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ABSTRACT
The ‘Unite the Right’ rally on 11 and 12 August 2017, shook the city of Charlottesville, Virginia, and spurred a national conversation about the long history of racial oppression in the United States and the future of its democracy. This article reviews the Transatlantic Partnership on Memory, Responsibility and Transformation, a collaboration between the Heinrich Böll Foundation North America and the Center for German Studies at the University of Virginia. Launched in response to the violent rally on the university's grounds and in downtown Charlottesville, the partnership adds a transnational dimension to antiracist pedagogy and Holocaust education. Through interdisciplinary projects, it challenges students to translate classroom learnings into hands-on practice of participatory democratic citizenship in local communities. The partnership's aim is to situate the study of memory and history in contemporary discussions of racial justice and responsible citizenship and to animate students to find urgency and relevance in the specific lessons of the Holocaust and in broader, transnational legacies of systemic oppressions. Starting with a discussion of the initiative's origins in the aftermath of far-right violence, this article offers some of the lessons learned through the partnership, as well as recommendations for others who might wish to explore similar pedagogical practices and programing.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Manuela Achilles, Kyrill Kunakhovich, and Nicole Shea, (eds.), “Nationalism, Nativism, and the Revolt against Globalization,” EuropeNow: Journal of the Council for European Studies (Special issue: February 2018): https://www.europenowjournal.org/2018/01/31/nationalism-nativism-and-the-revolt-against-globalization/. The volume includes a spotlight on the University of Virginia and its response to the Unite the Right violence on 11–12 August 2017.
2 Ibid. The transition from protest to violence is fluid in far-right circles, and there is considerable institutional infiltration. The terrorist who murdered 50 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, on Friday, 15 March 2019, for instance, had connections to various European far-right groups, including the Identitarian movement in Austria and white supremacist soldiers in the German federal army.
3 The foundation's civic work is guided by Heinrich Böll's belief in the critical importance of ‘meddling’ (Einmischung) – speaking out and getting involved in politics – as the only possible path for change. Begun in the fall of 2015, the foundation's transatlantic democracy program aims to bring German and American policymakers and civil society leaders together to discuss shared challenges to democracy and jointly develop new approaches and solutions. The program was founded on the recognition that the two countries’ histories are deeply intertwined and that the transatlantic partnership is rooted in the democratic values shared by both societies. Beginning in 2016, the program dedicated significant resources to countering anti-immigrant and anti-refugee sentiment, in close collaboration with city officials in Germany and the United States. After the Unite the Right rally in 2017, the program's leaders recognized the need to focus explicitly on confronting histories of racial oppression in the two countries. More information about the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Washington, DC, can be found at https://us.boell.org/. The website of the headquarters is available at https://www.boell.de/en.
4 A retrospective on Böll's life and work, put together by the foundation on the occasion of his 100th birthday, can be found at https://www.boell.de/de/100JahreBoell?dimension1=100_years_boell. See also: Jochen Schubert, Heinrich Böll: Eine Biographie (Darmstadt: Konrad Theiss, 2017); Ralf Schnell, Heinrich Böll und die Deutschen (Cologne: Kiepenheuer und Witsch, 2017); Heinrich Vormweg, Der andere Deutsche: Heinrich Böll: Eine Biographie (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2000).
5 See event information at https://magazine.arts.virginia.edu/stories/the-impulse-festival-with-wadada-leo-smith.
6 Built in 1926, the Jefferson School was Charlottesville's first African American high school, and for decades it stood as a beacon within the Black community. Students and families gathered to attend plays and meetings, use the library, and learn from teachers who were like family. Today the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center celebrates Charlottesville's rich African American history and culture with historical and contemporary exhibitions as well as special events. The center's website is https://jeffschoolheritagecenter.org/.
7 The EuropeNow campus spotlight on UVA offers a more complete list of events, as well as student and faculty testimonials; see https://www.europenowjournal.org/2018/01/31/collective-response-moving-forward-initiative-of-the-uva-college-of-arts-and-science/. See also Louis P. Nelson and Claudrena N. Harold, (eds.), Charlottesville 2017: The Legacy of Race and Inequity (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2018); and Hawes Spencer, Summer of Hate: Charlottesville, USA (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2018).
