Bernd Ulrich at die Zeit tries to understand the recent popularization of the past in Germany. Is Wortmann's Das Wunder von Bern, like Sonnenallee and Goodbye Lenin, evidence that Germans (chiefly West Germans) are finally "growing up" in their attitudes towards history? [There's more to it than that.]
Heute haben die meisten lebenden Deutschen sich persönlich nichts mehr vorzuwerfen, und sie finden auch kaum noch jemanden, dem man persönlich etwas vorwerfen könnte. Darum stünde so oder so die Verwandlung von persönlicher Schuld in politisch-historische Verantwortung an. Ein heikler Prozess, in dem das Gefühl für das Grauen und für die Gefährdung verloren gehen kann. Nun kommt, historisch zufällig, noch etwas Zweites hinzu: Da die Ökonomie labil wird, suchen die Deutschen neue Identitätsanker, nicht zuletzt in der Historie. Daraus ergibt sich leicht eine Tendenz zur Verkitschung, Verharmlosung, Verflachung. Geschichte, wo man gerne hingeht.
Just for fun: here's how Google translated a larger exerpt, including that same paragraph:
The Germans were with one another reconciled never as as today, and which is, in order to come on the dangers, naturally also delicately. That today still another revisionism did not threaten à la Ernst Nolte or also only before daring courage of trembling Neonationalismus à la Martin Walser. Nobody would come on the idea to explain the Gulag to the Prius from Auschwitz to or to charge the German complicity with German suffering or to explain also only Versailles as the actual place of birth of the Second World War. No, this reconciliation does not need displacing. The danger sees 21 at the beginning. Century differently out: Today most living Germans have to accuse themselves personally nothing more, and they find also hardly still someone, to which one could accuse personally something. Therefore in such a way or so the conversion of personal debt into political-historical responsibility would stand on. A delicate process, in which the feeling for the grey and for the endangerment can be lost. Now, historically coincidentally, still somewhat second is added: Since the economics becomes unstable, the Germans look for new identity anchor, not least in history. From it easily a tendency results to the Verkitschung, minimization, flattening. History, where one goes gladly.
Posted by Heather at November 2, 2003 08:21 PM
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