Memorial Places in the Urban Space of Warsaw. Monument of General Emil August Fieldorf “Nil” in Warsaw's District Praga South

Abstract

The analysis of social functioning of monuments in urban space is at the core of memory studies. Alexander Wallis (1971) claimed that monuments express moral, political, and intellectual values of smaller and larger communities. Sociologists argue the public feels obliged to remember that they received something that was not their merit. The willingness to repay takes the form of memory and active remembrance; it is often spatialized in material forms as monuments. In this paper, the case-study of the monument of general Emil August Fieldorf “Nil” in Warsaw’s district Praga South is presented. The aim of the article is to understand social functioning of memorial places in the urban space of Warsaw. It includes the following research problems: how the place of memory functions in a society, what is the social perception of the symbolism of the site of memory and what is the relation of a given place of memory to other representations of general Fieldorf. The study was carried out in 2014 using three methods: participant observation, analysis of existing data and in-depth interviews. The results of the study show that monuments are treated as a tool necessary to maintain the memory of important historical figures and events. There are also strong group expectations and requirements for the symbolism of memorial sites. In summary, it is worth considering which characters and events in public perception deserve commemoration in public space.