Historians' dispute

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The Historikerstreit (also: Historikerdebatte , Historikerkontroverse or Habermas Controversy ) of 1986/87 was a contemporary historical debate in the Federal Republic of Germany about the singularity of the Holocaust and the question of what role it should play for an identity-creating image of Germany's history .

The trigger was an article by Ernst Nolte from June 1986, which presented the Holocaust in the form of rhetorical questions as a reaction of the National Socialists to previous mass crimes and the Gulag system in the Soviet Union . The philosopher Jürgen Habermas criticized these and other statements by three other West German historians as "revisionism" , which aims to renew German national consciousness by shaking off a "demoralized past". Many German historians, journalists and other interested authors reacted to this with letters to the editor or newspaper articles that were later published as a book. This debate lasted about a year.

prehistory

The student movement of the 1960s had vigorously demanded a thorough coming to terms with the past during the Nazi era and given it impetus. West German historiography had intensified Nazi research since around 1965, but did not produce its own overall picture of the Holocaust until 1986.

Since around 1973 there has been a fundamental dispute among German historians over the historical methodology, which also affected other epochs of German history in the form of the Fischer controversy . Older historians from the Nazi era who had been leading up to that point, such as Andreas Hillgruber and Klaus Hildebrand , traditionally concentrated on leadership politicians, their ideas and scope for action, and defended this method. Younger historians such as Hans Mommsen , Wolfgang J. Mommsen and Hans-Ulrich Wehler , who later supported Habermas in the historians' dispute, on the other hand, advocated a sociological approach based on social structures and conflicting interests. However, the task of “historicizing” the Nazi era, which Martin Broszat put to the German historians' guild in an essay in 1985, was recognized by both sides . He understood it to be a comprehensive study of the historical and social conditions for National Socialism and its integration into German history as a whole, whereby he already distinguished himself from attempts to relativize Nazi crimes motivated by history and politics.

Since around 1979, some scholars belonging to the left-liberal spectrum saw a conservative change of direction in the scientific and public discourse about the Nazi era. At that time, Jürgen Habermas described a “ New Right ” that was planning a “regaining of the powers of definition” strategically. Hans and Wolfgang Mommsen as well as Hans-Ulrich Wehler saw similar tendencies in Nazi research. The “ spiritual and moral turnaround ” that Chancellor Helmut Kohl announced in his government statement in 1982, especially his dictum of the “ grace of late birth ” in Israel in 1984 and his visit to a military cemetery in Bitburg , where Waffen-SS members are also buried with US President Ronald Reagan in 1985, many viewed as a sign and reinforcing a trend that historical and political confrontation with the Nazi era in terms of a common final stroke mentality shut down. They therefore rejected Kohl's initiative for a German Historical Museum in West Berlin and the appointment of the founding commission (including Michael Stürmer ) in many cases as an attempt to politically decree a conservative, nationally compatible image of history.

In contrast, the Holocaust has been the focus of mass media since the television series Holocaust (1978; German January 1979) and again with the documentary Shoah (1986). On the 50th anniversary of the National Socialist “ seizure of power ” (January 30, 1983) and on the 40th anniversary of Germany's total surrender (May 8, 1985), Nazi crimes were publicly commemorated. Richard von Weizsäcker described May 8, 1945 as the first German Federal President as the “ day of liberation ” from National Socialism , no longer just as the defeat of the Wehrmacht , and declared that commemoration of the victims of National Socialism should take priority .

The existing historical polarization, the political constellation and the way this debate was carried out in the mass media were, according to Klaus Große Kracht, the main reasons for the formation of camps, polemical exaggerations and the lack of further results from the later historians' dispute .

Debated texts

Ernst Nolte

In 1980 the historian Ernst Nolte gave the lecture Between the Legend of History and Revisionism at the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation , which the FAZ abridged on July 24, 1980. Some statements from it were included in the dispute in 1986 after HW Koch had re-edited Nolte's lecture in an English translation in 1985 in a collection of essays.

In it Nolte stated a consistently and persistently negative image of the “Third Reich” , which he attributed to its guilt for the Second World War , its reactionary ideology ( blood and soil , racism ) and its singular acts of violence against Jews , Slavs , the mentally ill and by Nolte so-called “ Gypsies ”, especially the gas chambers of the extermination camps . This led to "that in retrospect only the voice of the victims was audible". This harbors the danger for science of perceiving and writing down history only from the perspective of the winners. Due to new circumstances, this view would have required a revision, but this should not replace the indictment with debt relief.

Nolte then lectured on three books as "revisionist approaches" that were current at the time, most recently the book Hitler und seine Feldherren (1975) by David Irving , who was later convicted several times for openly denying the Holocaust . He initially rejected Irving's theses that Adolf Hitler had known nothing about the “Final Solution” and could have won the war if his strategic plans had been better implemented. Then he took up some of Irving's assertions: Hitler had "good reasons" to "be convinced of the will to annihilate his opponents much earlier than at the time when the first news about the events in Auschwitz reached the world." For the President of the Jewish Agency Chaim Weizmann stated at the beginning of September 1939 that “Jews all over the world would fight on the side of England in this war.” This could justify the thesis that “Hitler treated the German Jews as prisoners of war and d . H. was allowed to intern. "

In April 1986 Nolte added after “prisoners of war” in a footnote: “- or more precisely, as civil internees following the pattern of the Germans in England from September 1939 or of American citizens of Japanese origin in the USA 1941–1945”. The air raid on Hamburg in 1943 also showed a “will of the Allies to annihilate the German civilian population”, which could not have been caused by their knowledge of the Holocaust.

On June 6, 1986, Nolte published in the FAZ the lecture The Past That Will Not To Pass , which he had planned for the Frankfurt Römerberg Talks, but had not given there. As reasons why the meant Nazi era did not want to pass, he named above all the memory of the "enormity of the factory-like extermination of several million people". Then he asked whether the widespread line-of-the-line mentality did not contain a real core: The talk of a " guilt of the Germans " was similar to the Nazi propaganda of the "guilt of the Jews" and was insincere with Germans, because only against "old opponents" directed. Attention to the Holocaust is diverted from other Nazi “facts”, such as euthanasia and treatment of Russian prisoners of war, and from current questions, such as about unborn life ( abortion ) and whether the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan is genocide . He also attributed scandals at the time in which politicians were accused of anti-Semitism to this alleged non-compliance . The film Shoah makes it probable that SS camp guards "may have been victims in their own way" and that there was "virulent anti-Semitism" among Polish Nazi victims. A revision of earlier "black and white pictures" appears dangerous because the Germans could identify with the Nazi era until 1939. But this was unthinkable because of Hitler's “extermination orders against the German people” in March 1945.

