Vergangenheitsbewältigung II Bernhard Schlink’s
Description: Vergangenheitsbewältigung II Bernhard Schlinks Der Vorleser, the Student Movement and the Legacy of National Socialism Nazi Victims Holocaust (6 Million Jews, Sinti Roma, Homosexuals) Death camps in Poland (Todeslager)
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slide1. Vergangenheitsbewältigung II Bernhard Schlink’s Der Vorleser, the Student Movement and the Legacy of National Socialism<br>
slide2. Nazi Victims Holocaust (6 Million Jews, Sinti & Roma, Homosexuals)
Death camps in Poland (Todeslager)
Konzentrationslager in Germany (KZ) with 1.6 Mio detainees and 450.000 documented deaths
‘Vernichtung durch Arbeit’
‘Euthanasia’ – ‘Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens’
Political prisoners (communists & socialists)<br>
slide3. Issues arising for Germany Guilt (individual/ collective)
Responsibility (individual/ collective)
Denial & Repression (Avoidance)
Damages - ‘Wiedergutmachung’
‘Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit’
Vergangenheitsbewältigung<br>
slide4. German deaths - Civilians Luftkrieg – every city over 50.000 bombed - estimated deaths: 450.000 - 600.000
Flight from East & Expulsions:
Estimated 300.000 deaths during flight from advancing German army in East Prussia 1945
Estimated 14 mio expellee Germans between 1945 and 1950
Estimated 2 mio women raped mainly by SU soldiers
Estimated 140.000 women die as consequence of rape<br>
slide5. German deaths - Soldiers Estimated 3.2 Million dead soldiers
11 Million POW’s (3.3 in SU, 42% of whom die)<br>
slide6. German expellees after WWII (‘Heimatvertriebene’)<br>
slide7. The sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff, 30 Jan 1945 Ex cruise ship marked as military vessel
Transporting refugees from East Prussia
Sunk on Baltic coast by Soviet submarine
Over 9000 dead<br>
slide8. Issues for Germany ‘Opfer’:
Victim
Sacrifice
Who is a victim? Who is a perpetrator?
What is a victim? What is a perpetrator?
Is victim a psychological or political category?
Remembrance: How do nations remember their war dead?<br>
slide9. Alexander & Margarethe Mitscherlich Die Unfähigkeit zu trauern (1967)
Question: Why Germans so little empathy with Nazi victims?
Thesis: Germans loved Hitler – should have mourned loss of Hitler
Germans failed to mourn Hitler – instead withdrew emotional energies from themselves and their past and channelled them into Wirtschaftswunder
Result: emotional distance towards their own past as responsible actants involved in Nazism (‘de-realisation’).
Insistence on innocence and own suffering in 1950s and 1960s.<br>
slide10. A. & M. Mitscherlich, Die Unfähigkeit zu trauern ‘Instead we Germans should extend the empathy with ourselves, so that we can at last recognise ourselves in such scenes […] and on those appalling occasions when one hundred, five hundred, or one thousand bodies lay in front of us, bodies of people we had killed. This would imply a compassionate and poignant acknowledgement of the victims long after the time of horror.’<br>
slide11. Sigmund Freud, ‘Mourning and Melancholia’ Mourning
Process of working through loss
‘erinnern, wiederholen, durcharbeiten’ (Freud)
Letting go –
Ability to re-cathect Melancholia
Refusal to acknowledge loss
Denial, repression
Internalisation of lost object
Melancholic subject remains frozen in time
No letting go<br>
slide12. Two Paradigms of Holocaust Remembrance Adorno’s ‘paradox remembrance’:
Intellectual task is to keep memory of Holocaust as rupture in history open; ‘gaze onto the horrors’.
Mitscherlich’s ‘inability to mourn’: Freudian paradigm of ‘Bewältigung’
Günter Butzer, Fehlende Trauer, Munich, 1998.<br>
slide13. Die Unfähigkeit zu trauern Reflexion in Fassbinder’s Die Ehe der Maria Braun?
Reflexion in Schlink’s Der Vorleser?
