A Mnemonic Zeitenwende?

German Memory Culture in the 2020s

Speakers:
Dirk Moses, Professor of Political Science, City College of New York
Helmut Walser Smith, Professor, Department of History, Vanderbilt University
Andrew I. Port, Professor, Department of History, Wayne State University
Sultan Doughan, Lecturer, Convenor MA Museum Anthropology, Goldsmiths University of London
Priscilla Layne, Professor of German, Adjunct Associate Professor of African and Afro-American Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Fabian Krautwald, Assistant Professor of African History, University College London

Moderators:
Anna von der Goltz, Professor, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University
Eric Langenbacher, Teaching Professor, Department of Government, Georgetown University; Senior Fellow and Director of the Society, Culture & Politics Program, AGI

After decades with a deeply institutionalized and influential Holocaust-centered memory in Germany, the first years of the 2020s have witnessed several trends and events that portend an evolution of the country’s memory culture. On the one hand, many voices within and outside of the country have pressed Germany to more deeply confront and work through its colonial past. Discussions have been centered on atrocities such as the genocide of the Herero and Nama in Southwest Africa (contemporary Namibia) and the restitution of looted artwork from all over the Global South. But it has proven challenging for advocates to find sufficient voice and impact in the memory-political landscape. Such difficulties helped to prompt a critique of the mnemonic status quo through the so-called “German Catechism” debate or “Historikerstreit 2.0.” On the other hand, real-world events such as the unprovoked Russian attack on Ukraine starting in 2022, revealed ways in which an inherited memory culture that pervaded the German political and policymaking communities and was reluctant to abandon shibboleths like “nie wieder Krieg,” (never again war) contributed to state failure to adequately recognize and act in ways that could have helped deter crimes against peace and against Ukraine, a country that suffered no less than Russia from the atrocities of National Socialist Germany. Scandalous anti-Semitic images at the 2022 Documenta 15 art exhibition also prompted criticism of a memory culture that could not even prevent this from happening in Germany. These incidents also fed into the larger discussions of the current German mnemonic environment.

This one-day conference brought together scholars and practitioners from Germany and the United States to delve deeply into the current debates about memory culture and its consequences in Germany. It resulted in comprehensive understanding of the current state and future of German collective memory discourses, and the main findings will be disseminated to the wider public through articles as well as through special issues of German Politics and Society, which is housed in Georgetown University’s BMW Center for German and European Studies.

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This event is sponsored by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD); BMW Center for German and European Studies, Georgetown University; and the American-German Institute (AGI).