In the strictest sense, Remembrance Culture consists of all the behavioral configurations and socially approved or acquired manners of a society or group used to keep parts of the past in their consciousness and thus deliberately make it present.
The politicization of Erinnerungskultur is above all noticeable in regime changes, in which the previous understanding of past events is altered under new leadership.
In Germany, Austria and in many other countries, the Culture of Remembrance is essentially a synonym for remembering the Holocaust and the sacrifices made during National Socialism.
There are also examples such as Apartheid in South Africa, the Reign of Terror of the Red Khmer in Cambodia, the acts of Stalin in the Soviet Union, Chairman Mao's regime in China or the war crimes committed by the Japanese army in eastern Asia during the Second Sino-Japanese War.
In 2011, during the event "Memorial Mania" [2] there was discussion about suitable dates for the construction of monuments and the risk of instrumentalizing them for political purposes.
Other prominent and current conflicts about the culture of remembrance are i.e. the reconstruction of Berlin City Palace in the place of the Palace of the Republic, Dresdner Frauenkirche that was restored via anastylosis, and the expansion of Prora (that was planned to be a KdF-Seebad, but was however extended to Stalinist barracks) in Rügen to luxury real estate.
The monument is considered to be a prominent exhibit of the Berlin Republic, in which the acknowledgments of nation and historical guilt are not seen as contradiction anymore.
Eine Jugend [de], the literary scholar and holocaust survivor Ruth Klüger has contested whether Dachau, amongst other examples, is suitable for use as an educational facility and museum.
She writes that Dachau is so clean and orderly that it almost feels inviting, as if it were evoking the memory of a former holiday camp rather than of a tortured existence.
"The language of commemoration is ritualized, selective, variegated, standardized, and tends to explicitly transport a particular society to the relevant image of history".