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UNIWERSYTET JAGIELLOŃSKI W KRAKOWIE
WYDZIAŁ STUDIÓW MIĘDZYNARODOWYCH I POLITYCZNYCH
INSTYTUT EUROPEISTYKI
Katharina Christina Nolte
Nr albumu: 1074112KIERUNEK Europeistyka
Specjalność Euroculture
WHAT DO THEY KNOW?
THE GERMAN TURKS AND THEIR
PERCEPTION OF THE HOLOCAUST
Praca magisterska
Promotor: Prof. dr hab. Zdzisław Mach
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Master of Arts Thesis
Euroculture
University of Groningen University of Kraków
February 2012
What do they know?
The German Turks and their Perception of the Holocaust
Katharina Christina Nolte S2044897 Katha.Nolte@gmail.com
Dr. C.M. Megens Prof. Z. Mach
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MA Programme Euroculture
Declaration
I, Katharina Christina Nolte, hereby declare that this thesis, entitled “What do they know? The German Turks and their perception of the Holocaust”, submitted as partial requirement for the MA Programme Euroculture, is my own original work and expressed in my own words. Any use made within it of works of other authors in any form (e.g. ideas, figures, texts, tables, etc.) are properly acknowledged in the text as well as in the List of References.
I hereby also acknowledge that I was informed about the regulations pertaining to the assessment of the MA thesis Euroculture and about the general completion rules for the Master of Arts Programme Euroculture.
Signed
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction 7
2. Theoretical Background 10
2.1. The duty of remembering the Holocaust 10
2.2. The memory 12
2.2.1. The individual memory 12
2.2.2. The social and generation memory 13
2.2.3. The collective and cultural memory 16
2.2.4. Additions to Halbwachs 18
2.2.5. The political memory 19
2.2.6. Summary 20
2.3. History and Memory 21
2.3.1. The absence of the Holocaust remembrance 22
2.3.2. Breaking the silence – the ’68 generation 24
2.3.3. Change of generations 25
2.3.4. The externalization of guilt 27
2.3.5. The internalization 28
2.3.6. Forgetting 29
2.3.7. Memory and identity 30
2.3.8. The term ‘Holocaust’ 31
2.3.9. Storage of memory 32
2.3.9.1. Museums, memorials and places of remembrance 32
2.3.9.2. Anniversaries 35
2.4. The Holocaust remembrance today 35
2.5. Outlook: Europe as community of shared memory 37
2.6. Conclusion 39
3. Methodology 41
3.1. Oral History 41
3.2. The survey 42
3.2.1. The contents 42
3.2.2. The survey participants 43
3.2.3. Distribution of the surveys 44
3.2.4. Evaluation of the surveys 45
4. Evaluation 46
4.1. Socio-demographic of the sample 46
4.2. Sample evaluation 48
4.2.1. Knowledge of the Holocaust 48
4.2.2. Mediator of the Knowledge 49
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4.2.4. Occupation and remembrance 50
4.2.4.1. Occupation with the Holocaust 50
4.2.4.2. Visit of a memorial place 52
4.2.4.3. Remembrance of the Holocaust 53 4.2.4.4. Responsibility 54 4.2.4.5. Israel 55
4.2.4.6. Identity 56 4.2.4.7. First generation and Holocaust 56 5. Discussion 58 5.1. Summary and critical reflection on the survey 58
5.1.1. Presumptions 58 5.1.2. Presentation of results 60
5.1.2.1. The knowledge of the Holocaust 60
5.1.2.2. Remembrance of the H. within the social memory 63
5.1.2.2.1. Individual and family memory 63
5.1.2.2.2. Generation memory 64
5.1.2.2.3. Transmission of social to cultural memory 65
5.1.2.3. Remembrance of the H. within the cultural memory 65
5.1.2.4. Remembrance of the H. within the political memory 67 5.1.2.4.1. Joint responsibility 69
5.1.3. Future perspective 71 5.1.4. Limitations of the research 72 6. Conclusion 73
7. Bibliography 76
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To my grandparents,
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1. Introduction
„How should I not know about it? How should it be possible not to know about it?‟, was the question of the Turkish unpaid politician Kemal Öner who is living and working in Germany since 1965 when the topic of the research presented in this work was introduced to him. „How should it be possible not to know about the Holocaust?‟, Germany‟s crime against humanity before and during World War II, was his question. Kemal Öner‟s reaction on my research question was surprising even though the Holocaust probably is the best documented crime against humanity. The Holocaust is present in rites, memorials, museums, archives, exhibitions, monuments, arts, books, TV series, journals, pictures, videos and many other forms of medial representation. Hence, the question whether it is possible not to know about the Holocaust is also legitimate. But is the demand for the knowledge of the Holocaust also valid for immigrant groups living in contemporary Germany?
Since twenty-odd years the history of the National Socialism and the Holocaust has come especially in Germany more and more urgently to the fore.1 Indeed, the occupation with the Nazi past is one of the pervasive topics in the contemporary political discourse of Germany. Recent occurrences with regard to neo-Nazi deeds dominate the German media since weeks.2 The topic National Socialism is that acute in Germany that the term „past„ almost automatically is understood as Nazi past.3 But this was not always the case:
During the post-war era nobody looked back; neither in anger nor in sorrow. It was just a matter of survival. All signs both in the West as well as in East Germany were pointing towards the future.4
After the war, Germany was removing its ruins and remains and was focused on changing bombed districts into new housing complexes. The millions of dead people killed by WW II, by the Holocaust, by bombardments, by escape or expulsion could not be resurrected; but stones and buildings could. For this big project regarding the reconstruction of Germany and the recovery of the German economy labor forces were needed urgently.
1 Aleida Assmann, Geschichte im Gedächtnis - Von der individuellen Erfahrung zur öffentlichen Inszenierung (München: C.H. Beck, 2007), 16.
2 The extreme right-wing so called Zwickauer Zelle and its recent crimes has awakened the occupation with the National Socialism in Germany noticeably.
3 Hans Günther Hockerts, Nach der Verfolgung. Wiedergutmachung nationalsozialistischen Unrechts in Deutschland? (Göttingen, Wallstein Verlag, 2002), 53.
„(…) so sehr, dass unter ‚Vergangenheit„ (…) nahezu automatisch die NS-Vergangenheit verstanden wird.“ 4 Assmann, Geschichte im Gedächtnis, 101.
