Conflicting Remembrance: Negotiating Memory and Religion Through Art at the Buchenwald Memorial

This article examines the interplay of memory, politics, and religion at the Buchenwald Memorial, focusing on the 2024 edition of the Genius Loci festival. Once staged by the German Democratic Republic as a monumental site of antifascist resistance, the memorial has undergone multiple reinterpretations, reflecting shifting regimes of remembrance and contested political claims, and an architectural vocabulary informed by Christian metaphors. Drawing on Durkheim’s sociology of religion and concepts of memory (Nora, Assmann), the analysis highlights how memorial architecture, ritual practices, and artistic interventions frame collective memory as both a political resource and a civic challenge. The Genius Loci festival exemplifies how contemporary art can reactivate debates around memorial spaces, exposing their religious frame of reference while simultaneously opening them to contemporary renegotiation.