Tendentious texts: Holocaust representations and nation-rebuilding in East German, Italian, and West German schoolbooks, 1949–1989^*

* Versions of this article were presented at the 2016 BAHS conference and the 2016 AJS conference. Most textbooks considered in this article are housed at the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research.

ABSTRACT

This article examines how post-fascist perpetrator countries – East Germany, Italy, and West Germany – represented the Second World War and the Holocaust in middle school history textbooks. History textbooks were important actors in the creation of new democratic communities in East Germany, Italy, and West Germany. Through a transnational comparison of one leading textbook published in each country, this paper answers why and how West Germany was eventually more successful than East Germany and Italy in conveying to its youth a more nuanced and self-critical national memory of the Second World War and the Holocaust. Such knowledge is imperative, not just to understand the past, but also to provide a better grasp of how to democratize youth in the future, an important topic, given the spectre of right-wing ethno-nationalism that has seen a revival in recent years.

KEYWORDS:

• Textbooks
• Holocaust
• Second World War
• memory
• nation-rebuilding
• Italy
• Germany

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Konrad H. Jaruasch, Karen Auerbach, Tobias Hof, and John Chasteen for their feedback on various stages of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

Daniela R. P. Weiner is a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, working under the direction of Konrad H. Jarausch and Karen Auerbach. She holds an AB from Vassar College, an M.S. in Education from Johns Hopkins University, and an M.A. in History from UNC-Chapel Hill. Her work has been funded by the UNC Department of History, the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies, the Duke University Council of European Studies, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research.

Notes

* Versions of this article were presented at the 2016 BAHS conference and the 2016 AJS conference. Most textbooks considered in this article are housed at the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research.

1 All translations of previously untranslated textbooks/curricular materials are my own.

2 Notable manuscript-length exceptions include: Ahonen (1992); Rodden (2006). There have also been a few German-language dissertations studies published since reunification, for example: Neuhaus (1998); Bonna (1996).

3 For recent individual studies, please see Pingel (2006) and Carrier (2013). For comparative works, please see Braham (1987) and Crawford and Foster (2008). Jason Nicholls has utilized Italy in his comparative study, but only considered textbooks published in the 1990s (Nicholls 2006).

4 I determined this through consultation of the complete run of the East German middle school textbook, which is housed at the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research. These textbooks appeared under various names. The 1952 textbook appeared as Lehrbuch für den Geschichtsunterricht, 8. Schuljahr and was revised and republished under that title through 1959. In 1960, the Lehrbuch für den Geschichtsunterricht seems to have been replaced by Geschichte, Lehrbuch für Klasse 9 and Geschichte, Lehrbuch für Klasse 10. The study of contemporary history also moved from Grade 8 to Grades 9 and 10.

5 Kultusministerkonferenz is translated “Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs.”

6 This term has been borrowed from Olsen (2015).

7 Bodo von Borries (2003, 49) also commented on this.

8 De Felice wrote that the Germans and “the Fascists” (not the Italians) rounded up the Jews.

9 This argument has also been made by Wolfgang Meseth (2012).

10 I am unable to substantiate this quote.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill [Christopher Browning Holocaust Studies Research and Travel Grant, as well as the Graduate Student Fellowship in Jewish Studies], the U.S. Department of Education [Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Academic Year Fellowship (German)], the Duke University Council for European Studies [Society of Fellows Research Scholarship], the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research [Research Fellowship- 3 weeks], and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Department of History [Graduate Stipend & Summer Stipend].