Double Subject Orientation? The In Flanders Fields Museum

Doppelte Subjektorientierung? Das In Flanders Fields Museum

 

Abstract: Shutters and flaps that can be opened, audios and videos that can be played, replicas of historical scenes that can be entered, and even smell boxes that can be used – the interactive and individualized offerings in exhibitions are becoming increasingly diverse. Military museums also follow this general trend. But how can these forms of active involvement in the development of a narrative in a museum stimulate individual historical thinking? To what extent is subject orientation possible for individual visitors?
DOI: dx.doi.org/10.1515/phw-2019-14642
Languages: English, German


Shutters and flaps that can be opened, audios and videos that can be played, replicas of historical scenes that can be entered, and even smell boxes that can be used – the interactive and individualized offerings in exhibitions are becoming increasingly diverse. Military museums also follow this general trend. But how can these forms of active involvement in the development of a narrative in a museum stimulate individual historical thinking? To what extent is subject orientation possible for individual visitors?

Former Frontline Region

In contrast to the destruction caused by World War II in Europe, that of World War I is mainly anchored in regional memories. This can also be seen in the West Flemish former frontline region Westhoek. The city of Ypres was heavily damaged during the war—the Gothic Cloth Hall on the marketplace, which was only rebuilt in the 1960s, became a symbol of the damage caused by the war and the consequences for civilians as well. In 1998, the In Flanders Fields Museum was opened in the Cloth Hall, which since 2012 has shown a newly designed permanent exhibition that focuses on developments in the region and follows a cultural-historical approach.[1]

Individual Fates

With this approach, the museum follows the trend established in research on the world wars since the 1990s, which focuses on people and their individual war experiences. Not only the so-called “everyday life” in war—on the front and away from it—, but also the consequences of it as well as the ways of remembrance have all become main topics of research.[2] For this purpose, historical sources (in particular ego documents) have been taken into consideration that have received little attention in political and social history.

Such sources are also central in the museum in Ypres, where they have also become the basis for complex museum presentations: At various stations in the museum, visitors “meet” projections of “war participants” who report in four languages (with subtitles) about the war from “their” point of view. These “icon figures” were portrayed by actors, but the spoken words were based on a historical testimony of the respective person.[3] Thus, the museum shows a clear acknowledgement that “an authentic war experience cannot be reconstructed because experiences can never be reproduced realistically”. A focus is placed on war experiences, which are “understood as an individual experience, which the participants can only process for themselves in the form of social patterns of interpretation, i.e. can integrate meaningfully into their world view”.[4]

In addition to the media performances, there are several showcases with personal objects of individual war participants whose fates are briefly explained. As a result, visitors are not offered a complete overview of the war but are invited to learn about everyday life on the front, injury and death, war captivity, and individual fates. The museum in Ypres thus clearly focuses on historical subjects which makes a “bridge to the learners”[5] possible—the use of which, however, being the responsibility of the visitors.

Life Stories to go

The Poppy bracelet, which is handed out at the beginning of the visit, also makes it possible to look at individual fates in the museum in Ypres. The exhibition explains that the soldiers had an additional identity during the war in the form of a number which was used, among other things, to identify fallen soldiers. According to the museum, the bracelet gives “a similar new identity”.[6] Visitors use the bracelet to register their personal data. Biographies based on the information given by the visitors are presented at four stations in the museum. The museum can currently draw on a total of 400 biographies. At the end of the exhibition tour, visitors can “take away” the biographies they have been told about in the various interactive stations as a PDF file.

This approach follows the basic idea of subject-oriented historical didactics. Visitors are perceived as learning subjects with individual pre-concepts and are provided with offers that are adapted to them. The “biographically perceived significance of the learning object”[7] which Johannes Meyer-Hamme demands is thus taken into account. However, no further support is offered to individual visitors. It is therefore questionable whether individual preliminary concepts can trigger historical learning, as subject orientation assumes, and whether subjective mental structures can actually be further developed.[8]

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Further Reading

  • Brandt, Susanne. “Das ‘In Flanders Fields Museum’ in Ypern.” Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 67, H. 7/8 (2016): 471–476.
  • Ammerer, Heinrich, Hellmuth, Thomas, und Kühberger, Christoph. Subjektorientierte Geschichtsdidaktik. Schwalbach/Ts.: Wochenschau Verlag, 2015.

Web Resources

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[1] Piet Chielens, Dominiek Dendooven und Annick Vandenbilcke, In Flanders Fields Museumsführer (Ypern: In Flanders Fields Museum, 2014).
[2] Thomas Kühne und Benjamin Ziemann, “Militärgeschichte in der Erweiterung. Konjunkturen, Interpretationen, Konzepte,” in Was ist Militärgeschichte. Krieg in der Geschichte 4, ed. Thomas Kühne und Benjamin Ziemann (Paderborn/München/Wien/Zürich: Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 2000), 9–46; Oswald Überegger, “Einleitung,” in Zwischen Nation und Region. Weltkriegsforschung im internationalen Vergleich. Ergebnisse und Perspektiven. Tirol im Ersten Weltkrieg. Politik, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft 4. ed. Oswald Überegger, (Innsbruck: Wagner, 2004), 11–15, 11-12.
[3] Arbeitsblatt des In Flanders Fields Museum: http://www.inflandersfields.be/images/filelib/67793IFFEDUpakketD2016Museumbezoek_2246.pdf (letzter Zugriff 5. Oktober 2019).
[4] Thomas Thiemeyer, Fortsetzung des Krieges mit anderen Mitteln. Die beiden Weltkriege im Museum. Krieg in der Geschichte 62 (Paderborn/München/Wien/Zürich: Schöningh, 2010), 128.
[5] Christoph Kühberger, “Subjektorientierte Geschichtsdidaktik. Eine Annäherung zwischen Theorie, Empirie und Pragmatik,” in Subjektorientierte Geschichtsdidaktik, eds. Heinrich Ammerer, Thomas Hellmuth und Christoph Kühberger (Schwalbach/Ts.: Wochenschau Verlag, 2015), 13–47, 34.
[6] Transcript in the exhibition on 3 September 2017 (translated).
[7] Johannes Meyer-Hamme, “Subjektorientierte historische Bildung,” 27. Juni 2012, http://www.bpb.de/geschichte/zeitgeschichte/deutschlandarchiv/139259/subjektorientierte-historische-bildung?p=all (letzter Zugriff am 5. Oktober 2019).
[8] Christoph Kühberger, “Subjektorientierte Geschichtsdidaktik. Eine Annäherung zwischen Theorie, Empirie und Pragmatik,” in Subjektorientierte Geschichtsdidaktik, eds. Heinrich Ammerer, Thomas Hellmuth und Christoph Kühberger (Schwalbach/Ts.: Wochenschau Verlag, 2015), 13–47, 24.

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Image Credits

In Flanders Fields Museum © Andrea Brait.

Recommended Citation

Brait, Andrea: Double Subject Orientation? The In Flanders Fields Museum. In: Public History Weekly 7 (2019) 29, DOI: dx.doi.org/10.1515/phw-2019-14642.

Editorial Responsibility

Isabella Schild/ Thomas Hellmuth (Team Vienna)

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Categories: 7 (2019) 29
DOI: dx.doi.org/10.1515/phw-2019-14642

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