The House of the End of European History

 

The House of the End of European History

The EU's Propaganda Museum

Katalin Deme

 

Summary

• The House of European History (HEH) in Brussels is less of a traditional museum than an elite memory culture project. It typifies the transformation of history museums into politicised institutions that explore the past in therapeutic and instrumental ways. The purpose is to mitigate past national traumas and conflicts, and reset Europeans’ historical consciousness, to facilitate a supranational European outlook for the future.
• The elitist and apologetic orientation of Houses of History, at national or European level, makes them complicit in Europe collapsing into an identity crisis. The emergence of these Houses of History represents a completely new model for history museums in the West. Such ‘houses’ become intellectual ‘safe spaces’ for the postwar elites’ idea of history.
• The HEH aimed to create a unified European history out of the fragmented and often contradictory national narratives of the 27 member states. This could only be accomplished by blunting the sharp academic debates about history. The resulting compromise set a precedent for future large-scale memory culture projects that would remove the controversial core of history and replace it with a more easily digestible narrative that is acceptable to all Europeans.
• Visitors to HEH are confronted with narratives of slavery, colonialism, poverty, oppression and war. As a counterpoint to the doom and gloom, the displays emphasize liberation and human-rights movements, with special focus on the late 20th century: Solidarnost, Glasnost, the fall of the Berlin Wall, feminism, sexual liberation, free abortion and minority rights. It is as if the entire almost 3,000-year-old European saga was just a prelude, a process of crystallization towards a more just and humane civilization. As the displays become more brightly lit, the journey through the HEH literally leads from the shadowy origins of European history and identity to its illuminated unfolding, which obviously begins with the founding of the EU, and features the bloc’s main historical actors and landmarks in the final section.
• At its core, the trouble is that a cultural-memory institution such as the HEH sees history as a problem to be solved, rather than a fascinating complexity worth learning from. The HEH, as the cultural promoter of the EU's federalization agenda through its ‘pan-European’ vision of history, is also complicit in Europe’s growing hatred of its own history/past.

Introduction

We will also examine how the HEH presents a critical assessment of its own concept of history. With these questions in mind, we now invite you to take a virtual tour of the HEH permanent exhibition and explore its space, narrative and audience.

 

The House that the EU Built

Since its opening in 2017, the House of European History in Brussels has been a Pandora's box of debates, ranging from the astronomical cost of the building to various historical, conceptual and didactic issues. From the outset, critical historians have targeted not only the HEH but also each other.

For example, concerned Eastern European historians felt that the historical traumas and experiences of their region had been trivialized or misinterpreted, while Western European historians believed that the HEH had deviated from the liberal canon of European history and had thus become 'Eastern Europeanized'.

Meanwhile, like two genies refusing to go back into their bottles, the memories of the Holocaust and Stalinism fought for their place within the exhibition concept, while national and European perspectives of the narrative clashed fiercely in the background. One could go on at length about the fault lines of these debates, but the price of doing so would be to distract attention from the fundamental dilemma surrounding the HEH phenomenon.

 

Museum vs House of history

Analyses that focus on the various ambiguities of the exhibition have missed a central point: namely, that the HEH is not a pioneering experiment, but the culmination of a step-by-step change in our approach to history since the end of the Cold War. From an institutional point of view, this new approach has been achieved by transforming traditional history museums into so-called ‘houses of history’ on a national or European scale.

The houses of history explore the past in a therapeutic and educational way. Their aim is broadly political: to mitigate national traumas and conflicts and to reset Europeans’ historical consciousness, in order to facilitate the coexistence of different cultures within the EU for future generations. Against this background, the HEH is worth considering not as a singular phenomenon, but in the context of the general paradigm shift in European memory culture. In this sense, it represents a new model for museums, which is gaining ground and should therefore be monitored with careful attention.

 

From idea to reality

The idea of creating a museum of European history was launched by Hans-Gert Pöttering - a German jurist, historian, and conservative politician (CDU, European People's Party) - who was president of the European Parliament from 2007 to 2009. The founders of the HEH embraced the idea of Germany's prominent role in rebuilding the ideal of European humanism, an ideal that Germany itself shattered in the Second World War (WWII).

