes against
humanity. An example is the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which
approached their truth-seeking imperative from a reconciliatory standpoint, rather than a
retributive one, as was utilized in the Nuremberg Trials. This process not only invited victims
to give public testimony of their experiences during apartheid, but also assembled victims
and perpetrators together in order for perpetrators to confess and ask for amnesty for their
crimes.
Over time, truth commissions have become a part of the transitional justice process.
Focusing on “testimony of victims of atrocity, truth commissions provide acknowledgement

and recognition of suffering and survival to those most affected” (Ibid.). As exemplified by
the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, truth commissions can be
characterized as a method to “engage and confront all of society in a painful national
dialogue, with serious soul-searching, and attempt to look at the ills within society that make
abuses possible (Kritz, 2009, p. 18).” The importance of public discourse within the
transitional justice framework has been strengthened by the use of truth commissions.
Lustration
While public discourse and involvement in transitional justice processes has so far
been described as a positive and necessary tool for effective change, lustration deals with the
management of shifting leadership and public discourse. Lustration, much like criminal
prosecution, concerns itself with the subject of addressing former crimes or oppressive
regimes of the past. However, lustration is characterized more in a transitional sense, not as a
function of punishment or accountability. This process became more prevalent after the Cold
War, during which many former Soviet countries sanctioned policies that denounced the
actions and ongoing involvement of the communist regime.
Poland’s lustration process is seen as one of the most innovative models in Central
Europe (Roman, 2011). Over the course of ten years the office of Public Interest recorded and
analyzed declarations from former informants and communist secret police. This thorough
vetting process helped evaluate and examine cases in order to remove corrupt officials from
Polish government through due process. This resulted in the ratification of a law in 2006 that
gave the Institute of National Remembrance in Poland lustration powers, further committing
to long-term goals of transitional justice.

Reparations
Reparations “serve to acknowledge the legal obligation of a state, or individual(s) or
group, to repair the consequences of violations — either because it directly committed them
or it failed to prevent them.” While reparations are often thought of as solely financial
compensation, it is important to note that this is only one type of reparations that can be
offered to victims. In many cases, reparations are provided for victims in ways that are
deemed structurally beneficial, such as land rights, or access to health care and education.
Reparations serve an important function of transitional justice because it is perceived to be a
direct address of justice to victims.
After the creation of the novel “Corporation on Reparation and Reconciliation” in
Chile, a two-year mandate was established to “promote reparation to victims, assist in the
search for remains of the disappeared, and formulate proposals for the consolidation of a
culture respectful of human rights” (Human Rights Watch, 1992). These reparations, by law,
included “a fixed pension for spouses, parents and children under 25 of the disappeared and
executed; medical care without charge and scholarships for children until they are 35 years of
age; and exemption from military service for relatives if desired” (HRW, 1992).
Reconciliation
An emerging facet of the transitional justice process has been the concept of
reconciliation, which concerns itself with the repairing of relationships that were damaged in
the course of past conflict. This concept is seen more and more as an essential element of a
holistic approach to transitional justice; that is, it focuses more on the restorative justice
aspect of post-conflict projects. In congruence with acknowledging past crimes and conflict
events, reconciliation efforts embolden processes of building trust between conflict actors
(Fischer, 2011).
While the meaning has been interpreted differently between different schools of
thought, it has been a key element of transitional justice process (Barsalou & Baxter, 2007).
Within the peacebuilding domain, peace activists in particular see reconciliation as a
necessary requirement for lasting peace. Reconciliation also brings the importance of grass-
roots involvement to the transitional justice theorization, reinforcing that effective transitional
justice proceed with both leaders and grassroots movements simultaneously (Bar-Tal &
Bennink, 2004).
Transitional justice conceptualizes reconciliation through the assumptions that truth-
finding and truth-telling are an important pre-condition and that holding perpetrators
accountable (otherwise named “justice”) by undergoing judicial or rehabilitative means
reaches the goal of reconciliation (Barsalou & Baxter, 2007). The search to empirically
define how reconciliation can be fostered within transitional justice processes is a new
research field and currently full of mixed results. One leading view is that criminal trials and
legal processes often limit the access to the experiences of victims and work solely to focus
on perpetrators without including an aspect of rehabilitation for survivors of these
perpetrators’ crimes (Stover & Weinstein, 2004). However, there is also the substantial
thought that trials or truth commissions have a better chance of promoting reconciliation
because of their ability to intervene and organize complex facets of conflict (Gibson, 2004).
In the bigger picture, reconciliation can be defined as how “a society moves from a divided
past to a shared future” (Ibid.) Referencing the future-temporal nature of transitional justice,
reconciliation also works to transform past events into experiences of “shared suffering and
collective responsibility” which aim at helping to restore confidence (Bloomfield et al. 2003,
12-21).
It is generally agreed upon that this aspect of transitional justice needs considerably
more cross-disciplinary research to better understand the interconnectedness between truth,
justice and reconciliation (Barsalou & Baxter, 2007). An important facet of reconciliation
that is a necessary prerequisite to the role that the arts can play in a transitional justice
process, is the understanding of reconciliation as a process rather than as a preset outcome. In
this framing, my research will examine arts-based peacebuilding in its direct impact on post-
conflict interventions used to transform culture, economy, politics and society overall. The
concept of reconciliation is essential to this framework because of its dealings with multilevel
processing, which not only engages the transitional justice process at the national level, but
also necessitates the involvement of local entities (Barsalou & Baxter, 2007).
Reconciliation is a mechanism of transitional justice that begins to deal with the
concept of memory. Boraine (2006) believes that in order to reconcile differences from a past
conflict, a “common memory that can be acknowledged by those who created and
implemented an unjust system, those who fought against it, and the many more who were in
the middle and claimed not to know what was happening in their country” must be
established (p. 22). The concept of memory is an important aspect of transformation and
change across the peacebuilding literature. Because of the contextual nature of conflict, the
attitudes and behaviors of actors is dependent upon the memory of the past which directly
impacts what expectations for the future the society holds (Miall, 2004). It is critical to
engage the manner in which communities remember and construct their pasts, as this is often
a catalyst for conflict. In other words, “memories are part of each party’s socially constructed
understanding of the situation, shaped by culture and learning, discourse and belief”(Fischer,
2011). To reiterate the goals of transitional justice stated above, truth and the process of
documenting it is a crucial factor, even if memorialization is not the central goal of a
peacebuilding process. Within Bickford’s concepts of “transitional justice paradigm” and
“memory paradigm” exists the requirement of the preservation and documentation of
historical stories, facts, photos and materials (Barsalou & Baxter, 2007). The act of physically
cultivating these memories and developing upon reconciliatory acts happens in the
transitional justice mechanism of memorialization.
Memorialization
Memorialization is a mechanism of transitional justice that reinforces remembrance
and can be used to reach goals surrounding reconciliation in post-conflict societies. This
mechanism can lend itself to one of the aforementioned goals of transitional justice
concerned with truth-telling: memorialization can be an acknowledgement of conflict events
in the past (Lundqvist, 2019). The concept of memorialization also lives in the public sphere,
making it a multifaceted tool that not only preserves public memory about a conflict, but also
fosters collective engagement about the future of a society post- conflict. Memorialization is
not solely about the documentation of past events of conflict, but an agent of transformation
that uses memory to create lessons and planning for a future that aims at not repeating said
conflict (Bickford, Ševčenko, Rios, 2007).
As a sub-type of transitional justice, it is then clear why memorialization as a concept
is also an underdeveloped theoretical field. Often memorialization is seen as an application
that is not applicable to the political or judicial process in post-conflict spaces, resulting in a
marginalization of the concept to live outside of the strategy-building segments of transitional
justice practices (Bickford, Ševčenko, Rios, 2007). While mechanisms that elicit public
scrutiny have been shaped by more defined structures, memorialization has not been given
such structures in most nations or communities (Barsalou & Baxter, 2007).
In this sense, memorialization can take the form of a number of different
implementations. Commonly, museums, monuments and historical location markers can
share the goal of memorializing acts of conflict in history. A widely accepted
memorialization framework is the Joinet Principles which have been accepted by the United
Nations to create standards around the role and responsibility to embed remembrance in post-
conflict contexts (UN, 2018). These principles and guidelines which were adopted by the UN
General Assembly in 2005 outline requirements regarding member states’ responsibility to
provide “commemorations and tributes to the victims” alongside efforts made to provide
remedies and reparations for victims of conflict.
Current literature shows that the exclusion of memorialization from transitional
justice process can work against peacebuilding goals, from reinforcing damaging political
narratives in the absence of public spaces for truth to squandering the capability to create
long-lasting cultural understanding surrounding the legacy of past conflicts (Bickford,
Ševčenko, Rios, 2007). Research also shows that as other mechanisms of transitional justice
have been completed, such as criminal cases and truth commissions, aspects of the conflict
that were previously misunderstood or obscured from the public will become more apparent.
While the literature speaks to the presence of memorialization efforts throughout the stages of
conflict, this research will place the actual process of memorialization in a position to follow
the efforts of truth-telling and legal accountability and punishments processes (Barsalou &
Baxter, 2007).
In order to frame memorialization as a process and not simply the act of creating
objects, the concept itself must be understood in terms of democratic methods that are
engaged similarly to other methods of transitional justice (Brett, Bickford, Ševčenko, Rios,
2007). This implies reliance upon strategy that further develops the goals of transitional
justice processes in specific post-conflict state or society. According to Stover, Megally, and
Mufti (2005) for transitional justice projects to be deemed effective, they must meet three
criteria. First, as outlined in the transitional justice theory section, the public must be aware
of the process in addition to supporting it as just. In terms of memorialization, this means that
the outcomes of these projects should not only be to provide a sense of justice to victims, but
to also imbed reflection of the conflict as well. Next, policy-based decisions made in regard
to the outcomes of the transitional justice process should involve significant input from actors
affected by the conflict. For projects of memorialization this means that victims and/or
survivors of the conflict should have a direct line of involvement with projects at hand,
especially in the discussion of what is imperative to be cast in public memory. Lastly,
echoing the literature above, transitional justice is deemed more effective when enacted
alongside multidisciplinary initiatives that support human rights outcomes and societal
advancement. Memorialization’s role in this is its ability to bring an aspect of long-term
attention to the post-conflict reconstruction in order to continuously promote these intended
outcomes of the transitional justice process.
The United States Institute of Peace (2007) has outlined eight functions of
memorialization as they pertain to a contemporary context. As a sub-system of transitional
justice, there exists an overlap between the goals of transitional justice and the functions that
memorialization serves. As a reminder, memorialization should be addressing overarching
transitional justice and peacebuilding goals, while also performing its theory-specific
functions. These eight functions are:
1. Truth-telling
2. Creating a specific place for mourning

3. Offering symbolic reparations to honor the victims of violence
and reinstate their reputations
4. Symbolizing commitment to values of democracy and human
rights
5. Promoting reconciliation
6. Engage the wider community in a dialogue about the past and
promote discussions of a peaceful future based on coexistence
7. Advancing educational purposes
8. Facilitating historic preservation
Truth-telling is an important facet of transitional justice processes as a whole. In the
context of how it serves as a function of memorialization, it is concerned with the gathering
of narratives, experiences and histories that have been directly or indirectly impacted by a
past conflict. Creating a place for mourning is not just implemented as a private place for
ritual intended for victims or families, but within a memorialization framework, a place is
created for society to reflect and mourn victims and the conflict itself. Memorialization can
also function as a form of reparations to victims by creating a platform that validates their
experiences with violence and creates a widespread understanding about their struggle. In
light of the temporal aspect of transitional justice, this also works to ensure there is societal
understanding about the long-term effects violence has on victims and their families. On the
stateside, memorialization can also function as marker of commitment to values of humans
rights and democracy. By engaging in memorialization projects, state or national bodies are
publically defining that the projects are crucial to the underpinnings of society, especially in
post-conflict contexts. Memorialization also functions to promote reconciliation by “recasting
the national identity or repairing damaged relations among groups (Barsalou & Baxter,
2007).” Since public input is such a crucial element of transitional justice projects, the role in
defining what memorials will be, where they will be located and how they are projected
becomes a part of reconciliatory efforts. To this end, memorialization can also function as a
method of engaging widespread dialogue about the history and contemporary context of a
conflict. This can also have a significant role in promoting the future-temporal nature of
peacebuilding by encouraging dialogue that reinforces outlooks for more peaceful futures. On
a more practice-based end of the spectrum, memorialization plays a major function in the
educational aspect of transitional justice. The “retelling of history for future generations”
focuses on ensuring there is a cultural and institutional handoff of knowledge that can
effectively strengthen societies in efforts to not repeat violent events of the past. To similar
effect, memorialization can function as a way of preserving historical sites, which serve as an
anchor to the occurrences in the past and which strengthens educational projects.
These functions of memorialization can be enacted in a number of ways. Louis
Bickford of the International Center for Transitional Justice outlines major forms of
memorials, which will be helpful in conceptualizing the diversity of ways in which
memorialization efforts can be employed. Memorialization projects will be further discussed
in the arts implementation chapter.
Major Forms of Memorialization
Constructed Sites Found Sites Activities

Anniversaries of actions
Museums Graves related to the conflict
Locations of mass killings
Monuments of genocide Temporary exhibits
Former torture
centers/concentration Renaming or rededicating
Walls of Victim Names camps streets
Virtual Memorials online Walking tours or parades
Commemorative Libraries Demonstrations and vigils
Public apologies
Figure 1: Louis Bickford, 2017

