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With Vladimir Putin's brutal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the new coalition government's resulting reorientation of German foreign and security policy--an epochal shift that jettisoned 30, even 50 [...]

It sometimes seems that Germany is a country perpetually caught in the past. There are so many anniversaries that some sort of tracker is necessary to remember them all. Commemorations [...]

Omer Bartov, Germany's War and the Holocaust: Disputed Histories (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003) Eva Hoffman, After Such Knowledge: Memory, History and the Legacy of the Holocaust (New York: Public [...]

Robert Gellately and Ben Kiernan, eds., The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003) Jan-Werner Muller, ed., Memory and Power in Post-War Europe: [...]

Andreas Huyssen, Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003) Refining and updating his previous book, Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of [...]

Jorg Friedrich, Der Brand.' Deutschland im Bombenkreig 1940-1945 (Munich: Propylaen Verlag, 2002) Gunther Grass, Crabwalk (Orlando: Harcourt, 2002) W. G. Sebald, On the Natural History of Destruction (New York: Random [...]

Micha Brumlik, Hajo Funke and Lars Rensmann, Umkampftes Vergessen: Walser-Debatte, Holocaust-Mahnmal und neuere deutsche Geschichtspolitik (Berlin: Verlag Das Arabische Buch, 2000) Robert G. Moeller, War Stories: The Search for a [...]

(Koln: Bohlau Verlag, 2000) Felix Lutz's Geschichtsbewusstsein der Deutschen is a path-breaking contribution to the study of German political culture. Through the presentation and analysis of an original, representative survey [...]

INTRODUCTION Today, Alexis de Tocqueville and Max Weber are two of the most popular political theorists of modernity and democracy. 'Max Weber's political vocabulary haunts our politics,' (1) with a [...]

Michael Moore's explosive new non-fiction film, Fahrenheit 9/11, deserves its substantial box office success and widespread critical acclaim because it is an important document of our current political culture. (1) [...]

This article examines recent dynamics of collective memory in German-American relations. After an introduction which outlines the importance of history and memory for bilateral relations, the article traces the evolution of collective memories of the two countries and identifies the key filters through which they evaluate each other. It then identifies the key characteristics of German-American relations since the advent of Donald Trump to the American presidency. This is followed by an analysis which examines Trump’s use and abuse of history and memory and what that means for his foreign policy in general and German-American relations in particular. In view of the way Donald Trump has taken the subjective nature of collective memories to an extreme by largely disconnecting these memories from their historical context at the same time as extensively referencing his own history and experience, the article argues that we might be witnessing the end of memory, in particular the end of memory’s direct impact on political discourse and policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For decades, collective memories of the Nazi period and the Holocaust have influenced greatly the Federal Republic of Germany. Despite fears that such progressive memories would decline after unification, the last twenty years have witnessed the institutionalisation of this memory regime. More generally, coming to terms with this past has been a constant political and cultural dynamic since 1945, even if the intensity of this process increased after the big debates of the 1980s. The last decade, however, has witnessed the development of a more pluralistic memory regime in the Berlin Republic, with collective memories of the East German dictatorship and, more importantly, the long-dormant memory of German suffering competing with memory of the Holocaust for visibility and influence. This article concludes with some speculation about the future of collective memories in Germany in light of evidence that the phase of intensive memory work may be coming to an end. The long-unmasterable past may be overcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author presents his views on the relation of drama to German politics. He relates his conversation with a colleague who was disdainful of German politics. The loss of the Social Democrats in the state election in North Rhine Westphalia in May 2005 is pondered by the author. The article also features politician Angela Merkel as the first female party leader and chancellor in the nation's history.

The article discusses the resurgence of memories of German suffering in German collective memories during the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II, Jewish Holocaust and Nazism in 2005. The discourse would be much enriched due to full access to all witnesses and official documents. The resurgent memory is not filling a vacuum of forgetting, but must compete with an occupied terrain of memory and morality, replete with substantial supporting infrastructure and many defenders. The article examines the kinds of political-cultural implications that follow resurgent German-centered memory and the ethical and policy implications of different outcomes. It also presents interviews with the participants of the Zentrum Debate.

The article discusses several studies concerning memory that have been published within the issue.