From the “poison cupboard” to the Internet? Is education about Nazi propaganda possible in an open scholarship network? A conference in Vienna on the responsibility of libraries and museums looks for new ways

Abstract

The article informs about the Vienna conference “National Socialism digital. The Responsibility of Libraries, Archives and Museums as well as Research Institutions and Media in Dealing with the Nazi Era on the Net” (November 27–29, 2019). It is also a plea to further develop the memory institutions library, museum and archive into digital workshops of democracy with strong citizen participation. If the future German newspaper portal of the “German Digital Library” were to fade out Nazi newspapers for copyright reasons, this would in fact be tantamount to continued protection of perpetrators. Rather, a complete newspaper portal should use the methods of digital humanities to contextualise the problematic sources appropriately and show, with language and image-critical analyses, where indifference and looking away have led in the past.