Many people consider the culture of remembrance to have failed. The advance of the anti-democrats seems to prove that nothing has been learned from history. “Rethinking commemoration” and “Everything at the beginning” are current book titles that give advice on how remembrance culture can be restarted.
It is noticeable that the content of the books is much more reserved than their provocative titles. It seems as if the fundamental criticism of the culture of remembrance is a sales argument, as if there is a social need to properly clean up the memorial landscape. This comes at a time when the culture of remembrance has long since had its back to the wall in many places.
Contemporary titles can follow a long tradition of criticism of the culture of remembrance. When a hesitant paradigm shift took place in the mid-1980s from defending against the memory of German crimes to recognizing them, critical authors formulated objections to the inconsistency of this change.
Tom Uhlig has his doctorate on political education against anti-Semitism and is a substitute professor for democracy promotion and methods at the Department of Social Affairs at RheinMain University of Applied Sciences.
Nikolas Lelle deals with coming to terms with National Socialism, with the culture of remembrance and criticism of anti-Semitism. He works at the Amadeu Antonio Foundation.
The instrumentalization of commemoration for the purpose of self-ennoblement was criticized, but also specifically the lack of material “compensation” for Nazi victims, the lack of prosecution of the perpetrators and the disregard for Jewish voices in the design of state commemoration.
Accusation of ritualized commemoration
These objections are echoed in current critiques of the culture of remembrance. Two strands of criticism can be followed: Firstly, the accusation of ritualized commemoration, i.e. the suspicion that gestures of remembrance are primarily meaningless nationalist self-assurance. And secondly, the idea that remembrance of the Shoah is characterized by competition with other remembrances and must be opened to other, especially postcolonial, perspectives.
Both strands of memory criticism must be questioned as to whether they meaningfully translate the older objections that were largely formulated against the state-supporting culture of remembrance of the early Berlin Republic into the present. Let’s start with the accusation of narrow perspective.
In 1981, a leaflet invited people to join a silent march on June 19th at the Hamburg-Neuengamme concentration camp memorial. There will be a rally on site “with representatives of groups that were persecuted under National Socialism,” including Jews, those politically persecuted, people with disabilities and homosexuals. Representatives of the Sinti and Roma and those persecuted for religious reasons were also invited. It wasn’t until three months later, on October 18th, that the memorial’s document house opened, with a first, permanent exhibition about the history of the camp and more fundamental aspects of the concentration camp system and National Socialism.
Solidarity between the victim groups has characterized the memorial since its inception. Their relationship was characterized by the common goal of remembering the crimes. Examples of this solidarity can be found not only in the history of institutionalization of the memory landscape, but also in the present, where, for example, the regional associations of Sinti and Roma work closely in exchange with Jewish communities or the Central Council.
Almost 30 years after the silent march on Neuengamme, Michael Rothberg formulated the programmatic claim of “memory as multidirectional” in his book “Multidirectional Remembrance”.“ to understand, in “contrast to a conception that thinks of collective memory as a case of memory competition – as a zero-sum game and a fight for scarce resources.”
It took another ten years until Rothberg’s book was noticed in Germany. In the context of the American culture of remembrance, his considerations may make sense, but in Germany they ignore the decades-long collaboration between victim groups.
Colonialism and National Socialism
The attempts here to connect German colonialism and National Socialism in terms of remembrance politics are also not convincing. The two forms of government are too different. Drawing a straight connection, as Jürgen Zimmerer did in 2011, is extremely questionable from a historical point of view. Zimmerer’s work was accused by his academic peers of selective source selection. It is not plausible why German colonial rule was more important for the Nazis than, for example, the First World War or the Weimar period.
It remains unclear to this day what exactly the continuity thesis is supposed to illuminate about colonialism or National Socialism. So far it has contributed less to clarifying the situation and more to concealing the peculiarities. It must both should be thought of and German colonial crimes in particular are underrepresented in the public consciousness.
However, ignoring the specifics of the crimes does not promote remembrance, but rather repression. Accordingly, it is also Minister of State for Culture Weimers new memorial concept not to criticize that he is planning a separate concept for colonialism, but rather that he treats National Socialism and the SED dictatorship together.
