The Holocaust Memorial Berlin- the emergence of a new culture of memory in post-unification Germany
The year of opening of the Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas marked the sixty year anniversary of the end of World War Two. The Holocaust-Denkmal stands south of the Brandenburg Gate and was the subject of intellectual and public debate throughout the nineties. There was much controversy over the building of the memorial, not only over what form the memorial should take but also to whom the memorial should be dedicated, where it should be, and most importantly what did a monument like this symbolise in terms of memory culture for post-unification Germany?
An intentionalist view of the Holocaust was the driving force behind the Holocaust Memorial. Not only were the Jewish people numerically the largest group of those murdered, their murder in particular was the central motive. This is why it was important in the eyes of the initiative to dedicate a memorial specifically to the Jewish victims of the Nazi regime. Berlin as the reinstated capital and the location of Nazi crimes stood as the obvious place for a central monument.
Before the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 and German reunification in 1990 there existed, as expected, a disparity in terms of memory culture between the two German states. In the German Democratic Republic the trend was to memorialise anti-fascist victims of the Nazi regime and there was little said about the Jewish victims, or any other victims at that. This was, of course, down to the politics of the SED government and its extreme left tendencies. Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen are examples of concentration camps in the East, where memorials were made to communists and political prisoners of the National Socialists. Some argue that the GDR only dealt with glorifying antifascists to celebrate themselves. The fact that cultural sites of memory were dedicated to the anti-fascist resistance might be seen as pointing the finger west: by blaming capitalism for the Nazi past, the German Democratic Republic alluded to the fact that continuity existed on the other side of the wall, where capitalism survived.
In the Federal Republic of Germany, west of the border, the consensus was more anti-totalitarian, which rejected the regime to the east. The National Socialist past was also largely avoided because many of the guilty parties still lived. After reunification, the time came to redefine the past. Reunification did not mean that the Bonn Republic and the German Democratic Republic disappeared or that West Germany expanded, rather that five East German Länder were integrated into West Germany, meaning that both states changed and a new nation was created. Traditional narratives of the past no longer seemed credible, National Socialist past was redefined in the 1990s as iconic. After over 40 years of separation the nation not only looked to a common history to unite, but it also began to seek out what the new nation stood for and what held it together. The hunger for memory has been a remarkable cultural feature of the last decade. And it is not surprising that the National Socialist past was contemplated after 1990, seeing as this was the most recent past which both East and West Germany could seek after to unite them. The question was how this past could be used to knit together and define the newly reunified Germany.
The 1990s saw not only the Wiedervereinigung of the two Germanys but also an unforeseeable confluence in the Left and Right discourses of the 1980s. During this period, called the Historikerstreit in West Germany, neo-conservatives had pushed for a national identity (in which the Holocaust had no place) and the constitutional patriots had spoken of a collective identity but not a nationalist one. The Holocaust-Denkmal might be seen as a middle ground between these contending notions, not only does it accept and adopt the negative past but it also stands as a national symbol at the heart of Berlin. The memorial might also be seen as anti-totalitarian because it renounces the defining principles of the National Socialist Regime, specifically anti-Semitism. Further to this the Holocaust-Denkmal inspires a post-nationalist identity, by naming not only German victims but victims from all corners of Nazi-occupied Europe. This strange synthesis of ideas gave birth to a new culture of memory in post-unification Germany.
The implicit and public denomination of the perpetrators, by their own descendants is what makes the Holocaust Memorial unique. Although it may be true that such a recognition of Nazi crime shouldn’t have taken so long to materialise, the post-war years were a difficult time when it came to dealing with guilt. In the 1950s and 60s there was an inferred consensus to muzzle the fascist past, and if a memorial such as the Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas had been suggested there wouldn’t have been support for it.
Perhaps this is why commemoration in the shape of the Holocaust-Denkmal was not possible until Germany was cleansed of its perpetrators and the above argument was no longer valid. Howbeit, since the Historikerstreit of the 1980s the public discussion on identity has grown, and with it so has the general consensus that the Holocaust should be part of the German identity. The living memory of the Holocaust is dying out with the generational change, meaning that the Third Reich is moving from communicative memory into cultural memory.
