Marcus Colla
Biographic Data
| ID | 3759908 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Marcus Colla |
| GIVEN NAMES | Marcus |
| FAMILY NAME | Colla |
| SIGNATURE | COLLA M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Bergen |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0880-3495 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 5 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Remembering 1989
Back to Babel
A Nation Fermented
The Stalin Cult in East Germany and the Making of the Postwar Soviet Empire, 1945–1961
Journal Article The Stalin Cult in East Germany and the Making of the Postwar Soviet Empire, 1945–1961 Get access The Stalin Cult in East Germany and the Making of the Postwar Soviet Empire, 1945–1961. By Alexey Tikhomirov. Translated by Jacqueline Friedlander.New York: Lexington Books. 2022. xiv + 368pp.$125.00(hardback); $42.99 (paperback); $40.50 (e-book). Marcus Colla Marcus Colla Pembroke College, University of Cambridge, UK [email protected] …
Whither Prussia? Berlin's Humboldt Forum and the Afterlife of a Vanished State
From its very conception some thirty years ago, Berlin's Humboldt Forum has been one of contemporary Germany's most controversial cultural initiatives. One aspect of this controversy has been the role of the Prussian past in reunified Germany. Housed in a reconstruction of the Prussian Royal Palace destroyed by the East German communist government in 1950, the visual symbolism of the project spurred a long struggle over the appropriate urban aest…
The Chronopolitics of Revolution
A failed effort at "reform from above" or a dramatic reassertion of "people power"? Almost thirty-five years on, studies of the Revolutions of 1989 continue to be framed by these two polarities. However, this historiographical focus has meant that scholars have often overlooked the actual content and character of protest itself. This article argues that one way of reinjecting agency and ideas back into our historical understanding of 1989 is thro…
Rebuilding the past
This article examines how political time in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) was shaped and contested by architectural preservation during that state’s formative years. In particular, it investigates the role of historic preservationists in the GDR as ‘time activists’ who both contributed to and challenged the construction of an ideologically informed ‘order of time’. It argues that preservationists in the GDR helped mould, solidify and reinf…
The Spectre of the Present
Presentism used to be so simple. In the old vernacular it referred to a tendency to view the past from the perspective of the present (or, at its most extreme, maybe even use the past to illuminate the present). Historians disagreed furiously on the intellectual virtues of orienting their views of the past to the needs of the current day. But the content of the term itself was rarely disputed
Bowling for Communism
Studies of communism’s fall in Eastern Europe rarely fail to note that ‘the ruling parties’ chronic inability to fulfil their own promises’ acutely exposed the shallowness of their claims to power. But while economic and consumer shortages have occupied the lion’s share of these kinds of analyses, the spheres of culture and aesthetics have been comparatively neglected. Redressing this oversight is one of the central ambitions of Andrew Demshuk’s …
Architecture in Global Socialism
Second- and Third World entanglements are a booming field of research on post-1945 Eastern Europe. The past decade or so has witnessed a veritable profusion of case studies tracking the myriad ways in which economic, cultural and political bonds were forged between the socialist and postcolonial worlds. In his remarkably rich and original new study, Łukasz Stanek enlists architecture as a lens through which to illustrate the complexity of these i…
Memory, Heritage and the Demolition of the Potsdam Garnisonkirche, 1968
In 1968, the ruling Socialist Unity Party demolished Potsdam’s Garnisonkirche (Garrison Church). This article analyses the way in which the demolition of the Garnisonkirche opened up a spectrum of reflections on the meaning of the Prussian and Nazi pasts in the GDR and the ways it ought to be mediated through the urban landscape. Using petitions sent by everyday citizens to the local political authorities as well as debates within the SED itself,…
The Politics of Time and State Identity in the German Democratic Republic
The communist regimes of Eastern Europe carried a particular set of assumptions about the way past, present and future related to one another. In the case of the German Democratic Republic (the GDR), these assumptions manifested themselves in official language and propaganda as a defence of the regime's dynamic and forward-looking historicity against the ‘ahistorical’ and ‘nostalgic’ modes of understanding that supposedly typified the historical …
Constructing the Prussia-Myth in East Germany, 1945–61
In postwar East Germany, dealing with the history of Prussia was problematic. While ‘Prussianism’ or the ‘Spirit of Prussia’ was widely perceived as a central cause of Nazism, it also could not be ignored when developing ‘progressive’ narratives of German history. This article investigates the political, intellectual and symbolic construction of a ‘Prussia-myth’ in the early postwar years. In particular, it investigates how the ‘Prussia-myth’ was…
Prussian Palimpsests
This article considers the fate of Prussian buildings and memorials in East Germany between 1945 and 1961. Analyzing a number of case studies from Berlin and Potsdam, it places the treatment of these structures within the broader contours of history management practices. Although this era was characterized by a strong anti-Prussian sentiment in the GDR's historical discourse, it also witnessed a complex interaction between the SED and its histori…
The Chronopolitics of Revolution
A failed effort at "reform from above" or a dramatic reassertion of "people power"? Almost thirty-five years on, studies of the Revolutions of 1989 continue to be framed by these two polarities. However, this historiographical focus has meant that scholars have often overlooked the actual content and character of protest itself. This article argues that one way of reinjecting agency and ideas back into our historical understanding of 1989 is thro…
Whither Prussia? Berlin's Humboldt Forum and the Afterlife of a Vanished State
From its very conception some thirty years ago, Berlin's Humboldt Forum has been one of contemporary Germany's most controversial cultural initiatives. One aspect of this controversy has been the role of the Prussian past in reunified Germany. Housed in a reconstruction of the Prussian Royal Palace destroyed by the East German communist government in 1950, the visual symbolism of the project spurred a long struggle over the appropriate urban aest…
