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

and accounts for professionals dealing with the past. After 1989,
most historians passed the verdict that, because of its total domination
of ideology, the historiography of the GDR proved to be
‘scholarly nearly meaningless’ and ‘without any intellectual
honesty’. 1 The really remarkable point is that the direct instrumentalisation
of history was not only a feature of periods of dictatorship.
It can also be seen in the intense opposition of historians to
the Treaty of Versailles which stipulated Germany’s exclusive
responsibility for World War I. Even in the Federal Republic of Germany
there were political attempts to influence historical interpretation.
In the early 1960s, the German Foreign Ministry obstructed
a planned American lecture tour by the historian Fritz Fischer
because of his disputed thesis that Germany was responsible for
starting World War I. Also in the 1960s, a sixth volume to an edition
about the expulsion of German communities from East- Central
Europe (1953-1962) remained unfinished and was never published
because of growing differences between politics and history. For
more than twenty years a specialist branch of contemporary history
and sociology known as GDR research, benefited from funding
from the ministry of all-German or inter-German relations
despite the fact that a number of the annual reports prepared for the
research advisory board on questions relating to the reunification of
Germany were not authorised for publication.
Taking these examples into account, the message is simple:
historians and politicians alike have to fight against the political
domination of their discipline. Historians should at all times stick to
the principles of scholarly research, and should consider themselves
fortunate to be able to carry out their work in the climate of
democratic liberalism, and professional autonomy that have prevailed
after the end of the Cold War and to withstand attempts to
politicise history and use it as a weapon.
The timeless distinction between history and politics
The relationship between history and politics and the demarcation
between the two is far more complicated than and not as obvious
as it may at first seem.
1 Interview with Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Es rächt sich, daß wir nie über Europa
gestritten haben, in: Die Welt, 26 February, 1996, p.7; also interview with
Heinrich August Winkler, Offen bleiben für die politische Kultur des Westens,
in: Die Welt, 29 July 1996, p.7
98