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4. The Concealed Curator: Constructed Authenticity in Uli Edel’s Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex

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Exhibiting the German Past
This chapter is in the book Exhibiting the German Past
Our view of the past is by necessity a mediated one – we cannot experi-ence directly that which is no longer present. We rely instead on writ-ten, visual, and audio mediations to form our individual and collective memories of historical events. The logic of this potentially infinite “remediation” of the past insists that “there was never a past prior to mediation; all mediations are remediations, in that mediation of the real is always a mediation of another mediation” (Grusin 18). As the prin-cipal, and often, only gateway to the past, remediated memories stand at the heart of collective remembering: “When we look at the emer-gence and ‘life’ of memory sites, it becomes clear that these are based on repeated media representations, on a host of remediated versions of the past... which create, stabilize and consolidate, but then also criti-cally reflect upon and renew these sites” (Erll and Rigney 5).Each remediated instance brings something specific to the table of historical remembering, serving up for consumption its own version of the past, determined in part by the properties of the medium itself. To comprehend collective memory, then, we must consider the diverse ways in which contemporary media musealize the past and turn bygone events into consumable products for the present.Film adaptations offer a particularly vivid example of remediation in action. The transfer from the verbal medium of literature to the audio-visual experience of film lays bare the unique contribution of each form to the construction of memory, shaped by qualities inherent in the medium and by the recipient’s horizons of expectation. Especially in those cases where book and film carry the same name, and hence operate under certain shared expectations, a comparative study of adaptation promises to shed light on the impact that medium-specific 4The Concealed Curator: Constructed Authenticity in Uli Edel’s Der Baader-Meinhof Komplexcatriona firth
© 2015 University of Toronto Press, Toronto

Our view of the past is by necessity a mediated one – we cannot experi-ence directly that which is no longer present. We rely instead on writ-ten, visual, and audio mediations to form our individual and collective memories of historical events. The logic of this potentially infinite “remediation” of the past insists that “there was never a past prior to mediation; all mediations are remediations, in that mediation of the real is always a mediation of another mediation” (Grusin 18). As the prin-cipal, and often, only gateway to the past, remediated memories stand at the heart of collective remembering: “When we look at the emer-gence and ‘life’ of memory sites, it becomes clear that these are based on repeated media representations, on a host of remediated versions of the past... which create, stabilize and consolidate, but then also criti-cally reflect upon and renew these sites” (Erll and Rigney 5).Each remediated instance brings something specific to the table of historical remembering, serving up for consumption its own version of the past, determined in part by the properties of the medium itself. To comprehend collective memory, then, we must consider the diverse ways in which contemporary media musealize the past and turn bygone events into consumable products for the present.Film adaptations offer a particularly vivid example of remediation in action. The transfer from the verbal medium of literature to the audio-visual experience of film lays bare the unique contribution of each form to the construction of memory, shaped by qualities inherent in the medium and by the recipient’s horizons of expectation. Especially in those cases where book and film carry the same name, and hence operate under certain shared expectations, a comparative study of adaptation promises to shed light on the impact that medium-specific 4The Concealed Curator: Constructed Authenticity in Uli Edel’s Der Baader-Meinhof Komplexcatriona firth
© 2015 University of Toronto Press, Toronto

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. Contents v
  3. Illustrations vii
  4. Acknowledgments ix
  5. Introduction 1
  6. 1. The “Museal Gaze” and “Civic Seeing”: City, Film, and Museum in Wim Wenders’s Der Himmel über Berlin 21
  7. 2. Refracted Memory: Museums, Film, and Visual Culture in Urban Space 42
  8. 3. Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s Unser täglich Brot: Preservation, the Food Industry, and the Interrogation of Visual Evidence 63
  9. 4. The Concealed Curator: Constructed Authenticity in Uli Edel’s Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex 81
  10. 5. Remembering and Historicizing Socialism: The Private and Amateur Musealization of East Germany’s Everyday Life 100
  11. 6. Object Lessons: Visuality and Tactility in Museums of the Socialist Everyday 123
  12. 7. Historical Museum Meets Docu-Drama: The Recipient’s Experiential Involvement in the Second World War 138
  13. 8. Framing the Past: Visual Musealizations of the Nazi Past in Harlan – Im Schatten von Jud Süß and Jud Süß – Film ohne Gewissen 158
  14. 9. Moving Statues: Arthur Grimm, the Entartete Kunst Exhibition, and Installation Photography as Standfotografie 187
  15. 10. “In a Hundred Years of Cinema …”: History and Musealization in Harun Farocki’s Arbeiter verlassen die Fabrik in elf Jahrzehnten 209
  16. 11. Sex on Display: Sexual Science and the Exhibition PopSex! 227
  17. 12. Spaces in Motion and Cinematic Experiences: The Permanent Exhibition Film of the Deutsche Kinemathek – Museum für Film und Fernsehen 248
  18. Bibliography 261
  19. Contributors 287
  20. Index 289
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https://doi.org/10.3138/9781442620742-007

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. Contents v
  3. Illustrations vii
  4. Acknowledgments ix
  5. Introduction 1
  6. 1. The “Museal Gaze” and “Civic Seeing”: City, Film, and Museum in Wim Wenders’s Der Himmel über Berlin 21
  7. 2. Refracted Memory: Museums, Film, and Visual Culture in Urban Space 42
  8. 3. Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s Unser täglich Brot: Preservation, the Food Industry, and the Interrogation of Visual Evidence 63
  9. 4. The Concealed Curator: Constructed Authenticity in Uli Edel’s Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex 81
  10. 5. Remembering and Historicizing Socialism: The Private and Amateur Musealization of East Germany’s Everyday Life 100
  11. 6. Object Lessons: Visuality and Tactility in Museums of the Socialist Everyday 123
  12. 7. Historical Museum Meets Docu-Drama: The Recipient’s Experiential Involvement in the Second World War 138
  13. 8. Framing the Past: Visual Musealizations of the Nazi Past in Harlan – Im Schatten von Jud Süß and Jud Süß – Film ohne Gewissen 158
  14. 9. Moving Statues: Arthur Grimm, the Entartete Kunst Exhibition, and Installation Photography as Standfotografie 187
  15. 10. “In a Hundred Years of Cinema …”: History and Musealization in Harun Farocki’s Arbeiter verlassen die Fabrik in elf Jahrzehnten 209
  16. 11. Sex on Display: Sexual Science and the Exhibition PopSex! 227
  17. 12. Spaces in Motion and Cinematic Experiences: The Permanent Exhibition Film of the Deutsche Kinemathek – Museum für Film und Fernsehen 248
  18. Bibliography 261
  19. Contributors 287
  20. Index 289
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