THE EASTERN GERMAN STATE of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania (Mecklenburg Vorpommern) was originally founded in 1945 comprising the state of Mecklenburg and the part of the Prussian province of Pomerania that remained under German administration after the war. The suffix West Pomerania was dropped in 1947. Following its administrative reform of 1952, the Socialist Unity Party (SED) replaced Mecklenburg with three districts. The Rostock district was located along the stretch of Baltic Sea coast belonging to the GDR, the Schwerin district was in the west of the region, and the Neubrandenburg district in the east. The federal state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania was reestablished shortly before the unification of Germany in 1990. As part of the Soviet zone of occupation after 1945 and then part of the GDR from 1949, the culture of remembrance in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania was predominantly state-controlled and gradually taken over by the ruling party, the SED. This centralized culture of remembrance focused on distancing the East German state from the National Socialist regime and the Second World War and honoring Communist heroes. The aim was to legitimize the SED regime and to present a “superior” version of history to that in West Germany. The state-regulated politics of memory lasted until the collapse of the SED regime in 1989, and with its accession to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1990, the former GDR was faced with the task of developing a new, democratic culture of remembrance. Memorial sites play a significant role in this respect and have undergone substantial changes since unification. These changes will be discussed in this article with a focus on developments in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania.

The period after 1989–90 saw a reevaluation of the past, just as there had been after 1945. This was accompanied by changes to a memorial landscape established over the course of forty years, changes with regard to existing memorial sites and exhibitions, plaques, monuments, and cemeteries, but also street names and the names of businesses and other institutions. Remembrance of the victims of German Fascism had played a key role in the memory politics of the SED; Communists were depicted as leading figures in the resistance and Communist victims were made into heroes and instrumentalized for the political agenda of the SED.