Historical sites have always been popular travel destinations. Especially with the advent of modern tourism in the 19th and 20th centuries, more and more people began visiting places considered to have historical significance. In doing so, travelers often went to great lengths to reach their destination. It didn’t even matter whether traces of the past were actually still present at the time of the visit or whether such traces had ever existed at the site. For tourists embarking on a “journey into the past,” it was often enough simply to see the relevant locations—even without visible signs of the past—and just to be there. At times, it could even be enough simply to read about the travels of others.

The international and interdisciplinary conference “Journeys into the Past: History as a Tourist Attraction in the^19th and^20th Centuries” examined this phenomenon from various angles, although the historical perspective was given a central role. The focus was not only on the reasons for and effects of historical tourism in various national and international contexts during the 19th and 20th centuries, but also on the practices involved and its social functions. In doing so, the conference deliberately distanced itself conceptually from the assumption that historical tourism is a phenomenon that has emerged only recently. The striking similarities between tourist and popular historical perceptions—as already demonstrated in numerous individual studies, particularly regarding the 19th century—suggest that there are further commonalities between these two fields of research, the systematic investigation of which has, however, remained a gap in the literature to date. Common to both fields is that they involve an encounter with something foreign, often exotic, which ultimately serves only to satisfy a variety of needs on the part of those who undertake the “journey” into spatial or temporal distance. Just as essential as motives and needs was—and remains to this day—in historical tourism the ceaselessly emphasized authenticity of what appeared to be history. The complex process of the emergence, construction, and maintenance of the fiction of authenticity—a continuous authentication of the past at a tourist site—was therefore, as a characteristic element of historical tourism, not coincidentally the focus of the individual presentations at this conference. Construction, preservation, and interpretation are inconceivable without media, so the media-driven presentation of history, in turn, played a prominent role at the various locations on the conference itinerary.

In her opening remarks, ANGELA SCHWARZ (Siegen) identified the central elements of the process of popularizing history, which are necessary for transforming historical sites into a tourist experience. She emphasized the essential role of these very specific sites, which are imbued with historical significance in various ways and are then regarded as places that serve as a link between the past and visitors’ own present. Furthermore, she argued, such a site must possess a second important characteristic: an aura of historical authenticity. Only in this way can the historicity of the site be accepted by the vast majority of tourists and thus essentially be recreated or even constructed as a site of historical tourism. In this context, Schwarz emphasized the particular significance of the media, especially their ability, on the one hand, to modify historical meanings and, on the other, to generate tourist interest.

JEROME DE GROOT (Manchester) continued the conceptual discussion of this phenomenon and viewed the tourist engagement with the past as part of a relationship in which the contemporary present dominates the past—which is often perceived as outdated. Referring to genealogical research—which, in today’s information age, can be conducted and commercialized using different resources and, above all, with significantly greater intensity than in the era before the digital revolution—he argued against David Lowenthal’s thesis of the past as a foreign land. In his view, the past is not an alien travel destination, but rather something that was once real and has been translated into a fictional representation in order to give those who undertake these interpretations an opportunity to influence the present and future of their own time. Building on these fundamental ideas, IAN MCKAY (Kingston, Ontario) demonstrated in his presentation that even the “memory” of something purely fictional can have a major influence on the tourist promotion of a region. He used as a case study the story of Evangeline, conceived by the American writer Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, an Acadian girl whose story is set during the expulsion of her people from Nova Scotia in the mid-18th century. Longfellow’s 19th-century poem quickly became a bestseller, especially in the U.S. The popularity of the fictional Evangeline subsequently triggered a wave of mass tourism to Nova Scotia. Tourists hoped to explore the protagonist’s real-world setting there, even though the actual landscape differed significantly from the romantic ideal depicted in the poem. Gradually, as part of efforts to market the region as “Evangeline’s homeland,” many locals adopted these constructed and already widely disseminated historical narratives as their own, supposedly authentic historical experience. This pattern reveals fundamental mechanisms in the construction of popular historical narratives derived from fiction, which are further disseminated and reinforced through tourism.

