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The Emotional Legacy of the National Socialist Past in Post-War Germany

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Memory and Political Change

Part of the book series: Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies ((PMMS))

Abstract

In West Germany, the systemic transition from the National Socialist dictatorship into a modern European democracy was accomplished within a period of four years. The transformation of society, however, took much longer. Examining the emotional legacy of the National Socialist past in West and post-unification Germany,1 this chapter focuses on its transformations over a period of 65 years and across three to four generations.2 Divided into two different sections, it firstly offers an overview of three distinct phases in which the memory of the Nazi past has been framed differently through modes of externalization, moralization and institutionalization. The second part presents the results of an interview study which was conducted on the topic of ‘Holocaust education’. It investigates the ways in which teachers and pupils engage with the National Socialist legacy in the classroom, exploring the emotional undercurrents in this process of transgenerational transmission. This analysis shows that, in spite of general transformations, some aspects of this complex emotional legacy seem to persist that are not fully integrated into the social and political framework.

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Notes

  1. Cited by Jörn Rüsen (2001), ‘Holocaust, Erinnerung, Identität’, in Harald Welzer (ed.), Das soziale Gedächtnis (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition), pp. 243–59, here p. 247.

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  2. See Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich (1967), Die Unfähigkeit zu trauern. Grundlagen kollektiven Verhaltens (Munich: Piper).

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  3. Theodor W. Adorno (1975), Schuld und Abwehr in Gesammelte Schriften, 9 (2) (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp), pp. 144–324.

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  4. Melita Maschmann (1963), Fazit. Kein Rechtfertigungsversuch (Stuttgart: DVA), p. 188.

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  5. Norbert Frei (1996), Vergangenheitspolitik. Die Anfänge der Bundesrepublik und die NS- Vergangenheit (Munich: C.H. Beck), p. 399.

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  13. Aleida Assmann (2006), ‘Zur (Un)Vereinbarkeit von Leid und Schuld in der deutschen Erinnerung’, Zeitgeschichte (33) 2, 68–77, here 69.

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Authors
  1. Gudrun Brockhaus
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Konstanz, Germany

    Aleida Assmann (Professor of English Literature and Literary Theory) (Professor of English Literature and Literary Theory)

  2. Bangor University, Wales, UK

    Linda Shortt (Lecturer in German) (Lecturer in German)

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© 2012 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

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Brockhaus, G. (2012). The Emotional Legacy of the National Socialist Past in Post-War Germany. In: Assmann, A., Shortt, L. (eds) Memory and Political Change. Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230354241_3

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