Cultural vandalism

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Fictional representation of the sack of Rome by the Vandals in 455

Cultural vandalism is the willful destruction or damage to cultural property . In the broadest sense, this means any type of action that, with intent or approval, leads to works of art such as paintings , sculptures , architecture , urban or cultural landscapes , science , literature , musical works or intangible cultural assets being damaged or irretrievably destroyed. Cultural creations of a material or immaterial nature are considered to be witnesses of cultural memory and are now generally classified as particularly worthy of protection. Severe cultural vandalism can therefore be regarded as an offense against all of humanity, because in the worst case it results in the loss of culture, i.e. the complete erasure of the memory of cultural assets and their creators. The destruction of cultural heritage is sanctioned as a crime by the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict of May 14, 1954 . Cultural vandalism can be religious , ideological , political , economic or individually motivated. The concept of cultural vandalism is broader than that of iconoclasm , which is sometimes used synonymously, but in a narrow sense describes the religiously motivated destruction of pictorial works to enforce a ban on pictures .

Typology

The term “cultural vandalism” was largely coined by the historian Alexander Demandt with his 1997 book Vandalismus. Violence against culture . Demandt defines the term as "damage to or removal of works of art and monuments in a larger political, ideological or economic context, with the intention of or with the consequence of a change in consciousness, ie the violent attempt to remove or change memory". This term includes the word vandalism , which was coined during the French Revolution on the destruction of works of art by the Jacobins . It is derived from the historically incorrect tradition that the East Germanic tribe of the Vandals is said to have plundered and sacked the city of Rome in 455 .

The willful destruction of cultural property can be broken down according to motives:

  • Religion : In particular, the monotheistic religions derived from Judaism - Christianity and Islam - know a ban on the representation of God ( ban on images ) and a ban on the worship of images . In these religions, the prohibition of images is interpreted radically by some currents, so that images of a secular or religious nature are deliberately destroyed. The Byzantine iconoclasm in the 8th and 9th centuries were particularly violent epochs of destruction . Century AD (although the more recent research assumes that the first phase of the iconoclast was hardly connected with destruction) and the iconoclasm of the Reformation period (16th century). The prohibition of images in Islam radically interpretive Muslim sects have also destroyed statues and over again. In early May 2012, Islamist fundamentalists from the Ansar Dine group destroyed the Sidi Mahmud Ben Amar mausoleum, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and threatened attacks on other mausoleums. At the end of June 2012, Timbuktu was put on the Red List of World Cultural Heritage in Danger due to the armed conflict in Mali . Shortly thereafter, the destruction of the UNESCO- listed tombs of Sidi Mahmud, Sidi Moctar and Alpha Moya in Mali continued under mockery of UNESCO.
  • Politics : The Damnatio memoriae is known from antiquity , especially ancient Egypt and the Roman Empire , the mostly posthumous punishment of rulers through the erasure of all monuments , images and inscriptions that commemorate them. The destruction of cultural assets can also be politically motivated as a military means to weaken the morale of the enemy or to deprive him of his cultural possessions, or to humiliate the defeated enemy.
  • Economy : The looting of cultural assets has economic motives, whether in the form of large-scale state theft ( looted art ) or individual small vandalism, such as the looting of the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad in 2003. Art theft, as long as it only damages the owner, but not the work of art, according to Demandt , is not cultural vandalism, but rather a compliment for the artist. State-planned art theft, such as the looting of the task force Reichsleiter Rosenberg during the National Socialist era , mostly does not serve to destroy, but to expropriate and preserve the looted cultural assets and thus not only to reorganize the situation economically but also culturally.
  • Individual Herostratism : Individual perpetrators appear again and again in history. Her archetype is Herostratus , who lived in 356 BC. BC is said to have set fire to the temple of Artemis in Ephesus in order to inscribe his name in history. Lone perpetrators who destroy works of art also occur in modern times; here their actions are occasionally motivated artistically or critically. Demandt excludes such individually motivated acts from the history of cultural vandalism.

Theories and justifications

In the face of the destruction of the First World War , Sigmund Freud developed the concept of the death instinct (Thanatos) in the 1920s . This immanent principle of the human psyche should explain why individual people or all of humanity are aggressive and destructive. In his essay, Das Unbehagen im Kultur, published in 1930, Freud expanded this concept into an explanation of the autoaggression of instinct-tamed people living in a culture.

Legal position

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Demandt 1997, p. 23
  2. ↑ "Timbuktu is in shock": Fundamentalists are destroying UNESCO World Heritage Sites in northern Mali , NZZ, May 6, 2012. Accessed July 1, 2012
  3. ↑ Mali Islamists attack UNESCO holy site in Timbuktu , Reuters, May 6, 2012
  4. ↑ Devastated World Heritage Site in Mali: Islamists Mock Unesco Spiegel Online, July 1, 2012. Accessed July 1, 2012
  5. ↑ Islamists destroy UNESCO World Heritage Site in Timbuktu , Welt Online , June 30, 2012. Accessed July 1, 2012
  6. ↑ Monument to humanity must give way . In: German Turkish News , accessed on June 23, 2012.
  7. ↑ Dunning? Reconcile? Dynamite! In: Spiegel Online, April 23, 2011. Retrieved June 22, 2011.
  8. ^ Memorial in Turkey: With the wrecking ball against reconciliation Frankfurter Allgemeine, April 20, 2011. Accessed June 23, 2011
  9. ↑ Demandt 1997, p. 43