While this research focuses on the positive attributes associated with memorialization
processes, it is important to note that memorialization has been used to the opposite effect of
some of the functions listed above. This is especially poignant in the context of German
history because of the shift in how memorialization was utilized before and after the
Holocaust. During Nazi rule, monuments were often used as a device to demonstrate power
over citizens and were systematic instruments of exploitation. This led to a “deep distrust of
monumental forms…and a profound desire to distinguish their generation from that of the
killers through memory” (Young, 2000, p. 92). One result was that German artists and
architects conceptualized the idea of memorialization through a lens that not only acted to
remember past horrors, but also to redefine how public space and remembrance was
experienced by the public.
It is extremely important then to see how goals of transitional justice are agents of
change; as can be seen in the German case, memorialization has been used not only to
support goals of remembrance, but also to support transitional justice goals through reshaping
national discourse surrounding memorials themselves. This is transformative in the way that
memorialization was then able to become a positive, reconciliatory tool, rather than an
extension of conflict.
This research will further explore the underpinnings of the aforementioned German
remembrance culture. In order to do so, four functions of memorialization have been selected
that are most relevant to the German context. The first, and perhaps most widely understood
concept of memorialization, is the placemaking aspect. It is specifically important that there
are places to mourn, remember and reflect because of the reality that the passage of time sees
the decrease in survivors and witnesses to the Holocaust. For many years this has already
been the focus for institutions engaged in memorialization processes. An example of this is
the project, “Dimensions in Testimony” from the University of Southern California Shoah
Foundation. This project actively collects testimonies from Holocaust survivors and creates
interactive exhibits that allow for visitors to ask questions and learn from first-hand, first-
person experiences with artificial intelligence versions of the survivors themselves.
According to the Foundation (2018), “the pioneering project integrates advanced filming
techniques, specialized display technologies and next-generation natural language processing
to provide an intimate experience with these eyewitnesses to history.” This allows for
ongoing interactions with witness and survivor narrative that previously would not have been
possible.
This is also an important function because of the generational effect that family
members of survivors experience decades after the initial conflict. Recent psychology studies
have shown that there is support for the inheritance of trauma and post-traumatic disorders of
children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors (Yehuda et al., 2016). Descendants of
Holocaust survivors are not only seeking restorative and healing spaces to reflect upon the
impact of the Holocaust. There have also been reports showing the impact the Holocaust has
had on descendants of perpetrators of the Holocaust, alluding to the necessity of mourning
and reflective spaces in order to contemplate and come to terms with their families’ dealings
in the atrocities of the Holocaust (Bar-On, 1998).
The next memorialization function that will be used specifically to speak on the
German context is the promotion of reconciliation. Within the transitional justice cannon,
reconciliation is referred to in its ability to repair relationships between groups, especially
within the scope of a national identity. Germany is cited as a leader in its reconciliation
efforts, however, even with such strong reconciliatory measures in place recent data show a
rise in anti-Semitism and xenophobic attacks over the last five years. In October 2019, a
shooting in a synagogue in Halle, Germany occurred on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur.
Federal investigators categorized the attack as a far-right crime and act of anti-Semitism. The
attack left two people dead and two injured. On February 20, 2020 a shooting in Hanau,
Germany, in a predominantly Turkish neighborhood, resulted in nine people dead.
Prosecutors called this case an act of terrorism, with authorities and Chancellor Merkel citing
the attack as having racist and xenophobic motives. These major events in Germany represent
a growing rhetoric of anti-Semitism, racism and xenophobia. In response to this rise in
violence, Germany has taken additional legal steps to strengthen the response to hate crimes
across the country (Human Rights Watch, 2018). Furthermore, there were also efforts on the
part of the German Federal Government to create a national strategy to strengthen transitional
justice processes, particularly with an “aim…to help ministries act more coherently and in a
more coordinated manner, to use synergies between different policy areas and to create closer
links between relevant stakeholders (German Federal Foreign Office, 2019).”
Thirdly, an important function of memorialization in the German context is the
encouragement of civic engagement around the discussion of the future of peaceful
relationships in Germany. Political analysts have linked the growth in political extremism in
Germany to a fading of Holocaust remembrance culture. William Glucroft (2020) writes:
An entire culture of remembrance has since been pursued with zeal: memorials and
monuments, commemorations, educational curricula, public programs, and political
rhetoric, symbols and structures—all to serve the refrain: nie wieder. Never again. But
it’s far from clear what nie wieder actually means. It might form the basis of a more
open and progressive society, but Germany is hardly a leader in extending rights,
opportunities, and protections to women, minorities, and other vulnerable groups.
Change comes slowly to its conservative culture.

The far-right political party, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has been accused of touting
racist language and anti-Semitic sentiment. Its leader, Björn Höcke, has seen a swift rise to
power, even with his controversial views on migration and Germany’s history of the
Holocaust, and even going as far as to call Berlin’s “Memorial to the Murdered Jews of
Europe” as a “memorial of shame.”
Justice Minister of Germany, Christine Lambrecht, has been quoted as saying “Far-
right terror is the biggest threat to our democracy right now” (NYT, 2020). After a number of
attacks carried out by far-right extremists on politicians who have supported pro-migration
policies and anti-hate campaigns, a debate reignited “about whether Germany, long praised
for confronting the ghosts of its extremist past, is in fact doing enough to combat far-right
groups in the 21st century (Elbaum, 2019).”
Lastly, the final selection of memorialization functions that are most relevant to the
German context is the advancement of educational programs dealing with WWII and the
Holocaust. There is overwhelming data to demonstrate that in recent generations there has
been a regression in knowledge about the Holocaust. Data from across the world has been
compiled to show there is an overall drop in students’ knowledge about the Holocaust.
Specifically, in Germany, a recent study by the Körber Stiftung revealed that “[m]ore than
half of German secondary school students aged 14 to 16 years of age…do not know that
Auschwitz-Birkenau was a concentration camp” (Goebel, 2017). While positive facts such as
the doubling in the number of visitors this decade versus last at the Sachsenhausen memorial
and the ongoing policy for German 12th graders to take classes on 20th-century German
history, experts still call for more educational implementations that pass down memory and
understanding of what happened during and after the Holocaust. The remaining four
functions of memorialization were excluded from this analysis because they were not
specifically relevant to the current context of Germany in terms of transitional justice efforts.
As has been outlined above in regard to wider transitional justice theory,
memorialization is also framed by its potential to grow, improve and become more
comprehensive by cross-disciplinary actions to engage it. Brett et al. (2007) state that
“successful memorialization draws upon specialists from many fields—transitional justice
experts, historians, museum designers, public artists, trauma specialists, and human rights
activists, among others—who traditionally have not worked together or are not viewed as
having concerns in common” (p. 2). It is in this scope of multidisciplinarity that the element
of arts-based change theory will be applied.
Art Based Approaches to Memorialization
As mentioned above, considering that the field of transitional justice is still emerging
and becoming more squarely defined within peacebuilding scholarship, it can be assumed
that arts-based implementations within it have even less of a foundation to show for itself. As
Shank and Schirch (2008) plainly state, “There is very little solid theory, research, or
evaluation of arts-based peacebuilding” (p. 217). Even with the pre-assumption that
peacebuilding requires a multitude of knowledges and approaches in order to manage conflict
during and after it occurs, there is still a reliance upon traditional and empirical norms rather
than creative approaches (Cohen, 1997; Lumsden, 1999; Senehi, 2002; Zelizer, 1997). While
effective in many ways, traditional schools of thought seek direct, prudent applications in
order to build structure into projects, which can block the opportunities for helpful or
insightful methods of listening and/or communication necessary of effective peacebuilding
procedures. (Senehi, 2002; Zelizer, 1997). However it has been shown that the goals of arts-
based projects, especially those that do exist within the peacebuilding canon, work fittingly
alongside transitional justice projects in the manner such that they are “conceptually
grounded, coordinated with other forms of peacebuilding approaches, infused with a long-
term perspective vis-à-vis the nature of social change, and serious about evaluating their
effectiveness and impact (Ibid., 2018)”.
Broadly speaking, there is a humanitarian case to be made for the utilization and
preservation of the arts in peace-related projects. For example, the United Nations outlines
the importance of artistic practices and rehabilitation in its Convention Against Torture, and
Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (UN, 1984). In 1956, The
Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict
was ratified into existence, making it the first international treaty to focus specifically on arts
and culture within armed conflict. It outlines that “any damage to cultural property,
irrespective of the people it belongs to, is a damage to the cultural heritage of all humanity,
because every people contributes to the world's culture” (UNESCO, 1956). In 2017,
continuing to highlight the importance of art and culture, UNESCO created a portion of the
peacekeeping force specifically responsible for protecting artworks from conflict zones and
areas ravaged by natural disasters. The arts have already long been identified as a vital
element of peacebuilding efforts by leading institutions.
But how are the arts defined within the context of peacebuilding and transitional
justice? “The arts” thus far has been a very vague concept, which is also a factor leading to
the lack of theorization around its implementation in the peacebuilding field. Part of the
complexity of art is its dynamism and the potential for multiple interpretations, making it
inherently subjective in nature (Garnsey, 2016). In order to bring more objectivity to the
subject, there are a number of aspects from which to view the concept. First, the arts can be
described in the aesthetic manner. Many scholars avoid an overthought definition of “the
arts” and opt for connecting societally agreed upon aesthetic outputs of visual arts, music,
theatre, written word and dance as examples of universal and broad understanding of art
(Shank & Schirch, 2008.) Much of the literature touching on arts within the peacebuilding
field focuses on creative expression through tangibly accessible outcomes that can either be
experienced or viewed in a public forum.
Art can be described in the way that it pertains to symbolism. Arai (2013) defines art as
a human experience of producing such a symbolic representation as well as the
experiential process which facilitates the production…[F]rom the viewpoint of a
peacebuilding practitioner, [it] is the role of art in orchestrating a holistic social
experience that creates a deeply humanizing social space in which individuals and
communities affected by conflict use their symbolic representations to gradually come
to terms with their identities, histories, and future possibilities (p. 3).
The reliance upon art projects to symbolize and make metaphors of traumatic and difficult
occurrences in the past allows for actors to address such material through abstract methods.
Lastly, and of most importance to this research, the arts can be defined as a
representation of emotion or self-expression. In either of the above definitions, aesthetic or
symbolically, art can express emotions, experiences or feelings. In this way art can be framed
in terms of “storytelling” or “narrative-building,” which is particularly important within the
peacebuilding field. A blanket term that can be used to encompass all facets of art within the
framing of transitional justice projects is creativity. “Creativity in conflict transformation is a
sustained, group-based process of interactive social learning where the actors involved in the
conflict learn to formulate an unconventional response to it, and a growing number of other
stakeholders come to perceive it as viable and acceptable” (Arai, 2013).
What is significant within this burgeoning field is how the implementation of arts-
based approaches has been able to expand upon the capacity to reach peacebuilding goals in
innovative ways. While the theoretical examination of the arts as a systematic mechanism has
only begun to be centered in this field, the arts “have been used for centuries to communicate
the human experience in ways that have sometimes nurtured peace and other times fostered
violence (Shank & Schirch, 2008).” Including applications within the neurological,
psychological, sociology fields, art has been employed to improve relations between identity
groups in conflict (Shank & Schirch, 2008; Zelizer, 2003), engage problem-solving within
group settings and facilitate communication in otherwise difficult settings. In terms of the
specific goals of transitional justice, the arts can be particularly relevant to the spatio-
temporal aspect of its projects, as mentioned previously. The art, as an aesthetic application,
can connect conceptualizations of time, memory and emotions within them, creating a basis
upon which agency can be recognized and these connections can be put on display (Garnsey,
2016).
Some other positive outcomes of arts-based approaches to transitional justice are how
the arts address rehabilitation and trauma. In addressing the past while building and/or
rebuilding institutions, “art plays an important role in communicating and creating affective
topologies of justice to recognize diverse and often competing claims for recognition”
(Garnsey, 2016). Trauma-informed arts practices can also strengthen the ability for
participants to “help raise awareness of the dangers of impending conflict and speak out in
favor of peace” (Zelizer, 2003). Additionally, implementing the arts helps create safe places
for victims to feel comfortable sharing ideas and emotions, further reinforcing the idea of
trauma-informed applications (Zelizer, 2003).
The arts also allow for a shaping of individual, national and societal narratives.
Garnsey (2016) speaks to the function of artwork “to produce and maintain the country’s
transitional justice narrative, but it also opens up spaces for new political thinking,
possibilities and actions in this narrative.” Shank and Schirch (2008) also support this
concept by stating “art can create a frame around an issue or relationship that offers new
perspectives and the possibility of transformation; acting like a prism that allows us to view
the world through a new lens.” The concept of art necessitating narrative-building is also
supported by Murray (2012), who says that “by involving people together in the process of
art-making it can provide a means of personal and collective reassessment and the
development of a new narrative of possibility.”
Lastly, the arts can also create more inclusive approaches to peacebuilding. Many
scholars have written on the strategies and impacts of peacebuilding being a site of Western
influence that can often overshadow the cultural norms and practices of the local areas in
which peacebuilding projects are being implemented, especially in light of a fair number of
such projects being the charge of international, third-party organizations. Lambourne (2014)
outlines this by arguing for the vitality of involving local communities in the implementations
of transitional justice projects in order for such mechanisms to truly be effective (Lambourne,
2014; Buckley-Zistel, et al, 2014, p. 22). Employing the use of the arts can better localize the
desires and experiences of victims and perpetrators of a conflict in the transitional steps in
post-conflict spaces. In this sense, art can also challenge the context and bring multicultural
and multi-context experiences to the forefront of collective and constructive future building
(Shank, Schirch, 2008) Research has also shown that art can be a tool for “challenging the
dominant negative social representation of a community and developing a new narrative of
change and of hope” (Murray, 2012).
Some scholars even argue that an artistic or “aesthetic” approach to transitional
justice is necessary in creating tangible through lines between present emotion and past
conflict. McNamee (2014) asserts that transitional justice without a connection to the
aesthetic is not a wholly adequate project because of the requirement of transitional justice to
stem from feelings of justice. This supports the notion that transitional justice cannot solely
be strategized and theorized upon, but must also be approached from an aesthetic or emotive
standpoint. “Such artistic expression can be both close enough to the reality it represents and
distant enough from the reality to contain the risk of emotional triggers” (Arai, 2013). In
addition, this connection to overcoming past wrongdoings can also be transmitted through art
to actors who did not directly experience the conflict.
Furthermore, the arts can be utilized to create tools to more deeply understand a
diversity of experiences among actors who have been directly and indirectly affected by a
conflict, (Garnsey, 2016). As Arai (2013) states: “Artistic expression can create a vicarious
experience of being in touch with a given social reality…that people may or may not have
experienced firsthand. This balance (esthetic distance) between experiential proximity and
emotional distance, if achieved, would provide a potentially useful basis for deep self-
reflection and creative reengagement in the reality of social conflict that needs transformation
.” In addition to grounding individuals’ experience, there is also the role of building
collective experiences by “activating the narratives of individuals so that they take on
collective importance” (Garnsey, 2016; Murray, 2012).
It is also important to note that research also reports upon a number of challenges that
art-integrations can have. In addition to the subjective nature of art, diversity in
interpretations can lead to adverse effects when being used to bridge gaps in communication
and understanding, especially between parties of conflict. Arts integrations run the risk of
inviting “uncertainty and arbitrariness of interpretation,” due to factors such as social context,
which may result in further divisions between participants (Arai, 2013). There is also the
notion that using arts integrations make peacebuilding methods less serious, potentially
diminishing the buy-in from local actors to participate in such exercises.
Another important challenging aspect is the capacity for practitioners and researchers
to differentiate between the purpose of an arts-driven project and its potential impact. As
most researchers have ascertained, using art for arts sake is not an effective approach to any
project of peacebuilding. Therein lies the challenge—to be able to effectively build process
and outcomes when using creative applications. Alongside this is the challenge of evaluation.
Citing, again, the idea that art is subjective creates a challenge in which it is simply difficult
to “assess the effects of artistic experience on conflict transformation by appeal to a
systematic, accountable method of inquiry. This difficulty, in turn, makes it hard for artistic
approaches to build academic credibility, policy relevance, and financial support.
Methodological innovation is essential” (Arai, 2013). The concept of purpose and strategy
will be discussed again later in the chapter.
While this research has been approaching transitional justice processes from the
aspect that its goal is to better societies in the wake of conflict, it is also important to note that
these processes can have an adverse effect and unintentionally cause harm. In the case of the
arts, it is even more obvious how creative applications have been manipulated to intentionally
create harm, such as in the way of reinforcing nationalist or oppressive ideologies, boosting
divisions and discrimination between conflict actors and even laying the ground for
consensus-building around crimes and other brutalities (Wilmer, 2002; Kelly, 2000).
This research is specifically uses peacebuilding goals to ascertain impact the arts have
on the memorialization process. This assumes that seeking as an end result the positive
attributes of arts-based applications is whether and how arts practices have helped reach said
goals. Accordingly, the arts act not as an end result or solution, but instead as an element of
process that leads to a solution.
More important than the aspect of what art is, are the ways in which art is utilized to
reach goals of transitional justice. Shank and Schirch (2008) frame art as a concept that
cannot easily be categorized, but should rather be viewed as a mode of communication (p.
218). The ICTJ characterizes memorialization itself as a creative process “in which artists can
play an important role” (ICTJ, nd). As a project with transitional justice goals, the arts must
be utilized in a manner that “provoke[s] conceptual or philosophical debate and engage[s] the
spectator emotionally (ICTJ, nd).” For scholars who have studied the effects of arts-based
implementations in the peacebuilding field, the bigger focus is not necessarily the type of art
used in a project, but the purpose of the art or the activity itself. Eskamp (1999) questions the
strategy built upon arts-based applications, asking if “the work being done by artists for the
purposes of artistic expression or [if] it is being conducted as a more explicit conflict
resolution or peacebuilding process….” Lederach (1999) supports that the strategy behind the
utilization has more of a significant impact on the intended outcomes. He frames this by
defining the “strategic what,” “strategic why,” and “strategic how.” These three areas can be
used to define what exactly is the project entailing and what its outcomes are; when arts-
based methods in the process of transitional justice should be employed; and how an art
project gets implemented (Shank & Schirch, 2008; Lederach, 1999). In another helpful
model, Lumsden (1999) conceptualizes three zones of social reconstruction within which
arts-based approaches can be utilized. The three zones that are elements of post-conflict
transition include the outside, social world; the inside, psychological world; and a zone that
transitions between the two former (Lumsden, 1999). Within this transitional zone, the arts
have a high potential to address healing from trauma and exploring concepts that bridge the
inside and outside zones. Due to the flexibility of the arts and the limited research to employ
replicable experiments, transitional justice projects that utilize the arts look different in their
activations, yet meet specific and shared overall goals of transitional justice.
Examples of Arts-based Transitional Justice Projects
One major example of an arts-based application in a transitional justice project is The
Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s photo exhibit, Yuyanapaq. Meaning “to
remember” in Quechua, the photography exhibition curated a public and collective archive of
images that served as a living documentation of truth and experiences during the violent
authoritarian regime between 1980 and the 2000s. As part of the truth commission, public
hearings were held in order to gather testimonies of victims and perpetrators so that a
comprehensive overview of the actors in the conflict and the crimes committed can be
gained. As part of this commission, photojournalists were asked to contribute photos to the
process, eventually giving rise to the Yuyanapaq project, which resulted in a public-access
webpage, a book and traveling exhibition. Cueva and Librizzi (2014) researched that [b]y
using iconic pictures—the most symbolic or representative photographs taken during that
period—the exhibition tried to trigger a profound reflection among individuals and the
community regarding Peru’s violent past (pg 452).” The transitional justice goals applied to
this project were to encourage public participation and active knowledge building in a public
forum, memorialize a traumatic event in the country and build a new narrative that relied on
pain, rather then terror and fear. While the exhibition itself was not used directly within the
commission or in official trials, “Yuyanapaq has helped destabilize the status quo of memory
in the country, where conservative sectors are dominant in the political arena. Its improvised
character and the spontaneous reception it obtained from the population demonstrate
that…performance and memorialization served [a significant] function: the first-person oral

