Hands off our Erinnerungskultur!

Should Germany's official remembrance of the past just be focused on 20th dictatorships, or should it be broadened?

Photo by Terence Burke on Unsplash

Dear Reader,

Since 2018 at the latest, we have known how sensitive appeals to widen the lens of Germany’s historical remembrance can be.

That was the year when former AfD leader Alexander Gauland shrugged off the Nazi era as “only a bird poo in 1,000 years of German history.”

In deploying that now infamous phrase, Gauland was attempting to argue that Germany should remember the “heroes” of its past, from Charlemagne and Bismarck, rather than fixing its gaze solely on the 12 years of Nazi terror between 1933 and 1945.

“Precisely because we have taken responsibility for those 12 years, we have every right to admire the Hohenstaufen Emperor Frederick II, the Bamberg Horseman, and the founder figures of Naumburg Cathedral,” Gauland argued.

Only by acknowledging the good parts of German history “will we have the strength to shape our future,” he added.

Much of the outcry in the aftermath focused on Gauland’s choice of the phrase “bird poo” to describe Hitler. Pr…