Scribd Logo

Language

Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

Enjoy millions of ebooks, audiobooks, magazines, and more, with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys
Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys
Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys
Ebook775 pages11 hours

Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys

By Jeffrey Herf

4/5

()

Read preview

About this ebook

A “valuable” study of how political narratives about the nation’s Nazi past differed in East and West Germany (The Wall Street Journal).

A significant new look at the legacy of the Nazi regime, this book exposes the workings of past beliefs and political interests on how—and how differently—the two Germanys recalled the crimes of Nazism, from the anti-Nazi emigration of the 1930s through the establishment of a day of remembrance for the victims of National Socialism in 1996.

Why, Jeffrey Herf asks, would German politicians raise the specter of the Holocaust at all, in view of the considerable support its authors and their agenda had found in Nazi Germany? Why did the public memory of Nazi anti-Jewish persecution and the Holocaust emerge, if selectively, in West Germany, while it was repressed and marginalized in “anti-fascist” East Germany? And how do the politics of left and right come into play in this divided memory? The answers reveal the surprising relationship between how the crimes of Nazism were publicly recalled and how East and West Germany separately evolved as a Communist dictatorship and a liberal democracy. This book, for the first time, points to the impact of the Cold War confrontation in both West and East Germany on the public memory of anti-Jewish persecution and the Holocaust.

Konrad Adenauer, Theodor Heuss, Kurt Schumacher, Willy Brandt, Richard von Weizsacker, and Helmut Kohl in the West and Walter Ulbricht, Wilhelm Pieck, Otto Grotewohl, Paul Merker, and Erich Honecker in the East are among the many national figures whose private and public papers and statements Herf examines. His work makes the German memory of Nazism—suppressed on one hand and selective on the other, from Nuremberg to Bitburg—comprehensible within the historical context of the ideologies and experiences of pre-1945 German and European history as well as within the international context of shifting alliances from World War II to the Cold War. Drawing on West German and East German archives, this book is a significant contribution to the history of belief that shaped public memory of Germany’s recent past.

“Groundbreaking . . . admirably subjects both East and West to equal scrutiny.” —Forward

“[A] masterful book.” —German History
LanguageEnglish
PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
Release dateNov 1, 2013
ISBN9780674416628
Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys
Read preview

Related to Divided Memory

Related ebooks

Related podcast episodes

Related articles

  • Article

    Playing The Nazi Card

    Jan 1, 1970

    We live in a hyperbolic world. “This smoothie is the worst!” “I’m literally starving!” “My parents will kill me!” Words have lost much of their impact. But we still want to be understood. So, what do you do when you feel genuinely aggrieved? When som

    2 min read

  • Article

    Tug of War

    Jan 1, 1970

    Tug of War
    1 min read

  • Article

    Ukraine War Shows Need For Germany To Rearm. But Is It Ready?

    Jan 1, 1970

    Roderich Kiesewetter says he could “smell” the decline in the German military. “You could feel it in the fingers,” says the former German battalion commander. The German military’s “readiness” factor was at 90% when Mr. Kiesewetter launched his caree

    5 min read

  • Article

    Last Known WWII Nazi Living In U.S., Deported To Germany Last Year, Is Dead at 95

    Jan 1, 1970

    The United States stripped Jakiw Palij of his citizenship in 2003, but it was difficult finding a country to take him. He was never charged for his involvement in the Holocaust.

    3 min read

  • Article

    Under Arrest Star Chef And Judge Among Suspects

    Jan 1, 1970

    A celebrity gourmet chef whose daughter is the girlfriend of the Real Madrid footballer David Alaba and an ex-police officer once tasked with protecting Jewish communities from terror attacks are among the figures to have been linked to the foiled Re

    2 min read

  • Article

    PHOTOS: Trove Of Nazi Artifacts Uncovered In Argentina

    Jan 1, 1970

    The artifacts will be donated to the Holocaust Museum in Buenos Aires following an investigation. It's not clear how the objects ended up in Argentina, though many prominent Nazis fled there.

    2 min read

  • Article

    Culture In The Third Reich

    Jan 1, 1970

    Culture In The Third Reich
    1 min read

  • Article

    ‘Disgusting, Ignorant, Offensive’: Marjorie Taylor Greene Condemned For New Comparison Of Covid Vaccinations To Holocaust

    Jan 1, 1970

    Far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has continued to compare Covid-19 vaccination policies and mask mandates to antisemitic Nazi abuse towards Jews. After she defended her remarks claiming that wearing a mask is “exactly” the same type of

    3 min read

  • Article

    Interview War of Words

    Jan 1, 1970

    Interview War of Words
    5 min read

  • Article

    Final Analysis

    Jan 1, 1970

    Final Analysis
    2 min read

  • Article

    Supreme Court Rules Against Heirs Of Jewish Art Dealers In Nazi Era

    Jan 1, 1970

    WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled against the heirs of Jewish art dealers who were pressured to sell medieval artifacts to Nazi leaders during the 1930s, holding that Germany is shielded by the principle of “sovereign immunity.” In a

    2 min read

  • Article

    Some Holocaust Survivors Oppose 'Concentration Camp' Comments. But They're Also Upset By Treatment Of Migrants

    Jan 1, 1970

    LAS VEGAS - The detention centers where the U.S. government has held migrant children have sparked widespread outrage. But are they really, as some critics have suggested, concentration camps? Celina Biniaz doesn't think so. To her, a concentration c