However, when the HEH opened its doors in 2017, similar European museum concepts offering a European outlook on national history had already emerged. Flagship projects included the House of History in Bonn (opened in 1994, refurbished in 2001 and 2011)^[i] and a similar but failed project to establish a House of the History of France (2012)^[ii].

The first was an attempt to create a new myth of a post-WWII and post-united Germany, and the second to convert the universalistic and messianic view of French history into a national one. Less than a year after the launch of the HEH, the Austrian House of History opened in Vienna in 2018^[iii], as a continuation of Bonn’s House of History or a kind of ‘missing link’ in the intertwined history of Germany and Austria. What we see in a figurative sense through these memory cultural initiatives is the Germanic-French foundations of the European Enlightenment melting into the official memory culture of the competing German-French leadership of the EU.

The decisive paradigm shift posed by the HEH was to create a unified European history out of the fragmented and often contradictory national narratives of the 27 member states. The compromise was reached over a decade through the cooperation of museum experts and various political stakeholders around Europe. This could only be accomplished by blunting the sharp academic debates on history into a consensus-seeking interpretative debate that avoids the dominance of a particular doctrine. This compromise set a precedent for future large-scale memory culture projects that would remove the controversial core of history and replace it with a more easily digestible narrative that is acceptable to all. 

As the House of Austrian History puts it: ‘What has also changed dramatically in the idea of the museum today is that the museum no longer has the exclusive right to interpret history. The exhibition is not intended to show the result of a discussion, but rather to make it possible in the first place.’^[iv] This fallacious conclusion undermines confidence in the professional authority of museums and transforms the museum into a safe place of free interpretation.

 

 

 

 

European History Brought to Life: Experiencing the HEH

The architectural setting of the exhibition, with its grandiose 1930s building in the heart of the European Quarter, expresses the importance of the message it must convey. The HEH building served originally as a dental clinic and was inspired by New York's luxurious palaces of the époque, built in a mixture of Art Deco and Neo-classicism. The existing building was extended with a glass facade, contrasting with the natural stone facade of the lower part of the building - a reflection on the simultaneous symbioses and ruptures between past, present and future through architectural symbolism. The reservedly elegant style of the exterior is deliberately counterbalanced by the interactive and experimental nature of the interior design, which invites visitors to be part of the story and develop it in a ‘polyphonic’ way.

Glass lifts take visitors up and down to different historical periods, creating the illusion of sci-fi time travel. Visitors of all ages - but predominantly students, and many families with children - enjoy the trip. The younger ones are running around with notebooks, discussing the exhibition in groups, obviously following an educational plan that involves task-solving. They are having fun, as the exhibition is adapted to the needs of the digital generation. European history and identity are presented for them as an amazing puzzle, a melting pot of nations and cultures, through an emotionally involving depiction of their tragedies and achievements, but mainly their struggles for freedom.

The spontaneous ambiance and vivacity of the public’s interaction with the exhibition display should not divert us from our starting assumption: that we are in a safe-space museum concept. What concepts come visually and conceptually to the fore when visitors enter the HEH exhibitions, and what conclusions might be drawn from the multimedia journey through the ‘utopia’ of European history?

The starting place of the visit is always crucial, as a sort of business card, marking the house's identity. The anteroom to the exhibitions, where multilingual audio-guides are distributed, is decorated with murals by the internationally renowned Romanian artist Dan Perjovschi.^[v] Here you see symbols evoking environmentalism, human rights and democracy, reminders of the pandemics or the Ukrainian war, but also inputs of politically correct irony about ‘good’ oil and ‘bad’ oil, or ‘good’ weapons and ‘bad’ weapons. This graphic entry design is about as thought-provoking as a perpetual BBC News channel, but it certainly serves its own purpose in setting the tone of the visit.

Regardless of this rather superficial graphic overture, visitors entering the exhibition room are immediately confronted with fundamental philosophical questions that have preoccupied thinkers since at least the Age of Enlightenment. What is Europe? What does it mean to be European? What is European history? These are epochal dilemmas that today appear to be more political than philosophical.

The permanent exhibition was intended to be based on three fundamental elements: the memory of European history, the history of European integration (until Brexit) and its impact on the formation of a putative European identity. The six-storey interactive audio-visual exhibition attempts to answer these questions universally and invites visitors to think along. However, active thinking on the part of the visitor is, in practice, inhibited from the outset.

