Conflicted Memories: Germans Struggle to Adequately Commemorate the East German Dictatorship
By Jenny Wüstenberg

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During the recent soccer World Cup, German and foreign observers alike noted with admiration that Germans seem to have become comfortable with asserting their national identity. An unprecedented number of flags were purchased and the black, red, and gold colors seem to have lost their negative nationalist connotation. The mood was celebratory and welcoming and did not even abate when the German team lost in the semifinals. Now, more than a month on, flags continue to fly and a question still hangs in the air: more than sixty years after the end of the Second World War and more than sixteen years after the demise of the Berlin Wall, have Germans found a way of reconciling an honest confrontation with the past with a positive patriotism?

Recent reactions to revelations by the Nobel laureate Günter Grass that he served in the Waffen-SS (an elite Nazi unit responsible for heinous war crimes) in the last months of the war indicate that Germans will carry on debating their history in a passionate manner. However, when it comes to publicly commemorating the Holocaust and the horrors of the Nazi period, a consensus has been reached. The Federal Republic has a decentralized landscape of memorials which has emerged primarily since the 1980s and continues to grow. The Berlin "Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe" (Photos 1 and 2) is only the largest and most prominent example of the broad agreement in German society and government as to the importance of remembering.

Photos 1 and 2: The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

Some new developments, which correspond to the recent surge in patriotism, are numerous efforts to commemorate and celebrate the positive aspects of German history -- an idea which would until recently have been decried as dangerous nationalism. The inauguration in June 2006 of the new permanent exhibition "German History in Images and Testimonials from Two Millennia" proudly presents the past from its beginnings to the early 1990s, without neglecting to critically examine its worst episodes. Even more remarkably, there have recently been moves to establish more traditional national monuments. Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung has proposed a central memorial to honor the sacrifices of Bundeswehr (German army) soldiers in their operations abroad. Günter Nooke, former East German dissident and currently human rights representative of the federal government, is seeking to establish a memorial commemorating struggles for unity and freedom, especially the peaceful revolution of 1989, which he says should be regarded as founding moments of the Federal Republic. These ideas will continue to be debated controversially for some time, but some believe that Germany is finally moving toward a more 'normal' national identity.

However, there is one issue that continues to divide Germans and threatens to jeopardize any emerging agreement on how to represent history in public space: the memory of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), its repression, and the denial of free movement to its citizens. In the immediate aftermath of the revolution of 1989, dissidents organized into citizens' committees and seized official GDR buildings and files, thus ensuring that the past was open to individual, academic, and political investigation. The authority which today controls and supervises this reckoning was a direct result of the grassroots movement that brought down the regime. It has been hailed as exemplary by other new Eastern European democracies that are struggling with similar problems.

In terms of publicly remembering the dictatorship, however, the record has not been so positive. The prime symbol of repression and the East-West conflict -- the Berlin Wall -- was demolished quickly and few traces of it remain. At the time, the understandable sentiment was that it could not be eliminated fast enough and only a few prescient Berliners sought to preserve parts of the Wall. One such early effort resulted in what is today the main official locale recalling the German separation: the memorial and documentation center at Bernauer Strasse, where scenes of desperation were played when the Wall was built in 1961 (see Photos 3 and 4). Though this memorial is praised by politicians and academics as historically appropriate, victims of the regime often find it to be an unemotional ensemble that does not adequately represent their suffering. In addition, many complain that the memorial is in an area not usually frequented by visitors and thus too obscure in the capital's memorial landscape.

Photo 3: Bernauer Strasse Dokumentation Center

Photo 4: Bernauer Strasse Wall Memorial

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Jenny Wüstenberg was a DAAD/AICGS Fellow in the summer of 2006 and is is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, College Park.

This essay appeared in the August 31, 2006 AICGS Advisor.

 All photos taken by Jenny Wüstenberg.