    4 min read

  • Article

    Reviews

    Jan 1, 1970

    Reviews
    5 min read

  • Article

    Shadow Army

    Jan 1, 1970

    Shadow Army
    1 min read

  • Article

    ‘My Prussian Relatives won't Be Forgotten’

    Jan 1, 1970

    Following the German invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, the Nazis began destroying Jewish cemeteries and removing their matzevot (singular matzevah) or grave markers. Some were used as kerbstones or building material. Thankfully, many of these p

    3 min read

Related categories

Reviews for Divided Memory

4/5

4 ratings0 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

    Book preview

    Divided Memory - Jeffrey Herf

    Divided Memory

    Divided Memory

    The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys

    JEFFREY HERF

    Harvard University Press

    Cambridge, Massachusetts

    London, England

    1997

    Copyright © 1997 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College

    All rights reserved

    Printed in the United States of America

    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

    Herf, Jeffrey, 1947-

    Divided memory : the Nazi past in the two Germanys / Jeffrey Herf.

      p. cm.

    Includes bibliographical references and index.

    ISBN 0-674-21303-3 (alk. paper)

    1. Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945)—Germany. 2. Antisemitism—Germany (East) 3. Antisemitism—Germany (West) 4. Historiography—Germany (East) 5. Historiography—Germany (West) 6. Historiography—Germany 7. War criminals—Germany (East)—Psychology. 8. War criminals—Germany (West)—Psychology. 9. National socialism—Moral and ethical aspects.

    I. Title.

    D804.3.H474 1997

    940.53’18’943—dc21 98–11231

    For

    Sonya, Nadja,

    and Ernst

    Contents

    Preface

    1 Multiple Restorations and Divided Memory

    2 German Communism’s Master Narratives of Antifascism: Berlin-Moscow-East Berlin, 1928–1945

    3 From Periphery to Center: German Communists and the Jewish Question, Mexico City, 1942–1945

    4 The Nuremberg Interregnum: Struggles for Recognition in East Berlin, 1945–1949

    5 Purging Cosmopolitanism: The Jewish Question in East Germany, 1949–1956

    6 Memory and Policy in East Germany from Ulbricht to Honecker

    7 The Nuremberg Interregnum: Divided Memory in the Western Zones, 1945–1949

    8 Atonement, Restitution, and Justice Delayed: West Germany, 1949–1963

    9 Politics and Memory since the 1960s

    10 Conclusion

    Notes

    Sources

    Acknowledgments

    Index

    Illustrations

    Following Chapter 6:

    Meeting of the Nationalekomitee Freies Deutschland, Moscow, 1944

    Meeting of the Bewegung Freies Deutschland, Mexico City, December 31, 1943

    Paul Merker in East Berlin, 1950

    Demonstration for the victims of fascism, East Berlin, September 1950

    Representatives of the Jewish community lay a wreath during the Day of Remembrance, East Berlin, 1951

    Former members of the French Resistance at Buchenwald during the Day of Remembrance, East Berlin, 1951

    Teenagers carrying the red flag at Ravensbrück, 1952

    Meeting of the VVN, November 9, 1952

    Hermann Matern at the SED Party Conference, Berlin, March 30, 1954

    Rosa Thälmann and Walter Ulbricht lead procession at dedication of Sachsenhausen memorial, April 23, 1961

    Otto Grotewohl with Gamal Abdel Nasser, Cairo, January 4, 1959

    Albert Norden denounces the war criminal [Hans] Globke, East Berlin, March 21, 1963

    Following Chapter 7:

    Theodor Heuss and Nahum Goldmann at the Bergen-Belsen memorial dedication, November 30, 1952

    Visit by West German Social Democratic leaders with members of the Jewish Labor Committee, April 8, 1954

    Kurt Schumacher at a political rally in Frankfurt, 1947

    Willy Brandt at the Warsaw memorial, December 1970

    Konrad Adenauer speaking in the British occupation zone, May 12, 1946

    Helmut Kohl, Johannes Steinhoff, Ronald Reagan, and Matthew Ridgeway, Bitburg, May 5, 1985

    Richard von Weizsäcker speaking in the Bundestag, May 8, 1985

    Preface

    History is the realm of choice and contingency. Writing history is a matter of reconstructing the openness of past moments before choices congealed into seemingly inevitable structures. In this work I return to contingencies and choices that accompanied the emergence of the political memory of Nazism and the Holocaust in the two Germanys. As in many parts of the world today, there was an abundance of voices in the early postwar years insisting that forgetfulness and amnesty were the handmaidens of future peace and stability, or that the memory of past crimes justified an avenging dictatorship. My sympathies instead are with those other voices, then and now, that expressed hope for a liberal democracy resting on clear memory and timely justice. I hope that understanding why those hopes remained unfulfilled then, and subsequently were only partially fulfilled, will contribute to their full and prompt realization in other times and places.

    1

    Multiple Restorations and Divided Memory

    This is a study of how anti-Nazi German political leaders interpreted the Nazi past during the Nazi era, and then remembered it as they emerged as national political leaders in the postwar occupation, in the two successor German states, and in unified Germany. It focuses on the mixture of belief and interest, ideology and the drive for power which shaped the political memory and public narratives of the Nazi era and the lessons they drew for postwar Germany. Of particular concern are the weight and place of the Jewish question and the Holocaust in postwar German political memory, and the multiplicity of German interpretations which contended for preeminence.1

    The temporal core of this work lies in the formative year