Guilt cult

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

German right-wing extremists , representatives of the New Right and right-wing populists refer to the culture of remembrance of the crimes of Nazi Germany that emerged after 1945 , especially the memory of the Holocaust, as the “guilt cult” , “guilt cult” or “cult with guilt” . This political battle term is part of a historical revisionism , which fends off, devalues, denies or belittles the German responsibility for the Nazi crimes and their consequences. He demagogically portrays the memory of the Nazi era as the oppression of Germany, which should permanently burden future German generations with an alleged collective guilt , humiliate their national pride and prevent their self-determined future. In connection with this, the Nazi crimes are often offset against war crimes committed by the Allies in World War II . With the suppression of the Nazi era, nationalist political goals are pursued.

Historical background

The “guilt cult” thesis goes back to the struggle of former National Socialists and their supporters since 1946 against denazification . In the course of this, the Allies had downgraded most of those affected to “ fellow travelers ” in 1948 and left the examination procedures to the authorities of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1950 , who then further restricted them. Nonetheless, right-wing extremist parties and associations ( German Community , German Reich Party , All-German Bloc / Federation of Expellees and Disenfranchised , Socialist Reich Party and others) called for an end to the denazification. They claimed that this was based on “ victorious justice ” and a blanket collective guilt charge with which the victorious powers wanted to defame the German people as a whole, punish them arbitrarily and culturally “decompose” them. At the same time, they demanded that all Nazi perpetrators who had already been arrested and convicted be released, their prosecution ceased and the economic consequences of denazification offset. In doing so, they equated the main perpetrators who were sentenced to death and executed in the Nuremberg trial of the main war criminals with Wehrmacht soldiers who had died in the war. Even bourgeois parties like the FDP at the time called for an end to denazification and compared this with the Nazi crimes.

At the time, most Germans shared this rejection and called for a " final stroke " for the Investigation of Nazi period. In representative surveys until 1949, only 20 percent of the West German population supported consistent punishment of Nazi perpetrators. Large majorities not only rejected specific individual complicity in Nazi crimes that could be attributed to criminal law, but also denied Germany's overall responsibility for the Second World War and its consequences. Many blamed the war on a few individual perpetrators of the Nazi regime, demonized them and declared themselves their "seduced" victims. In addition, they blamed the Allied military administrations for the emergencies of the post-war period and denied their connection with the German warfare and defeat. They accused the occupying powers of collective guilt which they had never officially represented.

In his dissertation (1949) entitled “The Conservative Revolution ”, Armin Mohler , pioneer of the New Right, portrayed various anti-democratic authors of the Weimar Republic mainly as victims, not forerunners of National Socialism, in order to rehabilitate their ideas after 1945. In the 1950s and 1960s, he and his colleague Caspar von Schrenck-Notzing tried to spread these ideas as a future- oriented leading culture for Germany's “national identity”. They formulated the basic theses of the "cult of guilt" rhetoric: the US had the Germans with denazification and re-education to liberalism forced to Germany to control permanently and to gain a moral dominance in world politics. They would have given German liberal intellectuals and media a position of power. This has led to a hysterical "coping hype" and to the "hereticization" of German tradition, which ideologically weakens and endangers German national awareness of the Soviet Union . A new power-conscious elite must immediately end Germany's coming to terms with the past and its ties to the West in order to stop the dissolution of national self-confidence in apolitical consumerism . In the Spiegel Affair in 1962, Mohler attacked the entire West German confrontation with the Nazi era as "national masochism", at the same time relativized the uniqueness of the Holocaust and compared the critical review of German traditions with centuries of persecution of the Jews. He thus indicated a revisionist assessment of the Nazi regime without expressing it.

Marcel Hepp , a student of Mohler and later a representative of the CSU , founded the right-wing conservative student group Katholische Front in 1958 , later renamed the Conservative Front . She attacked the reappraisal of the Nazi and war times by means of theatrical exaggeration and misrepresentation, for example as the “ flagellar movement in the 20th century”. The group is considered a forerunner of the New Right, whose self-image includes the defense against memory under the catchphrase “guilt cult”.

With similar polemics, the national conservative wing of the CDU and CSU refused to deal with the involvement of many Germans in the Nazi crimes. In 1969, the CSU chairman Franz Josef Strauss demanded "an end to the eternal coming to terms with the past as a social permanent penitent task". In 1986, Strauss demanded that the Nazi past "disappear into oblivion or immersion". It is true that German politics have made “mistakes that extend into the realm of criminality”, but “the eternal coming to terms with the past as a societal repentance task paralyzes a people!” It is wrong “if the Germans always have to regard themselves as the whipping boys in the world ... we are a normal, capable, productive nation that has had the misfortune of twice having bad policies at the top of their country. "

With this, Strauss contradicted Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker , who on May 8, 1985, with his widely acclaimed speech on the 40th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe and the National Socialist tyranny , had said: “The execution of the crime was in the hands of fewer ... But every German could witness what Jewish fellow citizens had to endure, from cold indifference to hidden intolerance to open hatred ... When the whole truth of the Holocaust came out at the end of the war, too many of us claimed that we had neither known nor even suspected anything. " Weizsäcker had helped a different view of history to break through: The surrender of the German Wehrmacht was a liberation from National Socialism , especially for the Nazi victims , and therefore a public holiday. The real defeat of Germany (its democracy) was the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists on January 30, 1933.

Since then, nationalist groups have opposed this German social consensus during the Nazi era with the talk of the “guilt cult”. This motif connects new rights to the magazine Junge Freiheit (founded in 1986), right-wing extremist “ Free Comradeships ” and the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD). Since the German reunification in 1990, the knowledge of the processes of the National Socialist extermination policy has expanded considerably, and since 1994 Holocaust denial has been punishable in Germany under Section 130 of the Criminal Code. Since then, German-speaking right-wing extremists and history revisionists have mostly avoided direct denial of the Holocaust and instead increasingly attacked forms of remembrance culture and remembrance. The thesis of a “guilt cult” on the Nazi crimes, which should be averted and abolished, has since appeared again and again in various daily political contexts.

