Germany stands apart from most nations in its efforts to confront its darkest past. Remembering and atoning for the Holocaust has become the centerpiece of German national memory culture. From strict protections of citizenship rights to the decision to admit over a million Syrian refugees fleeing civil war, lessons learned from the Nazi past have profoundly shaped Germany today. However, what historian Juergen Zimmerer finds especially troubling are signs that Germans may now be unlearning the lessons of the Holocaust. By declaring the defense of Israel to be a core principle of the state, or Staatsräson in German, former Chancellor Angela Merkel unwittingly opened the door to the legitimization of Islamophobia in terms of the burden of the past. Reducing the causes and scope of the Holocaust to antisemitism and the Nazi regime has freed Germans to unquestioningly celebrate the imperial past. In many respects, Zimmerer finds that Germany is now returning to a volkish or racialized self understanding that represents a fundamental unlearning of the past.
During a 2008 speech to the Israeli Knesset then Chancellor Angela Merkel declared that because of the burden of the Holocaust past the defense of Israel had become Staatsräson, or a core principle of the German state. What might seem perfectly reasonable at first glance has profoundly anti-democratic implications. Zimmerer explains that the concept of Staatsräson, or reason of state, is rooted in the early modern history of European states claiming the power to make decisions based on their own interests without consultation or approval by the people. Staatssräson is a Machiavellian conviction that states must have the freedom to take whatever actions are necessary to achieve their aims. Staatsräson, as the justification for the defence of Israel, has no basis in the German constitution, was never deliberated or put to a vote in the German parliament. It is an assertion placed above politics, beyond questioning and democratic debate.
With the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza Staatsräson took on another magnitude of importance. Adherence to Staatsräson became a litmus test for loyalty to and alignment with national values and national identity. With its large Muslim population Staatsräson allowed for the recasting of Islamaphobic sentiments in terms of Germany’s policy of zero tolerance for antisemitism. The assumption was that Muslim Germans brought with them antisemetic sentiments that were at odds with German values and Germany’s memory culture. Protests by Muslims Germans in support of Palestinians could be framed as the product of historical ignorance about and refusal to take responsibility for the Holocaust.
Recasting antisemitism in the present as a problem located with Germany’s Muslim communities is what Zimmerman describes as a form of moral offloading. It is based on the self-serving conviction that Germans have rooted out antisemitic thinking within their own culture. If antisemitism remains a problem in Germany it needs to be understood as a foreign import. It is a regressive form of tribal thinking brought by recent Muslim immigrant populations who refuse or are incapable of integrating into German culture. The notion of imported antisemitism is just one of the ways that the memory of the Holocaust gets twisted or hijacked to fuel volkish thinking about insiders and outsiders in the German present.
Hamas terror attack has now offered a new form of moral exoneration – one that many Germans have eagerly embraced. Not only are their own grandparents no longer the uniquely monstrous perpetrators (Murray), and Germany no longer the sole site of singular crimes (Minkmar), but now they can retroactively place themselves on the right side of history – fighting against the Holocaust, or at least its supposed recurrence. Juergen Zimmerer, Germany’s History Wars: Contesting Memory and Identity Today.
By establishing what is and is not permissible based on the memory of the Holocaust, Staatsräson also became a form of cancel-culture. In addition to the banning of pro-Palestinian demonstrations, Zimmerer notes that that a number of conferences and exhibitions deemed too transgressive were also canceled. In many cases, Zimmerer added, Jewish artists were the targets of this cancel-culture. Safeguarding Jewish life became the justification for restricting Jewish freedom of expression. Reminiscent of recent events in the United States, German universities were singled out as bastions of antisemitism and proposals were made to tie government funding of the arts to fight against antisemitism.
Since the Nuremberg Laws that stripped German Jews of citizenship and paved the way for their dispossession, removal, and murder, citizenship rights have been sacrosanct in Germany. But now German conservative parties want to modify Germany’s Nationality Law making it possible to strip dual citizens of citizenship in cases where they are considered “supporters of terrorism, antisemitism, and extremists.” Human Rights Watch warns that absent any precise explanation of who might be at risk of losing their citizenship, the measure could target unwanted or undesirable populations singled out for political reasons. Given the deep divisions among conservatives about Angela Merkel’s decision to admit over one million Syrian refugees, there is little doubt about which groups are in question.
Reframing antisemitism as an imported problem limited to Muslim populations in Germany dovetails with a generational desire to be good again. According to recent surveys, Zimmerer notes that younger Germans want to reimagine a Nazi past in which their grandparents’ generation were part of the resistance. Shifting the burden of antisemitism to Muslim populations is another way to position Germans on the right side of history. Similarly, in the wake of the October 7th attack, Hamas could be described as the new Nazis, supplanting the original Nazis and relieving their descendants of the burden of the past. Following the Hamas attack, Zimmerer notes that the liberal commentator Nils Minkmar, reformulated the iconic line from the poet Paul Celan, “Death is a Master from Germany” as “Death is a Master from Gaza.” Originally meant to evoke how German culture was a source of death, Minmar now suggested that the new Nazis were Hamas.
One of Zimmerer’s longstanding criticisms of German memory culture is the singular understanding of the Holocaust. While the importance of antisemitism and the central role of the Nazi regime are not in question, German memory culture tends to limit the Holocaust to these two causal factors. Responsible for some of the pioneering scholarship on the genocide in German South West Africa, Zimmerer argues that racial thinking from the imperial past can not be excluded. While the theater in Western Europe largely followed the rules of conventional warfare, the East more closely approximated colonial style racial warfare. From the starvation of millions of prisoners of war to the extermination camps, the exceptional level of violence in the East was partly due to the same kind of dehumanization and racial thinking that characterized the crimes of the imperial era.
Remembering the Holocaust as a singular event is also a means of limiting an uncomfortable past to a particular timeframe and political context. Containing the Holocaust within the Nazi era frees up the possibility of celebrating earlier periods in German history. Zimmerer characterizes the current memory regime in Germany as the Berlin Republic. Particular emphasis is now being placed on the glorification of Germany’s brief imperial past. The reconstruction of the Hohenzollern palace, now the Humboldt Forum, is part of a larger project which makes it possible to immerse yourself in the structures of the imperial past in the German capital.
Zimmerer’s hope for the future is that Germany will broaden its memory culture. Many recent immigrants have no connection to Germany’s Nazi past. However, memories of the imperial past have the potential to resonately more profoundly with immigrant populations originating in parts of the world directly impacted by European imperial expansion. But rather than broadening its memory horizons German is veering in the direction of a more ethnocentric self understanding often justified in terms of its national memory culture but more accurately representing a forgetting of the lessons of the Holocaust.
