Collective Guilt, National Identity, and Political Processes in Contemporary Germany

doi:10.1017/CBO9781139106931.012

10 - Collective Guilt, National Identity, and Political Processes in Contemporary Germany

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2012

Lars Rensmann

Edited by

Nyla R. Branscombe and

Bertjan Doosje

Show author details

Lars Rensmann: Affiliation:
Free University of Berlin
Nyla R. Branscombe: Affiliation:
University of Kansas
Bertjan Doosje: Affiliation:
Universiteit van Amsterdam

Book contents

Get access

Summary

The Holocaust against the Jews of Europe is internationally recognized as a modern genocide that changed the world. It has become a universal moral paradigm in democratic societies and continues to have a significant impact on world politics and international law. Its remembrance provides an ethical background for democratic decision-making and its institutionalization today.

In Germany, the memory and legacy of this past has special implications. The much-lamented burden of guilt has been influential in post-Holocaust German society; Germany's national guilt has deeply affected both collective memory and national identity since the end of the war (Fulbrook, 1999; Rosenthal, 1998). In subtle ways, guilt plays a key role in many facets of contemporary German social and political life (Safran, 2000). Germany, therefore, provides a central arena for analyzing the impact of collective guilt.

How has Germany's guilt been processed on the individual and political levels? More precisely, what is the emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and political impact of this negative legacy on cohorts who share a German identity but are free of personal guilt for any criminal action? Further, how does this affect the cognitive and affective identification with a group identity that is both part of one's self-image and, at the same time, the source of guilt feelings?

How Germany's guilt and the emotional processing of its collective responsibility influences collective identification in contemporary Germany touches on the very core of German social identity.

Type: Chapter
Information: Collective Guilt
International Perspectives
, pp. 169 - 190

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139106931.012 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2004

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Adorno, T. W. (1975). Schuld und Abwehr: Eine qualitative Analyse zum Gruppenexperiment. In T. W. Adorno (Ed.), Gesammelte Schriften Vol. 9.2 (pp. 121–324). Frankfurt: Suhrkamp

Adorno, T. W. (1998). The meaning of working through the past. In T. W. Adorno (Ed.), Critical models: Interventions and catchwords (pp. 89–104). New York: Columbia Universitiy Press

Altfelix, T. (2000). The post-Holocaust Jew and the instrumentalization of philo-semitism. Patterns of Prejudice, 34, 41–56CrossRef Google Scholar

Aly, G. (2000). Das Prinzip Wassersuppe. Berliner Zeitung, 3 February 2000Google Scholar

Arendt, H. (1945). Organized guilt and universal responsibility. Jewish Frontier, 12, 19–23Google Scholar

Aschheim, St. (1997). Archetypes and the German-Jewish dialogue: Reflections occasioned by the Goldhagen affair. German History, 15, 240–50CrossRef Google Scholar

Ahlheim, K., & Heger, B. (2002). Die unbequeme Vergangenheit: NS-Vergangenheit, Holocaust und die Schwiergkeiten des Erinnerns. Schwalbach: Wochenschau Verlag

Ash, M. G. (1997). American and German perspectives on the Goldhagen debate: History, identity, and the media. Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 11, 396–411CrossRef Google Scholar

Barkan, E. (2000). The guilt of nations: Restitution and negotiating historical injustices. New York: W. W. Norton

Baumeister, R. W., & Hastings, S. (1997). Distortions of collective memory: How groups flatter and deceive themselves. In J. W. Pennebaker, D. Paez, & B. Rimé (Eds.), Collective memory and political events: Social psychological perspectives (pp. 277–93). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum

Benz, W. (1994). Kollektivschuld. In W. Benz (Ed.), Legenden, Lügen, Vorurteile: Ein Wörterbuch zur Zeitgeschichte (pp. 117–19). Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag

Bergmann, W. (1997). Antisemitism and xenophobia in Germany since unification. In H. Kurthen, W. Bergmann & R. Erb (Eds.), Antisemitism and xenophobia in Germany after unification (pp. 21–38). Oxford: Oxford University Press