 

 

A guide to ‘free’ thinking

The displayed items are arranged as signs or metaphors, rather than as objects with their own narrative and identity. The exhibition effectively forces the visitor to adopt the accompanying audio guide. Indeed, without the audio-guide, the exhibition becomes as conceptually blurred as a 3D movie watched without 3D glasses. Visitors are never left to make up their own minds and are constantly instructed by the editorializing of the audio guide, guided towards the exhibition concept’s own conclusions.

A different picture emerges if you dare to approach the exhibition without the guide. It means walking in the tradition of Walter Benjamin's flaneur^[vi] - roaming without equipment and observing the building, the exhibition and the visitors. By starting the visit to the HEH exhibitions without a narrative voiceover, the first impression that meets the visitor is the dark and gloomy atmosphere. The overall stage is more reminiscent of Wagner's Twilight of the Gods than the spiritual elevation of Beethoven's ‘Ode to Joy’ that has become the EU's anthem. This sinister visual and psychological setting contextualizes the birth of the myth of Europe at the start of the visitor’s journey.

Detached from the audio-narrative, one’s emphasis switches naturally to the objects. It makes you wonder at how the exhibits have been stripped of their beauty and contexts of original belonging. These objects have a solitary and rootless aura; they serve mostly as holograms to open the prescribed discourse towards a chosen historical period, social phenomenon or systemic rupture.

When art historian Stephen Greenblatt published his essay ‘Resonance and Wonder’ in 1990^[vii], he explored two models applicable for the exhibition of artifacts generally: one focused on what he called resonance, the other on wonder - two aspects that curatorial work cannot dismiss. The HEH makes little use of either concept, because the desired ambition of the curators – to paint the instrumental teleology of European history – sits uneasily with allowing the space to think, which both these concepts require.

Another striking feature for the observer who relies only on the labels and texts on the showcases, without further explanation, is that the headlines of European history in the HEH’s narrative are overwhelmingly made by conflicts, revolutions and liberation movements. Empires, states, and regimes are born, but their failings always obscure their glory. The visitors are confronted with narratives of slavery, colonialism, poverty, oppression and wars, with short interim periods of peace and prosperity.

As a counterpoint to the doom and gloom, the displays emphasize liberation and human-rights movements, with special focus on the late 20th century: Solidarnost, Glasnost, the fall of the Berlin Wall, feminism, sexual liberation, free abortion and minority rights. It is as if the entire European saga - almost 3,000 years of it - was just a prelude, a process of crystallization towards a more just and humane civilization, one which is constantly evolving, but tragically always falling backwards.

 

Nation and religion in the back seat

Given the supranational and secular framework of the exhibition, it is not surprising that it relegates both the national perspective of history and religion to the background. The extent of this is revealed by a search of the HEH’s online catalogue,  which provides an understanding of the conceptual criteria of the collection - a core identity of every museum.

A search for the terms 'nationalism' and 'nation', and 'religion' and 'Christianity', yields 83 and seven results, respectively. The nation/nationalism database contains mostly modern or contemporary objects, among them the Brexit badge or the symbol of the Norwegian ‘Nei til EU’ movement – equating EU-scepticism with nationalism. The religion/Christianity database is surprisingly poor, with only six to eight items, mostly related to criticism of religion or the Reformation, but there is also a yellow Star of David, which clearly refers to the Church's historical anti-Semitism.

As the inseparable backdrop to the visible exhibition, the collection database reveals the house's curatorial strategies. Its structure and taxonomy clearly indicate the HEH's priority themes, to which national histories and religion obviously do not belong.

 

All roads lead to the EU

The two upper floors form the culmination of the HEH's narrative and its vision of European history, memory and identity. Here we enter a new space of light and clarity – quite literally, as the designers seem to have remembered by now to install lightbulbs. The museum journey thus literally leads from the shadowy long birth of European history and identity to its illuminated unfolding, which obviously begins with the founding period of the EU. In this final section, the milestones of European social transformation and integration, the EU’s main actors and legislative processes are presented. Darkness is followed by light, and light by darkness in a theatrically staged grand narrative.