Michael’s relationship with Hanna:
Dependency relationships (Hörigkeitsbeziehungen):
Narcissistic love object<br>
slide14. Student Movement Shock of Auschwitz-trial 1963
Große Koalition (Kiesinger and Lübke: ex-Nazis)
Come to see older generation as ‘perpetrators’ – breaking off of dialogue
‘Trau keinem über 30’
RAF: ‘Ihr könnt nicht mit Leuten reden, die Auschwitz gemacht haben’ (G. Ensslin)
Post 1968 German Left: focuses on Nazi perpetration and Nazism’s victims<br>
slide15. Politicisation of German Memory Discourse Denial and Repression in 1950s/60s
Trauma: de-historicises political issues
Political instrumentalisation of traumatic experience by right wing (Bund der Vertriebenen)
Kollektivschuld as instrument of denial
‘Aufrechnung’ – Settling of Accounts-mentality (‘The Germans suffered just as much as the Jews’)<br>
slide16. Bund der Vertriebenen (BdV) Founded in 1957
Represents expellees
Political pressure group with own ministry until 1969
Refuses to acknowledge the loss of Eastern territories
Argues expulsions after 1945 against international law
Ex-Nazis in high positions (but also SPD-members)
Willy Brandt’s ‘Ostverträge’ 1970 effectively sidelines BdV
1990 settlement with Poland re: Polish Western border
Since 2000 lobbies for ‘Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen’ to be built in Berlin
2005: Angela Merkel’s government decides to build ‘Zentrum’<br>
slide17. Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen At heart of ‘Berlin Republic’ – like Holocaust Memorial
Modelled on Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington
Claims to be about all expulsions of 20th ct (e.g. Turkish-Armenian genocide 1915, Turkish-Greek expulsion 1920/21, German expulsions after 1945)
German expulsions separated spatially from others
Effectively a ‘national’ memorial for German expellees
Highly controversial with Poland & Czech Republic
SPD-government said no, Merkel said yes<br>
slide18. Holocaust as ‘memory paradigm Eichmann trial in Jerusalem (1961)
Auschwitz trial in Frankfurt (1963)
US TV series Holocaust (1979)
Holocaust as ‘negative myth of origin’ of post-war Western world (Avishai Margalit & Gabriel Motzkin)<br>
slide19. Victim-centred approach to history of NS ‘The approach oriented toward the perspective of the victim in no way represents either a purely subjective or even a complementary way of viewing things. Rather, it is the more comprehensive perspective and the one more appropriate to the totality of the phenomenon, because it proceeds from the absolute extreme case.’
Dan Diner, ‘Between Aporia and Apology’, in: Peter Baldwin (ed.), Reworking the Past: Hitler, the Holocaust and the historians’ debate (Boston/Mass., Beacon Press, 1990), 135-45.<br>
slide20. Different traumatisation ‘what was traumatic for one group was obviously not traumatic for the other’.
‘victims cope with a fundamentally traumatic situation [...] many Germans have to cope with a widening stain, with political shame or guilt’.
Saul Friedlander, ‘Trauma, Memory and Transference’, in: Geoffrey H.Hartman (ed), Holocaust Remembrance. The Shapes of Memory (Cambridge/Mass., CUP), 1994, 252-63.<br>
slide21. Bernhard Schlink, Der Vorleser, p. 100 ‘Was sollte und soll meine Generation der Nachlebenden eigentlich mit den Informationen über die Furchtbarkeiten der Vernichtung der Juden anfangen? [...] Sollen wir nur in Entsetzen, Scham und Schuld verstummen? Aber zu welchem Ende? [...] Aber daß einige wenige verurteilt und bestraft und daß wir, die nachfolgende Generation [...] verstummen würden – das sollte es sein?’<br>
slide22. ‘Memory Contests’ (Anne Fuchs): Public vs. Private Memory of NS in Germany Public
Commemorations of Auschwitz
Holocaust memorial
Speeches in Bundestag
Focus on Responsibility Private (family)
Stories of hardship
Suffering
Heroism
Skeletons in closets?