The building in which the Council of Constance was held from 1414 to 1418 was the focus of the presentation by CHRISTOPH LUZI (Lucerne). The historical significance of the Council building lay primarily in the fact that it was—and remains to this day—the only site of a papal election north of the Alps. Since the advent of modern mass tourism around 1800, it has been marketed as a major tourist attraction in the city of Constance. This marketing of the Council and the papal election was complemented in 1993 when the “Imperia” statue was erected in the harbor, creating an additional landmark to commemorate this specific aspect of Constance’s history. By comparing past and present constructions of the historical event, Luzi highlighted the dual constructed nature of this form of historical representation. The tourist presentation was achieved by transferring the older tourist narrative onto a new and significantly more recent manifestation of the same. At the same time, he highlighted the most important forms of authentication in the process of conveying the history of the Council, such as the preservation of the historic structure of the Council building. SILVIO REICHELT (Heidelberg) demonstrated that it is not only Catholic sites that can generate historical tourism, citing Lutheran sites that—despite the otherwise rather uncommon emphasis on specific locations within the Protestant faith—have been transformed into tourist attractions. These sites offered—and continue to offer to this day—Protestants a “tangible” access to Luther’s time and to the key figures of the Reformation active at that time, an experience that would have remained hidden through a purely intellectual engagement with the subject. Due to the religious motivation behind these trips, they are in some ways reminiscent of Catholic pilgrimages; these sites could be viewed as the Protestant counterpart to places of pilgrimage.

SYLVIA KESPER-BIERMANN opened the session on the increasingly popular “dark side” of tourism with a lecture on torture museums. Drawing on several institutions of this kind in various European countries during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, she explained that the historicization and display of early modern instruments of torture served as a symbol of Europe’s supposedly overcome dark past. As an expression of modernity, the abandonment of torture was often embedded in the context of national narratives to establish the condemnation of torture as a universal legal and moral norm. The presentation by DANIELA FLEIß (Siegen) explored another “dark place” of remembrance. She analyzed visits to cemeteries as a form of tourist experience that is secularized and liberated from traditional memorial culture. Among the numerous different motives and functions that such a journey could have, she emphasized that of forming or strengthening one’s own identity—a central concern, especially for the bourgeoisie, when visiting gravesites in the 19th century. Cemetery tourism offered not only orientation in an ever-changing modern world, but also role models who, while rooted in the past, were nonetheless part of the present, and whose graves could be seen as mediators between the present and the past. AXEL DRECOLL (Munich) presented a special form of “dark tourism.” His lecture focused on the Obersalzberg region, which, on the one hand, was—and still is—marketed as a tourist destination featuring numerous private vacation homes owned by leading figures of the Nazi regime, but on the other hand also serves as an educational center that has sought—and continues to seek—to explore and convey insights into the power structures of National Socialism to visitors. According to Drecoll, the diverse and sometimes even contradictory tourist uses of the historical site ‘Obersalzberg’ revealed, according to Drecoll, various approaches and developments in historical education that exist not only with regard to Obersalzberg in particular, but also in relation to the general engagement with the Nazi past.

The presentations on the second day of the conference focused on the connection between historical tourism and national identity. ROBERT LUKENDA (Mainz/Erlangen) examined 19th-century domestic tourism in Italy, which, facilitated by new forms of mobility, had evolved into “patriotic tourism.” This new form of travel, Lukenda emphasized, served—prior to the creation of a unified Italian state in 1861—as a symbolic representation of national unity that transcended internal geographical and political boundaries. This image was disseminated not only through personal travel but also through numerous travelogues, which were widely circulated in books and magazines. Books also played a central role in the lecture by HANNA KOZIŃSKA-WITT (Rostock), as travel guides about Kraków—to use the example cited—could be utilized as a tool in the process of national identity formation in Poland. Following the dissolution of the Polish state at the end of the 18th century, the national movement of the 19th century declared the city of Kraków the “spiritual capital” of a future Poland. In doing so, Polish nationalist forces simultaneously elevated visiting the city as a tourist destination to the status of a national duty. Kozińska-Witt highlighted which specific “histories” were conveyed to the Polish public in the travel guides and which pieces of information were apparently deliberately omitted. She explained the problem of national identity construction as a selection criterion in the choice of topics, using the portrayal of the Jewish quarter in the guidebooks as an example. KATHARINA HAVERKAMP’s (Jena) journey took her even further east; she examined Soviet domestic tourism in the 1960s and 1970s as part of a specific identity-formation process within the Soviet state. Triggered by protests from the Russian nationalist movement and intellectual circles following the destruction of religious sites during the Khrushchev era, calls emerged in the mid-1960s from across society for the preservation of pre-Soviet monuments and their use for tourism. Haverkamp argued that the subsequent rise of mass tourism to sites that had been elevated to places of remembrance of pre-communist Russian history could be viewed as an escape from everyday life and from the seemingly endless wait for a better communist future—an escape into an honorable and memorable past. ANTONIO BARRENTO (Lisbon) addressed a comparable phenomenon in his analysis of the effects produced by the touristification of revolutionary sites in the Republic of China between 1912 and 1949. The revolutionary monuments erected at that time were perceived by the local population as attractions to a far lesser extent than the political leaders of the young republic had intended. This was due in no small part to the fact that traditional sites, such as the Great Wall—which were regarded as relics of a glorious, imperial, even exotic-seeming past—continued to enjoy great popularity. TOBIAS SCHEIDT (Siegen) demonstrated, through his comparison of British and German illustrated magazines, that people did not necessarily have to travel themselves to have a tourist experience. These magazines made such “armchair tourism” possible as early as the 19th century—long before the invention of cinema, television, or even the internet. Through these “reading journeys,” the magazines helped to popularize the phenomenon of historical tourism in the media, thereby further establishing and promoting it. Using the example of the German writer Julius Rodenberg, who wrote about his trips to England in numerous articles in the British press, Scheidt highlighted the transnational character of travel writing, both in terms of the canonization of tourist destinations and practices, and with regard to the popularization of history.

