II

The Invention of Cultural Memory:

A Short History of Memory Studies

Titling this chapter the ‘invention’ of cultural memory is intended to

emphasize that this is not a history of the phenomenon of memory itself,
but rather a history of memory studies. Acts of cultural remembering seem
to be an element of humans’ fundamental anthropological make-up, and
the history of creating a shared heritage and thinking about memory can
be traced all the way back to antiquity, for example to Homer, Plato, and
Aristotle. However, it was not until the beginning of the twentieth cen-
tury that there developed a scientific interest in the phenomenon. Forms
of collective reference to the past were observed methodically and made
the focus of research in the humanities and the social sciences. The field’s
fundamental assumption about the constructedness of cultural memory,
however, is also valid for the level of theory: Every theoretical idea about
the contents or functions of cultural memory is itself a construct and
more of an academic ‘invention’ than a discovery of cultural givens.
Today’s research on cultural memory takes its origin from two strands
of tradition in particular, both of which have their roots in the 1920s:
Maurice Halbwachs’s sociological studies on mémoire collective and
Aby Warburg’s art-historical interest in a European memory of images
(Bildgedächtnis). Halbwachs and Warburg were the first to give the phe-
nomenon of cultural memory a name (‘collective’ and ‘social’ memory,
respectively), and to study it systematically within the framework of a
modern theory of culture.
Yet it was not until the 1980s that the topic of memory again elicited
interest in the humanities and social sciences, in the context of what
may be called the ‘new cultural memory studies’. Pierre Nora’s lieux de
mémoire have proven to be the most influential notion internationally.
Roughly at the same time, Aleida and Jan Assmann, with their idea of a
‘Cultural Memory’, advanced a theory which is the most authoritative
13

A. Erll, Memory in Culture

© Astrid Erll 2011
14 Memory in Culture

in the German-speaking world and, in international comparison, also

the most elaborate.

II.1 Maurice Halbwachs: Mémoire collective

The French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs (1877–1945), a student of

Henri Bergson and Emile Durkheim, wrote three texts in which he
developed his concept of mémoire collective and which today occupy a
central place in the study of cultural memory. In 1925 he published his
study Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire (1994; ‘The Social Frameworks of
Memory’, partially translated in On Collective Memory, 1992) in which he
attempted to establish that memory is dependent on social structures.
In this he opposed the theories of memory of his contemporaries such
as Henri Bergson and Sigmund Freud, who emphasized the individual
dimension of memory. Halbwachs’s theory, which sees even the most
personal memory as a mémoire collective, a collective phenomenon, pro-
voked significant protest, not least from his colleagues at the University
of Strasbourg, Charles Blondel and Marc Bloch. The latter accused
Halbwachs, and the Durkheim School in general, of an unacceptable col-
lectivization of individual psychological phenomena (see Bloch 1925).
Stirred by this criticism, Halbwachs began elaborating his concept of
collective memory in a second book. For more than 15 years he worked
on the text La mémoire collective (1997; The Collective Memory, 1980), but
it did not appear until 1950, posthumously and incomplete. Before that,
Halbwachs did publish a third book, in which he illustrated the forms
and functions of memory sites using a specific example: La Topographie
légendaire des Évangiles en Terre Sainte (1941; ‘The Legendary Topography of
the Gospels in the Holy Land’; partially translated in On Collective Memory,
1992). In August 1944 the Nazis deported Halbwachs, whose wife was
Jewish, to Buchenwald, where he was killed on 16 March 1945. (See also
Vromen 1975; Namer 2000; Becker 2003; Marcel and Mucchielli 2008.)
Halbwachs’s writings on collective memory in particular, and also
the interest in the cultural dimension of remembering in general, were
largely forgotten in the postwar period. Today, however, virtually no
theoretical model of cultural memory exists without recourse to the
sociologist. It is possible to distinguish three main areas of analysis in
Halbwachs’s studies on mémoire collective, which point to three promi-
nent directions of research on cultural memory:

• first, Halbwachs’s theory of the dependence of individual memory

on social structures;
 The Invention of Cultural Memory 15

• second, his studies of the forms of intergenerational memory; and

• third, his expansion of the term mémoire collective to include cultural
transmission and the creation of tradition.

Thus, Halbwachs unites – albeit not explicitly – two fundamental, and fun-
damentally different, concepts of collective memory (see chapter IV.1):

1. Collective memory as the organic memory of the individual, which

operates within the framework of a sociocultural environment (see
chapter II.1.1).
2. Collective memory as the creation of shared versions of the past,
which results through interaction, communication, media, and insti-
tutions within small social groups as well as large cultural communi-
ties (see chapter II.1.2).

II.1.1 Cadres sociaux: the social frameworks of individual

memory
The starting point of Halbwachs’s theory of collective memory is his
concept of cadres sociaux. In the first part of Les cadres sociaux de la
mémoire, using his reflections on dreams and language, Halbwachs gives
a detailed illustration of the collective elements of individual memory.
He comes to the conclusion that the recourse to cadres sociaux, social
frameworks, is an indispensable prerequisite for every act of remember-
ing. Social frameworks are, for Halbwachs, first of all simply the people
around us. Humans are social creatures: Without other humans, an
individual is denied access not only to such obviously collective phe-
nomena as language and customs, but also, according to Halbwachs, to
his or her own memory. This is partly because we generally experience
things in the company of other people, who can also later help us to
remember the events.
Much more fundamental for Halbwachs, however, is the fact that it
is through interaction and communication with our fellow humans
that we acquire knowledge about dates and facts, collective concepts
of time and space, and ways of thinking and experiencing. Because we
participate in a collective symbolic order, we can discern, interpret and
remember past events. From cadres sociaux in the literal sense, our social
environment, derive ‘social frameworks’ in the metaphorical sense:
Metaphorically speaking, cadres sociaux are thought patterns, cognitive
schemata, that guide our perception and memory in particular direc-
tions. Social frameworks, thus, form the all-encompassing horizon in
which our perception and memory is embedded. They are constituted
16 Memory in Culture

