Vol. 20 · No. 1 · Issue 62 · Spring 2002 · pp. 92-106 (15)
Competing Interpretations of the Past in Contemporary GermanyEric Langenbacher
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Abstract
Micha Brumlik, Hajo Funke and Lars Rensmann, Umkämpftes Vergessen: Walser-Debatte, Holocaust-Mahnmal und neuere deutsche Geschichtspolitik (Berlin: Verlag Das Arabische Buch, 2000)
Robert G. Moeller, War Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001)
Klaus Naumann, Der Krieg als Text: Das Jahr 1945 im kulturellen Gedächtnis der Presse (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1998)
Klaus Neumann, Shifting Memories: The Nazi Past in the New Germany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000)
As the evil of Nazism and its crimes, above all, the Holocaust, rose to prominence over the last few decades, many authors have simultaneously devoted attention to the state of memory and efforts to confront and work through the past in the Federal Republic of Germany. Germans' attitudes towards the ever-present historical burden of the Third Reich became a kind of barometer, indicating how much, or even if, they had transformed themselves from the people who supported and carried out Hitler's genocidal policies. Accepting memories that center on the crimes committed, acknowledging responsibility for the Holocaust and its aftermath, and transforming attitudes and behavior comprise the progressive, healthy form of historical consciousness.