coping with the past

Coming to terms with the past is a key concept in the public discussion of how to deal with the past in Germany in the 20th century, especially when it comes to dealing with National Socialism.

It has individual and collective meaning. Negative, repressed and stressful, emotional injuries and feelings of guilt have to be dealt with . Sometimes taboos are broken in the process; For example, in the post-war period , many families with a National Socialist background frowned upon asking soldiers of all ranks, including members of the SS , who had returned from World War II , about their experiences and deeds.

In addition to dealing with the Nazi past, after the end of the GDR , coming to terms with the past also became customary for coming to terms with the SED dictatorship and its social concomitants. The experiences in Germany with dealing with the burdened past are sometimes perceived by outsiders as inspiring and exemplary.

Because past is not "managed" - that finally settled - can be, the term is now mostly dealing with the past or dealing with the past preferred. Conceptually, when coming to terms with the past, the focus is on determining responsibility. In addition, when coming to terms with the past, one deals with the process of remembrance culture. Since the end of the 20th century, terms such as politics of history and politics of the past have also been used, which rhetorically mark the political control of this process.

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin

Memorial to the Sinti and Roma of Europe murdered under National Socialism in Berlin

term

definition

Ravensburg , memorial to the memory of the 29 Sinti from Ravensburg who were murdered in Auschwitz

The term coming to terms with the past is often traced back to the historian Hermann Heimpel and was used in many speeches by Federal President Theodor Heuss . Early evidence of the use of the word can be found in the invitation to a conference on “ July 20 ” on the subject of “Commitment and the problematic of our history”, which was organized by the Evangelical Academy Berlin in 1955. In the invitation, the academy director Erich Müller-Gangloff spoke of the “shadow of an unresolved past” that falls on German history.

Eckhard Jesse defines the term using three main aspects:

“Coming to terms with the past requires, firstly, crimes, secondly, their termination and, thirdly, democratization. Only when the three aspects are present together can a coming to terms with the past worthy of the name take hold. "

Helmut König extends the definition:

“... the totality of those actions and that knowledge with which the respective new democratic systems relate to their non-democratic predecessor states. The main question is how the newly established democracies deal with the structural, personal and mental legacies of their predecessor states and how they stand in their self-definition and in their political culture to their respective burdensome history. "

Use of terms

In Germany and Austria, the term “coming to terms with the past” is used in particular for dealing with National Socialism and its manifestations. These include, among other things, tyranny , crimes against humanity , genocide , the Holocaust , racism , war guilt, followers . The process of coming to terms with the Nazi past began immediately after the Second World War in the Nuremberg trials and subsequent trials against the main war criminals. The 1968 movement called for a collective coming to terms with the past and complained that, from their point of view, there was no confrontation with Nazi history. This was partly led to the charge that a new fascism was recognizable in the system of the Federal Republic .

After the peaceful revolution in the GDR , a new chapter began in Germany to come to terms with the past. The Stasi files showed how many people felt it was important to come to terms with their individual past: they wanted to know by whom and when they had been spied on or denounced; they wanted to clear up the injustice committed and in some cases also atone for them (see also Central Registration Office of the State Justice Administrations (ZESt) in Salzgitter), Federal Commissioner for the Stasi documents (= "Gauck Authority").

In more recent literature, coming to terms with the past is understood as a “collective term” for activities that democratic societies that are committed to respecting human rights deal with in order to come to terms with a past marked by dictatorship and crime.

Coming to terms with the Nazi past

Nuremberg trials: In the dock - Göring, Heß, von Ribbentrop, Keitel (in front), Dönitz, Raeder, von Schirach and Sauckel (behind)

The term "dealing with the past of the Nazi era" the legal, political, scientific and social overcoming the ideological and material consequences of the Nazi era summarized.

The most important war goal of the anti-Hitler coalition was the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht and the "liberation of the world from National Socialism".

At the beginning of coming to terms with the past, there was the legal reappraisal, i.e. the punishment of perpetrators , the rehabilitation of victims and the establishment of a new legal system with the Basic Law and the GDR Constitution as well as a revision of National Socialist legislation, especially the race laws . The legal side was soon accompanied by historical research into National Socialist rule with different focuses.

At the same time, the Americans and the British in particular tried to democratize West German society through ideological denazification ( reeducation ) . The aim was to make the inhuman character of the Nazi state clear to a broad public and to bring them closer to democratic values ​​based on the Anglo-American model with the aim of "stamping out the whole tradition on which German nation has been built up" and "to look to great." Britain and to the English speaking world as their exemplar ". With the Potsdam Agreement , the victorious powers made it clear that they would integrate their zones of occupation both economically and ideologically into the western world (western integration ) or the eastern bloc under the leadership of the Soviet Union , which led to the division of Germany . In contrast to the GDR, coming to terms with the past remained a constant process in the Federal Republic.

The sociologist Rainer Lepsius described the differences between the three German-speaking states in dealing with the Nazi past using the terms internalization, externalization and universalization: In the Federal Republic of Germany, after a long period of silence, the Nazi past was recognized as part of its own history and thus internalized. For a long time, Austria was seen as the first victim of National Socialism, which was thus described as an external phenomenon. The GDR viewed it as fascism , that is, as a product of global capitalism . Therefore its roots seem to lie not only in German history, but in the universal struggle between capitalism and socialism, which will triumph with necessity of natural law.

Federal Republic of Germany

Reintegration policy

Federal Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger was slapped by Beate Klarsfeld to point out his Nazi past

Former members of the NSDAP , the Wehrmacht , refugees and displaced persons who, after years of denazification , internment and camp life, felt socially and economically declassed and experienced the fall of National Socialism as a serious loss of existence and meaning, formed a considerable potential for destabilization of the newly formed democracy in West Germany. The Socialist Reich Party (SRP) made a name for itself as the successor party to the NSDAP, and its slogans met with some approval from these population groups. Federal German politics countered this situation by moving from denazification to reintegration.

In the first legislative period of the Federal Republic of Germany (1949–1953), essential legal requirements for the social reintegration of Nazi perpetrators were created. 129 former NSDAP members belonged to the Second Bundestag . In 1949 and 1954 the Bundestag unanimously passed amnesty laws. The great majority of the National Socialists convicted by German courts were pardoned in this way. The judgments of the tribunals from the denazification of the Allies were struck from the criminal record. The " 131er -law" of 1951 (according to Art. 131 Basic Law ) governed the reintegration of officials who had been dismissed in 1945 by the Allies for political reasons, and former professional soldiers in the civil service . This law was also passed unanimously. With this, members of the NSDAP were exonerated and amnestied. Due to the right to reinstatement guaranteed by the 131 Law, they could be employed or return to positions in politics, justice and administration. Reconstruction came to the fore; taking an active part in it compensated for the moral failure of the Nazi era. An explicit break with the Nazi past no longer seemed necessary. Not even the highest offices in politics, administration and justice were reserved for people whose past was unencumbered by the Nazi era. Examples are Hans Globke and Theodor Oberländer .

Demands for an end to denazification and for an amnesty came from the parties in which an above-average number of former National Socialists were members, such as the DP and the FDP , as well as the soldiers' associations and the BHE . “Fueled by the equally profiled and popular past political demands of the right small parties, an all-party coalition of the Bundestag had ended the individual accountability imposed on the Germans after the surrender; almost all were now exonerated and excused ”. The Federal Ministry of Justice set up a Central Legal Protection Agency to support prisoners in Allied custody who were threatened with criminal prosecution. The West German prosecution of Nazi crimes was not very intensive, the Federal Ministry of Justice and the Federal Court of Justice prohibited the application of the Control Council Act No. 10 , according to which the Nuremberg courts had ruled.

In a survey in 1951, 40% of those questioned expressed the opinion that the Nazi era was better than the reorganization in the FRG.

The intensification of the East-West conflict leading to the Cold War favored the transition to integration policy. The Wehrmacht had carried out the National Socialist war of extermination . Numerous crimes occurred . This was also addressed in the Nuremberg Trials , particularly in the Nuremberg Trial against the main war criminals . Not only individuals were charged, but also eight institutions, including the Reich Cabinet , the General Staff and the High Command of the Wehrmacht (OKW). These three were acquitted and thus exonerated in the eyes of many; the other five were convicted as criminal organizations . In the run-up to the rearmament of Germany, the former generals of the Wehrmacht were courted and the commanders took advantage of the new situation. In the Himmeroder memorandum they laid down their ideas about the new German armed forces and demanded a declaration of honor for the armed forces from the governments of the Western powers. Almost all criminals convicted in the Nuremberg Trials were released by the American High Commissioner John Jay McCloy , and almost all those sentenced to death were pardoned. Only the prisoners of the Spandau war crimes prison remained in custody . In the Bundestag election campaign in 1953 , Chancellor Konrad Adenauer demonstratively visited the British war crimes prison in Werl .

Reparation policy

Financial compensation

Only after laws on the impunity and reintegration of Nazi perpetrators had been passed did the German Bundestag turn to reparations .