from social, material, and mental phenomena of culture. Hence

Halbwachs would probably have said Kaspar Hauser (a young man
in nineteenth-century Germany who allegedly grew up without any
human contact) had no collective memory, while the lonely Robinson
Crusoe most certainly did, since in his thoughts he could fall back on
the social frameworks of his homeland, the English middle-class ways
of thinking he had learned in his youth. For Halbwachs the sociologist,
however, it is the cadres sociaux in the literal sense, the social group,
which is of central importance, since without social interaction worlds
of meaning can neither come into being nor be passed on.
Social frameworks convey and interpret the contents of collective
memory – the supply of shared knowledge and experiences relevant to
the group. ‘It is in this sense that there exists a collective memory and
social frameworks for memory; it is to the degree that our individual
thought places itself in these frameworks and participates in this mem-
ory that it is capable of the act of recollection’ (Halbwachs 1992, 38).
Our perception is group-specific, our individual memories are socially
formed, and both are unthinkable without the existence of a collec-
tive memory. However, the collective memory is not a supraindividual
entity separate from the individual’s organic memories. Collective and
individual memory are instead mutually dependent: ‘One may say that
the individual remembers by placing himself in the perspective of the
group, but one may also affirm that the memory of the group realizes
and manifests itself in individual memories’ (Halbwachs 1992, 40).
It is only through individual acts of memory that the collective
memory can be observed, since ‘each memory is a viewpoint on the col-
lective memory’ (Halbwachs 1980, 48). This ‘viewpoint’ (Halbwachs’s
French term is point de vue) can be understood as a position people
assume based on their socialization and cultural influences. Every indi-
vidual belongs to several social groups: family, religious community,
colleagues, and so on. Each person thus has at his or her disposal a sup-
ply of different, group-specific experiences and thought systems. Thus,
what Halbwachs seems to suggest is that while memory is no purely
individual phenomenon, but must be seen in its fundamentally collec-
tive dimension, it is the combination of various group allegiances and
the resultant frameworks for remembering that are the actual individual
element which distinguishes one person from another.

II.1.2 Intergenerational memory and religious topography

In the second part of Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire, Halbwachs dis-
tinguishes between various forms of collective memories and provides
 The Invention of Cultural Memory 17

sociological case studies, addressing family, religious community, and

social class. Family memory is a typical intergenerational memory. This
type of collective memory is constituted through social interaction and
communication. Through the repeated recall of the family’s past (usu-
ally via oral stories which are told at family get-togethers), those who
did not experience the past firsthand can also share in the memory.
In this way an exchange of living memory takes place between eye-
witnesses and descendants. The collective intergenerational memory
thus goes back as far as the oldest members of the social group can
remember.
Halbwachs makes a sharp distinction between history and memory,
which he sees as two mutually exclusive forms of reference to the past.
Right at the beginning of his comparison of ‘lived’ memory and ‘writ-
ten’ history in La mémoire collective, Halbwachs emphasizes that ‘general
history starts only when tradition ends and the social memory is fad-
ing or breaking up’ (1980, 78). History and memory are irreconcilable:
Halbwachs sees history as universal; it is characterized by a neutral coor-
dination of all past events. Central to history are contradictions and
ruptures. Collective memory, in contrast, is particular; its carriers are
groups which are restricted both chronologically and spatially, whose
memory is strongly evaluative and hierarchical. A central function of
remembering the past within the framework of collective memory is
identity formation. Things are remembered which correspond to the
self-image and the interests of the group. Particularly emphasized are
those similarities and continuities which demonstrate that the group
has remained the same. Participation in the collective memory indicates
that the rememberer belongs to the group.
For Halbwachs, history deals with the past. Collective memory, in
contrast, is oriented towards the needs and interests of the group in the
present, and thus proceeds in an extremely selective and reconstructive
manner. Along the way, what is remembered can become distorted and
shifted to such an extent that the result is closer to fiction than to a past
reality. Memory thus does not provide a faithful reproduction of the
past – indeed, quite the opposite is true: ‘A remembrance is in very large
measure a reconstruction of the past achieved with data borrowed from
the present, a reconstruction prepared, furthermore, by reconstruc-
tions of earlier periods wherein past images had already been altered’
(ibid., 68). This already points to what half a century later, within post-
structuralist discussions, will be called ‘the construction of reality.’
Already in his work Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire (in the chapters
on aristocracy and the memories of religious communities), and even
18 Memory in Culture

more so in his later study on the Christian mnemonic topography

of Palestine, Halbwachs breaks through the constrictions that had
limited his studies to intergenerational memories, whose medium is
everyday communication and whose contents are for the most part
autobiographical memories. In ‘The Legendary Topography’ he turns
his attention to collective memories, whose temporal horizons reach
back thousands of years, thus transcend the horizon of living memory,
and therefore need objects and topographical sites of memory to pro-
vide structure. Material phenomena, such as architecture, pilgrimage
routes, or graves, take on a primary meaning. At this point, Halbwachs
leaves the area of socially shared memories of recent events and enters
the area of culturally constructed knowledge about a distant past and
its transmission through the creation of traditions.
Halbwachs’s theory of collective memory has been applied by a broad
spectrum of disciplines to a wide variety of research objects. But his
writings have not been able to serve as the basis of a single, coherent
theory of cultural memory; this might be because his broad concept of
mémoire collective is insufficiently differentiated. However, specific ele-
ments of Halbwachs’s writings have been adapted in various disciplines.
Halbwachs thus became the forefather of a variety of memory theories
(see Table II.1): In the field of psychology the focus is on Halbwachs’s
idea of the collective nature of individual memory, and the cadres sociaux
are understood as culturally specific schemata (see chapter III.3.1). Oral
history refers to his studies of intergenerational, communicative and
everyday forms of remembrance (see chapter III.1.4). And Halbwachs’s
interest in mnemonic space and objects, as, for example, in his studies of
the religious topography of Palestine, broke the ground for later histori-
cal and cultural studies approaches which deal with the transmission of
cultural knowledge and national sites of memory (see chapters II.3 and
II.4 on Jan and Aleida Assmann and Pierre Nora).

Table II.1 Three dimensions of Halbwachs’s concept of mémoire collective and

fields in which they have been applied

Halbwachs’s 1. Dependence of → Social psychology

mémoire collective individual memory
on social frameworks
2. Intergenerational → Oral history
memory
3. Transmission of → Theory of the ‘Cultural
cultural knowledge Memory’ (A. and J. Assmann),
Lieux de mémoire (Nora)
 The Invention of Cultural Memory 19

