Evolution and Normalization: Historical Consciousness in Germany

2012 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 35-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Philipp Lutz
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Historical Consciousness ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Strong Continuity ◽  
World War ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Nazi Era

German political culture has been undergoing gradual but significant changes since unification. Military engagements in combat missions, the introduction of a professional army, and a remarkable loss of recent historical knowledge mostly within the younger generations are hallmarks of the new millennium. Extensive education about the Holocaust is still prevalent and there is a strong continuity of attitudes and orientations toward the Nazi era and the Holocaust reaching back to the 1980s. Nevertheless, a lack of knowledge about history-not only the World War II period, but also about East and West Germany-in the age group of people under thirty is staggering. The fading away of the generation of victims who are the last ones to tell the story of persecution during the Holocaust and a parallel rise of new actors and technologies, present challenges to the educational system and the current political culture of Germany.

Returning to Stay? Jews in East and West Germany after the Holocaust

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 393-413
Author(s):  
Andrea A. Sinn
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Federal Republic Of Germany ◽  
World War ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Central Council ◽  
East And West ◽  
German Jewish

ABSTRACTTo better understand the position of Jews within Germany after the end of World War II, this article analyzes the rebuilding of Jewish communities in East and West Germany from a Jewish perspective. This approach highlights the peculiarities and sometimes sharply contrasting developments within the Jewish communities in the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, from the immediate postwar months to the official East-West separation of these increasingly politically divided communities in the early 1960s. Central to the study are the policies of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, which exemplify the process of gradual divergence in the relations between East and West German Jewish communities, that, as this article demonstrates, paralleled and mirrored the relations between non-Jewish Germans in the two countries.

scholarly journals The Separation and Reunification of Germany: Rethinking a Natural Experiment Interpretation of the Enduring Effects of Communism

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sascha O. Becker ◽  
Lukas Mergele ◽  
Ludger Woessmann
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Natural Experiment ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Extensive Literature ◽  
World War ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
Cautious Interpretation ◽  
East And West ◽  
And Gender ◽  
And Control

German separation in 1949 into a communist East and a capitalist West and their reunification in 1990 are commonly described as a natural experiment to study the enduring effects of communism. We show in three steps that the populations in East and West Germany were far from being randomly selected treatment and control groups. First, the later border is already visible in many socio-economic characteristics in pre-World War II data. Second, World War II and the subsequent occupying forces affected East and West differently. Third, a selective fifth of the population fled from East to West Germany before the building of the Wall in 1961. In light of our findings, we propose a more cautious interpretation of the extensive literature on the enduring effects of communist systems on economic outcomes, political preferences, cultural traits, and gender roles.

Moralpolitik versus Moralpolitik: Recent Struggles over the Construction of Cultural Memory in Germany

2005 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 106-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Langenbacher
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
World War ◽  
60Th Anniversary ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
The Holocaust

Before the series of 60th anniversary commemorations of the end of the Holocaust, Nazism and World War II in 2005, the big development regarding German collective memories and political culture was the resurgence of memories of German suffering. Contrary to the opinions of prominent observers like W.G. Sebald, this memory, linked to events from the end and immediate aftermath of World War II, is not a repressed or only recently discovered trauma. Rather, the current discussions signal the return of a memory that was culturally hegemonic in the early postwar decades. Nevertheless, the circumstances surrounding this return differ significantly from the postwar situation in which this memory first flourished in three main ways. The altered environment greatly affects both the reception and potential institutionalization of such memory, which could lead to deep political cultural changes.

scholarly journals Germany: Twenty Years After The Union

2010 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pete Mavrokordatos ◽  
Stan Stascinsky ◽  
Andrew Michael
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Final Section ◽  
German Economy ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
World War ◽  
The Third ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
The World ◽  
Before And After

One of the most important events in the world after World War II was the reunification of Germany, during the late 1980s and early 1990s. The aim of this paper is to discuss the general economic conditions in Germany, before and after the reunification. This paper is divided into four parts. The introductory section provides a summative discussion of the economic conditions in East and West Germany from World War II until the time of reunification. The second section presents an evaluation of the German economy since the reunification. The third section presents macroeconomic data to illustrate the general impact of the unification on the German economy. The final section offers concluding remarks and recommendations.

scholarly journals A Post-World War II Tragedy: The Expulsion of Ethnic Germans From Poland and Czechoslovakia, 1945-49

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erica Lamontagne
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
World War ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
Ethnic Germans ◽  
East And West ◽  
The Third Reich

Through a comparative approach, this essay examines the cruel and inhumane way in which ethnic Germans were expelled from Poland and the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia in the years immediately following the end of World War II. It compares the nature of the expulsions in Poland and Czechoslovakia and how this negatively impacted the two countries in the aftermath of the expulsions. In Czechoslovakia especially, the nature of the expulsions of ethnic Germans greatly resembled Nazi policy toward Jewish people during the Third Reich. This essay also briefly examines the integration of ethnic German refugees from Poland and Czechoslovakia into both East and West Germany. As a result of ideological differences in East and West Germany, expellees had very different experiences upon resettlement, depending on where they arrived in Germany. The purpose of this essay is to break through the common misconception that most, or all, Germans at the end of World War II were criminals. Many ethnic Germans expelled from Poland and Czechoslovakia saw themselves as Poles or Czechoslovaks, and did not associate themselves with Nazi Germany. 

