Helmut König. Die Zukunft der Vergangenheit: Der Nationalsozialismus im politischen Bewusstsein der Bundesrepublik. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 2003. 192 S. EUR 12.90 (paper), ISBN 978-3-596-15715-0.
Reviewed by Daniel E. Rogers (Department of History, University of South Alabama)
Published on H-German (May, 2004)
Imagine a Germany in 1945 that had not only purged Nazis and their sympathizers, but had also systematically rethought the previous seventy-five years, drawn the appropriate lessons, and fundamentally restructured itself. Gone would have been leaders in government, business, education, and culture--Nazis or not--who owed allegiance to less than egalitarian values. In their place would have arisen Germany's hitherto suppressed democrats. A fair and free Germany would have emerged as the mother of real democracy in a Europe where specious electoral democracies had served only the interests of hidebound, repressive elites. Secure in their true democracy, Germans could have amnestied all perpetrators, allowing a meaningful dialogue about the Nazi era.
In other words, take the past not on its own terms, but as the German moderate left wishes it might have been. Then you would get a sense of the perspective behind Helmut Koenig's provocative collection of interrelated essays. A professor at the Institute for Political Science at the Technische Hochschule Aachen who has previously edited several volumes on Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung in the 1990s, Koenig has a unique first-hand perspective on the Nazi past: the discovery that the former Rektor of his Hochschule, a Germanist known for most of his life as Hans Schwerte, had actually been born as Hans Ernst Schneider. Schneider/Schwerte had served as a Hauptsturmbannfuehrer in the SS's "Ahnenerbe" program and successfully suppressed his past for most of the history of the Federal Republic. I cannot say how much his personal contact with Schneider/Schwerte might have shaped Koenig, and whether he would be as focused on the history of Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung had 'Schneider/Schwete" taught at any other university. Whatever the reason, Koenig turned to Germany's struggles with its recent past. This book may be a good summary of what he has learned and thought about over the last decade, just as it represents an effort on behalf of his Hochschule to come to terms with its past.
The essays are arranged chronologically, and build on one another as the book progresses. The first part of the book divides the history of Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung into four distinct periods: the postwar era, the 1950s, a "long wave" between 1960 and 1990, and united Germany. In the postwar era Germans focused on "morality instead of revolution," since neither the victorious Western Allies nor German elites were revolutionary. Debates on guilt resulted in a strong moral condemnation of the Nazi era and the war, but there was no structural change to match. The 1950s witnessed a "double strategy": perpetrators and former Nazis were amnestied and integrated, but the Federal Republic also constructed an image of itself as radically different from the former regime and discouraged active inquiry into the worst of the Nazi era. During the "long wave" from 1960 to 1990, a negative stance toward the Nazi past and, increasingly, to the Holocaust became the "central interpretive framework of the political culture of the Federal Republic" (p. 17). And in the "new Federal Republic" after 1990 the Nazi past increasingly became more a part of history than of contemporary affairs.
The rest of the book, some 140 pages, is devoted to a theoretically informed discussion of the last fifteen years. One chapter examines the consequences of seeking justice against individual perpetrators, both in Nazi Germany and the former East Germany. Koenig regrets that the prosecution of both Nazi and Communist perpetrators prevented widespread discussion and reflection of the kind that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa provoked when it offered amnesty for perpetrators, provided they were complete and truthful in their testimony. In Germany, the problem was shunted aside when the justice system charged individuals and handled their cases much more quietly than Koenig would have wished. True "Kommunikation" about the past therefore never occurred, since criminal defendants have every incentive to dissemble and evade rather than enlighten.
In another chapter, Koenig disinters the Daniel Goldhagen controversy. Koenig is concerned mainly with Goldhagen's faulty logic and his seeming betrayal of the German left: the scene in which Goldhagen is honored with the "Democracy Prize" is humorous, but unintentionally so. In his speech accepting the prize, Goldhagen averred a nearly instantaneous transformation of Germans into good democrats after 1945, whereas one senses Koenig and those who had eagerly come to hear Goldhagen accept the award had previously seen in him the man who had laid bare the historical background to Germany's continuing political, cultural, and social backwardness. Koenig's displeasure is evident: "wie soll man verstaendlich machen, dass die barbarischen Ueberzeugungs- und Gewohnheitsverbrecher, die sich jahrhundertelang auf ihre Taten vorbereiteten, nun, nachdem sie ihr moerderisches Handwerk ausgeuebt hatten, nach Hause zurueckkehrten, als waere nichts geschehen und sich in arbeitsame, verlaessliche und vertrauenswuerdige Demokraten verwandelten" (p. 123)? But to be fair, far from arguing for a spontaneous conversion to democracy, in his speech Goldhagen stressed the indispensability of international influences after 1945.[1] In general Koenig's focus is on internal German debates, and his reading, wide though it may be, is confined mostly to German-language works that often slight the international context.[2]
The book is social science, not history: groups, classes, and periods are described, but it is relatively rare that named historical individuals make an appearance. (Konrad Adenauer, Schneider/Schwerte, Martin Walser, and Goldhagen are welcome exceptions.) And it will not be an easy read for scholars or students untrained in theory. The confidently theoretical approach here makes plain that historians, for so long willfully and blissfully ignorant of developments in the theoretical disciplines, do not control the debates on the history of history, except in the narrow arena of historiography.
In finishing the book, I was left with the sense that Koenig wishes things had turned out differently, that somehow Germany is worse off than it should have been. A comparative perspective here would be helpful: Nazi Germany's crimes against individuals and the very concept of civilization are unsurpassed, but Germans' sixty years of seeking atonement have not been outdone, either. The German confrontation with the Nazi past might have gone better, but as long as we are going to imagine other possible outcomes, it us easy to see the result having been a whole lot worse, too.
Notes
[1]. See the text of the speech at http://www.goldhagen.com/mfr2.html. Accessed February 11, 2004.
[2]. One notable and especially valuable exception, cited also by Koenig, is Ulrich Brochhagen, Nach Nuernberg: Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung und Westintegration in der Aera Adenauer (Hamburg: Junius, 1994).
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Citation:
Daniel E. Rogers. Review of König, Helmut, Die Zukunft der Vergangenheit: Der Nationalsozialismus im politischen Bewusstsein der Bundesrepublik.
H-German, H-Net Reviews.
May, 2004.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=9269
Copyright © 2004 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For any other proposed use, contact the Reviews editorial staff at hbooks@mail.h-net.msu.edu.
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