1. Indeed, as some observers have pointed out, this is implicit in the very composition of the term Vergangenheitsbewältigung itself. Its meaning, roughly “coming to terms with the past,” has reduced an expansive term—the past—to but twelve years of German history. See Hey, Bernd, “Die NS-Prozesse—Versuch einer juristischen Vergangenheitsbewältigung,” Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 6 (1981): 331.Google Scholar Most recent studies have been conservative critiques of the concept. See Kittel, Manfred, Die Legende von der zweiten Schuld: Vergangenheitsbewältigung in der Ära Adenauer (Berlin, 1993);Google ScholarWolffohn, Michael, Keine Angst vor Deutschland! (Erlangen, 1990), 96–110;Google ScholarJesse, Eckhard, “‘Vergangenheitsbewältigung’ in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland,” Der Staat 26, No. 4 (1987): 539–65.Google Scholar See also, Kielmansegg, Peter Graf, Lange Schatten: Vom Umgang der Deutschen mit der nationalsozialistischen Vergangenheit (Berlin, 1989)Google Scholar and Brochhagen, Ulrich, Nach Nümberg: Vergangenheitsbewältigung und Westintegration in der Ära Adenauer (Hamburg, 1994).Google Scholar

2. Conservatives have taken up the call for the second Vergangenheitsbewältigung. See Weissmann, Karlheinz, Rückruf in die Geschichte (Berlin, 1992).Google ScholarHoffmann, Christa, Stunden Null? Vergangenheitsbewältigung in Deutschland, 1945 und 1989 (Bonn, 1992).Google ScholarJay's, Martin “Once More an Inability to Mourn? Reflections on the Left Melancholy of Our Time,” German Politics and Society 27 (Fall 1992),Google Scholar offers a view from a different perspective.

3. Faulenbach, Bernd, Meckel, Markus, Weber, Hermann, eds., Die Partei hatte immer Recht—Aufarbeitung von Geschichte und Folgen der SED-Diktatur (Essen, 1994);Google ScholarJasper, Gotthard, “Vergangenheitsbewältigung': Historische Erfahrungen und politische Voraussetzungen,” in Burrichter, Clemens and Schödl, Günter, Ohne Erinnerung keine Zukunft! Zur Aufarbeitung von Vergangenheit in einigen europäischen Gesellschaften unserer Tage (Cologne, 1992), 17–31;Google ScholarHabermas, Jürgen, “Die Last der doppelten Vergangenheit,” Die Zeit, 13 05 1994, p. 54.Google Scholar

4. Kolb, Eberhard, “Foreword,” in Revolution und Räterepublik in München, 1918/19 in Augenzeugenberichte, ed., Schmolze, Gerhard (Munich, 1978), 9–10.Google Scholar

5. Schneider, Christian, “Historikerstreit auf bayerisch,” Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), 6/7 11 1993, p. 3.Google Scholar

6. Halbwachs further notes, “we can understand how we recapture the past only by understanding how it is…preserved in our physical surroundings.” Halbwachs, Maurice, The Collective Memory (New York, 1980), 140.Google Scholar Since Pierre Nora's work on the subject, other scholars have focused on the relationship between monuments, memory, and identity. See, among many others, Nora, Pierre, “Between Memory and History: Les lieux de mémoire,” Representations (Spring, 1989): 7–25;Google ScholarGillis, John, ed., Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity (Princeton, 1994);Google ScholarYoung, James, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (New Haven, 1993);Google ScholarZerubavel, Yael, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition (Chicago, 1995);Google ScholarNipperdey, Thomas, “Nationalidee und Nationaldenkmal in Deutschland im 19. Jahrhundert,” Historische Zeitschrift 3 (1968): 529–85.Google Scholar

7. Halbwachs's assertion that memory is fundamentally rooted and preserved in social relationships—indeed, that it is condemned to oblivion without them—raises questions as to its dissemination over time. The apparent diffculty in accounting for the passing on of memory once its original bearers, those who personally experienced events, have themselves passed on, however, is addressed by pointing to the existence of “communities of memory” groups who empathetically identify with, and assign meaning to, events of the past through various commemorative ceremonies and gesture. Irwin-Zarecka, Iwona, Frames of Remembrance: The Dynamics of Collective Memory (New Brunswick, 1994), 47–49;Google ScholarConnerton, Paul, How Societies Remember (Cambridge, 1989), 37–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8. James Young refers to a “biographical” approach to monuments, Young, The Texture of Memory, ix.