Then he asked what had moved later National Socialists to the Holocaust, who had directly observed the genocide of the Armenians in 1915 and judged it to be extermination in the "Asian style". Hitler had shown a possible answer by referring to the “rat cage” after the defeat of Stalingrad in 1943 , with which the Soviets would bring German officers captured in Moscow to confessions and cooperation. Nolte interpreted "rat cage" after George Orwell's novel 1984 as a threat of a torture method handed down by Chinese chekists ; the interpretation of the Lubyanka , the torture center of the Soviet secret police, is wrong. Furthermore, all later criminal methods of the National Socialists apart from gassing had already been described in the 1920s. Therefore the question is permissible and unavoidable:

“Did the National Socialists accomplish an 'Asian' deed, did Hitler perhaps only because they viewed themselves and their kind as potential or real victims of an 'Asian' act? Wasn't the 'Gulag Archipelago' more original than Auschwitz ? Wasn't the 'class murder' of the Bolsheviks the logical and factual Prius of the 'racial murder' of the National Socialists? Can't Hitler's most secret actions also be explained by the fact that he had not forgotten the 'rat cage'? Did Auschwitz have its origins in a past that did not want to pass? "

These questions, which he used to shy away from asking, had to be placed in the larger context of the history of Europe since industrialization , in the breaks of which “culprits” or “authors” of a development experienced as threatening were repeatedly sought. Only in this context does the qualitative difference between “biological” and “social” destruction become clear. One cannot justify murders by comparing them with other murders, but one cannot ignore “the other” mass murder , since a “causal nexus” is likely here. The meaning of this view of history could only consist in “becoming free from the tyranny of collectivist thinking”, which also shaped the way in which the Nazi era came to terms with the past.

Michael striker

On April 25, 1986, the historian Michael Stürmer , then political advisor to Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl, published the article History in a land without history in the FAZ . On the one hand, he noted a loss of memory and, on the other hand, an interest in history, which he interpreted as a “return to cultural tradition”, “promise of normality” and a search for direction for the future: “A loss of orientation and a search for identity are siblings.” Politics should not ignore, “ that in a land devoid of history the future wins who fills the memory, shapes the terms and interprets the past. "

The uncertainty of national identity had already determined German history before 1945. Only now is it no longer the Nazi era, but the post-war period that is the center of German history. The historical achievement of Konrad Adenauer , the western connection of the Federal Republic, is called into question by historical misinterpretations and competing historical images. This state of affairs could raise the anxious question of “where is all this going” among our neighbors. Since the Federal Republic, as the “centerpiece of the European defense line”, bears “global political and global economic responsibility”, the “search for lost history [...] is about the internal continuity of the German republic and its predictability in foreign policy.”

Andreas Hillgruber

In the spring of 1986, the historian Andreas Hillgruber published the book Zweiierlei Untergang: The smashing of the German Empire and the end of European Jewry. In it he put together two independently written essays. In the first, longer essay, he described the breakthrough of the Red Army on the Eastern Front and the ensuing flight and expulsion of German residents who lived east of the Oder-Neisse border . In doing so, he discussed in detail the question of what perspective today's historian should take. He then took the perspective of the soldiers of the Wehrmacht and fleeing Germans, to whom he himself had belonged. He wanted to relativize the view of May 8, 1945 as "Liberation Day" compared to Richard von Weizsäcker's 1985 speech . In the second, shorter essay, which he had previously prepared for a scientific conference and held there, Hillgruber described the Holocaust as the sole act of the National Socialists, without again raising the question of the right perspective of the German historian discussed in the first essay.

Jürgen Habermas's criticism

On July 11, 1986, the weekly newspaper Die Zeit published the article A kind of settlement of claims , which it presented on page 1 as "Kampfansage". In it Jürgen Habermas criticized "the apologetic tendencies in German contemporary history writing" (subtitle), namely in essays by Michael Stürmer, Andreas Hillgruber, Klaus Hildebrand and above all Ernst Nolte. He preceded his article with a quote from Nolte, according to which Hitler had committed an "Asian" act - the Holocaust - as a reaction to known Stalinist crimes, and research has so far ignored this connection.

He first criticized Michael Stürmer: In the sense of a neoconservative worldview, he had conjured up the danger of a “social civil war” in the pluralistic industrial society, which he was trying to counter with a “greater sense of purpose”. Stürmer therefore demanded from historical science to take on the earlier task of a religion and to produce and disseminate an image of history that is conducive to national consensus. That is why he sees it in the dilemma of "working off largely unconscious needs for inner-worldly sense creation ... in scientific methodology".

In accordance with this task, Andreas Hillgruber subjected himself to a “revisionist operation of his historical consciousness ” in his book Zweiierlei Untergang . As a historian, he dismissed the view of the resistance fighters of July 20, 1944 on the war situation at the time as an ethic of conviction from the outset and also allowed the liberation perspective of the victors only to apply to the Nazi victims , not to all Germans. Instead, he identified himself with the “desperate efforts” (Hillgruber) of the Wehrmacht to protect the East Germans from “revenge orgies” of the Red Army and their escape routes to the west. So he did not weigh the experiences of those involved against today's knowledge and thus excluded otherwise unavoidable questions of "morality in wars of extermination ". That is why he did not relate the Wehrmacht's struggle to hold the Eastern Front to the Holocaust, which was also why it could be continued. He tried to substantiate his initial thesis that the expulsion of the East Germans had not reacted to Nazi crimes with the Allied war goal of smashing Prussia, this smashing only to pave the way for the Soviet advance and the German Eastern Army only as a “protective screen a centuries-old German settlement area ”. In contrast, he only portrayed the Holocaust in a distant manner as the “end of European Judaism”: “There the unrevised, unexperienced clichés of jargon carried along from youth, here the bureaucratically frozen language.” He rejected social science explanations, only the “radical Racial doctrine “and only made Hitler responsible for their implementation and claims that, unlike the euthanasia murders, Hitler was isolated even in the leadership of the Nazi regime. Hillgruber did not explain historically that the majority of the population tolerated the Holocaust despite sufficient suspicions of it, but rather pushed it aside as a general human phenomenon.

