Don't Mention the War

by Michelle

category: The Lighter Side

Published May 16, 2009 @ 02:12PM PT

I watched The Reader on my flight home from London yesterday --- it's a bit slow, for my taste, but presents an interesting snapshot of the post-WWII German society's struggle to deal with the crimes of the Nazi era.

And, seeing as how satire and occasional inappropriate humor grace the pages of our blogs, I was reminded of a brilliant episode of the short-lived and underappreciated British sit-com Fawlty Towers. (Add it to your Netflix queue, if you haven't seen it yet.) To set the scene: John Cleese plays a hotel owner who, after suffering a head injury, acts even more ridiculous than usual in front of his German guests.

In all seriousness, though, the legacy of WWII and the Holocaust remains a very difficult and sensitive issue for German society. For those of you interested in the more academic dynamics of this struggle, read up on the "Historikerstreit," or "Historian's Debate" (or "quarrel," depending on your translator),  of the late 1980s, during which German intellectuals debated, via various media outlets, remembrance and the role of the Nazi era in German history.

I'm a particular fan of Jurgen Habermas's contribution to the debate, which began with an article titled "A Kind of Settlement of Damages" in Die Zeit in July 1986. Habermas criticizes other historians of presenting a revisionist view that sought to detach Nazism from the trajectory of German history, and argued instead:

"After Auschwitz our national self-consciousness can be derived only from the better traditions in our history, a history that is not unexamined but instead appropriated critically. The context of our national life, which one permitted incomparable injury to the substance of human solidarity, can be continued and further developed only in the light of the traditions that stand up to the scrutiny of a gaze educated by the moral catastrophe, a gaze that is, in a word, suspicious."

(I can't find the Habermas article online, but it is reproduced in the book "A New Conservatism.")

Habermas's idea of an "educated gaze" should speak not only to German society, but to a global constituency that seems far more comfortable with bemoaning moral catastrophes than averting them.