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Nowadays, approximately a little more than three million people living in Germany have their roots in the Republic of Turkey. Since the decision of an arrangement between Germany and Turkey in 1961 to send (mostly low-qualified) labor forces, so called Gastarbeiter, from Turkey to Germany, the immigration of the „first generation‟ has increased explosively. From 6,500 Turkish workers in the first year of the cross-national arrangement, the number rose to 910,000 in 19735 and to 1,600,000 in 1981.6 Since the arrangement did not foresee any rule concerning the return of the Turkish workers back to Turkey, most of the Gastarbeiter and their families stayed – unexpectedly – in Germany and witnessed Germany‟s post-war era. In North Rhine-Westphalia, focus of the present research, currently live 743,000 people with a Turkish migration background.7
The majority of the first generation of Turkish workers in Germany mainly derived from the countryside of Eastern Anatolia.8 Since 1973, the Turkish migrants have displaced the Italians as largest foreign group in Germany.
One of the pre-assumptions of the present investigation was that the education system and communication media in these regions of Turkey not have been well-elaborated in the 1950s and 1960s so that it was legitimate to pose the following question: how should it have been possible for the Turkish people from the countryside, having the objective to work in Germany in order to earn money and fight for their existence, to have heard or known about the Holocaust before coming to Germany? And even years later, when already living and working in Germany, how should the hard-working and mostly isolated first generation of Turkish workers have heard or received detailed information about the Holocaust without speaking sufficiently German, without understanding the media, without having consolidated social contacts to Germans and without having an unstressed mind which was not occupied with thinking of the family back in Turkey and earning money for them?
Concisely said, to me it was unlikely that the Gastarbeiter generation knew about the Holocaust before coming to Germany, probably until the topic became more and more discussed in German, European and worldwide public and society. Much more probable was the assumption that the
5 In the year 1973 the recruitment was stopped.
6 Faruk Sen and Alke Wirth, „1961-1991 Ein kritischer Rückblick auf die dreißigjährige Migrationsgeschichte in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland.“, ZAR 2/92 (1992): 75-80.
7
Wolfgang Seifert, „Statistik kompakt - 50 Jahre Zuwanderung aus der Türkei – zum Stand der strukturellen Integration in Nordrhein-Westfalen.“ Information und Technik Nordrhein-Westfalen (2011): 1.
8 Seifert, „Statistik kompakt“, 2.
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second and third generation, the descendents of the Gastarbeiter, knew about the Holocaust since the majority of them was born and raised in Germany, attended school in Germany and therefore their language skills admitted much deeper social contacts to Germans as well as to German literature and media.
The present work deals with two major hypotheses: firstly, the first generation of Turkish workers in Germany did not know about the Holocaust before coming to Germany in the 1960s and 1970s and probably never really knew about it since their integration efforts and opportunities until today might have been lower than those of the second and third generation who to a great extent grew up in Germany and therefore should possess a closer relation to German speaking sources. Secondly, at a next stage I assumed that the willingness of the Turkish people in Germany to remember the victims of the Holocaust would be remarkably low due to several reasons such as a low integration level and consequently a low sense of identification with the German nation or even with Europe, as well as a certainly problematic relationship to Israel as well as the genocide of the Armenians at the rear which is not officially admitted and confessed by the Turks yet.
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2. Theoretical Background
2.1. The duty of remembering the Holocaust
When thinking about the Holocaust, memory plays an important role on at least two different planes: as experiential memory of the contemporary time witnesses or as commemorative memory of the mankind after. The commemorative memory of the Holocaust embraces already two to three generations. It is not only the memory of the Germans but of people all over Europe and the world.
Anyhow, one of the most important characteristics of memory is its volatility and instability.9 Memories are able to change in the course of time along with the change of the individuals and their living circumstances. Over the course of time, once important things might become unimportant and former unimportant aspects might become important.10 The reason for the inexactness and variability of our memory is that for most of our memories there is no extern evidence. Only, in case of concurrence like the appearance of other peoples‟ memories or evidences through historical documents and representations we realize the weakness of our own individual memory. Therefore, it is essential to back up our memories.
Europe and especially Germany is a transnational showplace of unimaginable violence and a traumatic experience. Indeed, it is the task of a modern and strong Europe to remember the death camps, concentration camps and battle fields all over the continent in a transnational framework. In these new times of globalization, national borders have to be extended to a European or even to a global level in order to banish the mere national way of thinking and to promote a common European way of thinking and remembering. Aleida Assmann claims that the (in the meantime contested) comparative prohibition of the postulate of the Holocaust‟s uniqueness is associated with the compulsory demand for a transnational and trans-generational remembrance of the Holocaust into one single memory of mankind.11 According to Gerard Delanty and Chris Rumford „most memories are national ones or ones that are specific to particular groups.‟12
This
9 Aleida Assmann, Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit – Erinnerungskultur und Geschichtspolitik (München: C.H. Beck, 2006) 135.
10
‚Ibid.„, 25. 11
„Das mit dem (inzwischen umstrittenen) Vergleichsverbot unterstrichene Postulat der absoluten Einzigartigkeit des Holocaust verband sich mit dem verpflichtenden Anspruch dieses Ereignisses auf eine transnational und transgenerationell verkörperte Erinnerung in einem ‚Gedächtnis der Menschheit.“
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proposition is underlined by Chris Lorenz who refers to the Holocaust as a mere „German catastrophe‟ which „has become more present in unified Germany than ever before.‟13
Anyhow, with regard to the Holocaust, „until recently, this was a German memory.‟ But indeed, the Holocaust memory has become the greatest example for the development of the Europeanization of memory. According to Levy and Sznaider the Holocaust has become a reference point for a European cosmopolitan memory in the past two decades.14 Today‟s transition of national to cosmopolitan memory cultures is undeniable. Ethnic and national boundaries are run down by memory.15 The sociologist Ulrich Beck has introduced the term
Zweite Moderne, second modernity, in order to describe the global processes that are
characterized by delocalization of politics and culture.16 „In Second Modernity we detect a compromise that is based on the mutual recognition of the history of „the Other‟.17
The emergence of the Second Modernity is explained by Delanty and Rumford as follows: „It appears a political community must first be able to distance itself from the past in order to re-imagine itself.‟18
The traumatic memory of the Holocaust has developed and still is developing towards a post-national commemoration based on forgiveness and the recognition of the victimhood.19 But this is not the case with all traumatic memories: ‚Wer erinnert sich noch heute daran, was mit den
Armeniern geschah?„, ‚Who does remember nowadays what has happened to the Armenians‟,
was Hitler‟s question to the German folk in the 1930th.20
His wish was that the extermination of the Jews would also not leave any trace in the people‟s heads.21
Obviously, forgetting saves the perpetrators and weakens the victims. Therefore, remembering has become an ethnic duty and a form of subsequent resistance.22 Even today, the Turkish government has so far not made any
13 Chris Lorenz, “Border crossings: Some Reflexions on the Role of German Historians in Recent Public Debates on Nazi History”, in Remembering the Holocaust in Germany 1945-2000, ed. Dan Michman (New York: Peter Lang, 2002), 82.