Use since 1980

republican

The journalist Franz Schönhuber published his autobiography I Was There in 1981 , which made the West German commemoration of the Nazi era contemptible in the form of an apologetic self-accusation as a “guilt cult”. In doing so, he prepared the founding of the party The Republicans (1983), which temporarily came to some state parliaments and the European Parliament .

Martin Walser

Holocaust memorial in Berlin

After the capital city resolution of the Bundestag in 1991, a new all-German debate arose about the appropriate memory of the Holocaust. Older plans for a Holocaust memorial in Berlin were taking shape. The memorial for the murdered Jews of Europe , which was passed by a large majority in the Bundestag in 1999 , was completed and inaugurated in 2005. There was considerable resistance in the run-up, some of which was directed against the drafts and partly against the project as such.

A prominent opponent of the memorial was the writer Martin Walser . In his acceptance speech for the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (October 11, 1998), he questioned the historical and political consensus for Holocaust remembrance, the protection of victims and the fight against anti-Semitism in the German educated bourgeoisie. He criticized the memorial as a monstrous “monumentalization” and “nightmare the size of a football field”, the public Holocaust commemoration as “instrumentalization” and “permanent representation of our shame”, as a “blackmailing threat” and “means of intimidation” by the media and intellectuals that the German people with the “ Morale Club Auschwitz ”. He called for the way of commemorating the Holocaust to be left to the individual conscience. Right-wing extremists took up Walser's speech enthusiastically. Manfred Roeder saw it as the "beginning of the liberation of Germany".

Ignatz Bubis ( Central Council of Jews in Germany ) was almost the only one who initially contradicted Walser in public. Bubis saw in his advance the danger that the defense against public Holocaust memories, which until now had only been represented by right-wing extremists, would be normalized. The fight against anti-Semitism and xenophobia should not be blamed on the German Jews alone, since this is and will remain the task of the whole of German society. Walser appealed against Bubis to thousands of letters of approval that he had received during the controversy. However, anti-Semitism researchers found a large number of well-known nationalist and anti-Semitic stereotypes, including the reversal of guilt and the exclusion of Jews from a national collective. German Jews experienced increased attacks during and after the debate. According to Lars Rensmann , secondary anti-Semitism has increased since then and is more uninhibited. It is assumed that Jews instrumentalized the Holocaust for their own benefit and disrupted the self-reconciliation of the Germans with their nation, because Jews were reminiscent of the Holocaust by their very existence.

New rights

The journalist Heinz Nawratil , member of the board of the historical revisionist contemporary history research center Ingolstadt (ZFI), published a black book of expulsions of Germans from formerly German eastern regions in 1982 . In it he referred to these processes as planned "eviction crimes ", exaggerated the number of victims many times over and presented them as a genocide by the Allies comparable to the Holocaust . According to his own statement in the right-wing National-Zeitung , he wanted the "cult with guilt". fight. In his book under this title (2006) he described an alleged “evocation of the unique German guilt” since the 1950s, which had generated “debt neuroses and self-hatred” that were dangerous for Germany. He blamed “ left -wing radicalism and anti-Germanism” and claimed that up to 80 percent of German mass media were left-wing. While Erika Steinbach ( Association of Expellees ) recommended the book and adopted its theses, recognized historians during the Nazi era such as Martin Broszat from the Institute for Contemporary History rejected Nawratil's historical revisionist claims in detail.

In 2001 the author Antonia Grunenberg claimed that the Germans suffered from an overwhelming "lust for guilt" from which they had to confidently free themselves. She took up the right-wing extremist thesis of an alleged "national masochism".

In the 2006 debate about statements by the then CDU MP Martin Hohmann about an alleged “Jewish perpetrator ” that was classified as anti-Semitic , the Saxon CDU member of the Bundestag Henry Nitzsche said: Patriotism is needed “to finally get off the guilt cult” and thus “Germany never is again ruled by multicultural queens in Berlin ”. Nitzsche had already attracted attention with right-wing extremist statements and hints, but was not excluded from the CDU, but was re-elected. Because of his new statement, the CDU initiated his party exclusion this time, which he anticipated with his resignation. Nitzsche then attacked the CDU in the new right-wing magazines Junge Freiheit and German military magazine .

In 2005 Karlheinz Weißmann spoke for the State and Economic Political Society on the subject of " Coming to terms with the past as a political instrument", claiming a "warping of history", a "guilt neurosis" of the Germans and their alleged "joy in self-mortification". Josef Schüßlburner described the Berlin Holocaust memorial in the “Junge Freiheit” as a “coping temple and victory memorial of the American civil religion”. In 2007 the new right Institute for State Policy (IfS) published the text “My honor is called repentance”. The Germans ' pride in guilt emerged, in which various authors attacked the culture of remembrance during the Nazi era with expressions such as “guilt cult”, “lust for guilt” and “pride in guilt”. In 2009 the new right online magazine Blaue Narzisse wrote : "The guilt cult as a Holocaust religion is today the state religion of the Federal Republic."

In 2009 Thorsten Hinz wrote in Junge Freiheit that the “most powerful demon of our time” was “the civil religion in which Auschwitz took the place of God”. In another text, the same author attributed the growing self-confidence of Muslim functionaries to a German “guilt cult” that is now being exploited by the Islamic associations.

In 2012 Manfred Kleine-Hartlage claimed in an article on Young Freedom that a “guilt cult”, “guilt pride” or “guilty imprisonment ” was celebrated in Germany. The legal prohibition of Holocaust denial is a totalitarian means of establishing a “anti-German” historical image “of progress towards a one world ” and thus “ neutralizing the resistance to Muslim mass immigration”. According to the historian Michael Sturm , this rhetoric exemplifies a conspiracy-theoretical understanding of history by the New Right.

