Architecture and the Memory of Nazism in Postwar Munich

1998 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 140-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gavriel D. Roseneld
Keyword(s):  
Federal Republic ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Federal Republic Of Germany ◽  
German Politics ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
To Come ◽  
Nazi Past ◽  
The Impact

Few issues have possessed the centrality or sparked as much controversyin the postwar history of the Federal Republic of Germany(FRG) as the struggle to come to terms with the nation’s Nazi past.This struggle, commonly known by the disputed term Vergangenheitsbewältigung,has cast a long shadow upon nearly all dimensions ofGerman political, social, economic, and cultural life and has preventedthe nation from attaining a normalized state of existence inthe postwar period. Recent scholarly analyses of German memoryhave helped to broaden our understanding of how “successful” theGermans have been in mastering their Nazi past and have shed lighton the impact of the Nazi legacy on postwar German politics andculture. Even so, important gaps remain in our understanding ofhow the memory of the Third Reich has shaped the postwar life ofthe Federal Republic.

The two lives of neurologist Helmut J. Bauer (1914–2008)

Neurology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 93 (3) ◽  
pp. 109-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathias Schmidt ◽  
Jens Westemeier ◽  
Dominik Gross
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Federal Republic Of Germany ◽  
World War ◽  
University Professor ◽  
Medical Career ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Nazi Past ◽  
Second World

In 2008, the internationally renowned neurologist and university professor Helmut Johannes Bauer died at the age of 93 years. In the numerous obituaries and tributes to him, the years between 1933 and 1945 are either omitted or simplified; the Nazi past of Helmut Bauer has hardly been explored. Based on original documents dating from the Third Reich and the early Federal Republic of Germany as well as relevant secondary writings, Bauer's life before 1945 was traced to gain knowledge of his exact activities and tasks during the Second World War. Bauer was actively involved in Nazi crimes. He was a member of the so-called Künsberg special command of the SS and also worked in a prominent position at the Institute for Microbiology as well as for the Foreign Department of the Reich Physicians' Chamber. After World War II, Bauer underwent denazification and, like many others, was able to pursue his further medical career undisturbed, building on the contacts he had already made during the Nazi period.

Ägyptologen im Dritten Reich: Biographische Notizen anhand der sogenannten „Steindorff-Liste“

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 120-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Schneider
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Second World War ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
John Wilson ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Second World

Abstract The history of Egyptology in the Third Reich has never been the subject of academic analysis. This article gives a detailed overview of the biographies of Egyptologists in National Socialist Germany and their later careers after the Second World War. It scrutinizes their attitude towards the ideology of the Third Reich and their involvement in the political and intellectual Gleichschaltung of German Higher Education, as well as the impact National Socialism had on the discourse within the discipline. A letter written in 1946 by Georg Steindorff, one of the emigrated German Egyptologists, to John Wilson, Professor at the Oriental Institute Chicago, which incriminated former colleagues and exonerated others, is first published here and used as a framework for the debate.

Air Wars, Memory Wars

2005 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Nolan
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Ethnic Cleansing ◽  
The Past ◽  
Eastern Front ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Nazi Past ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
The Impact

The German preoccupation with the Nazi past, with issues of guilt, responsibility, and victimization “… doesn't end. Never will it end,” to quote the resigned note on which Günter Grass concluded his latest novel, Crabwalk. It manifests itself in ever new forms, as different parts of the past, which may or may not have been repressed, come to the fore and are painfully reconstructed, tentatively probed, and reluctantly and often only partially accepted. Each new perspective on the past reorders, sometimes even shatters, the previous mosaic. Recall the impact of the film Holocaust or of the Wehrmacht exhibition. A similar phenomenon is now occurring—or so some hope and others fear. Since 2002 German suffering, rather than German guilt, has become the principal theme in discourses about the past. The firebombing of Hamburg and Dresden, the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff, “moral bombing,” mass rape, and ethnic cleansing dominate historical and literary production and public debate as the Eastern Front, war crimes, and the pervasive knowledge of the Holocaust did in the mid- and late-1990s, and the uniqueness of the Holocaust and its central place within the Third Reich did a decade before that.

The „Niemands“ – Heimatlose Ausländer in Mannheim

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 220-243
Author(s):  
Maria Alexopoulou
Keyword(s):  
Federal Republic ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
The Self ◽  
Foreign Workers ◽  
Press Coverage ◽  
Federal Republic Of Germany ◽  
Displaced Persons ◽  
Local Authorities ◽  
History Of ◽  
Racial Knowledge

Abstract Heimatloser Ausländer (homeless foreigner) was a status granted to Displaced Persons, who were mostly slave or foreign workers during the Third Reich. How did local authorities and the population in Mannheim – an industrial ‘migration-city’– deal with these first ‘Ausländer’ of the Federal Republic of Germany? This article outlines how local authorities managed housing for dp s and later homeless foreigners and how their concerns were treated with at the Ausländerbehörde (foreigners office). It also looks into the reactions and attitudes of the population mirrored in local/regional administrative files and press coverage. The self-denomination as Niemands (nobodies), originating from sociologist and Mannheim based son of dp s, Stanislaus Stepień, expresses the history of a group of migrants who have been mostly forgotten after serving as projection surfaces and transmission objects for racial knowledge about the ‘migrant Other’ and ‘the German’.