14
Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider, “Memory Unbound: The Holocaust and the Formation of Cosmopolitan Memory”, European Journal of Social Theory 5 (2002): 87.
15 „Ibid‟, 88.
16 Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider , Erinnerung im globalen Zeitalter: Der Holocaust (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2001), 9.
17 Levy and Sznaider, “Memory Unbound “, 103. 18 Delanty and Rumford, Rethinking Europe , 100. 19 „Ibid.‟ 101.
20
ABC News Genocide http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BE9rt4QeyEw.
21 Dirk Rupnow, Vernichten und Erinnern. (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2005), 288.
„Hitler fragte in den 1930er Jahren: Wer erinnerst sich noch heute an die Armenier? Sein Wunsch war, dass die Endlösung der Judenfrage ebenfalls keine Gedächtnisspur hinterlassen würde.“
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public or official apology for the massacre of the Armenians23 and everybody knows that this ignorance is injustice. It has to be remembered and the conditions for this are more than convenient because today‟s „modern‟ or „globalized‟ memory is not anymore necessarily connected to a certain space or time. Memories are not „hidden‟ anymore. They have become liquid24 because memories are carried from individuals to the public and get back easily from the public to the individuals.
2.2. The memory
In the following, several types of memories will be presented in order to illustrate the complexity of memories and of remembrance.
2.2.1. The individual memory
The time dimension of an individual is not restricted to its own experience and life-time. By belonging to a group, the “we”, the time dimension of the individual moves backward and forward to a much wider time horizon and is extended to past and future. Hence, the memory of an individual contains more than its own experiences: the memory of the individual combines individual and collective memory.25
The individual memory is the dynamic medium of subjective empirical processing.26 It is not a mere private and „lonely‟ memory. Already in the 1920s Maurice Halbwachs assumed that the individual memory is socially based. According to Halbwachs a completely isolated individual would not be able to erect a memory because memories are established via communication with fellow human beings. Hence, the individual or more suitable termed „communicative memory‟ appears in a milieu of interaction with common life forms and with shared experiences.27
It can be affirmed that the individual memory is embedded in contexts and correlations in which the individual is participating and interacting with. This can be the social group like the family or the generation, the collective such as an ethnic group or a nation or even the cultural system.
23 Delanty and Rumford, Rethinking Europe, 98. 24
Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity (London: Polity Press, 2000), 219. 25 Assman, Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit, 23.
26 „Ibid.„ 25.
„Das individuelle Gedächtnis (…) ist das dynamische Medium subjektiver Erfahrungsverarbeitung.“ 27
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Hence, an individual is part of several different we-groups each having different memories and consequently different identities.
According to Maurice Halbwachs‟ theory in „Das Gedächtnis und seine sozialen Bedingungen‟ the memory is constantly reconstructed under the „pressure„ of the society, the social framework, meaning that the presence is dictating the past.28 Only through the social framework the individual unifies his or her personal memories and these memories become communicable and in this way common property of the group. Consequently, an individual remembers and forgets in order to belong to a group.29
Additionally to this social component, the time component is of great importance for the (individual) memory: the time horizon usually is determined by the change of generations. When three (or even four) generations30 in families come together this period is an exchange of experiences and memories. By talking, listening, questioning and explaining the scope of the memories of the individual broadens and develops. Stories and memories are passed on to children and grandchildren. This „three generation memory‟ is essential for the individual‟s orientation in time.
Because the world and the society are constantly changing, also the social frameworks are changing and things and events that have been important yesterday may be unimportant today and vice versa. According to Assmann, the years 2003 or 2005 were closer to the year 1945 than for example the years 1962 or 1975. The reason for this is the social framework with regard to the remembrance of the Holocaust that needed to be build up during the years and decades in which all the stories and messages (of individuals) were able to find their place.31 Nowadays we are able to talk about the past and to remember the past actively. Right after the war this was not the case which will be further explained later on.
2.2.2. The social and generation memory
An individual attains a social memory inevitably by belonging to a human society. Within the social memory the family memory plays probably one of the most important roles because the boundaries between experiences that one self has gone through and experiences that are told by
28 Maurice Halbwachs, Das Gedächtnis und seine sozialen Bedingungen (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 1985), 156. 29 Assmann, Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit, 150.
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the family (anecdotes, positions, attitudes, etc.) become transparent.32 Fragmentary stories of parents and grandparents become partly true and partly fictive but authentically perceived stories which circulate within the family memory.33
Apart from the family generation the social and historical generation is especially for individuals at the age of 12 to 25 of great importance because individuals at this age are very receptive and open for shaping experiences. Generations in general, whether they actively want or not, share common beliefs, opinions, attitudes, worldviews and cultural patterns. This implies that the individual memory is not only determined by the process of time but also by the experience of the generation memory.34 Hence, generations share a common world view and therefore establish a closed loop to a certain extent because every generation develops its own access to the past and does not let the previous generation determine its perspective. Therefore, it can be said that dynamics in the memory of a society are mostly determined by the change of generations. With every change of generation, which according to Assmann occurs approximately every 30 years, the memory of a society shifts remarkably.35 Attitudes and opinions that used to be of great importance move to the periphery and retrospectively it becomes clear that with the change of generation a certain atmosphere of experiences and values has vanished and new characters have appeared. The change of generation is essential for the change and the renewal of the memory of a society and plays an important role in the processing of traumatic experiences.
Moving to the history of Germany, this change of generation became important especially in the late 1960s when the so called ‟68 generation broke through the silence of the Holocaust memories and through the denial of guilt.36 This generation did not just start openly to talk about the past and Germany‟s guilt and responsibility, but was also leading the erection of monuments, the conception of exhibitions in museums, the production of films and other forms of public
32
Assmann, Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit, 206.
33 Janina Bach, Erinnerungsspuren an den Holocaust in der deutschen Nachkriegsliteratur (Dresden: Neisse Verlag, 2007), 59.
„Zudem werden fragmentarische Erzählungen von Eltern und Großeltern aus dem Krieg von den
Familienmitgliedern unbewusst nach dem Muster von medialen Produkten ergänzt, um eine für die nachfolgende Generation plausible Geschichte darzustellen, welche dann als teils wahre, teils fiktive, doch authentisch empfundene Geschichte im Familiengedächtnis kursiert.“
34 Assmann, Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit, 26. 35
„Ibid.„, 27. 36 „Ibid„, 28.
