Achim Saupe – författare

Authenticity has become a key concept in the culture of history and memory in the 21st century. This open access book explores the multifaceted nature of ‘historical authenticity’ and its uses in various academic, museum, and historical-cultural contexts. In 70 alphabetically-arranged articles, Historical Authenticity explains how authenticity can enable individuals and societies to locate themselves within time and space and the associated challenges.The book shows how today’s attitudes to the past are characterised by an intense striving for historical authenticity – a phenomenon which began to assume new potency in the last third of the 20th century. It considers how this manifests itself in practical terms, for example, in the value attached to ‘authentic voices’ from the past, ‘authentic objects’ in museums, collections and archives, or to ‘authentic places’ – be they historic buildings, urban architectural ensembles or memorial sites. The volume also reflects on how this desire for the ‘real’, the ‘genuine’ and the ‘original’ has changed over the centuries , and why it is nowadays so frequently linked with a longing to experience history ‘first-hand’, as evidenced in the degree of public attention accorded to surviving witnesses of historic events or the popularity of historical re-enactments. ‘Historical Authenticity’ convincingly makes the case that the analysis of academic, cultural, institutional and political authentification processes is central to a critical understanding of how the past is perceived in the present.The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Leibniz Research Alliance Value of the Past

The Second World War was filled with many terrible crimes, such as genocide, forced migration and labour, human-made famine, forced sterilizations, and dispossession, that occurred on an unprecedented scale. Authenticity and Victimhood after the Second World War examines victim groups constructed in the twentieth century in the aftermath of these experiences. The collection explores the concept of authenticity through an examination of victims’ histories and the construction of victimhood in Europe and East Asia. Chapters consider how notions of historical authenticity influence the self-identification and public recognition of a given social group, the tensions arising from individual and group experiences of victimhood, and the resulting, sometimes divergent, interpretation of historical events. Drawing from case studies on topics including the Holocaust, the siege of Leningrad, American air raids on Japan, and forced migrations from Eastern Europe, Authenticity and Victimhood after the Second World War demonstrates the trend towards a victim-centred collective memory as well as the interplay of memory politics and public commemorative culture.

This edited volume breaks new ground and opens up new perspectives by capturing the role played by claims to authenticity in populist discourses in Brazil, India and Ukraine.

This edited volume breaks new ground and opens up new perspectives by capturing the role played by claims to authenticity in populist discourses in Brazil, India and Ukraine.