05
Explaining propaganda
Here you see the symbol of the Hitler Youth (HJ). It is a greatly enlarged depiction of a very small object, which is also located here in this room. Can you find it? Look to the left.
A son of the Fahlbusch family wearing a Hitler Youth badge on his uniform, 1934
Badges from Nazi organisations were mass-produced during the Nazi era and are among the most common items found in museums with collections on National Socialism.
Simply displaying – like here – the Hitler Youth badge as a greatly enlarged photograph and treating it as a backdrop for other exhibit items obscures the history of the object. The presentation also runs the risk of catering to an already widespread fascination with Nazi symbols.
The badges still exude an allure today and are available for purchase on the internet, as here in an Italian online shop.
Other exhibitions attempt to counteract this by choosing presentations that do not overemphasise the badges, which were widely distributed under National Socialism: for example, they are shown as mass-produced goods, displayed in an archive box instead of a display case, or presented with the story of how they came to be in the museum.
Main exhibition in the House of Austrian History, opened in 2018
You will find the next station two rooms further on. It deals with the question of whether and how discriminatory representations can be exhibited.
Credits:
1. HJ pin © NS-DOK; 2. Son of the Fahlbusch family, 1934 © NS-DOK; 3. © private; 4: © RBNr Militaria; 5: © Margus Wörgötter; 6: Photo of the exhibition at the House of Austrian History © Lorenz Paulus/hdgö, CC-BY-SA 4.0 4.