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remembrance. Assmann claims that this way of public remembrance such as erecting monuments or museums usually appears after fifteen to thirty years after a traumatic experience.37
Distinctive for the social memory of generations is its constraint time horizon. Even though books, albums and diaries stabilize the social memory they do not broaden it. Only through a vivid and mutual communication the social memory stays alive. If the communication network breaks down, the common social memory also disappears. The materialistic leftovers of these vivid memories as photographs or letters then become traces to a not spontaneously renewable past. According to Assmann the time horizon of the social memory can be extended at most to three or four generations if it remains vivid through communication and interaction such as the communication within the family. Therefore the social memory can be determined as short-term memory of a society.38
A distinctive gain with regard to the transition from the individual to the social memory is indeed the enrichment of the own experience through the experience of others as well as the confirmation of the own experience and its perspective in the light of the experiences of the others.39 Hence, the social memory is a coordination of individual memories existing through coexistence, linguistic exchange and discourse. The scope of the social memory is restricted to the rhythm of life and therefore biologically constraint. It can be said that the social memory is a plastic issue. It is less adequate for the reliable tradition or passing on of experiences but more likely for the adaption to constantly new memory frameworks.40 This means, that working with the past actually means working with the presence while this presence is moving and shifting constantly.
Indeed, memories emerge in communicative processes. With regard to the Holocaust, the communicative memory has been transferred more and more into a cultural memory since the generation of the time witnesses concerning the Holocaust has became smaller and smaller.
37
Assmann, Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit, 28. 38 ‟Ibid.„
39 ‟Ibid.„, 34.
„Entscheidender Zugewinn im Übergang vom individuellen zum sozialen Gedächtnis ist jedoch die Anreicherung der eigenen Erfahrung durch die Erfahrungen anderer sowie die Bestätigung der eigenen Erinnerungen und ihre Perspektivierung im Lichte der Erinnerungen anderer.“
40‟Ibid.„, 35.
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2.2.3. The collective and cultural memory
Is it possible to remember collectively? At first glance, it is not possible due to the fact that every individual remembers differently and irreproducibly and this specific memory dies with the person that it belonged to. On the other hand, the term „collective memory‟ appears frequently in today‟s literature. But, memories are multi-perspective and therefore heterogeneous. Only on the level of representation they receive their homogenization.41 Instead of „collective memory‟ the term „ideology‟ might express the idea of a collective memory appropriately.42
How can an individual obtain a collective memory or ideology? Assmann claims that especially rites play an essential part in contributing to a collective memory.43 Hence, for example national holidays that let remember days of triumph or days of trauma and sorrow make history become memory. Hereby, past and presence meet and merge. Anyhow, it is essential to understand that collectives such as ethnic groups, nations or states do not „have‟ a collective memory but „make‟ a collective memory inter alia with the help of texts, memorials, anniversaries, rites etc. and thereby establish a „we-identity‟ which is not a question of origin or descent but of learning, participating and active belonging.44
In Germany, the term „collective memory‟45
is a great topic especially since the early 1990s. The collective memory bases on experiences and knowledge that are passed on from individual and vivid mediums to materialistic mediums.46 With the help of electronic media and its storage we are nowadays able to extend and maintain our artificial memory. Social networks and discussion boards are filled up every day with new information. Relying on this kind of online information may not always be safe with regard to credibility but life stories on well established homepages, like for example the webpage of the former death camp Auschwitz47, can offer an insight into the
past with the help of real stories and experiences of former victims stored in archives and in this way contribute to the preservation of memories. In this manner, memories can be stabilized from generation to generation while the social memory vanishes together with the people carrying it. The collective or so-called cultural memory on the other hand is unrestricted due to its storage in extern media as texts, pictures, monuments, anniversaries and rites. These symbolic elements of
41
Assmann, Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit, 202.
„Erinnerungen sind (…) multiperspektivisch und somit heterogen. Ihre Homogenisierung gewinnen sie erst auf der Ebene der Repräsentationen.“
42‚Ibid.„, 30. 43„Ibid.‟, 208.
44 Aleida Assmann, Einführung in die Kulturwissenschaft (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2006), 188. 45 By Aleida Assmann also called as „cultural memory‟.
46 Assmann, Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit, 34. 47
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the collective or cultural memory are the main differences compared to the generation memory or social memory. Hence, in contrast to the social memory the collective memory has got a long-lasting time horizon. Monuments, anniversaries and rites strengthen memories through materialistic signs or through periodic repetition so that they can offer upcoming generations the possibility to grow into a common memory without having the own and explicit experience.48 Halbwachs distinguishes between the social or autobiographic memory and the historical memory (cultural memory). Social memories relate to experiences one has gone through personally.49 In contrast, the historical memory bases primarily on mediated experiences such as memorials, movies, et cetera. For most people national experiences base on these mediated memories. This results in the fact that different national groups have different national memories.50 In case of the Holocaust, most people did not experience the Nazism but their memories are dependent on its representations. „Only a small minority who experienced the Nazism first hand is alive‟51
and therefore remembers the Holocaust in their social memory while the following generations might rely on the cultural memory.
But how exactly does a collective or cultural memory emerge? According to Assmann, the individual memory is labile and fragile as long as it is not fixed in an extern memory. After the death of an individual and the change of generation, the family memory vanishes and might be forgotten soon.52 Sometimes it is the case that material belongings of the deceased individual as for example furniture, photographs or letters remain. These material remains that outlive the lived existence and the social memory constitute the cultural memory. Hence, there is a clear separation between vivid (social) and material (cultural) remains. While the living memories vanish with their carriers, the material remains of a culture have the chance to survive, for example in institutions like museums, libraries and archives. One of the most famous elements of the cultural memory with regard to the Holocaust might be the movie Schindlers Liste by Steven Spielberg. Especially younger generations who did not personally witness the times of war were and still are able to get an idea about the horrors of the Holocaust via this movie.
But in order to extend our cultural memory through the existence of material remains, it is necessary to specifically select the memory: memories that are shielded or forgotten at a
48
Assmann, Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit, 35. 49 Halbwachs, Das kollektive Gedächtnis, 55 ff.
50 Levy and Sznaider, Erinnerung im globalen Zeitalter, 42. 51 Levy and Sznaider, “Memory Unbound“, 91.
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particular time are not necessarily lost completely.53 Material traces can be stored and newly discovered and interpreted at a later date in another epoch. Conservation and keeping therefore are the preconditions for the existence of a cultural memory but only through the individual perception and selection conveyed by media, institutions or political groups the cultural memory can be (re-)discovered and exist. The cultural memory can be extended for an indefinite period of time. Due to the cultural memory we are able to be the time-witnesses not just of our own epoch but also receive details of previous times and reflect knowledge and skills of these previous generations critically.54
Similar to the national memory the cultural memory is able to transport experiences and knowledge above the threshold of generations and hence to build a social long-term memory.55 The cultural memory is the precondition for survivable communication and the continuous encounter with one self and the others in the historical course of time.56
The dangers of the collective memory might be the fluent encounter of boundaries between memories of self-awareness and memories one has adopted through readings, movies, museums, etc.57 The American psychologist Daniel Schacter presented in 2003 „The Seven Sins of Memory‟ in which the case of misattribution constitutes a misperformance of the memory ascribing wrong memory contents which deal with memories oneself has never experienced nor have these experiences occurred at all.58 “Memory, for all that it does for us every day, for all the feats that can sometimes amaze us, can also be a troublemaker," said Schacter of his book.