In 2016, the right-wing extremist Austrian magazine Die Aula described the German culture of remembrance as “guilt cult and wallowing on the darker side of German history”. She welcomed the proposal by the new right-wing author Reinhard Uhle-Wettler to celebrate the anniversary of the liberation from National Socialism (May 8th) instead as a “day of resistance against the German culture of guilt and penance”.

Martin Sellner , head of the right-wing extremist Identitarian Movement in Austria , calls the confrontation with the Nazi past in public appearances "guilt cult". At a meeting called by Compact magazine in Berlin on September 25, 2017, he spoke of a “great peoples' movement” with a view to flight and immigration and commented: “We are tired of your multicultural world, we are tired of your school cult. Our uprising has only just begun. ”He thus combined defenses against memories and attacks against migrants and refugees for a“ fortress Europe ”.

NPD

The right-wing extremist NPD, founded in 1964, has been fighting Holocaust remembrance since its inception. On May 8, 2005, the 60th day of liberation from National Socialism, it called for a nationwide demonstration under the motto "60 years of liberation lies - an end to the guilt cult". This should lead past the Berlin Holocaust memorial, which should be opened on May 11th. On May 6, the Berlin Higher Administrative Court allowed the meeting, but forbade the requested demonstration route because the motto “degrades the millions of Jewish victims of National Socialism to the object of a cult and at the same time denies that the surrender is an act of liberation for the Jews persecuted by National Socialism was. “The Federal Constitutional Court upheld the judgment.

At the NPD event, NPD boss Udo Voigt spoke in front of around 2500 right-wing extremists of a “guilt cult show”, a “gigantic diversionary maneuver” and “psychological war” of the winners “against the German people”, of “liars and falsifiers of history” "Brainwashing process" and a "re-education soup" to dominate and exploit the German worker and industry. The speech was directed against Richard von Weizsäcker's groundbreaking speech of May 8, 1985 and against the partial compensation of former Nazi slave laborers initiated in 2005 . Federal President Horst Köhler had previously included this in the annual commemoration for the first time in his Bundestag speech. The federal government and the state of Berlin also jointly organized a “Day of Democracy” as a public festival at short notice. All parties represented in the Bundestag and 15,000 citizens who blocked the planned route of the NPD demonstration took part. This was seen as an expression of a broad, this time successful protest by civil society against right-wing extremist historical revisionism.

In 2009, the NPD representative Jürgen Gansel published a propaganda pamphlet under the heading Der Spaltpilz in the Jewish guilt cult headquarters. What was meant was the Central Council of Jews in Germany . Gansel claimed that “the Central Council Jews” took every subsequent German post-war generation “into grotesque but useful debt bondage ” in order to extort new reparations . For them, the Central Council was a "post-war German shadow government, the guilt cult center with an assumed monopoly of victims, the inquisition authority for moral ostracism and criminal prosecution of unpleasant expressions of opinion." To this end, he cited the controversial book "The Holocaust Industry" by Norman Finkelstein .

In 2010 the NPD placed polemics against the alleged “ anti-German guilt cult” and “one-sided mourning work ”, which led to the “self-destruction of our nation”, at the center of its historical-political rhetoric. Leading NPD representatives publicly polemicized against the annual Day of Remembrance for the Victims of National Socialism (January 27). So said Karl Richter (NPD Munich) on 18 January 2010: The "national opposition" fight the memorial as "ritual permanent stigmatization of Germans to, people of perpetrators. '" Israel has “no exclusive rights to commemorate the Holocaust”. Udo Pastörs described this in the state parliament of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania on January 28th as a "one-sided guilt cult" and "Auschwitz projection" and "victory of the lie over the truth". On the 66th commemoration day in 2011, Holger Apfel declared in the state parliament of Saxony: “66 years after the end of the Second World War, it must finally be over that our people are driven into bondage by the Auschwitz club. 66 years after the end of the Second World War, it is time to finally take off the penitent shirt and the fool's cap. The ticket office to Canossa , ladies and gentlemen, should be closed once and for all. ”Jürgen Gansel called the commemoration in May 2013“ historical pornography in the form of Holocaust memorial rituals and other forms of national masochism ”. “Inoculated guilt feelings” would “morally humiliated, politically patronized and financially squeezed out”. Therefore everything should be done to “give this almost broken people back their will to assert themselves and their historical pride” by drawing a line “under the insane 'coming to terms with the past'”.

The 2016 NPD program says: “We National Democrats are rejecting the state-imposed cult of guilt, which not least serves foreign financial interests and promotes German self-hatred, especially among young people. [...] To protect the honor of the German people, the end of the one-sided coming to terms with the past and the freedom of research and teaching are necessary. ”The former NPD theorist Jürgen Schwab explained:“ The linchpin of this strategy, a new German self-confidence and a national one Preventing Germans from finding themselves is the historical event which the Jews call the 'Holocaust'. "With the same intention, Holger Apfel (NPD) had the Allied air raids on Dresden on the 60th anniversary of Dresden on its 60th anniversary in 2005 as a " bomb holocaust " and "industrial mass murder " and thus linguistically equated with the Holocaust.