Due to the transfer agreement concluded with the Western Allies , financial donations had to be made to victims of Nazi persecution. In 1956, the Federal Compensation Act was passed retroactively from 1953, which largely limited reparations to German victims (around 1 million until 1969). Communists, homosexuals, anti-social and Sinti and Roma were for the most part excluded from compensation. Foreign victims were only exceptionally compensated. The " London Debt Agreement " in 1953 postponed their compensation "until the reparations question was finally settled ". However, the State of Israel and the Jewish Claims Conference received a total of 3.45 billion DM according to the German-Israeli reparation agreement in the Luxembourg Agreement in 1952. According to this model, the FRG took over in bilateral negotiations with eleven Western European states, including Austria ( Kreuznach Agreement 1961) and Switzerland, from 1959 to 1964 compensation of a further DM 876 million. However, the victims from Eastern Europe and above all the forced laborers were excluded .

The foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future” to compensate former forced laborers of the Nazi regime was founded in 2000, half financed by the federal government and half by German business enterprises .

The social judge Jan-Robert von Renesse has been campaigning for the payment of the so-called ghetto pensions since 2006 .

Legal processing

In order to compensate for the material damage suffered by the victims and to live up to the historical responsibility, reparation became a fixture in West German politics. The Nazi past was largely suppressed after the end of the Second World War. The unpunished Nazi crimes did not advance until the beginning of the 1950s with the onset of criminal proceedings against so-called “excess criminals”, various scandals about re-officiating former National Socialist officials and several student campaigns such as the exhibition Unpunished Nazi Justice (1959–1962) and the exhibition “The Past warns ”(1960–1962) into the public eye. The trial of Adolf Eichmann in Israel in 1961 and the first Auschwitz trial in Frankfurt from 1963 to 1965 attracted a great deal of attention. However, in the context of the Cold War, the criminal law dealing with the past was controversial until the Bundestag's debate on the statute of limitations . In a survey in 1965, half of those questioned called for an immediate end to all Nazi trials.

The repeal of Nazi injustice judgments and the rehabilitation of the victims is also part of the reparation. After individual decisions and various attempts at a general regulation at the federal level and in individual federal states, the German Bundestag passed the law to repeal unjust judgments in criminal justice by the German Bundestag in 1998 , which initially repealed the judgments of the People's Court and the trial courts . After corresponding changes in the law, the judgments of the military courts were included in 2002 and the judgments against so-called war traitors in 2009 .

History and Social Sciences

Among the scientists, the sociologist Hanna Meuter is one of the few examples of an early public regret of the Holocaust. As early as 1948 she stated that of the 150 members (before 1933) of the German Society for Sociology, more than half, “not unaffected by the extermination processes of the time, are no longer with us today” .

The Nazism and the Second World War belong in Germany to the most frequently processed subjects at all. A bibliography on Nazi research from 2000 contains around 37,000 entries.

art

literature

In West German magazine novels and entertainment literature of the 1950s, the German soldier was usually juxtaposed with the negative image of the Soviet soldier as conscientious, committed, tough in combat, but fair, comradely, friendly, educated and handsome. Examples of the use of these and other stereotypes are Peter Bamm's The Invisible Flag 1952 and Heinz Günther Konsalik's 1956 novel The Doctor of Stalingrad .

With the past of the Nazi era and its consequences beyond 1945 was a major theme of German literature after 1945. Important for the post-war literature was the Group 47 . Their common concept was, in the words of one of their main representatives, Alfred Andersch , “ to read the core of our experience, war and fascism as a sign of the apocalyptic situation of man ”. Many authors of the group or their circle dealt with the time of National Socialism in their work, for example Günter Grass ( The Tin Drum ), Heinrich Böll ( Views of a Clown , Billiards at 9.30am ), Hans Werner Richter ( The Beatings ), Alfred Andersch ( The father of a murderer , Zanzibar or the last reason ), Martin Walser ( Our Auschwitz ), Wolfgang Koeppen ( Death in Rome ), Siegfried Lenz ( German lesson ).

Nevertheless, from today's perspective, the attitude of Group 47 also meets with criticism. The critic Roland Wiegenstein said that an anti-fascist consensus within the group was initially connected with the rejection of the Nuremberg war crimes tribunals, the naming of German employees of the military governments as followers and the designation of the cooperation with them as collaboration. In an article in Der Ruf , for example, Richter and Andersch insisted on the emphasis on the " innocence of the fighters of Stalingrad, El Alamein and Monte Cassino in the Holocaust ". Many members of the group refrained from disclosing their own involvement between 1933 and 1945.

Other novels and stories on the subject come from Jurek Becker ( Bronstein's children ), Franz Fühmann ( comrades , Das Judenauto ), Ludwig Harig ( order is all life ), Hans Magnus Enzensberger ( Hammerstein or the obstinacy ), and Friedrich Dürrenmatt ( The Suspicion ). In the 1970s, Peter Weiss' Aesthetics of Resistance (1975–1981) stood out, as did Edgar Hilsenrath in 1977 as a Jewish author with The Nazi and the Hairdresser .

After the World War II homecoming piece Draußen vor der Tür (1947) by Wolfgang Borchert and the Swiss view Now they sing again (1946) by Max Frisch , especially Rolf Hochhuth's deputy after the world premiere in 1963 in West Berlin, was the occasion for broad public discussions and Disputes, in Hochhuth's play mainly about the relationship between the Catholic Church and Pope Pius XII. to National Socialism. The Auschwitz play The Investigation sparked even more political battles . An oratorio in eleven songs by Peter Weiss in 1965, which was also included in the Cold War because the author was close to the socialist GDR. Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Der Müll, die Stadt und der Tod was published in 1976, but never performed in Germany until 2009 because it was accused of renewed anti-Semitism after 1945 .

The best-known German poem in Holocaust literature is Todesfuge (written 1944/45) by Paul Celan , which became known in Germany around 1952. In addition, inventory (Günter Eich) and Nelly Sachs ' Chor der Geretteten as well as the work of Hilde Domin should be mentioned as early as 1946 .

Movie and TV

For a wider audience, film and television “came to terms with the past”.

Feature films

The films of the 1950s were mostly only critical to a limited extent. They often conveyed the image of the “ clean Wehrmacht ”, with their involvement in the National Socialist war of extermination being averted as well as personal guilt being relativized. Even the popular debris films did not research the causes and the perpetrators of National Socialism in depth.

Early feature films that dealt with the Nazi era were Die Murderers sind unter uns by Wolfgang Staudte from 1945/46 (which was only shown in West Germany in 1959, but then received the rating "Particularly valuable"), Des Teufels General from 1955 the play of the same name by Carl Zuckmayer , the anti-war film Die Brücke by Bernhard Wicki , Dogs, you want to live forever by Frank Wisbar 1959 and Wir Kellerkinder from 1960 based on a book by Wolfgang Neuss . The fate of the German expellees , based on the sinking of Wilhelm Gustloff in 1959, was addressed by Frank Wisbar's film Night fell over Gotenhafen .

Die Brücke, the movie poster
illustrator Helmuth Ellgaard

The history of the performance of the French film Nacht und Nebel in the FRG and the massive interventions by the Bonn government against France on this occasion clearly show the various factions that were either not at all ready, or to a certain extent, committed to the extermination of people in 1956 the concentration camps as a film theme.

In 1977 Hans-Jürgen Syberberg's seven-hour epic Hitler - a film from Germany was released , which " tries to approach the figure through the irrational layers of the German people's soul " and "is peppered with countless quotations from literature, painting, music and film" .

1981 ran the boat by Wolfgang Petersen , and 1982 dealt Michael Verhoeven's The White Rose with the resistance of Hans and Sophie Scholl . 1993 was anti-war film Stalingrad of Joseph Vilsmeier . The film Der Untergang by Oliver Hirschbiegel and Bernd Eichinger, about Hitler's last days in the Führerbunker and the final battle for Berlin, received international attention in 2004 .

The first German films dealt with the Holocaust in 1947, Marriage in the Shadow of Kurt Maetzig, and in 1948, Lang is the Path by Herbert B. Fredersdorf . The first US film about The Diary of Anne Frank in particular reached million viewers from 1959 onwards. Later films are From a German Life with Götz George 1977, The Ninth Day by Volker Schlöndorff in 2004, Anne Frank from 2001, and Not All Was Murderers by Jo Baier from 2006. 1993 was the American film Schindler's List by Steven Spielberg about the Holocaust at the box office very successfully worldwide.

Documentaries and TV series

The 1963 Grimme Prize TV series The Third Reich of the WDR from 1960/61 enjoyed great audience response, with 42 to 69 percent audience participation. The first television fiction film that directly addressed the Holocaust was the five-part ARD film adaptation of the novel On the Green Beach of the Spree by the director Fritz Umgelter , who achieved a visual participation rate of up to 80 percent in 1960. Otherwise, mass TV films in particular were largely absent. It was not until 1979 that the broadcast of the US series Holocaust - The Story of the White Family , an “emotionalized” filmic examination of the extermination of European Jews on the basis of individual fates, met with a great response and criticism by the ARD.

"Through this reduction to individual fates, for many viewers the incomprehensible became tangible and accessible both emotionally and cognitively."

