The German Countermonument: Conceptual Indeterminacies and the Retheorisation of the Arts of Vicarious Memory

This article examines trends in the conceptualisation of German countermonumental architecture that associate monumentality and fascism. The countermonument has been conceptualised as the appropriate form by which to memorialise the Holocaust, given its self-disruptive dynamic and inability to impose a monumental version of the past. However, following recent critiques of memory studies and German architectural discourse, this article argues that the prevailing conceptualisation of the countermonument engenders an ironic slippage from, to use Gillian Rose's terms, the “representation of fascism” to the “fascism of representation”.