accounts of the public hearings and the subtle force of photography (Cueva & Librizzi,
2014).”
A second example of arts implementation in transitional justice is the state-
implemented theatre projects in post-war Afghanistan. In 2008 the Afghanistan Independent
Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) and the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan
(UNAMA) and then later the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) began
running a number of participatory theatre workshops in a number of cities, including rural
area, in Afghanistan. This initiative sought to implement arts-based approaches in order to
analyze how it could support and rebuild Afghanistan at a localized level. Through activities
that directly addressed truth, memory, and prosecutions with war victims and their families,
the participatory theatre project worked with the local community in order to strengthen
truth-gathering information to support local governments during the post-conflict
reconstruction period. One activity of the project recreated events and places that had
particular meaning for the audience to build systems of trust in sharing narrative. These
workshops served as “memory-inducing, symbolically independent, and valid stage
presences” for the actors and audience-members (Siddiqui & Joffre-Eichorn, 2014). The
theatre performances were open to the public for not only for the final performances, but the
acting and crew participation as well, which created a public platform for victims of the
conflict. The organizers utilized the subject matter of the plays to serve as an organization
tool for collecting feedback regarding local-level rights and demands for justice. Addressing
institutional reform goals, the project created the space to rebuild historic narratives regarding
the public in efforts to address long-term dialogue regarding the conflict. The sub-projects
each strategically interacted with individuals from different social and ethnic groups as a way
to address long-term relationship-building. The overall process was to reconstruct past events
in order to establish a sense of “normalcy and closure” (Siddiqui & Joffre-Eichorn, 2014).
One last example of an arts-based transitional justice project comes from post-war
Bosnia and Herzegovina. Artist Tatjana Kovačević created and oversaw clay workshops,
Stories in Clay, as part of a reconciliation program aiming to provide a forum for “discussion,
understanding, and perspective-taking, thereby strengthening interpersonal relations as well
as the connection between mind and body” (Fantoni, 2015). In one of the workshops in 2014,
female participants between the ages of 22 to 60 participated by “working with the clay and
using various techniques such as hand-building, hollowing and adding, the participants really
get to know the clay, redirecting their own feelings of sadness, anger, and frustration into the
medium, all of which are hidden beyond our conscience,” notes Kovačević (Fantoni, 2015).
This project supported transitional justice goals by focusing on the individual healing and
rehabilitative aspect, strategizing to utilize artistic properties of clay creation to trauma-
informed outcomes such as experiencing freedom and envisioning safer, better futures.
Additionally, this project worked towards goals of reconciliation between ethnic groups by
bringing women together to participate in dialogue alongside their personal artmaking. This
allowed for participants to understanding their own experiences, as well as listen to and
internalize the experiences of others.
The examples above are just a few of the myriad projects that have been employed in
post-war settings across the world. As scholars have supported, the potential for arts-based
integrations in transitional justice processes is present; it is merely a matter of further
exploring and defining the specificities and complexities around evaluating their impact. As
has been shown in the previous examples and in the ways in which art can support
peacebuilding, there is a sufficient case for the arts to serve the aforementioned functions of
memorialization. Therefore, art can indeed be effectively utilized within the peacebuilding
realm.
Unfortunately in the transitional justice domain there is a dearth of empirical
assessment to show the impact of these arts-based approaches within the peacebuilding
literature. One standout model is Strategic Arts-Based Peacebuilding, which outlines “a
richer articulation of how [the arts] function in peacebuilding, when to use them, what they
can do, and how to evaluate their usage” (Shank & Schirch, 2008). Aspects of this framework
can be used to evaluate arts-based functions of memorialization, however, the framework as a
whole is too broad to apply to a specific focus on the impact the arts have on
memorialization.
One aspect of how the arts can function in peacebuilding is by regarding the concept
of time and various stages of conflict between conflict escalation and conflict prevention. By
outlining these phases, one is able to see more of a cross-section of conflict and how certain
arts integrations can be strategically mapped onto conflict stages and according to the conflict
intensity. In this first diagram below, the stages move from conflict escalation, to conflict
management, conflict transformation, and conflict prevention. This model can be used to
more clearly illustrate the phases of conflict and establish critical points of intervention. What
is crucial about this model is how there is a direct connection between the phases of conflict
and the goals of peacebuilding.

Figure 2: Shank & Schirch, 2008

Secondly, this framework offers more specific and theory-based forms of art that have
been used to approach change-based processes. This next diagram gives a succinct overview
of a few possible artistic implementations that have been employed by peacebuilders. While
arts integrations can span this list and be contextualized in different ways, this overview
allows researchers to see a range of integrations that approach strategic phases of
peacebuilding projects. The authors impress that “the overall efficacy of arts-based action
improves when preceded by thorough analysis, that is, appraising the intensity of the conflict
and evaluating the current stage in which the conflict resides (Shirch & Shank, 2008).” This
model has been appended with a highlight to mark the phases that are most specific to the
focus of the research presented here: conflict transformation and conflict prevention. The
model can be used to further specify where impact occurs as a result of case-specific
implementations.
Figure 3: Shank & Schirch, 2008
Lastly, the Strategic Arts-Based Peacebuilding model contributes thought processes to
understand how the arts can be transformative. This is specifically important, as this research
will be looking at how arts-informed practices contribute to social changes necessary to
sustain transitional justice processes. The Strategic Arts-Based peacebuilding framework
outlines a three-step transformational process that aids in the planning phases of arts-based
projects. The first element involves, as discussed earlier, the importance of having a clear
goal in utilizing the arts. This relies upon a clear vision for what the goal to be achieved
should be, in addition to formulating a methodology for how art will be used, who will be
impacted and how outcomes will be evaluated. Next, the authors state the importance of
“how the intended message is encoded into the chosen art form. Communication researchers
claim that the best messages allow listeners to feel like they were not ‘given’ a complete
solution to a problem” (Shank & Schirch, 2008; Cohen, et al, 2001). Finally, evaluation of
the impact of the aforementioned encoded message is the final step to categorizing a process
as transformative. This requires analyzing the effect the project had on the intended audience,
in addition to ascertaining the message that was received and tracking the changes that
occurred over the course of the integration. This transformation modeling is crucial to embed
within arts-based transitional justice projects in order to enhance the capacity to create
sustainable impact.
Consistent with calls to be more cross-disciplinary in the engagement of transitional
justice projects in conjunction with the lack of frameworks in this domain, it is helpful to
look outside of the existing peacebuilding models to further examine arts impact. While
scholars agree that there is a need for multi-disciplinary approaches to ever changing field of
peace building, there is no comprehensive study showing the effectiveness of arts-based
approaches to memorialization. This research is a novel attempt at assessing the impact of
arts-based projects. In order to determine the impact of arts-based approaches to
memorialization an examination of how this assessment can be formulated needs to be
conducted. To do so this research will utilize the Aesthetic Perspectives Framework (APF)
(Borstel et al., 2017). This framework, presented below, “offers 11 attributes designed to
enhance understanding and evaluation of Arts for Change...Establishing a common language
around how art contributes to positive social change can foster more illuminating
communication about outcomes and fuller appreciation of the aesthetic dimensions of and the
rigor required for such work (Borstel et al., 2017).”
The Aesthetic Perspectives Framework “promote[s] evaluation that embodies values
and practices congruent with arts and social justice work—equity, inclusion, understanding
context, and the role of arts and culture” (Ibid). This framework, being multidisciplinary and
utilizing theory that spans peacebuilding domains and crosses into the social justice realm,
establishes a shared language across disciplines that broadly seek to creative a positive social
change. The authors of this framework argue that by doing so transformative changes “can
foster more illuminating communication about outcomes, fuller comprehension by critics and
funders, and broader appreciation of the rigor required for such work” (Ibid).
Figure 4: Aesthetics Perspectives Framework, Attributes Definitions. (Borstel, et al.,

2017)
This arts-based framework fits my research because one can see arts-based
approaches to transitional justice as a social change project. From a broad standpoint, the arts
have historically played a major role in the realm of social justice and change. Scholarship
agrees with this statement, arguing “the arts can challenge people to think differently, engage
in different behavioural experiences and experience different emotions” (Camic, 2007, p.
288). In terms of how arts-based applications are used in community-centered process,

Jovchelovitch (2007) supports “there is an emancipatory potential embedded in the task of
recognising the validity of a community’s knowledge and engaging in critical dialogue with
it” (p. 158). Lastly, Freire (1972) posited, “people must first critically recognize
[oppression’s] causes, so that through transforming action they can create a new situation,
one which makes possible the pursuit of a fuller humanity” (p. 29). For these reasons, a
framework that directly outlines the capacity of transformation within the capabilities of arts
projects will be a fitting tool in evaluating approaches to memorialization.
In the next section, the research methodology is presented in order to show how
these employing these arts attributes can impact remembrance culture in Germany
through the analysis of four case studies.
Figure 5: Theoretical Framework, Weisinger, 2020.

