30th Conference of the working group of Polish and German Art Historians and Monument Conservators
Programm
War and its collateral effects – destruction of living environments, flight, displacement and death – are among the most haunting experiences of humanity. Every war produces images such as works of art, caricatures, photographs and films by artists or professional photographers as well as by amateurs. These are produced in order to cope with traumatic experiences and to bear witness to the destruction, but they are also used to glorify war and to promulgate the boasts and propaganda of the victorious – on pamphlets of the early modern period as well as in memes or videos on today’s globalized social media.

The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine is the context for us to focus on the production of images in times of war and on the cultures of remembrance in post-war periods. The conference will concentrate on the theatres of war in Eastern Europe – on the „bloodlands“ of the First, and especi-ally the Second, World War: some of which are now combat zones again. However, the period under consideration also stretches back to the Nordic Wars in the Baltic region and the Thirty Years‘ War, not least in order to suggest comparisons of pictorial topoi and to question images of history that can have an impact right up to the present day.

The conference is organised by the Schlesisches Museum zu Görlitz and the Muzeum Karkonoskie in Jelenia Góra, in cooperation with the Federal Institute for Culture and History of Eastern Europe (BKGE, Oldenburg), and the Leibniz Institute for History and Culture of Eastern Europe e.V. (GWZO, Leipzig).

The conference is sponsored by: Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien, Sächsisches Staatsministerium für Wissenschaft, Kultur und Tourismus, Sächsisches Staatsministerium des Innern, Stiftung für deutsch-polnische Zusammenarbeit, Stiftung der Sparkasse Oberlausitz-Niederschlesien and Böckler-Mare-Balticum-Stiftung.

See also: Exhibition „Art and War"