Jürgen Zimmerer, "Memory Wars: New German Historical Consciousness" (Reclam Verlag, 2023)

Summary

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Podcast Summary

New Books Network | German Studies

Episode: Jürgen Zimmerer, "Memory Wars: New German Historical Consciousness" (Reclam Verlag, 2023)

Date: January 3, 2026
Host: Miriam Shawy Schultz with co-host Henriette Deserter
Guest: Prof. Dr. Jürgen Zimmerer

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Overview

This episode delves into Memory Wars: New German Historical Consciousness, an edited volume by Prof. Jürgen Zimmerer. Through a wide-ranging conversation, the hosts and Zimmerer explore Germany’s evolving memory landscape, debates over national identity, the impact of colonial legacy, the significance and symbolism of public monuments, the so-called "Staatsräson" in German-Israeli relations, and the current crisis in public historical debate. The tone is reflective, urgent, and at times, deeply critical of contemporary memory politics.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Ownership vs. Historical Citizenship

[04:39]

• The book's introduction, “Who Owns German History?” asks who is allowed to participate in shaping the nation's historical narrative—not 'ownership' in a property sense, but in terms of voice and inclusion.
• Zimmerer’s dual goal:
  • To showcase the diversity within German memory culture that mainstream discourse often overlooks.
  • To demonstrate, through diverse contributors, that memory debates should and can be inclusive.

“Who belongs to German history and who has a say in German history and who is allowed to talk and is listened to?” (Zimmerer, [04:39])

2. Transatlantic 'Memory Wars' and German Specificities

[08:27]

• The "memory wars" in Germany parallel culture wars in the US (e.g., fights over Critical Race Theory), but with their own national contours.
• Recent years have seen a conservative and sometimes far-right backlash—often influenced by developments in the US and UK—against moves toward historical pluralism, including postcolonial studies, gender studies, and anti-racist initiatives.
• Activism is also transnational, such as Black Lives Matter's influence on German debates about colonial monuments.

“Everything which goes for more diverse understanding, for emancipation, for empowerment… all this is under attack by those who reject the progress of the last decades.” (Zimmerer, [09:53])

3. The Emergence of a 'New German Historical Consciousness'

[10:57]

• Zimmerer describes a shift from a self-critical, Holocaust-centered national identity (postwar Bonn Republic) to one that revives symbols and narratives of Imperial Germany.
• Berlin’s rebuilt cityscape—especially the Humboldt Forum (imperial palace) and its juxtaposition with Holocaust memorials—exemplifies a move toward historical “normalization” and selective commemoration.

“You could walk from the Brandenburg Gate through Berlin without encountering the destruction and the memorials of World War II and the German century of racist violence. And that is very telling.” ([13:39])

4. Demographic Change and the Limits of Memory Inclusion

[15:57]

• A quarter of contemporary Germans have a "migrant background," yet mainstream memory debates still assume an ethnically homogeneous population rooted in 1945 Germany—a “Nazi fiction,” Zimmerer warns.
• The book argues for expanding the definition of German historical identity to include stories and traumas of all Germans, regardless of background.

“The fiction of a homogeneous German society is a Nazi fiction… If you are of Italian background, Turkish background, Vietnamese background, whatever, you are born in this country, you are German. It's time that we also include their stories, including their traumas, into what German historical identity is.” (Zimmerer, [17:13])

5. Memory, East Germany, and Post-Unification Exclusion

[19:08]

• Recent debates revisit the marginalization of East German voices and the erasure of racist violence that accompanied unification.
• Black East Germans and immigrant communities often feel excluded from the celebratory narratives of reunification.

“Every year we have a celebration for unification and it's never about unifying Germans of diverse cultural or ethnic… backgrounds. It's only about East Germans, white East Germans and West Germans.” (Zimmerer, [21:56])

6. Book Structure & Historiographical Debates

[22:05]

• The volume is organized chronologically, covering the German Empire and its continuities, the Second World War, the Holocaust, east and west Germany, and finally the Berlin Republic.
• Zimmerer emphasizes that these divisions reflect current public and political debates, such as the Hohenzollern restitution controversy, the Fischer dispute over Germany's responsibility for WWI, and debates around colonial legacies.

“Most of it are political controversies which then are translated into historical questions.” (Zimmerer, [27:54])

7. Staatsräson, Israel, and the Limits of Debate

[30:11]

• Since Merkel’s 2008 declaration, Germany’s "raison d'État" (Staatsräson) is to guarantee Israel’s security—but the term’s implications were left deliberately vague, fostering a depoliticized consensus.
• The aftermath of October 7th has seen Staatsräson invoked to limit public speech, especially by and about Germans of Palestinian or Arab descent, and to justify potential infringements on civil liberties.

