War Belongs in a Museum

This thesis explores how visitors to World War II museums in the Netherlands experience and interact with the cultural memory of World War II. This research applies Jan Assmann's concept of cultural memory to explore the experience of visitors to World War II museums. Today, 80 years after the war has ended, there are ever fewer people alive who can tell firsthand stories of World War II. This makes examining how communicative memory is shifting into cultural memory more relevant than ever. The research took place at three different World War II museums in the Netherlands. At these locations, a total of 22 rounds of intervening participant observation were done. This meant conducting a mix of observations and discussions with the participants while walking through the museum. From these museum visits, several themes came up in relation to the visitor experience and the concept of cultural memory. At first, it became clear for what reasons people visited the museums. The next theme showed in what ways the museum was experienced, mostly unrelated to the concept of cultural memory. Visitors experience the museum both through emotions and through learning, with historical empathy and historical Verstehung as the deepest form of understanding. After this, the museum was explained as a space of relatability. The experience in a museum is highly dependent on what a visitor can relate to. This can occur in a multitude of ways, but it was found to be a significant aspect of the experience. Lastly, the findings suggest that personal stories, meaning communicative memory, are still an important part of the experience of cultural memory. Even while most of the visitors were not alive during the war, personal connections were an overarching aspect of the experience for most visitors. This challenges the understanding of the concept of cultural memory, because the binary, successive approach to communicative and cultural memory might be more fluid than proposed in the literature.