Anne van Mourik MA

PhD candidate

Area(s) of interest: European History, Memory Studies, Migration History & Diaspora, Modern & Contemporary History, Museums & Collections, War & Conflict

Cohort/Start PhD: 2020-2021

Conflicting legacies of Hunger in Germany

NIOD institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies/ University of Amsterdam
Overarching project: Heritages of Hunger: Societal Reflections on Past European Famines in Education, Commemoration and Musealisation
Promotor(es): Prof. dr. Peter Romijn, Prof. dr. Marguérite Corporaal, Dr. Ingrid de Zwarte
Start project: March 2020

The research project Conflicting legacies of Hunger in Germany investigates educational mediations of German hunger conditions in World War I and World War II in Germany, over the course of time (1919 – present). During both world wars and again in their aftermaths, Germany experienced alternate prosperity, hunger and collapsing public health. This research analyses the different and conflicting memories on these famine conditions. Drawing on past and present educational materials and practices in secondary education, museums and other heritage institutes it analyses how collective memories on the hunger conditions, across time and space are reimagined and rewritten following great socio-political change, such as the different forms of state in Germany (Imperialist, Weimar, Nazi, Socialist, Liberal-democratic). By exploring how these memories have been taught, the project will examine how these legacies function in relation to constructions of German identity and history. In this context the project also addresses the question of a German ‘victim discourse’ in representations of the famine conditions.