REWORDING THE PAST: THE POSTWAR PUBLICATION OF A 1938 LECTURE BY MARTIN HEIDEGGER

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 575-602 ◽  
Author(s):  
SIDONIE KELLERER
Keyword(s):  
Martin Heidegger ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
The Past

In 1950 Martin Heidegger published his 1938 lecture “Die Zeit des Weltbildes” in the essay collectionHolzwege. He did so in order to document his “inner resistance” after the mid-1930s against the Nazi regime. This text has since been seen as evidence for Heidegger's early rejection of National Socialism and his refusal of a modern ideology that culminated in the totalitarian system. In spite of its influence, the published text has never been compared to the original lecture delivered in 1938. The assessment has now been made, and the differences between the two documents are a striking testimony to the artful falsifications that Heidegger used to re-establish his reputation and philosophical standing after the collapse of the Nazi system.

scholarly journals The Frankfurt trial (1963—1965) and overcoming the past in Germany

Lex Russica ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 146-158
Author(s):  
A. P. Grakhotskiy
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
German Society ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
Mass Destruction ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
Life Imprisonment ◽  
The Past ◽  
War Criminals ◽  
Post War

In the first post-war decades in Germany the problem of crimes of the Nazi regime was hushed up. Information about the flagrant crimes of the Nazis in the concentration camps was perceived by the Germans as “propaganda of the winners”. The Frankfurt process of 1963-1965 was an event that contributed to the understanding of the criminal past of its country by the German society. Before the court in Frankfurt there appeared 22 Nazi war criminals who were accused of murder and complicity in the killing of prisoners of concentration camps and death camps of Auschwitz. During the trial, horrific facts of mass destruction of people and unprecedented cases of humiliation of human dignity were revealed. The position of the prosecution was that the defendants voluntarily served in Auschwitz, realizing that the main purpose of the operation of the camp is the mass destruction of Jews, purposefully participating in the implementation of a common criminal plan. The defense adhered to the strategy that the defendants were only weak-willed executors of the orders of the highest Nazi leadership and were forced to commit crimes at the risk of their own lives. None of the accused pleaded guilty, and in their closing speeches they expressed neither regret nor remorse to the victims and their relatives. The verdict of the jury was soft: only 6 accused were sentenced to life imprisonment, the rest received various (from 3 to 14 years) terms of imprisonment, three were acquitted. However, the significance of the Frankfurt trial exceeds the purpose of the criminal punishment of the Nazi criminals. The process became a milestone in the course of overcoming by the Germans of their recent past, the awareness of the responsibility of German society for the crimes of national socialism.

Die Zukunft der Vergangenheit Richard Oelze (1900 – 1980) and Post-war Reflection

2017 ◽  
Vol 80 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-155
Author(s):  
Eleanor F. Moseman
Keyword(s):  
Artistic Practice ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
Critical View ◽  
Repressed Memories ◽  
The Past ◽  
Working Through ◽  
Word And Image ◽  
Visual Expression ◽  
Post War ◽  
Regime Analysis

Abstract The Surrealist artist Richard Oelze’s postwar enterprise was one of inner reflection and personal questioning linked to the broader project of coming to terms with the past. The essay takes a critical view of his artworks and his automatist Wortskizzen to assess the manner and extent to which Oelze utilizes his artistic practice as a mode of working through his, and Germany’s, complicity with the Nazi regime. Analysis of the Wortskizzen exposes how verbal probing informs Oelze’s visual expression of inner turmoil, while implied gaps and voids in paintings and drawings puncture space as well as time, illuminating memory and blending the past with the present. Oelze’s serious play with word and image in turn invites his viewers to release repressed memories through reflective contemplation.

