Politics of the past: the use and abuse of history - Socialists ...

In Germany, public historical culture and professional historiography
by and large follow the same guidelines and modalities in their
approach to representing the past. They are shaped by the demands
of the Erinnerungskultur (remembrance culture) with its emphasis
on contemporary witnesses, their memories of victimhood,
and mental compensation for human suffering. It would be wrong
to marginalise the great advantages and achievements of this
approach that no longer honours the general with a monument of
him on horseback, but instead compels us to remember the desperate
Jewish citizen deported from his home to Auschwitz with a
golden Stolperstein in the sidewalk. The conjunction of professional
history and the politics of remembrance has helped to lay bare the
mechanisms of seduction during two dictatorships. It helped to establish
a mental caesura after 1945 and again after 1989, and it
has contributed to a historical awareness which privileges the critical
questioning of the past instead of the uncritical affirmation of
historical myths.
The German term for the unity achieved in coming to terms with
the past is Aufarbeitung. The term replaced Vergangenheitsbewältigung
which contains a hidden allusion to the Freudian concept
of psychological recovery by working through trauma. The era
of Aufarbeitung has brought contemporary history back to the attention
of the public and at the same time has challenged the historians’
monopoly on professional expertise. Today historians
compete with the mass media, contemporary witnesses and a political
interest in sharing the burden of Aufarbeitung. Professional
contemporary history in Germany is linked more and more to political
initiatives in this domain. Instead of following the benchmarks
of scholarly discussion there is a tendency towards the demands of
a culture of historical events that concerns itself with the anniversary
of 1956 in 2006, the anniversary of 1968 in 2008, and of
1989 this year.
We must be aware not only of the open and brutal politicisation of
history but we should also fear for its scholarly independence in
the context of this friendly political embrace. The basic definition of
the science of history is that it has to challenge common perceptions
and overcome views. The present paradigm of Aufarbeitung
tends instead to codify mainstream interpretations and commonly
accepted principles of coming to terms with the past. The laws
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