At h-soz-u-kult, Jörg Arnold has published a lengthy review of 28 (!) recent books dealing with localized accounts of the Allied air war. According to the reviewer these are books spawned by the success of Friedrich's Der Brand, offering documentation of the destruction of various cities, including photographs and quotations from eyewitnesses, rather than any historical analysis. As such they are reviewed "nicht in erster Linie als Beiträge zur wissenschaftlichen Forschung ...sondern als Indikatoren der gegenwärtigen Erinnerungskultur..."
[I was thinking that this might make an interesting context against which to understand the (near) completion of the restoration of Dresden's Frauenkirche.]
Posted by Heather at June 28, 2004 10:39 AM
Comments
in my opinion, the bombing of dresden, hamburg, cologne etc. was indeed a war crime. nevertheless, it was a understandable, a necessary one. while i feel a deep pity for the hundreds of thousands of victims, i don't feel any anger for the pilots or the ones that gave the order to pulverize those cities. think of london and rotterdam, think of auschwitz and treblinka, think of leningrad.
but a people needs to be allowed to mourn. the germans need to be allowed to mourn at last. all we have to look after is that "we" (the germans) manage to remember those horrible events with sadness and pity, but without any thought of revenge.
therefore i welcome books like this one, therefore i welcome the reconstruction of the frauenkirche - even if i usually don't like such backwarded exposure to history.
Posted by: vasili at June 30, 2004 03:19 PM
I think what's interesting in these cases is that they're short, local stories; relying on anecdotes and photographs...providing documentation of that very shift in 'German' opinion you mention: publicly discussing what happened, becoming able to mourn. I suppose the Historian looks at this type of thing somewhat sceptically because it doesn't provide enough analysis of larger factors; it looks at only one side of the equation.
With the Frauenkirche I think it's just amazing in itself. I haven't read anything in the papers yet, but I'm sure people are analyzing this event as a sort of conclusion to Reconstruction as a project.
Posted by: Heather at July 1, 2004 10:44 AM