Habermas then criticized a review by Klaus Hildebrandt: He had praised Ernst Nolte's work for taking the "seemingly unique" away from the history of the Nazi regime and classifying its "capacity to destroy" in the overall totalitarian development. Unlike Hillgruber, Nolte himself justified his revision of the depiction of the Nazi era with the fact that the winners largely wrote it and turned it into a negative myth. He cited an alleged “declaration of war” by Weizmann as a “good reason” for Hitler's belief that the enemy wanted to destroy him. He chose the Terror Pol Pot in Cambodia as the point of reference for today's historian and from there constructed a prehistory of the Holocaust from early socialism to the Gulag: “In this context of horror, the extermination of the Jews only appears as the unfortunate result of an understandable reaction to that what Hitler had to perceive as a threat of annihilation… ”In another essay, Nolte described Marxism and fascism as related reactions to modernization processes and thus separated an understandable intention of National Socialism from its crimes. Finally, in his essay intended for the Römerberg Talks, he reduced the singularity of the Holocaust "to 'the technical process of gassing" "and made it at least understandable as a response to (now continuing) Bolshevik threats of annihilation". These and other “unsavory tastings” showed strong anti-Semitic tendencies.

Apparently, the FAZ had printed Nolte's essay because it offered a solution to the dilemma described by Stürmer of finding a national identity for Germans without a nation state and reviving their national consciousness within the framework of NATO without national enemy images. In his opinion, this revisionist intention also influenced the composition and concepts of the founding commissions for the German Historical Museum and the House of History . Martin Broszat, on the other hand, convincingly demanded that the Nazi crimes be linked to everyday history in order to enable a distanced understanding instead of a brief moral judgment. While this type of historicization released “the power of a reflexive memory”, others like Stürmer wanted “to use a revisionist history for the national history of a conventional identity”. On the other hand, Hans-Ulrich Wehler recalled the role played by most German historians up to 1945, loyal to the state, loyal to power politics, or even complicit. Precisely because the Nazi regime has made it clear that every writing of history is dependent on the political context of its time, one cannot look at one's own past from any location. But only several different readings of this past made it possible “to make clear one's own identity-forming traditions in their ambivalences.” The younger generation's distance from national symbols also means an opportunity for a “post-conventional identity” based on universalistic values.

In the end, Habermas acknowledged the “political culture of the West”, to which only his generation opened up without reservation. In the process, the “ideology of the middle”, which the strikers and Hillgrubers tried to renew, had been overcome. He called for a constitutional patriotism that only became possible after the Holocaust: “Anyone who wants to drive out the blush of shame about this fact with a phrase like 'obsession with guilt' (Stürmer and Oppenheimer) [...] destroys the only reliable basis of our ties to the West . "

The debate

Attendees

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) first published articles by Michael Stürmer (April 25) and Ernst Nolte (June 6) as well as a little noticed lecture by Christian Meier (June 28), which focused on the Nazi era and its Significance for the German view of history, but not directly related to one another. Nolte's theses were sharply criticized by the Berlin historian Henning Köhler in a letter to the editor in the FAZ on June 26, 1986. The actual debate was opened by the article by Habermas in Die Zeit (July 11, 1986) as well as a criticism by Micha Brumlik of Hillgruber's book Zweiierlei Untergang of May 28, which the taz published on July 12. Three of the authors criticized by him in the FAZ initially responded to Habermas: Hildebrandt with a long article (July 31), Nolte (August 1) and Stürmer (August 16) with brief letters to the editor. Habermas answered Hildebrandt there on August 11th.

From the end of August, more and more authors who were not criticized by Habermas took a position in various German-language newspapers and magazines: Joachim Fest (FAZ, August 29), Karl Dietrich Bracher (FAZ, September 6), Eberhard Jäckel (Die Zeit, September 12) , Helmut Fleischer ( Nürnberger Zeitung , September 20), Jürgen Kocka ( Frankfurter Rundschau , September 23), Hagen Schulze (Die Zeit, September 26), Hanno Helbling ( Neue Zürcher Zeitung , September 26), Hans Mommsen (Merkur , September / October edition; sheets for German and international politics , October edition), Martin Broszat (Die Zeit, October 3).

Rudolf Augstein intensified the dispute by criticizing Hillgruber in particular ( Der Spiegel , October 6). Christian Meier ( Rheinischer Merkur , October 10), Thomas Nipperdey (Die Zeit, October 17) and Imanuel Geiss (Der Spiegel, October 20) reacted , before the main opponents Nolte (Die Zeit, October 31; FAZ, December 6th), now also Hillgruber (Rheinischer Merkur, October 31st; History in Science and Education , December edition), Habermas (Die Zeit, November 7th), Hildebrandt (Die Welt, November 22nd) and Stürmer (FAZ, November 26th) November) spoke. In addition, participating Heinrich August Winkler (Frankfurter Rundschau, November 14) again Christian Meier (Die Zeit, 20 November), Kurt Sontheimer (Rheinischer Merkur, November 21), Richard Lowenthal (FAZ, November 29), Wolfgang J . Mommsen (Frankfurter Rundschau, December 1st), Horst Möller (articles on conflict research, December 4th), Walter Euchner (Frankfurter Hefte, December edition ), Robert Leicht (Die Zeit, December 26th) and Joachim Perels (Frankfurter Rundschau, December 27th) . December). By the end of the year the dispute had reached a certain conclusion.

In February 1987 Imanuel Geiss wrote a résumé for the Evangelical Commentaries . On February 23, Habermas wrote a final "note" for the planned edition of the most important texts and statements of the dispute in Piper-Verlag . From April 15 to May 12, Nolte, Fest, Stürmer and Hillgruber reacted again there.