Methodology
Echoing Buckley-Zistel’s assertion (2013) that the processes of transitional justice are
contextual, it is significant to reiterate that this research centers its methodology within the
German concept of errinerungskultur. Evaluating transitional justice projects will look
different depending on the context in which they are being engaged, in this case, the
transitional justice goals refer to the context of post-war Germany. Recall the functions of
memorialization from the theoretical chapter—these functions are used to define the goals of
memorialization for transitional justice projects in post-war Germany. To reiterate, the four
that have been chosen to best suit the case of Germany are (1) creating a place for mourning,
(2) promoting reconciliation, (3) engaging community discussion and (4) advancing
education. Next, utilizing the Aesthetics Perspectives Framework, three arts attributes have
been pinpointed that apply best to the selected arts-based projects in the German context.
These variables are (1) commitment, (2) communal meaning and (3) cultural integrity. These
attributes contribute to the social change and impact associated with the functions of
memorialization stated previously. The following attributes will be used to measure arts
integrations’ impact on memorialization as per the reportage of case studies.
Commitment
The Aesthetics Perspectives Framework defines commitment as “creative processes
and products embody conviction to the cause espoused through the work” (Borstel , et al.
2017). This attribute concerns itself with the ongoing support for change processes involving
social changes within the intended community or society. From a process standpoint, this
includes implementing sustainability and long-term evaluative measures into projects. This
also includes accountability for the project during and after its implementation. From an artist
and art-making perspective, this alludes to a consideration for “who helps to make aesthetic
choices and how and whether their work supports community participants’ aesthetics, their
own aesthetics, or both” (Ibid).
Commitment connects to the functions of memorialization in the way that it can be
applied to the promotion of reconciliation by the strategic choices around participation and
how the project is carried out in the community. Committing to civic engagement and
community change are both facets of the Commitment attribute in the Aesthetics Perspectives
Framework and functions of memorialization, making Commitment a fitting element to make
clear the purpose and strategy of utilizing the arts in these projects. By strategically using
stakeholder feedback and drawing on the strengths of participants, the attribute also
contributes to the reconciliation and community-building functions of memorialization.
Communal Meaning
The Communal Meaning attribute is defined as “facilitat[ing] collective meaning that
transcends individual perspective and experience” (Ibid.) What this means in practice is the
capacity for a project to build a shared experience through its process and outcomes. This
includes the capacity for open interpretations by different actors and audiences who have
directly or indirectly been involved with the project. The definition of the purpose of the
project may be created communally or publically in order to reinforce a social change or
impact.
In terms of the specific functions of memorialization within the transitional justice
framework, the Communal Meaning attribute connects to the creation of a place of mourning
or reflection in the way that it “afford[s] participants access to collective expression,
engagement, and/or reflection.” Again, this attribute strongly connects to promoting
reconciliation and engaging community discussion as it works to “elicit the stories, images,
and perspectives of multiple individuals or stakeholders and provide them with opportunities
to discuss and make sense of them collectively,” speaks to the “[relevance] to the community,
location, or context,” and “enhance[s] people’s ability to see intersections and make
connections…through dialogue, interaction, or interpretive information (Ibid.)” This attribute
also connects to the memorialization function of advancing education as it takes into
consideration community engagement goals which often include educational goals.
Cultural Integrity
The last chosen attribute is Cultural Integrity, which asserts “the creative work demonstrates
integrity and ethical use of material with specific cultural origins and context (Ibid).” This
concerns itself with the authenticity and implications of truth that are utilized within the
project. The authors state that:
Integrity as an aesthetic characteristic can be observed in: 1) the background and
connections of artists and partners to the cultural context, issue/topic, traditions,
community, population, and/or place that is the focus of the work; 2) the way a
work of art is conceived and developed; 3) awareness and understanding of
cultural values and forms (cultural competence); and 4) in the way the work
involves and is experienced by stakeholders (p. 21).
This directly connects to the functions of memorialization in how exploring
“relationships of power, privilege, and cultural context within the process of making the
[art]” can be applied to reconciliatory and community engagement discussions. This is
also particularly pertinent in advancing educational initiatives as diversity and exposure
to different narratives adds to the impact of educational goals. Further, the Cultural
Integrity attribute also contributes to the creation of a place for reflection in the way that
“the people affected by the work have agency to act on their own behalf” and “the artists
and stakeholders considered what they may be taking away and what they can leave
behind that is meaningful in a cultural context” (Ibid).

Another element of Cultural Integrity is the consideration of how artwork or arts
programming can have the potential to appropriate or borrow from cultural norms that
might adversely impact communities that are perceived as key audiences. This special
consideration requires transitional justice practitioners to focus ethical practice and
strategize arts integrations to consider “the artist’s cultural relationship to the aesthetics
and techniques of the project,” how the project “deal[s] with questions of privilege or
potential for appropriation,” and how “members of the community/ population/locality
been engaged in meaningful ways in the development and/or presentation of [the
project]” (Ibid).
In order to further examine the impact that arts projects have on the process of
memorialization, exploratory case study has been determined as the best approach.
According to Yin (2009), one can rationalize the implementation of case studies when
research questions focus on answering how or why questions. This research seeks to
answer how arts-based approaches to memorialization impact errinerungskultur in
Germany. Next, Yin states that utilizing the case study method does not “require control
of behavioral events.” This means that for this specific research, the cases presented will
be examined individually and not against the backdrop of one controlled, exemplary or
primary case. Yin states that
a case study inquiry copes with the technically distinctive situation in which there
will be many more variables of interest than data points, and as one result relies
on multiple sources of evidence, with data needing to converge in a triangulating
fashion, and as another result benefits from the prior development of theoretical
propositions to guide data collection and analysis.”

However, for this research, due to the particularly novel exploration of the theoretical
frameworks pertaining to arts change/impact within the peacebuilding field, a deviation
from this traditional case study method will be applied.
In order to address this deviation and further strengthen the use of the case studies
in this particular research, an Exploratory Design methodology will be applied. Streb
(2010) asserts that exploratory design “investigates distinct phenomena characterized by
a lack of detailed preliminary research.” This is especially important to take into
consideration in the scope of this research because of the aforementioned novelty of both
transitional justice within the peacebuilding field and arts-change theory within the
community development field. Since there is not a wealth of history and researched
knowledge around these theories, the subject matter of these case studies aims at further
developing ideas and concepts within each field. Utilizing an exploratory case study
methodology is intended to lead to theory building. According to Eisenhardt (2007, 25)
building theory from the use of case studies can “create theoretical constructs,
propositions, and/or midrange theory from case based, empirical evidence.” Exploratory
case studies build theoretical concepts from the research gathered. Yin (2009) further
asserts that multiple case studies create stronger outcomes for building upon theory
because this allows for the potential of case comparison, which, over time, can strengthen
theory. Exploratory case studies are utilized when there is no pre-determined outcome,
such as in this research pertaining to the exploration of arts-based memorialization
projects. As mentioned earlier, exploratory cases studies are instrumental in answering
“how” and “what” questions, as per Yin’s assertions of when to use cases studies (2009).
Exploratory case studies also provide a framing through which to create a more
comprehensive understanding of a social idea of phenomenon and can be implemented in

order to further investigate causal connections that may be overly complex for structured
experimentation (Yin, 2009).
Lastly, in justifying this mixed methods design between an exploratory design and
a traditional case studies design, Yin says that case studies are prime methodological
choices for research focusing on contemporary events. While this research looks at
wartime and post-war events in Germany, the impact I am seeking to evaluate occurs in a
contemporary setting, making case study a beneficial approach for analysis. Case study
research should be applied to research that seeks to “understand a real-world case and
assume[s] that such an understanding is likely to involve important contextual conditions
pertinent to [the] case” (Yin, 2009). This is also supported by Creswell (2013), who states
that case studies explore a “real-life, contemporary bounded system (a case) or multiple
bounded systems (cases) over time, through detailed, in-depth data collection involving
multiple sources of information” (p. 27).
The particular case studies for this research were determined primarily by the
intended outcome of projects. Outcomes are determined by the Functions of
Memorialization as outlined in the Theoretical Chapter. As previously discussed, the four
significant functions of memorialization as they refer to the overarching goals of
Transitional Justice in post-conflict Germany are (1) creating a place for mourning or
reflection, (2) promoting reconciliation between perpetrator, victims, and other actors, (3)
engaging community discussion and (4) advancing education and learning goals of the
conflict. The case studies were chosen for their intent to reach one or more of these
memorialization goals and therefore will be analyzed by their ability to reach said goals
through implementations of arts-based applications.
Additional criteria of choosing case studies focused on the scope and spread of
each project. Projects that reached more subjects, either through participation or media
reach were deemed ideal since the implication is that there would be more community
response and reaction to analyze overall impact as compared to memorialization projects
that had very little scope. These projects needed to be implemented in Germany in order
to analyze the impact within the context of Germany. While the Holocaust impacted
communities outside of Germany and continues to propagate transitional justice projects
in other countries (e.g. ancestors of survivors involved in the memory-gathering project
in the United States), it is significant for this research to look at projects that are centered
in Germany and are able to be contextualized within the shared historical and
contemporary ideas around errinerungskultur. Lastly, projects that were implemented at
least 10 years ago were preferable because of the amount of time that has passed,
allowing for public discourse and project analysis to occur. While there are a multitude of
projects that continue to be conceptualized and implemented on the topic of
memorialization in Germany, this research is specifically looking at the impact the arts
approaches have had on remembrance culture. Thus, it is assumed that a large enough
span of time is required to better view aspects of change and transformation, rather than a
newly-formed project with little data surrounding participation and public response. The
data gathering methods that were utilized in this research were semi-structured
interviews, archival materials, multimedia references and institutional and third-party
project or program reports.
Projects
The data for each project will be presented to provide an understanding of the
components of the projects and their intended outcomes as they pertain to the functions of
memorialization. The case studies that were selected to explore the impact arts-based
methods has on memorialization projects in Germany are presented below.

Project Name Project Leader

Project 1 The Memory Void The Jewish Museum, Berlin
Project 2 The Place of Remembrance Topf und Söhne
Project 3 Die Suche Anne Frank Center
Project 4 Yolocaust Shahank Shapira
Project 1: The Memory Void
The Memory Void is an architectural feature of the Jewish Museum in Berlin,
Germany. The entire center was designed by architect Daniel Libeskind and completed in
1999. Since its opening, thousands of people have visited the contemporary museum and
experienced the education and reflective goals centered on the Holocaust and subsequent
experiences of Jewish people in Germany and the diaspora. The Memory Void itself is a
location within the Jewish Museum, intended to be a symbolic space that often acts as a
backdrop to installations and artworks that focus on experiential remembrance projects. The
building has been reported to lend itself to the act of remembrance and reflection even in its
empty state: between its opening in 1999 and February of 2001, over 350,000 visitors
experienced the museum even with its absence of exhibitions at that time. Conceptual
research about the space has asserted that
emptiness acts as a method of communication in itself; an unorthodox approach to the
relaying of narrative, even by contemporary standards. The spaces entirely represent
the history of Jews in Europe: ruptured, dark, disorienting, but ultimately continuing.
When compared to Berlin’s other museum spaces created to communicate a narrative
of Holocaust remembrance and education, it becomes clear just how original
Libeskind’s design for The Jewish Museum was (Ward, 2010, p. 4-5).
With time, however, the museum became the foremost location in Berlin to house significant
historical and sociopolitical collections pertaining to the experience of Jewish people before,
during and after the Holocaust in Europe. Huyssen (1997) posits that Libeskind’s primary
outcome in the design of the Jewish Museum “is crucially an architecture of memory, even
his suggestion to leave the void as it was in the early 1990s was not just romantic and
impractical. For Libeskind gave architectural form to another void that haunts Berlin, the
historical void left by the Nazi destruction of Berlin's thriving Jewish life and culture” (p.
75). This position further asserts the goals of memorialization that can be seen in the
development of the Memory Void wing of the Jewish Museum. The Memory Void uses the
conceptual idea of voids to deal with the aspect of remembrance and loss in the scope of post-
war Germany. Huyssen also alludes to the significance of the Memory Void in line with the
conceptualization of errinerungskultur, stating “it gives a different inflection to the notion of
Berlin as void in relation to memory and history but more importantly because, however
indirectly, it raises the issue of German national identity and the identity of Berlin. While all
the other major building sites in Berlin today are inevitably haunted by the past, only
Libeskind's building attempts to articulate memory and our relationship to it” (p. 75). The
meaning of the space itself in design-form is specifically working to meet goals of
memorialization in how people conceptualize and reflect upon the aspects of conflict in a
contemporary setting.
By exploring deeper into the architectural canon, one can better understand how
memorialization (and therefore overarching transitional justice goals) are embedded into the
outcomes of the Memory Void project. The void, physically, is found in a sliver of space in
between intersecting exhibitions halls of the building. The space cannot be reached directly
from any of the exhibitions and must be accessed from an underground entry separated from
the exhibition spaces. Huyssen (1997) asserts this connection between space and memory by
noting the significance of the concept of a void, which alludes directly to “the absence of
Berlin's Jews, most of whom perished in the Holocaust. As fractured void it signifies history,
a broken history without continuity--the history of Jews in Germany; of German Jews; and
therefore also the history of Germany itself, which cannot be thought separate from Jewish
history in Germany” (p. 78-79). Huyssen expounds upon the concept of errinergungskultur,
by explaining that the Memory Void has become a space that nurtures memory and reflection
for Jews and for Germans. Its very presence points to an absence that can never be overcome,
a rupture that cannot be healed, and that certainly cannot be filled with museal
stuff…[Libeskind’s] building itself writes the discontinuous narrative that is Berlin, inscribes
it physically into the very movement of the museum visitor, and yet opens a space for
remembrance to be articulated and read between the lines” (p. 79-80).
Currently, an art piece occupies the Memory Void space, further supporting the goals
of remembrance that the space is designed to foster. “Shalekhet (Fallen Leaves),” by
Menashe Kadishman, is an installation consisting of approximately 10,000 heavy, metal faces
strewn across the expanse of the floor. While the artwork is designed to look, at first glance,
like ‘fallen leaves’ in autumn, the significance of the piece comes to light when visitors walk
across the installation and the cacophony of metallic faces against each other become
unavoidable whilst underfoot. According to the Jewish Museum (n.d.), “Kadishman
dedicated his artwork not only to Jews killed during the Shoah, but to all victims of violence
and war.” This artwork further grounds the space it inhabits, the Memory Void, in the process
of memorialization in that it functions as a place of mourning.
In an interview (2016), Libeskind has spoken about the difficulty defending his
artistic views as they pertain to the importance of post-war knowledge and memorialization:
“I had to meet every week with 50 bureaucrats of the city who challenged
every link… ‘Why are we paying money to build a space that is
useless?…You can call it a void, but reduce it to something that is…really
economically viable.’ I tried to convince them that it’s necessary to organize a
museum around completely different ideas about a museum because such a