Stumbling blocks in Heidelberg

Right-wing extremists around the NPD regard the stumbling blocks with the names and life dates of Nazi victims , which have been laid since the 1990s, as particularly clear examples of the “guilt cult”, which supposedly reinforces it and branding the Germans as “malicious people of perpetrators”. More and more stumbling blocks are damaged, torn out, stolen, pasted over, smeared with paint, tar, swastikas or other symbols of hatred. This has happened particularly often in the accession area since 2010 , for example in Schwedt , Sassnitz , Greifswald , Wismar , Neustrelitz , Anklam and elsewhere. NPD regional associations or NPD supporters sometimes announce these acts on their websites, call for them in clauses or comment on them afterwards with contemptuous polemics, for example: "While German memorials, which remember those who have fallen in the last few days, rot and rot in this country, let Democrats pave the streets with stumbling blocks in great numbers. As permanent signs of atonement, these should always and constantly warn of the fate of the Jews and the eternal guilt of the Germans. Even those who still do not crawl should finally be encouraged to stumble. "

Pegida

On November 9, 2015, the 77th anniversary of the November pogroms in 1938 , the Pegida demonstration alliance , established in 2014, called for a rally on the Theaterplatz in Dresden . The speaker Tatjana Festerling called out to around 8000 cheering participants, "You let go of the past now", "End the Nazi paranoia", and declared "the guilt complex from twelve years of Nazi rule officially ended". Then she called on the federal government and “left filthy trash papers”: “Leave us alone with your guilt cult for the past, for which none of us here is responsible.” The audience then chanted Pegida slogans (“ Lies press ”, " Traitor " ...). Festerling's speech took up the NPD rhetoric of previous years to provoke counter-initiatives about 100 meters away.

These had previously tried in vain to obtain a city ban on the event because the National Socialists had renamed the Theaterplatz “ Adolf-Hitler-Platz ” and used it for large-scale marches. The “Cosmopolitan Dresden Initiative” accused the city administration of “irresponsible and historically forgotten” handling of this past, in which “more space is given to contempt and insult than remembrance and warning”. Dresden's Lord Mayor Dirk Hilbert (FDP) said that the Saxon right of assembly does not allow a ban or postponement of the pegidade demonstration. Democracy is able to "endure these excesses too."

AfD

Several AfD MPs and Bundestag candidates have publicly called the memory of National Socialism in the election campaign for the 2017 Bundestag election a “guilt cult”, according to Andreas Wild (January 2017) and Martin Renner (February 2017). On January 17, 2017, the Dresden judge Jens Maier declared in a speech for the Junge Alternative in Ballhaus Watzke (Dresden) the German “guilt cult” as “finally ended”. In addition, he turned against a "production of mixed peoples". The Thuringian AfD chairman Björn Höcke then said at the same event: "... we Germans, our people, are the only people in the world who have planted a monument of shame in the heart of their capital." Germany needs a "political change in memory by 180 degrees ”. The culture of remembrance since 1945 is a “stupid coping policy”. The air raids on Dresden and other bombings of German cities should have “robbed us of our collective identity”, “destroyed us with stumps and stumps” and “cleared our roots”. “With the re-education that began after 1945”, that was almost achieved. Richard von Weizsäcker's 1985 speech was directed “against its own people”.

Höcke's statements were understood as a seamless adoption of right-wing extremist ideology and a departure from Holocaust remembrance and were heavily criticized in public. The public prosecutor's office in Dresden initiated investigations against Maier and Höcke for sedition . In August Maier received a disciplinary reprimand from the Dresden Regional Court.

On February 5, 2017, Wilhelm von Gottberg , member of the board of the AfD Lower Saxony, declared in his application for the Bundestag candidacy at the AfD party conference in Hanover: He wanted to work to end the "cult with guilt" because the coming to terms with the Nazi Time is complete. Von Gottberg had already claimed in 2001 that the Holocaust was "still" "used as an effective instrument to criminalize the Germans and their history (...)", and asked "how long will the younger generation with the blemish of guilt be used for twelve years NS -Dictatorship burdened ". In response he had quoted a Holocaust denier ("... in more and more states the Jewish 'truth' about the Holocaust is placed under legal protection. The Holocaust must remain a myth, a dogma that is beyond any free historical research.") And agreed: “We have nothing to add.” In April 2017, a majority in the Bundestag changed the rules of procedure of the German Bundestag , also to prevent Gottberg from becoming old-age president . As such, he should have made the opening speech for the 19th electoral term.

Höcke, Maier and von Gottberg are considered right-wing extremist AfD representatives, Renner as nationally conservative. The AfD parliamentary group leader Alice Weidel , who is often classified as “moderate”, spoke of the German “guilt cult” in June 2017.

In the AfD election program of 2017 it was said: "The current narrowing of the German culture of remembrance to the time of National Socialism must be broken down in favor of an expanded view of history, which also includes the positive, identity-creating aspects of German history." The memory of the Nazi crimes applies to AfD therefore not as identity-creating. That's why, according to the historian Volker Weiß , Höcke's critics in the AfD only criticized his speech and the reactions to it, not its content. The abandonment of German historical politics during the Nazi era and the demand for a "line of thought" was consensus across the entire German right.

The AfD Lower Saxony declared in December 2016 against the previous culture of remembrance: "It is time to turn things around, to give the German people protection again and finally to ban this crazy guilt cult from Germany." Several AfD district associations demanded funds for memorials to the NS -Time to cancel.

That is why the associations of Nazi victims rejected the participation of the AfD in the council of the Lower Saxony Memorials Foundation in November 2017 and demanded that the foundation law be changed accordingly. The historian and head of the Foundation Council Jens-Christian Wagner explained: "Anyone who complains about the German 'guilt cult' or calls for a '180 degree change in the politics of memory' has no place in the committees of the Lower Saxony Memorials Foundation." The fact that in the AfD "revisionist , racist, anti-Semitic and positions that trivialize or even deny the Holocaust are at least tolerated ”, is contrary to the foundation's mandate. He pointed out, among other things, that the AfD Braunschweig wanted to cut municipal funding for the Schillstrasse memorial, the AfD Wolfenbüttel demonstratively stayed away from the 2017 annual commemoration of the victims of the pogrom night in 1938 , the AfD Wolfsburg a memorial for the Laagberg concentration camp, the AfD youth Bremen had rejected the promotion of the Bunker Valentin as a "guilt cult and reminder tourism", which AfD Lower Saxony had already publicly demanded in 2016 to "finally ban this crazy guilt cult from Germany", the election program of AfD Lower Saxony for 2017 not to promote memorials and the institute for migration research at the University of Osnabrück . On February 23, 2018, the state government decided to change the foundation statutes.

