Practices of Restitution : Law and Aesthetics in Modern Germany

Petersen offers a new interdisciplinary approach to restitution in the aftermath of the Second World War and the Holocaust in Germany, by providing a deeper understanding of how the concepts of responsibility and restitution migrate between law, literature, visual and memorial art. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

Since the end of the Second World War, restitution in Germany – Wiedergutmachung – has been mainly understood as part of state or private law. This book offers a different approach, arguing that authors and artists have also taken up a responsibility for restitution. Deploying the literal translation 'making-good-again', this book focuses on the 'making' of law, literature and visual art to argue that restitution is a practice which is found in different genres, sites and temporalities. The practices of restitution identified are dynamic, iterative and incomplete: they are practices of failure. Nevertheless, in this book, the question of how to conduct restitution emerges as a material question of responsibility asked through the making of texts and objects in different genres, including law. The resulting text is a unique expansion and re-conceptualisation of the practices of jurisprudence, restitution and responsibility in the context of the aftermath in Germany. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.