email: nicole.immler@assoc.oeaw.ac.at

homepage:http://www.oeaw.ac.at/kkt/mitarbeit/imm/imm_e.html

weblog: http://making-of-biography.blogspot.com

project: ‘The Afterlife of Restitution. About the Meaning of Restitution for the Victim Experience, Family Memory and Cultural Memory’ (post-doc project)

Nicole L. Immler is post-doc affiliated with the Research Institute for History and Culture at Utrecht University and the Commission for Culture Studies at the Austrian Academy of Science in Vienna.

Her present research project, The Afterlife of Restitution – About the Meaning of Restitution for the Victim Experience, Family Memory and Cultural Memory results from her experiences at the ‚General Settlement Fund for Victims of National Socialism’ in Vienna where she has been working since 2005. She studied History and Cultural Studies at the University Graz/Austria and was a researcher from 1999-2001 at the Ludwig Wittgenstein Archive in Cambridge/UK and from 2003 to 2004 at the Brenner Archive of the University Innsbruck. She wrote her dissertation about Das Familiengedächtnis der Wittgensteins (2005, in press). Her areas of specialization are Contemporary Austrian History, Cultural Studies and Studies in Memory and Biography. She is particularly interested in the question of ‚The making of biographies’ and organized a related conference in Vienna: ‘The making of…’ Genie: Mozart und Wittgenstein. Biographien, ihre Mythen und wem sie nützen (in press).

The Afterlife of Restitution. About the Meaning of Restitution for the Victim Experience, Family Memory and Cultural Memory

The occasion for this research-project is the near conclusion of the most recent measures of restitution and compensation in Austria. In the last 12 years three different Funds for victims of National Socialism have been initiated by the Federal Government and by the Parliament. Via interviews the project explores the impact of these restitutions on the applicants. Applicants are people who claim experienced losses or family members who claim losses in the name of their parents and/or grandparents. The political history and impact of the restitution measures have already been broadly discussed and documented. However, we know little about the consequences of this repeated confrontation with the past for the affected people and their families, for the individual victim experience, for the family memory and for the relationship between the generations.This project shall contribute to reflecting on the impact of the recent restitution in Austria on the people involved and on the relationship between the generations. In the end I hope to generate general results which will improve policies relating to restitution, in the sense of reconciliation, understanding and dialogue. The frames of this research-project are current debates regarding the collective and individual memory, especially concerning family memory, which has shifted in recent years to the center of scientific attention.