Popular science television documentaries from the Nazi era, for example by Guido Knopp , later received relatively high ratings . The five-part documentary series Das Erbe der Nazis , from 2015/16, does not deal with the Nazi era, but with the process of coming to terms with the past from the end of the war to the present.

music

In the field of modern music, Arnold Schönberg's A Survivor from Warsaw from 1947, Karlheinz Stockhausen's Gesang der Jünglinge im Feuerofen from 1956, the German-German joint composition Jüdische Chronik by Boris Blacher , Karl Amadeus Hartmann , Hans Werner, inspired by Paul Dessau in 1961, sat down Henze and Rudolf Wagner-Régeny based on a text by Jens Gerlach , as well as Heinz Holliger's composition Psalm based on the poem of the same name by Paul Celan deal with the Holocaust.

Churches

→ Main article : Churches and Judaism after 1945

After 1945, the Christian churches addressed both their relationship to the National Socialist state during the church struggle and the war crimes committed in World War II , as well as their theological relationship to Judaism. In addition, there was an organizational reform with the establishment of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD).

In 1949 the German Coordination Council of the Societies for Christian-Jewish Cooperation was founded, which has organized the Week of Fraternity every March since 1952 and has awarded the Buber-Rosenzweig Medal since 1968 .

The lay organizations Pax Christi and Aktion Sühnezeichen are also striving for an interreligious dialogue , but also an international reconciliation , especially with France and Poland.

Final stroke and commemoration

War memorial for the fallen of the two world wars

The prosecution of the 1980s and 1990s took place in a different socio-political climate in which the willingness to do so had increased significantly. In an opinion poll from May 2005, 41% of those questioned were in favor of putting an end to the preoccupation with the Nazi era; 51% voted for further processing. Since around 1948, such debates at the end of the line have been the opposite of a continuation of coming to terms with the past.

In spite of this, a broad public culture of remembrance has developed in the Federal Republic as well as in Austria , both in the context of the political and state debate with one's own history as well as in relation to a large number of private initiatives. The large number of memorial sites also plays an important role in this.

Since 1993, the victims of war and tyranny have been commemorated on the day of national mourning in front of the Neue Wache in Berlin. As the day of remembrance of the victims of National Socialism , January 27th has been a national, statutory day of remembrance in Germany since 1996 . The assassination attempt of July 20, 1944 on Adolf Hitler has been commemorated with speeches, wreath-laying ceremonies and memorial services since 1952. There is also a solemn pledge from prospective Bundeswehr soldiers.

Political speeches and gestures on the occasion of certain anniversaries or state visits are also an element of the official culture of remembrance. Richard von Weizsäcker gave a widely acclaimed speech on May 8, 1985 on the 40th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe and the Nazi tyranny . The kneeling of Willy Brandt at the memorial for the dead of the Warsaw ghetto and the joint visit to the Bitburg-Kolmeshöhe war cemetery by Helmut Kohl and Ronald Reagan also caused a stir . It is seen as a great danger of a state culture of remembrance that it can become frozen in external rites and empty formulas.

Criticism and recognition with regard to ways of coming to terms with the past

Criticism of forms of ongoing coming to terms with the past comes from various quarters. The political scientist Eckhard Jesse criticizes the current way of coming to terms with the past:

"If the self-tormenting form of coming to terms with the past does not come to an end, then that means a sustainable mortgage for the political culture in the Federal Republic - possibly with consequences that should not be in the interests of the 'copers'."

The writer Martin Walser criticized the permanence of the media coming to terms with the past :

“But when this past is held up to me every day in the media, I notice that something in me is resisting this permanent presentation of our shame. Instead of being grateful for the incessant presentation of our shame, I start looking away. "

The philosopher Hermann Lübbe coined the term “German pride in sin”: “First of all, someone should imitate us! Coping with it too! ”In doing so, Lübbe criticized a moral pride that is drawn from coping with the past. Henryk M. Broder followed suit repeatedly.

The right to come to terms with the past, which is perceived as excessive, is rejected by the right as “ guilt cult ” and “national masochism ”. The criticism of coming to terms with the past made by the New Right relates primarily to three points:

• Dealing with the past had degenerated from an originally legitimate concern to a farce and a moral murder argument (“ Auschwitz club ”) in the political debate.
• It was designed asymmetrically from the start, since other peoples did not plan to come to terms with the past from the beginning.
• It had been used by the victors of the war as a means of reeducation and therefore worked with a partially manipulated idea of ​​National Socialist Germany.

The philosopher Susan Neiman , based on Tzvetan Todorov, judges : “Germans who speak of the singularity of the Holocaust take responsibility; Germans who speak of its universality are looking for relief. "Neiman himself sees a new kind of civilizational achievement in the German coming to terms with the past, which she sees as work in progress :" It is a task that has to be worked on continuously, precisely because it is not foolproof Vaccination against racism and reaction there. While the AfD denounces decades of efforts to come to terms with the Nazi past as shameful, it is up to the rest of us to insist that shame is the first and necessary step towards a democratic self-confidence of a nation. ”As a perspective turning point regarding the perception of the The Nazi past in Germany appears to Neiman the speech of Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the end of the Second World War on May 8, 1985: “The collapse, as it was previously called in the Federal Republic, was the subject of mourning; after the speech it was a salvation that could be celebrated. "

German Democratic Republic

The group of figures by Fritz Cremer from 1958 depicts the resistance of the prisoners in the former Buchenwald concentration camp .

State culture of remembrance until 1990

Ideological self-image

During the Cold War , the declared anti-fascist view of history served above all to establish the national identity of the GDR and to establish ideological demarcation from West Germany. Against this background, for example, the trial against the then Minister of State in the Federal Chancellery and confidante of Konrad Adenauer , Hans Globke, took place in 1963 before the Supreme Court of the GDR , and in 1966 the "Auschwitz Trial" against Horst Fischer or the publication of the Brown Book of War and Nazi Criminals in of the Federal Republic .

There was no critical discourse about the role of former Nazis and war criminals in the GDR post-war period. The official state doctrine was the Dimitrov thesis : Fascism was "the open, terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, chauvinistic, most imperialist elements of finance capital ". Since the power of "finance capital" was broken in the GDR, fascism in the GDR was deprived of its basis. This image of the official anti-fascism of the GDR, however, corresponded neither to the takeover of former Nazi leaders into the system of rule of the GDR nor to the manifest right-wing extremism before the fall of the wall . The censors prevented any reporting on these topics. Even if, for example, the former Wehrmacht general Arno von Lenski got a report in the West, the topic was consistently kept quiet in the GDR. The lack of public discussion of the GDR's Nazi past is sometimes cited in the political debate as the reason why right-wing extremist views and parties are still more strongly represented in the new federal states than in the old ones.

Legal processing

The persecution of war criminals in the Nazi trials in the Soviet Occupation Zone (SBZ) and the early GDR is a subject of controversial discussion , particularly with regard to the influence of the Ministry for State Security .

After a period of denazification immediately after the end of the war with the dismissal of judges, teachers and administrative employees, the expropriation of “Nazis and war criminals” and the Waldheim trials in 1950, the GDR, at the insistence of the Soviet occupying power, adopted a policy of domestic political stabilization also towards the former NSDAP -Members to initiate the soldiers and officers of the Wehrmacht who have returned from captivity, as well as refugees and displaced persons . The GDR did not come to terms with the Nazi past.

The law on the granting of impunity of November 11, 1949 exempted people who, according to Control Council Directive No. 38, had endangered the peace because of propaganda for National Socialism or militarism or because of boycotts under Article 6, Paragraph 2 of the German Constitution Democratic Republic had been punished. In November 1949, however, the Provisional People's Chamber also passed the law on the enactment of expiatory measures for former supporters of the Nazi party and officers of the Wehrmacht , with the persons who had previously been subject to restrictions in their social and professional life because of their activities in the sense of National Socialism and militarism civic rights were granted such as the right to vote and stand for election as well as the right to work in the public service, in all businesses, in handicrafts, trade and commerce, in the professions and in democratic organizations. The only exceptions to this were activities in internal administration and the judiciary. Another law of October 2, 1952 granted former Wehrmacht officers and NSDAP members full civil rights. With the NDPD , a bloc party was created in May 1948 to integrate this group of people into the SED's new system of rule . As a result, many perpetrators of National Socialism took on high positions and offices.

By September 1949, in the Soviet occupation zone in 1485 Nazi injustice judgments due to the SMAD command No. 228 repealed from 30 July 1946th. The GDR did not issue a corresponding legal regulation and did not overturn any other NS judgments.

Reparation

In the further culture of remembrance of the officially anti-fascist SED, a distinction was made between those who were persecuted by fascism and the fighters against fascism , who were granted reparations in the form of honorary and survivors' pensions in different amounts . Among the fighters against fascism, the communist resistance fighters were the most important group. The Jewish communities, the euthanasia victims , the Sinti and Roma , the “ anti-social ”, the homosexuals and other groups of victims were hardly present in public memory. The association of those persecuted by the Nazi regime was transferred to the committee of anti-fascist resistance fighters in 1953 . Compensation for the Aryanization of Jewish assets was regulated by the law on the regulation of open property issues (VermG) passed by the People's Chamber in August 1990 , which is applicable in its property law provisions to property losses caused by persecution ( § 1 Paragraph 6 Property Act) and "documents, that the opportunity offered by reunification for a final general cleanup of this problem should be used ”.