museum is necessary now. It’s not a story you can just put to rest once and for
all and say you’ve finished with it and you can move on to new things. It’s a
story that forever, eternally, will create a tension. A tension between the
substance of the story, what can be told and what can never be told…What can
only be intuited and what will always remain something that subverts any
attempt to control, make the story finite…And I think that’s really part of the
challenge of building such a building” (ARTE, 2016).
Project 2: The Place of Remembrance
Topf und Söhne was a company located in Erfurt, Germany that designed and sold the
corpse cremation ovens and gas chamber technologies to concentrations camps such as
Mauthausen, Buchenwald and Auschwitz. In 1941, Topf und Söhne worked with the SS
construction team at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp to develop cremation
technology with the capacity to cremate nearly 5,000 bodies daily. Reports show that “[t]his
provided the SS with an essential technical prerequisite for making Auschwitz the center of
the extermination of European Jews from 1943 onwards. The company also installed the
ventilation systems in the Auschwitz gas chambers. The engineers and fitters from Topf und
Söhne were on site several times to manage and carry out the construction work, and they
witnessed mass killings” (Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation, n.d.).
Topf und Söhne was the largest company designing and building crematoriums and gas
chambers during the Holocaust.
The role of Topf und Söhne in the Holocaust was not systematically investigated until
1980 when its archival materials became more accessible. This reflects the cultural shift in
discourse surrounding the Holocaust and question of everyday roles in the complicity in
aiding and abetting war crimes. Hain (2007) speaks to this saying it “took 60 years to face
this uncomfortable shadow complex in public. Until now, perpetration under National
Socialism was largely considered to be limited to brown and black uniforms. The whole
interweaving of economy and crime is really poorly reflected.”
In 2003, the company site was declared a historic site and given protection status by
the State of Thüringen. In 2011, a memorial site at the former company’s headquarters was
opened to the public to acknowledge and discuss the role the company played in making
possible mass murder throughout the Holocaust. It is currently the only memorial dealing
with a private company’s dealing with its role in the Holocaust (Topf & Söhne, n.d.).
Embedded in the conceptualization for the memorial space is a need for building
reconciliatory pathways between the space itself and those who seek to understand how the
everyday person could be involved or played a role in the Holocaust. Hain (2007) posits that
the cultural landscape around how to disseminate historical knowledge has changed in
Germany over time and the “ability or possibility to absorb [history] is related to how much
credibility you give to a communicator. I think there was a phase up to the 1970s when there
were survivors who took guided tours in the camps, and all of this was very well received and
intensively processed. In the 80s…these stories were quickly dismissed as ideology. Younger
people than me…said they no longer wanted…to listen to teachers of civics, but they also
didn't want to listen to the guides at the memorial sites” (Hain & Escherich, 2007).
One of the major goals in creating the memorial site was to approach these
previously-non-discussed issues in German history through the remains of the company
itself, providing a physical backdrop for community dialogue and reconciliation around the
events of a very localized past. Scholars in this area state that the Place of Remembrance
project has been very influential with public perception due to the involvement and
commitment of the Topf und Söhne memorialization efforts (Hain & Escherich, 2007).
After the opening of the memorial space, an organizing group of academics and
community members committed themselves to “ensuring that parts of the historical site, now
an industrial wasteland, are used for documentation and exhibition purposes” (Buchenwald
and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation, n.d.). The space now functions as memorial site
and educational center, bringing light to questions around the rise of the company’s implicit
involvement in the murders of the Holocaust, how accountability and leadership oversaw
such discussions and “[h]ow…those involved and the two post-war societies deal with this
guilt” (ibid). While this site is labeled as a memorial site, its intent to educate and make
transparent the events of the past positions it to not only function as a place for mourning, but
also to promote reconciliation, engage community discussion and advance the education
around the Holocaust. This project can be framed within these four functions of
memorialization.
The goals of this project focus on the role of accomplices and role of German
companies during the Holocaust. This is contrasted to many Holocaust memorial sites in the
way that it focuses less on crimes and their victims, but rather on the routines of everyday
business of commercial enterprises and dealing with their entanglement in criminality and
politics (Hain & Escherich, 2007).
According to an architectural report (Hain & Escherich, 2007), one of the designers of
the memorial project, David Lieser, wanted to “defin[e] important and unimportant areas in
terms of monument preservation, [by] pointing the way to a subsequent use and revitalization
of the wasteland without negating the moments of memory that are stuck in the terrain (Hain,
Escherich, 2007).” More specifically, this points to the spatial aspect of the project, which
focuses on fostering conversation about the Holocaust through interaction with the actual
remains of the crematorium factory. Scholars state that while the space itself might hold less
meaning for people over time, the goal in this project is to transform how to have
conversations about history when the passage of time creates more of a distance between the
material and participants. For example “young people who know the site as an adventure
playground or who have a spatial reference to it do not take notice of this exhibition. Maybe
it simply passes them by. Our interventions for this historical site included communication
strategies that specifically invite young people” (Ibid.) This project takes into consideration
the cultural and contextual changes of conversations about the Holocaust over time, using the
memorial site as a central connecting point for this knowledge. In the building of this
knowledge, the focus on how to contextualize and contemporize the information to be able to
have more engaged discussions was at the core. Speaking to the contextual idea that newer
generations are lacking touchpoints with the history of the Holocaust, Hain and Escherich
(2007) state the “[y]oung people often lack elementary knowledge, and…the wave of
enlightenment in the 1970s, the history workshops and…so on have not been entirely
successful. Many found it difficult to absorb the enormous flood of connections and stories
on the subject. Some have said that they are not free to deal with the problem because they
are, so to speak, only now emotionally stirred up, the first time they have gone into the depth
of the connections.” This speaks to the function of reflection and mourning that this memorial
serves, in addition to engaging community discussion and advancing educational goals.
Hain (2007) asserts that the memorial needed to serve as a backdrop to changing
cultural shifts about errinerungskultur, saying “one has to look for new ways of
remembering. What has happened here now, in the [memorial], is in fact a very critical
adaptation to reception habits. The perception must indeed be sharpened. That is a general
problem of society. And I believe that the established culture of remembrance has distanced
itself somewhat too far from the actual communication habits.”
Currently, the Place of Remembrance offers a number of community-oriented
collaborative opportunities in order to further engage people and institutions in the role of
utilizing the site as an anchor for memorialization. This includes internship opportunities that
focus of creating educational connections to the memorial site and historical background for
new audiences and a Freiwilliges Soziales Jahr [Voluntary Social Year] which focuses on the
“promot[tion of] a reflected awareness of history, i.e. to stimulate personal examination of
history and to encourage one's own judgment. The guided study of historical sources and
research-based learning are central working methods (Topf und Söhne, n.d., translated).”
These opportunities demonstrate a commitment to ongoing community dialogue and
discussion with new participants regarding the issues around complicity and the Holocaust.
Project 3: Die Suche
“Die Suche” (The Search) is a comic book designed to teach students about the
events of the Holocaust and the impact of anti-Semitism. It was designed by Eric Hueval,
who had worked with the Anne Frank Center in the Netherlands to complete a similar comic
textbook for Dutch audiences previous to this project. After the success of the project in the
Netherlands, the Anne Frank Center aimed to create another textbook, but for a wider
audience across Europe. “Die Suche” project primarily focuses on reaching 9th grade
students, focusing on eight different topics: “the question of fictionality and historical reality,
the roles of victims, helpers, viewers and perpetrators, the Holocaust in comics and forms of
memory today” ([Gesichtscomic “Die Suche”, n.d.).
In terms of the functions of memorialization, this project very clearly acts to meet
goals pertaining to sustained education about the Holocaust and concurrent and subsequent
conflict. Since this project was always intended to be integrated in the German school
system, there were “certain goals that had to be very precise on a factual level. They invited
international experts and historians from different organizations all over Europe to work on
it...[the] Anne Frank Center in Berlin… played a role in the implementation and
dissemination and development of education materials for the German audience (P.Siegele,
Interview, July 1, 2020).”
In addition, the Anne Frank Center worked alongside a German textbook publisher
which provided an integral bridge between storytelling, memorialization and the German
education curriculum. The teaching materials were further developed by a team including the
Anne Frank Center, along with a history teacher, a German teacher and an art teacher.
Siegele (2020) credits much of the success of this project to the role stakeholders played in
the process of making the material. Working in a cross-sectorial team allowed for content to
fit better into the schooling system to ensure that teachers could use the material in their
classrooms. Siegel also mentions that, especially for non-formal educators in a classroom
setting, the school system protocols can be quite rigid and inflexible. But the Anne Frank
team realized that if they wanted to publish the textbook in order to reach their educational
goals they needed to compromise on some of the content in order to make it viable in
classrooms across Germany.
Several of the aforementioned educational goals imbedded in this project include
“imparting factual knowledge about the Holocaust, creating differentiation with the roles of
victims, helpers and perpetrators as well as the spectator. The pedagogical concept focuses on
the scope for decision-making and motives for action and what [feelings] discrimination had
for the victims” (Anne Frank Zentrum, 2008). The center even carried out tests to evaluate
the pedagogical applicability of the comic, providing a basis for creating revisions that would
better suit the learning needs of German students. The pilot project reached 807 students from
diverse age groups. At the completion of the pilot program, an evaluative survey was
conducted in order to test the knowledge gained after the completion of the book and
materials, in addition to gathering qualitative feedback from teachers and students about the
material. According to Siegele (2020), the project has been quite a success and is widely-
known across the country. “A lot of teachers like working with it especially because of the
fact that it opens up so well for discussions about historical events. This is a lot because of
how the story is told. We got very positive feedback from the students in different age groups
and levels of educations, especially for lower age groups because it was more accessible and
interesting to see the perspective of the personal stories. It made it easier for them to grasp
conceptually” (P. Siegele, Interview, July 1, 2020).
The memorialization function focusing on promoting dialogue was also embedded in
the project, yielding further reverberations. Siegele speaks on the transformation element of
the comic that comes with how young people interpret the stories of the Holocaust in their
daily lives, saying
youth first deal with the story of the Holocaust and from there they think of ways
about how they can get engaged in their surroundings today. What can they do against
anti-Semitism, racism, discrimination at school, in their sports club, in their families
or wherever they are…[Many people ask] isn’t it disrespectful if we deal with the
Holocaust at the same time that young people deal with homophobia and sexism
today? Some people would say you can’t compare these and the Holocaust is unique.
Yes, I agree, but on the other side, when young people read the diary of Anne Frank
and they deal with her story, there are still issues today, why should we stop them
from dealing with these issues?” (P.Siegele, Interview, July 1, 2020)
This intentionality built into the project aligns with the long-term and sustainable goals of
fostering dialogue as a form of memorialization. Making relevant the events of the conflict in
order to elicit empathetic and solid conceptualizations about how horrible facts of the past
can shed light on events in current time is central to this particular function of
memorialization. Siegele (2020) supports this by saying “it’s our task as educators in
memorial sites to…give young people spaces and opportunities to deal with the story in a
way that it becomes meaningful for them…We believe that each and every generation, the
more distance we have, has to find out for themselves what lessons they can learn from this
and what it means for them…This is our approach to how we work educationally in general.”
Project 4: Yolocaust
“Yolocaust” is a digital photography project created by Shahank Shapira, a Berlin-
based Israeli artist. The title is a reference to a popular, colloquial acronym meaning, “You
Only Live Once.” The portmanteau, of course, combines this phrase with the name of the
Holocaust to create an apt title for a project leaning on the influence that social media culture
has in the discussion of remembrance culture. This project consisted of his collection of 12
selfies taken at the Berlin “Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe” posted openly on
social media sites, such as Twitter and Instagram. He then created composite images of the
found selfies layered on top of historical images of the Holocaust, such as photos of
concentration camps or mass graves. The selfies are often images of people engaging in
flippant, almost joyful acts, using the memorial as a backdrop. His website displaying the
images has “provoke[d] a fresh debate about contemporary Germany’s relationship
with Erinnerungskultur (Oltermann, 2018).”
The original website Shapira created to display photos has now been removed by the
artist, but the original artist statement has been archived and reads:
“About 10,000 people visit the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe every day.
Many of them take goofy pictures, jump, skate or bike on the 2,711 concrete slabs of
the 19,000 m² large structure. The exact meaning and role of the Memorial to the
Murdered Jews of Europe are controversial. To many, the grey stelae symbolize
gravestones for the 6 Million Jews that were murdered and buried in mass graves, or
the grey ash to which they were burned to in the death camps” (Shapira, 2017).
This project engages the educational and community dialogue functions of
memorialization. Speaking on his artistic vision, Shapira stated that he “wanted to provoke
people into thinking about the Holocaust and appropriate ways to commemorate its legacy.
Berlin’s Holocaust memorial isn’t there for the Jews, or even the victims – it’s a moral
compass for future generations, to warn them precisely about people such as Björn Höcke”
(Oltermann, 2018). This directly alludes to the use of this artistic project as a long-term
process, specifically focusing on the aspect of transitional justice that is to prevent future
conflict from occurring. Shapira attempts this by fostering community dialogue through his
shocking and poignant photos.
There has been critique of Shapira’s project, placing it in the category of shock-value
and accusing it of not fully addressing the issues of remembrance in Germany. One critique
states “Those who react emotionally like to sell themselves as moralists…but they only do
what is commonly done in Germany: to organize their own memory theater that has nothing
to do with real empathy, just feeling better somehow” (Funk, 2017). Funk continues to say
that Shapira rose to popularity “without having done anything sustainable for the culture of
remembrance” and that “[for] instrumentalizing concentration camp prisoners and murdered
Jews, people who may not want to be part of this campaign because they don't want to be
stylized as victims of the Germans forever and for all time.” This critique sheds light on an
ongoing debate about the role of remembrance culture in Germany, which has been a through
line in the all of the projects. As intended by the goals of the artist, critiques like this still
function as facets of dialogue in the process of memorialization. This critique has simply
broadened the discussion around what the current perspective and role of errinerungskultur
should be in Germany, solidifying the memorialization goals embedded in the process.
A supporter of the project said in an interview that “she doesn't understand the whole
memorial. ‘It's so abstract. I can't do anything with it. It's beautiful - but what should it tell
me?’ Shapira's art project therefore seems more than necessary to her. The field of [columns]
actually works without a lot of explanations. A few panels tell the story of its origins,
otherwise the visitor is left to their own devices” (Wojcik, 2017). This further shows the
instrumentation of art as abstraction in order to engage dialogue and create meaningful
connections to historical, conflict events in a contemporary context.
Shapira’s current website features feedback from people who have interacted with the
project. The reactions that are posted are varied in tone. Many are positive and allude to the
nature of remembrance and the sustainability of remembrance culture, such as “Well done, I
applaud what you have done with your website. When the unthinkable becomes ordinary we
make it more likely that we will repeat it” and “Thanks for encouraging the awareness and
respect that such a monument commands. If we can't acknowledge and respect the past, we
have very little hope for the future” and “I'm a teacher (history!) and wanted to ask you if I
could show your project to my students in order to prepare them for our visit at the Holocaust
memorial” (Shapira, 2017). The positive responses generally reflect the connection between
past and present for those who have seen the artist’s project. However, the negative responses
do not focus on the impact of the project, but rather on the personal position of the artist
himself. As a Jewish artist much of the negative feedback presented on the site comes in the
form of personal attacks, with comments such as “Too bad you weren't in a German prison
camp during WWII. I hope you are some day” and “YOU'RE FUCKIN ASSHOLES!!!!
WISH YOU WERE IN THE HOLOCAUST!!!!! FUCK YOU” (Ibid).
Shapira speaks to the feedback and responses he received on the project, positing that
illuminating this type of polarizing discussion is part of the aim in a project like this. He
states one of the biggest successes of the project to be that almost all 12 people whose selfies
were used in the project “understood the message, apologized and decided to remove their
selfies from their personal Facebook and Instagram profiles” (Shapira, 2017). He goes on to
discuss public feedback that demonstrates the transformational nature of the project, rooted in
the memorialization function of engaging community discussion. Shapira draws upon a
particular message he received from one of the original selfie owners, which reads:
I am the guy that inspired you to make Yolocaust, so I've read at least. I am the
"jumping on de..." I cant even write it, kind of sick of looking at it. I didn't mean to
offend anyone. Now I just keep seeing my words in the headlines. I have seen what
kind of impact those words have and it's crazy and it's not what I wanted (…) The
photo was meant for my friends as a joke…But when it gets shared, and comes to
strangers who have no idea who I am, they just see someone disrespecting something
important to someone else or them. That was not my intention. And I am sorry. I truly
am… (Shapira, 2017).
The artistic process allowed for people who originally posted selfies to write a message to the
artist in order to engage dialogue and request the removal of the images. This set this project
in more of a community-dialogue project, rather than one that aims to solely shame or make
spectacle of others. The response by the person above reflects upon a transformation moment
that the project had for him, strengthening the role that this artistic project had in illuminating
the harms of forgetting or misremembering the Holocaust. The ways in which it was
contemporized (i.e. with the use of social media) shows the intent of creating conversations
that are time and context-appropriate, allowing for the goals of memorialization to be
sustainable for current and future generations.