The AfD also claimed its legal seat on the board of trustees of the Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe . Representatives from all other parties raised concerns. Lea Rosh , the initiator of the memorial , called on Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) to have the AfD's exclusion from the Board of Trustees examined legally because of its “anti-democratic” program and Höcke's Dresden speech.

In February 2018, AfD member of the state parliament, Wolfgang Gedeon , called for an end to the Germany-wide stumbling block campaigns reminding Nazi victims. The International Auschwitz Committee stated: “The AfD is fighting increasingly brutally and unscrupulously what the survivors of Auschwitz, as contemporary witnesses, did in German society.” The jargon and content of Gedeon's “shabby messages” are an attempt to target the survivors of Nazi terror and push their memories out of society.

The AfD Lower Saxony rejects a learning and memorial site decided by the district council of the Hameln-Bad Pyrmont district on the Bückeberg for the national socialist " Reichserntedankfeste " (1933 to 1937). AfD representatives justified this in July 2018 at a citizens' meeting in Emmerthal as follows: The memorial “makes the culture of remembrance independent”, a “ritual created artificially by the Nazis is now to be revived”, the proponents were subject to a neurotic “ washing compulsion ”, innocent Germans would be "placed under permanent guilt". The regional historian Bernhard Gelderblom replied: “Nobody on the Bückeberg was personally guilty. But we have to process guilt consciously - also in Emmerthal. "

In 2017, the memorial in Buchenwald concentration camp denied Björn Höcke admission because of his Dresden speech at the Holocaust memorial. During a conversation on August 8, 2018, the head of the memorial site Volkhard Knigge asked the AfD member of the Bundestag Stephan Brandner about the historical revisionist statements from the AfD, including the alleged “guilt cult”. Brandner refused to interpret statements by other AfD members, denied according to Knigges a historical revisionism in the AfD, but acknowledged Höcke's demand for a change in the culture of remembrance. Volkish and anti-Semitic statements from the AfD have been trivialized by Brandner as derailments of individuals. Therefore, a technical discussion about the work of the memorial and an end to the "exclusion policy" aimed at by Brandner against the AfD could not have taken place. Instead, the meeting made clear the fundamental differences in dealing with the Nazi era. According to Knigges and the memorial, the offensive fight against and revaluation of the established culture of remembrance serves to “normalize anti-democratic positions” and should turn away from the distortion of reality by the AfD, from aggressively stirring up prejudices and opening up to right-wing extremism. "National Socialism and its genesis also shed a bright light on the dangers posed by the AfD for the future of a free, humane society based on the rule of law."

On the occasion of the Holocaust Remembrance Day in January 2020, the AfD member of Baden-Württemberg, Stefan Räpple, called in a post on Facebook “End the guilt cult”.

classification

The founding of the NPD (1964) and the rise of German neo-Nazism were explained early and repeatedly as a result of the extensive failure of denazification, an inadequate coming to terms with the past and the suppression of the Nazi era during the West German economic miracle , as the psychoanalysts Margarete and Alexander Mitscherlich (“Die Inability to mourn ”, 1967) and by Holocaust survivor Ralph Giordano (“ The Second Guilt or From the Burden of Being German ”, 1987).

Historians of contemporary history classify the talk of the "guilt cult" as a historical revisionist thought pattern that attacks the reminiscence of the Holocaust, but does not deny the fact, also to avoid criminal prosecution. The rhetorical motif is part of a right-wing extremist view of history that narrative contrasts the memory of the victims of the Nazi regime with its own victim . The Second World War is stylized as a heroic struggle for existence of the German people, its causes and consequences are ignored, the victims are reduced to Germans and the one-sided memory of their suffering is demanded as a means of völkisch-national self-assertion that must be preserved. The German culture of memory during the Nazi era, on the other hand, is portrayed, repulsed and discredited as a “prison” for its own people. The journalist Toralf Staud counts the expression “guilt cult” as a comprehensive attempt by right-wing extremists to deny the causes, course and consequences of National Socialism, to play down and at least to end the discussion about it. The term should make any critical examination of the past appear ridiculous and imposed and suggest that the critical memory of National Socialism and its victims was "unnatural".

The New Right also wants to replace the memory of the Holocaust, denounced as a “guilt cult”, with a “national identity” that portrays it as the necessary emancipation of Germans. According to Wolfgang Gessenharter , new right academics, despite their distance from the NPD, continually provide arguments to historical revisionism, bringing new and extreme right wing closer together and spreading their ideas. Norbert Haase emphasized in 2006 in the face of provocative incursions of the NPD in the state parliament of Saxony : "The political rhetoric of the so-called cult of guilt" and a supposed, Nationalmasochismus' intended deliberately to break taboos and gets caught by no means exclusively in right-wing voters, "but also in society middle. Klaus Ahlheim judged similarly in 2007: “The political right in Germany castigates an alleged 'guilt cult' and calls for enlightenment restraint, a position that has been part of the inventory of the since Martin Walser's polemic against the 'permanent presentation of our shame', even in modified and moderate forms intellectual discourse in this country. "

In its 2005 annual report, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution cited excerpts from Udo Voigt's hate speech as an example of right-wing extremist historical revisionism. The 2008 report mentioned the "guilt cult" rhetoric as part of the NPD program. The 2012 report states: “The ongoing polemics against alleged 'reeducation', 'guilt cult' and 'national self-hatred'” prove “a perception of the Hitler regime that is diametrically opposed to serious historical studies. The historical analysis of the Nazi dictatorship sees the NPD as it were a continuation of the war against the German people by other means. "The report describes how the NPD the poem What needs to be said of Gunter Grass used to the Holocaust commemoration with openly anti-Semitic thought patterns on an alleged “psychological warfare of Jewish power groups”. According to the 2013 report, the NPD claims that the Allies forced the reappraisal of National Socialism in order to permanently weaken Germany, and it follows that only a completely new historical policy and a completely different view of history could bring about a “national renaissance”.

