Damnatio memoriae: Unterschied zwischen den Versionen

Der lat. Ausdruck '''''Damnatio memoriae''''' bedeutet Verdammung der Erinnerung. Insbesondere soll man sich nicht an eine bestimmte Person erinnern. Die damnatio war eine Form der Entehrung, die vom stimmt werden konnte. Wegen Hochverrats oder wegen anderen die Ehre Roms berührender Taten.  

== Overview ==

=== Etymology ===

The sense of the expression ''damnatio memoriae'' and of the sanction is to cancel every trace of the person from the life of Rome, as if he had never existed, in order to preserve the honour of the city; in a city that stressed the social appearance, respectability and the pride of being a true Roman as a fundamental requirement of the citizen, it was perhaps the most severe punishment.

In Ancient Rome, the practice of ''damnatio memoriae'' was the condemnation of Roman elites and [[List of Roman Emperors|emperor]]s after their deaths. If the Senate or a later emperor did not like the acts of an individual, they could have his property seized, his name erased and his statues reworked.  Because there is an economic incentive to seize property and rework statues anyway, historians and archaeologists have had difficulty determining when official ''damnatio memoriae'' actually took place, although it seems to have been quite rare.

Any ''truly'' effective ''damnatio memoriae'' would not be noticeable to later historians, since, by definition, it would entail the complete and total erasure of the individual in question from the historical record. However, since all political figures have allies as well as enemies, it was difficult to implement the practice completely.  For instance, the Senate wanted to condemn the memory of [[Caligula]], but [[Claudius]] prevented this. [[Nero]] was declared an enemy of the state by the Senate, but then given an enormous funeral honoring him after his death by [[Vitellius]].  While statues of some emperors were destroyed or reworked after their death, others were erected.  Also, many coins with the images of the discredited person continued to circulate.  A particularly large number exist with Geta's image.<ref>[http://dougsmith.ancients.info/geta.html Geta: The One Who Died]</ref>

==Similar practices in other societies==

[[File:Local do retrato de Marino Faliero na Galeria dos Doges de Veneza.jpg|thumb|Place in the series of portraits of [[Doges of Venice]], saying "Here is the place of [[Marino Faliero]], decapitated for his crimes"]]

==''Damnatio memoriae'' in fiction==

Many contemporary novels and films mention a form of ''damnatio memoriae''. Two early examples are the "vapourization" of "[[unperson]]s" in [[George Orwell]]'s 1949 [[dystopia]]n novel ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]'' ("He did not exist; he never existed"); and the reference to the Egyptian practice in the 1956 movie ''[[The Ten Commandments (1956 film)|The Ten Commandments]]'', in which the Pharaoh Seti orders the name of [[Moses]] be struck from every building and never mentioned by anyone.

*[[Shunning]]

*[[Yimach shemo]]

==External links==

*[http://www.newseum.org/berlinwall/commissar_vanishes/vanishes.htm "The Commissar Vanishes"] – [[Yezhov]] [[airbrush]]ed out of a picture with [[Joseph Stalin]]

*[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6909589.stm Pope Alexander VI and his mistress.]

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[[Category:Ancient Rome]]