8 The term Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung is linked to Theodor Adorno's critical understanding of the Holocaust and its impact on the present as an open-ended commemorative process that defies closure. Vergangenheitsbewältigung, another term often used in this context, has a slightly different ring to it. Translated roughly as ‘mastering the past,’ this term suggests the possibility of moving toward a time when the past is ‘dealt with’ (bewältigt). Although it is not always clear which of the two concepts is operative, German official culture includes the commitment to an ongoing process of reckoning with its past. For a discussion of the terms, see Mischa Gabowitsch, (ed.), Replicating Atonement: Foreign Models in the Commemoration of Atrocities (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017), especially Gabowitsch's introduction and Jacqueline Nießer's essay, “Which Commemorative Models Help? A Case Study from Post-Yugoslavia,” p. 132. For a discussion of memory cultures and memory politics in comparative perspective, see Katrin Hammerstein, Gemeinsame Vergangenheit, Getrennte Erinnerung? Der Nationalsozialismus in Gedächtnisdiskursen und Identitätskonstruktionen von Bundesrepublik Deutschland, DDR, und Österreich (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2017). On the difference between official memory and family memory, see Harald Welzer, Sabine Moller, and Karoline Tschuggnall, “Opa war kein Nazi”: Nationalsozialismus und Holocaust im Familiengedächtnis (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2005).
9 See Benjamin Nienass, who stresses the importance of local conditions for the reception of transnational memories as they depend on practices supported by a ‘memory regime’ often perceived in national terms. Benjamin Nienass, “Transnational Memories, National Memory Regimes: Commemorating the Armenian Genocide in Germany,” German Studies Review, vol. 43, no. 1 (2020): pp. 127–147.
10 We are not recommending, as Susan Neiman does in Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019), to ‘learn from’ but rather to ‘learn with’ the Germans about their past histories of racism. For a legal-historical work that explores the influence of the American regime of racial repression on the Nazi Nuremberg Laws, see James Whitman, Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017). For a project that emphasizes ‘learning with’ over ‘learning from’ in a different context, see Manuela Achilles and Dana Elzey, (eds.), Environmental Sustainability in Transatlantic Perspective: A Multidisciplinary Approach (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). For a reasonable review of Neiman's book that does justice to her public-facing work while also acknowledging its shortcomings, see Heather Souvaine Horn, “Facing Up to the Past, German-Style: What Can the United States Learn from Germany's Efforts to Reckon with the Holocaust?,” New Republic, 31 October 2019.
11 The great interest in antiracist literature is best illustrated by the bestseller lists on Amazon and in the New York Times in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests across the country. In the week of 22 June 2020, the top five bestsellers in the category of nonfiction in the New York Times were White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo, So You Want to Talk about Race by Ijeoma Oluo, How to be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi, Me and My White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad, and The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. That same week, Amazon's bestseller list likewise included these books in its top twenty, along with Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi, Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein, Born a Crime by Trevor Noah, and Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson. Anti-racist reading lists have circulated widely on social media and been issued by major publications. The Washington Post covered the nation's unprecedented demand for antiracist literature in an article on 4 June 2020, noting that Kendi's How to be an Anti-Racist had received its thirteenth printing in response to overwhelming public interest and that the spike in readership for anti-racist literature even extended to audio platforms such as Libro.fm. Likewise, the Obama Foundation has launched efforts to help people across the country self-educate and take action through the Anguish and Action website. See Stephanie Merry and Ron Charles, “Books about Race and Racism Are Dominating Bestseller Lists,” Washington Post, 4 June 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/books-about-race-and-racism-are-dominating-bestseller-lists/2020/06/04/e6efdab6-a69b-11ea-bb20-ebf0921f3bbd_story.html; and the Obama Foundation, “Anguish and Action,” https://www.obama.org/anguish-and-action/.
12 The initiative was launched as the ‘Transatlantic Partnership on Memory, Responsibility, and Transformation.’ We focused on ‘Memory and Democracy’ in the second year.
13 For an attempt to develop a theory of political responsibility through the figure of the implicated subject, see Michael Rothberg, The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2019).
14 See Nienass, “Transnational Memories,” p. 129, as well as Susannah Radstone, “What Place Is This? Transcultural Memory and the Locations of Memory Studies,” Parallax, vol. 17, no. 4 (2011): pp. 109–123. On the concept of memory regimes and the ‘memory of memory,’ see Susannah Radstone and Katharine Hodgkin, (eds.), Regimes of Memory (London: Routledge, 2003), and Jeff Olick, The Sins of the Fathers: Germany, Memory, Method (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2016).
15 Theodor W. Adorno, Aspekte des neuen Rechtsradikalismus. Ein Vortrag (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2019), p. 18.
16 “Wie diese Dinge weitergehen und die Verantwortung dafür, wie sie weitergehen, das ist in letzter Instanz an uns.” Ibid., p. 55.
17 All events, including student responses and press coverage, are documented at: https://us.boell.org/transatlantic-partnership-memory-responsibility-and-transformation (2018) and https://us.boell.org/transatlantic-partnership-memory-democracy (2019).