Criticism of Habermas

Some historians criticized Habermas' thesis of a revisionist trend in historical studies to relativize and level the Nazi crimes by comparing them with other mass crimes in favor of a uniform, nationally conservative view of history as an artificial construct. In doing so, they rejected his compilation of different positions, which so far did not represent a common research direction, his selection and citation style and the connection between historians' questions and political intentions.

Klaus Hildebrandt criticized Habermas' article as a "bad brew" of a "mixture of science and politics" and as a "black and white painting of progress and reaction in German historiography". He accused Habermas of false quotations and cited as an example: Hillgruber had described not only the “desperation” but also the “failure” of NSDAP officials; Habermas deliberately omitted this. British files backed Hillgruber's theses: Long before the Holocaust, the Allies had planned “terrifying” territorial and population shifts. Josef Stalin's long-term war goals and genocide plans “under the sign of class rule” in particular are comparable to those of Hitler “under the sign of racial rule”. Taking into account the feelings of German soldiers after Hitler's stop orders is a necessary “effort to understand” for historians their “tragedy” of preventing crimes of the Red Army and at the same time prolonging the Nazi regime. Hillgruber therefore rightly emphasized: “Liberation does not describe the reality of spring 1945.” Believing in a “secular redemption”, Habermas maintains a familiar view of history against new research results, which translates historiography into the “final state of utopia” with totalitarian features threatens: “Whoever erects such barriers in the service of the once and for all established, hinders research and pays homage to dogma.” Nolte's “longstanding questions and theses on the problem of the singularity and comparability of the National Socialist genocide” are also legitimate and not automatically politically usable . It is therefore not possible to ask questions about "parallels between the quality of extermination" of communism and National Socialism or about "models and traces of the 'murder of Jews' in history". The singularity of the Holocaust had long served to explain the "also not infrequently marked as incomparable consequences of the war"; This relativizes new research, according to which the Soviet, partly also British and US-American war aims “went far beyond” “to liberate, tame and educate the Germans.” Nolte's thesis that Chaim Weizmann's statements were a declaration of war with “understandable “Follow, did not mention Hildebrandt.

Joachim Fest responded on September 6, 1986: Since the late 1960s it has been customary to accuse deviating historical perceptions of complicity with “fascism”. It is not about scientific findings, but rather about "often merely suspected [...] motives". This “miserable practice” is being continued by Habermas, who puts some renowned historians under “NATO suspicion”. Firmly defended Nolte, who did not deny the singularity of the Nazi extermination actions, but placed it in a causal connection with Bolshevism:

“If it is not a form of academic dyslexia, the only remaining assumption is that an ideological prejudice first corrects things in order to then attack them. [...] Certainly the gas chambers [...] represent a particularly abhorrent form of mass murder [...]. But can it really be said that the mass liquidation by shooting in the neck, as it was common for years during the Red Terror , was qualitatively different? With all the differences, isn't the comparable one stronger? "

Karl Dietrich Bracher criticized the fact that the totalitarianism thesis was taboo and that the “fascism formula” had also been inflated by Nolte and Habermas at the time. As a result, what the left and right dictatorship had in common was suppressed, the question was so distorted and obscured.

On September 26, 1986, Hagen Schulze named Habermas a simpler who had presented a clear front position: here the enlightened liberals who had learned from a failed German history, there a clique of questionable historians who were promoted by the conservative side. But Habermas is "at the core of politics, actually morality , the attack is aimed at scientific practical and scientific theoretical positions". Science , however, has to do with the world of being, morals and politics with the world of ought. Habermas mixes "virtuoso direct with indirect quotations, and the incriminating statements about the alleged intentions of those four 'government historians' can be found almost entirely in the indirect part," they are Habermas' interpretations. In the Federal Republic of Germany, where “even a pro-government opinion does not have privileged access to the public”, a “unified and pious view of history” is not even possible. “Nothing speaks against a juicy polemic. But the discussion must not be conducted with the means of Manichaean reality reduction and artificial enemy images ”.

On October 31, 1986, Andreas Hillgruber presented his relationships with Nolte, Hildebrand, Stürmer and FAZ publisher Joachim Fest: He feels closely connected to Hildebrand, who "got into this attacked group" through a review in a specialist journal . He has a “friendly and collegial relationship” with Nolte and Stürmer, but he has nothing to do with their “completely different scientific approaches”. "Habermas 'mixes' everything together in order to prove his allegation of a ' revisionism ' that we allegedly jointly represent in contemporary history." The fact that Augstein called him a "constitutional Nazi" is "absolutely out of the question", but the mirror The publisher apparently has his allegations examined legally.

Imanuel Geiss also criticized Nolte's thesis of a causal link between the crimes of the Bolsheviks and the National Socialists "as scientifically untenable and morally strictly to be rejected". Most of all, however, he criticized Habermas, whom he saw as the actual cause of the dispute: there was actually no historians' dispute, but a "Habermas controversy". His and Augstein's allegations would amount to a "public moral execution" of those they criticized. Ultimately, this constitutes an attack on the social order of the Federal Republic of Germany, "because the nature of their attacks further escalated the polarization and with their› historical moralism ‹[...] would like to cut off free discussion to the right". A “historical classification of the intrinsically incomprehensible” is “not possible without historical comparisons and thus without a certain relativization”.

Support for Habermas

Habermas' thesis of a revisionist historian trend in the service of a national-conservative view of history was supported by some historians in the form that they criticized some of the positions used for their part, but did not take up other criticisms of Habermas.

In October 1986, Hans Mommsen criticized a tendency to displacement in West German historiography during the Nazi era. He also included the “theory of the ' totalitarian dictatorship '”, with which the conservatives had “fundamentally equated National Socialist dictatorship and communist rule”. In doing so, they described themselves as anti-fascist as well as marginalizing and criminalizing the left. Attempts are now being made to " make older authoritarian attitudes acceptable again through the historical relativization of National Socialism ".

