Talk:Vergangenheitsbewältigung

Cleanup
This article is a bit messy. Although I don't see anything objectable about the content, the formatting is very lacking.

It's a lot of info but lacks some order. Either the paragraphs should be shortened or more sections (or any sections in the first place) should be added. Preferably by someone who knows something about the subject -- I only know what I've read in the article, otherwise I'd have attempted a partial rewrite myself.

Any questions? -- Ashmodai 20:28, 23 July 2005 (UTC)


 * How about now? Kelisi 03:03, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

I took the liberty of changing the label from cleanup to wikify. The article is quite good as it stands. What it needs is primarily typographical changes, and perhaps a relevant picture of a German Holocaust memorial site. --Thorsen 07:58, 23 January 2006 (UTC)


 * The article presents a sound overview of the concept, however it tends to generalize and make arguments without supporting fact, I might suggest just a few changes:

1. "As a technical term in English, this relates specifically to the atrocities committed during the Third Reich, when Adolf Hitler was in power in Germany, and to both ongoing and historical concerns about the extensive compromise and co-optation of many German cultural, religious, and political institutions by National Socialism." Though it is now commonly accepted that Vergangenheitsbewältigung is primarily concerned with mastering the past, the term "coming to terms with or mastering a past" in the German sense, is in itself quite ambiguous. This statement suggests that any working through or bewältigung of traumatic pasts is 'specific' to Germany. (Could it be said that, for example Australian attempts to come to terms with the 'stolen generation' and murder of indigenous peoples is specifically related to National Socialism?) 2."Historically, Vergangenheitsbewältigung may be seen as the logical "next step," after [a?] denazification driven at first under Allied Occupation and then by the Christian Democratic Union government of Konrad Adenauer." There is no evidence supporting this argument. Why a logical step? was it to atone the crimes committed, or maybe aid the process of reconstructing a functioning civil society? (see H, Lübbe cited in R. Moeller, "Germans as Victims: Thoughts on a Post-Cold War History of World War II's Legacies," In: History & Memory, Vol. 17, No, 1-2, 2005. p. 164.) 3. "This includes honestly admitting that such a past did indeed exist, attempting to remedy as far as possible the wrongs committed, and attempting to move on from that past." Though Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung might seek to reconfigure the past, it by no means implies "to move on." Though, the post-1989 era certainly displays a shift from the traditional (as in pre-Unification West & East German) focus on 'exclusively dealing with the crimes committed under National Socialism," any suggestion that coming to terms with the National Socialist past equates to 'mov[ing] on from the past' may invoke suspicion due to the fact as Ignatz Bubis argued: those who are not willing to continuously confront the past may be guilty of: "Intellectual Arson" (see R. Moeller, "What has Coming to Terms with the Past Meant in Post World War II Germany? From History to Memory to the History of Memory," In: Central European History, Vol. 35, No. 2, 2002.), thus in my opinion though Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung might call for a reconfiguration or in the Freudian sense a critical "Durcharbeiten," forgetting or suppressing the National Socialist past is not one of its primary aims. 4. Finally as to the comment by Kelisi which calls for " a relevant picture of a German Holocaust memorial site," firstly what do you consider to be the Holocaust? is it exclusive destruction of the European Jewry or the combined victims of, firstly National Socialism and collective violence/? wouldn't making a memorial dedicated to one particular group negate the experiences of such other groups as the Roma, Sinti, disabled, homosexuals etc?


 * A German history prof. starting a new comment here.