II.2 Aby Warburg: Mnemosyne – pathos formulas and a

European memory of images

The second fundamental concept of cultural memory is likewise the

work of a scholar of the 1920s. The art and cultural historian Aby
Warburg (1866–1929) is today considered an important forefather of
the modern, interdisciplinary study of culture, and the Warburg Library
(Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg), once situated in Hamburg,
its icon. Its original arrangement was characterized by Warburg’s dislike
of the ‘policing of disciplinary boundaries’. He organized his exten-
sive collection according to cultural-historical themes, thus encourag-
ing an approach that transcends borders between different epochs,
media, and genres. A circle of significant researchers, including Ernst
Cassirer, Erwin Panofsky, and Hellmut Ritter, were associated with the
Warburg Library. After Warburg’s death, the library was transferred
to London in 1933, rescuing it from the Nazi takeover in Germany.
Since 1944, the Warburg Institute has been part of the University of
London. The Warburg Foundation in Hamburg, in cooperation with the
publishing house Akademie Verlag of Berlin, has edited Aby Warburg’s
collected works.
Aby Warburg’s interest was in a memory of art, in the readoption
of vivid images and symbols in different epochs and cultures (see
Gombrich 1986; Ginzburg 1989; Woodfield 2001). Warburg observed
a return of artistic forms – for example, motifs of classical frescos in
Renaissance paintings by Botticelli and Ghirlandaio or on stamps in
the 1920s – and instead of interpreting the re-use of these forms as the
result of a conscious appropriation of the ancient world by artists of
later periods, attributed it to the power of cultural symbols to trigger
memories.
Warburg placed particular importance on the so-called pathos for-
mulas (Pathosformeln), a kind of imagines agentes: in their attempts to
represent the ‘superlatives’ of human expression – passionate excite-
ment in gesture or physiognomy – Renaissance artists returned to the
symbols of ancient models. Because, according to Warburg, ancient
pathos, pagan emotional intensity, is reflected in these symbols, he
termed them ‘pathos formulas’. In order to explain why the affective
properties of these symbols had such an unusual staying power across
the centuries, he used a model suggested by the memory psychologist
Richard Semon and conceived of pathos formulas as cultural ‘engrams’
or ‘dynamograms’, which store ‘mnemic energy’ and are able to release
it under other historical circumstances or at far distant locations.
20 Memory in Culture

According to Warburg, the symbol is a cultural ‘energy store’. Culture

rests upon the memory of symbols. In this way, Warburg developed the
concept of a cultural memory of images which he called, among other
terms, ‘social memory’ (see also Kany 1987; Ferretti 1989; Michaud
2004).
Warburg felt that the ‘social memory’ was tied to deeply moral ques-
tions, since the pathos of antiquity is a memory which artists can suc-
cumb to but which they can also master. The re-use of pathos formulas
is connected to two fundamental aspects of culture, ‘expression’ and
‘orientation’. The affective content of symbolic gestures offers the
‘civilized’ artist who comes into contact with them the chance to cre-
ate an intensive and incisive vivid expression, but on the other hand
also represents a threat as it stems from ‘primitive’ levels of culture.
Art always moves within the dangerous zone between magic and logic,
between ‘primitive’ ecstasy and ‘civilized’ self-control. The decisive fac-
tor is whether the artist is able to take up the traditional symbolism and
simultaneously maintain a safe distance from it in order to create clarity
and beauty through this balancing act. Warburg is interested in ‘artistic
sophrosyne’, the restraint and moral self-assertion of modern humans
in the face of the memory of the deep layers of their culture. Artistic
techniques of sophrosyne can include an emphasis on the purely meta-
phorical character of the symbols, for example through grisaille paint-
ing techniques, or on modern re-interpretations, such as new, Christian
understandings of pagan symbols. ‘Warburg describes the reserves of
transmitted cultural possessions as “humanity’s treasure of suffering”
(Leidschatz) which is waiting to be transformed into human property.
“Humanity’s stores of suffering become the possessions of the humane”’
(Diers 1995, 68).
Warburg emphasizes the changes and actualizations of social memory
typical for every place and time. As a result of this constant renewal,
studying the specific interplay between continuity and re-interpretation
of cultural symbols in artworks allows one to draw conclusions regard-
ing the mental dimension of culture. ‘The variations in rendering,
seen in the mirror of the period, reveal the conscious or unconscious
selective tendencies of the age and thus bring to light the collective
psyche that creates these wishes and postulates these ideals’ (quoted in
Gombrich 1986, 270–1).
How central the concept of memory and the idea of administering
an artistic inheritance was to Warburg’s thought becomes evident in
his last exhibition project, which was entitled ‘Mnemosyne’ (1924–29;
see Warburg 2000), after the muse who personifies memory and is also
 The Invention of Cultural Memory 21

the mother of all the other Muses. The exhibit was an atlas and was
meant to illustrate the transcultural memory of images, which crosses
the chronological and spatial borders of epochs and countries. By
bringing together apparently heterogeneous panels, the atlas presents
an outline of an overlapping community of memory which connects
Europe and Asia.
Warburg referred to his concept of memory not only as ‘social mem-
ory’ but also as a ‘European collective memory’ (quoted in Gombrich
1986, 270), pointing to a significant expansion of its scope. This is pos-
sible since Warburg assumed as the central medium of cultural memory
not oral speech but rather works of art, which can potentially survive
for long periods of time and traverse great spaces. Warburg’s concept of
memory thus accommodates the historical variations and local imprints
of cultural memory, while at the same time not losing sight of its
embeddedness in the European-Asian community of memory.

Halbwachs’s and Warburg’s concepts of cultural memory are funda-

mentally different. While Halbwachs’s writings are an example of the
elaborate development of a theory, Warburg did not leave behind any
general theory or system. Warburg proceeded inductively, starting with
the material – following his famous dictum: ‘God is in the details’. His
approach shifts the material dimension of culture to the centre of focus.
Warburg studied the ability of objects and symbols to evoke memory and
create cultural continuity. His primary interest was the highly expressive
visual culture, which he saw as closely related to unconscious, mental
processes, albeit in such a broad understanding that he also enlisted for
his analysis objects of everyday culture, festivals, and literary sources.
In contrast, Halbwachs’s argument begins with the social dimension
of culture (for more on this difference, see also chapter IV.2). He was
primarily interested in social groups’ creation of a past related to their
identity, which he saw as an active, constructive process, one attuned to
the needs of the present.
What the two concepts have in common, however, is the perception
that culture and its transmission are products of human activity. At the
beginning of the twentieth century this assumption was by no means
a matter of course. Inspired by Darwin and the evolutionism and bio-
logical determinism of the turn of the century, many scientists tried to
explain the phenomenon of cultures’ survival with concepts of ‘racial
memory’. Halbwachs and Warburg deserve credit for showing that the
key to the continuation of ephemeral culture lies not in any kind of
22 Memory in Culture

genetic memory but rather in its transmission through social interac-

tion and its codification in material objectivations. At the same time,
the two scholars demonstrated through their approaches that getting to
the root of the phenomenon of cultural memory necessitates an inter-
disciplinary methodology.
Halbwachs’s and Warburg’s studies were part of a very animated
discussion about cultural memory in the first decades of the twentieth
century. Friedrich Nietzsche (Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für das
Leben, 1874), Henry Bergson (Matière et mémoire, 1896), and Sigmund
Freud (Die Traumdeutung, 1900) had brought the theme of memory
to center stage. Arnold Zweig, in his essay Caliban (1927), developed
an idea inspired by Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis: a concept of col-
lective ‘group affects’, on the basis of which he attempted to explain
the anti-Semitism of the time. Siegfried Kracauer, in an essay entitled
‘Photography’ (1927), considered the differences between photographic
and memory images. Frederic Bartlett, at the end of the decade, began
his experiments on culture-specific schemata and constructive proc-
esses of memory (Remembering, 1932). Wilhelm Pinder (Das Problem der
Generation in der Kunstgeschichte Europas, 1926) and Karl Mannheim (The
Problem of the Generations, 1928/29) addressed concepts of identity, the
perception of time, and the memory of generations. Walter Benjamin
doubted that, in the modern era and in particular after the shock of
mechanized warfare in the First World War, direct experience and mean-
ing-creating memory were still possible (see ‘The Storyteller’, 1936). In
his essay ‘On the Concept of History’ (1940), he criticizes the historicist
tradition of the nineteenth century, whose selection criteria invariably
yielded solely a ‘history of victors’. Using a term borrowed from Jewish
tradition – remembrance (Eingedenken) –, Benjamin pleads instead for
reading history ‘against the grain’, and for keeping alive the memory of
the victims and the nameless.