2.2.4. Additions to Halbwachs
Anyhow, nowadays and more than 80 years after Halbwachs‟ memory theory, we know that it is not only the present framework that determines the memories but that also the past has got a certain power towards the presence: „We live in the shadow of a past which has a manifold
53 Assmann 56. 54 „Ibid„, 61. 55 ‟Ibid„, 57. 56 ‟Ibid.„, 61.
„Das kulturelle Gedächtnis ist die Voraussetzung für überlebenszeitliche Kommunikation und mit ihr die
Möglichkeit für kontinuierliche Selbst- und Fremdbegegnungen von Menschen im geschichtlichen Wandel der Zeit.“ 57 „Hier stoßen wir auf die fließende Grenze zwischen Erinnerungsbildern, die auf selbst erlebtes zurückgehen, und Vorstellungsbildern, die man sich über die Lektüre oder Filme aneignet.“
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impact on the present and which haunts the descendents with emotional dissonance and moral dilemma.‟59
Halbwachs describes the plasticity and flexibility of the memory with regard to oral traditions and communication. Anyhow, he did not consider written sources which have a specific privilege towards the past.60 Assmann presents an essential difference between oral and written communication in between the social framework claiming that in the written communication the individual is slightly dissolved from its environment.
2.2.5. The political memory
Characteristic for the political memory is the evocation of history by the leading politicians of a nation state. Hence, in contrast to the social memory where the memory arises from the bottom up and changes and vanishes with every generation the political memory is a long-lasting top-down process:
The dynamics of remembering and forgetting is not just defined by the change of generations and the change of technical media but rather strongly by the change of political systems. Through political practices such as funeral ceremonies, remembrance rites, the erection of memorials or the denomination of streets, schools, buildings or ships a political memory with unconstraint unlimited and unbounded future aspiration is produced. In fact, this is lasting as long as the regime lasts which is supporting these aspirations. 61
The question of truth concerning memories indeed has got a social dimension. Whether memories are accepted as true depends on the social framework or more specifically on the acceptance of the public communication area.62 Hence, what is remembered from the past, also depends on how much it is „needed„ in a certain situation. But the initiative usually emanates from above.
59 Assmann, Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit, 198.
„Wir leben im Schatten einer Vergangenheit, die in vielfältiger Form in die Gegenwart weiter hineinwirkt und die Nachgeborenen mit emotionaler Dissonanz und moralischem Dilemma heimsucht.“
60
„Die von Halbwachs so anschaulich beschriebene Plastizität des Gedächtnisses (…) gilt für mündliche
Traditionen. Er berücksichtigt nicht die Dimension der schriftlichen Quellen, die dem Diktat der Gegenwart immer schon ein Veto entgegensetzen und ein gewisses Eigenrecht der Vergangenheit einklagen.“
61 ‚Ibid.„, 199 ff.
„Die Dynamik von Erinnern und Vergessen wird nicht nur durch den Wechsel der Generationen und technischen Medien, sondern auch durch den der politischen Systeme wesentlich bestimmt. Durch kulturelle Praktiken wie Begräbnisfeierlichkeiten, Gedenkrituale, die Errichtung von Denkmälern und die Benennung von Straßen, Schulen und Schiffen wird ein politisches Gedächtnis mit unbegrenztem Zukunftsanspruch erzeugt. Faktisch ist dies jedoch höchstens von ebenso langer Dauer wie das Regime, das solche Ansprüche stützt.“
62 ‚Ibid.„
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According to Assmann, the collective or political memory is shaped much stronger than the social memory.63 The impact from above on the individual and on the group seems to be much more intense and formative.
With radical changes of regime or political breaks an exchange of the commemorative framework is automatically connected.64 Applying this theory to the case of the Holocaust in Germany the radical political changes after 1945 led to a neglect of the past, in order to deal with the presence and the future. Hence, in the constellation of the Cold War the memory of the Holocaust became useless. Mainly, the turnaround of 1989 has loosened this strict framework of forgetting or suppressing the past and has shifted towards the occupation with the past in Germany as well as in Europe and other parts of the world.
Assmann introduces the term Geschichtspolitik65 as the discipline of organization, financing, administration, bureaucracy and especially political decision processes. These political decision processes determine memory structures and memory performances in a top-down process which aims at a homogenized form of remembrance. Especially, since 1989 in Germany several famous political speeches and acts have indicated the emergence of a turning point concerning the remembrance of the Holocaust from the national point of view.66
2.2.6. Summary
Our individual memory contains more than the events and actions we have experienced ourselves. Through interaction with other people and groups and through interaction with material signs our memory expands. Most of our knowledge is received by transmission and not by own experience. Citing the sociologist Edward Shils, Assmann states that our memory
63 Assmann, Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit, 40. 64 ‚Ibid.„,
„Mit radikalen Regime- und politischen Systemwechseln ist automatisch auch eine Auswechslung der Gedächtnisrahmen verbunden.“
65 ‚Ibid.„, 274.
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contains own experiences and experiences of others67 especially deriving from stored materials. The contents of our cultural memory become elements of our identity.68
Anyhow, the transition from the individual to the cultural memory is not easy or fluent but leads through several steps such as individuals, social groups, political collectives or cultures which all offer different identities. That means that through membership and participation of the individual in these different identities the memory becomes much more complex than through solely own experiences. Through communication processes the individual memory is already interwoven with experiences and memories of others. Additionally, with the acquisition and adoption of history, the experiential memory and the semantic memory, adopted by a learning process, coalesce.
2.3. History and Memory
Since the late 1980s a clear approach of history and memory in Germany is noticeable. In the development of the recent decades, the gap between subjective experiences and objectivity has been approaching and the importance and the impact of personal reports has been acknowledged in the field of historiography because they lead to both the completion of facts as well as the establishment of monuments for the victims themselves.69
Communication is the most important criterion of saving the memory. For the reconstruction and exposing of past and present discourses, interpretations and memory patterns, the discipline of „Oral History‟ is an important approach70
because it shows how individuals master political upheavals and how they construct their identities across system changes. In this way, „Oral History‟ does not only relate the individual to history, but it can also show the complexity of historical reality and correct simplistic assumptions about the past.