Bergmann, W., & Erb, R. (1991). Antisemitismus in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Ergebnisse der empirischen Forschung 1946–1989. Opladen: Leske & BudrichCrossRef

Brede, K. (2000). Die Walser-Bubis-Debatte. Aggression als Element öffentlicher Auseinandersetzung. Psyche, 54, 203–33Google Scholar

Brendler, K. (1994). Die Holocaustrezeption der Enkelgeneration im Spannungsfeld von Abwehr und Traumatisierungen. Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung, 3, 303–40Google Scholar

Broder, H. M. (2001). Deutschland im Holo-Wahn. Der Spiegel, 7, 222–4Google Scholar

Brusten, M. (1997). Knowledge, feelings, and attitudes of German university students toward the Holocaust. In H. Kurthen, W. Bergmann & R. Erb (Eds.), Antisemitism and xenophobia in Germany after unification (pp. 88–109). Oxford: Oxford University Press

Cohen, R. (2001). To be German and proud: Patriotism versus the past. The New York Times, 10 JanuaryGoogle Scholar

Doosje, B., Branscombe, N. R., Spears, R., & Manstead, A. S. R. (1998). Guilty by association: When one's group has a negative history. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 872–86CrossRef Google Scholar

Duckitt, J. (2000). Culture, personality and prejudice. In S. A. Renshon & J. Duckitt (Eds.), Political psychology: Cultural and crosscultural foundations (pp. 89–107). Houndmills, England: MacmillanCrossRef

Frei, N. (2000). Von deutscher Erfindungskraft oder: Die Kollektivschuldthese in der Nachkriegszeit. In G. Smith (Ed.), Hannah Arendt Revisited: ‘Eichmann in Jerusalem’ und die Folgen (pp. 163–76). Frankfurt: Suhrkamp

Friedlander, S. (1993). Reflections of Nazism: An essay on kitsch and death. Bloomington: Indiana University Press

Fulbrook, M. (1999). German national identity after the Holocaust. Oxford: Blackwell

Geyer, M., & Hansen, M. (1994). German-Jewish Memory and National Consciousness. In G. Hartman (Ed.), Holocaust Remembrance: The Shapes of Memory (pp. 175–90). Oxford: Blackwell

Goldhagen, D. J. (1996). Hitler's willing executioners: Ordinary Germans and the holocaust. New York: Knopf

Golub, J. (1994). Current German Attitudes towards Jews and other minorities. New York: The American Jewish Committee

Habermas, J. (1988). Concerning the public use of memory. New German Critique, 44, 40–50CrossRef Google Scholar

Herbert, U. (1999). Academic and public discourses on the Holocaust: The Goldhagen debate in Germany. German Politics & Society, 17, 35–53CrossRef Google Scholar

Herf, J. (1999). Legacies of divided memory for German debates about the Holocaust in the 1990s. German Politics & Society, 17, 9–34CrossRef Google Scholar

Jodice, D. A. (1991). United Germany and Jewish Concerns. Attitudes towards Jews, Israel, and the Holocaust. New York: The American Jewish Committee

Kirsch, J. H. (1999). Identität durch Normalität: Der Konflikt um Martin Walsers Friedenspreisrede. Leviathan, 27, 309–53Google Scholar

Kött, M. (1999). Goldhagen in der Qualitätspresse: Eine Debatte über “Kollektivschuld” und “Nationalcharakter” der Deutschen. Konstanz: UVK.

