Collective Memory and National Identity in the Berlin Republic: The Emergence of a New Consensus?

Abstract

At the turn of the millennium, a consensus seemed to exist which suggested that Germany had faced up to its National Socialist past and confronted questions of responsibility and guilt. At last, the Holocaust and the Second World War seemed to have become an integral part of German national identity. Within a few years, however, debates about Germany's past once again turned away from suffering caused by the Germans and returned to the issue of German suffering. This contribution will argue that recent dynamics of German collective memory suggest that a new consensus has emerged which acknowledges German responsibility for crimes committed between 1933 and 1945 at the same time as recognising German suffering. Germany is thus less restricted by its past than it has been at any other point since 1945 resulting in much more confident expressions of German national identity than had been possible in the Bonn Republic.

Notes

¹ For a discussion of the term, see Peter Dudek.

² See for example Bill Niven (Facing), Helmut Schmitz and Karl Wilds.

³ This has become particularly obvious in Germany's foreign policy, especially with regard to the use of force. Whereas Germany's past used to be employed to justify anti-militarism, the Holocaust memory strand of German collective memory has been used in the Kosovo war to legitimise military involvement.

⁴ For example, the SS “task force trial” in Ulm in 1958, the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem in 1961 and the Auschwitz trial in Frankfurt between 1963 and 1965.

⁵ For an account and a discussion of these two debates, see Niven, chapters 5 and 6.

⁶ For various contributions to the debate including British reactions, see Kettenacker.

⁷ See Welzer et al. and Wittlinger.

⁸  Spiegel-Spezial 2 2002 and 2003, respectively.

⁹ For a detailed discussion of this, see Wiegel.