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The seat of the company J. A. Topf and Sons in Erfurt, which had built the ovens and gas chambers in Auschwitz concentration camp , was kept secret in the GDR propaganda and moved to Frankfurt am Main, where one of the Topfs tried to start over after the Second World War . However, almost everyone in Erfurt would have known the real company headquarters and the relevant business activities in Auschwitz. The medium-sized company is promoted to a “ concern ” in Bruno Baum's book “Resistance in Auschwitz” in the 1962 version and placed in a row with Siemens AG and IG Farben in order to “ state monopoly capitalism ” as the beneficiary of National Socialism in the Federal Republic Denouncing Germany . In the post-war period, a number of Topf employees - including travel cadres who had worked on the gas chamber and crematorium in Auschwitz - moved up to higher positions in the SED and police apparatus in Erfurt.

Scientific research since 1990

In October 1990, the Federal Archives took over the indexing of the "NS Archive" of the Ministry for State Security of the GDR (so-called Z-Material) .

In addition to the federal ministries and authorities of the Federal Republic of Germany, the ministries and authorities of the former GDR are also involved in current research and further research needs to come to terms with the early post-war history in relation to the Nazi past. This applies to the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of National Defense or the Ministry of State Security , but also the People's Chamber and the Central Committee of the SED .

Artistic reception

Anna Seghers wrote the novel The Seventh Cross in 1943 and The Dead Remain Young in 1949 , and Bruno Apitz in 1958 Naked Among Wolves , which stand for socialist realism .

In films such as Ehe im Schatten (1947), Sterne (1959), The Adventures of Werner Holt (1965), The Pictures of the Witness Schattmann (1972) or Jakob the Liar (1974) based on the novel by Jurek Becker of the same name , DEFA sat down deal with the Nazi past.

Republic of Austria

→ Main article : “Processing and repression” in the article Austria in the time of National Socialism

The provisional state government passed the Prohibition Act on May 8, 1945 , with which the NSDAP and all organizations connected with it were dissolved and banned.

In post-war Austria , Nazi crimes were prosecuted by people's courts , named in reference to and in contrast to the Nazi people's courts , of 3 lay judges and 2 professional judges according to the Austrian code of criminal procedure, but with legal remedies that had been suspended. They passed 13,607 convictions, including 43 death sentences, of which 30 were carried out.

In the years immediately after World War II, Nazi crimes were still severely prosecuted. After the less polluted followers were admitted to the National Council election in October 1949 , this group (around 500,000) became potential voters, and politicians and parties tried to gain their votes.

After 1945 and well into the following decades , the Austrian victim thesis was widespread among Austrians, both among the population and in politics, according to which Austria, as formulated in the Moscow Declaration of 1943, was the "first victim of Hitler". The majority of the population later justified themselves by saying that when Austria was annexed they “had no other choice” . One consequence of this attitude is the restitution of stolen property, which has been carried out very slowly to this day .

Chancellor Vranitzky's speech to the National Council on July 8, 1991 is considered remarkable. In it he confessed that the Austrians were complicit in the Second World War and its consequences:

"There is shared responsibility for the suffering that, although not Austria as a state, but citizens of this country have brought upon other people and peoples."

“We are committed to all deeds in our history and to the deeds of all parts of our people, both good and bad; and just as we claim the good for ourselves, we have to apologize for the bad - to the survivors and to the descendants of the dead. "

The author Thomas Bernhard and his drama Heldenplatz were among the most prominent critics of Austria's self- image .

Coming to terms with the SED dictatorship

The Freedom Memorial at Checkpoint Charlie (November 2004 to July 2005)

The coming to terms with the GDR's past is called coming to terms with the SED dictatorship . The aim is to convey the “inhuman character” of the “communist dictatorship” in the Soviet Zone / GDR and at the same time to decisively counteract the “ transfiguration and trivialization of the SED dictatorship and any ' Ostalgie '”. In 1992 and 1995 the German Bundestag set up a commission of inquiry to deal with the SED dictatorship.

Sabrow Commission

In mid-2005, the red-green government set up a commission of experts to create a historical association ›Working through the SED dictatorship‹ , which presented its recommendations on May 15, 2006. The Sabrow Commission , chaired by the Potsdam historian Martin Sabrow, was supposed to develop a concept “for a decentrally organized historical network to come to terms with the SED dictatorship”, including all institutions “of national importance”. The aim was a stronger division of labor, professionalization and better networking. In June 2006 the Commission made its recommendations. For Commissioner Sabrow, the aim was to include the “contradictions of GDR society” in the research: “In order to counteract an 'ostalgic' glorification of everyday life, the landscape of memory needs places where the character of the regime and the environment come together and the daily adaptation, rebellion, enthusiasm and indifference become tangible ”. Mainly because of this turn to everyday life in the GDR, the report of the so-called Sabrow Commission is controversial. For the civil rights activist Freya Klier, the recommendations of the commission did not take enough account of the threats posed by the resurgent old SED cadres. Hubertus Knabe spoke of a "trivialization of the GDR image" and a threatened "centralized processing combine". Others criticized Sabrow as a "soft focus of the SED dictatorship".

Legal processing

The assessments of the criminal law processing of GDR injustice differ widely. While some are of the opinion that this was a disguised political reckoning and ultimately “winning justice” without a sufficient legal basis, others accuse the judiciary of having only acted half-heartedly against system criminals, so that the victims of the system denied satisfaction and much to the main perpetrators to have imposed mild sentences. The legal difficulties that arise are in some cases comparable with the problems arising after 1945 with regard to Nazi injustice.

According to Art. 8 Unification Treaty, the criminal law of the Federal Republic became binding for all of Germany with the accession of the GDR. According to Article 315 (1) of the Introductory Act to the Criminal Code (EGStGB), Section 2 of the Criminal Code applies to crimes previously committed in the GDR , which means that the offense must be punishable under both legal systems and that the milder law is to be used for punishment ( Most favored nation principle ). An exclusive assessment according to German law would not have been compatible with the constitutional prohibition of retroactive effects . In addition, in order to rule out a violation of the non-retroactivity rule, it must be checked whether the offense is not only formally but also materially linked to the injustice regulated in GDR criminal law at the time of the offense. The third step creates great difficulties with regard to offenses with regard to state-political institutions.

The preconditions for the statute of limitations for GDR injustice have not yet been fully clarified in case law and literature. Important principles result from Art. 315a EGStGB and three additional statute of limitations. Accordingly, October 3, 1990 is regarded as an interruption of the limitation period . Important and difficult to decide in detail is the question of which acts are to be regarded as statute-barred at the time of accession. For crimes that were not prosecuted at the time for political reasons, the period from October 11, 1949 to October 2, 1990 is not considered for the statute of limitations.

The offenses to be dealt with legally can be grouped as follows:

• Violent acts on the inner-German border

In more than 3000 preliminary proceedings (as of 2002) there were 457 indictments and 230 convictions of people. The jurisprudence sought both those responsible for the order to shoot and those who carried out the process. The approval of the order to shoot was one of the main charges against Erich Honecker , General Heinz Keßler , Egon Krenz and Günter Schabowski . The question of whether the execution of the order to shoot was generally illegal under superordinate law is controversial, but was in principle affirmed by the Federal Court of Justice with a recommendation of a slight penalty. In cases in which GDR legal norms had been violated, fatal shots had been fired immediately without warning (instead of first on the legs) or the victim had been allowed to bleed to death, the judgments were clearer. In 1992, one in four defendants in the Chris Gueffroy case was sentenced to two years probation. In the Horst-Michael Schmidt case, two soldiers received probation for 18 and 21 months respectively.

• Election fraud
• Perversion of the law
• Denunciations
• domestic activities of the MfS
• Abuse in detention centers
• state-organized doping
• Abuse of office and corruption
• other economic crimes
• espionage

Another component of the legal appraisal are expropriations that West German nationals suffered from their properties in the GDR as a result of the division of Germany between 1949 and 1990 (so-called open property issues ). The Federal Office is responsible for central services and outstanding property issues .

The Criminal Rehabilitation Act of 1992 regulates the redress for criminal injustice and illegal deprivation of liberty in the Soviet Occupation Zone (SBZ) and in the GDR as well as in East Berlin between May 8, 1945 and October 2, 1990.

Authorities, commissions and foundations

Logo of the foundation to come to terms with the SED dictatorship : Flag of the GDR with cut-out coat of arms

The Stasi Records Act of 1991 and the associated opening of files and the establishment of the authority of the Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the GDR (also known as the Gauck Authority ) enabled an academic, journalistic and individual approach to the GDR's past.

The unmasking of many unofficial employees (IMs) of the Ministry for State Security due to the files of the Gauck authority has since repeatedly led to sharp political and social disputes about the role and the meaningful extent of coming to terms with the past in relation to the GDR dictatorship and resignations of former IMs political-social offices and functions. Attempts on the part of those affected have repeatedly been recorded to hinder this educational work. The Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records, Marianne Birthler , commented as follows in 2008:

“Unofficial or full-time Stasi employees try to use the courts to prevent their role as a tool of the SED dictatorship from being publicly named. The activities of former Stasi people were primarily directed against smaller associations that had neither the strength nor the means for a long legal battle through all instances. These are attempts at intimidation. "

In order to guarantee a broad and differentiated democratic analysis in the long term, two study commissions were set up. On a political level, these deal with a broad spectrum of the GDR's past. Later, the federal foundation to come to terms with the SED dictatorship was set up, which supports relevant research and projects. The federal memorial site concept of 1999 defined standards of federal German remembrance of both German dictatorships and regulates the responsibility of the federal government and the states for cultural remembrance institutions. In 2013, the German Youth Institute examined GDR memorial work projects and came to the conclusion that there the “apparently far-reaching one-sided selection of materials” and the “generality of the content conveyed were problematic”, which was viewed critically from the point of view of the danger of being overwhelmed .

