04-Lang:Layout 1 2/26/10 2:55 PM Page 42 THE MASTERED PAST? Collective Memory Trends in Germany since Unification Eric Langenbacher Government, Georgetown University ABSTRACT The Federal Republic of Germany—both before and after 1989—has been influenced deeply by collective memories of the Nazi period and the Holo- caust, a seemingly “unmasterable past.” In a first phase after unification, memory trends, which had their origin in the mid 1980s, continued, but a second period, beginning around the 1999 move of the capital back to Berlin, however, witnessed the erosion of this older trend and the delayed rise of new memory dynamics. Substantively, there have been three vectors of memory concerning Nazi crimes, German suffering, and the period of division, especially regarding the German Democratic Republic. In this article, I outline the major collective memory dynamics and debates, first from a qualitative and then from a more quantitative perspective where I analyze the holdings of the German National Library. I conclude that an intense period of memory work characterized the postunification years, but the peak of concern was reached several years ago and the German future will be much less beholden to the past. Given inevitable normalizing trends and the unintended consequences of the hegemony of Holocaust memory, Germany’s difficult historical legacy increasingly appears to be disappearing or even mastered. KEYWORDS collective memory; historical consciousness; memorials; Holocaust; expulsion; German Democratic Republic (GDR); Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) German Politics and Society, Issue 94 Vol. 28, No. 1 Spring 2010 doi:10.3167/gps.2010.280104 04-Lang:Layout 1 2/26/10 2:55 PM Page 43 The Mastered Past? Introduction Attempts to periodize the past often abuse the historical flow and evolu- tion of events, personalities, and processes. The decline of an industry, the rise of a political movement, or the dissipation of a generation’s political influence rarely is connected nicely to a round date. Nevertheless, “critical junctures” do significantly affect political-cultural reality—sometimes with foundational impact, but often accelerating, decelerating, beginning, or ending processes. 1989/1990 in Germany was such a critical juncture in both senses. Yet, when looking specifically at cultural and collective mem- ory trends, this caesura had delayed influence with processes begun before the watershed continuing and other incipient trends, “founded” by the juncture taking years to become manifest. With these provisos in mind, looking back over the last twenty years, I discern two phases of German collective memories—divided loosely around the 1999 return of the capital to Berlin, which itself is another (albeit less-critical) juncture. Moreover, there have been three, at times, intersecting vectors of collective memory concerning the Holocaust, Ger- man suffering, and the period of division during the Cold War. In this paper, I outline the major memory dynamics and debates, from both qual- itative and quantitative perspectives. I argue that the last twenty years wit- nessed a period of vigorous memory work, but the zenith of such attention probably has passed and the German future will be much less beholden to “pasts that won’t go away.”1 Indeed, Germany may be in the midst of a shift from an “unmasterable” to a “mastered” past.2 The History of Memories since Unification Holocaust-centered Memory The first postunification trend was the continuation, culmination, and institutionalization of Holocaust memory, what I elsewhere have called Holocaust-centered memory or the Bonn memory regime.3 Rising slowly rose from subsequently much-criticized obscurity in the immediate post- war years—a period of silence, even repression towards the Nazi period during which a pervasive “amnesty mentality” allowed numerous perpe- trators to escape justice4— the memory because increasingly prominent from the 1960s onward. This process was spurred by several factors including: generational change;5 judicial proceedings, such as the Eich- mann Trial in Jerusalem in 1961 and the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial of ••• 43 ••• 04-Lang:Layout 1 2/26/10 2:55 PM Page 44 Eric Langenbacher 1963-1965; and a variety of cultural works including plays by Rolf Hochhuth (Der Stellvertreter, The Deputy, 1963) and Peter Weiss (Die Ermit- tlung,The Investigation, 1965), and, later, the NBC television miniseries Holocaust, which was aired in the Federal Republic in 1979 (and that one in two adults watched).6 The rise of the local “history from below” and the history of everyday life (Alltagsgeschichte) movements from the 1970s onwards—part of a more general increase of interest in history, heritage, and memory internationally at this time—were additional facilitating fac- tors.7 Yet, despite heightening attention over several decades, this memory achieved cultural hegemony only in the years right before the fall of the Wall. Crucial were the great public and political debates surrounding the fortieth anniversary of the end of World War II in 1985: the Bitburg Affair, when Helmut