II.3 Pierre Nora’s lieux de mémoire – and beyond

Whereas today Halbwachs’s and Warburg’s concepts are acknowledged

as having laid the foundations for theories of cultural memory, at
the time of their writing they found only a limited audience. Ideas of
memory as a collective phenomenon which constitutes and maintains
culture were not taken up again on a broad basis until the 1980s. One
of the most influential concepts of the interdisciplinary ‘new cultural
memory studies’ emerging in the late twentieth century was developed
within the field of French cultural history, namely Pierre Nora’s lieux de
 The Invention of Cultural Memory 23

mémoire, a notion which revolves around memory, history and nation.

As early as 1978 Pierre Nora had drawn on the idea of collective mem-
ory, in order to describe the numerous popular and political forms of
addressing the past, which he – and this is Halbwachs’s legacy – strictly
separated from history.
Between 1984 and 1992 Nora edited his monumental, seven-part
work Les lieux de mémoire (for English translations see Nora 1996–98 and
Nora 2001–10). The collection is introduced by an essay entitled ‘Entre
mémoire et histoire’ (‘Between Memory and History’, 1989, 8) in which
Nora, closely following Halbwachs, emphasizes that ‘memory and his-
tory, far from being synonymous, appear now to be in fundamental
opposition’. Yet unlike Halbwachs, who starts from the premise of the
existence of collective memories, Nora summarizes our current time by
saying: ‘We speak so much of memory because there is so little of it left’
(ibid., 7). Thus, the focus of his attention shifts to lieux de mémoire, sites
of memory. In the tradition of ancient mnemotechnics, they can be
understood as loci in the broadest sense of the term, which call up imag-
ines, the memory images of the French nation. Such sites can therefore
include geographical locations, buildings, monuments and works of art
as well as historical persons, memorial days, philosophical and scientific
texts, or symbolic actions. Thus, Paris, Versailles, and the Eiffel Tower
are sites of memory, but so are Joan of Arc, the French flag, 14 July, the
Marseillaise, and Descartes’s Discours de la méthode.
However, sites of memory cannot constitute a collective memory as
defined by Halbwachs. Quite the contrary, as Nora explains: ‘There are
lieux de mémoire, sites of memory, because there are no longer milieux
de mémoire, real environments of memory’ (ibid.). The French sites of
memory have their origin in the nineteenth century, during the time of
the Third Republic. At that point, the national memory was still capa-
ble of fostering a collective identity, but this function has disintegrated
during the twentieth century. According to Nora, today’s society is in a
transitional stage, during which there is a breakdown of the connection
to a lived, group- and nation-specific, identity-forming past. Thus, sites
of memory function as a sort of artificial placeholder for the no longer
existent, natural collective memory.
Les lieux de mémoire, edited by Nora, is a collection of essays about dif-
ferent elements of French culture. And while they each stand for aspects
of a common past, they do not, in their variety, amount to a binding
comprehensive memory, but instead leave the reader with a fragmented
image of the French past. Each individual will make his or her own
selection from the many sites of memory offered. Their pluralization
24 Memory in Culture

does not allow for any hierarchization, any configuration into a coher-
ent narrative or structured meaning. In addition, the rupture which
separates the past from the present is too great for sites of memory to
elicit reactions in a contemporary observer that are anything but nostal-
gic. Sites of memory are thus signs which not only refer to aspects of the
French past which should be remembered, but at the same time always
point to the absence of living memory (see Carrier 2000).
In his theoretical preface to the first volume of Les lieux de mémoire,
Nora explains the conditions which an event or an object must fulfil
in order to be identified as a site of memory. According to him, three
dimensions of memory sites can be distinguished: material, functional,
and symbolic (1989, 19).

• Material dimension: Sites of memory are cultural objectivations in the

broadest sense of the term. They include not only ‘graspable’ objects,
such as paintings or books; past events, too, and even commemora-
tive minutes of silence exhibit a material dimension, since they, as
Nora explains, ‘literally (break) a temporal continuity’ (ibid.).
• Functional dimension: Such objectivations must fulfil a function
in society. Famous books, such as the Histoire de France by Ernest
Lavisse (Nora 1997, 151–86), are first – before being turned into
memory sites – created for a particular purpose. The Histoire de France
served as a textbook and structured history teaching in schools. The
aforementioned minute of silence has the function of periodically
evoking a memory.
• Symbolic dimension: Finally, the objectivation must, in addition
to its function, also have a symbolic meaning. This is the case, for
example, when actions become rituals or places are shrouded with a
‘symbolic aura’ (Nora 1989, 19). It is this intentional symbolic signi-
fication – whether ascribed to the objectivation already at the point
of its creation or not until later – that first makes a cultural object a
site of memory.

These last two characteristics, symbolic dimension and intentional-

ity, distinguish sites of memory from other cultural objectivations: ‘To
begin with, there must be a will to remember. If we were to abandon
this criterion, we would quickly drift into admitting virtually every-
thing as worthy of remembrance’ (Nora 1989, 19).
This actually quite clear definition of a site of memory, however, is,
in the course of the three volumes – La République, La Nation, and Les
Frances – with their 130 contributions, deconstructed bit by bit: Popular
 The Invention of Cultural Memory 25

