Wie normal sind die Normalen?” — this question was raised in a 2004 poster campaign sponsored by the charity Aktion Mensch in response to the highly topical debate on the subject of bioethics. The question draws attention to the use of “normality” as a normative standard: what are the criteria by which it is defined and how reliable are they? Normality is, of course, by no means a self-evident truth. Even if the use of the term “normal” naturalizes that which is called normal, normality is a discursive construct. The distinction between the normal and the non-normal is always blurred and contested.

Is there a connection between the discussion of normality in relation to bioethics and the discourse of German “normalization” dealt with in this volume? One of the conventional denotations of “normality” is individual physical and mental health. To draw a parallel between the National Socialist concept of the “gesunder Volkskörper” and the contemporary discourse of the “normal nation” might thus not be entirely illegitimate. Less provocatively — without referring to the racist ideology of a biologically pure nation — this chapter argues that there is a close connection between concepts of a normal and healthy psychological development of the individual and conceptions of national identity within the discourse of a normalization of German history. I begin with some general reflections on the use of the term normal in this discourse and then focus on one aspect: the connection between normalization and narration in historiography and public memory.