67 Assmann, Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit, 209.
„ Das Individuum bezieht in seine Selbstwahrnehmung Dinge ein, die nicht von seinen eigenen Erfahrungen begrenzt sind. Das Gedächtnis ist nicht nur mit Erinnerungen an Ereignisse ausgestattet, die das Individuum selbst erlebt hat, sondern auch mit Erinnerungen anderer Menschen.“
68 ‟Ibid.‟, 210. 69 „Ibid.‟, 49.
22
Assmann claims that history and memory are no autocrats in our modern society but characterized as a complex coexistence that comes about through mutual impacts.71 Hence, history and memory need each other in order to be complete or as Charles Maier has stated: „Memory motivates historical activity; historical research utilizes memory.‟72
2.3.1. The absence of the Holocaust remembrance
In the first decades after WW II, in Israel as well as in Germany a lack of need of the general thematization of the recent happenings of the war and the mass extermination prevailed.73 Especially in Germany, in the post-war era there was a general consensus in the Bundestag not to open a public debate concerning guilt and experience of suffering.74 Assmann summarizes that in the first decades after the war the traumatic past in Israel and in Germany was kept under wraps in order not to threaten the development for a new future and concomitant a new identity.75 Nevertheless, what was happening in the family circles is hardly to trace but certainly also the private life was mainly dominated by tabooing and concealment.
According to Levy and Sznaider a central strategy of abdicating responsibility and of escaping the negative consequences with regard to the Holocaust memory was to establish a certain equivalence between German victims and the victims of the Germans.76 If the topic WW II was mentioned in public at all, the political and public discourse of the young Federal Republic was dominated by the thematization of German victims such as the civil society, bomb victims and prisoners of war.77 The occupation with the Jewish victims or the other minorities was basically hushed up. Hence, the division of memory with focus on the victimization of non-Jews was a continuing feature of postwar German memory: „Germans after 1945 had many memories of the Nazi period but the memory of the Holocaust was certainly the weakest.‟78
The first German
71 Assmann, Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit, 51. 72
Charles S. Maier. ”A Surfeit of Memory? Reflections on History, Melanchony and Denial”. History and Memory 5 (1993): 143.
73 „Weder in Israel noch in Westdeutschland bestand in den ersten anderthalb Jahrzehnten nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg ein ausgeprägtes Bedürfnis nach einer allgemeinen Thematisierung der jüngst zurückliegenden Ereignisse des Krieges und der Massenvernichtung.“
74 „In den ersten Jahren nach dem Krieg gab es somit einen Konsens im Bundestag, weder die Schuld noch die Leiderfahrung zum Gegenstand einer öffentlichen Debatte zu machen.“
75 Assmann, Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit, 99. 76
Levy and Sznaider, Erinnerung im globalen Zeitalter, 88.
77 Dan Diner, Gegenläufige Gedächtnisse – Über Geltung und Wirkung des Holocaust (Göttingen: Vadenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007) 8.
23 Volkstrauertag, People‟s Memorial Day, introduced by the FRG in November 1952 which
commemorated the civilian victims of the two world wars as well as all fallen soldiers underlines the absence of a „collective German guilt‟ for the murder of the millions of Jews and other minority victims.79
Consequently, the victims of the Holocaust came across not only the problem of traumatization meaning that the traumatic experiences they had gone through needed many years or even decades to become approachable and amenable. The second obstacle was the tabooing of the German society meaning that the people did not want to remember the past and especially did not want to talk about it. If the victims of the Holocaust were finally willing to talk about their traumatic past they highly probable were not able to find somebody who wanted to listen. Many Holocaust survivors who managed to write down their experiences and memories were not able to find a publisher in the first years after the war and so it happened that most of the autobiographies were not published until the 1960s.8081 Hence, the victims of the Holocaust and of the war came across two main obstacles in the post-war era: their own traumatization and the tabooing of the (German) society because in the first decades after the war, the transgression of the boundary from private to political public communication was a taboo.82 Assmann admits that the public and groups of politicians in Germany did at least try to remember, for example via „Oral History‟ projects regarding expelled people, but the focus on presence and the future were obviously more important and consequently prevailed.83
It was only the mission of the following generation to free the society from the total complicity and to break the silence of the society which already to this time was in the transition from the generation of perpetrators and time-witnesses to the generation of children.84
79
Gilad Margalit. “Divided Memory? Expressions of a United German Memory,” in Remembering the Holocaust in Germany, 1945-2000, ed. Dan Michman (New York: Peter Lang, 2002) 36 ff.
This was also rejected officially by Konrad Adenauer. 80 Assmann, Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit, 100. 81
„Es hat bis in die 1980er Jahre gedauert bis die schmerzhaften und entwürdigen Erfahrungen der Opfer erzählbar wurden und ihnen allgemein Gehör geschenkt wurde.“
82 „Die Überschreitung der Grenze von der privaten zur politisch-öffentlichen Kommunikation war offenbar tabu.“ 83 Assmann, Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit, 192.
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2.3.2. Breaking the silence – the ‘68 generation
Leading figures such as Wolfgang Iser, Dieter Henrich, Helm Stierlin, Niklas Luhmann, Ralf Dahrendorf, Reinhart Koselleck or Jürgen Habermas, all of them born between 1923 and 1929 and therefore belonging to the so called ‟45 generation, stand for the will of innovation and initiation of a spiritual and intellectual new start in Germany after the war.85 But the real achievements were attributed to the representatives of the „68 generation because it was them who searched and found their examples in Jewish intellectuals expelled from Germany, such as Theodor W. Adorno or Max Horkheimer and more radical thinkers such as Marx, Engels, Freud, Foucault or Lacan.
Anyhow, the „45 generation constituted an important and influential historical interim generation between the ‟68 generation and their parents. The „45ers were too young for a career in the Nazi era. Consequently, the problem of historical responsibility for them was shifted86 because as perpetrators these young people did not come into question. Thanks to their juvenileness they had the opportunity to start a new life after the war and to take the chance of confession to the values of democratization and integration with the West. Consequently, some representatives of this generation became moral authorities of the new Federal Republic of Germany or outstanding representatives of new arts (Grass) and sciences (Habermas).87
In the late 1960s the „communicative silence„ that had dominated the German culture of the 1950s and early 60s was more and more broken by protests and revolts of the youth.88 This communicative silence had prevailed for almost two decades after the war and had dominated the political as well as the social life. As already mentioned above, the near past had disappeared from the social consciousness and was dedicated to the private or even individual coping and mastery.89 This attitude during the 1950s and 1960s documented the inability of the post-war society to grieve as well as the inability of democratic handling in the public communication.90
85 Aleida Assmann, Geschichte im Gedächtnis - Von der individuellen Erfahrung zur öffentlichen Inszenierung (München: C.H. Beck, 2007) 37.