Coming to terms with the past as reflected in the political spectrum

The question of how to assess the history of the GDR as well as the correct form and the appropriate or necessary degree of coming to terms with the past has repeatedly led to disputes in the spectrum of political parties. These conflicts are mostly based on individual questions such as the question of the legal regulation for the disclosure of Stasi files, the regulation of the work of the trust company , the assessment of pensions and pension payments for former MfS employees, the appointment of commissions to come to terms with the past, financial donations for research institutions and memorials to the GDR dictatorship and in the context of personal debates ( Manfred Stolpe , Lutz Heilmann and others). The former PDS mostly takes a decidedly different position than the other parties, also due to the continuity of personnel across the system. The extremism research of the PDS certified a “ questionable way of coming to terms with the past ” as well as the cooperation of several former Stasi employees.

Status of the processing of the SED dictatorship

Hubertus Knabe commented on the state of the process of coming to terms with the SED dictatorship as follows:

"Only when the communist dictatorship is as present to the Germans as the criminal regime of the National Socialists is the processing of the legacies of Stasi Minister Erich Mielke really successful."

The historian Hans-Ulrich Wehler answered the question of whether one should draw a line under the coming to terms with the past in GDR history as follows:

“No, that would be fatal. And luckily - apart from some people from the ex-PDS - this is rarely heard in public. Of course, they would like their little killer republic to finally get out of focus. But that won't happen. The GDR was a murderous regime that left many lives on its conscience. There is no reason to let up in the memory of it. There can be no question of an end. (...) An intensive study of the GDR past is urgently required. The consequences of this state can still be observed for decades not only in Bitterfeld , but also in society. "

According to a study by the Emnid Institute from May 2010, more than half of East Germans assess the GDR as largely positive.

Today state-supported institutions in the form of museums, memorials, victims' associations as well as educational and research institutions including the Stasi Records Authority (BStU) devote themselves to coming to terms with the SED dictatorship in different ways.

On March 22, 2013, the German Bundestag debated the status of the process of coming to terms with the SED dictatorship. The corresponding report by the federal government formed the basis. The report was praised by the governing parties CDU / CSU and FDP and also by the SPD and Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen, while Die Linke lamented the “delegitimization of the GDR from the beginning” expressed in the report.

Dealing with the past twice

In the German history of the 20th century, at least two epochs have been perceived and discussed since 1990, which require coming to terms with the past. This has led to controversy among researchers and the public. The controversial term of “coping with the past twice” includes the scientific processing of both pasts as a comparison of dictatorships and the resulting comparative analysis of criminal, personal and material “coping with the past”. In addition, the less equating term of “twofold coming to terms with the past” is used.

The deeper dissent of research lies in the question of the extent to which it is appropriate and legitimate to equate the two German dictatorships with one another. Roughly three different attitudes can be observed:

• With the use of the term "double dealing with the past" an uncritical parallelization of National Socialism and the GDR regime is made. In this way both systems are equated suggestively and indirectly, which fulfills the desire to suppress the Nazi era. Only those who ignore the fundamental differences between the two systems fail to recognize the singularity of the Nazi dictatorship and its unique crimes ( Holocaust ). The fact that the GDR dictatorship, in contrast to the Nazi regime, hardly had a mass base among the people and did not act in an openly racist manner towards other races / peoples is omitted in this presentation.
• Particularly in the context of the temporary dominance of totalitarianism theory between 1990 and 1995, the similarities between the Nazi and GDR dictatorships were emphasized. The focus was on similarities in terms of domination techniques, analog totalitarian structures and the comparison of similar forms of personal, legal and material coping with the past. Although the major differences between the systems were named, the representation of similarities took up more space.
• A research approach that focuses on individual questions in the comparison of dictatorships and usually does not derive general conclusions from its results. A “utilization” of historical knowledge by political interest groups is usually opposed. The historian Bernd Faulenbach expresses this as follows:

"However, the draft takes up the principle that we have been advocating since 1991 that the Nazi crimes must not be 'put into perspective' by the crimes of the post-war period, but conversely that the Stalinist crimes cannot be 'trivialized' with reference to the Nazi crimes."

Dealing with the past in other states

Coping with one's own role in World War II

In many states, their own role in the Second World War has been increasingly questioned since the 1990s. This form of coming to terms with the past is often accompanied by heated public controversy, as it questions the self-image of states as victims in the resistance against German occupation (e.g. Norway) or as a neutral state (e.g. Sweden).

For example, Maria-Pia Boëthius wrote in her popular science book Heder Och Samvete: Sverige Och Andra Världskriget (Honor and Conscience: Sweden and the Second World War) that Sweden was complicit in the Holocaust .

In Norway the debate ignited. a. in the evaluation of the liquidations of the resistance movement or in the legal settlement ( rettsoppgjør ) of the collaborators of the Nasjonal Samling in the post-war period.

On behalf of Denmark, Kirsten Lydloff questioned the guilt of Danish authorities and doctors for the deaths of thousands of German refugees in Denmark towards the end of the war.

There were numerous collaborations in France from 1940 to 1944 . After the war, this was often ignored or made taboo. The Vichy regime under Philippe Pétain - it was anti-communist , conservative and Catholic - ruled the "unoccupied zone" of France after the armistice from June 22, 1940 to 1944 and collaborated extensively with the German Reich, for example in the deportation of French Jews to the German extermination camps (see chronology of the collaboration of the Vichy government in the Holocaust ). After the liberation by the Allies, many falsely claimed to have been active in the Resistance or exaggerated their actions.

The film by Marcel Ophüls Le Chagrin et la pitié (= mourning and pity; German title: Das Haus nextan - Chronicle of a French town during the war , 1969) made a contribution to turning away from the myth of a French people united in the resistance against the German occupiers. done. The film was a shock to many French people and sparked a lot of discussion.

In all of the countries occupied by Germany during the war, there were relationships between German men and local women. Over 10,000 occupation children were born. After 1945, many countries were very rude with these children and their mothers. Later, many public authorities regretted what they did during this time (see child of occupation).

Coping with one's own dictatorial past

Some of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo at the former Argentine President Néstor Kirchner

In a broader sense, the originally German term coping with the past is transferred to corresponding activities in which other states or societies deal with their own history, insofar as it is characterized by dictatorship, crimes by state organs or human rights violations . This often happens in the form of a truth commission , which works for a limited time and therefore does not cover all areas. In some states in Latin America, in Morocco, or in South Africa, after the end of dictatorships, temporary truth commissions were set up, which tried to create as precise a picture as possible of human or international law violations in a certain period of time in their own country.

The German way of dealing with the Nazi dictatorship is now often cited as a model for coming to terms with the dictatorial past and seems to be constituted as a kind of norm by which other European states orient themselves and measure their respective processes of coming to terms with the past. There are increasing efforts to establish standards and binding guidelines for coming to terms with the past, both at national, transnational and European level. At the beginning of denazification , the then military governor of the American zone of occupation, Dwight D. Eisenhower , estimated the time it would take in Germany to be 50 years.

Despite country-specific individualities, some commonalities can be found in different countries' coping with the past. The following basic models in the attitude of the population and / or the new political leadership can often be observed, also depending on the political function and positioning of the respective persons in the past epoch to be thematized.

• The view, observed after many regime changes, especially in ideologically based dictatorships, that the earlier system was based on a “good idea that was badly implemented”, was observed in Germany after 1945 as well as in post-communist Eastern Europe.

• The demand for an end to the public discussion of the past ( closing line debate , closing line or zero hour), often combined with demands for amnesty , was also made after 1945 and can be found in Eastern Europe. In Poland, for example (gruba kreska = thick line), this was the explicit policy of the first democratic prime minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki in 1989 . The arguments often cited are the need to preserve inner peace, the integration of all social groups into the post-dictatorial society, the preservation of an intact national consciousness, or the reference to the need to focus on future tasks (German reconstruction after 1945).

• The demand for a more thorough coming to terms with the past often comes from groups which were already in opposition to the old regime before the regime change and are now demanding a consistent break with the old institutions, elites and traditions. The focus is usually also on the demand for justification of the victims, disclosure of the historical truth, and clarification or punishment of previously responsible representatives. This should be demonstrated as often and effectively as possible through symbolic acts.

• The increased retreat into the private and apolitical ( inner emigration ) can also be observed, especially after overcoming ideologically strongly indoctrinating systems, and blocks the coming to terms with the past.

According to Claus Offe, coming to terms with the past takes place in a field of conflict between the leadership groups of the old regime, the new regime, the direct victims and those who suffered, including their families and relatives, as well as the resistance movements and dissidents of the old regime.

In general, psychological trauma and mechanisms such as feelings of guilt or repression mechanisms of the perpetrator and feelings of shame or powerlessness of the victims, as well as mutual aggression - as long as both are still relevant in a society - determine the type of discourse.

