Remembrance of Revolutions Past—A Democratic Resource? 1989—Space of Remembrance in the “Hero Cities” of Leipzig and Timişoara

Abstract

Almost twenty-five years after the mass protest of 1989 against the socialist regimes, the relationship between individual and official memory has reached a crucial point. The question of what narrative or interpretation of past events is memorialized in the urban landscape—in cities where the actual protest and dissent took place—should be determined at both the national and local level. Do the protesters of the 1980s feel that their political actions are being accurately represented by official museums, monuments, and commemorative practices? Is the new post-socialist generation of youth interested in the way the past is inscribed onto their cities? This article compares how memory and place are connected in Leipzig, Germany, and Timişoara, Romania, two countries in which the challenges to commemorating protest have taken different forms since the transition to democracy.