German "Victimhood" During World War Two: A New Chapter in Germany’s Coming to Terms with Its Past?

German Author: Christopher Reichow
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3656653488
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 14

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Book Description
Essay from the year 2013 in the subject History of Germany - National Socialism, World War II, grade: 1,0, Diplomatic Academy of Vienna - School of International Studies, language: English, abstract: The Second World War and its historical categorization remains a disputed topic within the German society. Still, the way of how Germans are rethinking their history is in a state of flux. While the question of collective and individual German guilt has attracted increased scientific and popular attention since the late 1960s, more precisely after the Eichmann and Auschwitz trials, German intellectuals and the German media have in recent years turned their attention, again, towards German suffering during the war. This can be seen as a recourse within a new framework. Already in the immediate postwar period, Germans depicted themselves as victims of the war and its settlement. The preferred self-image was that of being first a victim of Hitler’s and then of enemies hands. Once again, though very late, Germans today consider their own countrymen as victims. In movies and books, they depict themselves and their ancestors not only as villains, but also as people who endured air bombing, starvation, and expulsion. This revived way of storytelling began around the new millennium and focused espe-cially on Germany’s civilian population. An important stimulus for Germany’s coming to terms with its past, or Vergangenheitsbewältigung, was once again triggered by Günter Grass, born in 1927 in Danzig, one of the country’s most popular and successful authors. Already as a member of the famous Group 47, he had – inter alia – initiated a new concept to rejuvenate German literature, particularly with his book The Tin Drum. He also contested a denial of civic responsibility and guilt in past and present, which he saw occurring in the consumerist-driven Bonn Republic. His first two books written in the new millennium, the novel Crab-walk, published in 2002, and his autobiographic work Peeling the Onion, released in 2006, were widely analyzed and sparked off a heated debate on both German guilt and German suffering. By using both books as a case study, this essay examines the main issues that were addressed by Grass and points out today’s situation of German Vergangenheitsbewältigung.

German "Victimhood" During World War Two: A New Chapter in Germany’s Coming to Terms with Its Past?

German Author: Christopher Reichow
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3656653488
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 14

Get Book Here

Book Description
Essay from the year 2013 in the subject History of Germany - National Socialism, World War II, grade: 1,0, Diplomatic Academy of Vienna - School of International Studies, language: English, abstract: The Second World War and its historical categorization remains a disputed topic within the German society. Still, the way of how Germans are rethinking their history is in a state of flux. While the question of collective and individual German guilt has attracted increased scientific and popular attention since the late 1960s, more precisely after the Eichmann and Auschwitz trials, German intellectuals and the German media have in recent years turned their attention, again, towards German suffering during the war. This can be seen as a recourse within a new framework. Already in the immediate postwar period, Germans depicted themselves as victims of the war and its settlement. The preferred self-image was that of being first a victim of Hitler’s and then of enemies hands. Once again, though very late, Germans today consider their own countrymen as victims. In movies and books, they depict themselves and their ancestors not only as villains, but also as people who endured air bombing, starvation, and expulsion. This revived way of storytelling began around the new millennium and focused espe-cially on Germany’s civilian population. An important stimulus for Germany’s coming to terms with its past, or Vergangenheitsbewältigung, was once again triggered by Günter Grass, born in 1927 in Danzig, one of the country’s most popular and successful authors. Already as a member of the famous Group 47, he had – inter alia – initiated a new concept to rejuvenate German literature, particularly with his book The Tin Drum. He also contested a denial of civic responsibility and guilt in past and present, which he saw occurring in the consumerist-driven Bonn Republic. His first two books written in the new millennium, the novel Crab-walk, published in 2002, and his autobiographic work Peeling the Onion, released in 2006, were widely analyzed and sparked off a heated debate on both German guilt and German suffering. By using both books as a case study, this essay examines the main issues that were addressed by Grass and points out today’s situation of German Vergangenheitsbewältigung.

German "Victimhood" During World War Two: A New Chapter in Germany's Coming to Terms with Its Past?