9. The Bavarian revolutions sparked the most historical studies during the 1960s and 1970s and have tailed off as of late. The subject acquired the most interest among East German historians who, like Hans Beyer, aimed to demonstrate the existence of mass working-class support for the second Räterepublik, Beyer, Hans, Von der November Revolution zur Räterepublik in München (Berlin, 1957).Google Scholar An opposing view can be found in Mitchell's, AllanRevolution in Bavaria, 1918–1919: The Eisner Regime and the Soviet Republic (Princeton, 1965)CrossRefGoogle Scholar which, though clearly oriented toward debunking east bloc historiography, is the best work in the fairly scant English-language literature on the subject. See also Grunberger, Richard, Red Rising in Bavaria (London, 1973).Google Scholar Recent attention toward Kurt Eisner's role in the period has been particularly promoted by the work of his granddaughter, the journalist Freya Eisner, who has been motivated by the desire to overturn left-wing and rightwing stereotypes about Eisner's political career. See, most recently, Einser, Freya, “Kurt Eisners Ort in der sozialistischen Bewegung,” Vierteljahreshefte fü Zeitgeschichte (07, 1995): 407–37.Google Scholar See also Herz, Rudolf and Halfbrodt, Dirk, Revolution und Fotografte, München 1918/19 (Berlin, 1988).Google Scholar

10. For other works on history and memory, see Hutton, Patrick, History as an Art of Memory (Hanover, NH, 1993);Google ScholarTerdiman, Richard, Present Past: Modernity and the Memory Crisis (Ithaca, 1993;Google ScholarGoff, Jacques Le, History and Memory (New York, 1992).Google Scholar See also the journal, History and Memory: Studies in Representation of the Past. For the purposes of this brief essay, the following simplified distinctions between history and memory can be offered: history is the reconstruction of the past in written form by historians; memory represents how the past (as well as how written history) is perceived by society. Whereas the past is forever fixed, both history and memory evolve over time, with neither attaining an absolute or objectively “true” understanding of the past. This is not to say that history and memory are equally subjective, for their standers of reconstructing the past are very different. Still, although history has traditionally aimed (at least until recently) for a high degree of scientific objectivity, the opposition made by Halbwachs and others between a scientific history and “subjective” view of the past represented by memory can no longer be accepted.

11. Mitchell, Revolution in Bavaria, 5.

12. Ibid., 11–20. The creation of new war-related industries in the city after 1914 (especially the Krupp works in the northern districts) dramatically increased the size of Munich's working class, a development that lent new support to the SPD and its constitutional reform efforts. Ibid., 20–29.

13. Ibid., 89–101; Schmolze, Revolution und Räterepublik, 85–110.

14. The oft-cited line read by Eisner was: “Fortan ist Bayern ein Freistaat” (From this moment on, Bavaria is a republic). As will be seen, the use of the term Freistaat would be highly controversial in postwar Munich. Rathaus München/Direktorium, Stenographischer Sitzungsdienst (RMDSS)/RP, Bauausschuss, 2 February 1989, 27–34.

