Over the past two decades or so, there has been a recognisable growing interest in politics, the media and the humanities in the themes of 'remembrance' and 'memory'. The authors of this volume - historians, political scientists, Scandinavists - conceive this boom as a radical political and cultural change in our perceptions and our cognitive interests, and examine theoretical and empirical aspects of the fields of research and activitiy that are affected by it. They enquire into its genesis and the academic yield of collective memory and politics of memory as guiding concepts, as well as the transformations at the interface between academic and political publics. Theoretically oriented contributions are complemented with case studies on the history of memory in the 20th century. In these case studies, the authors - partly on the basis of a multinational comparison - examine different aspects of the public handling of history in Germany, Italy, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the US and in the worldwide web. German text.