As a counterpoint, the commemoration of the Holocaust as a constitutive part of the European culture of remembrance finds its place in the same section. There is, however, a slippage in the carefully weighted accounts surrounding the Holocaust. Among the quotes on the walls in this section - from Konrad Adenauer, Walter Ulbricht, Franz Vranitzky, Aleksander Kwaśniewski and Jacques Chirac, emphasizing national guilt in the Holocaust or the fight against fascism - there also appears a quote from Viktor Yushchenko, president of Ukraine from 2005 to 2010. The quote says: 'Ukrainians have lived through wars and famines, just like Stalin's purges. There were times when even the Ukrainian language and culture were denied. That is why Ukrainians understand so well the trials of the Jews.’ (2000)

It is important to know that Yushchenko has been known for his pro-EU and pro-NATO statements, which were, however, not followed by domestic policy and memory politics. During the pro-EU, pro-NATO Yushchenko presidency, however, several institutes of national memory were organized, one of whose main functions was to deny or trivialize the ethnic cleansing and atrocities against Poles and Jews committed by Ukrainian nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army from 1942-43^[viii]. The quote chosen by the curators is all the more bizarre because it depicts Ukrainians as martyrs in the first place and does not acknowledge the complicity of many Ukrainian nationalists in the Holocaust. Although, seen from a broader perspective, the exploitation of the memory of the Holocaust in order to strengthen European integration is nothing new.

Finally, after walking through the entire exhibition complex, the conceptual highlight of the tour arrives when visitors are asked to define their own Europe and their own Europeanness. They can draw on their impressions from the visit to help focus their own understanding of and answers to the questions.

 

 

 

 

History Houses and the End of History

Does the end of the visit to the HEH evoke the ‘End of History’, as in Francis Fukuyama’s prediction? If not, perhaps it reveals the disappearance of the traditional history museum with an authoritative master narrative, grounded in scholarly research to safeguard the integrity of its interpretation.

Essentially, what is the problem with the proliferating model of Houses of History and why should we be sceptical of them?

At its core, the conceptual trap of both the HEH and similar memory institutions is that they see history as a problem to be solved, rather than a fascinating complexity worth learning from. Strangely enough, the HEH, as the cultural promoter of the EU's federalization agenda, is sometimes credited with a ‘pan-European’ vision of history that leads back to Charlemagne's empire or even to the Roman Empire.

The assumption is ambiguous. To describe contemporary Europe as the heir to one of the world's most glorious powers, a forerunner of social justice, while at the same time defining its past as an apologetic entity that needs to be therapeutically addressed, is a double contradiction to say the least. Rather, the truth is that the elitist and apologetic orientation of Houses of History, at national or European level, makes them complicit in Europe collapsing into an identity crisis and hatred of its own history. In fact, the emergence of these ‘houses of history’ represents a completely new model for history museums in the West. By placing ‘the narrative’ of history at the core of their mission (rather than, say, objects from the past), they attempt to provide a decisive new idea of Western history. Such ‘houses’ become intellectual ‘safe spaces’ for the postwar elites’ idea of history.

After all, might not the best scenario for the HEH be to ditch its first exhibition concept and transform it to the history of the EU from the first pan-European vision back in 1920^[ix] to the present day? This would have the virtue of not trying to read history backwards – avoiding the temptation to say that everything in European history was always destined to end in the post-political ‘utopia’ of the EU.

But such a change is highly unlikely. The House of European History has become a key part of the EU’s legitimating narrative. Until we defeat politically the idea that the only solution to the questions posed by history to European peoples is further European integration, the House will remain a key plank of the EU’s propaganda narrative.

 

About the author

Katalin is responsible for expanding MCC Brussel's academic network and promoting events in the fields of history, memory culture and the arts. A native of the Hungarian minority in Slovakia, she is one of the founders of the first Slovak Jewish museums in Presov and Bratislava. She witnessed the Velvet Revolution and the break-up of Czechoslovakia in Prague. After these historical turmoils come to end, she left the city of the Golden Towers and lived in different parts of the world. She obtained a Master's degree in Hebrew and Yiddish at INALCO in Paris and a PhD in Eastern European Studies at Aarhus University, where she taught for several years.