ESSA Brussels: European History Museum

 

Within Brussels lies the House of European History. It is a museum dedicated to the history of Europe, especially the European Union, located in the capital of the European Union: Brussels. It's a multi-story complex where each floor tells a different story about the history of Europe. The first floor starts with the somewhat problematic Roman story of Europa and the beginnings of the concept of Europe. The second floor then addresses history from the beginnings of European Christian history up to the World Wars. The next few floors deal with World War I, World War II, the European perspective on the Cold War, and up to about the present day. A whole wing is dedicated to chronicling the proceedings of World War II and strived to humanize the victims of Hitler’s brutality as much as possible.

While Belgium is a fairly small country, its relative neutrality throughout European conflicts made it the ideal candidate for the new European alliance's capital. Within this city often called “the capital of Europe” this museum stands as a testament to Europe’s complex, bloody, problematic, and dark history in an honest, informative, and hopeful way. I have said this in past posts but I will say it again: the way a country deals with its past, particularly the ugly parts, correlates with its cultural depth and quality. History is the soil on which culture strives to take root and grow, and this museum is the fertile soil of for the culture of Europe.

This raises more questions about Brussels’s status not only as a cultural capital of Belgium but of all of Europe. While it was the elected location for the European Union’s capital upon its ratification, I do think there is some degree of superiority in how this capital within a capital takes ownership of the history of an entire continent. Especially because most of the events outlined in the museum did not occur within what is today Belgium, I think this museum’s location tries less to anchor Belgian culture but rather to claim ownership in some degree to the EU and its constituents’ individual history.