On May 4 and 5 we commemorate our dead and celebrate our freedom. But the Germans are still working on Vergaanheitsbewältigung, "coming to terms with the past". Commemorating remains complicated, because is Germany only a perpetrator or also a victim?
In Germany there is no commemoration of the dead and also no Liberation Day. Foreign? No. The subject is still far too sensitive. For Germans, a commemoration of the dead is unimaginable, because it is their own fault that those dead are there. As Dutch people, we are used to paying extensive attention to the victims of the war and to the liberation. In Germany, however, this is not the case at all. There are national days of remembrance, but there is no integral celebration or commemoration in all of Germany.
Remembrance Day and Liberation Day are a very Dutch phenomenon. The commemoration of the Second World War in Germany is too complex to do in one day. In addition, the Germans are afraid of what other countries would say if they introduced a day of remembrance. The memorial is overshadowed by their guilt, which makes them very reserved. Whether this guilt is still appropriate is debatable.
'Quiet Tag'
So no wreath laying or two minutes of silence. But although there is no integral day of remembrance, attention is certainly paid to the victims of the war. This happens on different days, commemorating different things. On May 8, 1945, Nazi Germany capitulated, and a number of commemorations take place on that day. On January 27, Auschwitz was liberated, and that day is still celebrated today.
In addition, there is Volkstrauertag on the second Sunday before Advent, which commemorates all the victims of all wars. In the Bundestag and in municipalities, on this Stiller Tag (silent day) did lay wreaths and flowers. The major newspapers do pay attention to it on those days and there are programs on that theme on television.
Larger commemorations are only organized in the 'round years'. In 1985, for example, there was a major commemoration of the war and in 2009 much attention was paid to the invasion of Poland in 1939. This year it is 80 years since Hitler came to power and 75 years since Kristallnacht took place. In Berlin, attention is paid to this throughout the year with the theme Zerstörte Vielfalt , devastated diversity.
Central to this is that Hitler disrupted the diversity that existed in Germany. The persecution of the Jews led to an intellectual exodus. Biographies of famous Jewish refugees such as Albert Einstein, Fritz Lang and Bertolt Brecht tell what it was like to live in Germany at the time.
So commemorating in Germany is a complicated matter. This is also apparent from the realization of the commemoration as it is now.
Historical kneeling
The first years after the Second World War were dominated by displacement, reconstruction and the Wirtschaftswunder. There was still no room for commemoration, let alone acceptance. In the 1960s and 1970s, the younger generation rebelled against this. Old wounds were opened and the old generation was forced to face its own past.
The most painful part of this confrontation was the focus on the persecution of the Jews. It wasn't until the 1960s that the scale of the Holocaust dawned on us, exemplified by the Eichmann trial in 1961. In 1970, Chancellor Willy Brandt made a historic bow in front of the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial. Brandt thus gave a new impulse to the acceptance of the past.
Since the 1980s, there has been a change in thinking about the Second World War. The elapsed time created room for the war crimes to be put into perspective:the historian Ernst Nolte said that the Holocaust was not unique, but comparable to other genocides. This ruling led to great commotion and division in Germany.
The Neue Wache – a monument too loaded
The Neue Wache in Berlin is typical of the complicated German commemorations. The Neue Wache was restored in 1818 under the Prussian Emperor Wilhelm III as a victory monument. It was the center of militaristic display. After the First World War, the Wache became a memorial to the fallen of the First World War. When Hitler came to power, it again became a symbol of militarism power and Prussia was glorified.
After World War II, attempts were made to make the Neue Wache a place to commemorate the victims of fascism and militarism, but this was met with considerable resistance. After the fall of the Wall, Helmut Kohl wanted to make it a monument to all war victims. This was very unsuccessful because the Neue Wache is an over-charged place that has been claimed by too many different ideologies. The commemorations never take place at the Neue Wache and in 2005 the new Mahnmal on the Bebelplatz was unveiled.
New Look
The German Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker made a statement that radically changed the view of the Germans and the Second World War. On May 8, 1985, he said in a speech that in 1945 the Germans themselves were liberated from National Socialism. For the first time it became possible to see the Germans as victims.
Von Weizsäcker's statement was 40 years after the end of World War II. For the generation living now, the war is increasingly part of the stories of parents and grandparents. This creates space in Germany for a new perspective on the commemoration of the war.
Although the youngest generations only know the war from stories, it remains important to commemorate. From an investigation by the newspaper Die Zeit It turns out that German youngsters no longer want to feel guilty. Too much time has passed for that. But they also indicate that they think commemoration is important. In German there is a word for processing one's own past:Vergaanheitsbewältigung. Literally it means 'coming to terms with the past'.
This is a difficult process in Germany because there are so many sides to commemorating the Second World War. This is nicely illustrated by the history of the Neue Wache (see box). The discussion in Germany about the nature of the commemoration revolves around perpetrators and victims. Is Germany only the perpetrator, or is it also a victim? There is still no good answer to that question. This is also apparent from the nature of the commemorations. Commemorating in Germany is complicated.