German Author: Christopher Reichow
Publisher:
ISBN: 9783656653462
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 16

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Book Description
Essay from the year 2013 in the subject History Europe - Germany - National Socialism, World War II, grade: 1,0, Diplomatic Academy of Vienna - School of International Studies, language: English, abstract: The Second World War and its historical categorization remains a disputed topic within the German society. Still, the way of how Germans are rethinking their history is in a state of flux. While the question of collective and individual German guilt has attracted increased scientific and popular attention since the late 1960s, more precisely after the Eichmann and Auschwitz trials, German intellectuals and the German media have in recent years turned their attention, again, towards German suffering during the war. This can be seen as a recourse within a new framework. Already in the immediate postwar period, Germans depicted themselves as victims of the war and its settlement. The preferred self-image was that of being first a victim of Hitler's and then of enemies hands. Once again, though very late, Germans today consider their own countrymen as victims. In movies and books, they depict themselves and their ancestors not only as villains, but also as people who endured air bombing, starvation, and expulsion. This revived way of storytelling began around the new millennium and focused espe-cially on Germany's civilian population. An important stimulus for Germany's coming to terms with its past, or Vergangenheitsbewaltigung, was once again triggered by Gunter Grass, born in 1927 in Danzig, one of the country's most popular and successful authors. Already as a member of the famous Group 47, he had - inter alia - initiated a new concept to rejuvenate German literature, particularly with his book The Tin Drum. He also contested a denial of civic responsibility and guilt in past and present, which he saw occurring in the consumerist-driven Bonn Republic. His first two books written in the new millennium, the novel Crab-walk, published in 2002, and his autobiograp

Narratives of Trauma

Narratives of Trauma PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9042033207
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
Over the last decade German culture has been engaged in a re-examination of the traumatic events of the Second World War and their post-war legacy in the public and private sphere. This shift in German memory culture from a focus on responsibility for the Holocaust to a focus on wartime suffering has attracted a lot of critical attention over the past decade, in both Cultural and Literary Studies and History. This volume brings together British, German, Dutch and American scholars from the fields of Cultural Studies, History and Sociology to address the national and international significance of discourses of ‘German wartime suffering’ in post-war and contemporary Germany. The focus of this interdisciplinary volume is both on the historical roots of the ‘Germans as victims’ narratives and the forms of their continuing existence in contemporary public memory and culture. The first three sections of this volume explore the conditions of German victim discourses in a variety of media and public arenas from historiography, sociology, literature and film to monuments, civil defence bunkers and local public memory. The final section sets the contemporary re-articulation of German wartime suffering in an international context with respect to its reception and its reflection in both Western and Eastern Europe and Israel.

The War in the Empty Air

The War in the Empty Air PDF Author: Dagmar Barnouw
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780253346513
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
Sixty years after the liberation of Auschwitz, the impact of the war and the Holocaust on the non-Jewish German population remains a subject that is difficult to broach in public. While the literature on the Second World War in Europe is enormous, the experiences of these Germans have been little studied, as if the memories of the defeated were not deserving of preservation. In Germany 1945, an examination of Allied photography of postwar Germany, Dagmar Barnouw demonstrated one of the means by which the victors sought to impose the burden of responsibility for World War II and the Holocaust on the German people as a whole. Now, in The War in the Empty Air, she demonstrates how deeply that narrative took hold and the silence it imposed, in the context of recent controversies surrounding history and memory.

Medical Memories and Experiences in Postwar East Germany

Medical Memories and Experiences in Postwar East Germany PDF Author: Markus Wahl
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000011763
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
This book draws on the example of the major cities of Leipzig and Dresden to illustrate continuity and change in public health in the German Democratic Republic. Based on archival work, it will demonstrate how members of the medical profession successfully manipulated their pre-1945 past in order to continue practising, leading to persistence in the social conception of medicine and disease after Communism took hold. This was particularly evident in attitudes towards and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases and the pathology of deviant behaviour among young people.

