Tag: Profiteer
- Projekt, Franz Wanner
How is history interpreted and by whom? And whose interests are associated with such interpretations? In his multi-part work “Mind the Memory Gap” Franz Wanner contrasts two places—Neuaubing and Ottobrunn—both connected with the history of the Nazi armaments industry. While at one of them the Nazi past has long since been forgotten and a memorial site has now been made possible, at the other this past is being suppressed.
In the film “From Camp to Campus” Wanner addresses the history of the Nazis’ former aviation research institute in Ottobrunn. The Reich Ministry of Aviation commissioned the aircraft manufacturer Messerschmidt AG, founded in 1938, to construct a building for the institute. Hundreds of forced laborers were deployed for this purpose.1 Today the site is home to the Ludwig-Bölkow-Campus, a technology center housing research institutes and industrial concerns.
The aviation and armaments company Airbus also has its headquarters on this site. Airbus took over the military aviation and space technology of the former aircraft manufacturer Dornier-Werke in 2004. During the Nazi era Dornier-Werke also had a site in Neuaubing, not far from the Reichsbahn labor camp.
In the film “Mind the Memory Gap” Wanner stages a fictitious guided tour in which history is employed as a marketing strategy. Attention is focused on certain aspects while others are omitted. He thus reveals the techniques and constructs behind perceived reality.
Here the past is interpreted for commercial purposes, turning remembrance into symbolic capital and at the same time de-politicizing it. Alongside the two films and his texts Wanner uses an interactive tool to reflect on the role of language as a medium with which to generate ideas of reality.
[1] See Elsbeth Bösl, Nicole Kramer, Stephanie Linsinger, “Die vielen Gesichter der Zwangsarbeit. Merkmale des ,Ausländereinsatzes’ im Landkreis München,” in Heusler/Spoerer/Trischler (eds.), Rüstung, Kriegswirtschaft und Zwangsarbeit im „Dritten Reich”, Oldenbourg 2010, pp. 149–162, here p. 156.