1 “Fixpunkte des ‘antitotalitären Konsenses’”? The Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen memorials, Germany’s ‘double past’, and cultural memory in the Berlin Republic Richard Boffey Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of Modern Languages and Cultures Submitted for examination November 2013 2 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement © 2013 The University of Leeds and Richard Boffey 3 Acknowledgements In the course of researching and writing this thesis I have received help from a great many people. My first, and biggest, debt of gratitude is owed to Jane Wilkinson, who as my supervisor has provided no end of reassuring guidance and direction at every stage of the project. Jane was unfailingly encouraging and supportive, whilst her feedback has been in equal parts constructive and searching; I quite simply could not have contemplated finishing this thesis without her help. Moritz Föllmer, my secondary supervisor until the summer of 2011, expertly steered the project through its early stages along with Jane, and I profitted greatly from out discussions about theoretical and historical questions. Stuart Taberner, who took over Moritz’s responsibilities as secondary supervisor in 2011, helped enormously in keeping the project on track, and offered very useful feedback on drafts of the thesis. Researching and teaching in the stimulating and collegiate surroundings of the German, Russian and Slavonic Studies department at Leeds has been a great pleasure. Both the staff and my fellow PhD students were a constant source of inspiration and good humour, which made the tougher moments of the past few years in particular that much easier to negotiate. Outside of the German department I received indispensable advice on sources and methodology at an early stage from Bill Niven, Holger Afflerbach and Mark Smith. Whilst in Germany, I was offered enthusiastic and knowledgeable assistance from archivists and librarians in Oranienburg, Berlin, and Weimar. In particular I thank Christian Becker, Stefan Sarter, Josefine Popp, Sabine Stein, Rosemarie Hoffmann and Monika Liebscher for their invaluable support of my research. Many of my interview partners not only agreed to give up their time to respond to my questions, but also went out of their way to share insider insights with me. I extend my thanks to Norbert Frei for inviting me to present a portion of my PhD research at his research colloquium in Jena. I gratefully acknowledge the generous financial support I have received at various points throughout the last three years from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the German Academic Exchange Service, the German History Society, the Association for German Studies in Great Britain and Ireland, and the University of Leeds. 4 Finally, I would like to thank friends and family for their encouragement and support over the years, and last but by no means least María, for somehow never doubting that I would see this through. 5 Abstract This thesis sheds light on the ways in which Germany's 'double' National Socialist and communist past has been represented and contested since 1998, taking the Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen memorials as case studies. It pays particular attention to the intersection between discourses on the ‘double past’ and the institutionalization of remembrance in reunified Germany, signalled by the passing into law of a Federal Memorials Concept (Gedenkstättenkonzeption) in 1999 that sought to align the memorials with a present-day 'anti-totalitarian consensus'. Whilst Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen, having served as concentration camps during the Third Reich and then as Soviet internment camps from 1945-1950, have in a normative sense been co-opted into the ‘anti-totalitarian’ narrative, this thesis argues that it is necessary to at least partially uncouple the situation on the ground from the official position. On the evidence of various cultural representations of the two memorials, it demonstrates that there is no single, uniform ‘anti-totalitarian consensus’ governing discourse on the double past. Instead, the thesis proposes a situational and relational model of discourse that attends to both the contexts and power relations within which the double past is negotiated. The four thematic chapters of the thesis address the situational question by each focusing on the embedment of the memorials in a specific cultural space. In the majority of these spaces, a Holocaust-centred culture of remembrance has obtained, despite federal rhetoric appearing to have moved closer to equation of National Socialism and communism throughout the 2000s, therefore pointing to factors besides policy directives emanating in Berlin shaping discourse on the memorials. Furthermore, by utilizing a Foucauldian model of discourse and concepts from Niklas Luhmann’s theory of social systems, the thesis offers a more nuanced view of the relationship between institutionalization and responses to the memorials. 6 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS.....................................................................................7 CH. 1: CONSTRUCTING AND DECONSTRUCTING THE ‘ANTI-TOTALITARIAN CONSENSUS’.........................................................................................................10 INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................................................10 HISTORY OF BUCHENWALD AND SACHSENHAUSEN....................................................................................15 FROM DIVIDED TO UNIFIED MEMORY ...........................................................................................................23 MEMORY OF THE ‘DOUBLE PAST’ IN THE BERLIN REPUBLIC: THE SHIFTING COORDINATES OF ‘NORMALIZATION’ ........................................................................................................................................27 INSTITUTIONALIZING REMEMBRANCE AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MEMORIAL LANDSCAPE .............36 THEORETICAL UNDERPINNINGS....................................................................................................................53 METHODOLOGY & SOURCES ........................................................................................................................65 THESIS STRUCTURE.......................................................................................................................................69 CH. 2: THE ‘DOUBLE PAST’ IN THE MEMORIAL MUSEUM...........................73 INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................................................73 “RÜCKKEHR ZUM HISTORISCHEN ORT”: INTERPRETING THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS ............................77 BROADENING PARAMETERS: THE PLACE OF THE SPEZIALLAGER IN THE MEMORIAL CONCEPTS...............98 CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................................118 CH. 3: LOCAL PATTERNS OF REPRESENTATION..........................................122 INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................................................122 CONSTRUCTING LOCAL MEMORY PARADIGMS ..........................................................................................127 BLIND SPOTS OF LOCAL MEMORY: THE GDR ............................................................................................146 (COUNTER-) CULTURES OF REMEMBRANCE IN WEIMAR AND ORANIENBURG .........................................157 LOCAL SPECIFICITY OR LOCAL NORMATIVITY? A PROGNOSIS .................................................................173 CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................................185 CH. 4: REGIONAL DISPOSITIFS?.......................................................................189 INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................................................189 INSTITUTIONALISING REMEMBRANCE AT THE TURN OF THE MILLENNIUM...............................................192 2006: CHALLENGING OR UPHOLDING THE CENTRALITY OF THE NAZI PAST? ...........................................198 NATIONAL SOCIALISM AND COMMUNISM IN REGIONAL PEDAGOGY........................................................215 AN END TO THE ‘VEREINIGUNGSKRISE’? THE DOUBLE PAST AFTER 20 YEARS OF GERMAN UNITY.......238 CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................................247 CH. 5: ON NATIONAL AND TRANS-NATIONAL DISCOURSES ....................250 INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................................................250 GERMANY’S ‘OTHER’ HOLOCAUST MEMORIALS? .....................................................................................254 BUCHENWALD AND SACHSENHAUSEN ON THE FRONTIER OF EUROPEAN MEMORY POLITICS .................276 THE ‘DOUBLE PAST’ AND THE