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ABSTRACT
The Jewish Museum Berlin (JMB) is a dynamic, performative space that negotiates between representing the Jew as an integral part of German history and as ultimate Other. While this tension has been documented through the political history of the museum (Lackmann 2000; Pieper 2006; Young 2000), we focus on the dynamics of guided tours and special events. We claim that guiding and festival events at JMB marginalise Holocaust memory and present an image of Jews of the past that promotes a multicultural vision of present-day Germany. In guiding performances, the identity of the guide as German/Jewish/Muslim is part of the guiding performance, even when not made explicit. By comparing tour performances for various publics, and the 'storytelling rights' granted by the group, we witness how visitors' scripts and expectations interact with the museum's mission that it serve as a place of encounter (Ort der Begegnung). As German-Jewish history at JMB serves primarily as a cosmopolitan template for intercultural relations, strongly affiliated local Jews may not feel a need for the museum. Organised groups of Jews from abroad, however, visit it as part of the Holocaust memorial landscape of Berlin, while many local Jews with weaker affiliations to the Jewish community may find it an attractive venue for performing their more fluid Jewish identities - for themselves and for others.
KEYWORDS
Berlin, Jews, museum, performativity, space, tour guides
The meanings of public spaces are never determined all at once by their builders. Rather, as Karen Till writes of contemporary Berlin, 'individuals perform their identities in particular places ... By acting, speaking, dressing, and interacting in certain ways at different locales, they cite who it is they are supposed to be. In so doing, they create... spaces through which they experience, remember, and imagine the world, and through which they fashion an identity' (Till 2005: 16-17). Contemporary museums have increasingly come to acknowledge the extent to which they are constantly reshaped by social processes: 'the space of the museum', Suzanne McLeod reminds us, 'is increasingly recognized as an environment created through a complex of practices and systems of knowledge' (MacLeod 2005).
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