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In 1841, the British historian Thomas Carlyle posited that the history of the world was really the biography of great men. Ten years later he argued that when an individual seeks to commemorate one of these great men, it reveals as much about them as it does about the object of their veneration: ‘Show me the man you honour, I know by that symptom, better than any other, what kind of man you yourself are’ (Savage, 2009, pp. 8-10). As it is with individuals, so it is with nations.
Memorial or monument?
People regularly use the words ‘memorial’, ‘monument’ and ‘commemoration’ as synonyms. They are all expressions of memory, which can belong to an individual or to a group in the form of a collective memory. Although there is no clean boundary between them, it is often useful to consider them as different, though interrelated terms.
Commemoration refers to the process whereby individual memories are constructed and repackaged for public consumption. This could take many forms, including an Anzac Day service, an Armistice Day ceremony, or a religious gathering. By watching and participating in a commemorative event, the individual expresses their loyalty to shared views of the past and acknowledges their importance to the present.
Memorial is a broad term that can encompass any effort at commemorating an event or person, particularly when it is associated with loss. It can be a statue, but might just as easily be a community hall, a town’s swimming pool, a book, a scroll, a road or a bridge.
Monument is usually used in more narrow terms to describe a built structure which commemorates – though not always celebrates – an event or person.
The placement of memorials and monuments in public spaces recognises that they offer an officially sanctioned view of history. This provides an insight into the values and ideals of the society that constructed them, and which subsequently maintains them or allows them to fall into disrepair. The memorials and monuments are, however, far from being static repositories of a nation’s history. By acting ostensibly as a public noticeboard (Auster, 1997), they become powerful ideological tools that legitimise what is, in reality, an imagined community (Anderson, 1991). For example, the Arc de Triomphe or ‘Triumphal Arch of the Star’ (Figure 1.1) is one of the most famous monuments in Paris and honours those who fought and died for France in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.
Video 1.1: Arc de Triomphe by drone [4K]
One of the most common types of public memorials and monuments are those dedicated to commemorating war, and by extension, a vision of citizenship grounded in wartime service and sacrifice. The British Marxist historian Raphael Samuels (1998, p. 8) observes that the role of war in shaping a nation has entered into ‘the very marrow of the national idea’. The Soviet War Memorial (Figure 1.2) is located in the Tiergarten, a large public park to the west of Berlin’s city centre. It is one of several war m