While scholars recognize both museums and films as sites where historical knowledge and cultural memory are created, the convergence between their methods of constructing the past has only recently been acknowledged. The essays in Exhibiting the German Past examine a range of films, museums, and experiences which blend the two, considering how authentic objects and cinematic techniques are increasingly used in similar ways by both visual media and museums.

This is the first collection to focus on the museum–film connection in German-language culture and the first to approach the issue using the concept of “musealization,” a process that, because it engages the cultural destruction wrought by modernization, offers new means of constructing historical knowledge and shaping collective memory within and beyond the museum’s walls. Featuring a wide range of valuable case studies, Exhibiting the German Past offers a unique perspective on the developing relationship between museums and visual media.

Peter M. McIsaac is an associate professor in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures and the Museum Studies Program at the University of Michigan.

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Gabriele Mueller is an assistant professor of German Studies and affiliated with the Canadian Centre for German and European Studies at York University, Toronto. Her research focuses mainly on German cultural studies and German film studies. She has published essays on various aspects of post-unification German film, in particular on cinematic contributions to cultural memory discourses.

James M. Skidmore teaches German literature, film, and cultural studies at the University of Waterloo. His research focuses mainly on the intersections of politics, history, and societal development in narrative literature and film. He is the author of The Trauma of Defeat: Ricarda Huch's Historiography during the Weimar Republic (2005), as well as articles on German and Canadian literature and film.

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‘This is one of the most cohesive collection of essays I have ever read… The essays all speak to each other, not only through parenthetical references but by engaging with many of the recurring themes… The book does a favor to future scholarship by illuminating how enriching further investigation could be.’

German Studies Review vol 40:03:2017

‘Illuminating and fully researched essays… Highly Recommended.’

Choice Magazine vol 53:11:2016