Cultural memory requires symbols. The continuity of past, present and future of a nation can be symbolised by its monuments; Das Hermannsdenkmal, erected in 1875, was a celebration of freedom from foreign rule. The Prussian defeat of France in 1871 memorialised in the form of Arminius’ defeat of the Romans was typical of the traditional nationalism in the late 19th Century which used pride and sacrifice for the fatherland to tie together the newly united patchwork of German states. As human beings we do not only articulate our memories around people, symbols and objects but also in places, for example the house we lived in as a child or a particularly memorable holiday destination. The collective and cultural memory of a nation is anchored in important places too. Usually the most high profile of these places are owed to a positive, traditional nationalist past: something which in unified Germany is dangerous territory, a consequence of its National Socialist past. The Holocaustmahnmal does perform this function of a national, symbolic place for the new Germany but does so by avoiding traditional nationalism.
By recognising its negative past the Holocaust memorial functions as a symbol of the democratic reunited Germany, nations appear more credible and authentic if they recognise their crimes as well as their virtues. The Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas therefore fulfils several functions, it is a symbolic place of remembrance (as the place where the Holocaust was planned), it defines the values of the nation and commemorates international victims.
Some might say that national symbols are detrimental to self-reflection because they pointedly tell their observer what they should think. The architect of the Denkmal, Peter Eisenman, would writhe at this condemnation of his work since he considers the memorial to be anti-symbolic and not to explicitly instruct the visitor, but rather to encourage them to ‘denk mal’ (think for a moment). It cannot be denied that the Mahnmal is thought provoking for visitors, its long narrow passageways between the gravestone-like blocks instil feelings of restriction, confinement and disorientation. Its design is a key feature of the Mahnmal which brings the past into the present. Even for those who do not explore the visitor’s centre below ground the structure is thought-provoking and impressive.
Some saw the Denkmal an unfair hierarchy of victims, which distorted and relativized the genocide of the Sinti and Roma at the hand of the Nazis. Nonetheless the Holocaust-Denkmal did not mean the total exemption of non-Jewish victims of National Socialism, for in 2008 the Gedenkort für die Nationalsozialistischen verfolgten Homosexuellen was erected nearby, and the Denkmal für die ermordeten Sinti und Roma followed a year later. The importance of the centrality of the Holocaust memorial could be owed to the high profile of the anti-Semitic genocide in the media. Anti-Semitism and the elimination of European Jewry was Hitler’s intention since 1919. The inter-European scale of the Holocaust and its large statistics highlights its uniqueness.
Unlike conventional national monuments, in which a positive past is commemorated by the temporal nation, the Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas draws on a negative past. The Mahnmal breaks the tradition of a ‘cult of sacrifice’ because the ‘glorious dead’ named in memorials were heretofore soldiers who sacrificed themselves for their country. The Jews to which the Mahnmal is dedicated, however, were murdered and the public gaze is directed not at the heroes but a non-glorious national past. It is therefore undeniable that memory culture has changed. The Holocaust-Denkmal shows how traditional nationalism has been overtaken by the democratic constitutional state, it demands of Germany that it no longer restricts its values to its own citizens but symbolises a complete break from particularistic self-identification.
Although there is a particularistic dedication to Jewish victims, the memorial stands for all victims. It is essentially a statement that the solidarity of the nation stands no longer with its forefathers but with the victims of its forefathers. For this reason the Holocaust Memorial is symbolic of the abandonment of the traditional bond with nationalism and an employment of humanitarianism. Germany’s involvement in the Kosovo intervention in 1999 (its first military engagement since the Second World War) is further proof of that the political culture of the nation is no longer defined solely within the national boundaries but it has also taken up the moral obligation to prevent another genocide in Europe. One might also argue that the same humanitarianism and moral obligation is reflected through Germany’s large intake of refugees throughout the European Migrant Crisis in 2015 and 2016. Thus, the Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas is a cultural complement to political and economic globalisation and illustrates the creation of a post-national identity.
Throughout debates about whether the Holocaust should be aesthetically represented, how it should be done and what this means for the newly reunified Germany, one thing remains clear: a new culture of memory has emerged in post-unification Germany. The Holocaust-Denkmal, as well as the later built memorials to Homosexual, Sinti and Romany victims of the National Socialist past, symbolise the recognition that the rupture in German history can never be repaired, yet more importantly the memorial presents how this history has been laid bare in the centre of Berlin as a constant reminder. The Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas serves as an interface between the everyday of the modern Germany and the horror of its past. It shows how the past has been filtered through the present and that the Holocaust has been integrated into concepts of identity after reunification, as well as serving as a symbolic place of collective identity post-fascism and post-communism both domestically and internationally.
With the naming of a broad range of groups the memorial is a place which speaks to the collective, across social, political, economic and cultural differences. Memory functions as glue for society and the Holocaust memorial is the concrete configuration of this. A common identity which unites has been forged from history.
