Browsing by Author "Nissinen, Päivi"

The battles leading to the end of the Second World War in Europe were mainly fought between Germany and the Soviet Union in the eastern parts of Germany. The battle of Halbe was a part of the Red Army's battle for Berlin. Around 40 000 German soldiers and civilians were killed during the battle, and they are nowadays buried in Germany's largest military cemetery in Halbe. The aim of this thesis is to study the collective identity of the German people and the war crimes of Germany represented in the landscape of the cemetery, and to define the role of the cemetery as a war memorial and a place of memory. Landscapes and places of memory are important media of collective memory and identity in geography, and they can be used to study what a certain society values. Interpreting war memorials contributes to knowledge of especially the national identity and the meanings of past phenomena to a society. The cemetery is approached as a landscape, which is interpreted using hermeneutics and iconography. The data was collected by observation and the remarks were illustrated by photography. The cemetery was decrypted into analysis units and the units were then divided into categories. A three-level iconographical analysis was then conducted within each category applying also perspectives of, among others, semiotics and feminist analysis. A wide perspective on the constructing and moulding factors of the cemetery is reached through analysis. Power relations between state and church, scales of human life from individual and local levels to societal and national levels, and problems in attitudes towards the dead of former Nazi armies are all well represented in the controversial attributes of the cemetery landscape. It can be stated, based on the analysis, that the Germans mourn bravely their own war losses at the cemetery of Halbe. The Second World War was a tragedy to them as well. At the cemetery there are no clear national symbols, which might have easily been translated as references towards the Nazi past especially during the first decades of the cemetery. National ideals of fortitude and ruggedness do, however, distinguish in the style, architecture and flora of the cemetery, and these can be interpreted as expressions of healthy nationalism. Despite the national rituals held in Halbe, its label is strongly local and emphasizes individual grief and remembrance. The cemetery doesn't tie itself to the context of the Second World War, but tells a story about one aspect of war: a local tragedy that touched ordinary people regardless of their reference group. It also doesn't include links to Germany's war crimes. According to the landscape, the Holocaust was not the sole tragedy of the Second World War, and the other stories deserve to be heard as well.