Welzer, Moller, Tschuggnall, Opa war kein Nazi, FfM, 2002<br>
slide23. Political instrumentalisation of traumatic experience Victim discourse in hands of (far) right – inflated numbers of ‘German’ victims (e.g. Dresden)
Discourse of responsibility for NS and Nazi victims in hands of (liberal) left (Gruppe 47, Student movement)
Neo-Nazi Party NPD in Germany active with success in early 1960s (9.8% 1966-69) and
After 1990 NPD successful in East and West German Länder (Niedersachsen, Sachsen)
2005: NPD leaves Landtag in Saxony during minute’s silence for Holocaust in protest
NPD: ‘Bombenholocaust’ with respect to Dresden<br>
slide24. The German Historians’ Debate (1986-89) Circles around issue of ‘Historisation’ of National Socialism
Contrahends: Ernst Nolte and Jürgen Habermas
Andreas Hillgruber: Zweierlei Untergang (1986)
Attempts to de-centralise the Holocaust
Martin Broszat’s and Saul Friedlander’s exchange of letters regarding historisation and ‘Alltagsgeschichte’
Dan Diner: victim perspective is ‘more comprehensive, more appropriate to the totality’ of NS<br>
slide25. Institutionalisation of NS Memory in 1990s Debate about Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s Hitler’s willing executioners (1996)
Controversy about exhibition ‘Crimes of the Wehrmacht 1941-44 (1995-99 and 2001-04)
Controversy about Berlin Holocaust Memorial
Bill Niven, Facing the Nazi Past (2001)<br>
slide26. The ‘Germans as Victims’ Debate of the 2000s Follows decade of ‘Institutionalisation’ of Holocaust Memory
Focus on ‘German’ experience of war and traumatisation (e.g. the Luftkrieg, the expulsions)
‘Germano-centric’ memory of NS
Emotive approach to history (‘Gefühlte Geschichte’, Norbert Frei)
Focus on long-term legacies of trauma within families (transgenerational traumatisation)
‘Histotainment’ (merging of history and entertainment)
Increasing shift into entertainment and ‘heritage cinema’ (Der Untergang, Das Wunder von Bern, Dresden, Unsere Mütter unsere Väter)<br>
slide27. Style & Form ‘new German Cinema’
Form in relation to subject matter
Verfremdungseffekte
Epistemological scepticism
Epistemology = theory of knowledge (from Greek epistēmē, meaning ‘knowledge, understanding’)<br>
slide28. Das schreckliche Mädchen ‘Uns ist in alten maeren, wunder viel geseit’
The Nibelungenlied (early 13th ct)
Richard Wagner (1813-1883), Der Ring des Nibelungen, 1948-73<br>
slide29. Heinrich Lübke, Bundespräsident 1959-69
‘zu weit nach rechts gegriffen’
Richard von Weizsäcker, Bundespräsident 184-94
‘zu hoch gegriffen’
Carl Carstens, Bundespräsident 1979-84<br>
slide30. Das schreckliche Mädchen Form and style – how does the film use Verfremdungseffekte (and why?)
Use of comedy and satire
Image of (Catholic) Church & Bavarian society
Representation of time (as in passing historical time)
Ending.<br>
slide2. Nazi Victims Holocaust (6 Million Jews, Sinti & Roma, Homosexuals)
Death camps in Poland (Todeslager)
Konzentrationslager in Germany (KZ) with 1.6 Mio detainees and 450.000 documented deaths
‘Vernichtung durch Arbeit’
‘Euthanasia’ – ‘Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens’
Political prisoners (communists & socialists)<br>
slide3. Issues arising for Germany Guilt (individual/ collective)
Responsibility (individual/ collective)
Denial & Repression (Avoidance)
Damages - ‘Wiedergutmachung’
‘Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit’
Vergangenheitsbewältigung<br>
slide4. German deaths - Civilians Luftkrieg – every city over 50.000 bombed - estimated deaths: 450.000 - 600.000
Flight from East & Expulsions:
Estimated 300.000 deaths during flight from advancing German army in East Prussia 1945
Estimated 14 mio expellee Germans between 1945 and 1950
Estimated 2 mio women raped mainly by SU soldiers
Estimated 140.000 women die as consequence of rape<br>
slide5. German deaths - Soldiers Estimated 3.2 Million dead soldiers
11 Million POW’s (3.3 in SU, 42% of whom die)<br>
slide6. German expellees after WWII (‘Heimatvertriebene’)<br>
slide7. The sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff, 30 Jan 1945 Ex cruise ship marked as military vessel
Transporting refugees from East Prussia
Sunk on Baltic coast by Soviet submarine
Over 9000 dead<br>
slide8. Issues for Germany ‘Opfer’:
Victim
Sacrifice
Who is a victim? Who is a perpetrator?
What is a victim? What is a perpetrator?
Is victim a psychological or political category?
Remembrance: How do nations remember their war dead?<br>
slide9. Alexander & Margarethe Mitscherlich Die Unfähigkeit zu trauern (1967)
Question: Why Germans so little empathy with Nazi victims?
