Within the context of the interdisciplinary LehrZeit project “Researching, Mediating, Exhibiting. Virtual Learning Spaces in Historical Studies” at the University of Osnabrück, students together with Imke Selle, Prof. Dr. Christoph Rass, Prof. Dr. Lale Yildirim & Prof. Dr. Michael Brinkmeier developed the “Osnabrück Peace Chess”: the chessboard functions as an interactive memory game in which “peace monuments” and “war memorials” compete against each other and generate a new memory landscape through their arrangement on the board in each game. The course of play symbolizes historical and memory-cultural negotiation processes and aims to stimulate reflective discussion about the production of history and its representation through material culture in public space.
Within the framework of LehrZeit 2023, students from history and computer science were brought together. The goal was to test practice-oriented approaches for conveying historical content in the context of digital education. Students from both disciplines collaboratively developed a mixed-reality exhibition on Osnabrück monuments and presented it in the Osnabrück University Library. The Peace Chess functioned as an interface between academic research, historical-cultural practice, and digital competence development. The focus was on reflective engagement with forms of public memory – particularly with war and peace monuments – in a playful setting.
The conception of LehrZeit within the framework of the Osnabrück Peace Year 2023 connected to Osnabrück’s self-positioning as a “City of Peace.” Starting from the 375th anniversary of the Peace of Westphalia, LehrZeit focused on the negotiation of history, public memory, and urban identity. In doing so, a fundamental memory-cultural contradiction became visible: Despite the city’s peace-political self-understanding, numerous traditional war memorials continue to shape the Osnabrück cityscape today.
Various war memorials in Osnabrück (Photos: Johanna Schweppe and Imke Selle).
Against this background, the Osnabrück Peace Chess emerged as a reflexive game format that allows these tension-filled memory sites to compete symbolically against each other: war and peace monuments become game pieces that embody competing forms of historical narrative. Digitally reconstructed miniatures of real monuments in Osnabrück’s urban space take the place of classic chess pieces. Monuments historically associated with war, violence, or peace face each other as opposing figures. The chessboard thus becomes a symbolic stage for historical and memory-cultural confrontation and dialogical engagement.
This setting not only enables a playful approach to historical content; the selection, reproduction, and staging of the monuments in the game simultaneously points to the question of which narratives gain visibility in public space – and which remain marginalized.
The Memorial against Homophobia and for Civil Courage in the cityscape (left) and as a chess piece (right) (Photos: Ella Malin Visse and Imke Selle).
The monument replicas were created using photogrammetry and LiDAR scanning and made accessible as 3D prints within the framework of the game – in doing so, the students also utilized the technical infrastructure of the Osnabrück Digilab. In the mixed-reality exhibition “The Monument in Motion. Remembering War and Peace in Osnabrück Anew” that emerged from the project, the Peace Chess was physically experienceable as an analog exhibition element and served there as a concrete space for reflection on memory-cultural tension fields in Osnabrück’s urban space.
Within the framework of the Connective Holocaust Commemoration Expo of the Alfred Landecker Foundation at the University of Sussex in June 2025, the team from the Chair of Modern History and Historical Migration Research presented the Osnabrück Peace Chess again as an exhibition piece and opened it for discussion in an international and interdisciplinary context. On this occasion too, the chess game with its underlying concept met with great interest. Detailed reports on the expo including a digital tour can be found here.
This article is an English translation of the original German post: Geschichtsproduktion ‘spielbar’ machen | Das “Osnabrücker Friedensschach“. Die Aushandlung von Erinnerung im Spielformat.