Competing Memories of European Border Towns (Routledge Borderlands Studies)

This book considers competing memory politics in European border towns after the First and Second World Wars.

In the twentieth century Europe’s borders shifted dramatically in the wake of war, and towns were often moved from one state to another despite their physical locations remaining unchanged. Urban spaces adapted to incorporate new place names, monuments, and requirements, overlaid onto the cultural heritage of previous settlers. This book investigates how the memories of different ethnic groups compete and sometimes contest with each other in the town’s space, using the case studies of Vyborg/Viipuri in present-day Russia, Klaipėda/Memel in Lithuania, Szczecin/Stettin in Poland, Flensburg in Germany, Trieste in Italy, and Rijeka/Fiume in Croatia. The book considers how public memories are built and how old traditions are moulded to new forms in urban settings.

Drawing on perspectives from across borderland, urban, and memory studies, this book will be an important resource for researchers with an interest in Europe, and in how urban memories are constructed and contested.

Steen Bo Frandsen is Professor and Head of Centre for Border Region Studies at the Department of Political Science, University of Southern Denmark. His research focuses mainly on regional history and nation states (Denmark, Germany, and Italy), the Danish–German borderlands, and their entangled histories. His ongoing projects include a regional history of Schleswig, and the project Danish-German Cultures (1773–1864): Conflict and Cohesion.

Jörg Hackmann is Professor at the Department of History and Director of the International Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Szczecin, Poland. His research focuses on the history of North-Eastern and East Central Europe, in particular on historiography, memory cultures, civil society, and regionalisms with a focus on transnational entanglements. He is currently working on a project dealing with the Jewish topography of Szczecin before the Holocaust.

Kimmo Katajala is Professor of History at the Department of Geographical and Historical Studies, University of Eastern Finland. His research focuses on social disturbances, history of borders, cartography, and state building in the early modern period. His ongoing projects explore early modern state building, political space, and politics of memory.