{"id":2192,"date":"2017-10-02T16:44:59","date_gmt":"2017-10-02T16:44:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/?p=2192"},"modified":"2017-10-09T20:48:03","modified_gmt":"2017-10-09T20:48:03","slug":"der-kult-mit-der-schuld-collective-memory-following-the-2017-german-federal-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/der-kult-mit-der-schuld-collective-memory-following-the-2017-german-federal-elections\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cDer Kult mit der Schuld\u201d \u2013 Collective Memory Following the 2017 German Federal Elections"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the first time since 1933, an extreme-right party has been voted into German parliament. Going by the name of the Alternative f\u00fcr Deutschland (AfD), this newcomer made substantial gains from the last federal election (+7.9%) while centrist parties were dealt (to use a German soccer colloquialism) a massive \u201cKlatsche.\u201d Now Germany must ponder its political future. But what does this mean about the country\u2019s collective memory?<\/p>\n

Just this month, AfD party leader Alexander Gauland said that Germany should be proud of its soldiers in both world wars<\/a>. \u201cI am not denying that the Wehrmacht in the Second World War was involved in crimes,\u201d said Gauland, acknowledging the Nazi murder of six million Jews, but in the form of a structuralist apology<\/a>: \u201cmillions of German soldiers did their duty for a criminal system. But this is the system\u2019s fault, not the fault of the soldiers who were brave.\u201d (He pointed to Erwin Rommel and Claus von Stauffenberg as examples of German military resistance in their assassination plot against Hitler<\/a>.) In an interesting turn of phrase, he called for the country to \u201cpull the curtain\u201d over its Nazi past<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This is unprecedented in Germany. For the past 70 years, German public figures have hardly ever called German WWII soldiers \u201cbrave.\u201d Instead, Germany\u2019s coming to terms with its Nazi history, better known as Vergangenheitsbew\u00e4ltigung<\/em>, has been legislated in forms of integration policy, reparations, education, memorialization of Holocaust victims in public space and media, etc. so that Germany demonstrates a continual reconciliation with its past atrocities.<\/p>\n

\"Screen
Examples of contemporary literature rooted in the ideology of the German far-right. Here we see intersecting concepts of guilt, multiculturalism, and migration presented as \u201cproblem topics\u201d contradictory to AfD\u2019s notion of German cultural identity.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So, where are Gauland\u2019s comments coming from? A good place to start is with a book: Der<\/em> Kult mit der Schuld<\/em>, which roughly translates to the \u201cCult of Guilt.\u201d The book decries \u201cpolitical correctness\u201d as having evolved from Germany\u2019s collective memory of the Holocaust, lamenting that \u201cno other people like the Germans are so ashamed of themselves.\u201d From the back cover description<\/a>:<\/p>\n

What is often overlooked is that the \u201ccult of guilt\u201d has a highly destructive potential; indeed, the modern interpretation of collective guilt hovers over us like a radioactive cloud on all areas of public life\u2014contaminating slowly but surely not only our politics and culture, but also our democratic and moral values. And in certain leftist and politically correct circles, this amounts to classic psychological symptoms of self-hatred.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Before the election, AfD politician Wilhelm von Gottberg spoke out against this so-called \u201ccult of guilt\u201d to say that the Nazi era had been \u201cworked through\u201d<\/a> \u2013 and that today, the Holocaust has been twisted into an \u201ceffective instrument to criminalize the Germans and their history.\u201d<\/p>\n

If von Gottberg is trying to absolve today\u2019s Germany of its guilt, then Gauland\u2019s wants to reassert Germany\u2019s innocence\u2014and neither attempt legitimately produces an end result of \u201cworking through\u201d the Holocaust. Nonetheless, the party continues its normalizing message. AfD politician Bjorn H\u00f6cke called for Germany to adopt \u201ca memory culture which brings us first and foremost into contact with the great achievements of our ancestors.\u201d He has also said that the Holocaust memorial in Berlin was \u201ca monument of disgrace.\u201d<\/a> Earlier this year, AfD insisted<\/a> that school curricula emphasize \u201cpositive, identity-uplifting\u201d events in German history. The AfD wants to contest how Germans remember. We should remember that \u201cpulling the curtain\u201d fails at disturbing depths to extract innocence from guilt.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Christopher Levesque is a doctoral student in Sociology at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. His research interests include institutions\/patterns of migration, collective memory, and refugee political participation in Germany and the United States.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the first time since 1933, an extreme-right party has been voted into German parliament. Going by the name of the Alternative f\u00fcr Deutschland (AfD), this newcomer made substantial gains from the last federal election (+7.9%) while centrist parties were dealt (to use a German soccer colloquialism) a massive \u201cKlatsche.\u201d Now Germany must ponder its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2058,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[142],"tags":[4455,239,248,3144],"class_list":["post-2192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-collective-memory","tag-elections","tag-germany","tag-nazism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2058"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2192"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2200,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2192\/revisions\/2200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}