I think this article REALLY needs work. It presumes that there is such a thing as VB, thereby reifying the concept. Actually it started out as the phrase unbewaeltigte Vergangenheit around 1953, and then was nominalized to VB by the end of the decade. At that time Theodor Adorno coined a new term in a presentation and article titled "Was heisst Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit?" (What does 'Working through the past' mean?). This was a conscious counterpostion of a verb meaning to process (or work through) as opposed to bewaeltigen, which means to master, implying a process with an endpoint. There are many translations, indicating the wide variety of meanings of the term: coping, coming to terms with, dealing with, working through, processing. In any case, I think the article needs a lot of work. When I next cover this in my lecture course, I will come back and work on it. Hmarcuse (talk) 07:04, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Vergangenheitsbewältigung, Konrad Adenauer and CDU
"a denazification driven at first under Allied Occupation and then by the Christian Democratic Union government of Konrad Adenauer" - I find this misleading. Formally, it is, of course, true, that the denazification programme that was begun by the Allies was continued under Konrad Adenauer and his CDU-government. But I believe it would be better to simply state that the denazification was continued in the first years of the Federal Republic by the German government. In my opinion mentioning Konrad Adenauer and the CDU in this context gives the wrong impression that denazification was on Adenauer's and the CDU's political agenda more than on that of other parties. Which would be blatantly wrong. It is fair to assume that a government made up of social democrats and possible communists would have cleansed the institutions and society in general much more eagerly and effectively than what was done under the rule of the Christian Democrats. It happened under Adenauer, after all, that most of the war and other criminals that had been tried in Nuremberg were pardoned, most life-long prison terms reduced to just a couple of years etc. At the same time tens of thousands of former Nazi-officials regained their old positions or came into new influential ones. Just like the Western allies found nothing wrong with making use of the German experts who had been involved in Nazi crimes, as long as they seemed useful or even indispensable in the beginning confrontation with the Soviet Union, the CDU-Federal government (even more so the Länder-governments) included countless former members of the NSDAP and did not shun away from employing former SS-members and the like especially in the police forces and the secret services (Verfassungsschutz, Bundesnachrichtendienst). Hardly any of the Nazi jurists were punished, most of them continued their careers as attorneys, judges and in the administrative institutions and universities. The willingness to declare all matters that had to do with the Nazi period as past and over evolved unbelievably early, even before 1950, and this broad movement found political support mainly in the CDU. So this is why I would hate to see Konrad Adenauer and his CDU depicted as protagonists of "Vergangenheitsbewältigung", provided that term is not understood as meaning denying, belittling, hushing up and effectively forgetting what had happened between 1933 and 1945.141.91.129.5 (talk) 15:45, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
 * an encylopadic entry is not about what you like to see, or what you beleive could have happen with Kurt Schumacher as chancelor. 16:50, 7 February 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.210.114.106 (talk)

POV
in the after denazification part: "Having replaced the institutions and power structures of National Socialism, the aim of liberal Germans was to deal with the guilt of recent history." That is very euphemistic. The institutions were replaced, but not at all the people controlling the instituions. Look for example at Kurt Georg Kiesinger.

in the Poland part: "...that of the Communist regimes which possessed them for more than four decades." Sounds like they were grabbing the memorials in Auschwitz & Theresienstadt from someone, not creating them in the first place. --  ExpImp talk con 21:32, 30 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't see why "Having replaced the institutions and power structures of National Socialism, the aim of liberal Germans was to deal with the guilt of recent history" should be qualified as "very euphemistic", and the case of Kurt Georg Kiesinger doesn't disprove the statement. "The institutions were replaced, but not at all the people controlling the institutions" - this is also true. But you obviously disregard that the first statement is limited to "liberal Germans". Kiesinger wasn't one of them, neither before nor after 1945. He was one of the leading politicians of the Christian Democratic Union, a conservative party that, although led by Konrad Adenauer, who had belonged to the conservative, catholic opposition against the Nazis, had very little qualms receiving "former" Nazis into its ranks. The sentence that refers to the liberal Germans could be criticized as to the fact that certainly the German left (social democrats and communists) who, after all, belonged to the group of people that had suffered most under the totalitarian régime was even more interested in "Vergangenheitsbewältigung", including identifying and punishing the perpetrators of Nazi crimes. Most notable critics of German post-war politics, when under the auspices of the Cold War the western allies lost their interest in denazification and the conservative governments of the Federal Republic was even less inclined to perform a real "Vergangenheitsbewältigung", belonged to the German left, and they were more often then not denigrated by the conservatives as unpatriotic mudrakers. While the sentence quoted above is not inclusive enough on the one hand (because it focuses only on the liberals), it is unwittingly over-inclusive on the other. For the relatively small political party that was programmatically affiliated with liberalism, the FDP (Freie Demokratische Party = liberal democratic party)was a very strange mix: on the one hand it consisted of old liberals of the Weimar Republic and, of course, of young liberal democrats, on the other hand there was a very strong tendency to absorb "old" Nazis, and in fact in some regions it seems that such old Nazis used their membership in the liberal party as a camouflage of their true political ambitions, which were not as far removed from that of the NSDAP as one would have wished.141.91.129.4 (talk) 14:39, 23 November 2011 (UTC)