Page 474 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo II

1114 XXXIX Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

portrayed the GDR and its citizens as direct successors of the Antifascist Resistence. By
this strategy it was possible to see the society of the GDR rather as innocent victims of
15
Fasiscm. This is supported by the inauguration of military memorial sites and war mu-
seums in the GDR already in the 1960ties, which is much earlier than similar activities
16
in the Federal Republic of Germany. The exposure of weapons, military tools and the
glorification of the Soviet victory in the post-war period of Germany echoes the rheto-
rics in the Cold War: The GDR claimed to be threatened by western capitalist countries
and was therefore in need of military-education institutions such as this museum to
convince the society of the necessity of having an army.

Archivesources & Thesis
My museological research-concept concerning the permanent exhibition was based
on a cultural-historical approach. Following Thomas Thiemeyer (Tübingen) and his un-
derstanding of the „historical museology“, I see the exhibition as a source that pro-
17
duces visual representations. The exhibition can be analysed on a visual, narrative and
performative level. My goal was to examine the representation strategies of the staging
curators on these three levels. I asked the following questions: Which particular events
of the War on the eastern front were shown in the exhibition, and which were omitted?
Which objects and sources did the curators use for the display of the official commemo-
ration of the Great Patriotic War?
The main sources I used were exhibition-plans and written transcripts of the guided
tours. Technical sources such as visitors statistics showed who came, more precisly
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was forced to come, to see the exhibition. By analizing the cultural-educational program
linked to the exhibition one can get an idea of how the exhibition was further promoted
to the public. The remarks in the visitor-books as well as the newspaper reports represent
the official reception of the exhibition. Qualitative Interviews with former employees of
the museum give a more personal insight of the daily life of the museum in those days.
My research is centered around the following thesis: The official Soviet idea of how

15 Münkler, Herfried: Antifaschismus und antifaschistischer Widerstand als politischer Gründungsmythos der
DDR, in: Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, Beilage zur Wochenzeitung Das Parlament, B 45/98, p. 16-29, here
p. 17.
16 Zwach, Eva: Deutsche und englische Militärmuseen im 20. Jahrhundert, Eine kulturgeschichtliche Analyse
des gesellschaftlichen Umgangs mit Krieg, Münster 1997, p.
17 Thiemeyer, Thomas, Geschichtswissenschaft, Das Museum als Quelle, in: Bauer, Joachim (Ed.): Muse-
umsanayse, Bielefeld 2010, p. 73-94.
18 Naučnoėkspozicionnyj plan memoral’novo muzeja istorii razgroma nemecko-fašistskich vojsk v berline, Ijun’
1967) 1967. (Scientific exhibitionplan of the historic memorialsite of the defeat of the german-fascists power
in Berlin, June 1967).
Tekstovoj material ėkspozicii istoriko-memoral’novo zala-muzeja gruppy sovetskich voisk v germanii, g.
Berlin 1984). (Textmaterial of the exhibition from the historical memorialsite of the Museum of the Soviet
Armed Forces in Germany, Berlin 1984).
Text für die Führung durch die historische Gedenkstätte, übersetzt aus dem Russischen von Jan Zwerg, 1985.
(Text for the guided tour of the historical Memorial-Site, translated from russian by Jan Zwerg, 1985.
All sources concerning the „Museum of Capitulation“ are recorded in the archive of the German-Russian
Museum, Berlin-Karlshorst, or in the archive of the German History Museum in Berlin.