Memory Vanished, Absent, and Confined: The Countermemorial Project in 1980s and 1990s Germany*

Lupu examines two countermonuments in their socio-historical contexts and as lieux de memoire (sites of memory). He considers these countermonuments from the space between their conception and their reception. He suggests that countermonuments failed to escape the symbology they resented in traditional monumental forms and thereby failed to create a sphere of social interaction outside the didacticism of traditional monuments.