Thesis: Germans loved Hitler – should have mourned loss of Hitler
Germans failed to mourn Hitler – instead withdrew emotional energies from themselves and their past and channelled them into Wirtschaftswunder
Result: emotional distance towards their own past as responsible actants involved in Nazism (‘de-realisation’).
Insistence on innocence and own suffering in 1950s and 1960s.<br>
slide10. A. & M. Mitscherlich, Die Unfähigkeit zu trauern ‘Instead we Germans should extend the empathy with ourselves, so that we can at last recognise ourselves in such scenes […] and on those appalling occasions when one hundred, five hundred, or one thousand bodies lay in front of us, bodies of people we had killed. This would imply a compassionate and poignant acknowledgement of the victims long after the time of horror.’<br>
slide11. Sigmund Freud, ‘Mourning and Melancholia’ Mourning
Process of working through loss
‘erinnern, wiederholen, durcharbeiten’ (Freud)
Letting go –
Ability to re-cathect Melancholia
Refusal to acknowledge loss
Denial, repression
Internalisation of lost object
Melancholic subject remains frozen in time
No letting go<br>
slide12. Two Paradigms of Holocaust Remembrance Adorno’s ‘paradox remembrance’:
Intellectual task is to keep memory of Holocaust as rupture in history open; ‘gaze onto the horrors’.
Mitscherlich’s ‘inability to mourn’: Freudian paradigm of ‘Bewältigung’
Günter Butzer, Fehlende Trauer, Munich, 1998.<br>
slide13. Die Unfähigkeit zu trauern Reflexion in Fassbinder’s Die Ehe der Maria Braun?
Reflexion in Schlink’s Der Vorleser?
Michael’s relationship with Hanna:
Dependency relationships (Hörigkeitsbeziehungen):
Narcissistic love object<br>
slide14. Student Movement Shock of Auschwitz-trial 1963
Große Koalition (Kiesinger and Lübke: ex-Nazis)
Come to see older generation as ‘perpetrators’ – breaking off of dialogue
‘Trau keinem über 30’
RAF: ‘Ihr könnt nicht mit Leuten reden, die Auschwitz gemacht haben’ (G. Ensslin)
Post 1968 German Left: focuses on Nazi perpetration and Nazism’s victims<br>
slide15. Politicisation of German Memory Discourse Denial and Repression in 1950s/60s
Trauma: de-historicises political issues
Political instrumentalisation of traumatic experience by right wing (Bund der Vertriebenen)
Kollektivschuld as instrument of denial
‘Aufrechnung’ – Settling of Accounts-mentality (‘The Germans suffered just as much as the Jews’)<br>
slide16. Bund der Vertriebenen (BdV) Founded in 1957
Represents expellees
Political pressure group with own ministry until 1969
Refuses to acknowledge the loss of Eastern territories
Argues expulsions after 1945 against international law
Ex-Nazis in high positions (but also SPD-members)
Willy Brandt’s ‘Ostverträge’ 1970 effectively sidelines BdV
1990 settlement with Poland re: Polish Western border
Since 2000 lobbies for ‘Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen’ to be built in Berlin
2005: Angela Merkel’s government decides to build ‘Zentrum’<br>
slide17. Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen At heart of ‘Berlin Republic’ – like Holocaust Memorial
Modelled on Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington
Claims to be about all expulsions of 20th ct (e.g. Turkish-Armenian genocide 1915, Turkish-Greek expulsion 1920/21, German expulsions after 1945)
German expulsions separated spatially from others
Effectively a ‘national’ memorial for German expellees
Highly controversial with Poland & Czech Republic
SPD-government said no, Merkel said yes<br>
slide18. Holocaust as ‘memory paradigm Eichmann trial in Jerusalem (1961)
Auschwitz trial in Frankfurt (1963)
US TV series Holocaust (1979)
Holocaust as ‘negative myth of origin’ of post-war Western world (Avishai Margalit & Gabriel Motzkin)<br>
slide19. Victim-centred approach to history of NS ‘The approach oriented toward the perspective of the victim in no way represents either a purely subjective or even a complementary way of viewing things. Rather, it is the more comprehensive perspective and the one more appropriate to the totality of the phenomenon, because it proceeds from the absolute extreme case.’
Dan Diner, ‘Between Aporia and Apology’, in: Peter Baldwin (ed.), Reworking the Past: Hitler, the Holocaust and the historians’ debate (Boston/Mass., Beacon Press, 1990), 135-45.<br>
slide20. Different traumatisation ‘what was traumatic for one group was obviously not traumatic for the other’.