Analysis
These projects will first be analyzed by their ability to meet criteria in each of the Arts
Attributes Categories. Using the Aesthetic Perspectives Framework, the three arts attributes
were chosen to examine impact on remembrance culture by each of the projects. The
attributes are “Commitment,” “Communal Meaning,” and “Cultural Integrity.” The
Aesthetics Perspectives framework utilizes several questions for each attribute so that users
may better develop their goals and outcomes for arts-based projects that seek some sort of
social or community transformation. Using questions from this framework, each project is
assessed by whether it met or did not meet the criteria in each question within the attribute.
The “yes or no” questions were derived from the Aesthetic Perspectives Framework and the
answers are determined by the data gathered in the exploratory case study for each project.
While the answers to the questions are determined by the data presented in the Methodology
chapter, the detailed rationale for the answers can be found in figure seven in the Appendix.
For the sake of brevity, the chart below shows the questions with the corresponding answers
for each project. A “yes” response is scored as 1 and a “no” response is scored as 0. In terms
of projects, it should be noted that Project 1 or “P1” denotes “The Memory Void by the
Jewish Museum,” Project 2 or “P2” denotes “A Place for Remembrance” by Topf undSöhne,
Project 3 or “P3” denotes “Die Suche” by the Anne Frank Center, and Project 4 or “P4”
denotes “Yolocaust” by Shahank Shapira. The following chart presents a summary of the
scores for each project on the questions for each of the three arts attributes.
project
project 1 project 2 3 projec4
A1: Commitment
Q1. Is there commitment to civic engagement,
community change or justice? 1 1 1 0
Q2. Is there intention to engage the interest of
community partners and intended participants? 1 1 1 0
Q3. Does the project demonstrate commitment to
stakeholder input in defining the purpose of creative work
as well as social outcomes? 0 1 1 0
Q4. Are partners committed to engaging art and artists at
an early stage to allow for a maximum value? 0 0 1 0
Q5. Are artists and community partners involved in a plan
for sustained commitment or depth of impact? 1 1 1 0
A2: Communal Meaning
Q6. Does the project reflect purposeful relationship
among stakeholders and participants? 1 1 1 0
Q7. Does the project give participants access to collective
expressions, engagement and/or reflection? 1 1 1 1
Q8. Does the work elicit stories, images, and perspective
of multiple individuals or stakeholders and provide them
with opportunities to discuss and make sense of them
collectively? 1 1 1 1
Q9. Is the work relevant to the community, location or
context? 1 1 1 1
Q10. Does the work enhance people’s ability to see
intersections and make connections? 1 1 1 1
A3: Cultural Integrity
Q11. Does the project explore relationships of power,
privilege and cultural context in the planning stages? 0 1 1 1
Q12. Does the project and stakeholders explore
questions of credibility, authenticity and integrity? 0 1 1 1
Q13. Does the project reflect enduring commitment to
community, practice, situation, locale, or the conflict
itself? 1 1 1 1
Q14. Do people affected by the project have agency to
act on their own behalf? 0 1 1 1
Q15. Does the project have a relationship with the
knowledge, traditions, and practices they are engaging
in? 0 1 1 1
Q16. Does the project engage members of the
community/conflict in meaningful ways in the
development and/or presentation of the work? 0 1 1 1
TOTAL 9 15 16 10
Figure 7: Arts-based Project Criteria and Initial Scores
The chart above reflects the degree to which each project met various criteria across
all three attributes in total. However, a realistic assumption behind assessing the use of these
arts-based processes for transformation is that the more of these criteria that are met across
more attributes, the better. In other words, a project that met a reasonable number of criteria
across all three attributes is more impactful on memorialization than one that, for example,
met more criteria under two attributes but none under the third. In other words, meeting more
of the attributes overall carries some weight in terms of impact.
Thus, in order to more accurately reflect this weighting in the scoring data for each
project, weighted scores are tabulated for each attribute then used to calculate an overall
score for each project. First, the total number of “yes” responses on criteria questions for an
attribute is divided by the total number of questions for that attribute to yield a subscore for
the attribute. This calculation is repeated for each of the three attributes, resulting in three
subscores. The total score for each project is now a sum of all three sub-scores.
This index reflects the encapsulation of arts impact on remembrance culture by
demonstrating how arts-based memorialization projects embed values pertaining to social
and/or cultural transformation. As a formative mechanism to examine how transitional justice
and the arts intersect, this analysis tool is named the Avalon Index by the author.
P1 P2 P3 P4
Commitment 0.60 0.80 1.00 0.00
Communal Meaning 1.00 1.00 1.00 0.80
Cultural Integrity 0.17 1.00 1.00 1.00
TOTAL 1.77 2.80 3.00 1.80
Figure 8: The Avalon Index (Weisinger, 2020).

It is then possible to use these final scores assess impact. The Aesthetic Perspective
Frameworks looks at each attribute separately. That is to say, the framework has presented
guidelines for what evaluative measures look like for projects that encapsulate multiple
attributes. That is not to say that projects focusing on meeting the goals of one arts-change
attribute will not also have overlaps in the goals of another attribute; but it is to say that in the
case of this research it should be assumed that the more goals of each attribute a project
reached the more impactful it was. Therefore, projects were deemed impactful if they met
over half of the criteria with “yes” responses.
Key Findings:
One main finding is that each project resulted in Communal Meaning being the
strongest arts-change attribute. Across all four projects, this attribute clearly emerged as a
strong factor in reaching the memorialization goals of each project. The planning process of
all projects put a specific emphasis on how participants or viewers built a relationship with
the project and provided ways to access discussion and reflection elicited by the project. An
important facet of the Communal Meaning attribute is the capability of projects to utilize
images and stories to create a platform for participants or viewers to engage and
contextualize themselves. Project 1 (Memory Void) and Project 2 (Topf und Söhne) do this
by creating architectural experiences that lead to spaces meant to serve reflective and
thoughtfulness of historical events pertaining to the Holocaust. In slight contrast, Project 3
(Die Suche) does this by providing images in comic book form to illuminate stories and
multiple perspectives that aim at guiding discussion and reflection from participants.
Communal Meaning also takes into consideration the relevance of the community, location or
context. Project 4 (Yolocaust) specifically plays with the concept of space in engaging
dialogue about how remembrance is spatial in nature and uses the very location of the
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe to engage dialogue about remembrance.
The weakest arts-based attribute score across all projects is Commitment. Project 1
scored the lowest in this category, purely because based on data collected the planning and
execution of the Memory Void was one that didn’t directly rely on community participant
and stakeholder input. It was the vision of the architect, museum and partially the City of
Berlin that built intent and gals of memorialization into the project. While the project aimed
at creating dialogue and creating a physical touch point for discourse, the planning process
itself did not meet most criteria for commitment because of how partners were not directly
involved in its conception. Project 3 scored the highest of all the projects, as it was clearly
evident based on the data collected, that from the very birth of the project partnership and
participant input were extremely central to the outcomes of the project. By ensuring work
teams were diverse and multidisciplinary the Die Suche project was able to engage
community partners and demonstrate its commitment to stakeholder input by making it a core
part of the planning and execution process. Project 4 scored the lowest in the Commitment
category for failing to meet any of the criteria. Much of this points to the fact that this project
was developed to make a statement and to bring attention to the fading of errinerungskultur
in Germany. As the gathered data shows, the project sought to ignite future conversations and
changes in how memorialization is treated in the sociopolitical landscape, but the process of
the project development itself did not aim at engaging community partners or working with
stakeholders to create some sort of civic change or justice. However, it is also important to
note that, based on the data collected, the only project that committed to engaging artists and
participants at an early stage to reach maximum value, was Project 3. This presents an open
opportunity for future projects to explore the planning phase of memorialization projects and
how, when strengthened, it can lead to stronger outcomes.

The Avalon Index provides a succinct view of the overall impact of the projects. To
reiterate, any project that met over half of the criteria with a “yes” response was deemed
impactful. Based on the total scores as reflected in the Avalon Index, each of the projects can
be deemed impactful as they all met over half of the three attribute criteria. However, it is
important to reflect upon which arts attribute bore more weight for each project in order to
better understand where there may be trends in the overarching goals of memorialization
projects. Additionally, this may also allow us to see where gaps in process may be filled in
future projects that seek to utilize arts change methods in order to reach goals of
memorialization. In order to better visualize this data, each project has been graphed to view
how it assigned importance across attributes. Here it can be seen how some projects (such as
P2 and P3) show more balance across attributes and how the other projects lean more to one
attribute.
P1: The Memory Void P2: place of remembrance

Commitme Commitme
nt nt
1.00 1.00
0.50 0.50
0.00 P1 0.00 P2
Cultural Communal Cultural Communal
Integrity Meaning Integrity Meaning
P3: Die Suche P4: Yolocaust

Commitme Commitme
nt nt
1.00 1.00
0.50 0.50
0.00 P3 0.00 P4
Cultural Communal Cultural Communal
Integrity Meaning Integrity Meaning
Figure 9: Spider graph visualization of Avalon Index data

