1961: Germans Begin to Confront their Recent Past

Abstract

The article shows that by the early 1960s some Germans were making serious attempts to come to terms with their problematic past, including the attempted destruction of European Jews. The context of the 1950s, during which avoidance and forgetting dominated, is noted. Two decisive but very different books, published by Richard Errell and Hannah Vogt in 1961, are analyzed to illustrate the thoroughness with which they exposed the recent past. The attempt by the books' authors to make Germans take responsibility for the misdeeds of the Third Reich is set out. The issue of the degree to which the works were disseminated and publicized is posed but not resolved. Both the reviewed books underscored the need to reassess the past and to keep the memory of the Nazi regime's victims alive. The article acknowledges these seminal studies which, together with other contemporaneous attempts, threw down a gauntlet and challenged the established nationally-centered history accounts that had dominated public awareness until then. The article demonstrates that well before the cultural shift of 1968 an acknowledgement of Nazi horrors was underway.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Adolf, Judith, and Lisa Buse for editorial assistance and astute advice.

Notes

¹ For a summary with further literature see Moses and Jarausch.

² Hannah Arendt's famous book, Eichmann in Jerusalem, appeared in 1963, although Gerald Reitlinger had done the basic spadework in his 1956 book, but received more attention in its English translation. See the discussion of Hannah Vogt's work below; Vogt probably utilized Reitlinger's information.

³ Some examples in Jarausch and Geyer (46ff.); Schulze.

⁴ Hughes summarizes many opinion poll results, for example regarding priorities in mid-1949 as being “housing, the status of refugees, unemployment, the Lastenausgleich, and tax reform” (143), with similar results until the mid-1950s.

⁵ The term is from Moeller, esp. ch. 3.

⁶ The essays by Georg Iggers and Stefan Berger, in Berger et al., do not provide any specifics on when acknowledgement of the history of the Holocaust began to attain public consciousness as they present historical studies from the perspective of the universities and research institutes. In that volume only Mary Fulbrook notes a shift toward considering Hitler's victims after the 1950s during which “neither side [East and West Germany] wished to devote much attention to the Holocaust or the racial character of Nazi persecution” (222). The reception of historical studies is not considered in these overviews of the long-term trend away from nationally inspired approaches.

⁷ See van Rahden, who implicitly poses the question of when the authoritarian model in professions such as history and political science began to be questioned. Van Rahden points to Geoff Eley's assertion that the political left had created “languages of rights and capacities” which a “later radicalism could also employ” (122). The film Das Wunder von Bern, though filmed in 2003, suggests that in 1954 an authoritarian father, filled with self-pity about his POW years, could be transformed into a democratic family member.

⁸ From the presentation by Christoph Kleßmann summarized at <http://hsozkult.geschichte. hu-berlin.de/tagungsberichte/id=1816>.

⁹ See essays in Gassert and Steinweis, reviewed by Adam Webster on H-German, Jan. 31, 2008, who also acknowledges that Norbert Frei's concept of “policies toward the past” significantly advanced understanding of the early phases of coping.

¹⁰ Born as Richard Levy February 7, 1899 and died June 19, 1992, Errell was apprenticed in a silk factory and, after war service 1915–18, worked as decorator before attending the art academy in Düsseldorf. From 1923 he did publicity work for various firms. Acknowledged as a graphic artist he changed his name to Errell in 1927. In 1933 he emigrated to Prague, in 1937 to Palestine. After 1948 he did publicity and designs for the Israeli state, including books of landscape photography. In 1961 he went to Switzerland for health reasons (Allgemeiner Künstler Lexikon).

¹¹ The eminent historian Gordon Craig wrote an introduction to the English version, from which the quotation is taken and which has been used for this study.

¹² Born in 1910 in Berlin Vogt grew up in a middle-class family in Göttingen. Coincidently, during the 1920s she worked as a student intern in the same Berlin factory (Osram) as Errell. In 1930 she joined the Communist Party and then studied in Hamburg and helped edit a radical newspaper. After the Nazis came to power she worked underground for the party but was arrested in March 1933 and imprisoned for three months in Osterode. Then she was sent to the women's concentration camp at Moringer. Her censored correspondence from prison has been published (Heinrich Hesse). After release in 1942 she served as a Red Cross nurse and later was allowed to return to university studies. After the war she helped needy people in Hesse. Politically active in the liberal Free Democratic Party, in 1962 she switched to Social Democracy while working for the Hesse Office for Civic Education. She fostered Jewish-Christian reconciliation through an organization she headed and through her writings.

¹³ A study that examines Vogt's account, and agrees that this part is crucial, is Magana's research paper for a University of Santa Barbara seminar June 2004; it quotes at length from the book.