Abstract

At a time when Europeans are at loggerheads with each other about the best way out of the current state debt crisis, the plan to open a ‘House of European History’ in Brussels in 2014, intended to promote an awareness of European identity, is causing heated debate. Predictably, the project has attracted the ire of Euro-sceptics in this country: the Daily Mail described it as an ‘offensive waste of money’, and railed about the alleged denomination of WWII as ‘the European Civil War’. But there are sceptics elsewhere, not least in Eastern Europe, who worry that their specific historical experience is going to be erased in the attempt to find a politically-correct single unifying narrative for the histories of the 27 separate member states. We have invited the Director and Curator of the EU’s project, the historian Taja Vovk van Gaal (Brussels), to present the current plans for the exhibition concept. The second panellist, Prof Wolfram Kaiser (Portsmouth), who is currently working on a big research project analysing how ‘Europe’ has been exhibited over the last decades, will provide a critical commentary. A stimulating debate, and free wine & lemonade: everyone warmly welcome! For more information, please contact Dr Bernhard Fulda, bdf20@cam.ac.uk.