Europe is a fragile construct. For some, "Europe" is synonymous with progress, humanity and freedom – for others it stands for intolerance and slavery, colonialism and genocide. Who translates the spectrum of frequently competing perceptions of Europe and in what way? The danger that the idea of Europe could be lost in the diversity of its translations is very real. Social cohesion and political action in Europe are doomed to fail without communication and consensus on those memories which unite and divide its people, on shared visions, values and cultural assets. The societal relevance of images of Europe and their translations is impossible to underestimate; the continent's history is omnipresent throughout, its impact extending into our day.
The network carrying out this project, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), is working with the Universities of Kassel and Gießen and the Centre for Contemporary History in Potsdam to discover how perceptions of Europe have changed throughout the major political and societal ruptures of the 20th century, how Europe has been constructed and communicated via a range of media and how it is perceived from various spatial perspectives. The project examines communication and consensus on Europe across cultures and forms of communication, looks into how European history lives on, or comes to life, in the present, and investigates the transmission of images of Europe in the media.
This work covers a number of different media or agents of translation: print media and parliamentary debates discuss Europe and European memory from a largely ephemeral perspective, while textbooks, memorials and political symbols are intended to pass images of Europe on to future generations. Their purpose notwithstanding, all media examined show evidence of the specific selectivity with which they translate images of Europe, using codes, symbols and narrative patterns across all media of communication that indicate the existence of transnational or trans-generational translation processes, ruptures or continuities.
The sub-projects covered by Lost in Translation? survey Europe from the perspective of shifting centres and peripheries in transition. Germany, France, Spain and Poland have all conceived of themselves, in differing ways and at various times, as European centres; Britain and the USA represent a view of Europe from the periphery.
The sub-project attached to the Georg Eckert Institute deals with the depiction and remembrance of and processes of coming to terms with Europe's colonial past in German, French and English textbooks from the 20th century.