‘victims cope with a fundamentally traumatic situation [...] many Germans have to cope with a widening stain, with political shame or guilt’.
Saul Friedlander, ‘Trauma, Memory and Transference’, in: Geoffrey H.Hartman (ed), Holocaust Remembrance. The Shapes of Memory (Cambridge/Mass., CUP), 1994, 252-63.<br>
slide21. Bernhard Schlink, Der Vorleser, p. 100 ‘Was sollte und soll meine Generation der Nachlebenden eigentlich mit den Informationen über die Furchtbarkeiten der Vernichtung der Juden anfangen? [...] Sollen wir nur in Entsetzen, Scham und Schuld verstummen? Aber zu welchem Ende? [...] Aber daß einige wenige verurteilt und bestraft und daß wir, die nachfolgende Generation [...] verstummen würden – das sollte es sein?’<br>
slide22. ‘Memory Contests’ (Anne Fuchs): Public vs. Private Memory of NS in Germany Public
Commemorations of Auschwitz
Holocaust memorial
Speeches in Bundestag
Focus on Responsibility Private (family)
Stories of hardship
Suffering
Heroism
Skeletons in closets?
Welzer, Moller, Tschuggnall, Opa war kein Nazi, FfM, 2002<br>
slide23. Political instrumentalisation of traumatic experience Victim discourse in hands of (far) right – inflated numbers of ‘German’ victims (e.g. Dresden)
Discourse of responsibility for NS and Nazi victims in hands of (liberal) left (Gruppe 47, Student movement)
Neo-Nazi Party NPD in Germany active with success in early 1960s (9.8% 1966-69) and
After 1990 NPD successful in East and West German Länder (Niedersachsen, Sachsen)
2005: NPD leaves Landtag in Saxony during minute’s silence for Holocaust in protest
NPD: ‘Bombenholocaust’ with respect to Dresden<br>
slide24. The German Historians’ Debate (1986-89) Circles around issue of ‘Historisation’ of National Socialism
Contrahends: Ernst Nolte and Jürgen Habermas
Andreas Hillgruber: Zweierlei Untergang (1986)
Attempts to de-centralise the Holocaust
Martin Broszat’s and Saul Friedlander’s exchange of letters regarding historisation and ‘Alltagsgeschichte’
Dan Diner: victim perspective is ‘more comprehensive, more appropriate to the totality’ of NS<br>
slide25. Institutionalisation of NS Memory in 1990s Debate about Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s Hitler’s willing executioners (1996)
Controversy about exhibition ‘Crimes of the Wehrmacht 1941-44 (1995-99 and 2001-04)
Controversy about Berlin Holocaust Memorial
Bill Niven, Facing the Nazi Past (2001)<br>
slide26. The ‘Germans as Victims’ Debate of the 2000s Follows decade of ‘Institutionalisation’ of Holocaust Memory
Focus on ‘German’ experience of war and traumatisation (e.g. the Luftkrieg, the expulsions)
‘Germano-centric’ memory of NS
Emotive approach to history (‘Gefühlte Geschichte’, Norbert Frei)
Focus on long-term legacies of trauma within families (transgenerational traumatisation)
‘Histotainment’ (merging of history and entertainment)
Increasing shift into entertainment and ‘heritage cinema’ (Der Untergang, Das Wunder von Bern, Dresden, Unsere Mütter unsere Väter)<br>
slide27. Style & Form ‘new German Cinema’
Form in relation to subject matter
Verfremdungseffekte
Epistemological scepticism
Epistemology = theory of knowledge (from Greek epistēmē, meaning ‘knowledge, understanding’)<br>
slide28. Das schreckliche Mädchen ‘Uns ist in alten maeren, wunder viel geseit’
The Nibelungenlied (early 13th ct)
Richard Wagner (1813-1883), Der Ring des Nibelungen, 1948-73<br>
slide29. Heinrich Lübke, Bundespräsident 1959-69
‘zu weit nach rechts gegriffen’
Richard von Weizsäcker, Bundespräsident 184-94
‘zu hoch gegriffen’
Carl Carstens, Bundespräsident 1979-84<br>
slide30. Das schreckliche Mädchen Form and style – how does the film use Verfremdungseffekte (and why?)
Use of comedy and satire
Image of (Catholic) Church & Bavarian society
Representation of time (as in passing historical time)
Ending.<br>