Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Von der hinteren Coverseite

"This is not the first collaborative volume on post-World War II memory in Europe to appear in recent years, but it is the best and most important. Two qualities that set it apart are the integration of excellent historical writing with a stimulating social-science framework and the broadly humanistic cultural sensibilities embodied in the country-specific chapters. The book will be read with benefit by students of history and political psychology, as well as by those interested in the comparative politics of the past."--Martin O. Heisler, University of Maryland

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

The Politics of Memory in Postwar Europe

Duke University Press

Contents

PREFACE..................................................................................................................................................................ixRICHARD NED LEBOW The Memory of Politics in Postwar Europe..............................................................................................................1HEIDEMARIE UHL From Victim Myth to Co-Responsibility Thesis: Nazi Rule, World War II, and the Holocaust in Austrian Memory..............................................40RICHARD J. GOLSAN The Legacy of World War II in France: Mapping the Discourses of Memory................................................................................73WULF KANSTEINER Losing the War, Winning the Memory Battle: The Legacy of Nazism, World War II, and the Holocaust in the Federal Republic of Germany.....................102CLAUDIO FOGU Italiani brava gente: The Legacy of Fascist Historical Culture on Italian Politics of Memory...............................................................147ANNAMARIA ORLA-BUKOWSKA New Threads on an Old Loom: National Memory and Social Identity in Postwar and Post-Communist Poland............................................177REGULA LUDI What Is So Special about Switzerland? Wartime Memory as a National Ideology in the Cold War Era.............................................................210THOMAS C. WOLFE Past as Present, Myth, or History? Discourses of Time and the Great Fatherland War......................................................................249CLAUDIO FOGU AND WULF KANSTEINER The Politics of Memory and the Poetics of History......................................................................................284BIBLIOGRAPHY.............................................................................................................................................................311CONTRIBUTORS.............................................................................................................................................................355INDEX....................................................................................................................................................................357

Chapter One

Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage which we did not take Towards the door we never opened Into the rose garden -T. S. Eliot, "Burnt Norton"

In April 2005 the College of Cardinals elected a German pope-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger-who had been a member of the Hitlerjugend and briefly served in the Wehrmacht. The new pope was controversial in Europe-for his ultraconservative religious views, not for his German past. It was widely accepted that he bore no personal responsibility for the crimes of the Nazi era. Just about every youth of his age had been enrolled in the Hitlerjugend, and he had deserted the German army to return to the seminary. Jewish authorities praised him for encouraging his predecessor's official recognition of the church's historical role in fanning anti-Semitism and for his efforts to establish more fraternal relations with the State of Israel and Jewish communities in Europe.

At the same time as the College of Cardinals was deliberating, Chinese demonstrators, egged on by their government, were throwing stones at the Japanese embassy in Peking and consulates elsewhere in China, attacking Japanese businesses, and generally protesting Japan's efforts to obtain a permanent seat on the United Nation's Security Council. The demonstrators and the Chinese government had become doubly enraged by the nearly simultaneous publication of a Japanese textbook that sought to downplay or discredit the atrocities, including the Rape of Nanjing, that Japanese occupation forces had committed in China and elsewhere in Asia. The textbook, like most in Japan, also put a favorable gloss on Japan's invasions of China and Southeast Asia, characterizing them as acts of anticolonialism and as economically beneficial for those who had been occupied.

The two events in two different regions of the world were closely related, even if diametrically opposed in their symbolic value. The election of a German pope, and one, moreover, who had worn a military uniform, would have been hard to imagine in the absence of a decades-long effort by successive German governments to come to terms with the past and accept their responsibility for the horrendous suffering the Nazis had inflicted on Europe. The Chinese government was not shy about comparing the German and the Japanese politics of memory. Chinese officials praised Germany for acknowledging its Nazi past, for paying billions of dollars in reparations to victims or their families, and for the increasingly forthright approach of its school curriculum. They noted the visits Chancellor Willy Brandt and President Richard Weizscker had made to Auschwitz, as well as their seemingly heartfelt apologies for Germany's crimes. Had the Japanese behaved this way, one Chinese official said, we would view them and their claims for a Security Council seat differently.

These events clearly highlight the positive side of Germany's struggle to overcome its past. But that struggle is far from complete, not only in Germany-hate crimes have reached an all-time high in the former East Germany-but in Europe more generally, where the past continues to weigh on the present in unfortunate and unhelpful ways. On 28 February 2002 Chancellor Gerhard Schrder canceled his visit to Prague to protest Czech prime minister Milos Zeman's branding of ethnic Germans, expelled at the end of World War II, as "Hitler's fifth column." The week before, Prime Minister Victor Orban of Hungary said that neither the Czech Republic nor Slovakia should be admitted to the European Union until they revoked a 1945 decree stripping ethnic Germans and Hungarians of their citizenship in retaliation of their support for Nazi Germany. In September 2004 the Polish parliament unanimously passed a resolution demanding reparations from Germany.

How should one understand such statements and actions? Are they throwaway lines intended to placate aging migr constituencies? Do they reflect something more sinister: a revival of national assertiveness kindled by still-rankling memories of past wrongs in which all parties concerned consider themselves the victims? And what about the undeniable rise of anti-immigrant and anti-foreigner sentiment through Europe? Is this the last gasp of old ethnic antagonisms fueled by the unfreezing of politics in the east and high unemployment in the west brought about by both the collapse of Communism and an economic downturn? Or does it signal a rebirth of xenophobia, fueled by illegal immigration, Islamic fundamentalism, and opportunistic politicians like Jean-Marie Le Pen of France, Jrg Haider of Austria, and the late Pim Fortuyn of Holland? What do these events, and the ways in which governments and people respond to them, say about the emerging identity and politics of the European Union?

A growing literature explores these problems and how European public opinion and governments respond to them. Rather than engage these themes directly, the essays in this volume explore the context in which such issues play out and responses to them develop. Even the most cursory review of European policies about national identity, ethnic conflict,...