Just as it is legitimate to ask how much tourism, as a change of location, requires historical tourism, it is equally legitimate to ask how much history it actually needs. In fact, among the destinations of this type of travel, there are “historical sites” where the associated events may never have taken place. SILVIA HESS (Lucerne) examined one such site in her analysis of the tourist use of the area where the medieval Battle of Morgarten is said to have taken place. As early as the 19th century, Swiss national historiography promoted the battle as the first struggle for Swiss independence from Habsburg rule and pinpointed the supposed site of the battle with great precision. However, the landscape depicted in pictures, schoolbooks, and other media differed significantly from the actual appearance of the site at the time these visual records were created. Hess explained that the historical narratives of the battle—which had continued to evolve over the course of oral tradition—and the tourist attractions of the site known as “Morgarten” had come to align with one another, thereby allowing the existing gaps in the history of the Battle of Morgarten to be filled despite insufficient source material. In his presentation, TIMO SAALMANN (Bamberg) examined the interplay between tourism and archaeology. He demonstrated that, throughout history, Celtic sites in Franconia have been used to shape political identities, and explained how this occurred. Saalmann illustrated, for example, how King Ludwig I of Bavaria used these archaeological sites as a means of integrating new regions into his realm. The process of reinterpreting such sites continues to the present day. For example, since the 1980s, reconstructions of Celtic artifacts have served to promote the image of Celtic culture as a premodern model of European unity—a very different case of integration and the formation of a shared identity—in which Europe has taken the place of the nation. ADAM ROSENBAUM (Grand Junction, CO) examined the tourism industry in postwar Bavaria. From the late 1940s and early 1950s onward, official tourism advertising placed a clear emphasis on the region’s provincial character. The goal was reconciliation between the defeated German civilian population and American occupation forces as well as other American tourists, but at the same time it served as a distraction from Bavaria’s Nazi past. Although they certainly embraced the regional tourism industry’s offerings of rural idyll, many American visitors to Bavaria remained interested in sites such as the former concentration camp in Dachau or the Obersalzberg region, where Nazism had left particularly clear traces. In this way, a hybrid tourist culture—in terms of its political messages—subsequently developed in postwar Bavaria.