“Staatsräson is now used as a justification for limiting the freedom of expression. And that is quite problematic.” (Zimmerer, [35:44])

8. Historical Struggles—From Habermas to Today

[39:15]

• Reflects on the 1980s Historikerstreit (historians’ dispute), when Habermas defended the singularity of the Holocaust and set the moral foundations for the Federal Republic.
• Describes a new "Historikerstreit 2.0" in which Holocaust uniqueness is weaponized to suppress postcolonial and migrant perspectives, often labeling critique as antisemitic.
• Examples include controversies over the Humboldt Forum, debates about reparations for the Herero and Nama genocide, and the uproar surrounding the Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe.

“This is now becoming a discussion about perspectives of the global south or international perspective versus German perspectives. And I think that's repeated now in the debate about Habermas…” (Zimmerer, [48:32])

9. Limits of Debate and the Need for Dialogue

[51:07]

• The current atmosphere is highly polarized, with conceptual “triggers” preventing meaningful discussion.
• Zimmerer advocates for genuine attempts to understand the suffering of all sides, resisting the urge for simplistic moral positioning.

“We sometimes just have to accept that there is a horrible situation which cannot easily be solved… we understand the suffering of others.” (Zimmerer, [53:11])

10. Reflections on Gaps & Future Work

[55:52]

• Zimmerer wishes the book had attended more to stories of Muslim-Jewish solidarity and positive cross-cultural engagement.
• For future research, he intends to examine the dangerous resurgence of "völkisch" (ethnosexual/nationalist) concepts in German discourse, especially the racialized idea of “imported antisemitism.”

“That's what really worries me is that what we see now is that the folkish ideas is gaining ground… it has a racist bias to it.” (Zimmerer, [57:48])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On memory exclusion:

  “A lot of Germans… are not responsible for World War I. And then along came Christopher Clark… which could be read like, no, it's not just Germans. It's more a systemic failure. And that it became immediate best seller in Germany… because it was understood by a lot of Germans as we are not responsible, not so responsible for World War I.”
  — Zimmerer, [26:52]

• On Staatsräson and repression:

  “Staatsräson is now used as a justification for limiting the freedom of expression. And that is quite problematic.”
  — Zimmerer, [35:44]

• On inclusion and German identity:

  “Because the debate or our, our concept of German historical identity is shaped by a Germany of 1945, and that is ethnically cleansed German society… we need a new German history consciousness because we need to include those.”
  — Zimmerer, [17:02]

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Important Timestamps

• [04:39] Zimmerer on ‘who owns history’ and goals of the edited volume
• [08:27] Transatlantic parallels and German specificity in ‘memory wars’
• [10:57] The emergence of a new historical consciousness post-reunification
• [15:57] Demographic changes and the need for inclusive memory
• [19:08] Marginalization of East Germans and memory of reunification
• [22:05] Book structure and historiographical controversies
• [30:11] Explanation and critique of "Staatsräson" after October 7th
• [39:15] From Habermas and the Historikerstreit to today's debates
• [51:07] On the difficulty—and necessity—of restoring public debate
• [55:52] Missed opportunities and plans for future research

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Tone and Takeaways

Zimmerer, both passionate and even-tempered, calls for critical self-reflection, pluralism, and empathy in approaching German history and memory. He is outspoken about present dangers: new exclusions, the silencing of minority perspectives, and the instrumentalization of historical trauma for political ends. The hosts support and extend his arguments, bringing a sense of urgency and personal investment to the conversation.

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For Listeners Who Haven’t Tuned In

This episode is essential for anyone interested in German history, the politics of memory, and the intersection of historical scholarship and contemporary identity debates. It offers succinct yet nuanced explanations of current controversies, their historical roots, and what’s at stake for Germany—and for wider global discussions of memory and inclusion.

Transcript

[Marshall Po]

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[Miriam Shawy Schultz]

Hello and welcome back to New Books in German Studies, a podcast channel on the New Books Network. My name is Miriam Shawy Schultz and I'm one of the hosts of this channel. And I'm joined today by my comrade and friend, Henriette Deserter. Hi, Henrietto.

[Henriette Deserter]

Hi, Miriam. I'm delighted to join you for this episode of the show today as a co host and we are very, very happy to welcome Professor Dr. Zimmera to this episode today. And we look very much forward to this conversation and maybe, Miriam, you want to introduce our guests to our listeners?