The processing, on the other hand, becomes more scientifically founded, less problematic and relaxed with increasing time lag, and with it the demographic decrease of people who have lived during this time, as well as the better accessibility of locked archives.

For the way of coming to terms with the past, it makes a significant difference whether a regime:

• or was gradually transformed through transition due to internal economic disruption (like the Soviet Union ) or despite still existing internal stability and economic power ( Franco-Spain , apartheid regime in South Africa )
• was uninstalled by foreign powers and not internal developments (like Nazi Germany)

In the first case, for example, personnel and constitutional continuities are being dismantled more slowly than in the second, in which large parts of former high officials are often absent due to death or prison sentences.

Cultural peculiarities of the countries and cultures as well as their history can cause additional differences in the form and intensity of coming to terms with the past. An example of this was the long stagnating coming to terms with the past in Japan, which can also be traced back to the importance of the ancestor cult in Japanese culture. Another illustrative example of cultural specifics is the corporatism between the allocation of goods , clientist interest groups, preferred classes, the Catholic Church and the state, which was strongly pronounced in South America both before and after the respective dictatorships . This corporatism was and still is a stumbling block for effectively coming to terms with the past of dictatorial actions and experiences.

See also

• List of former NSDAP members who were politically active after May 1945
• Transitional Justice
• Algerian War # Processing and Remembrance

literature

General literature

• Sven Felix Kellerhoff : Learning from history. A handbook for dealing with dictatorships, Baden-Baden 2013
• Susanne Buckley-Zistel, Thomas Kater: After war, violence and repression. Difficult dealing with the past . Baden-Baden, 2011.
• Helmut König , Michael Kohlstruck , Andreas Wöll: Coming to terms with the past at the end of the twentieth century (Leviathan special issue No. 18). Opladen 1998, ISBN 3-531-13156-7 .

Literature to come to terms with the Nazi past

• Theodor W. Adorno : What does: coming to terms with the past. In: Theodor W. Adorno: Interventions. Nine critical models. Frankfurt 1963 (online)
• Aleida Assmann , Ute Frevert : Forgetting about history - obsession with history. How to deal with German pasts after 1945. DVA, Stuttgart 1999.
• Nicolas Berg: The Holocaust and the West German Historians. Wallstein Verlag; Edition: 3rd, revised. 1999 edition.
• Torben Fischer, Matthias N. Lorenz (Ed.): Lexicon of 'coping with the past' in Germany. Debate and discourse history of National Socialism after 1945. 3rd, revised and expanded edition. transcript, Bielefeld 2015, ISBN 978-3-8376-2366-6 .
• Norbert Frei : Politics of the past. The beginnings of the Federal Republic and the Nazi past. Munich 1996, ISBN 3-423-30720-X .
• Stephan Alexander Glienke, Volker Paulmann, Joachim Perels (eds.): Success story Federal Republic? Post-war society in the long shadow of National Socialism. Wallstein Verlag Göttingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-8353-0249-5 .
• Sabine Koloch: German studies, politics and the cross-generational project “ Coming to terms with the past”. Peter Schütts contribution to the discussion for “Die Welt” 1966 ( online ). In: 1968 in German literary studies / topic group “Post-War German Studies in Criticism” (literaturkritik.de archive / special editions) (2020).
• Wilfried Loth , Bernd-A. Rusinek : Transformation policy: Nazi elites in West German post-war society. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 3-593-35994-4 .
• Peter Reichel : Coming to terms with the past in Germany: dealing with the Nazi dictatorship from 1945 to the present day. 2nd updated edition Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-45956-6 .
• Peter Reichel , Harald Schmid , Peter Steinbach (Hrsg.): National Socialism - the second story. Overcoming - Interpretation - Memory , CH Beck, Munich 2009.
• Harald Schmid : From “coming to terms with the past” to “remembrance culture”. On the public dealing with National Socialism since the late 1970s. In: Gerhard Paul, Bernhard Schossig (Ed.): Public remembrance and medialization of National Socialism. A balance sheet for the last thirty years. Göttingen 2010, pp. 171–202.

criticism

• Armin Mohler : Coming to terms with the past. From purification to manipulation. Stuttgart 1968.
• Ulrike Jureit , Christian Schneider: Felt victims: illusions of coming to terms with the past. Klett-Cotta, 1st edition 2010, ISBN 978-3-608-94649-9 .
• Henryk M. Broder : Forget Auschwitz! The German memory delusion and the final solution to the Israel question. Albrecht Knaus Verlag, Munich 2012

Literature on coming to terms with the SED dictatorship

• Martin Sabrow et al. a. (Ed.): Where are GDR memories drifting? Documentation of a debate. Göttingen 2007
• Sabine Ross: Dealing with the totalitarian past. Berlin 2008.
• Dong Lyoul Kim: Basics of the criminal law processing of GDR injustice and the possibilities of applying it to dealing with North Korean system injustice. Frankfurt am Main 2012.
• Iris Keller: The criminal processing of GDR justice injustice. Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Vienna 2013.
• Micha Christopher Pfarr: The criminal law processing of the mistreatment of prisoners in the prisons of the GDR. Berlin 2013
• Johannes Weberling (Hrsg.): Forced Labor in the GDR - An Open Topic of All-German Processing. Baden-Baden 2015
• Anne K. Krüger: “No reconciliation without truth” - the Enquête Commissions for “coming to terms with” and “overcoming the SED dictatorship”. In: S. Buckley-Zistel, T. Kater (ed.): After war, violence and repression: The difficult handling of the past. Baden-Baden: Nomos 2011, pp. 131–149.
• Katrin Wenkel: Nordhausen district council (1990 to 1994): Committee for coming to terms with the past and petitions. In: Landratsamt Nordhausen (Hrsg.): Landkreis Nordhausen:: Yearbook of the Landkreis Nordhausen. Volume 2 (1994), Neukirchner, Nordhausen 1995, 1037046390 in the GVK - Common Union Catalog , pp. 126–129.

Dealing with the past twice

• Harald Schmid : System change and history. On the debate about the "double overcoming of the past" of the NS and SED past. In: Deutschland Archiv 38 (2005) 2, pp. 290–297.
• Harald Schmid : One past, three stories. Coming to terms with the Nazi dictatorship: Federal Republic, GDR and Austria. In: Angela Borgstedt, Siegfried Frech, Michael Stolle (Eds.): Lange Schatten. Coping with dictatorships. Wochenschau-Verlag, Schwalbach / Taunus 2007, pp. 89–119.
• Eckhard Jesse , Konrad Löw (Ed.): Coping with the past. (= Series of publications by the Society for Research in Germany . Volume 54). Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-428-09183-3 .
• Lucia Scherzberg (Ed.): “Double Dealing with the Past” and the singularity of the Holocaust. Saarland University Press, Saarbrücken 2012.
• Bert Pampel: What does “coming to terms with the past” mean? Can one learn lessons from the “coming to terms with the past” after 1945 for the “coming to terms” after 1989? In: From politics and contemporary history, B 1-2 / 95, pp. 27–38.
• Sanya Romeike: Transitional Justice in Germany after 1945 and after 1990 International Academy of Nuremberg Principles , Occasional Paper No. 1, 2016

Other countries

• Susanne Maerz: " Treason versus resistance - stations and problems of" coming to terms with the past "in Norway ". In: NORDEUROPAforum (2005: 2), pp. 43–73.
• Reiner Marcowitz , Werner Paravicini (Ed.): Forgive and forget ?. Discourses of the past after occupation, civil war and revolution = Pardonner et oublier? (= Paris historical studies. Volume 94). Oldenbourg, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-486-59135-4 .

Web links

Wiktionary: Coming to  terms with the past - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

• Literature on coming to terms with the past in the catalog of the German National Library
• Dealing with history using the example of Landsberg: reappraisal - repression - defamation
• Legal constructions of Nazi perpetrator images in post-war Germany: theory and practice

