MARATHON: A EUROPEAN CHARTER MYTH?
MARATHON: A EUROPEAN CHARTER MYTH?

Summary/Abstract: In a period of time when Europeans are looking more carefully for their common traditions, and in order to commemorate Iza Bieżuńska-Małowist, a really great Polish and European scholar, it may not seem inappropriate to recall dominant features of Europe’s mémoire collective. One of these features is, beyond doubt, the battle of Marathon, not only as a historical event, but also, and actually even more, as a repertoire of different interpretations and memories related to the event and developed further, again and again, in different historical circumstances. Thus it has become a genuine lieu de mémoire in accordance with Pierre Nora’s concept. Since ‘places of remembrance’ are always important elements in the creation and formation of collective identities I feel encouraged to present in the following some results of my own work on this topic. This is dedicated in particular to the role which history or conceptions of the past play in the creation of social and collective identity. One of the results of my research has been the impression that building up of collective unities is always strongly influenced and shaped by the history or tradition a given community or society holds as its own past. Using the anthropological concepts of Wilhelm Muhlmann, I call this kind of history that is crucial for the self-conception of a group ‘intentional history’.

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