Project DERLA: Digital Memory Landscape Austria. Persecution and Resistance under National Socialism | Documenting and Learning

The Digital Memory Landscape Austria (DERLA) is a documentation and education project. It documents the places and signs of remembrance of the victims and places of terror of National Socialism in Austria and aims at a critical examination of National Socialism and fascism and the remembrance of them. The interdisciplinary cooperation project also aims to develop new concepts for digital remembrance education.

"Places of remembrance", memorials, memorial plaques, memorial sites as well as street and place names after resistance fighters and victims of the Nazi regime are the materializations of historical consciousness in everyday life. A look at the landscape of remembrance in the present therefore provides an insight into the collective memory of Austrian society on the one hand. On the other hand, dealing with the history of its origins reveals the cycles of this process. The questions to be constantly asked, what, when, where, and by whom and how was and is remembered, are the guiding principles of the project and give us insights into the transformations of the confrontation with the National Socialist legacy. Also, they are an expression of our political and social self-image in the present.

Based on these assumptions, DERLA, through the cooperation of historians, didacticians and experts of Digital Humanities, presents places of remembrance (memorial signs such as monuments, street names, or commemorative plaques) of the Nazi victims and places of Nazi terror on the homepage www.erinnerungslandschaft.at and offers specially developed teaching and learning materials. The addressees are young people as well as a historical and political public.

In a first phase of the project, all signs of remembrance of Styria and Vorarlberg will be documented. In the next step the federal states Tyrol, Carinthia and Burgenland will follow.

Contact and information: gerald.lamprecht@uni-graz.at, victoria.kumar@erinnern.at