‘Memory Tourism’ and Commodification of Nostalgia - Tourism and Visual Culture: Theories and Concepts - page 48

of this museum. Seen through the eyes of for-
mer East German visitors, banal everyday old-
fashioned objects take on a signifi cant symbolic
value, occasioned by their sudden disappear-
ance and their connection with specifi c (and
unsubstitutable) biographies. With the elicitation
of the visual indicators of these different types of
visitors, it could be possible - and it would be
signifi cant, I think - to understand how these dif-
ferent tourists feel about their own experience in
the museum and how they imagine and per-
ceive the other visitors that are observing and
evaluating their past and their biographies.

by Ostalgic forms of consumption experiences in
the former GDR in order to experience a world
and a material culture that is alternative to that of
capitalist society. In both of these cases, the tour-
ist experience risks becoming a banal 'nostalgia
of style', whose contents are equivalent, but it is
not necessarily so. In all these cases, the media
imaginery plays a very important role.
Second, the tourists can experience a revival
of their own memories, which can be living and
embodied memories, or of the memories of their
ancestors: in this case the tourism of memory
lead to 'realms of memory' ( lieux de mémoire ) of
the history of the tourist itself. In this case, the
value of these experiences is typically linked to a
founding narrative, that can be biographical (per-
sonal) or collective. This is for example the case of
the 'paths of memory' at the sites of the First and
Second World Wars, 11 such as the 'Remem-
brance Trail' along the sites of the battlefi elds of
the Somme in the Great War in France or the
' Sentieri partigiani ' (Partisans' Paths) in the Italian
Appennine mountains, 12 if the tourists are the
people that lived through these events or are
their direct or indirect descendants (by this I
mean relatives or symbolic descendants, that feel
a sense of belonging to a collective history that
has its founding protagonists, a kind of secular
'ancestors'). This is also the case of the Ostalgia
tourism in the perspective of the former GDR
citizens, where the value of the experienced past
is more biographical. These memories are less
appealing for the market if they cannot be gener-
alized to a vaster universe of consumers, thanks
also to the help of the communication media. As
a result, in all these cases the commodifi cation of
memories and of nostalgia is more limited.
Memory tourism may also seem similar to
heritage tourism, and there are some important
connections. 13 In reality, however, there are also
some important differences: in heritage tourism,
both nostalgia and embodied memories are not

Conclusions: Towards a Defi nition
of 'Memory Tourism'

Through the emblematic cases of Heidiland/
Heididorf and of Ostalgia tourism in East Ger-
many, it is possible to defi ne more precisely the
characteristics of memory tourism as a form of
marketing of nostalgia, based on commodifi ed
memories that are very different and heteroge-
neous but, in the perspective of the tourism
market, absolutely equivalent. Through this
commodifi cation, these memories are supplied
to a wide public of consumers.
I can precisely defi ne this form of tourism
starting from a review of its possible contents.
The question is: what kind of memories can be
commodifi ed by memory tourism?
First, they can be 'the memories of others',
which can be attractive because their meanings
or values are close or similar to the embodied
memories or desires of the tourists, even if they
haven't experienced them directly. This is, for
example, the case of the Japanese visitors to
Heididorf, who feel a nostalgia caused by
modernity, linked to the disappearing of a tradi-
tional way of life, or the case of the West German
citizens (and not only Germans) that are attracted

11 Compare http://www.pathsofmemory.net/ (Accessed 25 July 2008) and the D-Day Museum in Portsmouth.
This website covers locations in six European countries (UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Belgium)
relating to the two World Wars and the Spanish Civil War.
12 Compare for example http://www.partigiano.net/gt/sentieri.asp, related to the Appennines of Piacenza or
http://www.istoreco-re.it/isto/default.asp?id=626& lang=ITA related to the Appennines of Reggio Emilia, both
in the Italian Region Emilia-Romagna (both accessed 26 July 2008). See also Bartoletti (2003) about the case
study of Brescello (Italy).
13 See for example Urry (1996).