Eberhard Jackel wrote in the time of 12 September 1986 that the question of the uniqueness of the Holocaust is not so critical. More important is the assertion of a causal connection between Bolshevik and National Socialist murders. On this point he criticizes Nolte's "abstruse [...] chain of associations" with the rat cage anecdote and the word about the "Asian deed". The fact that the Gulag came first, then Auschwitz, i.e. “ post hoc, ergo propter hoc ”, is not a sufficient logical conclusion, “unless it is possible to prove that Hitler's decision to kill the Jews was determined by such fears . “By contrast, Hitler said many times that he wanted to kill the Jews. There was no rat cage or fear of the Bolsheviks in it. “On the contrary, Hitler always believed that Soviet Russia, precisely because it was ruled by Jews, was a defenseless colossus on feet of clay. The Aryan was not afraid of Slavic and Jewish subhumans ”, but Hitler understood it“ excellently ” to“ mobilize the anti-Bolshevik fears of the bourgeoisie for his own purposes ”. Nolte's thesis of the causal nexus wanted to suggest "the thesis of a preventive murder".

On October 6, 1986, Rudolf Augstein listed some of the theses of Nolte and other scholars criticized by Habermas under the heading “The new Auschwitz lie”. He quoted the blurb of Hillgruber's two downfalls and wrote about Hillgruber: "Anyone who thinks and speaks like this is a constitutional Nazi, one that would exist without Hitler." Augstein accused Nolte of incorporating the "German Hitler crimes" in the "crimes of millennia" to want to make the Federal Republic a normal state again. “It is not for nothing that Ernst Nolte reveals to us” that the kulaks had been destroyed before Hitler came to power. “But Stalin's madness, unlike Hitler's, was a realistic madness [...] Hitler was one of the most credible politicians. He announced and carried out his program. "

Reactions from the main opponents

On August 1, 1986, Ernst Nolte initially only referred to two incidents mentioned by Habermas: Habermas had one-sidedly presented that the Jewish historian Saul Friedländer had demonstratively left a discussion group only because of him, Nolte. He, Nolte, was not summoned in writing, but verbally from the Römerberg Talks. This is probably due to an impetus from Habermas, who did not use his "positions of power" in publishing houses and committees for "a special kind of censorship office" for the first time.

Michael Stürmer accused Habermas of "sloppy research", "jumbled quotes" and "socialist nostalgia" on August 16, 1986. He, the striker, only answered the “German question” that had been given for a long time by deepening the “Atlantic-European ties”. History can only be left to others to establish identity; Habermas tried this “luckily in vain”. Stürmer quoted a sentence left out by Habermas from his criticized essay: History must "from the very beginning counter the legend, the myth, the partial abbreviation." Habermas' criticism is therefore "an imaginative invention"; he let "the end justify the means" for alleged enlightenment.

On October 31, 1986, Nolte explained his criticized essay. He took the subject of the past, which does not want to perish, as a metaphor for the present way of dealing with the Nazi era and described it as follows: Most of them are looking for Nazi features everywhere in the present, some see political interests and a distraction from current ones in them Questions and strived for a more objective picture of the Nazi era, but this was stigmatized as apologetics. This shows how the discovery of the Nazi crimes after 1945 shaped the Germans and what paradoxical, unexpected consequences this could have. He then tried to explain Hitler's motives for his worst crimes also from a non-passing past: a fear, widespread since 1920, of collective murders by the Bolsheviks and torture methods of the Cheka , about which Hitler learned from newspaper reports that he found credible. The Bolsheviks ideologically justified their murders as class murder; Both the left and the right in the Weimar Republic saw this as a historically new “Asian” act. Hitler transformed this “genuine experience” into a biological ascription of guilt against the Jews and thus justified another novelty, a genocide. The Holocaust was not a direct response to the Gulag archipelago, but rather a response conveyed through this interpretation. He took it for granted that this interpretation was inadmissible, absurd and wrong. Habermas and his supporter Eberhard Jäckel misinterpreted this as a direct justification for the reaction.

He, Nolte, also did not agree with David Irving's thesis of a Jewish declaration of war, but only pointed out that Weizmann's declaration, which historians ignored, “amounted to a declaration of war”, so that “internment can be understood as a countermeasure”. However, this should only have happened in accordance with international law . Therefore it is "infamous" to interpret this reference as a justification for the Holocaust. Jäckel's definition of the singularity of the Holocaust agrees with his term “genocide”; however, a public order from the Führer to murder all Jews is unproven. For this, Hitler lacked the power out of consideration for the remnants of the liberal system. In contrast, "extermination of the bourgeoisie" and "liquidation of the kulaks" were publicly propagated. Habermas described this as an “expulsion”, out of the question, and Jäckel played it down by pointing out that not every bourgeoisie was murdered. He himself believes that nationalism should not be reversed merely by anti-nationalism, which is mainly looking for the guilt of collective opponents. The “fundamental guilt of the collectivist attribution of guilt” must be viewed jointly from all sides. In order to have a say in this, Habermas must learn to "listen even when he feels his prejudices challenged."

reception

Germany

There is still no consensus in Germany about the outcome of the dispute and how it should be assessed. In 1993, the political scientist Martin Greiffenhagen doubted that "such intellectual battles for the formation of a historical consciousness do anything at all that must be deeply rooted". If the historians' dispute had any public impact at all, it had strengthened right-wing extremist positions .

Henning Köhler said in 2002 that in the historians' dispute the thesis of the uniqueness of the Nazi crimes and their paramount importance for German history in the sense of an "internalization of division " had prevailed:

"Auschwitz took on the meaning of a singular crime of the century, for which the Germans were subjected to a just punishment with the division of their state."

Hans-Ulrich Wehler also stated in 2008 that the opponents Nolte, Stürmer and Hillgrubers had triumphed in the balance sheet, but assessed this positively: "The self-critical attitude with which the laboriously established political culture of the Federal Republic was defended" has won through Historians' dispute broadened. "Overall, this strengthened the willingness to defend the socio-political system of the Federal Republic against future challenges."

Wolfgang Wippermann sums it up in 2006: "The 'causal nexus' was rejected by the vast majority of those in the discussion, often on the grounds that German guilt and responsibility would be relativized if the German crimes were only a kind of self-defense reaction." Wippermann referred to Dan Diner , Hans-Ulrich Wehler and Richard J. Evans .

The contemporary historian Klaus Große Kracht denies that the historians' dispute, which was carried out with so much polemics and mass media attention, produced empirical or analytical-reflexive results: It was a conflict within a certain generation of historians who could no longer have their various interpretive approaches agreed internally - " perhaps also because in their own biographies layers of experience from the time of National Socialism overlapped with Federal Republican career patterns ”.

