Makarychev A. S. City identity and historical memory: political berlin in images and narratives

Key words: identity, memory politics, discourse, images

In this paper the author unveils the effects of a combination of political discourses and the language of visual representations in an urban milieu. The study is based on a variety of Berlin’s museums, which the author describes from the viewpoint of different narratives, each grounded in a specific interpretation of history. It is the esthetic components of these narratives that give a strong politicizing effect as an organic element of a perpetual process of rethinking and resignifying the key social concepts. By the same token, the blurring distance between the past and the present is one of key factors determining the state of political debates in Germany.