Conflicting Interpretations. Memories and Controversies on National Socialism in the FRG and the GDR

Completed publication (2021-2023)

The history of the "Third Reich" has shaped German historical culture like no other. The twelve years of National Socialist rule are contrasted by a "second history" of National Socialism, now spanning more than 75 years, which, accompanied by numerous public debates, has had a decisive impact on Germany's self-image. For many years, the "second history" of National Socialism in Germany was also a history of German bi-statehood. While the Federal Republic saw itself as the successor state to the "Third Reich" and increasingly struggled for responsibility under the heading of "coming to terms with the past," the GDR saw itself as a "better Germany" in the tradition of anti-fascist resistance to National Socialism. The historical-cultural debate about the legacy of National Socialism with its politics of memory was thus part of the "asymmetrically interwoven parallel history" (Christoph Kleßmann) of German-German relations. In the process, public images of history in the West and East underwent a mutual transformation after 1945 that developed contextually between "demarcation" and "convergence".

The research project aimed to examine these "interpretive struggles" over the National Socialist past, with its shifting, divergent concepts and future expectations, in the Federal Republic and the GDR – in their transnational, European and global interconnections. To this end, narratives and discourses, media and practices, actors and institutions of the historical-cultural debate in both the divided and the reunified Germany will come to the fore.