Changing Memory Regimes in Contemporary Germany?

2003 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 46-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Langenbacher
Keyword(s):  
Federal Republic ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
Federal Republic Of Germany ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Political Effects ◽  
Nazi Era

Are collective memories currently changing in the land where the“past won’t go away?” Long dominated by memory of the Holocaustand other Nazi-era crimes, Germany recently witnessed the emergenceof another memory based on the same period of history, butemphasizing German suffering. Most commentators stress the noveltyand catharsis of these discussions of supposedly long-repressedand unworked-through collective traumas and offer predominantlypsychoanalytic explanations regarding why these memories onlynow have surfaced. However, thanks to “presentist” myopia, ideologicalblinders, and the theoretical/political effects of Holocaustmemory, much of this discourse is misplaced because these Germancenteredmemories are emphatically not new. A reexamination ofthe evolution of dominant memories over the postwar period in theFederal Republic of Germany is necessary in order to understandand contextualize more fully these current debates and the changesin dominant memories that may be occurring—tasks this article takesup by utilizing the memory regime framework.

A Matter of Pure Conscience? Franz Wieacker and his “Conceptual Change” [CRITIQUE]

2020 ◽  
Vol 82 ◽  
pp. 9-28
Author(s):  
Tomasz Giaro
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Change ◽  
Federal Republic ◽  
Legal History ◽  
German Law ◽  
Federal Republic Of Germany ◽  
Legal Tradition ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
The Times ◽  
Nazi Era

Based on a recent biography of Franz Wieacker (1908–1994) two central questions are examined. Is it allowed to analyze a young, but already prominent German law professor of the Nazi era as a pure scholar whose identity remained unchanged from the times of Weimar to the Federal Republic of Germany? Is it plausible to treat the Nazis as progenitors of current European legal history, and in particular as founding fathers of European legal tradition?

FORUM: INTELLECTUAL HISTORY IN AND OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 625-639 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. DIRK MOSES
Keyword(s):  
Federal Republic ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Political ◽  
Federal Republic Of Germany ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Intellectual Traditions ◽  
Private And Public

What can one say about the state of the art in the Federal Republic? A number of aspects are discernible, not only in the practices and various traditions of intellectual history there, but also in its politics: the stark dichotomy between Marxists and anti-Marxists; the ever-present metahistorical question of which (sub)discipline, field, or method would set the political agenda; and the position of Jewish émigrés. These issues raise still more basic ones: how to understand the Nazi experience, which remained living memory for most West Germans; how to confront the gradually congealing image of the Holocaust in private and public life; and the related matters of German intellectual traditions and the new order's foundations. Had the Nazi experience discredited those traditions and had the personal and institutional continuities from the Nazi to Federal Republican polities delegitimated the latter? These were questions with which intellectuals wrestled while they wrangled about historical method. In this introduction, I give a brief overview of these and other innovations in the field, before highlighting some of its characteristics today.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document