Malwina Górecka: In the labyrinth of memory — the case of Dresden

In my presentation I intend to acquaint the listeners with the highly complex and equally fascinating issue of Dresdeners’ memory and identity, whose constitutive element is the memory of the destruction of the city in the wake of its bombing by the Allied forces in 1945. I will outline not only the main motifs in the Dresden narrative, but I will also present the strategy of its building and creating, and thus identify a process of the appropriation and mythologisation of collective memory.

I will put particular emphasis on today’s multifaceted and internally conflicted discourse of memory, which reaches its climax every year during the “13 February” commemoration day.