18 Looking beneath and beyond depictions of marginalization to identify its root causes, Babej's photography explores the material and psychological motives behind the construction of majority narratives, and the institutions by which such narratives are propagated. His search for synergies between images and texts led to the development of Aspective Realism, a new historically based art style. To learn more about his work, go to http://marcerwinbabej.com/.
19 Umpfenbach's plays often use site-specific locations to turn the city itself into a stage. Her piece Gleis 11 (Platform 11) took place in a bunker in Munich's central train station. Urteile (Judgments) gave voice to the victims of the National Socialist Underground (NSU), a neo-Nazi cell in Munich. The performers are mostly ‘real people’: non-actors, people engaged in other professions, old people, children, and refugees. Umpfenbach has also worked in many theaters, including the Volksbühne Berlin, Münchner Kammerspiele, Theater Freiburg, and Residenztheater. Her UVA piece (titled Document It!) premiered on 16 April 2019 at the famed Rotunda (a UNESCO World Heritage Site) and was covered by a local TV station. More information at http://www.schaefersphilippen.de/kuenstler_in/christine-umpfenbach/.
20 Schmieding has worked as a public historian curating exhibitions and programs that address discrepancies between private and official memory, help students and teachers come to terms with the most recent past, and counter populism and right-wing extremism. He recently accepted a position as a research associate at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.
21 Aikins has been a leading voice in the Berlin movement to rename streets that honor German colonizers; he successfully lobbied to rename the Gröbenufer, which honored an enabler of the Brandenburgian enslavement enterprise on the shores of today's Ghana, to May-Ayim-Ufer, now honoring the Afro-German poet, social scientist, and activist May Ayim. He served on the advisory board of Initiative Schwarze Menschen in Deutschland (Initiative of Black People in Germany) and as an expert member of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry on Racism and Discrimination in the State of Thuringia. In 2015, he coordinated and presented the parallel report to the official German report to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
22 Noa Ha's publications include Decolonize the City! Zur Kolonialität der Stadt (Münster: UNRAST-Verlag, 2017) and Straßenhandel in Berlin. Öffentlicher Raum, Informalität und Rassismus in der neoliberalen Stadt (Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2016). More information at https://herstorycity.tumblr.com/aboutme.
23 The UVA class project was inspired by an educational station Natasha Kelly curated for the exhibition German Colonialism. Fragments of its History and Present at the German Historical Museum in Berlin (2016–17). Kelly's Poison Cabinet (Giftschrank) invited visitors to interrogate terms and objects of colonialism by opening small ‘poison boxes’ hidden in drawers. Language quite literally ‘appeared’ there as a form of action with the power to both colonize and resist. For more information on her projects and publications, go to http://natashaakelly.com/the-poison-cabinet/.
24 Langer is the author of the book Ein Jude in Neukölln: Mein Weg zum Miteinander der Religionen (Berlin: Aufbau Verlag, 2016) and co-editor, with Ozan Zakariya Keskinkilic, of the volume Fremdgemacht & Reorientiert – jüdisch-muslimische Verflechtungen (Made Foreign & Reoriented: Jewish-Muslim Interconnections) (Berlin: Yilmaz-Günay, 2018). He has a PhD in sociology from Humboldt University in Berlin and is currently a student at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. More information at https://www.arminlanger.net/.
25 See Geoffrey Short, “Lessons of the Holocaust: A Response to the Critics,” Educational Review, vol. 55, no. 3 (2003): p. 283.
26 Bruce Carrington and Geoffrey Short, “Holocaust Education, Anti-Racism and Citizenship,” Educational Review, vol. 49, no, 3 (1997): p. 280. See also T. McLaughlin, “Citizenship, Diversity, and Education: A Philosophical Perspective,” Journal of Moral Education, vol. 21, no. 3 (1992): pp. 235–251. Citing the more critical views of Omer Bartov, Peter Novick, Lionel Kochan, and Nicholas Kinloch, Short (‘Lessons of the Holocaust’) asserts the moral and social impact of Holocaust education. One of the lessons to derive from the Holocaust, in Short's view, is the importance of commemoration. Gallant and Hartman stress the importance of ‘teaching motives for action’ and advise teachers to create projects that ‘would not only help learn about genocide using the Holocaust as a model but would also develop the kind of activism in students that builds bridges between “we” and “they” in the community.’ Mary J. Gallant and Harriet Hartman, “Holocaust Education for the New Millennium: Assessing our Progress,” Journal of Holocaust Education, vol. 10, no. 2 (2001): pp. 6, 9–10. For a different perspective, see Zehavit Gross, “The Process of the Universalization of Holocaust Education: Problems and Challenges,” Contemporary Jewry, vol. 38 (2018): pp. 5–20. While Gross points to the pedagogical hazards of the universalization of Holocaust education as a means to combat racism, he argues that these challenges can be addressed to advance antiracist education using the Holocaust as a case study and thus developing a reflective culture of remembrance.