phrases (‘dying for the fatherland’), ways of thinking and arguing

(‘Gaullists and Communists’), and social manners (‘gallantry’) are pro-
moted to the status of lieux de mémoire and become objects of mnemo-
historical research. Thus, many critics pose the question of just what
exactly can become a site of memory (see for example, den Boer and
Frijhoff 1993). The answer is likely: any cultural phenomenon, whether
material, social or mental, which a society associates with its past and
with national identity. Aleida Assmann (1996a) has blazed a trail in the
thicket of sites of memory with her distinction between lieux de mémoire
as media and topoi of cultural memory.
Nora’s strict separation of history and memory is also not entirely
unproblematic. While Halbwachs’s polemic needs to be understood
against the backdrop of nineteenth-century historicism, blocking out
the memorial function of historiography appears strange in light of
the discussions among historians – beginning as early as the 1970s –
regarding the constructed nature, subjectivity, and perspectivity of all
history writing.
In addition, it is hard to understand Nora’s civilization-critical, strongly
judgemental construction of a history of the deterioration and decline of
collective memory. According to Nora, contemporary memory cultures
are confronted with ‘globalization, democratization, and the advent of
mass culture’, the end of ‘societies based on memory’, and the end of ‘ide-
ologies based on memory’ (1996, 1f.). Nora contrasts this with a roman-
ticized version of original, natural and authentic milieux de mémoire, such
as ‘peasant culture, that quintessential repository of collective memory’
(ibid.). What we are faced with today, in Nora’s diction, is a ‘terror’ or ‘tyr-
anny’ of memory. Accordingly, he ends his Lieux-project with the words
‘The tyranny of memory will reign for only a certain time – but this time
will have been ours’ (Nora 1984–92, III.1012).
Nora’s lieux de mémoire are the most prominent example of a mne-
mohistorical approach, in which an (admittedly discontinuous) theo-
retical conception of cultural memory is borne out by a rich variety
of case studies illuminating the dynamics of cultural remembrance.
The concept of lieux de mémoire is restricted neither to the discipline
of history nor to the study of French memories; on the contrary, it
has inspired scholars of the most varied of disciplines to undertake
memory research. Nora’s project of charting national sites of memory
has been favourably received and imitated in many other countries.
There are publications on Italian luoghi della memoria (Isnenghi 1987ff.),
American sites of memory (Hebel 2003), sites of memory in Quebec
(Kolboom and Grzonka 2002), as well as Dutch Plaatsen van Herinnering
26 Memory in Culture

(Wesseling 2005–06), which, however, concentrates only on literal,

physical places of memory.
Arguably, one of the greatest problems of the lieux de mémoire-approach
is its nation-centredness. Hue-Tam Ho Tai (2001a) has convincingly criti-
cized Nora’s construct of a nation-mémoire, a French national memory,
which ignores, despite its striving for polyphony, ‘la France d’outre-mer’
(the French colonies) as well as the memory cultures of immigrants
(see also Judt 1998; Taithe 1999). More and more scholars are trying
to address these shortcomings and focus on sites of memory under
postcolonial, multicultural, diasporic, transcultural, and transnational
perspectives, on what Andreas Huyssen (2003, 95) has called ‘memory
sites in an expanded field’.
Building on Nora’s work, Etienne François and Hagen Schulze ini-
tiated the project Deutsche Erinnerungsorte (2001, ‘German Sites of
Memory’), which is, in contrast to the French model, strongly oriented
towards Europe as a whole: International authors, a combination of
insider and outsider perspectives, as well as the inclusion of sites of
memory which are also significant for Germany’s neighbors (for exam-
ple, ‘Versailles’ and ‘Charlemagne’) all serve to reflect the more general
process of an opening up of Germany towards Europe. More recent
publications show an even greater sensitivity towards the complex
inter-, multi- and transcultural constellations of memory sites. With
België, een parcours van herinnering (Tollebeek and Buelens et al. 2008)
and Lieux de mémoire au Luxembourg/Erinnerungsorte in Luxembourg
(Kmec et al. 2008) this pertains, perhaps unsurprisingly, to volumes
which address the memory sites of nation-states that are characterized
by bilingualism and diglossia. Finally, projects dedicated to European
memory sites are increasingly coming to the fore, for example on
the transnational lieux de mémoire in Central Europe (Le Rider, Czàky
and Sommer 2002; Le Rider 2008) or on European realms of memory
(Buchinger et al. 2009).
One notable attempt to rethink the conception of the lieu de mémoire
and provide a more solid theoretical fundament is Ann Rigney’s work
on the emergence and ‘life’ of memory sites. She emphasizes that:

Although it has proven useful as a conceptual tool, the metaphor

of ‘memory site’ can become misleading if it is interpreted to mean
that collective remembrance becomes permanently tied down to
particular figures, icons, or monuments. As the performative aspect
of the term ‘remembrance’ suggests, collective memory is constantly
‘in the works’ and, like a swimmer, has to keep moving even just to
 The Invention of Cultural Memory 27

stay afloat. To bring remembrance to a conclusion is de facto already

to forget. (Rigney 2008a, 346)

Understanding the lieu de mémoire not as a stable entity but as funda-

mentally a mnemonic process, Rigney (2005, 18) emphasizes that ‘sites
of memory are constantly being reinvested with new meaning’ and
that they thus ‘become a self-perpetuating vortex of symbolic invest-
ment’. She advocates the study of lieux de mémoire in the wake of what
she terms a ‘shift from “sites” to “dynamics” within memory studies
[which] runs parallel to a larger shift of attention within cultural studies
from products to processes, from a focus on cultural artifacts to an inter-
est in the way those artifacts circulate and influence their environment’
(Rigney 2008a, 346; see also 2008b).
All in all, it can be said that while Nora’s lieu de mémoire is certainly the
most prominent and internationally most frequently practised approach
to cultural remembrance, it also constitutes one of the most sorely under-
theorized concepts of memory studies. On top of this, it carries with it
some old-fashioned and ideologically charged assumptions about the
nature of memory, history and the nation, which memory studies had
better shed if it wants to capitalize on the great inspirational value of the
idea of the lieu de mémoire in order to study the increasingly globalizing
processes and constellations of cultural memory (see chapter III.1.6).

II.4 Aleida and Jan Assmann: The Cultural Memory

The theory of ‘Cultural Memory’ (das kulturelle Gedächtnis), which was

introduced by Aleida and Jan Assmann at the end of the 1980s, has
proved to be the most influential approach of memory studies in the
German-speaking world. (To distinguish it from a more generic use
of the term ‘cultural memory’, this text capitalizes ‘Cultural Memory’
when referring specifically to the Assmanns’ concept.) One of its central
achievements is to describe the connection between culture and mem-
ory in a systematic, conceptually nuanced and theoretically sound man-
ner. In particular through its accent on the interdependences among
cultural memory, collective identity, and political legitimation, the
Assmanns’ theory makes it possible to deal with a range of phenomena
which have been of increasing interest in the humanities and the social
sciences since the 1980s. The theory of Cultural Memory has generated
a shared field of research and brought together under one roof such dis-
parate academic fields as history, anthropology, archaeology, religious
studies, media theory, literary studies and sociology.
28 Memory in Culture