The third day of the conference focused on the past as a romantic or romanticized tourist attraction. EKKEHARD SCHÖNHERR (Jena) opened this thematic section with an examination of the perception of Mallorca in the travel diaries of the Spanish historian Juan Cortada, who traveled to the Mediterranean island in the 19th century. Cortada failed in his attempt to retrace the route taken by the Christian conquerors of the island in the Middle Ages—a result that, according to Schönherr, was symptomatic of tourism in Mallorca during the second half of the 19th century. He further argued that despite visitors’ stated interest in Mallorcan history, historical sites were in fact only visited if they were scenically attractive and, in that sense, offered a “picturesque” travel experience. ANGELA BERLIS (Bern) once again brought religious aspects of historical tourism into focus, specifically using the example of the supposed or actually felt romanticism of a monastery ruin. Drawing on the example of the ruins of the Port Royal monastery in France and their highly romanticized descriptions in the travelogues of the British author Mary Anne Schimmelpennick, Berlis emphasized that historical tourism can always imply ethical and religious significance, especially when the sites, as in the case of Port Royal, point to a history of conflict and destruction. She advocated for a relaxation of the strict separation between the categories of “pilgrimage” and “travel.” DREW FLANAGAN (Waltham, MA) examined the French discourse on travel to the French occupation zone of Germany during the postwar period from 1945 to 1955, when, following the restoration of Germany’s sovereignty, the occupation statute in effect since 1945 was repealed. Using a wide range of examples, he demonstrated how the history of long-standing rivalry between the two nations and the military occupation of southwestern Germany significantly shaped the travel experiences of French military personnel and civilians in that region during the decade in question. Flanagan emphasized that the primary goal of the French travelers had been to gain a better understanding of Germany’s and France’s shared past while simultaneously overcoming their fears of Germany and the Germans. In the final thematic presentation, ALEXANDRE BONAFOS (Columbia, SC) analyzed domestic travel in early 19th-century France. Drawing on the travel accounts of selected Romantic writers, he explained how travel itself was driven by travelers’ desire for a personal encounter with the past. Bonafos emphasized how greatly these early tourist practices were influenced by the search for history. Over the course of the rest of the 19th century, he argued, this played a major role in enabling the French nation to construct its image of France as a country full of sites of historical significance.

The numerous “journeys into the past” presented and constructively discussed in Siegen revealed a multitude of travelers over the past two centuries, each with their own distinct motives, expectations, and media-based concepts. In this context, the authenticity of a historical tourist site was of paramount importance. If this authenticity was not already present in the form of a distinct building or object, it could be newly created or recreated in a variety of ways. The presentations on nation and identity formation in the Western and Central European context, in particular, demonstrated that tourist infrastructure was created at “historical sites” where, until then, few or no remnants of an event or a person were visible. Constructions of memory could be transferred to new sites or objects, or they were created beyond the actual site and independently of it—for example, in the form of literary fiction or travel literature. Equally significant as a second element was the media presentation of a tourist destination. The media, for example, promoted certain places, ascribed tourist attributes to them, and evoked specific images in the minds of a target audience. Travel guides, narratives, magazines: Various presentations across sections examined individual media formats, all of which, in different ways, helped tourists form very precise ideas about a destination. The originators could be the regions themselves, which sought to market themselves as tourist destinations in a specific way. At the same time, however, the media also projected external images onto these places, which might have evoked entirely different ideas. Entirely in line with the “tourist gaze,” the media not only created clear expectations even before a trip, but could even make these expectations seemingly tangible through corresponding “virtual journeys.” Closely linked to this media presentation was a third factor: the experiential nature that was often inherent to the travel destinations. Historical tourism always required a certain curiosity on the part of travelers, as the goal was to discover and seemingly experience a world that felt foreign precisely because it belonged to the past. In particular, the papers in the section on historical tourism and the formation of national identity made it clear that the experience of history was often embedded in a process of constructing or reinforcing collective identity. Thus, the desire to experience history became an essential strategy for appropriating history, which takes on a distinct form in tourism, significantly shaped by its portrayal in the media.

The “journeys into the past” presented and discussed at the conference could help to further refine the still-vaguely defined concept of “historical tourism.” Furthermore, they highlighted the extraordinary quality of the historical tourism experience as a historical source by categorizing destinations and forms of tourist travel and by thoroughly examining the relationship between the more recent past and the more distant past. Education, entertainment, the desire for an “authentic experience,” and the construction of identities emerged at the conference as some of the motives that may explain why people over the past two centuries have sought to experience and explore history through tourism—and why they continue to do so today. Research into this complex set of motives must, of course, be intensified; the conference has opened up avenues for this as well and taken the first steps in this direction. Further research into historical tourism will depend heavily on the availability of accounts from those tourists who visited historical sites in the past. It is therefore essential to continue working to ensure that precisely such personal accounts or travelogues are made accessible as historical sources in various media, just as political and economic documents from earlier times are. They reveal both history and the consumption of history—both of which are clearly worth the journey.

Tim Bernshausen and Jan Pasternak 
Department of History, University of Siegen