Individual evidence

1. ↑ This Martin Sabrow ; Foundation work-up .
2. ↑ Christoph Cornelißen u. a. (Ed.): Cultures of memory. 2nd Edition. Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-596-15219-4 , p. 12.
3. ↑ Peter Dudek: Coming to terms with the past. On the problem of a controversial term. In: From politics and contemporary history , supplement 1–2, 1992, p. 44 ff.
4. ^ Ulrich Battis, Günther Jakobs, Eckhard Jesse, Josef Isensee: Coping with the past through law, three treatises on a German problem . 1992, p. 716.
5. ↑ Helmut König: From dictatorship to democracy or What is coming to terms with the past . Opladen u. a. 1998, p. 375.
6. ↑ Helmut König, Michael Kohlstruck a. a. (Ed.): Coming to terms with the past at the end of the twentieth century. Opladen Wiesbaden 1998, p. 7.
7. ↑ Wolfgang Benz : War Aims of the Allies bpb , April 6, 2005.
8. ^ Eike Wolgast : Coming to terms with the past in the immediate post-war period, Heidelberg University, 1997.
9. ↑ Peter Brandt: The Confrontation of Germany with National Socialism after 1945, Lecture 2005.
10. ↑ Hans Mommsen : Research Controversies on National Socialism bpb , March 23, 2007.
11. ↑ Nicholas Pronay, Keith Wilson: The Political Re-Education of Germany and her Allies after World War II. London 1985, p. 5
12. ^ Edgar Wolfrum : History of the culture of remembrance in the GDR and FRG bpb , August 26, 2008.
13. ↑ Referred to by Herfried Münkler : The Germans and their myths. Rowohlt Berlin, Berlin 2008, p. 435 f.
14. ↑ Norbert Frei: Politics of the Past. The beginnings of the Federal Republic and the Nazi past . Munich 1996, ISBN 3-423-30720-X , p. 327.
15. ↑ CIA files Gehlen, released from 2001 (PDF; 1.7 MB), p. 12: "[…] figures recently compiled […] from Berlin Document Center records […] show that the present Bundestag has 129 or 26.5% former NSDAP members. "
16. ↑ Quote from: Norbert Frei: Politics of the Past. The beginnings of the Federal Republic and the Nazi past . Munich 1996, ISBN 3-423-30720-X , p. 20.
17. ↑ Piper: Brief History of National Socialism from 1919 to Today. Hoffmann & Campe, Hamburg 2007, p. 280.
18. ↑ The other five were leadership corps of the NSDAP , SS , SD , SA , Secret State Police (Gestapo).
19. ↑ Federal Ministry of Finance (Ed.): Compensation for Nazi injustice. Reparation arrangements as of November 2012.
20. ^ Federal Ministry of Finance (ed.): Calendar for the reparation of Nazi injustice. Statutory and non-statutory regulations as well as guidelines in the area of ​​reparation for National Socialist injustice Status: November 2012.
21. ↑ BGBl II 1955, pp. 303, 405, 418 ff.
22. ↑ Cf. Constantin Göschler: reparation policy - debt, guilt and compensation. In: Peter Reichel; H. Schmid, P. Steinbach: The National Socialism - The Second Story , BPB, Bonn 2009, ISBN 978-3-89331-943-5 , pp. 62–84.
23. ↑ Julia Smilga: Jan Robert von Renesse: Judge Mundtot Die Zeit , August 18, 2016.
24. ↑ Lobberich yearbook 1996 .
25. ↑ Michael Ruck: Bibliography on National Socialism Darmstadt, 2000, ISBN 3-534-14989-0 .
26. ↑ Michael Schornstheimer: Harmless Idealists and Daring Soldiers - Military and War in the Illustrated Novels of the Fifties. In: Hannes Heer , Klaus Naumann (Hrsg.): Destruction War - Crimes of the Wehrmacht 1941 to 1944. P. 635–642.
27. ↑ Irmela von der Lühe: Displacement and Confrontation - the post-war literature. In: P. Reichel; H.Schmid, P. Steinbach: National Socialism - The Second Story , BPB, Bonn 2009, ISBN 978-3-89331-943-5 , pp. 243-260. In addition to the open argument, there was also the covert z. B. with Thomas Mann in Doctor Faustus (1947) or Hermann Kasack in The City Behind the Stream (1946). An apologetic literature gathered around Hans Grimm in 1951 in the "Lippoldsberger Dichtertreffen".
28. ↑ ^{a b} Torben Fischer, Matthias N. Lorenz: Lexicon of Coping with the Past in Germany - Debate and Discourse History of National Socialism after 1945. transcript, 2007, p. 111.
29. ↑ Frederick Alfred Lubich: Wendewelten - paradigm shift in German literary and cultural history after 1945. Königshausen & Neumann, 2002, p. 81.
30. ↑ Quotation n .: Ursula Heuenkamp: Amsterdam contributions to recent German studies. Volume 50.1 (2001), Guilt and Atonement? The experience of war and the interpretation of war in the German media in the post-war period (1945–1961) , Rodopi, 2001, p. 174.
31. ↑ Peter Reichel: Invented memory. World War I and the murder of Jews in film and theater. Frankfurt am Main 2007, pp. 215–248.
32. ↑ Peter Gleber: Between yesterday and tomorrow. Film and cinema in the post-war decade. In: Franz-Josef Heyen, Anton M. Keim (Ed.): In search of a new identity. Culture in Rhineland-Palatinate in the post-war decade. v. Hase & Koehler, Mainz 1996, ISBN 3-7758-1349-7 . Here after the online version ( memento of September 11, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) of the chapter, in the page numbering of the PDF p. 47.
33. ↑ Peter Reichel : Invented memory. World War and the Murder of Jews in Film and Theater , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 173.
34. ↑ The controversy is detailed in Night and Fog ; it ended with the victory of those (with the exception of Baden-Württemberg) who wanted to show the film to the Germans, for example when there were teachers in schools who showed the film, which was made available free of charge.
35. ↑ Lexicon of International Films; quoted from deutsches-filmhaus.de  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .  
36. ↑ Knut Hickethier: Fiction and fact - the documentary game and its development at ZDF and ARD. In: Helmut Kreuzer, Karl Prümm: TV programs and their forms. Reclam, Stuttgart 1979, p. 68.
37. ^ Mathias Lehmann: Music about the Holocaust. On a secondary topic in German music history after 1945. In: Villigster Research Forum on National Socialism, Racism and Anti-Semitism (Ed.): The Unease in the “Third Generation” - Reflections on the Holocaust, Anti-Semitism and National Socialism. P. 49 ff.
38. ↑ Wolfgang Benz : Churches - Self-Assertion and Opposition ( Memento from September 14, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) bpb , April 30, 2003.
39. ↑ Manfred Gailus : Protestantism and National Socialism. Studies on the National Socialist penetration of the Protestant social milieu using the example of Berlin, 1930–1950 ( memento from September 26, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Hamburg Institute for Social Research , research project 1998.
40. ↑ Clemens Vollnhals : The Mortgage of National Protestantism . Denazification and prosecution of Nazi crimes after 1945. History and Society , 18th year, volume 1, Evangelical Church after National Socialism (1992), pp. 51–69.
41. ↑ Stephan Linck: New Beginnings? How the Evangelical Church deals with the Nazi past and its relationship to Judaism. The regional churches in northern Elbe. Volume 1: 1945-1965. Lutherische Verlagsgesellschaft Kiel, 2013, ISBN 978-3-87503-167-6 . Book presentation ( Memento from September 27, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) EKD website, accessed on September 26, 2016.
42. ↑ Gerhard Besier : The Political Role of Protestantism in the Post-War Period bpb , May 26, 2002.
43. ↑ Johannes Tuchel : Between Defamation and Recognition: How to deal with July 20, 1944 in the early Federal Republic bpb , June 20, 2014.
44. ↑ Norbert Frei : memory struggle. On the legitimation problem of July 20, 1944 in post-war Germany. Festschrift for Hans Mommsen on the occasion of his 65th birthday, Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1995. Pre-print
45. ^ Das Argument , Argument-Verlag, Hamburg 1992, p. 205.
46. ↑ Eckhard Jesse in: Philosemitism, Antisemitism and Anti-Antisemitism - The Shadows of the Past - Impulses for the historicization of National Socialism. edited by Uwe Backes, Eckhard Jesse, and Rainer Zitelmann, Frankfurt, 1990, p. 543.
47. ↑ Acceptance speech by Martin Walser for the award of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt on October 11, 1998: Experiences with writing a Sunday speech .
48. ↑ Pride in sin .
49. ^ Susan Neiman: What can you learn from the Germans? Speech: Despite Hanau - no other country has faced its past so encouragingly. In: Die Zeit , March 5, 2020, p. 58 f.
50. ^ Hermann Wentker: The legal punishment of Nazi crimes in the Soviet occupation zone and in the GDR Kritische Justiz 2002, pp. 60–78.
51. ^ Regina Kusch, Andreas Beckmann: Crimes of the Class Enemy. The Auschwitz Trials in the GDR Deutschlandradio Kultur, June 29, 2016.
52. ↑ Georgi Dimitrov : The offensive of fascism and the tasks of the Communist International in the struggle for the unity of the working class against fascism . August 2, 1935.
53. ↑ Michael Lausberg : History of the extreme right in the GDR (no year)
54. ↑ Tobias Haberkorn: War Criminal Prosecution in the Soviet Zone and the Early GDR 1945–1950: Legends, Conflicts and Defects bpb , April 20, 2012.
55. ^ Benjamin Schulz: Nazi perpetrators in the GDR. How the Stasi blackmailed SS men from Auschwitz Der Spiegel , August 24, 2014.
56. ^ Henry Leide: Nazi Criminals and State Security. The secret past politics of the GDR . Göttingen, 3rd edition 2007, ISBN 978-3-525-35018-8 . Review by Annette Weinke in sehepunkte 2006, No. 7/8
57. ↑ Annette Leo : The confrontation with the National Socialist past in the GDR. In: United Nation - Divided History. German society after reunification , ed. by Wolfgang Benz and Jörg Leuschner, Salzgitter 1993, p. 46.