Conclusion
Germany is currently contending with a changing sociopolitical landscape, shifting
demographics and an international environment that impacts the manner in which it takes on
leadership roles in the global sphere. As the aforementioned rates of hate crimes and acts of
anti-Semitism and xenophobia grow in current times, a distancing from past pains and
wounds of Germany histories can be observed. Through research and studies conducted to
examine the shift in culture and understanding around the Holocaust, it can be assumed that
there is a fading, or perhaps a transformation, of errinerungskultur in Germany underway.
This change in German remembrance culture demonstrates a need to continue
transitional justice efforts. Memorialization, specifically, creates an avenue through which to
strengthen peacebuilding in a contemporary context. Strategic planning of memorialization
projects allows for more intentionality around goal setting and shared outcomes. Most
specifically, the outcomes with ultra importance in the current German landscape of
memorialization are creating a place for mourning, promoting reconciliation, engaging
community discussion and advancing education and learning opportunities. There are a
multitude of projects in Germany that are engaging these outcomes in order to shape the
future of a culture that does not wish to foster an environment that lends itself to the support
of the events of the Holocaust again.
This research has shown that within the spectrum of projects being enacted in order to
meet these shared goals of memorialization, arts-based projects present themselves as a
particularly useful tool set. Arts-based projects have been demonstrated as optimal
mechanisms for reaching transitional justice goals because of their ability to broaden and
make more accessible the shared goals across different groups of stakeholders. The case
studies examined in this research represent the diversity of approaches possible in order to
reach goals of memorialization in a new and different cultural context. While each project
presented completely different stylistic, organizational and project management styles, they
ultimately showed the underlying shared motivations around community engagement in order
to better employ wide-spread objectives of memorialization projects.
The results of the data analysis indicate that the strength of future transitional justice
projects in Germany depends upon the involvement of community members, stakeholders
and government bodies. That is to say, based on the findings, the more a project worked
alongside outside stakeholders in order to define goal-setting and community need, the
stronger the impact was reflected after the completion of the project. This shows that projects
that strategically build this type of collaboration and conceptual framework around
community participation and transparency will yield more impactful results in terms of
reaching reconciliatory, education and civic goals.
The results also revealed that while overall impact may reflect positive results, there
are underlying factors that may be missing when seeking to reach robust and sustainable,
long-terms peacebuilding goals. Looking at the data analysis, one can surmise that even
though each arts-based project created positive impact on remembrance culture in Germany,
there are clear weaknesses in individual projects that allude to focus areas that could
strengthen future memorialization projects. The Commitment attribute was found to be the
weakest attribute across all projects. This is not because of a lack of committment to the
project or stakeholders , but more because of the structural and institutional difficulty of
maintaining projects over time and the challenge of continued outreach to shifting
communities that may have different ideas and needs as it pertains to their own connection to
errinerungskultur in Germany.
It is also important to review the limitations that this exploratory case study faced.
One major limitation of this research is primarily rooted in the methods design itself. An
exploratory case study deviates from the traditional case study methodology in the manner
that “it should follow a replication design...[and] upon uncovering a significant finding from
a single experiment, an ensuing and pressing priority would be to replicate this finding by
conducting a second, third, and even more experiments… The logic underlying these
replication procedures also should reflect some theoretical interest, not just a prediction that
two cases should simply be similar or different” (Yin, 2009). In the exploratory case study
conducted, there was a deviation from this traditional path specifically in order to gather
more supporting data within both the transitional justice theory and the arts change theory.
Moreover, a replication method was not utilized because of the lack of a framework that
supports the evaluation of the intersection between peacebuilding and the arts. It was deemed,
as is outlined in the methodology chapter, important to further examine this intersection in an
exploratory fashion before being able to apply a replicative research design model to this
field of research. This also speaks to the high potential, as discussed in the theory chapter, for
this intersection of arts and peacebuilding to be further studied through stronger evaluative
and replicable research. This paper, however, makes a case for how this may be possible in
future research and that an avenue into such research can be through systemic and process-
focused evaluation, rather than post-project assessment.
This research could have also been bolstered by more personal interviews.
Unfortunately, the research period was overshadowed by the international Covid-19
pandemic, coming with it a number of research challenges around interviewees handling
urgent institutional matters pertaining to the virus, centers and memorial sites being shut
down for public health safety, and general travel issues in order to safely meet with project
participants and organizers. While in times of dire emergency these situations were
unavoidable, it should be noted that future research will benefit immensely from gathering
more primary responses regarding these and other memorialization projects in order to index
the responses. To this end, it is also important to note that a portion of the data collected for
Project 3 (Die Suche) came from a personal interview with the director of the center. Project
3 also received the highest score based on the arts-change criteria it met. Since the interview
questions were based upon these arts-change criteria it would be very interesting and
important for future research to further draw out the element of personal interviews in order
to more specifically ask questions and engage in conversation that better elicits data that can
be viewed within the Avalon Index.
Nonetheless, given the preliminary results here, it is recommended that policy makers
enhance ongoing transitional justice goals in Germany by focusing efforts on the
sustainability factor of such projects. The German Federal Government’s 2017 pledge to
strengthen transitional justice goals aimed to “help ministries act more coherently and in a
more coordinated manner, to use synergies between different policy areas and to create closer
links between relevant stakeholders” (p. 7). These aims reflect an acknowledgement that
cross-departmental and even multidisciplinary approaches are necessary for strengthening
transitional justice efforts. However based on this paper’s research it can be said that to have
more of a long-term and substantial impact, a more significant focus on how to systematize
sustainability of engagement is key. As per the pledge document, there will be a follow-up
action in the year 2025 to assess how this interministerial effort has been impacting
Germany’s transitional justice goals. This presents a prime opportunity to consider arts-based
approaches to impact the overall governmental transitional justice outcomes as they pertain to
sustainability and commitment. This government effort is being framed within the scope of
foreign, security and development policy, making it a particularly unlikely area to implement
art-related projects, as they maybe deemed too flimsy or inadequate to reach such goals.
However, this research paper seeks to make a case for why creative and innovative
approaches to process and planning can yield results that support high-level and
comprehensive goals. Further, this research should support the notion that the “artwork” that
is produced as a result of a planning process should not be the core focus of a transitional
justice project; the goals, such as intentionality, community engagement, stakeholder
development, cultural integrity, etc. are the more important factors to creating positive impact
within transitional justice projects. In this sense, utilizing creative means to ensure the
aforementioned goals are reached purely strengthens the capacity of planners, in this case the
German government, to meet policy goals.
One policy recommendation would be to fund a nationwide educational program that
focuses on supporting the transitional justice goals of the interministerial project pledged in
2017. The proposed project would be able to serve a specific age demographic across
Germany and effectively and creatively build engaging programming for youth, while
scaffolding the project upon overarching goals pertaining to the ongoing reconciliation efforts
of post-Holocaust Germany and “growing awareness that processes of transitional justice
must also consider refugees and internally displaced persons (German Federal Government,
2017)”. This intersection between historic knowledge and contemporary context is at the core
of potent transitional justice advancement.
Seeing as the involvement of partners and stakeholders early on has been shown, as in
this paper’s research, to have a positive impact upon the results of a project it is also
recommended to work alongside organizations or institutions that have shared goals and
whose collaboration would enhance the impact of an educational project such as this. It has
recently been announced that the Stiftung Exilmuseum will be official begin building a
museum in Berlin that will be “a place of unforgettable stories, a place of reflection, a place
of empathy. A place that fosters understanding of the word exile and in doing so takes a stand
against totalitarianism and inhumanity” (Stiftung Exilmuseum, 2020). With plans to open this
new museum in 2025, the center aims at discussing the history and impact of the Holocaust
through the lens of exile and emigration. The museum website currently lists their conceptual
ideas for discourse around exile and the role it plays in German history and current political
discussion. One such stated goal is that museum “tells how the exodus from Central Europe
also became a transnational transfer of ideas. It shows how migration changes cultural
patterns in a significant way – an awareness that is of increasing importance for a peaceful
coexistence in our globalized world” (Stiftung Exilmuseum, 2020).
The museum will approach the history of Nazi persecution in Germany through a
unique perspective of identity, migration and nationhood. These themes are particularly
poignant when cast against the current sociopolitical backdrop in Germany, which is
currently dealing with these same factors. According to a recent article (Landsberg, 2020),
the costs to build and start-up will be privately funded. This is an opportunity for government
funding to be allocated to programming that connects historical knowledge around the
Holocaust to contemporary social, cultural and political discussion in order to cultivate new
connections and contextually-respective discourse. One of the reasons projects such as “Die
Suche” had shown such success is because of the ability to connect young people to historical
events and build curricula that creates pathways to current issues. Such programming could
be essential in preventing the fading of erinerrungskultur in Germany by instead transitioning
goals of memorialization into active discussions and cultural engagement focused on the
future. An ongoing project that seeks to promote reconciliation, engage community
discussion and advance education across institutions, stakeholders and community members
could significantly impact the state of remembrance culture in Germany. By focusing
planning and strategic program scaffolding around transformational values such as
commitment, communal meaning and cultural integrity, the policy initiative has the potential
to make significant impact, not only within the governmental sector, but the educational and
arts and cultural sector as well.

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Appendix
Interview Transcript Summary
Date: July 1, 2020

Interviewee: Peter Siegele, Director of Anne Frank Center, Berlin
Project: “Die Suche” Comic Book textbook
Project: International project from the beginning

The Anne Frank house has designed a graphic novel by Eric Huevel, “Die Entdeckung”, for a
Dutch audience. It was very well-received and successful in the Netherlands and we decided
to do a follow-up, but make it a European project from the beginning.
The Anne Frank House is an educational institution. They had certain goals that had to be
very precise on a factual level. They invited international experts and historians from
different orgs all over Europe to work on it, such as the Educational Officer [inaudible],
Auschwitz State Museum, The Imperial War museum in London. As the Anne Frank Center
in Berlin, we played a role in the implementation and dissemination and development of
education materials for the German audience.
There was quite a bit of criticism that the piece of art is very educational compared to other
graphic novels about the Holocaust such as Art Spiegelman’s Maus, but one can see that
behind this artwork certain knowledge had to be transferred through the comic. It is a history
lesson when you read it. Certain events in the persecution of European Jews are described
through the voice of the eye-witness who describes what happens to her and her family. The
other thing is that different roles of victims, perpetrators, bystanders and helpers are really
made explicit in this comic that was an important role of “The Search” and very essential
when we developed the educational materials for the schools in Germany.
What is the long-term goal for this project?

To be honest at the moment we are not planning anything in terms of the comic. There was
the “Die Entdeckung” “Die Suche and then the Anne Frank graphic. We aren’t planning
anything new as far as it comes to comics. It is not a strategic decision; to be honest a project
like this is so expensive. It was only due to the Anne Frank House and the foundation there
that they could do a project like this. For us as a small NGO in Germany we just don’t have
the budget. You need to do it properly. You need a good artist and someone good at
storytelling.
How did you involve stakeholders in the creation of the project?

The good thing about this project was that we worked together with a textbook publisher here
in Germany. So they knew exactly what the curriculum looked like and where you could
build a bridge to the curriculum. The teaching materials were written not only by us, but we
had three teachers in our team: a history teacher, a German teacher and an art teacher. They
knew exactly how the assignments needed to be done so that they would be accepted by
teachers and fit into the school system. I think this is one of the reasons why this material has
been so successful in the last years. Sometimes we, as non-formal educators not working in
schools, found it very strict and inflexible, but we realized that if you want to do it the way
we did it has to fit into the school lesson and curriculum or else teachers won’t use it so you
have to compromise.
How does the comic book create dialogue about the Holocaust and remembrance
differently than a museum or statue?
We did a pilot project in seven schools all over Germany with different age groups, different
levels of education and I know some schools that after 12 years are still working with the
same materials and the graphic novel. In Germany it is quite well-known and a huge success.
A lot of teachers like working with it especially because of the fact that it opens up so well
for discussions about historical events. This is a lot because of how the story is told. We got
very positive feedback from the students in different age groups and levels of educations.
Especially for lower age groups because it was more accessible and interesting to see the
perspective of the personal stories. It made it easier for them to grasp conceptually.
Additionally, in the educational materials we developed, we wanted the teachers and students
to deal with the different representations of the Holocaust. The lessons we did with “Die
Suche” were not only to aim for factual knowledge, but also to deal with the Holocaust from
a sociological point of view and from a cultural point of view. Sociological in the sense of
dealing with the different roles. Why did some people become bystanders? What were
perpetrators motivation for dealing with different situations? These are all topics we dealt
with when developing the materials for “Die Suche.” Who is responsible for the genocide? Is
someone driving the train to Auschwitz in the same way responsible for what has happened
like someone like Adolf Eichmann who was planning the Holocaust at his desk? So these
were some of the questions we dealt with for the young audience and the graphic novel
provided a good basis for that.
What were the challenges with this project?

Even though the project was a huge success, I think I would do it differently today. One of
the challenges was that we had to choose a fictional story. The whole story is based on eye-
witness accounts and is based on true stories, but because of the fact that we had to write and
exemplify…you will not find a story like this in which everything is ideally shown in one
story. You have the helpers, the perpetrators, the conflicts in a family, the survivors going to
the United States, etc. So this is a mixture of different stories that is an ideal construction of a
story. It has a lot of advantages. You can deal with different roles, with scope of action, with
the questions of responsibility. The disadvantage is, of course, students ask why didn’t you
choose a real story? There are so many survivors, why wouldn’t you choose one of those?
Afterwards we did a graphic biography on Anne Frank, which is of course, based on all the
true stories and facts we have.
You have to make a decision. Sometimes we say it’s difficult if you use a personal
story only to tell the history. Maybe this doesn’t really fulfill that you show respect for the
story. Each and every story is worth telling and shouldn’t just be used because you want to
give factual knowledge about a certain historical event.
It’s also interesting…our new permanent exhibition on Anne Frank here in Berlin that
we opened a year and a half ago is also in this new approach. The exhibition before was in a
timeline of certain events and facts we wanted to tell. In the new exhibition it’s more of a
biographical exhibition. The story of Anne Frank and her family are in the focus and the
historical context is only there to help understand her story and not vice versa. I think that is
something I might do differently if I were going to do a graphic novel again.
Did you receive any criticism of the project?

We definitely have a different political situation in Germany since the right populous
party AfD is in the parliament. It’s the first time in decades that a political party has
suggested that we should finish dealing with the Holocaust and we should look with the good
sides of history and the Holocaust was only a small chapter in the glorious history of
Germany and why always focus on that and we need a shift in the remembrance culture away
from national socialism and the Holocaust… On the other side we know that most German
citizens do not agree with this. There have been a number of polls that show that 80-90% of
people agree that for Germany being a democracy it is important for Germany to deal with
national socialism and the Holocaust. A lot of people who have been asked stated that you
can’t understand the way that democracy works today if you haven’t dealt with history. Some
would even go so far to say that dealing with the Holocaust is part of German identity.
How do you think this project impacts errinerungskultur in Germany?