German anti-Semitism researchers judge the “guilt cult” rhetoric of the NPD (for example Gansel's text from 2009) as continuing anti-Semitism: Jews are stereotyped as the dominant operators of the culture of remembrance, Holocaust remembrance is portrayed as a Jewish means of exerting pressure on their private profit, and in the National Socialist tradition they are out of racial featured German national community excluded. This anti-Semitism is a common feature of the otherwise inconsistent German right-wing extremism. It is also latently present where Jews are not explicitly mentioned. You classify the NPD demands of 2016 as a hallmark of “secondary anti-Semitism”: Jews (i.e. Holocaust survivors) would not be presented as the perpetrators or inventors despite, but because of the Holocaust, in order to abolish Holocaust remembrance, which is the main obstacle to new German greatness is issued. Anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial or Holocaust relativization and historical revisionism formed an inseparable unit in order to gain the authority to interpret Nazi history and thus at the same time current political action: “Revisionism and secondary anti-Semitism are attempts to undermine the basic anti-totalitarian consensus in society, this protection of democracy . They serve to rehabilitate nationalist and racist politics. "

In 2016, political scientist Hans-Peter Killguss emphasized: Neo-Nazis always documented the critical examination of Nazi crimes "with terms such as 'national masochism', 'self-hatred' and above all 'guilt cult'." This rhetoric has long been used by other right-wing extremists as well, including the IfS, Junge Freiheit, which has served as a mouthpiece for the AfD, and Pegida.

In its judgment of January 17, 2017 on the NPD ban proceedings , the Federal Constitutional Court demonstrated the continuous anti-constitutional activities of the NPD, its positive reference to National Socialism and its affinity with the NSDAP, among other things with its “guilt cult” rhetoric. The court referred to public statements by Karl Richter, Udo Pastörs (2010), Holger Apfel (2011) and Jürgen Gansel (2013).

The historian Volker Weiß emphasized in July 2017: Because they saw the defeat of the German Reich as a loss of German identity, AfD representatives (not only Höcke) drummed for a "political change in the past". The right-wing extremist slogan “Germany for the Germans” is also common property in these circles, even if they use different words for it. The AfD (which counts white as part of the New Right) has benefited from various “taboo breaks” in recent years (including Martin Walser 1998, Thilo Sarrazin 2010 - Germany abolishes itself ). Their program aimed at ethnic homogeneity had already been formulated in 1994 in the anthology The Self-Confident Nation . In the current attacks by the AfD, "the chauvinism of the educated and wealthy" is breaking through from the middle of society.

A symposium of the memorial in the former Buchenwald concentration camp (November 2017) placed the talk of the “guilt cult” in the development of German right-wing extremism since 1990: the NPD was able to mobilize a total of several thousand supporters against the Wehrmacht exhibitions . The recent court cases against former members of the SS, in the extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau worked, performances by Holocaust deniers as Ursula Haverbeck and neo-Nazi marches on April 20, 2016 ( Adolf Hitler's birthday) and 9 November 2016 (Kristallnacht) in Jena as well as on August 16, 2017 (30th anniversary of Rudolf Heß's death ) in Berlin, historical revisionist attacks on the German culture of remembrance were again given greater public attention. But the “New Right” has also been trying for years to discredit the self-critical examination of the past with terms such as “guilt cult” and to link it to nationalist arguments. The culture of remembrance is seen here as the reason for an alleged lack of national pride, which must be changed in order to make nationalist politics possible.

The historian Volkhard Knigge (head of the Buchenwald memorial) emphasized in November 2017: The AfD demand for a “political change in memory” and a renunciation of the alleged “guilt cult” is linked to the shortcomings of East and West German historical cultures. Corresponding statements by Alexander Gauland , Björn Höcke and Jens Maier could also come from the national conservative CDU / CSU wing of the 1970s. He described the culture of reprocessing as “pollution of the nest” and demanded “to step out of the shadow of Auschwitz” or to draw a mental line. In the GDR , the Nazi era had hardly been dealt with socially because of the state-controlled historical image. The German people had primarily been portrayed as a victim of the Nazi regime, fascism as being exterminated with the GDR, so that one never had to consider the support of the majority population for it.

According to a representative survey published by the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence at Bielefeld University on February 13, 2018, a “guilt cult” cannot be empirically proven. Only 10.4 percent of the 1000 respondents agreed with the statement: “Even if I haven't done anything bad myself, I feel guilty for the Holocaust.” Andreas Eberhardt ( Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future” ) explained: “It there is no cult of guilt, because only those who were personally involved can feel guilty. People living in Germany feel a responsibility for dealing with this part of history. The study offers many approaches to counter the false claims of populists and right-wing extremists. "