In 2011, the ancient historian Egon Flaig renewed the allegations at the time that Habermas falsified quotations, dramatized positions and tore them out of context without knowing their theoretical requirements. These “tricks”, otherwise reserved for “rag journalism”, have intentionally escalated the debate in which Habermas rose to become the moral inquisitor. This was a reign of "moral terror" through "the pestilential virulence of political correctness and Gutmenschentums reinforced with its specific intelligence". In their own contributions, Heinrich-August Winkler and Micha Brumlik reacted to Flaig's contribution and rejected it as a polemic.

As became known in 2020 through an article in the Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte , Jörg Villain, a major historian at the Ministry for State Security of the GDR , wrote an analysis of the historians' dispute at the end of 1988. In it he had called for vigilance against historical revisionism and for an offensive refutation of the references to Stalinist crimes that had been variously expressed in the historians' dispute. These would consistently be “invented atrocity propaganda ” and anti-communist agitation. The fact that the “right-wing conservative masterminds” could not have prevailed was also attributed to the “peace policy offensive of the socialist community of states ”: World socialism was gaining more and more power.

Other states

According to Philipp Stelzel, American historians supported the criticism of Nolte's theses: “American historians were unanimous in their opposition to Ernst Nolte's apologetics regarding the uniqueness of National Socialism and the Holocaust.” In 2011, Timothy Snyder viewed both sides critically: “In the historians' dispute everyone had Wrong. Jürgen Habermas had prescribed a framework within which the discussion had to take place. So there was ideological censorship combined with relatively little knowledge. But since then there has been incredible progress in Germany in terms of the increase in knowledge about that time. The continued work on the subject made the Holocaust worse on the one hand, and more plausible than fact on the other. If you see it as metaphysically unique, you withdraw it from history - and what else can you do then? "

The German historians' dispute was followed by similar controversies in other countries. In Historisk Tidsskrift, the historian Øystein Sørensen took the German debate as an opportunity to inquire into the connection between historiography and national identity in Norway . Above all, it was about narrowing Norwegian historiography to the resistance movement while appropriating its moral valuation. Nils Johan Ringdal also criticized the fact that Norwegian historiography, according to Magne Skodvin, had not broken away from the perspective of resistance. Hans Fredrik Dahl called for a more neutral view of the ideology and motives of the Nasjonal Samling , who should not be seen as traitors, but in this sense as revolutionaries. This was u. a. criticized by Arnfinn Moland, who links moral valuation in historiography with Norwegian reasons of state .

literature

Primary texts
  • Ernst Reinhard Piper (Ed.): "Historikerstreit". Documentation of the controversy about the uniqueness of the National Socialist extermination of the Jews. Piper Verlag, Munich / Zurich 1987, ISBN 3-492-10816-4 .
  • Ernst Nolte: The passing of the past. Answer to my critics in the so-called historians' dispute. Ullstein, Berlin / Frankfurt / M. 1987, ISBN 3-550-07217-1 .
course
  • Reinhard Kühnl (ed.): The past that does not pass. The “Historians Debate”. Documentation, presentation and criticism. Pahl-Rugenstein, Cologne 1987, ISBN 3-7609-1114-5 .
  • Imanuel Geiss: The Habermas Controversy. A German dispute. Siedler, Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-88680-328-7 .
  • State Center for Political Education North Rhine-Westphalia (Hrsg.): Dispute German history. Consciousness of history and the present in the 80s. Hobbing, Essen 1988, ISBN 3-920460-39-1 .
  • Klaus Oesterle, Siegfried Schiele: Historians' dispute and political education. (Didactic series of the State Center for Political Education Baden-Württemberg) JB Metzler, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-476-30312-8 .
  • Richard J. Evans: In the shadow of Hitler? Historians' dispute and coming to terms with the past in the Federal Republic. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1991, ISBN 3-518-11637-1 .
  • Jürgen Peter : The historians' dispute and the search for a national identity in the eighties. Peter Lang Verlag, Frankfurt am Main / New York 1995, ISBN 3-631-49294-4 ( full text PDF, 893 kB).
  • Wolfgang Wippermann: Controversial past. Facts and controversies about National Socialism. Espresso Verlag, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-88520-717-6 .
  • Ulrich Herbert: The historians' dispute. Political, scientific, biographical aspects. In: Martin Sabrow, Ralph Jessen, Klaus Große Kracht (eds.): Contemporary history as a history of controversy. Great controversies since 1945. Beck, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-49473-0 , pp. 94–113.
  • Nicolas Berg: The Holocaust and the West German Historians. Exploration and memory. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2003, ISBN 3-89244-610-5 .
  • Klaus Große Kracht : The historians' dispute: Trench warfare in historical culture. In: Klaus Große Kracht: The quarreling guild. Historical controversies in Germany after 1945. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-525-36280-3 , pp. 91–114 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  • Christian Mentel: Historians' dispute . In: Wolfgang Benz (Ed.) Handbook of Antisemitism , Vol. 4: Events, Decrees, Controversies . de Gruyter Saur, Berlin / New York 2011, ISBN 978-3-598-24076-8 , p. 166 ff.
Opinions
  • Dan Diner (Ed.): Is National Socialism History? On historicization and historians' dispute. Fischer TB, Frankfurt am Main 1987, ISBN 3-596-24391-2 .
  • Hans-Ulrich Wehler: Disposal of the German Past? A polemical essay on the “historians' dispute”. Beck, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-406-33027-4 ( table of contents , PDF, 5 kB).
  • Eike Hennig: To the historians' dispute. What does fascism mean and at what end does one study? Athenaeum, Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-610-08490-1 .
  • Imanuel Geiss: The hysterical dispute. An unpolemical essay. Bouvier, Bonn and Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-416-02370-6 .
  • Michael Schneider : “People's Education” from the right. Ernst Nolte, the efforts to "historicize" National Socialism and the "self-confident nation". Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Bonn 1995, ISBN 3-86077-463-8 ( full text as electronic ed. , Library of the FES , 1998).
reception
  • Hans-Hermann Wiebe: The present of the past: Historians' dispute and memory work. (Volume 2 of time-critical contributions of the Evangelical Academy North Elbe) Verlag Wäser, Bad Segeberg 1989, ISBN 3-87883-039-4 .
  • Ralf Dahrendorf, Gina Thomas (Eds.): The unresolved past: a debate in Germany history: a conference. Wheatland Foundation, Weidenfeld and Nicolson Verlag, London 1990, ISBN 0-297-82033-8 .
  • Gerrit Dworok, "" Historikerstreit "and the emergence of a nation. Origins and interpretation of a Federal Republican conflict." Cologne, Weimar, Vienna 2015, ISBN 978-3-412-50198-3 .
  • Barbara Hahn, Philippe Despoix (ed.): The German Historikerstreit from a Central European perspective , In: OstEuropaForum 77, Junius Verlag GmbH, Hamburg 1989, ISBN 3-88506-003-5 .
  • Charles S. Maier: The Present of the Past. History and National Identity of the Germans. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1992, ISBN 3-593-34523-4 .
  • Dominick LaCapra : 1986: The Historians' Debate (Historikerstreit) takes place over the status and representation of the Nazi period, and more specifically of the Holocaust, in Germany's past . In: Sander L. Gilman , Jack Zipes (Ed.): Yale companion to Jewish writing and thought in German culture 1096-1996. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1997, pp. 812-819.
  • Steffen Kailitz : The culture of political interpretation as reflected in the historians' dispute. What's right? What's left? VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2001, ISBN 3-531-13701-8 .
  • Steffen Kailitz (ed.): The present of the past. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2008, ISBN 978-3-531-16132-7 ( review ).
  • Volker Kronenberg : Contemporary history, science and politics: the “historians' dispute” - 20 years later. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden, 2008, ISBN 978-3-531-16120-4 ( limited preview in the Google book search).

