Germany’s Past Is Present Again : After Four Decades, People Look Honestly at Nazism

Observers of West German public life have been fascinated lately by the so-called battle of the historians (Historikerstreit) , a vitriolic debate over the moral-historical meaning and uniqueness of Nazism and its extermination policies.

This barrage of opinions has included harsh public exchanges between the eminent Frankfurt philosopher Jurgen Habermas and the West Berlin historian Ernst Nolte, as well as a stream of articles in newspapers and academic journals.

There are obvious reasons for paying close attention to such discussions, given their historical as well as their contemporary significance. For the Historikerstreit interplays directly with the question of what West Germans must remember about their past and hence what building blocks they must use to construct (if indeed they should construct) a new national identity.

Yet the Historikerstreit is also something of a red herring. It has produced no new research findings and has had an uneven impact on the wider public. This does not mean that West Germans ignore their recent past. Indeed, the history of Nazism has become the focus of intense activity within what may be called enclaves of memory--limited spheres of discourse in government departments, schools, universities, voluntary associations, churches, synagogues, families or groups of friends.

Though differing in origins and composition, the enclaves share a common goal: how to do full justice to the experiences of the victims of Nazi horror but also create a livable past for future generations. Led usually by the educated middle classes, the enclaves say more about popular thought on the history of Nazism in West Germany than does the rarefied language of the Historikerstreit .

I recently had an opportunity to observe such enclaves as an invited participant in a study tour of Bonn, Hannover, West Berlin and other cities, sponsored by the Foreign Office and the Standing Conference of State Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Federal Republic of Germany. The official theme of the tour was how the history of Germany since 1918 is taught in West German schools and universities. But the program went well beyond the classroom. I learned that many West Germans today, unlike the majority of their fellow citizens over the past four decades, no longer have the goal of “overcoming” the past but of engaging it in an honest and open way.

I found that there was no shortage of information on Nazism. Conscientious high school teachers make a point of including as much material on the Nazi dictatorship as curriculum plans allow, and classroom debates on the subject are vigorous and often well-informed. So extensive has this treatment been in some schools that parents and officials complain of overexposure. Newspapers constantly remind West German readers of the Hitler years, as in articles on the theft of Nazi documents from the U.S.-managed Berlin Document Center, on compensation for victims of Nazi sterilization programs, and related subjects. Voluntary groups seek out representatives of the West German Jewish community, now numbering about 30,000, for public discussions and programs. Members of lay history groups, called “barefoot historians,” write histories of their towns or neighborhoods during the dictatorship or conduct tours that focus on the sites of Nazi persecution.

In West Berlin, that era is recalled in permanent exhibits, such as the newly created “Topography of Terror” and the Stauffenberg Street Memorial and Educational Center--the first dealing with the locations of SS terror, the second with the limited German resistance to Nazism. And there are the commemorative sites of concentration camps, such as Bergen-Belsen; on the day our study group was there, a large number of West German soldiers were fulfilling their required tour of one such site as part of their civic education training.

All this represents an advance over the situation 25 years ago. And yet there are problems. Many enclaves remain just that--very limited in impact and at times prone to self-flagellation instead of consciousness-raising. Critics charge that some of the enclaves are motivated by left-wing political goals rather than a thirst for historical knowledge. High school students reject further information on the subject out of a need to provoke their elders. Monuments often use euphemistic language that reduces the impact of the event that is commemorated; at the site of a West Berlin synagogue that had been used as a collection point for concentration camp deportees, the commemorative plaque referred to the Jewish victims of Nazi terror as having gone on their “eternal way,” as if they had died a natural death.

Outside the enclaves, serious popular interest in the Nazi years often becomes simple nostalgia, a maudlin reminiscence disengaged from analytical or moral concerns. And then there is the overpowering desire to forget--a desire shared in many cases by victims as well as perpetrators.

The women and men who populate the enclaves of memory are courageous, sincere and committed--a significant minority of West Germans who want to create a social narrative that makes no excuses about the Nazi years.

However, it is only the passage of time and depletion of the ranks of those directly implicated in the Nazi system that will allow the enclaves to have a wider say. That also will require enlightened policies by officials, educators and politicians--indispensable policies that must bring the process of constructing a livable but chastened German past into the mainstream of everyday life.

In the meantime, implosive debates such as the Historikerstreit will mislead foreign observers about what the West German public is doing to understand the history of Nazism.