15. Compared to the SPD's 33 percent of the vote, the USPD received only 2.5 percent. The fact that the BVP, the postwar incarnation of the Catholic Center Party, received the highest electoral total of 35 percent indicates the general degree of conservatism in Bavaria. Mitchell, Revolution in Bavaria, 217–18. The Thule-Gesellschaft was the most active in organizing propagandistic smear campaigns against the Eisner regime as well as more drastic actions ranging from espionage and kidnapping to paramilitary insurrection. Wilhelm, Hermann, Dichter, Denker, Fememörder: Rechtsradikalismus und Antisemitismus in Müncken von der Jahrhundertwende bis 1921 (Berlin, 1989), 57–76.Google Scholar

16. It has often been speculated that Arco-Valley killed Eisner for complex psychological reasons due to his own anti-Semitic self-hatred. Born of a Jewish mother (from the Cologne Oppenheimer banking family), Arco-Valley had been rejected for membership in the Thule-Gesellschaft because of his “impure” background—a fact that, according to many, led him to assassinate Eisner as proof of his raial trustworthiness. Wilhelm, Dichter, Denker, Fememörder, 62; Schmolze, Revoltion und Räterepublik, 227–29.

17. Schwarz, Albert, “Die Zeit von 1918 bis 1933,” in Handbuch der Bayerischen Geschichte, ed. Spindler, Max, vol. 4 (Munich, 1974), 428.Google Scholar

18. Mitchell, Revolution in Bavaria, 303–19; Grunberger, Red Rising, 111–14.

19. The total death figures vary. Hans-Günther Richardi has claimed that between 30 April and 8 May 1919, some 557 people were killed. “Die kurze Herrschaft der Räte in München,” SZ, 7 April 1994, p. 35. Others cite figures of over 700, if not 1000. Nöhbauer, Hans, München: Eine Geschichte der Stadt und ihrer Bürger vol. 2. Von 1854 bis zur Gegenwart (Munich, 1992), 206;Google Scholar Schwarz, “Die Zeit,” 432

20. Rudloff, Wilfried, “Auf dem Weg zum ‘Hilter-Putsch’: Gegenrevolutionäres Milieu und früher Nationalsozialismus in München,” in München, Stadtmuseum, München—“Hauptstadt der Bewegung” (Munich, 1993), 36.Google Scholar

21. Among the future Nazis who opposed the Eisner regime and attempted to unseat the Räterepublik were former members of the Thule-Gesellschaft such as Dietrich Eckart, Hans Frank, Rudolf Hess, and Alfred Rosenberg, and Freikorps members, such as Franz Ritter von Epp and Ernst Röhm.

22. In national Reichstag elections, Munich support for the NSDAP began higher than the national total but later sank below it. Thus, in May 1924, 28.5 percent of all Münchner voted for the Völkischer Block (the successor party to the temporarily banned NSDAP), while only 6.5 percent of all Germans voted for it nationally; in May, 1928, the Nazis gained 2.6 percent of the total national vote, but 10.7 percent of the Munich vote; in September the figures were 18.3 percent nationally and 21.8 percent in the city; by July 1932, however, the figures were 37.3 percent nationally and 28.9 percent locally, and by November 1932, the figures were 33.1 percent and 24.9 percent respectively. See ClemensVollnhals, “Der Aufstieg der NSDAP in München, 1925 bis 1933: Föderer und Gegner,” in: München—“Hauptstadt der Bewegung,” 157–65; Hamilton, Richard, Who Voted for Hitler? (Princeton, 1982), 144–55, 476;Google ScholarSchumann, Klaus, “Kommunalpolitik in München zwischen 1918 und 1933,” in Stölzl, Christoph, Die Zwanziger Jahre in München (Munich, 1979), 1–17.Google Scholar

23. See the catalogue for the eponymous 1993–94 exhibition at the Munich city museum, München—“Hauptstadt der Bewegung,” Munich,1993) for the most comprehensive view of the relationship between the city and the movement. See also Mensing, Björn and Prinz, Friedrich, Irrlicht im leuchtenden München? Der Nationalsozialismus in der “Hauptstadt der Bewegung” (Regensburg, 1991);Google ScholarNicholls, Anthony, “Hitler and the Bavarian Background to National Socialism,” in: German Democracy and the Triumph of Hitler, ed. Nicholls, Anthony and Matthias, Erich (London, 1971), 99–128.Google Scholar

24. Schmolze, Revoltion und Räterepublik, 240–42; Eisner, Freya, “Zwischen Kapitalismus und Kommunismus,” Die Zeit, 18 02 1994, p. 74;Google Scholar Allan Mitchell refers to this memorial as a “pagan altar,” 275; Grunberger, Red Rising, 80; Herz and Halfbrodt, Revolution und Fotografie, 119–24.