Fritz: Nazi Propagandist

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristen Renwick Monroe
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Nazi Party ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Socialist Movement

This chapter showcases a Dutch collaborator named Fritz. Fritz shared many of Tony's prewar conservative opinions in favor of the monarchy and traditional Dutch values, although he was of working-class origins, unlike Tony and Beatrix, who were Dutch bourgeoisie. But unlike Beatrix or Tony, Fritz joined the Nazi Party, wrote propaganda for the Nazi cause, and married the daughter of a German Nazi. When he was interviewed in 1992, Fritz indicated he was appalled at what he later learned about Nazi treatment of Jews but that he still believed in many of the goals of the National Socialist movement and felt that Hitler had betrayed the movement. Fritz is thus classified as a disillusioned Nazi supporter who retains his faith in much of National Socialism, and this chapter is presented as illustrative of the psychology of those who once supported the Nazi regime but who were disillusioned after the war.

Recovering Futurity: Theorizing the End and the End of Theory

2018 ◽  
pp. 293-312
Author(s):  
Elliot R. Wolfson
Keyword(s):  
Martin Heidegger ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Way

This chapter addresses the co-dependence of people's conceptions of end and of beginning. To comprehend the beginning, one must think of it from the perspective of futurity, from the perspective, that is, of the ultimate end. Consequently, the beginning lies not in the past but, rather, in the future. The chapter then relates this mode of philosophizing with the way people understand Jewish eschatology, which lies at the center of Jewish theorization about time. In Jewish eschatology, what is yet to come is understood as what has already happened, whereas what has happened is derived from what is yet to come. Martin Heidegger has dismissed Judaism as a religion that by its very nature cannot experience temporality authentically. Yet his own understanding of temporality accords well with rabbinic conceptions of temporality and later kabbalistic eschatologies.

Epilogue

2020 ◽  
pp. 206-214
Author(s):  
Michael Geheran
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Great War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
German Identity ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Great War

The book closes with a short glimpse into the history of Jewish veterans after 1945, as the survivors of the camps returned to Germany, outlining ruptures and continuities in comparison with the pre-Nazi period. Jewish veterans imposed different narratives on their experiences under National Socialism. As the past receded into the distance, it became a concern for the survivors to engage with the past, which they variously looked back on with nostalgia, disillusionment, or bitter anger. Although National Socialism threatened to erase everything that Jewish veterans of World War I had achieved and sacrificed, sought to destroy the identity they had constructed as soldiers in the service of the nation, as well as bonds with gentile Germans that had been forged under fire during the war, threatened to sever their connections to the status they had earned as soldiers of the Great War and defenders of the fatherland, their minds, their values and their character remained intact. Jewish veterans preserved their sense of German identity.

Antijüdische Politik und deren Bewältigung. Das Wirken der Sozialversicherungsabteilung des Reichsarbeitsministeriums im „Dritten Reich“

2019 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-162
Author(s):  
Alexander Klimo
Keyword(s):  
Civil Servants ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
Federal Republic Of Germany ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
Pension Insurance ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One ◽  
Anti Jewish

Zusammenfassung Der Beitrag beleuchtet die Rolle der Rentenversicherungspolitik des Reichsarbeitsministeriums im „Dritten Reich“. Auf der einen Seite stellt er dar, wie die Rentenversicherung herangezogen worden ist, um zusätzliche Arbeitskräfte für den Arbeitseinsatz zu gewinnen. Dabei wurde die Rentenversicherung durch die Gesetzgebung des Reichsarbeitsministeriums komplett auf die Anforderungen des nationalsozialistischen Arbeitseinsatzes ausgerichtet. Auf der anderen Seite beleuchtet er die Diskriminierung von jüdischen Versicherten und Rentnern. Die zuständigen Beamten des Reichsarbeitsministeriums und der Rentenversicherungsträger besaßen umfangreiche Freiräume, um die Ziele des Regimes zu verfolgen und zu unterstützen. Die nach dem Krieg verfolgten Rechtfertigungsstrategien und die mangelhafte Aufarbeitung der eigenen Rolle im „Dritten Reich“ hinderten hohe Beamte der Sozialversicherung nicht daran, ihre Karrieren in der Sozialverwaltung der Bundesrepublik fortzuführen. Abstract Anti-Jewish policy and its coming to terms with the past. The work of the social security department of the Reich Ministry of Labour in Nazi Germany The article examines the pension insurance policy of the Reich Ministry of Labour in Nazi Germany. On the one hand, it shows how the pension insurance has been used to generate additional workforces for the labour market. The pension insurance was completely aligned by the legislation of the Reich Ministry of Labour on the requirements of the National Socialist labour service. On the other hand, it highlights discrimination against Jewish insurants and pensioners. The responsible civil servants of the Reich Ministry of Labour and the pension insurance providers used their possibilities to pursue and support the goals of the Nazi regime. The justification strategies pursued after the war and the inadequate working up of one’s own role in Nazi Germany did not preventhigh civil servants from continuing their careers in the social administration of the Federal Republic of Germany.

