Cultural memorial places (Kulturelle Gedächtnisorte KGO)

The conference of the KGO is an association of currently 22 cultural institutions of national importance, all based in the new federal states (the former GDR) of Germany. The formation of the KGO in 2003 traces back to the so called “Blaubuch” (Blue book) of the German government.

Memorial places – “What kind of places are these, where history has formed sediments? How had they come into being? What do they offer?  First of all they create memory in the sense that they keep alive the practical spatial circumstances of the life of outstanding writers, artists, musicians, thinkers, scientists and inventors until the present days. They do this, to begin with, […] by preserving the house where the particular person was born or had died, where they worked and from where they operated. The memorial places of this type embrace live and work and like the impression of a dinosaur foot in fossil clay they visualize the physical existence of these intellectual heroes. They hold on to the traces of a life that would otherwise volatilize or, if at all, last on scattered printed paper and as an article in an encyclopedia. Based on the person and his/her life these memorial places open up the spatial foundations and the physical embodiment of the micro-universe of their work making it thereby accessible to the present.” (Aleida Assmann)