History politics

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History politics is that formulated for political reasons, i. H. Partial interpretation of history - combined with the attempt to convince the general public of this interpretation in order to achieve political goals.

Types of history politics

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Origin of the terms not proven, inadmissible theory finding

Because the view of history understood and interpreted in the humanities always changes with the viewer and because the viewer's self-image changes with his view of history, there have always been attempts to not only understand history and to bring it into a context of meaning ( narration , historiography ) but also to change this self-image in one's own political interest.

This conscious change for political purposes is called historical politics.

One can differentiate between the following different types:

  1. History manipulation ( damnatio memoriae , history falsification , history revisionism )
  2. Mythologizing for the purpose
    1. the explanation of the world ( creation story , legends of origin etc.)
    2. of self-discovery and Selbstverklärung ( "I am proud a German / poles / Turk / Japanese etc. to be")
    3. the self-legitimation of a ruler ("King / Emperor by God's grace")
  3. Enlightenment (for example: there was genocide , societies are un / human orders, not divine). Attempts to sensitize the media to certain historical topics for the purpose of forming a historical and political opinion among the public should also be included.
  4. Attempt at multiple perspectives (not the political correctness of the interpretation of history, but the attempt to understand foreign images of history )

Examples

Obviously, the examples are initially chosen mainly from the German-speaking area. But there are museums in many countries about the Second World War and similar subjects, for example the Imperial War Museum in England .

History manipulation

It is not uncommon for histories to be found that divert attention from historical truth for political reasons. Famous examples of political history falsification are the stab in the back legend and Holocaust denial , where responsibility is shifted from oneself. Conversely, the actors working here try to glorify their role .

The same applies to the problem of euthanasia , whereby the perpetrators on the part of the medical staff often tried to assume the role of victim. There was no longer any room for the real victims in the so-called nursing homes in such a historical review. It is only since the last years of the 20th century that people have started to think about someone else and try to deliberately pursue individual fates.

Mythologizing

The Schildhornsage is part of the founding myth of the Mark Brandenburg . The victory over the Slavs asserts the superiority of the German new settlers over the Slavic inhabitants, justifies the conquest and establishes a long-term distrust of the Slavic neighboring peoples.

Declaration of the world

In the time of National Socialism , attempts were made to justify a hierarchy of people based on their alleged race ( social Darwinism ). Therefore one had to upgrade the role of the Indo-Europeans and the Teutons .

They wanted a justification for conquests in Eastern Europe according to the motto: The “ people without space ” needs living space . Therefore, one had to glorify the German settlement in the east and declare the Italian policy of the German kings in the sense of the medieval imperial concept (cf. translatio imperii , Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation ) to be wrong. In contrast, Heinrich I was upgraded compared to Otto I. Large SS celebrations were held in Quedlinburg to commemorate Heinrich.

Self-image (self-discovery / self-transfiguration)

In the 19th century, since the end of the Wars of Liberation and the Congress of Vienna, since Friedrich Carl von Savigny and Heinrich Friedrich Karl Freiherr vom Stein and also Wilhelm von Humboldt, history had increasingly come into the focus of political interests. It was about a historically well-founded legitimation of the German Empire with a view to a future establishment of an empire and thus the overcoming of the small German states , which then took place in 1870 . This is expressed in the founding of source editions on the history of the German Middle Ages Monumenta Germaniae Historica or its prehistory, which still exists today . The establishment and development of history as an academic subject, which is inseparably linked with the names of Leopold von Ranke and Heinrich von Sybel , as well as the establishment of the conception of historicism that pervades all areas of science , cannot be imagined without political implications .

In the GDR you first tried a special appreciation of the democratic and revolutionary tradition with a special memory of Thomas Munzer (eg Muehlhausen / Thuringia as Thomas-Müntzer-Sta * See also: museums about the Second Weltkriegdt or the Peasants' War panorama of Werner Tübke in Bad Frankenhausen ) under the official title: Early bourgeois revolution in Germany . In the course of the attempt to develop a special GDR identity, national traditions were again highlighted, which could be linked to Central Germany. That was above all the Prussian tradition. This required a less critical, almost re-glorifying view of Frederick II of Prussia .

But Martin Luther was also upgraded compared to Müntzer because it was seen that his achievements for the national self- image were far greater than those of the failed revolutionary Müntzer because of the creation of early New High German and the historical role of the Reformation in Germany.

