The future of the past: Historiographical disputes and competing memories in Germany and Israel

History and Theory

Volumn 38, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 51-66

  Levy, Daniel ^a  

^a Columbia University ^*

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0001957518     PISSN: 00182656     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/0018-2656.761999076     Document Type: Article

References (87)

1. Stefan Berger, The Search for Normality: National Identity and Historical Consciousness in Germany since 1800 (Providence, 1997)
2. Charles Maier, The Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust, and German National Identity (Cambridge, Mass., 1988)
3. Reworking the Past: Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Historians' Debate, ed. Peter Baldwin (Boston, 1990)
4. Jacques Le Goff, History and Memory (New York, 1992)
5. Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity, ed. John R. Gillis (Princeton, 1994)
6. This point is made forcefully in Steven Kaplan, Farewell Revolution: The Historians' Feud (Ithaca, N.Y., 1995) where he discusses the historians' dispute around the bicentennial celebrations of the French Revolution. Recognizing the political quality of collective memory one could also say that different groups are struggling to control the future in order to change the past
7. These similarities have invited numerous comparisons from different perspectives. Jose Brunner, for examples, provides a psychoanalytic reading of revisionist debates in Germany and Israel; José Brunner, "Pride and Memory: Nationalism, Narcissism and the Historians' Debates in Germany and Israel," History and Memory 9 (1997), 256-300.
8. Moshe Zimmermann offers a historical comparison in "Pulmusei HaHistorionim: HaNisayon Ha Germani we hitnasut haIsraelit," Teoria u Bikoret 8 (1996), 91-103.
9. Tom Segev describes how the memory of the Holocaust has informed Israeli national identity in different periods; Tom Segev, The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust (New York, 1993)
10. first published in Hebrew in 1991. The centrality of the Holocaust for Germany's political culture has been the subject of countless publications. To be sure, the traumatic impact of World War II is not confined to the collective memory of Jewish victims and German perpetrators alone. Other European countries have also reassessed perceptions of their national past with respect to the Second World War
11. see Pieter Lagrou, "Victims of Genocide and National Memory: Belgium, France and the Netherlands 1945-1965," Past and Present 154 (1997), 181-222.
12. Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge, Eng., 1992)
13. For a good analysis of the political and cultural significance of how the "other" is constitutive for the collective self, see Michael Jeismann, Das Vaterland der Feinde: Studien zum nationalen Feindbegriff und Selbstverständnis In Deutschland und Frankreich, 1792-1918 (Stuttgart, 1992).
14. Uri Ben Eliezer, Derekh ha-kavenet:hivatsruto shel ha-militarizin ha-Ysreeli, 1936-1956 (Tel-Aviv, 1995); Segev, The Seventh Million.
15. Maier, The Unmasterable Past, 123.
16. See also Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory (Chicago, 1992)
17. Commemorations, ed. Gillis; David Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country (Cambridge, Eng., 1985)
18. and Yael Zerubavel, Recovered Roots, Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition (Chicago, 1995) for the Israeli.
19. Both nations share a conception of citizenship which is based on notions of ethnic descent rather than the more common civic associational understanding. For a more detailed discussion about the relationship of citizenship conceptions and national self-understanding see Daniel Levy, "Coming Home?! Ethnic German Repatriates and the Transformation of National Identity in the Federal Republic of Germany," in The Politics of Belonging: Migrants and Minorities in Contemporary Europe, ed. Adrian Favell and Andrew Geddes (Aldershot, Eng., 1998)
20. This argument clearly extends to historical narratives in general, as Richard J. Bosworth, Explaining Auschwitz and Hiroshima: History Writing and the Second World War 1945-1990 (New York, 1993) has shown in his study about different national historiographies
21. Georg Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From, Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge (Hanover, N.H., 1997) extends this argument by showing that these historical narratives are not only embedded in national cultures but that they are also circumscribed by historiographical traditions of a given country
22. Maier, The Unmasteruble Past, 32.
23. Berger, The Search for Normality, Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century; Maier, The Unmasterable Past.
24. The most prominent expression of this sentiment, though by no means the only one, was a book by Friedrich Meinecke, The German Catastrophe [1947] (Cambridge, Mass., 1950). The notion of "catastrophe" evokes an imagery that reduces a concrete historical process and actual political decisions to a realm of inevitability rather than human responsibility