If we come to the point where young people cant build emotional relationships to
these stories then we will lose. We will come to a point where the history of the Holocaust is
another part of history about facts and events that is told like the French Revolution or
something like that. To personalize the story is also a way to show how multi-perspective and
how diverse history is. Very often the history of the Holocaust is told in the same way. You
have certain dates in history; there is a certain narrative that has become a part of the
collective remembrance and this is told. And then it’s always good to see stories that
somehow do not really fit into this narrative because it happened in another part of Europe or
the world. When people think about Jews that went into hiding they think about Anne Frank,
that the families stayed together and they were in the same hiding place for 2 years. But from
Berlin we know that the situation was completely different. Most of the people changed their
places all the time, they moved outside, they met people, some went to work with a false
identity, etc. There are so many stories to tell. The more you tell of these personal stories, the
more complex it gets. But the more you can create a connection to yourself. As the Director
of Anne Frank House in the Netherlands always puts is he says, “Learning about Anne Frank
is always about learning about myself.” What can I find out about myself when learning or
reflecting on the story of Anne Frank? Therefore, it’s our task as educators in memorial sites,
on the one hand, give young people spaces and opportunities to deal with the story in a way
that it becomes meaningful for them. We won’t reach anything if we tell students this is a
sad, important story and you have to learn this, this, this and this. We believe that each and
every generation, the more distance we have, has to find out for themselves what lessons they
can learn from this and what it means for them. And this of course makes a difference for
students growing up in Germany or the US or Argentina or Poland; countries that were very
differently affected by the Nazis and the Holocaust. Every generation has to find this. This is
our approach to how we work educationally in general.
Youth always play an active part in what we are doing. They are not only the target
groups of the educational programs, they are part of our peer-educational programs with our
traveling exhibitions, where its young people who guide other young people through the story
and exhibitions, not us. We have an Anne Frank ambassadors program where youth first deal
with the story of the Holocaust and from there they think of ways about how they can get
engaged in their surroundings today. What can they do against anti-Semitism, racism,
discrimination at school, in their sports club, in their families or wherever they are. I think
this is the way we can make it meaningful for young audiences. As adults and educators we
have to step back and let young people go. Of course, in Germany, there are always a lot of
debates going on, why are you using the story of Anne Frank or the Holocaust on issues of
today? Isn’t it disrespectful if we deal with the Holocaust at the same time that young people
deal with homophobia and sexism today? Some people would say you can’t compare these
and the Holocaust is unique. Yes, I agree, but on the other side, when young people read the
diary of Anne Frank and they deal with her story, there are still issues today, why should we
stop them from dealing with these issues? For the US, this is something that is not so
controversial as it might be in Germany. I always had the feeling when I think about
programs from the US Holocaust Memorial museum is doing which always compares the
Holocaust with other genocides and deals with current issues.
Project Photos
Project 1: The Memory Void
Picture 1, 2: The Jewish Museum, n.d.
Project 2: The Place of Remembrance
Picture 3: Topf & Söhne, n.d.

Project 3: Die Suche
Picture 4,5: Anne Frank Center, 2008

Project 4: Yolocaust
Picture 6,7,8: Euronews, 2017

Figure 7 with Analysis Basis
A1: Commitment project 1 Rationale

Q1. Is there commitment to civic 1 Yes; Libeskind's vision for the project
engagement, community change or contributes to civic engagement.
justice?
Q2. Is there intention to engage the 1 Yes; the project is specifically for participants
interest of community partners and to experience.
intended participants?
Q3. Does the project demonstrate 0 No; creative work driven by architect and city
commitment to stakeholder input in
defining the purpose of creative work
as well as social outcomes?
Q4. Are partners committed to 0 No; fairly closed project at beginning
engaging art and artists at an early
stage to allow for a maximum value?
Q5. Are artists and community 1 Yes; the Void is engage different art projects
partners involved in a plan for for more dialogue
sustained commitment or depth of
impact?
Q1. Is there commitment to civic 1 Yes; the space was developed specifically for
engagement, community change or community dialogue and education
justice?
Q2. Is there intention to engage the 1 Yes; the education process involves
interest of community partners and community members ongoingly
Q3. Does the project demonstrate 1 Yes; community input was involved
commitment to stakeholder input in throughout the life of the project
Q4. Are partners committed to 0 No; community inserted themselves in the
engaging art and artists at an early process later to meet their own needs
Q5. Are artists and community 1 Yes; there are programs dedicated to
partners involved in a plan for insuring stakeholders continue dialogue
impact?
Q1. Is there commitment to civic 1 Yes; this is one of the main goals of the
engagement, community change or project
justice?
Q2. Is there intention to engage the 1 Yes; they were involved from the beginning
interest of community partners and
Q3. Does the project demonstrate 1 Yes; there was collaboration from the
commitment to stakeholder input in beginning
Q4. Are partners committed to 1 Yes; cross-sector stakeholders were brought
engaging art and artists at an early together early on
Q5. Are artists and community 1 Yes; teacher and student feedback was
partners involved in a plan for collected
impact?
Q1. Is there commitment to civic 0 No; this was a statement piece and did not
engagement, community change or intend to make change after completion
justice?
Q2. Is there intention to engage the 0 No; this was a solo artist project
interest of community partners and
Q3. Does the project demonstrate 0 No; the ideas and execution were driven by
commitment to stakeholder input in one person with no input collected
Q4. Are partners committed to 0 No; this is not applicable; no other
engaging art and artists at an early stakeholders were involved
Q5. Are artists and community 0 No; sustainability was not a goal of the
partners involved in a plan for project
impact?
A2: Communal Meaning project 1 Rationale

Q6. Does the project reflect 1 Yes; it was made to engage stakeholders
purposeful relationship among
stakeholders and participants?
Q7. Does the project give 1 Yes; it was designed for reflection and
participants access to collective thoughtfulness about history
expressions, engagement and/or
reflection?
Q8. Does the work elicit stories, 1 Yes; uses images and other artworks to
images, and perspective of multiple engage narratives
individuals or stakeholders and
provide them with opportunities to
discuss and make sense of them
collectively?
Q9. Is the work relevant to the 1 Yes; was made specifically with community
community, location or context? and location extremely in mind
Q10. Does the work enhance 1 Yes; the images and concepts add to
people’s ability to see intersections conversation about history and Holocaust
and make connections?

Q6. Does the project reflect 1 Yes; specifically questions history for
purposeful relationship among participants to discuss
Q7. Does the project give 1 Yes; makes visible previously hidden stories
participants access to collective
reflection?
Q8. Does the work elicit stories, 1 Yes; uses historical space to drive dialogue
images, and perspective of multiple and discussion
collectively?
Q9. Is the work relevant to the 1 Yes; significant story and location in history
community, location or context? brought to surface
Q10. Does the work enhance 1 Yes; the honesty of the memorial opens
people’s ability to see intersections people's minds to discussion
Q6. Does the project reflect 1 Yes; designed directly alongside

purposeful relationship among stakeholders
Q7. Does the project give 1 Yes; there was an evaluative phase
participants access to collective
reflection?
Q8. Does the work elicit stories, 1 Yes; uses images to convey multiple
images, and perspective of multiple perspectives
collectively?
Q9. Is the work relevant to the 1 Yes; specific to students in Germany
community, location or context?
Q10. Does the work enhance 1 Yes; especially with guided curriculum
people’s ability to see intersections

Q6. Does the project reflect 0 No; did not seek to involve stakeholders
purposeful relationship among
Q7. Does the project give 1 Yes; allowed for subjects to respond and
participants access to collective remove photography
reflection?
Q8. Does the work elicit stories, 1 Yes; uses imagery to explain memorial
images, and perspective of multiple context
collectively?
Q9. Is the work relevant to the 1 Yes; using a well-known space to guide
community, location or context? reflection about memorialization
Q10. Does the work enhance 1 Yes; feedback resulted in people having
people’s ability to see intersections their eyes opened and minds changed
A3: Cultural Integrity project 1 Rationale

Q11. Does the project explore 0 No; this focused on the aesthetic connection
relationships of power, privilege and to history
cultural context in the planning
stages?
Q12. Does the project and 0 No; this focuses more on how to situation
stakeholders explore questions of dialogue and assumes authenticity
credibility, authenticity and integrity?
Q13. Does the project reflect 1 Yes; connects directly to the conflict and how
enduring commitment to community, people react to it now
practice, situation, locale, or the
conflict itself?
Q14. Do people affected by the 0 No; project does not function in this way
project have agency to act on their
own behalf?
Q15. Does the project have a 0 No; the architectural nature does directly
relationship with the knowledge, have to do with community dialogue
traditions, and practices they are
engaging in?
Q16. Does the project engage 0

members of the community/conflict in
meaningful ways in the development
and/or presentation of the work?
Q11. Does the project explore 1 Yes; looks at accountability during the
relationships of power, privilege and Holocaust
stages?
Q12. Does the project and 1 Yes; looks at accountability during the
stakeholders explore questions of Holocaust
Q13. Does the project reflect 1 Yes; specifically considers community stand
enduring commitment to community, point and answers questions
conflict itself?
Q14. Do people affected by the 1 Yes; people can get involved and be part of
project have agency to act on their storytelling
own behalf?
Q15. Does the project have a 1 Yes; specifically using a historic site
relationship with the knowledge,
engaging in?
Q16. Does the project engage 1 Yes; brings in community members to co-
members of the community/conflict in educate
Q11. Does the project explore 1 Yes; in the choosing of the narratives used in
relationships of power, privilege and the project
stages?
Q12. Does the project and 1 Yes; and expert advice given to this phase
stakeholders explore questions of
Q13. Does the project reflect 1 Yes; in long term education goals and
enduring commitment to community, ongoing use of curriculum
conflict itself?
Q14. Do people affected by the 1 Yes; teachers can choose how to use or not
project have agency to act on their use at all
own behalf?
Q15. Does the project have a 1 Yes; created by experts
relationship with the knowledge,
engaging in?
Q16. Does the project engage 1 Yes; multidisciplinary and widespread

members of the community/conflict in
Q11. Does the project explore 1 Yes; specifically looks at privilege in a space
relationships of power, privilege and
stages?
Q12. Does the project and 1 Yes; questions integrity at the core of the
stakeholders explore questions of project
Q13. Does the project reflect 1 Yes; reflects specifically about hos space it
enduring commitment to community, used to remember
conflict itself?
Q14. Do people affected by the 1 Yes; people who want to improve their
project have agency to act on their actions, can by talking to the artist
own behalf?
Q15. Does the project have a 1 Yes; specifically about imagery and
relationship with the knowledge, photographs and history
engaging in?
Q16. Does the project engage 1 Yes; effectively gets point across to a large
members of the community/conflict in audience
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Arts-Based Approaches to Transitional Justice

Thesis · August 2020

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and memorialization efforts.

This research examines how arts-based memorialization projects impact

errinerungskultur in Germany. An exploratory case study was conducted, in which primary

showed that projects that strategically implemented stakeholder and participant-oriented

Keywords: errinerungskultur, remembrance culture, memorialization, transitional justice,

Angesichts der wachsenden Zahl von Hassverbrechen, Antisemitismus und einer

Zunahme der Fremdenfeindlichkeit in Deutschland im letzten Jahrzehnt glauben viele

Deutschland zusammenhängen kann. Der Errinerungskultur kommt in Deutschland wegen

Bedeutung zu. Eine Möglichkeit, mit den gesellschaftlichen Nachwirkungen solcher

versöhnliche Prozesse in Nachkriegsgesellschaften aufzubauen.

Diese Forschung untersucht, wie sich kunstbasierte Memorialisierungsprojekte auf die

Errinerungskultur in Deutschland auswirken. Es wurde eine explorative Studie durchgeführt,

in der Primär- und Sekundärdaten von vier verschiedenen deutschen, kunstbasierten

Memorialisierungsprojekten gesammelt wurden. Unter Verwendung des Rahmens

die in der Entwicklungsphase der Projekte strategisch stakeholder- und teilnehmerorientierte

verschiedenen Gruppen von Interessengruppen entwickelt werden können, zu

wirkungsvolleren Ergebnissen führen.

Stichworte: Errinerungskultur, Memorialisierung, Übergangsjustiz, kunstbasierte

Table of Contents ................................................................................................................................................... 5

Theoretical Background ..................................................................................................................................... 10

Transitional Justice ........................................................................................................................................ 10

Art Based Approaches to Memorialization .................................................................................................. 29

Examples of Arts-based Transitional Justice Projects ................................................................................. 37

Project 1: The Memory Void ....................................................................................................................... 53

Project 2: The Place of Remembrance ......................................................................................................... 56

Project 3: Die Suche..................................................................................................................................... 60

Project 4: Yolocaust ..................................................................................................................................... 63

Key Findings: .................................................................................................................................................. 70

Interview Transcript Summary..................................................................................................................... 90

Project Photos ................................................................................................................................................. 94

In October 2019, a shooting in a synagogue in Halle, Germany occurred on the Jewish

in a predominantly Turkish neighborhood in Hanau, Germany resulted in 9 people dead.

a growing rhetoric of anti-Semitism, racism and xenophobia. In 2018 anti-Semitic hate

from 37 to 62 attacks in 2018 (BBC News, 2019).

relationship to everyday life and society seems to be fading. Errinerungskultur, or

As an important facet of German sociopolitical identity, errinerungskultur has been

growing visibility of contemporary anti-Semitism, racism and xenophobia is an ongoing

movement of memory preservation and institutionalization. These efforts are processes of

arts-based approaches. As this is an emergent focus within the overarching peacebuilding

Buckley-Zistel (2013) who examines and defines transitional justice as “extremely

emerging or from crossing disciplinary boundaries.” Buckley-Zistel sees transitional justice

of transitional justice. Rather approaches to conceptualize the phenomenon can be manifold

the Holocaust making it a solid foundational work to use in this research.

Additionally, Naomi Roht-Arriaza’s (2006) work on transitional justice has developed

doubtful whether the populations…accepted the facts established in their rulings as

authoritative or even knew of their work.” Roht-Arriaza characterizes transitional justice as

peacebuilding because of the limited research on its methodological validity. However, a

has played in post-conflict reconciliation, memorialization and reconstruction in order to

Importantly, I intend to challenge my support for arts integration in the peacebuilding

scholars studying arts-integrated approaches face is the questionability surrounding

for assessing arts-integrated peacebuilding. They construct a “set of new framework

approaches to allow for context-sensitive and humanities-inflected processes of more

peace (Hunter & Page, 2014).”

In order to examine how the arts impact such processes of memorialization, an