literature

  • Lenard Suermann: guilt cult . In: Bente Gießelmann, Robin Heun, Benjamin Kerst, Lenard Suermann, Fabian Virchow (eds.): Concise dictionary of right-wing extremist fighting terms. Wochenschau, Schwalbach / Taunus 2015, ISBN 978-3-7344-0155-8 , pp. 269–281.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Boris Böhm, Norbert Haase (ed.) : Offenders, criminal prosecution, relief from debt: biographies of doctors between Nazi tyranny and German post-war history. Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2007, ISBN 3865831664 , p. 14
  2. ↑ Hans-Gerd Jaschke: Origin and development of right-wing extremism in the Federal Republic. To the tradition of a particular political culture. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 1984, ISBN 978-3-322-99709-8 , p. 39f.
  3. ↑ Heiko Buschke: German press, right-wing extremism and the National Socialist past in the Adenauer era. Campus, 2003, ISBN 3593373440 , p. 37f.
  4. ↑ Darius Harwardt: "The resistance must be organized - and above all also spiritually": Armin Mohler and Caspar von Schrenck-Notzing as right-wing intellectuals in the early Federal Republic. In: Timothy Goering (Ed.): History of Ideas Today: Traditions and Perspectives. Transcript, ISBN 3839439248 , pp. 117-160, here pp. 131 to 139
  5. ↑ Martina Steber: The Guardians of Terms: Political Languages ​​of the Conservatives in Great Britain and the Federal Republic of Germany, 1945-1980. De Gruyter / Oldenbourg, Munich 2017, ISBN 3110454289 , p. 353
  6. ↑ Volker Weiß: The authoritarian revolt: The New Right and the Fall of the Occident. Klett-Cotta, 2nd edition 2017, p. 108
  7. ^ A b Valerie Schönian: Nazi era: Does the East deal with guilt differently? Time November 6, 2017
  8. ^ Gunter Hofmann: Half time for Richard von Weizsäcker: The annoying model. Time, December 5, 1986
  9. ↑ a b Henning Borggräfe: compensation for forced laborers: From controversy over "forgotten victims" self-reconciliation of the Germans. Wallstein, 2014, p. 488
  10. ^ Lars Breuer: Communicative memory in Germany and Poland: images of perpetrators and victims in conversations about the Second World War. Springer-VS, Wiesbaden 2015, ISBN 978-3-658-08320-5 , p. 37 and fn. 28
  11. ↑ a b Martin Langebach , Michael Sturm (ed.): Places of remembrance of the extreme right. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2015, ISBN 3658001305 , pp. 47-49
  12. ↑ Claus Leggewie: Political Times: Observations from the Sideline. Bertelsmann, 2015, ISBN 3570102009 , p. 154
  13. ↑ Micha Brumlik, Hajo Funke, Lars Rensmann: Contested forgetting: Walser debate, Holocaust memorial and recent German historical politics. 2nd edition, Hans Schiler, Kempten 2004, ISBN 3899302400 , pp. 9 and 34
  14. ↑ Martin Dietzsch (Ed.): Finally a normal people? Duisburg Institute for Language and Social Research , Duisburg 1999, ISBN 3927388718 , p. 82
  15. ^ Matthias N. Lorenz: 'Family Conflict' or 'Anti-Semitism Controversy'? To the Walser-Bubis debate. In: Seelenarbeit an Deutschland: Martin Walser in Perspective. Editions Rodopi BV, 2004, ISBN 904201993X , p. 363
  16. ↑ Micha Brumlik, Hajo Funke, Lars Rensmann: Umkampfes Vergessen , Kempten 2004, p. 27
  17. ↑ Hans Henning Hahn, Eva Hahn: The expulsion in German memory: legends, myth, history. Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2011, p. 600f.
  18. ^ Lars Rensmann: Democracy and the image of the Jews: Anti-Semitism in the political culture of the Federal Republic of Germany. Wiesbaden 2004, p. 163, fn. 488
  19. ↑ Tagesspiegel, November 30, 2006: "Multicultural fagot"
  20. ^ Stephan Braun , Ute Vogt : The weekly newspaper "Junge Freiheit": Critical analyzes of the program, content, authors and customers. Springer-VS, Wiesbaden 2008, ISBN 978-3-53-19055-9-4 , p. 30f.
  21. ↑ a b Right-wing radicalism: March into the middle. Der Stern, May 16, 2005
  22. ^ Roland Eckert: Cultural homogeneity and aggressive intolerance. A Critique of the New Right. Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb), October 28, 2010 (fn. 37)
  23. ↑ a b Johannes Radke, Henning Flad: Where is the "east coast" actually? Die Zeit , August 28, 2009
  24. ↑ Volker Weiß : The authoritarian revolt. The New Right and the Fall of the West. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2018, p. 225
  25. ↑ Michael Sturm: Fate - Heroism - Sacrifice. The extreme right's use of history. In: Martin Langebach, Michael Sturm (ed.): Places of remembrance of the extreme right. Wiesbaden 2015, pp. 17–60, here: p. 25
  26. ↑ Documentation archive of the Austrian resistance (DÖW): The “Aula” in February 2016 - news from far right - March 2016.
  27. ↑ Stefanie Panzenböck: Uprising of the brown Bobos. falter.at 17/2016
  28. ↑ Konrad Litschko: Actions of the “Identitarian Movement”: Hide? The times are over. taz, October 4, 2017
  29. ↑ Katrin Gaßner: The case law on freedom of assembly in international comparison. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2012, ISBN 3161518675 , p. 92
  30. ^ Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI, ed.): Verfassungsschutzbericht 2005 (PDF, p. 85); Brandenburg State Center for Civic Education: "Liberation Lie" ( Memento from April 22, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  31. ↑ a b Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI, ed.): Anti-Semitism in Germany: manifestations, conditions, prevention approaches. Report of the independent expert group on anti-Semitism. 2011, pp. 15-19
  32. ↑ a b Federal Constitutional Court: judgment of the Second Senate of January 17, 2017 (I, lines 835-844)
  33. ↑ a b BMI (Ed.): Verfassungsschutz Report 2013 (PDF, p. 100)
  34. ↑ a b Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (ed.): Antisemitism in political extremism. Ideological foundations and forms of argumentation. 2016 (PDF p. 19f.)
