The sugarcoat factory: A comparative approach to national history museums

Abstract

This Master thesis deals with the depiction of national history in national history museums. In order to contribute to comparative studies of national museums, the author pursues to create an approach to compare the narration at these museums. This attempt is based on the assumption that certain common patterns of narratives (topoi) are incorporated into the narration at national history museums. The aim of the thesis is to nd and de ne these topoi and to ascertain whether they are part of the historiography at three national museums in Europe (Scotland, Czech Republic and Germany) and one national museum in North America (United States of America). By applying a discursive analysis to the main labels and particular objects at the museums, the topoi shall be located. With the help of Formal Concept Analysis, a method deriving from Mathematical Sciences, the results of the discursive analysis are prepared for evaluation and conclusion. This method serves to answer, amongst others, the question: To which extend are the exhibitions at the four national museums driven by underlying nationalistic ways of thinking? The inquiry will demonstrate that similar patterns of narrating national history do exist in the four museums, especially in regard to the three European museums. At two museums, an intrinsic nationalistic sentiment in the way of narrating can be shown on the basis of an ad hoc elaborated de nition of the term nationalism.