Web links

Wiktionary: Historikerstreit  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Original texts

review

criticism

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ulrich Herbert: The Historikerstreit. Political, scientific, biographical aspects. In: Martin Sabrow, Ralph Jessen, Klaus Große Kracht (eds.): Contemporary history as a history of controversy. Great controversies since 1945. CH Beck, Munich 2003, p. 101.
  2. ^ Andreas Hillgruber: Political history in a modern view. In: Historische Zeitschrift 216 (1973), pp. 529-552 ( doi : 10.1524 / hzhz.1973.216.jg.529 ).
    Klaus Hildebrand: History or “Social History”? The Need for a Political Historiography of International Relations. In: Historische Zeitschrift 223 (1976), pp. 328-357 ( doi : 10.1524 / hzhz.1976.223.jg.328 ).
  3. ↑ Hans Ulrich Wehler: Modern Political History or "Great Cabinet Politics"? In: Geschichte und Gesellschaft 1 (1975), pp. 344-369 ( abstract ).
    Hans Ulrich Wehler: Criticism and critical anti-criticism. In: Historische Zeitschrift 225 (1977), pp. 347-384 ( doi : 10.1524 / hzhz.1977.225.jg.347 ).
    Summary: Eckart Conze: Modern Political History. Aporias of controversy. In: Guido Müller (Ed.): Germany and the West. International Relations in the 20th Century. Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 1988, ISBN 3-515-07251-9 , pp. 19-30.
  4. ↑ Martin Broszat: Plea for a historicization of National Socialism. In: Mercury. German Journal for European Thinking 39 (1985), pp. 373-385.
  5. ↑ Jürgen Habermas (Ed.): Keywords on the spiritual situation of the time. (1979) 2 volumes, Suhrkamp, ​​3rd edition, Frankfurt am Main 1980, ISBN 3-518-11000-4 , foreword p. 21.
    Hans Mommsen: The burden of the past , volume 1, p. 164-184.
    Wolfgang J. Mommsen: “We're somebody     again.” Changes in the political self- image of Germans , Volume 1, pp. 185–209.
    Hans-Ulrich Wehler: History Today , Volume 2, pp. 709–753.
  6. ↑ Christoph Stölzl (Ed.): German Historical Museum. Ideas - controversies - perspectives. Propylaen Verlag, Frankfurt am Main / Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-549-06682-1 .
  7. ↑ Address by Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker on May 8, 1985 at the memorial hour in the plenary hall of the German Bundestag (DHG) ( Memento from April 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ Klaus Große Kracht: The historians' dispute: Trench warfare in the historical culture. In: Klaus Große Kracht: The quarreling guild. Historical controversies in Germany after 1945. Göttingen 2005, pp. 91–114; similar to Richard J. Evans: In the shadow of Hitler? Frankfurt am Main 1991, pp. 27-40.
  9. ↑ HW Koch (ed.): Aspects of the Third Reich , Palgrave Macmillan, London 1985, ISBN 0-312-00381-1 , pp. 17-38.
  10. ↑ Rudolf Augstein et al. a .: Historians' dispute. Documentation of the controversy about the uniqueness of the National Socialist extermination of the Jews. Piper, Munich / Zurich 1987, pp. 13–35, citations p. 24.
  11. ↑ Ernst Nolte: The past that does not want to pass. A speech that could be written but not delivered. FAZ, June 6, 1986; quoted from: Ernst Reinhard Pieper (Ed.): Historikerstreit. Documentation of the controversy about the uniqueness of the National Socialist extermination of the Jews. Piper, Munich / Zurich 1987, p. 45; Full text online in the LeMO .
  12. ↑ Ernst Nolte: Past that does not want to pass. In: Ernst Reinhard Pieper (Ed.): Historikerstreit. Documentation of the controversy about the uniqueness of the National Socialist extermination of the Jews. Piper, Munich / Zurich 1987, pp. 39-46.
  13. ↑ Michael Stürmer: History in a land without history. (FAZ, April 25, 1986) In: Eugen Rudolf Piper (Ed.): Historikerstreit. Documentation of the controversy about the uniqueness of the National Socialist extermination of the Jews. Piper, Munich / Zurich 1987, pp. 36-38.
  14. ↑ Andreas Hillgruber: Two types of downfall: The smashing of the German Empire and the end of European Jewry. Corso bei Siedler, Berlin 1986, ISBN 3-88680-187-X , p. 24.
  15. ↑ Jürgen Habermas: A kind of damage settlement . In: DIE ZEIT, July 11, 1986, No. 29.
  16. ↑ Jürgen Habermas: A kind of damage settlement. The apologetic tendencies in German contemporary history. (Die Zeit, July 11, 1986) In: Ernst Reinhard Piper (Ed.): Historikerstreit. Documentation of the controversy about the uniqueness of the National Socialist extermination of the Jews. Piper, Munich / Zurich 1987, pp. 62-68.
  17. ↑ Henning Köhler: Adventurous Dreischritt , in: FAZ from June 26, 1986, p. 12.
  18. ^ Ernst Reinhard Piper (Ed.): Historikerstreit. Documentation of the controversy about the uniqueness of the National Socialist extermination of the Jews. Piper, Munich / Zurich 1987, pp. 5-9 (table of contents).
