Heritas’20 | Emotional experiences at historic places and heritage sites | Stephanie Herold

Presentation by dr. Stephanie Herold “Empathic Encounters. Emotional experiences at historic places and heritage sites”. Heritas’20 Alternative discussion space. 3rd October 2020.
From the very beginning, historical monuments have served not only as testimonies to historical developments, but also as places for an emotional approach to the past they embody. For this process of emotional appropriation of objects art historians at the turn of the last century coined the term Einfühlung. In its English translation ‘empathy’ this term is now experiencing a surprising renaissance in the field of heritage and museum studies.
In this context empathy is understood as the possibility of a personal, emotional access to history that goes beyond the communication of facts. Besides the aspired deeper understanding of the implications of historical facts on certain - often marginalized - groups of people, this approach also bares the risk of emotionalizing history, which can manifest itself, for example, in a concentration on individual fates and a neglect of complex historical contexts.
Against this background, the presentation argues that empathy in the context of heritage primarily should not be understood as a form of emotionally based knowledge transfer, but rather in the original sense of the word as an aesthetic process that draws its power from the personal encounter with the material object and its interpretative openness. This opens up new perspectives for dealing with cultural heritage, which will be presented and discussed in the contribution - also with regard to their limits.
Co-funded by Lithuanian council of culture. Project partner - Vilnius University Faculty of History. More information: www.heritas.lt