II.4.1 Communicative Memory and Cultural Memory

The starting point of the theory of Cultural Memory is the distinction
between two registers of Halbwachs’s collective memory. Jan and Aleida
Assmann’s concept, which is in many aspects indebted to Halbwachs’s
findings, is grounded in the insight that there is a qualitative difference
between a collective memory that is based on forms of everyday interac-
tion and communication and a collective memory that is more institu-
tionalized and rests on rituals and media. In response, they differentiate
between two ‘memory frameworks’ – communicative memory on the
one hand and the Cultural Memory on the other.
Jan Assmann (1992, 56) pointedly contrasts characteristics of communi-
cative memory and Cultural Memory, in order to show that the contents,
forms, media, temporal structure and carriers of these two memory frame-
works are fundamentally different from one another (see also Table II.2):

• Communicative memory comes into being through everyday interac-

tion; its contents consist of the historical experiences of contempo-
raries and it thus always refers only to a limited, shifting temporal
horizon of about eighty to one hundred years. The contents of com-
municative memory are changeable and not ascribed a determined
meaning. Within this framework, everyone is considered equally
competent in remembering and interpreting the common past.
Communicative memory, according to Jan Assmann, belongs to the
field of oral history. The Assmanns use communicative memory as a
contrasting term to better demarcate the field of Cultural Memory,
which represents the actual focus of their research.
• Cultural Memory is a memory which is tied to material objectivations.
It is purposefully established and ceremonialized. Remembering
within the framework of the Cultural Memory takes place in what
Jan Assmann calls the ‘temporal dimension of the festival’ (while
communicative memory is tied to the ‘temporal dimension of
everyday life’. Cultural Memory transports a fixed set of contents
and meanings, which are maintained and interpreted by trained
specialists (for example, priests, shamans, or archivists). At its core
are mythical events of a distant past which are interpreted as foun-
dational to the community (for example, the exodus from Egypt or
the Trojan War). Between the time remembered in the framework of
the communicative memory and that remembered in the Cultural
Memory, thus, there is a gaping hole, or – using the term coined by
the anthropologist Jan Vansina – a shifting ‘floating gap’ that moves
along with the passage of time.
 The Invention of Cultural Memory 29

Table II.2 Comparison of communicative memory and Cultural Memory

(J. Assmann 1992, 56)

Communicative memory Cultural Memory

Content historical experiences within mythical past/ancient history,
the framework of individual events from an absolute past
biographies
Forms informal, loosely shaped, natural, consciously established,
created through interaction and highly formalized, ceremonial
everyday experience communication, festival
Media living memory in individual established objectivations,
minds, experience, hearsay traditional symbolic encoding/
staging in word, image, dance,
etc.
Temporal 80–100 years, a temporal horizon absolute past of a mythical
structure of three or four generations that ancient time
shifts with the passage of time
Carriers non-specific, eyewitnesses within specialized carriers of tradition
a memory community

In an essay entitled ‘Collective Memory and Cultural Identity’ (pub-

lished in German in 1988 and in English in 1995), Jan Assmann coined
the term ‘Cultural Memory’ and offered the following definition:

The concept of cultural memory comprises that body of reusable

texts, images, and rituals specific to each society in each epoch,
whose ‘cultivation’ serves to stabilize and convey that society’s self-
image. Upon such collective knowledge, for the most part (but not
exclusively) of the past, each group bases its awareness of unity and
particularity. (1995, 132)

A cluster of central characteristics establishes the meaning of the term

‘Cultural Memory’ (J. Assmann 1995, 130–2):

• Concretion of identity means that social groups constitute a Cultural

Memory, from which they derive their collective identity.
• Cultural Memory’s capacity to reconstruct takes into account the
insight that every memory is related to the present situation:
Cultural Memory is a retrospective construction.
• Formation is the first distinctive characteristic that distinguishes
between the frameworks of communicative and Cultural Memory.
Cultural Memory requires the continuation of meaning through
30 Memory in Culture

established, stable forms of expression; communicative memory is

more flexible. One of Cultural Memory’s methods of stabilization is
the creation of ‘memory figures’ (Erinnerungsfiguren), the amalgama-
tion of an image and a term or a narrative (as, for example, in the
memory figure of ‘Exodus’; see J. Assmann 1992, 37).
• Organization refers to the institutionalization of Cultural Memory
and the specialization of its carriers. These gatekeepers of memory
are usually elites, such as shamans, priests, or professors of history.
• The obligation of Cultural Memory ‘engenders a clear system of values
and differentiations in importance’ (J. Assmann 1995, 131) for the
group.
• The characteristic of reflexivity, lastly, points to the fact that Cultural
Memory reflects the group’s lifeworld and its self-image, and is
moreover self-reflexive.

Such a bisection of Halbwachs’s collective memory has proven to be

highly suggestive for numerous authors and it turns up again and again,
in one form or another, as milieux de mémoire and lieux de mémoire
(Pierre Nora), as ‘vernacular’ and ‘official’ memory (John Bodnar), and
as ‘lived’ and ‘distant’ memory (William Hirst and David Manier). This
tendency to further subdivide cultural remembrance into two modes
likely results from the need to differentiate between the reference to
events of one’s own epoch and the reference to more distant epochs;
between unofficial and official forms of commemoration; between
modifiable, negotiable everyday memory and meaning-laden tradi-
tions; between oral forms of remembrance and a memory which relies
on other, more elaborate media technologies; and thus also, as Aleida
Assmann puts it, between the relative fluidity and fixity, the more liquid
and the more stable forms of cultural memory (see A. Assmann 1991).
However, at first glance, the Assmanns’ use of the terms ‘cultural’
and ‘communicative’ may seem confusing. The adjective ‘cultural’ in
the context of their theory does not denote a broad understanding of
culture, that is, the totality of human self-interpretations in a given
context, but rather the area which Aleida Assmann (1991) calls ‘culture
as monument’ (as opposed to ‘culture as lifeworld’, the staged, stylized,
observer-oriented areas of (high) culture). This use of the term ‘culture’
is not fully compatible with the current anthropological understand-
ing, which also encompasses practices of everyday life and popular
culture. ‘Cultural Memory’ does therefore not describe all manifesta-
tions of ‘memory in culture’; rather it represents a subset of this: the
societal construction of normative and formative versions of the past.
 The Invention of Cultural Memory 31

