Genre memories and memory genres: A dialogical analysis of May 8, 1945 commemorations in the Federal Republic of Germany

Commemorative images of the past not only reflect the commemorated evens an d the contemporary circumstances but are path-dependent products of earlier commemorations as well. Drawing on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, I specify the central mechanism of this path-dependency-genre memory-and reconceptual ize commemoration dialogically. In a case study of May 8, 1945 anniversarie s in the Federal Republic of Germany, I take an integrated approach that in cludes the politics of commemoration (context-dependence), the history of c ommemoration (long-term development of commemorative forms), and most impor tant, the memory of commemoration (prosaic path-dependence), illuminating a subtle yet crucial feature of the 50th anniversary commemoration of May 8 1945: its response to the memory of the 40th anniversary.