25. Herz, Revolution und Fotografie, 120.

26. Ibid., 301.

27. Guttmann, Thomas, ed., Giesing: Vom Dorf zum Stadtteil (Munich, 1990), 176–79, 259.Google Scholar See Herz and Halfbrodt, Revolution und Fotografie, 11, for a photograph of the monument. The bronze plaque read: “Kurt Eisner, born 14 May 1867. Died 21 February 1919.” Herz and Halfbrodt, Revolution und Fotografie, 301.

28. Little evidence exists of the actual plaque. The Munich Stadtarchiv possesses no records of it; the few references to it appear after 1945 with the attempts of certain city councilmembers to restore it. Stadtarchiv München/Ratsitzungsprotokolle (StAMü/RP), Stadtrat, 14 January 1947, 190–91; 21 January 1947, 289–98. Letter to author from Dr. Helmuth Stahleder, Stadtarchiv München, 2 January 1996.

29. Letter to author from Dr.Helmuth Stahelder, StadtarchivMünchen, 2 January 1996. I am indebted to Dr. Stahleder for his assistance in tracking down the origins of this plaque. The date of this monument is the most likely one, but it may have been erected in 1933. For the slightly amended text see Alckens, August, München in Erz und Stein: Gedenktafeln, Denkmäler, Gedenkbrunnen (Mainburg, 1973), 46.Google Scholar

30. In Mein Kampf, Hitler refers to Eisner as having acted “solely as a servant of the Jews” who were trying to make the Reich “fall…prey to Bolshevism.” Hitler, Adolf, Mein Kampf (New York, 1971), 557.Google Scholar

31. Guttmann, Giesing, 176–79. As one Nazi councilman argued, “the memory of Kurt Eisner will remain preserved by the people…as a deterrent example for those who are inclined to harm the state.” Herz and Halfbrodt, Revolution und Fotografie, 301.

32. Herz and Halfbrodt, Revolution und Fotografie, 301.

33. Schubsky, Karl W., “Jüdische Friedhöfe,” in Synagogen und Jüdische Friedhöfe in München, ed. Selig, Wolfram (Munich, 1988), 186.Google Scholar

34. Preis, Kurt, München unterm Hakenkreuz, 1933–1945 (Munich, 1989), 30–31.Google Scholar

35. Alckens, München in Erz und Stein, 46.

36. See Dollinger, Hans, Die Münchner Strassennamen: Zu Fuss durch die Geschichte unserer Stadt (Munich, 1995), 121, 56, 179, 293.Google Scholar

37. Angermair, Elisabeth and Haerendel, Ulrike, eds., Inszenierter Alltag: “Volksgemeinschaft” im nationalsozialistischen München, 1933–1945 (Munich, 1993), 32;Google Scholar Guttmann, Giesing, 176–79; Alckens, München in Erz und Stein, 41.

38. Under the terms of Allied Control Council Directive no. 30, “any monument…which tends to preserve…the German military tradition…or to commemorate the Nazi party…must be completely destroyed…” “Directive no. 30,” Official Gazette of the Control Council for Germany, no. 7 (31 May 1946): 154.

39. See “Umbenennung von Strassen und Plätzen,” Münchner Stadtanzeiger, 26 September 1945, p. 3 and 3 October1945, p. 3; Stahleder, Helmuth, Haus-und Strassennamen der Münchner Altstadt (Munich, 1992), 24–25.Google Scholar

40. City building director Hermann Leitenstorfer gave his approval for the demolition after concluding that “artistic reasons for preserving [the figure] have receded in importance.” StAMü/RP, Hauptausschuss, 13 February 1947, 174–76; “Gegen das Freikorps-Denkmal,” Münchner Mittag, 20 December 1946, p. 5. In its place, a bronze sculpture by Josef Erber representing children at play, flanked by reliefs of scenes from local history, was erected in the fall of 1959. “Ein Kinderbaum… SZ, 27 October 1959, p. 4; Alckens, München in Erz und Stein, 73.

