The Emotional Life of Contemporary Public Memorials

Resumen de los autores

tures a number of Holocaust memorials, including the Nooit Meer Auschwitz ('Never Again Auschwitz') Monument, designed by Jan Wolkers and dedicated in Amsterdam's Wertheim Park in , and the Homomonument (the first memorial honoring gays and lesbians killed during the Nazi Holocaust), which was designed by Karin Daan and dedicated along Amsterdam's Prinsengracht, near the Anne Frank Museum, in .In , the Slavernij Monument, commemorating the victims of slavery in the Netherlands, was dedicated in Amsterdam's Oosterpark.Likewise, the Netherlands has seen its share of temporary memorials: those ephemeral memorials made of flowers, candles, balloons, hand-penned letters, sympathy cards, and stuffed animals that precipitate after unexpected, and generally highly-publicized, traumas, often on the site where those traumas have occurred.Following the murders of controversial Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn in , and similarly controversial Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh in , the outdoor sites were they were slain (and sites elsewhere) became temporary shrine sites decorated with votive candles, floral tributes, cards, posters, photographs, teddy bears, and other offerings particular to their personalities and those of their mourners.Following /, the exterior grounds of the U.S. Embassy in The Hague were literally blanketed with bouquets of flowers, cards, and candles.Temporary memorials were also erected after the  Hercules disaster, in which a military transport plane crashed and left thirty-four dead in Eindhoven, in the southern Netherlands; after the  explosion in a fireworks factory in Enschede, in which twenty-two people died; and after the  New Year's Day fire in Volendam, a small village north of Amsterdam, that claimed the lives of fourteen people. And while it is mostly mass disaster and mass-mediated tragedy that commands large-scale, national attention in the Netherlands (as in other nations), roadside memorialsthose hand-made crosses that are erected by grieving families and friends at the sites of fatal traffic accidents, and are often decorated with flowers, personal items, and photoscan be seen throughout the country, and elsewhere around the world.

Áreas y palabras clave

Cómo citar (APA 7)

Doss, E. (2011). The Emotional Life of Contemporary Public Memorials. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.5117/9789089640185