Cultural Diplomacy in the War Museum: The Case of the German-Russian Museum Berlin-Karlshorst

Abstract:National heritage, and particularly "difficult" heritage, does not exist in isolation from the heritage of other countries. Russia's relationship to Germany is a salient case in point in the Putin era, in which a more cosmopolitan approach to the history of the Second World War in many European states has been challenged by a reversion to nationalist approaches to this period in Russian memory politics. On the basis of the German-Russian Museum Berlin-Karlshorst, this article explores the possibilities of and limitations to international projects for the development of shared narratives about the past as a phenomenon of cultural diplomacy.