41. StAMü/RP, Stadtrat, 21 January 1947, 291.

42. The fact that the bill was sponsored by the KPD—a party soon to be banned nationwide as a result of cold war tensions—no doubt also hampered its passage.

43. StAMü/RP, Stadtrat, 21 January 1947, 294.

44. StAMü/RP, StR, Aktensammlung, 22 April 1958, 1326. In light of this bill, assertions that the monument was restored in 1945 appear to be in error. See Guttmann, Giesing, 176–79, 259 and “Die Inschrift und das Vermächtnis aufpoliert,” SZ, 23 May 1989, p. 15.

45. Photo with caption, SZ, 22/23 February 1969, p. 15. As indicated by a local citizen's demand (in a letter to the editor in the Süddeutsche Zeitung at this same time) to restore of the original plaque at the site (demolished by the Nazis), the Weimar-era monument had clearly persisted in local memory. “Eisners Andenken ehren,” SZ, 21 February 1969, p. 12.

46. StAMü/RP, Hauptausschuss, 14 January 1969, 6–21.

47. StAMü/RP, Stadtrat, 15 January 1969, 66–95.

48. StAMü/RP, Hauptausschuss, 14 January 1969, 6–21.

49. Ibid.

50. Ibid.

51. StAMü/RP, Stadtrat, 15 January 1969, 66–95.

52. “Leser schreiben uns,” MM, 23 January 1969, p. 16.

53. “Starkes Echo zum Thema Strassennamen,” MM, 18/19 January 1969, p. 10: “Leser schreiben uns,” MM, 23 January 1969, p. 16.

54. BayerischerLandtag, 6. Legislaturperiode, 1966–1970, supplement 1794. Schriftliche Anfrage, NPD, 3 February 1969. Reminiscent of other anti-Semitic canards proclaiming the Jewish “identity” of leftist politicians, the charge that Eisner's name was Kosmanowsky lacks all factual basis. Freya Eisner, “Zwischen Kapitalismus und Kommunismus,” Die Zeit, 18 February 1994, p. 74.

55. “Wo Kurt Eisner ermordert wurde…” SZ, 9 November 1976, p. 19. This fear was not unfounded given the destructive attacks aganist a plaque dedicated to Lenin on the site of his former residence in Schwabing in 1970. Alckens, Giesing, 76.

56. Mess, Reimund, Das andere München: DGB-Stadtrundfahrt (Munich, 1983), 27.Google Scholar

57. Letter from HannesKönig, SZ, 6 September 1985, p. 20.

58. RMDSS/RP, Lottmann Antrag, no. 819, 20 August 1985; Bauausschuss, 24 October 1985, 382–85; Bauausschuss, 27 February 1986, Aktensammlung, 497–502. “Streit um Kurt Eisner,” SZ, 27 August 1985, p. 9.

59. “Streit um Kurt Eisner,” SZ, 27 August 1985, p. 9.

60. Letter from Paul Walter, SZ, 13 September 1985, p. 16.

61. See letters from GeraldEngasser, PaulWalter, PeterHendl, SZ, 13 September 1985, p. 16 and Heinrich Bihrle and Klaus Budzinkski, SZ, 25 September 1985, p. 16; “Nochkein Platz für Eisner-Denkmal,” SZ, 25 October 1985, p. 15.

62. Opponents had claimed that insufficient space existed on the sidewalk site for a monument. RMDSS/RP, Bauausschuss, 24 October 1985, 382–85; Bauausschuss, 27 February 1986, Aktensammlung, 497–502; “Jetzt doch ein Denkmal für Kurt Eisner,” SZ, 31 October/1 November 1985, p. 17.