„Denn mit dem Pogrom war ich und werde gewesen sein“

2012 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tilman Venzl
Keyword(s):  
Federal Republic ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
Politics Of Memory ◽  
German Politics ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Transitional Time

Abstract:Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition is juxtaposed to Lotte Paepcke’s descriptions of the disrespect for Jews in Germany from the Weimar Republic, through the Third Reich, to the Federal Republic. While Paepcke’s depiction of the transitional time to National Socialism can be well understood in terms of Honneth’s theory as a continuous erosion of the various spheres of recognition, the theory is not fully adequate to describe her position on the German politics of memory of the postwar period. Paepcke is convinced that a renewed recognition of Jews in Germany after the Shoah can only be obtained by a broad acceptance of the concept of ‘negative symbiosis’ (Dan Diner), both publicly and individually.

Shirer's History of Nazi Germany

1961 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 230-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klaus Epstein
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Board Of Directors ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
Great Work ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Board Of Directors ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
To Come

William shirer'sRise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (New York, 1960) has been widely hailed as a great work of history. Harry Schermann, chairman of the board of directors of the Book of the Month Club, says that it “will almost certainly come to be considered the definitive history of one of the most frightful chapters in the story of mankind.” The book has already sold more widely than any work on European history published in recent years. It is probable that tens of thousands of American readers will take theirviews on recent German affairs from Shirer's pages for years to come. For that reason, it is important to point out the serious shortcomings of this work.

scholarly journals The Controversy That Isn't: The Debate Over Daniel J. Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners in Comparative Perspective

1999 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
GAVRIEL D. ROSENFELD
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
Historical Understanding ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Media Hype ◽  
To Come ◽  
Nazi Past

This article attempts to explain the heated controversy sparked by Daniel Goldhagen's bestselling book Hitler's Willing Executioners, by comparing it with its most obvious precedent: the international furor in 1960–62 over William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Through such a comparison, the Goldhagen controversy emerges as a relatively shallow event, largely driven by the book's own weaknesses and by media hype, that provides little of value for a deeper historical understanding of the Holocaust. At the same time, however, Goldhagen's surprising popularity in Germany does, in fact, signal a possible shift in the Germans' long postwar struggle to ‘come to terms' with the Nazi past.

Kina warszawskie: wrzesień–grudzień 1939 roku

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (0) ◽  
pp. 0-0
Author(s):  
Karol Szymański
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
World War ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
General Government ◽  
History Of ◽  
Fire Victims ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
To Come ◽  
The City

Karol Szymański depicts the history of the Warsaw cinemas and analyzes the cinema repertoire in the particular time from September to December 1939 (that is from the outbreak of World War II, through the defense and the siege of Warsaw, until the first months of the German occupation) taking into account a wider context of living conditions in the capital as well as a changing front and political situation. The author draws attention, among other things, to the rapid decrease in the cinema audience in the first week of September. As a consequence cinemas ceased to work, which made them unable to fulfill their informational or propaganda role and provide the inhabitants of the fighting city with the escapist or uplifting entertainment. During the siege of Warsaw some cinemas changed their functions and became a shelter for several thousand fire victims and refugees, while others were irretrievably destroyed in bombings and fires. In turn, after the capitulation and takeover of the city by the Germans, some of the most representative cinemas which survived (they were entirely expropriated by the administration of the General Government) began to gradually resume their activity from the beginning of November. By the end of 1939 there were already eight reactivated cinemas in Warsaw, including one (Helgoland, former Palladium) intended only for the Germans. These cinemas showed only German films – they were entertaining productions which were well-executed, devoid of explicit propaganda or ideological elements, with the greatest stars of the Third Reich cinema. However, December 1939 brought also the first action of the Polish resistance against German cinemas and cinema audience in Warsaw, which in the years to come developed and became an important element of the civilian fight against the occupant.

What Does It Mean to Normalize the Past?: Official Memory in German Politics since 1989

1998 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 547-571 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey K. Olick
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Federal Republic ◽  
Federal Republic Of Germany ◽  
German Politics ◽  
The Past ◽  
Working Through ◽  
Theodor Adorno ◽  
To Come

In 1959, Theodor Adorno delivered a lecture whose title and theme played on Immanuel Kant’s famous essay “Answering the Question: What Is Enlightenment?” {Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?). Kant’s essay had begun with the statement that enlightenment is humanity’s emergence from self-imposed nonage. Called “What Does It Mean to Come to Terms with the Past?” (Was bedeutet: Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit?), Adorno’s lecture takes issue with tendencies in the Federal Republic of Germany to wish away difficult legacies of the Nazi period. Evoking a parallel between Kant’s “enlightenment” (Aufklärung) and the contemporary expressions “coming to terms” or “working through” (Aufarbeitung), Adorno poses a high critical standard for German political culture. According to his diagnosis, the Federal Republic was more concerned with getting beyond the past, with avoiding difficult memory through what Adorno calls “an unconscious and not-so-unconscious defense against guilt,” than with the genuine working through that would be required to “break its spell.” The latter would demand an act of clear consciousness, a difficult process much like the work of psychoanalysis. According to Adorno, the defensive unwillingness in the Federal Republic to confront the past—at both the personal and official levels—indicated not the persistence of fascist tendencies against democracy (e.g., neo-Nazi groups) but of fascist tendencies within democracy. The latter, he argues, are much more insidious.

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