The Social Lives of Monuments

In recent decades, cultural theory has fundamentally changed how we look at monuments. Driven by generational shifts, the memory boom, the spatial turn and new materialism, scholars have become increasingly aware that spaces and materials – buildings, memorials, architecture and infrastructures – do not simply exist as neutral settings, but are produced and continually redefined through social practices and conflicts over meaning. Building on such insights, this special issue of “zeitgeschichte” explores the social lives of monuments in public urban spaces. It adopts a broad understanding of “monument” as any built structure that commemorates a person, a historical event or a particular period, and traces how such structures become charged with competing interpretations over time. The contributions cover case studies from Germany, Italy, Austria and Croatia, from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century. Together, they examine how monuments entangled with contaminated histories – totalitarian regimes, colonial projects and other forms of political violence – are constructed, reinterpreted, contested, defended or even quietly ignored. By tracing these shifting meanings, the volume shows how monuments remain active agents in contemporary struggles over memory, identity and public space.