Date of Award

4-2017

Document Type

Thesis

First Advisor

Julia Bruggemann

Second Advisor

David Worthington

Third Advisor

Hiroko Chiba

Abstract

This paper examines if, how and to which degree, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum in Nakajima District of Hiroshima, Japan and the Information Center under the Field of Stelae in Berlin, Germany, transform a Culture of Violence and a Culture of Neutrality into a Culture of Peace. I analyzed sponsors, mission statements, exhibits, topographical and architectural designs, and geographical factors as a reflection of the degree of these selected museums’ contribution to the cultural transformation. The two selected museums stand on the soils with a complex history involving mass tragedies. Hiroshima became the first-ever victim to the atomic bombing which killed 140,000 people as well as destroyed an integral military city of the Imperial Japan. Berlin was a capital city of the Nazi Germany as well as a victim of the Ally’s air raids and post-war occupation. The comparison of these museums and the respective city tell us how the museums contribute to a Culture of Peace with different concepts of and approaches to peace. It is shaped by whether them standing on the land of victims or the land of perpetrators, and whether the city itself was completely destroyed or not in the same way as how the victims of a larger tragedy were produced.

Comments

Honor Scholar Thesis

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