  19. ↑ Joachim Fest: The owed memory. On the controversy about the incomparability of the National Socialist mass crimes. In: FAZ. September 6, 1986; Reprinted in: Historikerstreit. Documentation of the controversy about the uniqueness of the National Socialist extermination of the Jews. Piper, Munich / Zurich 1987, pp. 100-101, 103.
  20. ^ Karl Dietrich Bracher: What we have in common has been faded out. In: FAZ. September 6, 1986; quoted from Rudolf Augstein a. a .: Historians' dispute. Documentation of the controversy about the uniqueness of the National Socialist extermination of the Jews. Piper, Munich / Zurich 1987, p. 113.
  21. ↑ Hagen Schulze: Questions that we have to ask. No historical liability without national identity. In: The time. September 26, 1986; quoted from Rudolf Augstein a. a .: Historians' dispute. Documentation of the controversy about the uniqueness of the National Socialist extermination of the Jews. Piper, Munich / Zurich 1987, pp. 143, 144, 147, 149.
  22. ↑ There is no ban on questions for research. Interview with Andreas Hillgruber, In: Rheinischer Merkur. / Christ and the World , October 31, 1986; quoted from Rudolf Augstein a. a .: Historians' dispute. Documentation of the controversy about the uniqueness of the National Socialist extermination of the Jews. Piper, Munich / Zurich 1987, pp. 233, 235.
  23. ↑ Imanuel Geiss: The Habermas Controversy. A German dispute. Siedler, Berlin 1988.
  24. ↑ Imanuel Geiss: On the historians' dispute. In: Evangelical Commentaries. Issue 2, February 1987; quoted from Rudolf Augstein a. a .: Historians' dispute. Documentation of the controversy about the uniqueness of the National Socialist extermination of the Jews. Piper, Munich / Zurich 1987, p. 373-380, the citations p. 375, 378-379.
  25. ↑ Hans Mommsen: Searching for the ›Lost History‹? Comments on the historical self-image of the Federal Republic , in: Merkur. German Journal for European Thinking , September / October 1986, pp. 864–874; quoted from Rudolf Augstein among others: Historikerstreit. Documentation of the controversy about the uniqueness of the National Socialist extermination of the Jews. Piper, Munich / Zurich 1987, pp. 157, 159, 170.
  26. ↑ Eberhard Jäckel: The miserable practice of the subordinates. The uniqueness of the National Socialist crimes cannot be denied. In: The time. September 12, 1986; quoted from Rudolf Augstein among others: Historikerstreit. Documentation of the controversy about the uniqueness of the National Socialist extermination of the Jews. Piper, Munich / Zurich 1987, pp. 119-121.
  27. ^ Rudolf Augstein: The new Auschwitz lie. In: Der Spiegel, October 6, 1986 ( online , accessed October 4, 2010).
  28. ^ Martin and Sylvia Greiffenhagen: A difficult fatherland. On political culture in united Germany , List, Munich and Leipzig 1993, p. 250.
  29. ^ Henning Köhler, Germany on the way to itself. A story of the century . Hohenheim-Verlag, Stuttgart 2002, p. 640.
  30. ^ Hans-Ulrich Wehler: German History of Society , Volume 5: Federal Republic and GDR , CH Beck, Munich 2008, p. 287.
  31. ↑ Wolfgang Wippermann: "German Catastrophe". Meinecke, Ritter and the first historians' dispute . In: Gisela Bock , Daniel Schönpflug (Ed.): Friedrich Meinecke in his time . Steiner, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-515-08962-4 , pp. 177-191, here p. 177.
  32. ↑ Klaus Große Kracht: Debate: The Historikerstreit , on Docupedia ( online )
  33. ↑ Egon Flaig: The Habermas Method. In: FAZ, July 13, 2011, supplement “Geisteswissenschaften”, No. 160, p. N4. (online) Abridged version of an article from: Mathias Brodkorb (Ed.): Singular Auschwitz? Ernst Nolte, Jürgen Habermas and 25 years of “Historikerstreit”. Adebor Verlag, Banzkow 2011, ISBN 978-3-9809375-9-7 , pp. 67-94.
  34. ^ Heinrich-August Winkler: Hellas instead of Holocaust. In: DIE ZEIT, July 21, 2011, No. 30 (online)
  35. ↑ Micha Brumlik: Hellenic superman. In: taz online, July 15, 2011 (online)
  36. ↑ Christina Morina : Between repression and appropriation. The historians' dispute and the GDR . In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 68, issue 2 (2020), p. 249–275, the quotations p. 272 ​​f. (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  37. ^ Philipp Stelzel: Working Toward a Common Goal? American Views on German Historiography and German-American Scholarly Relations during the 1960s . In: Central European History 41, 2008, pp. 639-671, here p. 641 ( doi : 10.1017 / S0008938908000873 ).
    See, for example, Charles Maier : The Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust, and German National Identity . Harvard University Press, Cambridge 1988; Gordon A. Craig : Review of Ernst Nolte, The European Civil War . In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 36, 1988, pp. 772–773.
  38. ↑ Michael Freund: "One should look at all crimes" . In: Der Standard , October 18, 2011.
  39. ↑ Susanne Maerz: Treason versus Resistance - Stations and Problems of “ Coming to terms with the Past” in Norway In: NORDEUROPAforum (2005: 2), pp. 43–73.