25. Berger, The Search for Normality; J. A. Moses, The Politics of Illusion: The Fischer Controversy in German Historiography (New York, 1975)
26. Ernst Nolte, "Vergangenheit, die nicht vergehen will," in "Historikerstreit": Die Dokumen-tation tier Kontroverse um die Einzigartigkeit der nationalsoziaiistischen Judenvernichtung (Munich, 1987), 39-48 is probably the most recognized but not the only exponent of this view.
27. Comparisons of this sort were rather common in the postwar period in the context of the emerging Cold War. Politicians frequently compared Nazism and Stalinism, as did Nolte in his book on fascism, which won wide acclaim. Ernst Nolte, Der Faschismus in seiner Epoche (Munich, 1963)
28. Jürgen Habermas, "Ein Art Schadensabwicklung," in "Historikerstreit": Die Dokumentation der Kontroverse, 62-77.
29. see also Maier, The Unmasterahle Past; Richard J. Evans, In Hitler's Shadow: West German Historians and the Attempt to Escape from the Nazi Past (New York, 1989)
30. Christhard Hoffmann, "Introduction: One Nation-Which Past? Historiography and German Identities in the 1990s," German Politics and Society 2 (1997), 1-7.
31. Daniel J. Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York, 1996). Shortly after the German publication of the book, a volume with collected reactions to Goldhagen, comparable to the one that documented the Historikerstreit of 1986, was published
32. Ein Volk von Mördent? Die Dokumentation zur Goldhagen-Kontroverse um die Rolle der Deutschen im. Holocaust, ed. Julius H. Schoeps (Hamburg, 1996)
33. At a panel discussion during Goldhagen's book promotion tour in Germany one of the panelists, Wolfgang Wippermann, remarked: "Goldhagen contributed to the political culture of our country" (Die Zeit 38 [September 20, 1996]).
34. See also Wippermann's Wessen Schuld? Vom Historikerstreit zur Goldhagenkontroverse (Berlin, 1997)
35. In a detailed analysis Jeffrey Olick has shown that official Holocaust commemorations in Germany in the last fifty years have always carefully made distinctions between collective and individual guilt, and commonly adhered to the idea that while responsibility can be shared by a group, guilt cannot. See Jeffrey Keith Olick, The Sins of the Fathers: The Third Reich and West German Legitimation (unpublished manuscript, 1993)
36. Dan Diner, "On the Ideology of Antifascism," New German Critique 67 (1996), 123-132.
37. For a general example of the modernity argument, see Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Ithaca, N.Y., 1989)
38. for a more specific study, see Gótz Aly, Vólkerverschiebung und der Mordan den europáischen Juden (Frankfurt, 1995).
39. Diner "On the Ideology of Antifascism," 123-132.
40. David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley The Peculiarities of German History (New York, 1984).
41. Interview with Daniel J. Goldhagen, New York Times (1 April 1996), section C, p. 11
42. Andreas Huyssen has criticized the German left for leaving the concept of the nation to the forces on the right, instead of trying to shape it in a less chauvinistic manner. See Andreas Huyssen, Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia (New York, 1995)
43. The concept of collective guilt played a certain role right after 1945
44. see West Germany under Construction: Politics, Society, and Culture in the Adenauer Era, ed. Robert Moeller (Ann Arbor, 1997). But it was gradually suppressed and eventually gave way to a new understanding, one that emphasized Germany's collective responsibility. This stands in marked contrast to the vehement reaction of the older generation
45. see Rudolf Augstein's polemic, "Der Soziologe als Scharfrichter" in Ein Volk von Mördern?, ed. Schoeps, 106-110
46. and Frank Schirrmacher's response for the conservative right, "Hitler's Code," in the same volume, 99-106
47. With the ascendance of the right-wing Likud under Menachem Begin, the idea of a greater Israel began to dominate the public discourse. Its ideological vanguard was the settler movement, andg radually their ethnocentric vision pervaded Israeli public discourse. Baruch Kimmerling, "Between the Primordial and the Civil Definitions of the Collective Identity: Eretz Israel or the State of Israel?," in Comparative Social Dynamics, ed. U. Almagor, E. Cohen, and M. Lissak (Boulder, Colo., 1985)
48. Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949 (Cambridge, Eng., 1987)
49. Ilan Pappe, The Making of the Israeli-Arab Conflict (London, 1992)
50. Gershon Shafir, Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1882-1914 (Cambridge, Eng., 1989)
51. Avi Shlaim, Collusion across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement and the Partition of Palestine (New York, 1988).
52. Shabtai Tevet, "Charging Israel with Original Sin," Commentary 88, no. 3 (1989), 24-33
53. "Special Issue: Israeli Historiography Revisited," History and Memory, ed. Gulie Ne'eman Arad (Spring/Summer 1995)
