Language of Remembrance
Over the last few years, American society has been entrenched in a debate about how to remember the past. Demonstrations calling for the removal of Confederate statues and the backlash …
On the Possibilities and Pitfalls of German Holocaust Memory Today
In the past week, we marked the eightieth anniversary of the Wannsee Conference, in which Nazi bureaucrats coordinated the murder of millions of European Jews in a beautiful villa outside …
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. …
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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 …
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. …
Keeping History Alive: 75 Years after the Liberation of Auschwitz
One of the negative icons of the twentieth century was the Holocaust—the Nazi German persecution and murder of approximately 6 million Jewish people in Europe during World War II from …
The 100th Anniversary of the Treaty of Versailles
Among the many important dates that we largely overlooked is the 100th anniversary of the Treaty of Versailles, the treaty that ended the state of war between Germany and the …
The Afghanistan War: Collective Memory Formation in the United States and Germany
More than eighteen years have passed since October 2001, when U.S. forces were deployed to Afghanistan after the Taliban regime refused to extradite Osama bin Laden and shut down Al-Qaeda …
The Fall of the Wall as a Memory of Joy
Few countries have had to grapple with such a complex historical legacy as Germany. Among the many challenging issues arising from this past has the been the dynamic between appropriately …
Marking the Polish-German Treaty of Good Neighborhood and Friendly Cooperation
On June 17, 1991, the Federal Republic of Germany and the Republic of Poland signed a treaty vowing to be good neighbors: to respect national boundaries and to contribute to …
Mothers: Remembering Three Women on the 80th Anniversary of Kristallnacht
Ida was terrified. She figured she would never see either her husband or brother ever again. For several days she fretted, not knowing what to do. While desperately trying to …
Memory, Identity, and Commemorations of World War II
Anniversary Politics in Asia Pacific Edited by Daqing Yang and Mike Mochizuki Why do some governments and societies attach great significance to a particular anniversary year whereas others seem less …