The second strand of criticism of contemporary remembrance culture concerns the meaningless commemoration. The accusation is that remembrance practices such as state commemorative events and speeches serve solely to reassure oneself as world champions of remembrance, but raise doubts about their emotional and political seriousness.
This line of criticism is often linked to the conclusion that remembrance culture must change its form so that it can better fulfill its “purposes”. What is usually meant is political education, i.e. the promotion of democracy, which is foisted on historical education. But the AfD cannot be forgotten, and historical education is not the same as political education.
Commemorate free of external purposes
Even though the two often go hand in hand and memorials provide excellent political education, one must still insist on the right to commemorate what happened without any external purpose. Making the success of historical educational work dependent on its democratizing effects overestimates its possibilities.
In addition, the social starting point for such criticism has fundamentally changed over the past 30 years. Memorial work is being threatened existentially both in parliamentary and extra-parliamentary terms by the AfD and those around it. Your federal election program envisages a fundamental restructuring of the landscape of remembrance. One should “not just concentrate on the low points of our history,” it says. National Socialism and the Shoah do not appear in the election program.
In practice, the AfD’s historical policy translates into attacks against memorial site managers, disruptive visiting groups and political-legal intimidation attempts, which make everyday memorial work increasingly difficult. Torn out stumbling blocks and damaged places of remembrance are part of the new normal. In this climate, the massacre of October 7th also triggered a wave of anti-Semitic disinhibition and loss of solidarity, which also discredited and complicated the work of remembrance, not least through a false equation between the culture of remembrance and the state’s historical policy.
In view of the constant attacks, it should be emphasized that the ritualized culture of remembrance also represents progress compared to what Adorno described as “cold forgetting”. State remembrance policy is also a product of remembrance work from below, against which it vehemently distanced itself, especially at the beginning. Criticism of the state-supporting memory discourse should be aware that even the formal recognition of German guilt has become politically precarious.
The necessary criticism of the instrumentalization of memory politics and phrases with no consequences also misses its point if it does not make a distinction from the actual work of remembrance. Federal presidential speeches are not the same as memorial work. Perpetrators, victims, spectators, places – the early criticisms of the culture of remembrance always had one thing in mind: memory must be concrete.
The Author Eike Geisel not only coined the phrase “reparation of the Germans,” but also reconstructed Jewish life in Berlin’s Scheunenviertel in an exhibition and a book. The recently deceased Micha Brumlik not only criticized the complacent German politics of remembrance, but also, for example, occupied Frankfurt’s Börneplatz in order to preserve the remains of the Jewish ghetto. Michal Bodemann did not stop at criticizing memory theater, but rather gave Jewish biographical work its due.
The memory fought for remains precarious even after it has been institutionalized
This concrete work of remembrance has been carried out by hundreds of initiatives and individuals for decades. The Adlerwerke historical site, which commemorates the Frankfurt Katzbach concentration camp, only opened in 2022. Since the 1990s, the establishment has been preceded by civil society struggles, school projects and private research work, demonstrations, protests and invitations from survivors. Since 2001, the forced labor memorial in Leipzig on the site of what was then Saxony’s largest arms factory, Hasag, has been commemorating the social crime of civilian forced labor, which has hardly been remembered so far and yet shows very clearly how the Germans were involved in National Socialist crimes. The memorial is the result of an initiative by former forced laborers.
The Berlin memorial to the Sinti and Roma murdered under National Socialism shows that the memory we fought for remains precarious even after it has been institutionalized. For years, people have been campaigning against the monument, which was only opened a few years ago, being closed or dismantled by the construction of an S-Bahn tunnel.
Remembrance work from below does not need an invitation to take a critical stance against appropriation tendencies, because it has been resistant from the start. A culture of remembrance does not need to be restarted, but rather strengthened against attacks and appropriation. Their autonomy needs financial support, but also public recognition. The criticism of the instrumentalization of memory politics must not affect the culture of remembrance from below.