In recent years, Germany’s Culture of Remembrance, or Erinnerungskultur, has been making several appearances in American pop-culture. Take for instance this clip from the hit TV show ‘Dear White People’(1:54) or this moment from an NYT opinion video (4:30). It was even a storyline for comedian Neal Brennen’s appearance on Netflix’s Comedians of the World.
While each of these cases come with a funny punchline, they also carry serious undertones. In a nation severely polarized by issues of race, many in the US today are looking for ways of collectively addressing America’s history with slavery and white supremacy. It’s a heavy topic, which many do not feel well equipped to handle. It, therefore, isn’t surprising that Americans are looking for a road map to help guide them. And for some progressives living in the US, Germany offers a much-needed precedent to follow when it comes to reconciling with difficult heritage.
But what exactly is Germany’s Culture of Remembrance? And what can American society learn from it? Before I go into more detail on the latter question, here is a turbo-speed recap for any novices of Erinnerungskultur, as well as a brief background on its relevance to the US:
Erinnerungskultur
The term refers to the policy of confronting Nazi-era crimes in Germany through frank discussion and by acknowledging responsibility for the Holocaust. Although this culture was at first externally driven after WWII when US forces compelled German civilians to tour death camps, it was later pursued internally, and with zeal. Monuments, educational curricula, public programs, and large-scale government initiatives were instituted to ensure that the atrocities of National Socialism would not repeat themselves.
The impact of Erinnerungskultur can even be located in the German language. The idea that the past needs to be acknowledged and dealt with is summed up in the German term Vergangenheitsbewältigung. Literally translated, Vergangenheit means ‘the past’ and Bewältigung denotes a process of coping (with), handling, or mastering a difficult problem. Other compound nouns are just as telling. Vergangenheitsbelästigung means ‘burdening by the past’ and die Erblast, or ‘inherited burden’, makes use of the German word for heritage ‘das Erbe’. Together, these terms underscore the sense of responsibility and undertaking for the Holocaust that current generations of Germans are still confronted with.
The American Context
How the United States teaches and remembers its history has been a growing topic in the past several months. In February, CBS published a disheartening article on the disparities of state standards for addressing slavery and the civil rights movement. The findings show that 7 states do not directly address slavery and 8 do not mention the Civil Rights Movement in their state standards. Months later, when George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer, a national wave of protests triggered the take-down of several confederate monuments in the American south, and activists urged for a systematic understanding of the impact that white supremacy has had—and continues to have—on American society.
With this in mind, I’ll return now to one of my initial questions: what lessons can the US take away from Germany’s culture of remembrance? Well, I am not going to pretend to know the full scope of this answer. But I do want to bring up three worthwhile lessons that I believe should be taken seriously:
1. A culture of remembrance did not appear in Germany overnight. On the contrary, the process took decades and required sustained effort on behalf of the German public to be systematically implemented. In fact, the movement did not begin to gain serious momentum until the broadcasting of the American TV series “Holocaust” (starring, you guessed it, Meryl Streep) to a large German audience in 1979.
2. It offers a counterargument to the fears of Americans who believe that a direct reckoning with its violent history will cause the US to be more divided and mistrustful of their government.
3. Germany’s Culture of Remembrance is imperfect and has been facing critiques that it does not do enough.
This last point is significant because although it does have serious shortcomings, Erinnerungskultur is capable of adaptation. For example, many scholars have called for a new cosmopolitan culture of remembrance that takes into account Germany’s brutal colonial enterprise. As the world continues to globalize, history will need to continue to develop to address the experiences and perspectives of those previously ignored. But this shouldn’t be a detractor from coming to terms with one’s responsibility to the past. It’s about giving the next generation the tools for understanding and addressing histories that you wouldn’t want to be repeated.
As someone fascinated by history and how it is remembered in the present, I admire the concept of Erinnerungskultur. Yet I also wonder what younger people in Germany think about it today. Do they view it with the same detached irrelevance as some Americans understand slavery? Is it something they are outspoken about and actively involved in? Maybe they view it like my Oma (Mainz DE, born and raised). To her, Erinnerungskultur was just what had to happen. It was a fact of moving forward, not a choice or a controversy.
Megan - history enthusiast with a love for German beers, architecture, and compound words (Sie sind so logisch!). Her interest in Germany is inspired by her Oma, who was born and raised in Mainz, DE. She spends her free time reading, exercising, and talking her Oma through the intricacies of Zoom
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