Schoenberg's Symbolic Remigration: A Survivor from Warsaw in Postwar West Germany

2009 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joy H. Calico
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Federal Funding ◽  
West Germany ◽  
World War ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
Crucial Component ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Musical Modernism

Abstract Musicologists have recently begun to study a crucial component in the reconstruction of European cultural life after World War II——the remigration of displaced musicians, either in person or (adopting Marita Krauss's notion of "remigrating ideas") in the form of their music. Because composers are most significantly present in the aural materiality of their music, and because Arnold Schoenberg's name was synonymous with modernism and its persecution across Europe, his symbolic postwar reappearance via performances of his music was a powerful and problematic form of remigration. The case of Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw and the former Nazi music critic Hans Schnoor serves as a representative example. Schnoor derided Schoenberg and Survivor in a newspaper column in 1956 using the rhetoric of National Socialist journalism as part of his campaign against federal funding of musical modernism via radio and festivals. When radio journalist Fred Prieberg took him to task for this on the air, Schnoor sued for defamation. A series of lawsuits ensued in which issues of denazification and the occupying Allied forces put a distinctly West German spin on the universal postwar European themes of anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, remigration, and modernism.

Rejecting Radbruch: The European Court of Human Rights and the Crimes of the East German Leadership

2001 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 653-663 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell Miller
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Central Line ◽  
West Germany ◽  
World War ◽  
Military Leaders ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
European Court ◽  
East German ◽  
East And West

The European Court of Human Rights found no violation of the Convention in its judgement in the complaints of the former East German political and military leaders Streletz, Kessler, and Krenz. All three were convicted and sentenced to terms in prison by German courts in relation to the deaths of East Germans who were killed in attempts at fleeing across the fortified border between East and West Germany. Nonetheless, the Court's decision constitutes a clear rejection of the Radbruch Formula, which served as a central line of reasoning in the decisions of the German courts in the cases. The author addresses the Court's rejection of the Radbruch Formula, focusing especially on the distinct historical and political circumstances that existed after World War II and in 1989.

scholarly journals Psychiatry in former East and West Germany since reunification

1994 ◽  
Vol 18 (10) ◽  
pp. 637-639 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manfred Bauer
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
West Germany ◽  
World War ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
The Social ◽  
Conservative Christian ◽  
The Government ◽  
Expert Commission ◽  
First Time

Discussion of the need to reform psychiatric services in former West Germany started relatively late. It was only in the late 1960s, when the government changed from the conservative Christian Democrats to a coalition of the Social Democratic and Liberal Parties, that psychiatry became a public issue for the first time since World War II. Parliament appointed an expert commission, which after four years gave a comprehensive report in which the inadequate care of mentally ill patients was criticised.

Reading the Writings on the Walls— Remembering East Berlin

2005 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 65-82
Author(s):  
Katharina Gerstenberger
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
West Germany ◽  
World War ◽  
Politics Of Memory ◽  
East Berlin ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Nazi Past ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Sixtieth Anniversary

Between the end of the Cold War in 1989 and the sixtieth anniversary of the end of World War II more than fifteen years later, Germany witnessed not only a proliferation of events and experiences to be remembered but also of traditions of memory. Before the fall of the wall, remembrance of the past in West Germany meant, above all, commemoration of the Nazi past and the memory of the Holocaust. Germany's unification had a significant impact on cultural memory not only because the fall of the wall itself was an event of memorable significance but also because it gave new impulses to debates about the politics of memory.

“New Citizens” or “Community of Fate”? Early Discourses and Policies on “Flight and Expulsion” in the Two Postwar Germanys

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 314-334
Author(s):  
Peter N. Gengler
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
West Germany ◽  
World War ◽  
Humanitarian Crisis ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
Forced Migrations ◽  
Social Agendas ◽  
Social Recovery

AbstractThe historiography of the postwar Germanys often examined the Nazi legacy and the remarkable efforts needed for economic and social recovery after 1945. In both the FRG and GDR, the consequences of the war and resulting “flight and expulsion” featured prominently in public discourse and were among the most pressing challenges in the early postwar years. Examining how the competing regimes in East and West Germany attempted to solve the humanitarian crisis caused by the forced migration of 10 to 12 million German refugees in the first years after World War II reveals that the discourses and policies started from common points of departure yet diverged into competing narratives underpinning the states’ political and social agendas. Reconstructing the evolution of how the forced migrations were discussed and leveraged in the neglected period immediately after the war opens new perspectives on how Germans shouldered the burdens of dictatorship and defeat.

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