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Paper short abstract

This paper explores the Wolfsschanze as a site of difficult heritage through the lens of multispecies and surface-oriented ethnography. By following the notion of curated decay, I discuss non-human agencies and non-linear temporalities that shape postwar dynamics of the Nazi military infrastructure.

Paper long abstract

This paper explores the Wolfsschanze (Wolf’s Lair) as a site of difficult heritage (Macdonald 2008) through the lens of multispecies (Kirksey, Helmreich 2010) and surface-oriented ethnography (Smykowski, Stobiecka 2022). Departing from the environmental history of the Second World War and the Holocaust, the presentation examines how Nazi military infrastructure persists in the landscape not only as historical remnants but as an entanglement of various agencies. The Wolfsschanze, embedded within the forest ecologies, where concrete, steel, vegetation, as well as human visitors co-produce the dynamic meaning of ruins, shows how erosion, moisture, plant, moss, and lichen overgrowth transform wartime heritage that is purposefully maintained by State Forests in the state of curated decay (DeSilvey 2017). By attending to surfaces and following the premises of the arts of attentiveness (Tsing 2015), I look into nooks and crannies – cracked concrete filled with cyanobacteria, moss-covered bunkers, rusted reinforcements, lichen colonies – in search of emergent life, reappearing on the surface of deteriorating structures. The tension between material decomposition, multispecies intra-actions, and vegetative cycles challenges the linear temporality of historical object and the strategy of its preservation characteristic of the Authorized Heritage Discourse. I argue that the instability and ambiguous status of Wolfsschanze, amplified by the notion of curated decay, on the one hand, might be beneficial for the secondary succession, especially in the ecosystem radically disturbed by wartime violence; but on the other hand, it could excessively aestheticize and obscure histories of violence, raising ethical questions concerning visibility, responsibility, and commemoration.