86 ‚Ibid.„
„Sie waren für eine Karriere im NS-Staat zu jung. Damit verschiebt sich für sie das Problem der historischen Verantwortung.“
87 Assmann, Geschichte im Gedächtnis, 47.
„So wurden Vertreter dieser Generation zu moralischen Instanzen der neuen Bundesrepublik, zu herausragenden Vertretern einer neuen Kunst (Grass) und Wissenschaft (Habermas).“
88 „Damals wurde das kommunikative Beschweigen, das die Kultur der fünfziger Jahre dominiert hatte, immer entscheidender durch Protest und Revolte der Jugend gebrochen.“
89
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The new social movements in the late 1960s in Germany resulted from the transition of the social to the historical and cultural memory. The war generation was more and more obligated to deal with their descendents, the post-war generation, and to communicate the experiences of the times of war. The existential experience of the „68 generation consisted of the detection of having “bad parents” and of being betrayed by them. Later on, the so called Väterliteratur of the 1970s and 1980s underlined this rejection of the biological parents, more precisely of the biological fathers, and the turn towards spiritual fathers. Consequently, the „68 generation was shaped by its will of dissociation. Assmann claims that it was the second generation, the children of the perpetrators as well of the victims, who finally broke through the confines and broke the silence about the Holocaust in the German society.91
2.3.3. Change of generations
A little later, in the 1980s, also in the political scope of Germany it was a series of memorial days which brought back the past into the public awareness and induced the society to new forms of occupation with the past and the occurrences that still had a place in the empirical memory of the society. Worth mentioning would be in 1985 the official commemoration of the four-decade end of the war, in 1988 the commemoration of six-decade November Crystal Night, in 1989 the commemoration of 50 years since start of WW II or in 1986 the Historikerstreit92, the historians‟ dispute.93 A new period of commemoration in Germany had begun.
But how is the return of the (political) memory since approximately 1989 in Germany explainable? According to Assmann, there are three possibilities: the increasing amount of media which is impossible to disregard or to neglect nowadays, the reunification of East and West
„Das kommunikative Beschweigen ermöglichte in der westdeutschen nachkriegsgesellschaft den Rückzug aus der politischen Öffentlichkeit; die nahe Vergangenheit verschwand aus dem gesellschaftlichen Bewusstsein, die Auseinandersetzung überließ man (…) der privaten Bewältigung.“
90 ‚Ibid.„
„Diese Haltung der 1950er Jahre dokumentierte nicht nur die Unfähigkeit der Nachkriegsgesellschaft zu trauern, sondern auch die Unfähigkeit zum demokratischen Medium der öffentlichen Kommunikation.“
91 ‟Ibid.„, 102.
„Diese Texte sind gegen das Schweigen der ersten Generation angeschrieben. Oft sind sie durch den Tod der Eltern ausgelöst und vollziehen stellvertretend einen Dialog, der im Leben gerade nicht zustande kam. (…) Ähnliches gilt für die Opferseite. Auch hier ist eine Literatur der zweiten Generation entstanden, in der Themen ansprechbar waren, die die Eltern vor sich selbst und ihren Kindern verborgen haben.“
92 The Historikerstreit was a public controversy which thematized the uniqueness and the incomparability of the Holocaust.
93 „In Deutschland war es in den 1980er Jahren eine Folge von Gedenktagen (1985: vierzig Jahre Kriegsende, 1988: sechzig Jahre Novemberpogrom, 1989: fünfzig Jahre Kriegsbeginn, 1986: Historikerstreit), die die Vergangenheit ins öffentliche Bewusstsein zurückgeholt und die Gesellschaft zu neuen Formen der
26
which led to a common national myth that connected East and West, and the upcoming change of generations through the extinction of the very last time witnesses of the war which leads to the revival of (experience) memories.94
The date of birth anchors each of us in a certain historical epoch. As already mentioned above, generations do not only exist due to the birth date but also due to common experiences, challenges, attitudes, communication and discourse which lead to a generational identity of an individual which consists of biological and socio-cultural elements.95 The demarcation of generations emerges through drastically appearing happenings in history or social innovations which are perceived as historical caesura.96 Crises, wars or epochal turning points are perceived differently by different cohorts.97 Hence, the different biographic shaping phases let experience adults, teenagers and children certain happenings differently.98 99
Subsequently, after a latency of about 50 years the social and political climate especially in Germany was changing remarkably: time-witnesses, both perpetrators as well as the civil society, began to tell and write down their stories.100 In 1999, the number of witnesses of the National Socialism amounted to 5 million people at a total number of 82 million people in Germany. This number is decreasing rapidly and the disappearance of the oldest generation occurs silently. After all, the oldest have the largest memory and consequently the closest connection to the past while the younger generations “know the past” from history books, movies and other kinds of media, the cultural memory. Anyhow, it is necessary to deal with the past and its cultural memory actively, inter alia in order to prevent the repetition of the past.
94 Assmann , Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit, 194. 95 Assmann, Geschichte im Gedächtnis, 34.
96 ‚Ibid.„
„Die Abgrenzung von Generationen entsteht durch einschneidende Geschichtserlebnisse und gesellschaftliche Innovationen, die als historische Zäsur erfahren werden.“
97 „Krisen, Kriege oder epochale Wendepunkte werden von unterschiedlichen Alterskohorten je anders erfahren.“ 98 „Unterschiedliche Altersstufen haben den Krieg au seiner je anderen Perspektive erlebt: von denjenigen, die in beiden Weltkriegen kämpften, bis hin zu denen, die als Kinder die Auswirkungen des Krieges auf die
Zivilbevölkerung miterlebt haben.“
99 Times of peace, on the other hand, are perceived totally different: nowadays the technical environment dominates the character of the society meaning that the society is characterized by new technology and the new media
landscape.
