Project description

Under National Socialism, discrimination and murder were implemented with frightening efficiency with the help of bureaucratic routines. The crimes of the Nazi era could be presented as necessary and harmless processes with the use of administrative language and euphemistic terms in forms and correspondences. But how can this phenomenon be presented to visitors in an interesting, intuitive and interactive way using exemplary Nazi documents? Can visitors learn to read and assess Nazi documents with the right medium?

In the project, an exhibition on the Concentration Camps Inspectorate (CCI) – the administrative authority of all concentration camps – is being redesigned at the Sachsenhausen Memorial and supplemented with newly developed digital visitor information systems. In terms of content, the increasing fusion of brutal SS machinations with sober administrative procedures will play just as much a role as the presentation of perpetrator and victim perspectives. The centerpiece will be a multi-touch table for which the IWM is developing an application. Several Nazi administrative documents will be presented, with which the visitors can deal independently. The classic intuitive gestures such as turning, sliding and zooming will be extended by clickable information fields that provide in-depth texts on the document. The contents of the exhibition and the multi-touch table will also be offered as an interactive web application, which will make the topic accessible to visitors of different Nazi memorials.

In the accompanying empirical research, the usability of the touch application will be recorded. Furthermore, it will be investigated to what extent the use of the application has a learning effect on the thematic and linguistic assessment of selected Nazi writings.

Cooperations

Dr. Axel Drecoll, Brandenburg Memorials Foundation