Fatal Attraction: Nazi Landscapes, Modernism, and Holocaust Memory

Landscape and heritage form a strong couple in European culture. Since the Renaissance landscapes have been perceived as ‘art’ and valuated by scenic qualities, represented in painting and reproduced through design and architecture. This connoisseurship is still a basic assumption of heritage conservation and tourism, working under the fetish of authenticity by singling out aesthetic styles and iconic periods. Although recent biographical approaches to historical landscapes have opposed this reductionism by stressing long-term development, the landscape/mindscape nexus can – in my view – not be grasped by the prevailing metaphor of an archaeological layering of time. Alternatively, a more dynamic