Returning Memories

Returning Memories PDF Author: Christiane Wienand
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1571139044
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
Provides the first comprehensive analysis of the history of returning German POWs after the Second World War, explored as a history of memory both during Germany's division and after unification.

Authenticity and Victimhood after the Second World War

Authenticity and Victimhood after the Second World War PDF Author: Randall Hansen
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 148752823X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
The Second World War was filled with many terrible crimes, such as genocide, forced migration and labour, human-made famine, forced sterilizations, and dispossession, that occurred on an unprecedented scale. Authenticity and Victimhood after the Second World War examines victim groups constructed in the twentieth century in the aftermath of these experiences. The collection explores the concept of authenticity through an examination of victims’ histories and the construction of victimhood in Europe and East Asia. Chapters consider how notions of historical authenticity influence the self-identification and public recognition of a given social group, the tensions arising from individual and group experiences of victimhood, and the resulting, sometimes divergent, interpretation of historical events. Drawing from case studies on topics including the Holocaust, the siege of Leningrad, American air raids on Japan, and forced migrations from Eastern Europe, Authenticity and Victimhood after the Second World War demonstrates the trend towards a victim-centred collective memory as well as the interplay of memory politics and public commemorative culture.

Echoes of Trauma and Shame in German Families

Echoes of Trauma and Shame in German Families PDF Author: Lina Jakob
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253048273
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
How is it possible for people who were born in a time of relative peace and prosperity to suddenly discover war as a determining influence on their lives? For decades to speak openly of German suffering during World War II—to claim victimhood in a country that had victimized millions—was unthinkable. But in the past few years, growing numbers of Germans in their 40s and 50s calling themselves Kriegsenkel, or Grandchildren of the War, have begun to explore the fundamental impact of the war on their present lives and mental health. Their parents and grandparents experienced bombardment, death, forced displacement, and the shame of the Nazi war crimes. The Kriegsenkel feel their own psychological struggles—from depression, anxiety disorders, and burnout to broken marriages and career problems—are the direct consequences of unresolved war experiences passed down through their families. Drawing on interviews, participant observation, and a broad range of scholarship, Lina Jakob considers how the Kriegsenkel movement emerged at the nexus between public and familial silences about World War II, and critically discusses how this new collective identity is constructed and addressed within the framework of psychology and Western therapeutic culture.

Women in European Holocaust Films

Women in European Holocaust Films PDF Author: Ingrid Lewis
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319650610
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
This book considers how women’s experiences have been treated in films dealing with Nazi persecution. Focusing on fiction films made in Europe between 1945 and the present, this study explores dominant discourses on and cinematic representation of women as perpetrators, victims and resisters. Ingrid Lewis contends that European Holocaust Cinema underwent a rich and complex trajectory of change with regard to the representation of women. This change both reflects and responds to key socio-cultural developments in the intervening decades as well as to new directions in cinema, historical research and politics of remembrance. The book will appeal to international scholars, students and educators within the fields of Holocaust Studies, Film Studies, European Cinema and Women’s Studies.

Germans as Victims

Germans as Victims PDF Author: Bill Niven
Publisher: Palgrave
ISBN: 9781403990426
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Since the 1960s and certainly the 1980s, Germans have been confronting the Nazi past and the legacy of German perpetration. However, over recent years, Germany has become increasingly preoccupied with German suffering during the war and the post-war period. Arguably, it is no longer the Holocaust that takes centre-stage in the contemporary German culture of memory but the trauma caused by Allied bombing of German cities, and by the expulsion of millions of Germans from eastern Europe at the end of the war. This thought-provoking and lively collection of essays, by a team of leading scholars in the field, explores current memory trends in Germany. What has triggered this preoccupation with German suffering? How dangerous is it? Is it really new, or have the Germans always tended to empathise more with their own losses than with Nazi victims? Together these essays are an invaluable resource for students and teachers, and are essential reading for all with an interest in how Germans, in the new millennium, are facing up to their past.