„Vier Steine seien der Heimat Dank“ – Kriegerdenkmäler und Erinnerungskulturen in Oberösterreich vom Ersten Weltkrieg bis zur Gegenwart
“Four stones show the homeland’s gratitude” – war memorials and the culture of commemoration in Upper Austrian from the First World War to the present

Summary/Abstract: War memorials reflect in a special way both the breaks and continuities which the political upheavals of the First World War, the Third Reich and the post-war period left in the Austrian culture of remembrance. In this article, the main focus is on a sample of war memorials in a specific region of Upper Austria. An analysis of the inscriptions shows the ambivalence and superficial neutrality characteristic of war memorials: Their messages based on the extreme poles of ‘heroes’ and ‘victims’, leave little space for socially direct and historically reflective perspectives on the violent excesses of the 20th century.

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