63. While the commissioning of a monument would take several years to yield results, unconventional interim measures served to maintain the new interest in Eisner. On 21 February 1986, the anniversary of Eisner's death, members of the SPD-affiliated group, “The Other Bavaria,” Launched its action “the invisible monument,” tearing up a flagstone in the Kardinal-Faulhaber-Strasse's sidewalk and burying a plastic painting of Eisner beneath it, before restoring the site's appearance. While the commemorative impact of this action was limited, it attested to a new impulse to recognize Eisner's symbolic importance. “Unsichtbares Denkmal für Kurt Eisner,” SZ, 23 February 1986, p. 19; “Vom Problem, mit einer Inschrift Zeichen zu setzen,” SZ, 3 February 1989.

64. RMDSS/RP, Bauausschuss, 2 February 1989, Aktensammlung, 506.

65. RMDSS/RP, Stadtrat, 22 February 1989, 113–44.

66. In addition to having dominated the post of Minister President (except during the tenure of Wihelm Hoegner), The CSU has possessed an absolute majority in the Landtag since 1962. Roth, Rainer A., Freistaat Bayern: Politische Landeskunde (Munich, 1994), 73.Google Scholar

67. RMDSS/RP, Stadtrat, 22 February 1989, 113–44.

68. Ibid.

69. “Die Inschrift und das Vermächtnis aufpoliert,” SZ, 23 May 1989, p. 15.

70. The naming of “Erich-Mühsam-Platz” in Schwabing in 1989 also represents the creation of a site for the political Left. Dollinger, Die Münchner Strassennamen, 72.

71. Schneider, Christian, “Historikerstreit auf bayerisch,” SZ, 6/7 11 1993, p. 3.Google Scholar

72. “Mit Verkehrsschild und Tomatensaft,” SZ, 25 04 1994, p. 14;Google Scholar “Denken an einen Ermordeten,” Abendzeitung, 25 April 1994, p. 12. The monument was erected by the local artists Wolfram Kastner and Eckhard Zylla.

73. “Eine Tafel erinnert jetzt an Gustav Landauer,” SZ, 25/26 01 1997, p. 45.Google Scholar The plague's text reads: “Gustav Landauer, 1870–1919, philosopher, translator, and briefly, People's Representative for Popular Enlightenment, was murdered at the end of the Munich Soviet Republic on May 2, 1919 in Munich-Stadelheim, as a radical socialist and violent anarchist.”

74. To a degree, this failure reflects a built-in deficiency of monuments which, as many observers have pointed out, do not preserve memory to the extent commonly assumed. Whether or not one fully accepts the somewhat cynical views of Robert Musil that “there is nothing in the world so invisible as [a] monument” or James Young, that “the more memory comes to rest in its exteriorized forms, the less it is experienced internally,” one must avoid the naive assumption that monuments inevitably preserve memory. Musil, Robert, Gesammelte Werke (Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1978), 506;Google Scholar Young, The Texture of Memory, 5.

75. James Young has addressed this issue in nothing that “the surest engagement with memory lies in its perpetual irresolution.” Young, The Texture of Memory, 21.

76. Kammen, Michael, Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (New York, 1991), 13.Google Scholar

77. For a wide range of essays concerning the toppling of GDR monuments in the early 1990s, see the entire issue of kritische berichte 3 (entitled “Der Fall der Denkmäler) (1992). See also Schönfeld, Martin, “Erhalten-Zerstören-Verändern? Diskussionsprozesse um die politischen Denkmäler der DDR in Berlin,” kritische berichte 1 (1991): 39–43Google Scholar and Adam, Hubertus, “Zwischen Anspruch und Wirkungslosigkeit: Bemerkungen zur Rezeption von Denkmälern der DDR,” kritische berichte 1 (1991): 44–64.Google Scholar

78. See, for example, Kershaw, Ian, “Totalitarianism Revisited: Nazism and Stalinism in Comparative Perspective,” Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für Deutsche Geschichte 23 (1994): 23–41.Google Scholar