In fact, the attribute ‘cultural’ in the broad anthropological sense can be

applied to both the communicative as well as the Cultural Memory, as
both are certainly phenomena of culture. The opposite also holds true:
Both Cultural and also communicative memory are ‘communicative’ as
it is only through media communication that memory can be conveyed
intersubjectively.
And, of course, Jan Assmann’s distinguishing criteria – contents,
media, forms, time structure, carriers – cannot really be unambiguously
assigned to one or the other framework of memory. Life experience,
for example, is nowadays by no means transmitted solely through oral
everyday speech, but also through a host of mass media and the so-called
new media (for example, in blogs and on Facebook). And equally,
in the age of the Internet and formats such as Wikipedia there is an
increased blurring of the distinction between specialists and laymen of
the Cultural Memory.
Relativizing his polarizing contrast of Cultural and communicative
memory, Jan Assmann (1992, 51) explains: ‘At stake here are two modes
of remembering, two functions of memory and the past – “uses of the
past” – which one must first carefully distinguish, even if they perme-
ate one another in manifold ways in the reality of a historical culture.’
Working from this insight, Cultural Memory and communicative mem-
ory should be conceived of as two modi memorandi, modes of memory,
possible horizons of reference to the past. Their distinction depends
upon the (conscious or unconscious) decision as to which mode will
be applied for the remembering – the mode of the ‘foundational’ or
the ‘biographical memory’ (ibid.). This means that in a given historical
context, the same event can become simultaneously an object of the
Cultural Memory and of the communicative memory. Such a scenario
is not an exceptional borderline case, but is rather a recurrent charac-
teristic of modern memory culture. In societies which have experienced
massive changes in recent times, it is in fact the rule. For example, the
French Revolution around 1800 and the First World War in the 1920s
were objects of both the Cultural and also the communicative memory.
The Second World War and the Holocaust still are today. In this sort
of historical constellations we are dealing with a ‘simultaneity of the
non-simultaneous’ (Wilhelm Pinder) evoked through concurrent yet
divergent modes of imagining the past.
As part of life experience, of a ‘lived’ or ‘experienced history’
(Halbwachs’s histoire vécue), such historic events are the content of com-
municative generational memories. They are understood as a component
of temporally limited, group-specific worlds of experience, as events
32 Memory in Culture

which had an effect on individuals’ lives. Memories in accordance with

communicative memory belong, in Aleida Assmann’s (1991, 12) words,
to the everyday ‘near horizon’ of a time perceived as the ‘present’. The
rememberers connect the memories with their lifeworld: ‘The lifeworld
context is a near horizon, which tightly and flexibly encloses the
present.’ As objects of ‘foundational remembering’, the same events
have very different implications. They are part of a cultural ‘distant hori-
zon’. Remembering in accordance with the Cultural Memory means the
‘transformation of the past into foundational history, that is, into myth’
(J. Assmann 1992, 77).
The ‘distant horizon’ of Cultural Memory, however, can, in terms of
historical-chronological time, be extremely near. Not only has founda-
tional history, at least since the beginning of modernity and the associ-
ated experience of an ‘acceleration of time’ (Koselleck) in the eighteenth
century, as well as the founding of nation-states in the nineteenth
century, slipped largely into the area of historical time, but its most
significant elements even arise from a very close historical past. The
French Revolution took on the character of a foundational event almost
immediately. The same holds true for the founding of the German Reich
in 1871, for the world wars in the twentieth century, and last but not
least for ‘9/11’. Such ad hoc transformations of events barely past into
foundational history share basic characteristics with the memory of
‘distant’, ‘mythical’ times and fulfil the same functions. The mode of
Cultural Memory generates meaning which, first, is to a greater extent
binding and obligatory than is the case for the mode of communicative
memory, and which, second, claims to be valid for very large mnemonic
communities (religious groups, societies, and so on). Connected with
Cultural remembering are usually political or ideological function-
alizations of the past. Cultural Memory therefore has to be legitimized
(which is not necessarily the case with communicative memory). To
this end, foundational events are tied to events of a distant past and/or
visions of a distant future.
The central criterion to differentiate the ‘Cultural’ from the ‘commu-
nicative’ mode of remembering is therefore, it seems, not the measur-
able time (the chronological distance of the remembered events from
the present in which the act of remembering takes place). It is rather the
way of remembering chosen by a community, the collective idea of the
meaning of past events and of their embeddedness within temporal
processes, which makes a memory ‘Cultural’ or ‘communicative’. Thus
the distinction between the two modes rests not primarily on the struc-
ture of time (a universal, measurable category), but rather on the con-
sciousness of time (a culturally and historically variable phenomenon of
 The Invention of Cultural Memory 33

the mental dimension of culture). The criterion ‘consciousness of time’

also overrules the strict differentiation between the media associated
with each of the two frameworks of memory. Neither is the produc-
tion of communicative memory limited to orality, nor do all texts and
images automatically belong to Cultural Memory. The deciding factor
is rather the media usage.

II.4.2 Cultural memory, writing, and political identity

In Germany, the most influential book in the area of cultural memory
studies is arguably still Jan Assmann’s Das kulturelle Gedächtnis (‘The
Cultural Memory,’ 1992), in which he addresses the connections
between memory, the formation of collective identity, and the exercise
of political power, and also the differences and similarities between oral
and written cultures. ‘Societies imagine their self-images and maintain
an identity over the course of generations by developing a culture
of memory, and they do this in entirely different ways’, Jan Assmann
emphasizes (ibid., 18). His goal is to illustrate these differences in the
‘connective structure’ of societies (that is, a structure that brings together
different times – past and present – as well as different groups of a society
through acts of remembering; see ibid., 16), by creating a typology of
cultures. The Egyptologist Assmann uses as examples the early eastern
and western civilizations – Egypt, Israel, the Hittites, and Greece.
The two central media of Cultural Memory, orality and literacy, can
fulfil fundamentally the same functions, as far as the creation of cul-
tural coherence is concerned: They are functionally equivalent. However,
the introduction of writing does influence the forms through which the
past is envisioned in a culture. Assmann speaks of the ritual coherence
of oral cultures and of the textual coherence of literate cultures. Oral
cultures depend on the relatively exact repetition of their myths, since
the Cultural Memory is stored in the organic memories of the singers or
shamans and any variation could endanger the tradition. Textual coher-
ence, on the other hand, relies on the outsourcing of cultural meaning
into the medium of writing. By means of such medial externalization,
it becomes possible to transmit more than that which the individual is
able to keep in his or her memory. However, the obligatory, canonical
texts of Cultural Memory must be re-appropriated by later generations.
Their meaning has to be laid out, interpreted: Textual coherence thus
goes hand-in-hand with the cultural techniques of commentary, imita-
tion or critique.
Drawing on a distinction made by Claude Lévi-Strauss, Jan Assmann
names two possible strategies of memory policy: the ‘hot’ and the ‘cold’
34 Memory in Culture

