The second fault

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The second guilt or the burden of being German is the title of a non-fiction book by Ralph Giordano (1923–2014) from 1987 in which he describes how the failure of German society after National Socialism shaped the political culture of the Federal Republic .

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Giordano's book describes how “the great peace with the perpetrators” became one of the foundations of the state. As an example, he introduces Hans Globke , commentator on the National Socialist race laws of September 1935 and later “gray eminence of the West German early epoch”, State Secretary Konrad Adenauer and creator of the Federal Chancellery . Giordano describes the great peace with the perpetrators as a creation of the Adenauer era and Adenauer as the spiritus rector “of the great peace with the perpetrators”, the father of the “second guilt”, their “figurehead”.

After the end of the Second World War, many perpetrators were convicted by German jury courts , but Giordano criticized that they were only "the lowest links in the chain of industrialized serial, mass and genocide , the small employees of the administrative massacre " , "The killing workers who murdered with their own hands, their nail boots and firearms". Their prosecution was rightly carried out, but since they were the bulk of the accused, the question arises more and more urgently: “Where are your superiors who have delivered the 'human material' to the 'death mills'? Where are the 'big ones', the planners, the desk criminals, the heads of the Reich Security Main Office murder center ? Where are the Wehrwirtschaftsführer, the SS leaders, the dutiful military? "

The new edition of the book, published in 1998, has 15 chapters in which Giordano begins with the description of the "loss of human orientation" in Germany since the establishment of the Empire in 1871. Then he presents the foundation of the second guilt, the failure to prosecute Nazi criminals. Further chapters deal with the lack of criticism of the Wehrmacht and its warfare, the love of most Germans for the "Führer" and the unwillingness of the national collective of former Hitler supporters , is the collective guilt to confess to the Nazi crimes. The resistance to National Socialism was limited to individuals and small groups and unpopular. In the chapters on "perverse anti-communism", the activities of the expellees' associations , the longing of the "forced democrats" for the "strong man" embodied by Franz-Josef Strauss , right-wing "counter-radicalism" and its entanglement with the terror of the RAF as well as the attempts To draw a line under the preoccupation with Nazi history, Giordano deals with the consequences of the second guilt in West Germany , in 1998 he added a chapter on the inadequate “decreed anti-fascism” of the GDR .

Reception and criticism

Jürgen Müller-Hohagen , the head of the “Dachau Institute Psychology and Education”, commented on Giordano's theses. The repression and denial of the first guilt after 1945 had a major influence on the political culture of the Federal Republic of Germany to this day, a mortgage that will be borne for a long time. He points out that there could also be a “third guilt” and that there is now. Insofar as the descendants continued to suppress, deny and conceal the previous generations, they persisted in a transgenerational complicity and carried on something of the Nazi violence.

In 2018, Kulturlotse Hamburg , together with the Research Center for Contemporary History in Hamburg, organized an event on the subject of Ralph Giordano and the second debt: On the topicality of a journalistic intervention ... a mortgage that will be borne for a long time . In view of current political developments from NSU terror to the removal of taboos on racist discourses, it seemed advisable to put the West German coming to terms with the Nazi past, widely perceived as a success story, to the test. Specifically post-National Socialist influences of the Federal Republican present were questioned and the current challenges for a critical culture of remembrance were discussed.

As a counter-position to Giordano, Manfred Knittel is occasionally quoted, who wrote himself in 1993 in his book “The legend of the 'Second Guilt'. Dealing with the Past in the Adenauer Era ”focuses on the time since the constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany. Eike Wolgast from the Department of History takes a critical look at this in his contribution Dealing with the Past in the Immediate Post-War Period.

In the preface to the new edition published in 1998, Giordano states that the level of awareness of the problem of the second guilt has increased enormously in the ten years since the book was first published. He accuses Knittel of notoriously ignoring the concrete facts of his book in his criticism.

expenditure

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ralph Giordano, The Second Debt - Or From The Last To Be German , Kiepenheuer & Witsch, New Edition 2020, Excerpts
  2. ↑ a b c Ralph Giordano, The Second Debt or Von der Last zu sein. Hamburg 1998, ISBN 3-89136-670-1 ; Table of contents, foreword, p. 106 ff. (Globke), 160 (Adenauer era)
  3. ↑ a b Ralph Giordano, Second Guilt , Jüdische Allgemeine, November 16, 2010. Retrieved May 10, 2020.
  4. ↑ Jürgen Müller-Hohagen, Dealing with Guilt , Dachau Institute Psychology and Education. Retrieved May 18, 2020.
  5. ↑ Ralph Giordano and the second guilt: On the topicality of a journalistic intervention . Retrieved May 18, 2020.
  6. ↑ past in the immediate postwar period , University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg 3/97. Retrieved May 19, 2020.