Kurthen, H. (1997). Antisemitism and xenophobia in united Germany: How the burden of the past affects the present. In H. Kurthen, W. Bergmann & R. Erb (Eds.), Antisemitism and xenophobia in Germany after unification (pp. 39–87). Oxford: Oxford University Press

Löwenthal, L. (1987). An unmastered past. Berkeley: University of California Press

Olick, J. K. (1998). What does it mean to normalize the past? Official memory in German politics since 1989. Social Science History, 22, 547–71Google Scholar

Ostow, R. (1996). Imperialist agents, anti-fascist monuments, eastern refugees, property claims: Jews as incorporations of East German social trauma, 1945–94. In Y. M. Bodemann (Ed.), Jews, Germans, memory: Reconstructions of Jewish life in Germany (pp. 227–41). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press

Rensmann, L. (1999). Holocaust memory and mass media in contemporary Germany: Reflections on the Goldhagen debate. Patterns of Prejudice, 35, 59–76CrossRef Google Scholar

Rensmann, L. (2000). Belated Narratives: New testimonies of ordinary perpetrators in the context of contemporary post-Holocaust Germany. In S. Leder & M. Teichman (Eds.), The burdens of history: Post-Holocaust generations in dialogue (pp. 79–102). Merion Station, PA: Merion Westfield Press

Rosenthal, G. (1998). Der Holocaust im Leben von drei Generation. Familiale Folgen von Überlebenden der Shoah und von Nazi-Tätern. Gießen: Psychosozial Verlag

Rommelspacher, B. (1995). Schuldlos – schuldig? Wie sich junge Frauen mit Antisemitismus auseinandersetzen. Hamburg: Konkret Literatur Verlag

Rommelspacher, B. (2000). Generationenkonflikte und deutsches Selbstverst-ändnis: Sozialpsychologische Aspekte der Goldhagen-Debatte. In H. Kramer (Ed.), Die Gegenwart der NS-Vergangenheit (pp. 314–28). Berlin: Philo Verlag

Ross, M. H. (2000). The relevance of culture for the study of political psychology. In S. A. Renshon & J. Duckitt (Eds.), Political psychology: Cultural and crosscultural foundations (pp. 33–46). Houndmills, England: MacmillanCrossRef

Safran, W. (2000). Germans and Jews since 1945: The politics of absolution, amends, and ambivalence. In A. Del Caro & J. Ward (Eds.), German Studies in the post-Holocaust age: The politics of memory, identity, and ethnicity (pp. 41–51). Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado

Schwan, G. (1997). Politics and guilt: The destructive power of silence [Politik und schuld. Die zerstörerische macht des schweigens]. Frankfurt: Fischer

Shandley, R. R. (Ed.). (1998). Unwilling Germans? The Goldhagen debate. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press

Silbermann, A., & Stoffers, M. (2000). Auschwitz: Nie davon gehört? Erinnern und Vergessen in Deutschland. Berlin: Rowohlt

Stern, F. (1992). The whitewashing of the yellow badge: Antisemitism and philosemitism in postwar Germany. Oxford: Pergamon Press

Stern, F. (1994). The revival of antisemitism in united Germany: Historical aspects and methodological considerations. In M. Brown (Ed.), Approaches to antisemitism: Context and curriculum (pp. 78–94). New York: The American Jewish Committee

Stern, F. (1996). German-Jewish relations in the postwar period: The ambiguities of antisemitic and philosemitic discourse. In M. Y. Bodemann (Ed.), Jews, Germans, memory: Reconstructions of Jewish life in Germany (pp. 77–98). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press

Stone, W. F., Lederer, G., & Christie, R. (1993). Strength and weakness: The authoritarian personality today. New York: Springer

Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1986). The social identity theory of intergroup conflict. In S. Worchel & W. G. Austin (Eds.), Psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 7–24). Chicago: Nelson-Hall

Taylor, G. (1985). Pride, shame, and guilt: Emotions of self-assessment. Oxford: Clarendon Press

Vogt, B., & Vogt, R. (1997). Goldhagen und die Deutschen: Psychoanalytische Reflexionen über die Resonanz auf ein Buch und seinen Autor in der deutschen Öffentlichkeit. Psyche, 51, 494–569Google Scholar

Weissbrod, L. (1994). Nationalism in reunified Germany. German Politics, 3, 222–32CrossRef Google Scholar

Wilds, K. (2000). Identity creation and the culture of contrition: Recasting ‘normality’ in the Berlin Republic. German Politics, 9, 83–102CrossRef Google Scholar