What is Angela Merkel’s Legacy for German Memory Culture?
AGI Asks: How has Angela Merkel contributed to Germany’s culture of remembrance and influenced memory politics? Lily Gardner Feldman AGI Senior Fellow All German post-war chancellors have been committed to …
Alliance Relations and Berlin
Berlin posed the worst kind of alliance problem. Lying 100 miles inside East German territory, surrounded by 124 Soviet and East German divisions, Berlin was indefensible by the West. General …
The Berlin Wall
Sixty Years Since its Construction Sixty years ago on August 13, East German leader Walter Ulbricht tried to save his regime by closing off the escape route to West Berlin. …
Queer Activism and Human Rights
During gay pride season, it is always tempting – at least from a German perspective – to focus narrowly on the German elements of queer history and emancipation. These accounts might feature the precocious …
President Biden’s Recognition of the 1915 Armenian Genocide
Will the German Government Follow? On April 24, 2021, President Joe Biden recognized as a genocide the mass killings by the crumbling Ottoman Empire of 1.5 million Armenians, beginning in …
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Germany intends to restitute artworks from the Kingdom of Benin (“Benin Bronzes”) to Nigeria
On April 30, 2021, Germany’s Culture Minister Monika Grütters announced that restitution of a “substantial” portion of Benin artworks that are held in German museums to Nigeria will begin next …
The Diplomacy of Genocide
President Biden’s Recognition of the Armenian Genocide On the 106th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, April 24, 2021, President Biden issued a statement honoring the memory of Armenians who perished. …
Germany’s Memory Culture and the Alternative for Germany
Issue Brief 62 For decades, the dominant narrative about the evolution of collective memory in the Federal Republic of Germany has been that after several decades of silence, evasion, and …
On the Passing of a German Generation
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my “Nazi aunt” (actually a great aunt) as I called her. Born a century ago in 1920 in northern Bavaria, Leni was a …
Lily Gardner Feldman on Reparations as Part of Reconciliation
AGI Senior Fellow Dr. Lily Gardner Feldman recently spoke with Quartz about the German experience of confronting the past. The article notes, “If the German example can teach it anything, …
Lucky Soldiers
Part Four of Rubble Child’s World: Stories from Bremen’s Ruins Introduction George H. Jordan, Jr. did not like the movie Commando.[1] He made this clear to me as the Arnold …
