Das sozial-räumliche Gedächtnis der europäischen Grenzen: Dispositive des Erinnerns und Vergessens

Disruptive events have a profound impact on how societies and spaces change. Whether it is the reorganisation of borders after the Second World War, the Cold War or the recent changes due to the Brexit, disruptive events play an essential role in shaping our borders and border regions. This leads to a fundamental question: how do we remember these borders, and what influence does this memory have on the concept of a borderless Europe? The Emmy Noether Independent Junior Research Group "The Social-Spatial Memory of European Borders: Dispositifs of Remembering and Forgetting" explores how past disruptive events, such as wars, geopolitical conflicts and political unifications, have influenced the current state of borders.

To date, there is a lack of theoretical concepts that can capture the significance of the social memory of borders for the everyday lives of inhabitants. The research group will fill this gap with an innovative study on social memory in twin towns and twin villages in Europe. The project will investigate three dimensions of border memory - memory frames, memory practices and memory materiality - in twin towns and twin villages on four different borders of nations that are part of the Schengen area: the Polish-German border, the Swiss-German border, the Danish-German border and, as a contrast, the Irish-Northern Irish border.

The research group, led by Vivien Sommer, will follow a multi-perspective methodological approach combining expert interviews with memory activists, narrative interviews with residents, mental maps of the borders and walks with the residents. The data will be analysed using a multimodal coding method. In addition, cartographic maps will be created in local archives and interactive digital maps will be produced. The project aims to develop a theoretical concept of socio-spatial memory of borders as dispositifs in order to understand the complexity of remembering and forgetting in contemporary everyday life at the borders of Europe.