Kohl and Ronald Reagan awkwardly celebrated Cold War unity at a German military cemetery that contained SS graves; President Richard von Weizsäcker’s speech on 8 May; the Historians’ Dis- pute (Historikerstreit) starting in 1986; and, later, the Jenninger Affair of 1988, where the Christian Democratic Union (CDU)Bundestag speaker was forced to quit after delivering an inappropriate speech on the fiftieth anniversary of the “Kristallnacht” pogrom.8 The continued ascendance of Holocaust memory post 1989 was espe- cially visible in the institutionalization of unified German commem- orations. “Round” anniversaries, especially 1995 and 2005, became significant political events, routinely producing important official pro- nouncements asserting responsibility and contrition for the crimes of the past, exemplified by former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s speech at the sixtieth anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising in 2004. Other dates—like 8 May, 9 November (the anniversary of the fall of the Wall and “Kristall- nacht”), and 27 January (the date of the liberation of Auschwitz and, since 1996, an official commemorative day (Gedenktag))—have become annual commemorations replete with full media coverage. High-level visits of German politicians to Israel (e.g., Chancellor Angela Merkel’s March 2008 trip) and stops by foreign dignitaries to former concentration camps (e.g., U.S. President Barack Obama at Buchenwald in June 2009) also have become expected rituals.9 Memorials have proliferated since 1990, continuing a trend that dates back to the mid 1980s in the Federal Republic.10 Prominent examples include the Neue Wache memorial rededicated controversially (because various victim groups are not differentiated and their suffering seemingly is equated) to “all victims of war and tyranny” on Berlin’s Unter den Lin- den in 1993, and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, opened ••• 44 ••• 04-Lang:Layout 1 2/26/10 2:55 PM Page 45 The Mastered Past? in 2005 near the Brandenburg Gate after fifteen years of debate mainly about proper commemorative forms and aesthetics in the “land of perpe- trators.”11 Other memorials in the capital include one on the Bebelplatz (site of the infamous Nazi book burning of 1933) erected in 1993; various “anti-monuments” especially in old Jewish districts like the Scheunenvier- tel (off Oranienburger Strasse) or the “Places of Remembrance” in Schöneberg’s Bayerisches Viertel;12 and at other sites such as the Haus der Wannsee Konferenz, Rathaus Steglitz and the train station in Grunewald (where many Berlin Jews were deported to Auschwitz). Additional memo- rials to other groups victimized by the Nazis commemorate gays (unveiled in 2008 across the street from the Holocaust memorial), Sinti and Roma (to be completed in late 2009 or 2010), and the “T4” euthanasia victims. Mention should also be made of the Jewish Museum in Kreuzberg with Daniel Libeskind’s symbolic architectural “voids,” the Museum of Ger- man History, re-opened in 2006, which comprehensively covers the Nazi period and the Holocaust, as well as the Topography of Terror, the site of Gestapo headquarters, where a new documentation center will open in 2010.13 The proliferation of such sites has transformed the city into what some have called the “capital of remorse” (Hauptstadt der Reue) as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung memorably put it.14 These high-profile museums and memorials in the new/old capital are just the most prominent examples of the Holocaust memorialization trend that exists throughout the country beyond the memorials at the former Nazi concentration and labor camps on German soil (Bergen-Belsen, Neuengamme, Sachsenhauen, Ravensbrück, Buchenwald, Mittelbau- Dora, Dachau, Flossenbürg), as well as at the sites of destroyed syna- gogues (e.g., Worms, Altenkunstadt, Cologne) and former Jewish quarters (e.g. Augsburg, Rothenburg). Nuremberg, for example, installed a small museum and memorial plaques throughout the former Nazi Party Rally grounds—in time for the matches of the 2006 World Cup of Soccer that were played in the vicinity. It has declared itself a “city of human rights”15 and is currently erecting a memorial and museum to the Nuremberg Trials (Courtroom 600).16 Hamburg (the “Black Form” monument in Altona, dating back to the late 1980s and several others), Frankfurt (Judengasse), Kassel (Aschrottbrunnen), Stuttgart (Nordbahnhof) and many other places have installed memorials to the victims of the Nazis and to the centuries- old Jewish communities that were destroyed. There are also efforts to more fully commemorate Munich’s “brown” past in a city notorious for its unwillingness to confront its Nazi legacy17 and the East German city of Erfurt is erecting a museum at the former site of the Topf und Söhne ••• 45 ••• 04-Lang:Layout 1 2/26/10 2:55 PM Page 46 Eric Langenbacher factory, which produced the crematorium ovens used, for example, at Auschwitz and Buchenwald.18 One of the most interesting commemora- tive efforts is the artist Gunter Demnig’s Stolperstein (stumbling stone) ini- tiative on-going since 1993.