27 The concepts of citizenship and democracy are open to a broad range of interpretations. Employing a definition beyond legal or juridical qualifications links up productively to the idea of a ‘universe of obligations,’ developed by Helen Fein in Accounting for Genocide: National Responses and Jewish Victimization during the Holocaust (London: Free Press, 1979). See Short, “Antiracist Education and Moral Behaviour: Lessons from the Holocaust,” Journal of Moral Behaviour, vol. 28, no. 1 (1999): pp. 49–62. For a broad definition of democracy as a way of life, see Till van Rahden, Demokratie: Eine gefährdete Lebensform (Frankfurt and New York: Campus Verlag, 2019).
28 Laura Hofmann, “Bus der Begegnungen: Raus aus der Filterblase,” Der Tagesspiegel, 11 July 2017. Students received a translation of this article and were encouraged to read a number of Langer's pieces. Choices included: “Terrorattentat in Neuseeland: Der Hass betrifft uns alle,” Spiegel Online, 16 March 2019; “AfD-Ideologie: Warum es keinen homogenen Volkskörper gibt,” Spiegel Online, 16 June 2018; “Integration – A Process of Give and Take,” Deutsche Welle/Qantara.de, 13 August 2018; and “Are Muslims the New Jews?,” JEU European Jewish Magazine, 20 February 2017.
29 Ármin Langer, “Armin's Reflection,” Heinrich Böll Foundation, 16 October 2019, https://us.boell.org/en/2019/10/16/armins-reflection.
30 For more information on the new memorial, see https://slavery.virginia.edu/memorial-for-enslaved-laborers/.
31 Langer, “Armin's Reflection.”
32 Ármin Langer, e-mail message to Manuela Achilles, 13 December 2020.
33 Ibid.
34 For a discussion of many of the key issues in contemporary Holocaust education, see Paula Cowan and Henry Maitles, Understanding and Teaching Holocaust Education (London: Sage, 2016). The authors underscore that the ‘de-Judaization’ of the Holocaust is a real concern. We agree. Confronting other traumatic pasts in the context of a class on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, as described here, is not instead of but in addition to understanding the Jewish experience; the Jewish experience must not be marginalized. Our hope is to inspire intersectional solidarity against all forms of racism – it was no coincidence that Unite the Right protesters on UVA grounds chanted both ‘You will not replace us’ and ‘Jews will not replace us.’ For a useful evaluation of Maitles and Cowan's book, see Richelle Budd Caplan's review at https://www.yadvashem.org/education/educational-materials/books/holocaust-education.html.
35 In addition to the Heinrich Böll Foundation and the Center for German Studies, co-sponsors (all within UVA) so far include the Collective Response: Moving Forward Fund of the College of Arts and Sciences; Center for Global Inquiry and Innovation; Center for German Studies; Department of German; European Studies Program, and the Religion, Race & Democracy Lab.
36 The video is available at https://www.monticello.org/the-water-dancer-and-monticello/?ref=homecard.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Manuela Achilles
Manuela Achilles is an Associate Professor of German and history at the University of Virginia. She holds a joint appointment in the Department of German and the Corcoran Department of History, and is the director of the European Studies Program and the Center for German Studies at UVA. Dr. Achilles has published broadly on the political culture of Weimar democracy and is completing a book length-study of constitutional patriotism and the desire for democracy in Weimar Germany. Her second research interest revolves around green practices and ideas. Together with Dana Elzey, she has edited an interdisciplinary volume on Environmental Sustainability in Transatlantic Perspective. Her teaching interests include Weimar and Nazi Germany, Hitler in history and fiction, fascism in global perspective, apocalyptic history, and transnational cultures of memory.
Hannah Winnick
Hannah Winnick is the Europe Program Manager at the Obama Foundation. From 2015 to 2020, she served as the founding director of the Democracy Program at the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Washington, DC. The program brings together thought leaders in government and civil society to develop innovative, transatlantic approaches to shared democratic challenges in the United States and Germany. Prior to joining the Foundation, Winnick was the Transnational Liaison at Hispanics in Philanthropy in San Francisco, where she worked to support the growth of Latino-led, Latino-serving nonprofit organizations in the US and Mexico. She has also spent time as a research fellow on German diplomacy with the LEAD Mercator Capacity Building Center for Leadership and Advocacy in Berlin. Winnick holds a master's degree in public policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a bachelor's degree in political science from Amherst College.