This article was written by guest contributor and former checks member (2022-2023) Paul Johann Lindhorst.

In the new print edition of the “Checks&Balances” magazine, the author sincerely and seriously contemplates German history and her own family’s role in it. As a fellow German, I understand the sentiment of curiosity towards our (personal) past and horror in the face of it, which is conveyed in this text. To look at what our ancestors did during and around World War 2 is a hard thing to do, yet it is absolutely necessary. While her article “End of the Beginning” constitutes a well-intentioned and honest attempt to grasp Germany’s complicated relationship with its past, it gets many things wrong. It shows a lack of understanding of modern German “Erinnerungskultur” (Remembrance Culture) which leads it to come to a severely misguided conclusion. And that is why, also as a fellow German, I felt the need to write a response letter to the article. 

There is, firstly, the false and oversimplistic generalization that the generation immediately after the war was too busy rebuilding the country to confront the past and that younger generations wanted to detach their identity from Germany’s history. It was, in fact, an achievement of younger generations to cultivate German remembrance. Namely, that of the 1968 Movement. In the years after the war, Germans veiled themselves in silence. The economic boom of the 50s was going on and while partitioned in two, the country had started to flourish again. Questions about what one did during war, were shoved under the carpet. Judges, who had ordered death penalties to Socialists, Pacifists or other enemies of the Nazi regime during the Third Reich, were now part of the new West-German judiciary. In officially anti-fascist Eastern Germany, de-nazification was announced completed in 1948, but also here many culprits remained untrailed. Only in the late 1960s, German students went into the streets of West Germany demanding that justice be spoken for the old Nazi lackeys that still occupied comfortable positions in society and that there be a critical, holistic reappraisal of the Third Reich. This constituted an important achievement and impulse for the “Erinnerungskultur” Germany has today. And it is why her generalization of “newer generations wanting to detach their identity from German history” is just a bit too easy. 

A second big problem is how the article talks about guilt. Not only is it misunderstood, but it unintendedly pushes the article to take conclusions dangerously close to what Neo-Nazis would say about German “Erinnerungskultur”. 

In the anecdote about the mandatory class trip to a concentration camp, “guilt” is identified as an emotion purposefully triggered in students to “deter” them from “expressing antisemitism”. While guilt is an understandable and legitimate emotion to feel here, it is not the purpose of these trips, as portrayed in the article. Deterrence is also not the goal. “Erinnerungskultur” is not about deterrence. “Erinnerungskultur” is also not solely about antisemitism. While Jews were the main persecuted group, in concentration camps Germans killed millions of Sinti & Roma, disabled people, Slavs, political dissidents, prisoners of war, homosexuals, People of Color, and homeless people – the article overlooks them by only focussing on antisemitism. It is this lacking nuance in looking at the past, that German “Erinnerungskultur” tries to enable people to have.   “Erinnerungskultur” is about understanding that unspeakable human suffering, the circumstances that could create it, and developing a feeling of responsibility to not be ignorant or blind to them ever again. Not guilt, Verantwortung (responsibility) is the key word here. As German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said in his speech on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of concentration camp “Auschwitz-Birkenau”: “The Shoa (Holocaust) is part of the German history. It is, whether we want it or not, part of our identity. There is no ending to remembrance, and there is no putting an end to our responsibility.” Responsibility, not guilt. 

In Germany, the people talking most about guilt are those remnants of Nazism that see in “Erinnerungskultur” just a “Schuldkult” (Guilt cult). Fascists like AfD’s Björn Höcke through this narrative allege that Germans are being held hostage by this culture and use it to create frustration and delegitimize German democracy and freedom. They want to stop the translation from guilt to responsibility. They want Germans to see themselves as trapped by this culture and by extension the political system, which they have sworn to destroy.

That is why the final sentence of the article is so tragic. “Germany deserves a future in which it has stopped letting the past control its current politics.” It fits perfectly into this Neo-Nazi narrative. It is probably the consequence of her attempt to have a catchy phrase to close her argument – in this case, it went wrong. 

To put it all into perspective, I believe that to be an honest mistake which upon further reflection would not happen again, but it shows how difficult words can be. The rest of the article displays many good aspects, like insight into her personal discovery of her family history and a good problematization of some of the older generations still being awkwardly silent on the atrocities of Germans. Also, the perspectives gained from her time abroad are a good contribution that this article makes, but in the end the things clarified in this response letter needed to be clarified – especially considering the international readership of “Checks&Balances”, who would have got a distorted perspective of German “Erinnerungskultur” otherwise.

There is no question to me, that this article was made with the best intentions and a genuine curiosity for looking into the abyss that is the family history of Germans during WW2, something that many Germans nowadays sadly lack, but mistakes happen, and I am hopeful this helped to put some of the statements the article makes into perspective. 

This article was written by a contributing writer, and does not necessarily represent the views of the Checks & Balances editorial staff.