The Invention of Cultural Memory: A Short History of Memory Studies Titling this chapter the "invention" of cultural memory is intended to emphasize that this is not a history of the phenomenon of memory itself, but rather a history of memory studies. Acts of cultural remembering seem to be an element of humans' fundamental anthropological make-up, and the history of creating a shared heritage and thinking about memory can be traced all the way back to antiquity, for example to Homer, Plato, and Aristotle. However, it was not until the beginning of the twentieth century that there developed a scientific interest in the phenomenon. Forms of collective reference to the past were observed methodically and made the focus of research in the humanities and the social sciences. The field's fundamental assumption about the constructedness of cultural memory, however, is also valid for the level of theory: Every theoretical idea about the contents or functions of cultural memory is itself a construct and more of an academic "invention" than a discovery of cultural givens.