Data

The coming to terms with the past is essential as a negotiating point in interstate relations, especially in the consequences of the Second World War. Not only the question towards compensation, guilt and victimhood but as well in numbers and losses of humans - and their remains. The dealing of the commemoration of the dead and their resting places makes an integral part in the history politics. After the end of the Soviet Union, the new Russian Federation signed an agreement with the Federal Republic of Germany on the war graves in both countries.

Le recours aux nouvelles technologies dans un contexte muséal s’est amplifié ces dernières années. Les exemples deviennent nombreux et prennent des directions multiples. La dimension supplémentaire offerte par les réalités augmentée et virtuelle au sein même du contenu et de la narration des institutions muséales s’avère définitivement enthousiasmante et ouvre le champ des possibles.

In February 2021, a team at the Centre for Contemporary and Digital History at the University of Luxembourg launched a call for contributions as part of the project, “WARLUX – War Experiences in Luxembourg,” funded by the Luxembourgish Research Fund (Fond National de la Recherche). The team researches the personal side of the Luxembourgish war generation’s history. To uncover the individual experiences of these men, women and families, the team asked the public to share their family stories, letters, diaries, photographs, and other personal documents.

Expertenworkshop am 30./31.08.2022 im Landesarchiv NRW in Duisburg: born digitals und die historische Wissenschaft – Annäherungen an eine Quellenkunde für genuin elektronisches Archivmaterial

Public History and history didactics are two subdisciplines of history that focus on reaching the world outside the academy. Both put an emphasis on “practising” history while at the same time grounding practice on theoretical reflection and empirical research with the ultimate goal of developing the most effective strategies of reaching diverse audiences to enhance historical knowledge and understanding.

Data collections are essential for historical research. In addition to official archives and state institutions, collections from research institutions and private holders face different challenges in creation and consistency, preservation and use. While most private collections are stored in official and state archives due to donations or the acquisition of private holdings, crowdsourcing data as private collections is a different approach. Crowdsourcing has become popular in Citizen Science and public history projects in the last decade.

Since the 1990s the Luxembourg government has increasingly used the past to improve the country’s image. Though this use of history was not new, it has evolved significantly from the 1990s onward, both due to international influences and to specifically Luxembourgish developments. The transformation of the cultural landscape, the organisation of large events, and the European integration process are some examples. The contribution will analyse the uses of the past by public authorities in Luxembourg within this context.

With a view to ensuring future access to digital cultural heritage, the first Web collections were established in the mid-1990s. To date there exist for example some 25 national Web archives in Europe that collect and preserve Web material and the Internet Archive has saved 651 billion pages since 1996. However, research projects based on the archived Web rarely engage with or include the general public.

The COVID-19 outbreak at the beginning of the 2020s not only marked a dramatic moment in world health, but also the start of manifold and entangled global crises that seem to define a watershed moment with severe effects on education. Pandemics we know are recurrent events. Faced with COVID-19 some historians have looked to previous pandemics to understand the nature of the disease and its trajectory, and how previous generations have dealt with similar health crises. This special issue intends not to reinforce narratives of the past but rather to question them.

The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg was de facto annexed and incorporated into the German Reich during the Second World War. The laws and ordinances of the Reich applied to the local population, and male residents were drafted into the Wehrmacht and thus subject to military jurisdiction. The main reason for Luxembourgers to be tried by the Wehrmacht courts was for disobeying orders, mostly desertion. Wehrmacht court records contain not only individual and personal information about the motives of the convicts and the findings of the court but also details about their families and backgrounds.