Commemorative images of the past not only reflect the commemorated event and the contemporary circumstances, but are path-dependent products of earlier commemorations as well. Drawing on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, I specify the central mechanism of this path-dependency—genre memory—and reconceptualize commemoration dialogically. In a case study of May 8, 1945 anniversaries in the Federal Republic of Germany, I take an integrated approach that includes the politics of commemoration (context-dependence), the history of commemoration (long-term development of commemorative forms), and most important, the memory of commemoration (prosaic path-dependence), illuminating a subtle yet crucial feature of the 50th anniversary commemoration of May 8 1945: its response to the memory of the 40th anniversary.
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