58. ↑ Agnes Steinbauer: The GDR and the Nazi past Book tip Christian Dirks: The crimes of others - Auschwitz and the Auschwitz trial of the GDR, 2005 . Deutschlandradio Kultur, April 2, 2006.
59. ↑ Law on the granting of impunity of November 11, 1949, Journal of Laws I p. 60. documentArchiv.de, accessed on September 21, 2016.
60. ↑ Law on the adoption of expiatory measures and the granting of civil rights for former members and supporters of the Nazi party and officers of the fascist Wehrmacht of November 11, 1949, documentArchiv.de, accessed on September 21, 2016.
61. ^ What was on October 2, 1952 chroniknet.de, accessed on September 21, 2016.
62. ↑ Olaf Kappelt (Ed.): Brown Book DDR. Nazis in the GDR . Berlin 1981.
63. ↑ A concentration camp guard made it to the GDR professor Die Welt , September 29, 2015.
64. ↑ Order on honorary pensions for fighters against fascism and for those persecuted by fascism as well as for their survivors of September 20, 1976 (FEhrPensAnO)
65. ↑ Birgit Müller: Culture of Remembrance in the GDR bpb , August 26, 2008.
66. ↑ Jürgen Danyel: The Discourse on Political Past in the Soviet Zone / GDR 1945–1989. In: War - Dictatorship - Expulsion. Cultures of remembrance in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Germany since 1945, ed. by Christoph Cornelißen , Essen 2005, p. 191.
67. ↑ Law on the regulation of outstanding property issues of August 31, 1990. dokumentArchiv.de, accessed on September 23, 2016.
68. ↑ BVerwG, judgment of December 9, 2004 - 7 C 2.04
69. ^ Nazi archive of the Ministry for State Security ( Memento from September 21, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) website of the Federal Archives, as of June 15, 2013.
70. ↑ Sabine Dumschat: Processing of the "NS archive" of the Ministry for State Security of the GDR in the Federal Archives Lecture at the 75th German Archives Day in Stuttgart on September 28, 2005 at the meeting of Section 1 (archivists at state archives) / amended version, accessed on September 21, 2016.
71. ^ Dagmar Unverhau: The "Nazi Archive" of the Ministry for State Security. Stations of a development website of the BStU , accessed on September 21, 2016.
72. ↑ Christian Mentel, Niels Weise: The Central German Authorities and National Socialism - Status and Perspectives of Research Institute for Contemporary History Munich 2016, editorial deadline: October 19, 2015, pp. 69 ff.
73. ↑ Lisa Schoß (Berlin): We don't need any tutoring! Representations of the Shoah in East German film using the example of 'Die Bilder des Zeugen Schattmann' (1972) . Simon Wiesenthal Conference 2014. Prime Time Genocide - The Holocaust on TV. December 3 to 14, 2014, Funkhaus Wien, Studio 3, 1040 Vienna. YouTube , from min. 47:49
74. ^ Dieter Pohl: NS crimes. A historical introduction Messages from the Federal Archives - Special Issue 2008.
75. ↑ Post-War Justice Research Center
76. ^ Post-war justice website of the Central Austrian Research Center on Post-War Justice at the DÖW
77. ↑ Survey published on September 11, 1987 in the weekly press .
78. ↑ Responsibility, coming to terms with, commemorating. Update of the federal memorial site concept of June 18, 2008, documented in: Germany Archive, (2008) 4, p. 601, p. 608.
79. ^ Zeit Online on June 29, 2006: We had happy days too . In: The time .
80. ↑ Recommendations of the expert commission for the creation of a historical network "Working through the SED dictatorship" . ( Memento of October 16, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 78 kB).
81. ↑ Cf. Martin Sabrow et al. (Ed.), Where is GDR memory drifting? Documentation of a debate, Bonn 2007.
82. ^ Struggle for the sovereignty of interpretation , December 8, 2006.
83. ↑ Klaus Marxen , Gerhard Werle : Strafjustiz und DDR-Inrecht , Volume 6, MfS-Strafaten, de Gruyter, 2000, p. 16.
84. ^ Klaus Marxen, Gerhard Werle: The criminal law processing of GDR injustice - a balance sheet . de Gruyter, 1999, p. 4 f.
85. ^ Klaus Marxen, Gerhard Werle: The criminal law processing of GDR injustice - a balance sheet . de Gruyter, 1999, p. 5 ff.
86. ^ Klaus Marxen, Gerhard Werle: The criminal law processing of GDR injustice - a balance sheet . de Gruyter, 1999, p. 7.
87. ↑ Hubertus Knabe : The perpetrators are among us. About the glossing over of the SED dictatorship . Propylaea, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-549-07302-5 .
88. ↑ Charles S. Maier: The disappearance of the GDR and the fall of communism . S. Fischer, Frankfurt, 1999, pp. 485-488.
89. ↑ Stasi employees are obstructing the investigation - head of the authorities Birthler: "These are attempts at intimidation. Those affected have a right to know who reported on them. ” In: Hamburger Abendblatt .
90. ↑ Torben Fischer, Matthias N. Lorenz: Lexicon of Coping with the Past in Germany - Debate and Discourse History of National Socialism after 1945. transcript, 2007, p. 277.
91. ↑ Alexander Leistner, Katja Schau, Susanne Johansson: Result report of the scientific support of the federal program "Strengthening Democracy", scientific texts of the German Youth Institute, Munich 2013, p. 78ff ( Memento from February 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 980 kB ).
92. ↑ Katja Neller: GDR nostalgia - dimensions of the orientations of East Germans towards the former GDR, their causes and political connotations . VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2006, p. 106.
93. ↑ Hubertus Knabe: How the processing of the Stasi files could be reorganized . In: Spiegel Online . August 15, 2007.
94. ↑ Dealing with the GDR's past - “There can be no talk of a line in the past”. In: Spiegel Online - Politics .
95. ↑ East Germans transfigure GDR
96. ↑ See German Bundestag, report of the federal government on the status of the processing of the SED dictatorship, January 16, 2013, printed matter 17/12115, online: http://dipbt.bundestag.de/dip21/btd/17/121/1712115. pdf
97. ^ "Coming to terms with the SED dictatorship" - today like yesterday? - essay
98. ↑ Jürgen Danyel: The divided past. On dealing with National Socialism and resistance in both German states . Akademie Verlag, 1995, p. 107.
99. ↑ Torben Fischer, Matthias N. Lorenz: Lexicon of Coping with the Past in Germany - Debate and Discourse History of National Socialism after 1945. transcript, 2007, pp. 275 and 277.
100. ↑ Torben Fischer, Matthias N. Lorenz: Lexicon of Coping with the Past in Germany - Debate and Discourse History of National Socialism after 1945. transcript, 2007, p. 275.
101. ↑ Torben Fischer, Matthias N. Lorenz: Lexicon of Coping with the Past in Germany - Debate and Discourse History of National Socialism after 1945. transcript, 2007, pp. 275f.
102. ↑ Torben Fischer, Matthias N. Lorenz: Lexicon of Coping with the Past in Germany - Debate and Discourse History of National Socialism after 1945. transcript, 2007, p. 276.
103. ↑ bundestag.de  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .  
104. ↑ Maerz, Susanne: "Treason versus resistance - stations and problems of" coming to terms with the past "in Norway" In: NORDEUROPAforum (2005: 2), pp. 43–73 at http://edoc.hu-berlin.de/nordeuropaforum/2005 -2 / marz-susanne-43 / XML /
105. ↑ Schultheiss, Michael: "Did you think of the small children ...?" The negotiations about medical help for German refugees in Denmark at the end of the Second World War. In: NORDEUROPAforum (2009: 2), pp. 37–59 under (PDF)
106. ↑ The film was only shown on French television in 1981 and is about the resistance and collaboration of the French population and the Vichy regime during the time of the German occupation in World War II . This is illustrated using the example of the city of Clermont-Ferrand with the help of interviews and other, in some cases previously unpublished historical film material.
107. ^ Berthold Meyer: Forms of conflict settlement . 1997, p. 381.
108. ↑ univie.ac.at  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF).  
109. ^ Ike and the Disappearing Atrocities , NY Times, February 24, 1991: "The success or failure of this occupation will be judged by the character of the Germans 50 years from now. Proof will come when they begin to run a democracy of their own and we are going to give the Germans a chance to do that, in time. "
110. ↑ In the various surveys, on the other hand, “between 42 and 55% stuck to the fact that National Socialism was a good idea that was badly implemented”. ( Memento of the original from March 29, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
111. ↑ Ian Kershaw: "But for years after the war - as studies show the Allies - a majority of the West German population believes that National Socialism was a good idea based and these had been poorly executed" .
112. ^ F. Plasser, PA, H. Waldrausch: Political cultural change in East-Central Europe, theory and empirical evidence of democratic consolidation . 1997, pp. 149-152.
113. ↑ “We draw a thick line to what happened in the past.” (Niewątpliwie na ogólną sytuacje istotny wpływ ma gruba kreska.) “We only answer questions about what we can do to help Poland out of its crisis in the future recover. ” Gruba kreska in the Polish language Wikipedia.
114. ↑ For the entire section: Elke Fein: History Policy in Russia. 2000, pp. 27-32.
115. ↑ Claus Offe: The tunnel at the end of the light, explorations of the political transformation in the New East . 1994.
116. ↑ Mark Arenhövel: Democracy and memory, the look back on dictatorship and human rights crimes . 2000, p. 78.
117. ↑ Mark Arenhövel: Democracy and memory, the look back on dictatorship and human rights crimes . 2000, p. 89.