  35. ^ Anton Maegerle : Right-wing extremism: Brute against "guilt cult". Jewish General , January 24, 2013
  36. ↑ Stefan Locke: Pegida demonstrations: "Leave us alone with your guilt cult". Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), November 9, 2015
  37. ↑ Ulrich Kraetzer: After Höcke's agitation speech, the Berlin AfD is silent. Berliner Morgenpost , January 20, 2017
  38. Jump to the right at the AfD: Martin Renner is the top candidate for the federal election. Kölnische Rundschau , February 27, 2017
  39. ↑ a b Appearance with Bjoern Hoecke: After the “guilt cult” speech, AfD judge receives a reprimand. Die Welt , August 11, 2017
  40. ↑ AfD - Höcke calls the Holocaust memorial “Monument of Shame”. ( Memento from January 18, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Deutschlandfunk, January 18, 2017
  41. ↑ Katja Thorwarth: Comment on AfD in Dresden: Björn Höcke gives the Nazi. Frankfurter Rundschau (FR), January 18, 2017
  42. ^ Saxony: Public prosecutor investigates Höcke and Dresden judges. Die Zeit, January 24, 2017
  43. ↑ List places: Fine art at AfD top, the rest takes. NDR, February 5, 2017
  44. ↑ Paul Middelhoff: Wilhelm von Gottberg: "The genocide of European Jewry is still used as an effective instrument for the criminalization of the Germans (...)". Die Zeit, March 30, 2017.
  45. ↑ Bundestag: Coalition prevents possible age presidents of the AfD. Die Zeit, April 27, 2017
  46. ^ Kai Biermann, Astrid Geisler, Christina Holzinger, Paul Middelhoff, Karsten Polke-Majewski: AfD parliamentary group: right to extreme in the Bundestag. Die Zeit, September 26, 2017, ISSN  0044-2070
  47. ^ Sabine am Orde: AfD politician Alice Weidel: The new right. taz, September 9, 2017; Marc Brost, Sarah Jäggi, Mariam Lau: Alice Weidel: Heaven, Lille! Die Zeit, September 13, 2017; Kordula Doerfler: AfD top candidate Alice Weidel has mastered right-wing populist rhetoric. Berliner Zeitung, September 16, 2017
  48. ↑ Stefan Maas: AfD and Nazi commemoration: This is how right-wing history politics work in Germany , in: Deutschlandfunk, February 1, 2017
  49. ↑ Andrea Maestro: Memorial Law in Lower Saxony: Fractions exclude AfD. taz, February 28, 2018; Robert Bongen, Julian Feldmann, Philipp Hennig and Johannes Jolmes: Holocaust: How the AfD wants to end the guilt. ARD Panorama, March 22, 2018
  50. ↑ Concentration camp survivors do not want AfD on the foundation council , NDR.de, November 21, 2017
  51. ↑ Lower Saxony Memorials Foundation: Statement by the Managing Director on the planned change in the composition of the Foundation Council , February 12, 2018 (PDF)
  52. ↑ Andrea Maestro: Memorial Law in Lower Saxony: Fractions exclude AfD. taz, February 28, 2018
  53. ^ Matthias Meisner: Entitlement to a seat on the board of trustees: AfD is pushing into the Holocaust Memorial Foundation. Tagesspiegel, January 10, 2018
  54. ↑ Commemoration of Nazi victims: Committee reacts to criticism of Stolperstein actions. Spiegel, February 19, 2018
  55. ↑ Rundblick Niedersachsen: Dispute about the Bückeberg: AfD rejects memorial at the former Nazi crime scene. Edition 125/2018, July 3, 2018
  56. ↑ Questions to Brandner before Buchenwald visit: What goals does the AfD pursue in terms of culture of remembrance? Thuringian newspaper , August 8, 2018
  57. ↑ a b c Brandner's explosive visit. FAZ , August 9, 2018, accessed on August 12, 2018 .
  58. ↑ a b Interview by Thomas Dirr with Volkhard Knigge: "Brandner refused to give any clarification". August 9, 2018. Retrieved August 12, 2018 .
  59. ↑ Concentration camp memorial accuses AfD politicians of trivializing after meeting. Thuringian newspaper, August 8, 2018
  60. ^ Benjamin Konietzny: AfD and anti-Semitism: The pro-Jewish facade is crumbling. www.n-tv.de, February 1, 2020
  61. ↑ Heiko Buschke: German press, right-wing extremism and the National Socialist past in the Adenauer era. 2003, p. 14.
  62. ↑ Martin Langebach , Michael Sturm (Ed.): Places of remembrance of the extreme right. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2015, ISBN 3658001305 , pp. 47-49 ; Thorsten Oppelland: National Democratic Party of Germany. bpb, June 5, 2017
  63. ^ Elke E. Theile: The German-Polish relationship history in the focus of adult education. Wochenschau, 2017, p. 300
  64. ^ Norbert Haase: Memorials of Two Dictatorships in Germany - Orientation Places for Democracy? In: Gerhard Besier , Katarzyna Stokłosa (ed.): Burdens of the dictatorial past - challenges of the democratic present: on right-wing extremism today. LIT Verlag, Münster 2006, ISBN 978-3-82-58878-9-6 , p. 219
  65. ↑ Klaus Ahlheim, Bardo Heger: Nation and Exclusion: The pride of the Germans and its side effects. Political Analysis. Wochenschau, 2008, ISBN 3899743911 , p. 98
  66. ↑ Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI): Verfassungsschutzbericht 2005. Berlin 2006, p. 85.
  67. ↑ BMI (Ed.): Verfassungsschutzbericht 2008. Berlin 2009, p. 77
  68. ↑ BMI (Ed.): Verfassungsschutz Report 2012 ( Memento from February 28, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF, pp. 87-89)
  69. ↑ Hans-Peter Killguss: The "Alternative for Germany". Materials on the development, content and support of a völkisch-nationalist party. Newsletter of the EL-DE House Cologne, September 2016; Reprint: HaGalil , November 28, 2016
  70. ↑ Nadja Erb: Myths of the Right: “The New Right profits from breaking taboos”. FRI, July 14, 2017
  71. ↑ Buchenwald.de: “Truth makes you free”: Specialist conference on historical revisionism and Holocaust denial from the right fringe on November 14th and 15th, 2017 in the Buchenwald memorial.
  72. ↑ Matthias Meisner: Study “guilt cult” claimed by AfD, empirically not proven.