How have the various countries of Europe addressed their 1848 revolutions over the course of the last 150 years? Contributions from France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Poland, Denmark, and Norway follow the ever-changing history of remembering and forgetting a historical event whose impulses, experiences and perceptions more than any other previous episode suggest a European character. The revolutions of 1848 present an ideal comparative case study of the cultures of memory, where the European, national, local as well as political and social expectations and memories fuse and compete with each other. This collection of essays focuses on the question of how historical consciousness functions as well as examining which factors influence it and to what degree it is subject to a country’s political vacillations.

The Editor: Charlotte Tacke received her Ph.D. from the European University Institute in Florence in 1993 with a comparative study on German and French national monuments in the 19th century. She has authored several articles on general questions of nationalism and national symbols in Europe, and is currently working on her «Habilitation» at the University of Bielefeld on a comparative history of hunting in Germany and Italy in the 20th century.