I 16 Perspectives from Germany lish his Nordisches Archiv (“Nordic Archive”) in Oerlinghausen. During the 1995 Viking Festival, meanwhile, Harry “Radegeis” Schmidt, a “grandmaster” of the Armanen-Orden (“Armanen Order”; see below), appeared there together with other activists. Far-right extremists from political parties such as the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (“Nationaldemocratic Party of Germany”, NPD, now Die Heimat), Die Rechte (“The Right”) and Der III. Weg (“The Third Path”) still attempt to hijack the open-air museum to promote their ideology.20 Two other examples of post-war open-air museums in West Berlin and the former East Germany (GDR) show that experimental archaeology also provided significant impetus for the growth of ancient history reenactments, which became increasingly popular after 1990. In the Düppel district of Berlin, a museum village was founded in 1975 that involved reconstructing a 12th-century settlement that had been excavated by archaeologists. Visitors are shown the mediaeval lifestyle as well as old handicrafts and farming methods in order to create a living image of the Middle Ages.21 Reconstruction work at the excavation site of a Slavic stronghold and putative religious shrine in Groß Raden in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania started in 1982. With the support of the local socialist party committee and the local collective farm, archaeologist Ewald Schuldt managed to rebuild much of the site and display it in an open-air museum despite the objections of the GDR Academy of Sciences. This museum was likewise revived later on with demonstrations of craftsmanship and the past way of life.22 Since the 1980s, many open-air museums in Germany have also had strategies for using living history to present aspects of daily life and the relevant material culture. Open-air museums have more than doubled in number since 2000 and have been joined by countless historical theme parks. This development is often associated with a wave of commercialisation and “eventisation” practices within history education that reflects changing ideas in museum didactics as well as the growing popularity of role-playing games, historical reenactments, medieval markets and TV programmes about history.23 Since the late 1990s, numerous places that are regarded as Germanic, Slavic or Viking as well as other villages and forts have been converted into archaeological reserves or theme parks. Not all of these are publicly funded official institutions; some are private initiatives run by local historical societies, commercial companies or even reenactment troupes themselves.24 Examples include the complex known as Ukranenland – Historische Werkstätten Torgelow (“Land of Ukrani – Historical workshops Torgelow”) in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and the Frühmittelalterlicher Königshof – Gervina (“Early mediaeval royal court – Gervina”) in Breitungen in Thuringia as well as the Historisches Dorf – Gannahall (“Historical village – Gannahall”) near Nauen in Brandenburg, which will be looked at in more detail below. At these complexes, visitors acquire knowledge largely by themselves as they go round, meaning that there is no academic “corrective” to counterbalance the representations presented. Yet visitors have the impression that they are at an open-air museum that teaches its knowledge in an academically sound and scientifically watertight way. Criticism of the concept of reenactment Measured against its massive contribution to the production and popularisation of images of history, the critical examination of reenactment as a method for picking up and communicating (ancient) history must be regarded as largely under-represented. As illustrated above, reenactment as a concept is considered capable of practically reliving historical events by replaying them and, in so doing, of gaining a better understanding of life in times past. However, such an assumption hinges on the belief that historical knowledge is based on a practical understanding of the past in the present, yet such an assumption has to be deemed to have been refuted by a series of fundamental insights from the theory of knowledge and the theory of history. Even as early as the 18th century, the historical theorists Johannes Martin Chladenius and Johann Christoph Gatterer highlighted the locational constraints – in terms of space, time and everyday life – affecting the writers of history, which always have a relativising effect.25 The debate over the fiction of history intensified from the mid-20th century onwards. Apart from generally critical viewpoints – which conceptualise perception and knowledge as human constructs controlled by cognitive and social processes with, at most, conditional reference being made to an ontic reality – the main problem for any appropriation of history is that the past can no longer be perceived or physically experienced. Even though remnants from the past, whether
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