There are depictions of the Second World War in Germany that emphasize the role of Germans as victims. The historical-political interventions of the [[Displaced personsv * See also: Museums about the Second World Warrior Band | Displaced Persons Associations]] are to be seen in this context, for example the efforts to establish a center against displacement and the agitation against the Beneš decrees . The resettlement of the eastern German " ethnic groups " is seen disconnected from the historical context and presented as the last in the series of "crimes against humanity".

On February 23, 2005, a law was passed in France according to which historians had to present colonial history in a positive way. The French historian Claude Liauzu criticizes it particularly sharply . (The law was later withdrawn without a parliamentary debate).

The memory of the Second World War also played an important role in the Eastern Bloc in legitimizing the new regimes that had emerged from the liberation from National Socialism. Many soldiers' memorials in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and the Balkans were used for this purpose. After the fall of the communist regime, these monuments became the object of historical-political debates in the new national states.

Self-legitimation

The justification of rule as given by God, as a representative of Christ, still used today for the Pope, is of course no longer comprehensible today for the entire Middle Ages (also used in absolutism - for example in Bossuet ). In addition, however, the justification is found early on with his own performance, such as in deeds report of Augustus "my state the first servant" or in the formula of enlightened absolutism .

enlightenment

On the other hand, there are attempts to convey a sense of responsibility to the population through political history education. This includes the thesis of the German collective guilt for the crimes from the time of National Socialism , which was then changed to understand that each individual has an individual responsibility for his or her actions, but that there is collective responsibility for dealing with the results of these crimes. This manifests itself on the one hand in the attempt to come to terms with the past or, more modestly, in the attempt to keep alive a culture of remembrance of historical events that is difficult to remember because it is unpleasant.

That also includes

Multiperspectivity

The fact that many articles can be found in Wikipedia for attempts to secure memory, and that a multinational, multilingual attempt to collect knowledge is being undertaken, leaves Wikipedia as a bearer of historical politics in the sense of striving for multiple perspectives ( see historical awareness - relativity awareness).

Multiperspectivity is a leitmotif of the history workshop Europe . It is achieved on the one hand by international project teams, on the other hand by bringing together different perspectives and experiences on a historical event or place of remembrance.

A state monopoly over historical politics tends to lead to one-sided storytelling, which can lead to a taboo on difficult historical events in a country and damage credibility.

To the criticism of systematisation

Such a systematization of historical politics is of course somewhat problematic, because many historical-political efforts cannot be clearly assigned. The renaming of cities, street names, etc. (e.g. Saint Petersburg / Leningrad , Chemnitz / Karl-Marx-Stadt) serves on the one hand to attempt to create a special self-image by linking to a certain tradition. On the other hand, it can also have features of a damnatio memoriae .

Nevertheless, one cannot do without such or other distinctions in order to make it clear that historical politics only has to do with historical manipulation in exceptional cases.

See also

literature

General

  • Aleida Assmann : The long shadow of the past. Culture of remembrance and history politics (= publication series of the Federal Agency for Civic Education. Vol. 633). Federal Agency for Political Education, Bonn 2007, ISBN 978-3-89331-787-5 .
  • Beatrix Bouvier , Michael Schneider (ed.): History politics and democratic culture. Balance sheet and perspectives (= political and social history . Vol. 78). Dietz, Bonn 2008, ISBN 3-8012-4183-1 .
  • Claudia Fröhlich, Horst-Alfred Heinrich (ed.): History policy. Who are their actors, who are their recipients? Steiner, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-515-08246-8 .
  • Claudia Fröhlich, Harald Schmid (Ed.): Yearbook for Politics and History , 2010 ff., Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart
  • Horst-Alfred Heinrich, Michael Kohlstruck (Hrsg.): History politics and social science theory. Steiner, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 3-515-09183-1 .
  • Justyna Krzymianowska, Harald Schmid (ed.): Political memory. History and collective identity , Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2007
  • Harald Schmid (Hrsg.): History politics and collective memory. Cultures of memory in theory and practice (= forms of memory. Vol. 41). V&R Unipress, Göttingen 2009, ISBN 3-89971-575-6 .
  • Peter Steinbach : History in the Political Struggle. How historical arguments manipulate public opinion. Dietz, Bonn 2012, ISBN 3-8012-0415-4 .
  • Harald Welzer : The communicative memory. A theory of memory (= Beck's series. Vol. 1669). CH Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-52858-9 .