100 Assmann, Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit, 103.
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2.3.4. The externalization of guilt
The American Jew Saul Padover conducting interviews with Germans in the post-war years in Germany concluded the following:
Die Neigung der Deutschen, alle Schuld und Verantwortung auf Hitler zu schieben, sollte aufmerksam registriert werden. Psychologisch gesehen, wollen sich die Deutschen Strafe und moralischer Verantwortung entziehen, indem sie der Welt einen Schuldigen präsentieren, den sie noch vor kurzer Zeit als Halbgott angehimmelt haben.101
Padover‟s interesting conclusion resulting from all the interviews he did is written down in the following way:
Seit zwei Monaten sind wir hier zugange, wir haben mit vielen Menschen gesprochen, wir haben jede Menge Fragen gestellt, und wir haben keinen einzigen Nazi gefunden. Jeder ist ein Nazigegner. Alle Leute sind gegen Hitler. (…) Was heißt das? Es heißt, dass Hitler die Sache ganz allein, ohne Hilfe und Unterstützung irgendeines Deutschen durchgezogen hat. Er hat den Krieg angefangen, er hat ganz Europa erobert, den größten Teil Russlands überrannt, fünf Millionen Juden ermordet, sechs bis acht Millionen Polen und Russen in den Hungertod getrieben, vierhundert Konzentrationslager errichtet, die größte Armee in Europa aufgebaut und dafür gesorgt, dass die Züge pünktlich fahren.102
Externalization, a term introduced by the sociologist Rainer M. Lepsius, describes the process of eliminating the guilt from oneself and instead blaming somebody else for it. By indentifying somebody else as perpetrator or offender oneself automatically becomes the innocent victim.103 Hence, externalization means to shift the blame on somebody else. After the war, the Germans tended to shift the blame to the others, no matter to whom, but away from oneself:
Man sei belogen und betrogen worden, von den Greueltaten habe man nichts gewusst, unter den Bedingungen der Zwangsherrschaft sei jeder Widerstand ausgeschlossen gewesen, allein die Nazis seien schuldig, die Deutschen seien unschuldig, sie hätten nur Befehle ausgeführt.104
To sum up, after the Second World War the accusation of guilt in Germany lead to complex defense strategies on the individual as well as on the collective level. Individuals blamed higher instances such as politicians, neighbors blamed neighbors, the ‟68 generation blamed their parents and the GDR obviously externalized its „own guilt‟ and ascribed it to the FRG.
101 Saul K. Padover, Lügendetektor (Frankfurt. Eichborn Verlag, 1999), 93f. 102
‚Ibid.„
103 Claus Wendt, “M. Rainer Lepsius' theory of institutions”, Journal of Area Studies Volume 6 Issue 13 (1998): 14ff.
“Mit der Identifizierung von Schuldigen macht man sich selbst zum unschuldigen Opfer.“ 104
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2.3.5. The internalization
Only, in the course of time the strategy of externalization was gradually displaced by the attempt of internalization meaning the recognition and acknowledgement of guilt as well as the voluntary occupation with this dark part of German history. In general, the rejection of guilt is in so far problematic as it leads to the non-existence of memory. Something that has not happened or was not perceived because the people did not want to perceive it, hence something that did not exist, is not rememberable.
According to Assmann, with regard to Germany an obvious paradigm change of historical politics has lead to a different handling with the past especially since 1989. But obviously this change is not only a German issue. The new consciousness with regard to dealing with the past is a worldwide phenomenon of the last two and a half decades as a consequence of the progressive globalization and the development of the media. Fine describes the times since 1989 even as „new cosmopolitanism‟.105
Its faith lies in the attainment of a post-national, transnational, or global democracy.106 With the end of the Cold War the Holocaust memories have stepped out of their national containers. These social processes indicate that the world is becoming interconnected to the point that „a violation of rights in one part of the world is felt everywhere‟.107
Amnesty International manages to deliver the screams of pain of the tortured into the whole world. CNN and other forms of media convey the suffering from the most distant place in the world to the own place of residence.
The change in the construction of the national memories is the basis for the peaceful coexistence of perpetrators and victims nowadays. Assmann underlines the beginning of a new era concerning the public admission of guilt by mentioning general public confessions of guilt like the excuse of the Canadian government in 1998 regarding the natives, the excuse of President Clinton regarding slavery in Uganda, the excuse of the Japanese Premier Obuchi regarding the crime to Koreans108 and other public political confessions or excuses regarding crimes of the past. In this new world of globalization of the media and transnational connections nations barely can preserve their mythicizing and non self-critical images and therefore cannot allow themselves to forget the victims of their own past.109 Cunningham describes today‟s Europe as culture of forgiveness: „there is a new European culture of apologies, mourning and collective guilt for
105
Robert Fine, “Taking the „Ism‟ out of Cosmopolitansim”, European Journal of Social Theory 6 (2003): 454. 106 Jürgen Habermas, “Towards a Cosmopolitan Europe”, Journal of Democracy 14:3 (2003): 87ff.
107 Immanuel Kant Immanuel, Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 107f. 108 Assmann, Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit, 115.
109
29
national crimes such as the Holocaust and acts of violence against minorities.‟110 Ultimately, there is even the recognition that all European peoples were involved, albeit differently, in this vast project of death. Culpability was continental.111
But not only remembering is important for the (political) memory. Also forgetting is an essential part of the memory and has on the political level basically two purposes: punishment (damnation
memoriae) and mercy (amnesty).112
2.3.6. Forgetting
The knowledge storage of an individual is constraint. Therefore, forgetting is an essential part of the individual as well of the collective memory in order to make a distinction between relevant and irrelevant information.113 Individuals and collectives have to forget in order to break away from traumatic experiences, in order to solve conflicts and in order to establish new space for present tasks.114 By referring to Nietzsche, Assmann claims that this filter is essential in order to build an identity and a clear orientation. An overfilled memory would lead to the loss of identity.115 Hence, „all remembering presupposes forgetting, because it is impossible in principle to remember everything.‟116
Anyhow, it may not be forgotten in order to escape from responsibility or the assignment of guilt such as Germany did in the post-war era:
Früher wurde nach Kriegen ein gemeinsames Vergessen verordnet, das die für ein friedliches Zusammenleben gefährlichen Erinnerungen zwischen Siegern und Besiegten neutralisieren sollte. Für die Traumata der Geschichte, die durch Verbrechen und Ausbeutung und Vernichtung unschuldiger und wehrloser Menschen verursacht sind, gibt es jedoch keine heilende Kraft des Vergessens. (…) Solche Verbrechen gegen die Menschlichkeit werden nicht durch Vergessen entsorgt, sondern in einer von Opfern und Tätern geteilten Erinnerung bewahrt.117
In his article Seven types of forgetting, Paul Connerton adjusts the common notion of presenting forgetting as a human failure and introduces the following seven types of forgetting, conducted
110
Michael Cunningham, “Saying Sorry: the politics of the apology”, The Political Quarterly 70 (3) 1999: 285ff. 111 Dan Diner, “The Irreconcilability of an Event: Integrating the Holocaust into the Narrative of the Century” , in Remembering the Holocaust in Germany 1945-2000, ed. Dan Michman (New York: Peter Lang, 2002), 96. 112 Assmann , Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit, 105.
113
‚Ibid.„, 36.
114 Assmann, Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit, 51.
„Wie im Kopf des Einzelnen muss auch in der Gesellschaft ständig vergessen werden, um sich von schmerzhaften Erfahrungen zu lösen, um Konflikte zu überwinden, um Neuem Platz zu machen und sich den Aufgaben der Gegenwart stellen zu können.“
115 ‚Ibid.„, 37.
116 Chris Lorenz, “Border-crossings: Some reflections on the role of German Historians in Recent Public Debates on Nazi History”, in Remembering the Holocaust in Germany 1945-2000 (New York: Peter Lang, 2002), 61.
117
