Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Role of History and Memory in Identity Construction: The Case of Kaliningrad, Formerly German Konigsberg

New York University, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the ability of a state to manipulate national identity by investigating the history of the former German city of Koenigsberg after it was taken over by the Soviet Union in 1945 and renamed Kaliningrad. In the following decades, the pre-war history of the city became the focus of a struggle between the Soviet state, the local administration, and the Russian speaking citizens. Despite Soviet prohibitions, the local population maintained the German history of the territory. Interviews and archival data will be used to document the state-promoted official history and the efforts by the local intelligentsia to reproduce the German history of the territory. Architectural projects (deconstruction, reconstruction, and preservation) provide an especially valuable historical record for understanding how these conflicts over collective memory varied over time with changes in the political regime.