{"id":7120,"date":"2022-09-19T07:05:44","date_gmt":"2022-09-19T05:05:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uni.lu\/c2dh-en\/articles\/on-the-political-uses-of-the-past-in-luxembourg\/"},"modified":"2025-03-26T10:08:21","modified_gmt":"2025-03-26T09:08:21","slug":"on-the-political-uses-of-the-past-in-luxembourg","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/www.uni.lu\/c2dh-en\/articles\/on-the-political-uses-of-the-past-in-luxembourg\/","title":{"rendered":"On the political uses of the past in Luxembourg"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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In August 2022, I had the pleasure to participate in the conference of the International Federation for Public History at the Freie Universit\u00e4t in Berlin. Besides meeting colleagues and listening to exciting papers, I held a presentation as part of the panel Public History and the Political Uses of the Past. This blog post is based on my conference paper entitled \u201cPolishing the Image of a Nation-State: Luxembourg and the Political Uses of the Past since the 1990s\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The topic of my presentation was not linked to any current project, and it was partly based on my past research on the history of cultural policy in Luxembourg. The idea to organise a panel on the uses of the past occurred to me in 2019, partly because this topic was present in my research, but also because I felt that it was very up to date. Three colleagues and I submitted the panel proposal. As the conference did not take place as planned in 2020, we resubmitted our panel proposal for the 2022 conference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the final panel in August 2022, two colleagues who were part of the original proposal could unfortunately not participate. Nevertheless, I was delighted that it could take place after three years of coordination, including very insightful presentations by the other two panellists, Vera Dubina and Sylvia Bailey. Serge Noiret chaired the panel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my presentation, I talked about the political use of history by the Luxembourg government in recent decades and focused on two dimensions of this use. The introduction briefly reflected on the concept of \u201cpolitical use of history\u201d and discussed the uses of the past identified by Klas G\u00f6ran-Karlsson.[1]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nProtecting a \u201cnational identity\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I began with the 1980s as this period marked a turn in the government’s attention to history and memory politics. The audiovisual memory campaign aiming to collect photographic material about the industrial south of Luxembourg is one example. The protection of a national identity (or cultural identity) became a policy objective of the government. Of course, the question of national identity was already present in public and political discourse in the preceding decades. However, it was a concern that explicitly appeared in official policy documents at the end of the 1980s. The attention that the government paid to national identity might be explained by at least a couple of reasons: the appearance of nationalist, right-wing movements in the 1980s \u2013 to which the government attempted to react \u2013 and the European integration process (Treaty of Maastricht in 1992), triggering fears that Luxembourg might lose its identity in a Europe of open borders. In 1991, the Ministry of Cultural Affairs was explicit in this respect, highlighting the need to strengthen \u201cour cultural identity\u201d and to develop initiatives that promote \u201cour cultural heritage\u201d in view of 1993 (creation of the EU common market).[2]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this context, Luxembourg celebrated the 150th<\/sup> anniversary of its independence in 1989. The government commissioned a national exhibition, De l\u2019Etat \u00e0 la Nation<\/em>, coordinated by the late historian Gilbert Trausch. The goal consisted in showing the development of national consciousness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The exhibition catalogue disseminated tropes of the master narrative (in an updated version including the Nazi occupation). It reproduced, for instance, the idea of a massive resistance during the occupation, while completely ignoring collaboration. The exhibition was an example of a public history initiative linked to the idea of protecting and promoting national identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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