scholarly journals How 'Afro-Americanophilia' became Polyphilia: Joachim-Ernst Berendt’s Journey from Jazz to “Weltmusik”

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Wright Hurley
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
World Music ◽  
West Germany ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
African American Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Stuart Hall ◽  
1960S And 1970S

This article contributes to our understanding of the continuities and disconnects in the way that ‘race,’ and in particular African-American culture, were conceived of in the long postwar era in West Germany. It does so by examining some salient racial aspects in the writings and production activities of West-German ‘jazz pope,’ Joachim-Ernst Berendt, between the late 1940s and the mid-1980s. I demonstrate that the late 1960s brought about a sharpening in talk concerning the racial ‘ownership’ of jazz, and that in these circumstances, Berendt proceeded beyond his earlier, liberal elaborations about jazz, race, and African-Americans to advance an inclusive, ecumenical model of ‘Weltmusik’ (world music). Germany’s National Socialist history figured in important ways in his conception of both jazz and then Weltmusik. Whilst he initially saw jazz as an antidote to National Socialism, by the late 1960s and 1970s, he regarded certain traits of jazz discourse to be, themselves, proto-fascist.  Far from being a boon, Afro-Americanophilia—or at least one strain of it—now became something from which to distance oneself. What was important for Berendt, as for others of his generation, was distance from the past, as much as seeking out racial Others in Germany, engaging with them on their own terms, and yielding to a new racial ‘relationships of representation’ (Stuart Hall). 

Spying in God’s House

2018 ◽  
Vol 98 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 425-447
Author(s):  
William S. Skiles
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
Racial Ideology ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
Secret Police ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Public Opposition

AbstractThis article examines the reports of the Gestapo and SD regarding pastors’ criticisms of the Nazi state and its ideology from the authority of the pulpit. My research reveals a degree of public opposition to the regime within the walls of the German churches, especially in terms of Nazi racial ideology and the persecution of Jews. While pastors did not incite resistance to the Nazi regime or conspire to overthrow its leadership, they at times sought to undermine the legitimacy of Nazi claims to truth. The sermons reveal concern among pastors that National Socialism and Christianity are at odds, or even mutually exclusive believe systems. Furthermore, the evidence indicates that pastors were often drawn into the cross-hairs of the Nazi secret police by asserting that Christianity must be the standard and measure of Nazi racial truth claims.

German archaeology and National Socialism. Some historiographical remarks

2005 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martijn Eickhoff
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
The Past ◽  
Its Analysis ◽  
Academic Exchange ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
Post War ◽  
Do So

This paper reconsiders German reflection on National Socialist pre- and protohistoric archaeology from 1933 onwards. It tries to do so by means of a case study of the academic contacts between the Dutch prehistorian A.E. van Giffen (1884–1973) and his German colleague H. Reinerth (1900–90). The approach adopted here differs from traditional historiographical writing on National Socialist archaeology in two respects. First, in its analysis of the academic exchange between the two scholars, the case study seeks to bridge the classical caesura between a pre- and post-war period. Second, contemporary and historical studies of National Socialist archaeology and archival sources, as well as interviews, have been incorporated in the research alongside the usual publications of the scholars involved. It is argued that with the approach taken here we may arrive at a more nuanced understanding of the different ways archaeologists have reacted to National Socialism over the past seven decades.

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