The Spectre of the Present
Presentism used to be so simple. In the old vernacular it referred to a tendency to view the past from the perspective of the present (or, at its most extreme, maybe even use the past to illuminate the present). Historians disagreed furiously on the intellectual virtues of orienting their views of the past to the needs of the current day. But the content of the term itself was rarely disputed
Constructing the Prussia-Myth in East Germany, 1945–61
In postwar East Germany, dealing with the history of Prussia was problematic. While ‘Prussianism’ or the ‘Spirit of Prussia’ was widely perceived as a central cause of Nazism, it also could not be ignored when developing ‘progressive’ narratives of German history. This article investigates the political, intellectual and symbolic construction of a ‘Prussia-myth’ in the early postwar years. In particular, it investigates how the ‘Prussia-myth’ was…
Prussian Palimpsests
This article considers the fate of Prussian buildings and memorials in East Germany between 1945 and 1961. Analyzing a number of case studies from Berlin and Potsdam, it places the treatment of these structures within the broader contours of history management practices. Although this era was characterized by a strong anti-Prussian sentiment in the GDR's historical discourse, it also witnessed a complex interaction between the SED and its histori…
Constructing the Prussia-Myth in East Germany, 1945–61
In postwar East Germany, dealing with the history of Prussia was problematic. While ‘Prussianism’ or the ‘Spirit of Prussia’ was widely perceived as a central cause of Nazism, it also could not be ignored when developing ‘progressive’ narratives of German history. This article investigates the political, intellectual and symbolic construction of a ‘Prussia-myth’ in the early postwar years. In particular, it investigates how the ‘Prussia-myth’ was…
The Politics of Time and State Identity in the German Democratic Republic
The communist regimes of Eastern Europe carried a particular set of assumptions about the way past, present and future related to one another. In the case of the German Democratic Republic (the GDR), these assumptions manifested themselves in official language and propaganda as a defence of the regime's dynamic and forward-looking historicity against the ‘ahistorical’ and ‘nostalgic’ modes of understanding that supposedly typified the historical …
Memory, Heritage and the Demolition of the Potsdam Garnisonkirche, 1968
In 1968, the ruling Socialist Unity Party demolished Potsdam’s Garnisonkirche (Garrison Church). This article analyses the way in which the demolition of the Garnisonkirche opened up a spectrum of reflections on the meaning of the Prussian and Nazi pasts in the GDR and the ways it ought to be mediated through the urban landscape. Using petitions sent by everyday citizens to the local political authorities as well as debates within the SED itself,…
Rebuilding the past
This article examines how political time in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) was shaped and contested by architectural preservation during that state’s formative years. In particular, it investigates the role of historic preservationists in the GDR as ‘time activists’ who both contributed to and challenged the construction of an ideologically informed ‘order of time’. It argues that preservationists in the GDR helped mould, solidify and reinf…
The Spectre of the Present
Presentism used to be so simple. In the old vernacular it referred to a tendency to view the past from the perspective of the present (or, at its most extreme, maybe even use the past to illuminate the present). Historians disagreed furiously on the intellectual virtues of orienting their views of the past to the needs of the current day. But the content of the term itself was rarely disputed
Bowling for Communism
Studies of communism’s fall in Eastern Europe rarely fail to note that ‘the ruling parties’ chronic inability to fulfil their own promises’ acutely exposed the shallowness of their claims to power. But while economic and consumer shortages have occupied the lion’s share of these kinds of analyses, the spheres of culture and aesthetics have been comparatively neglected. Redressing this oversight is one of the central ambitions of Andrew Demshuk’s …
Architecture in Global Socialism
Second- and Third World entanglements are a booming field of research on post-1945 Eastern Europe. The past decade or so has witnessed a veritable profusion of case studies tracking the myriad ways in which economic, cultural and political bonds were forged between the socialist and postcolonial worlds. In his remarkably rich and original new study, Łukasz Stanek enlists architecture as a lens through which to illustrate the complexity of these i…
Whither Prussia? Berlin's Humboldt Forum and the Afterlife of a Vanished State
From its very conception some thirty years ago, Berlin's Humboldt Forum has been one of contemporary Germany's most controversial cultural initiatives. One aspect of this controversy has been the role of the Prussian past in reunified Germany. Housed in a reconstruction of the Prussian Royal Palace destroyed by the East German communist government in 1950, the visual symbolism of the project spurred a long struggle over the appropriate urban aest…
The Chronopolitics of Revolution
A failed effort at "reform from above" or a dramatic reassertion of "people power"? Almost thirty-five years on, studies of the Revolutions of 1989 continue to be framed by these two polarities. However, this historiographical focus has meant that scholars have often overlooked the actual content and character of protest itself. This article argues that one way of reinjecting agency and ideas back into our historical understanding of 1989 is thro…
The Stalin Cult in East Germany and the Making of the Postwar Soviet Empire, 1945–1961
Journal Article The Stalin Cult in East Germany and the Making of the Postwar Soviet Empire, 1945–1961 Get access The Stalin Cult in East Germany and the Making of the Postwar Soviet Empire, 1945–1961. By Alexey Tikhomirov. Translated by Jacqueline Friedlander.New York: Lexington Books. 2022. xiv + 368pp.$125.00(hardback); $42.99 (paperback); $40.50 (e-book). Marcus Colla Marcus Colla Pembroke College, University of Cambridge, UK [email protected] …
Back to Babel
A Nation Fermented
Remembering 1989
History (11 works) · Political science (10 works) · European history and politics (9 works) · History (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Archaeology (6 works) · German History and Society (6 works) · Politics (6 works) · Communism (5 works)