54. Steven Heydenmann, "Revisionism and the Reconstruction of Israeli History," in Critical Essays on Israeli Society: Politics and Culture, ed. Ian S. Lustick and Barry Rubin (New York, 1991), 3-26
55. New Perspectives on Israeli History, ed. Laurence Silberstein (New York, 1991)
56. Michael Barnett, "The Politics of Uniqueness: The Status of the Israeli Case," in Israel in Comparative Perspective: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom, ed. Michael Barnett (Albany, 1996), 3-29
57. Baruch Kimmerling, Zionism and Territory: The Socio-Territorial Dimensions of Zionist Politics (Berkeley, 1983); Shafir, Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.
58. Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem; Pappe, The Making of the Israeli-Arab Conflict
59. Shafir, Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
60. Shlaim, Collusion across the Jordan.
61. Some of these revisionist views were recently expressed in a state-sponsored television documentary series celebrating Israel's fiftieth anniversary. The ensuing public controversy was yet more evidence of the pluralization of legitimate voices. The range of identity options has included pledges for a regional identity emphasizing Mediterranean traits, as well as adaptations to liberal models emphasizing individual over collectivistic forms of identity. A good example for the latter is Natan Sznaider, "Vom Wehrbürger zum Einkaufsbürger: Nationalismus und Konsum in Israel," Soziale Welt 49 (1998), 43-56
62. Uri Ram distinguishes two trends: one characterizes the new historians and is commonly referred to as post-Zionism (implying a post-national identity); the other is neo-Zionism, a trend that radicalizes the particularistic features of Zionism's settler component by stressing its ethno-cultural foundations over its democratic commitment. Uri Ram, "Memory and Identity in the Sign of Post-Zionism: The Sociology of the Historians' Disputes in Israel," Teoria u Bikoret 8, no. 3 (1996), 9-32 (Hebrew)
63. Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, "Exile within Sovereignty: A Critique of the "Negation of Exile" in Israeli Culture," Teoria u Bikoret 4 (1994), 23-56
64. and 5 (1995), 113-132 (Hebrew)
65. Maier, The Unmasterable Past, 149, 123.
66. The French have started to look at the collaborational nature of the Vichy regime, and American historiography has re-evaluated the Frontier Thesis, to name but two examples of the proliferation of historical revisionisms.
67. The Invention of Tradition, ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge, Eng., 1983)
68. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780
69. Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (New York, 1986)
70. Charles S. Liebman and Eliezer Don-Yehiya, Religion and Politics in Israel (Bloomington, Ind., 1984); Zerubavel, Recovered Roots
71. Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford, 1983)
72. Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1990 (Cambridge, Mass.,1990)
73. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York, 1991)
74. John Breuilly, Nationalism and the State (New York, 1982)
75. Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914 (Stanford, 1976).
76. Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens, and Scott Lash, Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition, and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order (Stanford, 1994)
77. Pierre Nora, "Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Memoire" Representations 26 (1989), 1-21
78. Nora, "Between Memory and History," 8. 58. Ibid., 11
79. Nancy Wood, "Memory's Remains: Les lieux de memoire," History and Memory 6 (1994), 125.
80. Sensitivity to questions of national guilt and responsibility for their historical pasts is especially pervasive since the end of the Second World War. Due to its historical legacy and the central role of the Holocaust, Germany is a paradigmatic case for the increasing reflexivity that characterizes the national self-questioning in many European states. For a good comparative study elaborating on this shift, see Bosworth, Explaining Auschwitz and Hiroshima. The recent admission of Vichy, both in the sense of guilt and as a legitimate topic of public discourse, and the legitimizing role of the Resistance in the rehabilitation of national pride in France, are other examples. See Henry Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France since 1944 (Cambridge, Mass., 1991)
81. Nora, "Between Memory and History," 10.
82. Steven Laurence Kaplan, Farewell Revolution: The Historians' Feud (Ithaca, N.Y., 1995)
83. For a good discussion of memories and counter-memories see Zerubavel, Recovered Roots
84. Wood, "Memory's Remains," 125.
85. Zerubavel, Recovered Roots, 12.
86. For a more theoretical discussion of how mythical claims are de-tabooized, see Jeffrey K. Olick and Daniel Levy, "Collective Memory and Cultural Constraint: Holocaust Myth and Rationality in German Politics," American Sociological Review 62 (1997), 921-936
87. Waiter Benjamin, "Über den Begriff der Geschichte," Gesammelte Schriften 12 (Frankfurt, 1985), 695.