Comic Art and/as Remembrance in German Culture and Beyond

Identity is unthinkable without remembrance. Memories alone make us who we are — as individuals as well as a collective. With regard to the interpretation of historical processes, as well as with regard to one’s own self, remembrance therefore has a fundamental significance. But memories are always a retrospective interpretation from a present-day point of view, which are usually mediated.

While the importance of media products such as films, paintings or literary test for individual collective memory in the German culture has already been widely studied, the analysis of comics and graphic novels in this context has so far rather been neglected.

Against this background, the conference on Comic Art and/as Remembrance in German Culture and Beyond intends for the first time to focus on the meaning and the achievements of graphic narrative for the field of remembrance, examining questions on various dimensions. The conference examines aspects of content as well as the formal achievements of memories in comics and asks about the reception of specific comics that must be seen as part of the German culture of remembrance.

The conference marks a first attempt at a systematic approach to the peculiarities and achievements of the important art form comic for remembering, thus providing impulses both for comics research and for research on the subject of remembrance.