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The atrocities of Nazi Germany included the radical transformation of natural landscapes. At Ravensbrück (Brandenburg), a lakeside setting became the site of the largest women’s concentration camp in Germany, processing approximately 159,000 inmates until 1945. Similarly, at Flossenbürg (Bavaria), a picturesque valley in the Oberpfälzer Wald housed a large concentration camp with approximately 100,000 inmates over seven years and a granite quarry to support Hitler’s extensive construction programme. After the war, part of Ravensbrück became a Soviet Army base, while large sections of Flossenbürg were removed to make way for a new housing and industrial development. Along with other former camps (particularly Auschwitz-Birkenau), parts of these landscapes were developed into memorial sites that aim to provide a liminal experience for visitors – a ‘rite of passage’. In attempting to regain a sense of place that evokes the trauma of the past, the landscapes of the memorial sites of Ravensbrück and Flossenbürg were recently altered to resemble their appearance in 1945. For visitors, however, the aesthetic experience of these landscapes lies in stark contrast to the narrative they encounter at both sites; they are surprised to see signs of life, objecting to modernisation at Ravensbrück or the existence of a supermarket next to the memorial site in Flossenbürg. This paper examines the transformative processes of these landscapes and explores how their liminality is constructed, experienced and challenged. Through empirical visitor research conducted at both sites, it provides a critical evaluation of the narrative given to visitors and suggests how these important sites can offer a more engaging ‘rite of passage’.

After the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War (1780–1784), which ended disastrously for the Dutch East India Company (VOC), the need to reform was strongly felt. The Board of Directors (Heren XVII) asked for state support. This resulted in the formation of an independent Military Commission, with the mandate ofreporting on the (military) state of affairs in the East, surveying the settlements and making plans for their improvement. The Prussian-born Carl Friedrich Reimer was employed as the main surveyor and military engineer. He had already been in the VOC’s service for two decades before he was given this important task and became a confidant of Governor-General Arnold Willem Alting. The Governor-General wasvery skeptical towards the activities of the Military Commission, which operated fully outside the Company’s established chain of command. By maneuvering Reimer into the Commission, Alting had eyes and ears in its affairs. Next to observing, surveying, drawing plans and writing recommendations, Reimer wouldalso inform Alting about the journeys. Every major Dutch settlement from South Africa to the Moluccas was visited by the Military Commission, forming a unique view on the (military) state of affairs of the Dutch presence in Asia in around 1790. Together with the various recommendations that were accompanied by the excellent military maps by Reimer, the Dutch could make a fresh start in their imperial ambitions. However, when the Commission Fleet returned to the Republic in 1793 and all the reports and maps were transferred, the political constellation no longer had an eye for the overseas troubles of the VOC. The young and revolutionary French Republic just declared war. As such, the cartographic legacy of CF Reimerwas ‘dead on arrival’.

Strain engineering is a powerful technology that exploits the stationary external or internal stress of specific spatial distribution for controlling the fundamental properties of condensed materials and nanostructures. This advanced technique modulates in space the carrier density and mobility, the optical absorption, and in strongly correlated systems, the phase, e.g., insulator-metal or ferromagnetic-paramagnetic. However, while successfully accessing nanometer-length scales, strain engineering is yet to be brought down to ultrafast time scales allowing strain-assisted control of the state of matter at THz frequencies. We demonstrate control of an optically-driven insulator-to-metal phase transition by a picosecond strain pulse, which paves the way to ultrafast strain engineering in nanostructures with phase transitions. This is realized by simultaneous excitation of VO2 nanohillocks by a 170-fs laser and picosecond strain pulses finely timed with each other. By monitoring the transient optical reflectivity of the VO2, we show that strain pulses, depending on the sign of the strain at the moment of optical excitation, increase or decrease the fraction of VO2 that undergoes an ultrafast phase transition. A transient strain of moderate amplitude of approximately 0.1% applied during ultrafast photo-induced nonthermal transition changes the fraction of VO2 in the laser-induced phase by approximately 1%. In contrast, if applied after the photoexcitation when the phase transformations of the material are governed by thermal processes, a transient strain of the same amplitude produces no measurable effect on the phase state.