Germany

  • Manuel Becker: History Politics in the Berlin Republic. Conceptions and controversies. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2013, ISBN 3-658-03232-4 .
  • Norbert Frei : Politics of the past. The beginnings of the Federal Republic and the Nazi past. Beck, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-406-41310-2 .
  • Hannes Heer : About the disappearance of the perpetrators. The war of extermination took place, but no one was there (= construction paperbacks. Vol. 8135). Aufbau-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-7466-8135-9 .
  • Sebastian Klinge: 1989 and we. History politics and culture of remembrance after the fall of the Berlin Wall (= Histoire. Vol. 61). Transcript, Bielefeld 2015, ISBN 3-8376-2741-1 .
  • Michael Klundt: History Politics . The controversies about Goldhagen, the Wehrmacht exhibition and the "Black Book of Communism" (= PapyRossa university publications. Vol. 34). PapyRossa-Verlag, Cologne 2000, ISBN 3-89438-212-0 .
  • Frank König: Shaping the past. Historical places and politics of history in a united Germany. Tectum, Marburg 2007, ISBN 3-8288-9265-5 (also: Erlangen-Nürnberg, Univ., Diss., 2006).
  • Claus Leggewie , Erik Meyer: “A place that one likes to go to”. The Holocaust memorial and German historical policy after 1989. Hanser, Munich et al. 2005, ISBN 3-446-20586-1 .
  • Harold Marcuse : Legacies of Dachau. The Uses and Abuses of a Concentration Camp, 1933-2001. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2008, ISBN 978-0-521-06448-4 .
  • Jan Motte, Rainer Ohliger (Hrsg.): History and memory in the immigration society. Migration between historical reconstruction and the politics of memory. Klartext-Verlag, Essen 2004, ISBN 3-89861-040-3 .
  • Carola S. Rudnick: The other half of memory. The GDR in German historical politics (= Histoire. Vol. 25). Transcript, Bielefeld 2011, ISBN 3-8376-1773-4 .
  • Ralf Steckert: Exciting suffering. On the media staging of the “brand” and its historical-political impact in the run-up to the Second Iraq War (= culture - education - society. Vol. 3). ibidem-Verlag, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-89821-910-5 (also: Hannover, Univ., diploma thesis, 2003).
  • Ulla-Britta Vollhardt: History politics in the Free State of Bavaria. The House of Bavarian History: Idea - Debate - Institutionalization (= Munich History Didactic Colloquium. Vol. 5). Herbert Utz-Verlag, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-8316-0235-2 .
  • Bernd Wagner (Ed.): Topic: cultures of remembrance and history politics (= yearbook for cultural politics. Vol. 9). Klartext-Verlag, Essen 2009, ISBN 978-3-8375-0192-6 .
  • Heinrich August Winkler (ed.): Reach for the power of interpretation. On the history of historical politics in Germany. Wallstein, Göttingen 2004, ISBN 3-89244-710-1 .
  • Edgar Wolfrum : History politics in the Federal Republic of Germany. The way to Federal Republican memory. 1948-1990. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1999, ISBN 3-534-14479-1 (also: Darmstadt, Techn. Univ., Habil.-Schr., 1999).

Europe

Russia

  • Elke Fein: History Politics in Russia. Chances and difficulties of a democratizing reappraisal of the Soviet past using the example of the activities of the company MEMORIAL (= Eastern Europe. Vol. 23). Lit Verlag, Münster et al. 2000, ISBN 3-8258-4416-1 .

Tibet

  • John Powers : History as propaganda. Tibetan exiles versus the People's Republic of China. Oxford University Press, Oxford et al. 2004, ISBN 0-19-517426-7 .

United States

  • Peter Novick : After the Holocaust. Dealing with the mass murder. Translated from the English by Irmela Arnsperger and Boike Rehbein. Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-423-30877-X (on history politics in the USA).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Public perception of monuments in Slovakia and Bosnia-Herzegovina ( Memento from July 18, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Multi-perspective method of the history workshop Europe ( Memento from January 5, 2012 in the Internet Archive )