options. Hot cultures, such as ancient Israel, are dynamic societies

which make memory the engine of their development. Alternatively,
societies can ‘freeze’ historical change through remembering an eter-
nally unchanged past. Examples of such cold cultures are ancient Egypt
or medieval Judaism.
The Cultural Memory is founded on ‘myths’, stories about a common
past, which offer orientation in the present and hope for the future.
These stories can (as in the case of ancient Egyptian culture) feature
elements of an absolute past, of mythical time; but they can also (as
in the case of ancient Israel) deal with a relative past, with history. No
matter whether they rest on facts or fiction, either way, the myths of
the Cultural Memory fulfil a specific function: ‘Myth is a story one tells
oneself in order to orient oneself in the world; [it is] a truth of a higher
order, which is not simply true but in addition makes normative claims
and possesses a formative power’ (ibid., 76).
Myths tend to exhibit both a foundational as well as a contra-present
dynamic. The myth provides the fundament for and legitimizes existing
systems when it is perceived by society as an expression of a common
history, from which present circumstances derive. In contrast, the myth
can also take on a contra-present and potentially delegitimizing mean-
ing if it serves to contrast a ‘deficient present’ with the memory of a
past, better era.
The case studies in the second part of Das kulturelle Gedächtnis show
that writing, cultural memory, and political identity are quite closely
entwined. Shared, identity-forming cultural meaning is established and
maintained in literate cultures through normative and formative texts.
‘Normative texts codify the norms of social behaviour. Formative texts
formulate the self-image of the group and the knowledge that secures
their identity’ (J. Assmann 2006, 104). The former answer the question
of ‘what should we do?’; the latter that of ‘who are we?’ Such texts
constitute the monumental discourse of Egypt, are the prerequisite for
religious memory as resistance in Israel, and cultivate the ethnogenesis,
the birth of a culture, in Greece.

II.4.3 Memory as ars und vis, functional memory and

stored memory
Aleida Assmann prefaces her book Erinnerungsräume (1999, ‘Memory
Spaces’), which further develops the theory of Cultural Memory, with
a fundamental distinction: memory as ars vs memory as vis. The con-
cept of memory as ars, as art or technology, goes back to the topologi-
cal model of ancient mnemonics (see chapter III.2.1). Memory as ars
 The Invention of Cultural Memory 35

appears as a storehouse of knowledge, in which information can be

deposited and later recalled in the same form. The concept of memory
as vis, an anthropological ‘force’, in contrast, accentuates the temporal
dimension and time’s transformative effect on the contents of memory,
thus highlighting memory’s processual nature and its reconstructive
activity. Memory as vis always also implies forgetting, since from the
plethora of things that could be remembered only a few elements can
be chosen which speak to the present situation.
Assmann uses these two traditional conceptions of memory as a basis
for a typology of cultures: It is the period ‘around 1800’ – when the
ancient mnemotechnics became less prestigious, Locke had developed
his philosophy of identity, the bourgeois subject had come into being,
and finally the ‘romantic concept of identity-through-memory’ was
arising – which she identifies as the turning point: The previously domi-
nant concept of memory as ars is now replaced by an understanding of
memory as vis (ibid., 89–113). During the nineteenth century, then, the
philosopher and cultural critic Friedrich Nietzsche became the ‘patron
of the paradigm of identity-creating memory’ (ibid., 29).
To describe how the contents of the Cultural Memory are activated
and deactivated, Assmann makes one further distinction, that between
functional and stored memory (or: working and archival memory).
Functional memory is the ‘inhabited memory’. It consists of ‘meaningful
elements’ which can be configured to form a coherent story. Functional
memory is characterized by its ‘relevance to a group, selectivity, its rela-
tion to shared values and an orientation towards the future’. The stored
memory, on the other hand, is the ‘uninhabited memory’, ‘an amor-
phous mass’ of unconnected, ‘neutral elements’, which do not exhibit
any ‘vital connection’ to the present (ibid., 134f.).

On a collective level, the stored memory contains that which has

become unusable, obsolete, or foreign; the neutral, identity-abstract
factual knowledge; but also the repertoire of missed opportunities,
alternative options, and unused chances. The functional memory,
in contrast, is an acquired memory, which emerges from a process
of choosing, connecting, and constituting meaning. Unstructured,
disconnected elements enter the functional memory composed, con-
structed, and connected. Meaning emerges from this constructive act,
a quality which the stored memory fundamentally lacks. (ibid., 137)

Aleida Assmann describes the relationship between these two areas of

the Cultural Memory as ‘perspectival’. The functional memory should
36 Memory in Culture

be seen as existing in the foreground, silhouetted against the back-

ground of the stored memory (see also A. Assmann 1996b).
While the functional memory fulfils such important tasks as iden-
tity construction or the legitimization of an existing societal form, the
stored memory is no less important. It serves as a ‘reservoir for future
functional memories’, as a ‘resource for the renewal of cultural knowl-
edge’ and thus as a ‘condition for the possibility of cultural change’
(ibid., 140). The elements of the stored memory can – should they
acquire an additional dimension of meaning for society – cross over
into the functional memory. The decisive aspect is thus not only the
contents of the two areas of Cultural Memory, but also the degree of
permeability between them, as this determines the possibilities for
change and renewal (see Table II.3).
The distinction between a stored and a functional memory allows
an explanation of processes of change within the Cultural Memory. In
Erinnerungsräume, Assmann recounts the history of such changes from
ancient to postmodern times.
Aleida Assmann’s concept of Cultural Memory as the totality of
stored and functional memory entails an enormous expansion of the
phenomena that can be studied from a memory studies perspective.
All objectivations which a given culture preserves now come into sight:
not only the central ‘reusable’ texts, images and rituals, but also docu-
ments stored in archives, long-forgotten works of art, scarcely heeded

Table II.3 Differences between stored and functional memory (Assmann and
Assmann 1994, 123)

Stored memory Functional memory

Content ‘the Other’, transcending of ‘the Self’, the present rests
the present on the fundament of a
specific past
Temporal anachronous: dual temporal diachronic: continuity
structure horizon, the past exists alongside between past and present
the present; contra present
dynamics
Forms inviolability of texts; documents selective = strategic,
have autonomous status perspectival use of memories
Media and literature, art, museums, science festivals, public rituals of
Institutions collective commemoration
Carriers individuals within a cultural collectivized subjects
group
 The Invention of Cultural Memory 37

buildings, and so on. The bundle of characteristics suggested by Jan

Assmann in his 1988 essay clearly applies only to the core area of func-
tional memory – to the Cultural Memory in the narrow sense – which
has merely one characteristic in common with Cultural Memory in
the broader sense, namely that of ‘formation’. The distinction between
functional and stored memory further clarifies why the Assmanns’ con-
cept is not merely a ‘reissue’ of the study of tradition. Cultural Memory,
in contrast to tradition, exists not only ‘in the modus of actuality’, but
also in the ‘modus of potentiality as an archive, as a “total horizon”’
(J. Assmann 1988, 13). The concept of tradition brings only the actu-
ality of memory culture into focus. The Assmanns’ concept not only
describes a larger field than could be grasped with research on tradition
or on lieux de mémoire; it also allows for a description of the reservoirs,
origins, dynamics, and changes of cultural recall.