[Miriam Shawy Schultz]

Yes, sure. So, Jurgen Zimmerer is Professor of Global History and the head of the Research Center Hamburg's Post Colonial Legacy at the University of Hamburg. He served as the founding president of the International Network of genocide scholars for 12 years until 2017, and was the Senior editor of the Journal of genocide from 2005 to 20 2011. His research interests include German colonialism, comparative genocide studies, colonialism and the Holocaust, and environmental violence and genocide. And for the specific German context, his work has been very crucial in revealing the deep connections between the Holocaust and German colonialism. Up until that point, two German histories of violence hegemonically thought of as ontologically different, if at all thought together. Jurgen's work is really so extensive That I can only mention a few of his similar books here. And I will focus on the English language publications. So his publications include German Rule, African Subjects, State Aspirations and the Reality of Power in Colonial Namibia, which came out in 2021, and from winter to Auschwitz Reflections on the Relationship between Colonialism and National Socialism, which is forthcomin in English in 2024. But today we will be discussing his new and surely provocative and edited volume, errinnerungskamfilm Neues Deutsches Geschichtbeweststein, which came out with Rieklam earlier this year. What can be loosely translated as Memory Wars. New German Historical Consciousness is a collection of essays that lay bare a mosaic of a diverse German memory landscape, as well as major debates and turning points that have been and are continuously shaping it. And since it is an edited volume and in German, our conversation will probably go a little different than usual. Less chapter specific and more from a bird's eye view.

[Henriette Deserter]

So.

[Miriam Shawy Schultz]

Hi Jurgen, wonderful to have you and welcome to the show.

[Jurgen Zimmerer]

Thank you very much.

[Henriette Deserter]

Yeah, welcome also from my side. So let's get right started with our first question. So Jorgen, you are not only the editor of this book, but you also contributed two chapters to it. So maybe let's start with your introduction, which is called who owns German History? Wim GE hurdi deutsche gechter. And we thought it's interesting to think about history that can be owned. So maybe can you elaborate on that? Who has owned German history so far and who hasn't and also who wants ownership now?

[Jurgen Zimmerer]

Well, maybe the translation of ownership is a bit, not problematic, but flawed because what it means is who belongs to German history and who has a say in German history and who is allowed to talk and is listened to. And the starting point, what I wanted to achieve with the book are two aims, two goals, so to speak. I wanted to show that the German memory landscape is a lot more diverse than the public and the published discourse in Germany shows. And I wanted to show that you can edit a volume on German memory wars and the diversity and also have a diverse authorship. I tried. I mean, it's open to any sort of criticism where I failed, where I succeeded. But I wanted to prove that you could actually get into debate, into a discussion in a volume. Because we sometimes in Germany have. We like to talk over subjects, on subjects, but not. Not listen to those people more, more. More involved or more biographically involved than. Than ourselves. So that's what I wanted to achieve. And the starting point, another one was that we have. Well, I do think that as you know, German society, German identity is very focused on history and on memory. And I think that over the last couple of years we have quite an intensified debate on German identity and historical consciousness. And we always treat it like there's only one issue we need to talk about. Whether it's the Bembe debate or the new historical stride or the Documenta. It's almost always centered about one topic. I just wanted to provide the German public with the information that actually there are a number of debates going on and I think it's very telling that like the guest workers or East German memory or the, the memory of violence, of German unification is ignored in, in, in the, in, in the mainstream debate.

[Miriam Shawy Schultz]

Yeah, thank you for this. It reminded me of what Anna Haikova, drawing on Gayatri Spivak, called also historical citizenship, which I think is maybe a better term than the translation of ownership of history. Yeah. So given that ours is a transatlantic conversation for not exclusively German audience, the title memory wars probably calls to mind ongoing cultural wars in other national contexts. So here in the United States, for instance, we are reminded of heated debates and also right wing attacks on such fields as critical race theory or queer studies. So I think it would be helpful you mentioned already the historica stride and the Mbembe debate or affair. What is specific about the German memory wars?

[Jurgen Zimmerer]

Well, let's start with saying what's not specific, because I actually think it is a transnational problem or a transnational problem, Conservative extreme right backlash, white supremacist backlash against everything we achieved or many of us have fought for over the last years and decades. And I observe that a lot of it is originating in the US and actually then copied in Germany, it's changed a bit, like also for the better. I mean, if you look at the Black Lives Matter movement, which was concentrating on civil war monuments in the us then concentrated on slavery profiteers in Britain and then in Germany it engaged, for example, like the Bismarck statues in Hamburg and other places. So there is a transformation, but it's the same movement. And you can also see the same for the opposite side, for the opponents, so to speak. We have critical race theory, which is not as prominent in Germany now we are attacked under the headline of post colonial studies, but it's the same mechanism. So I think everything which goes for more diverse understanding, for emancipation, for empowerment, all this, gender studies, feminism, all this are under attack by those people who reject the progress of the last decades. I would say.

[Henriette Deserter]

Yeah, well, maybe in addition to this and also like regarding the very different debates and attacks that are currently happening. The subtitle of the book is Neues Deutsches like New German Historical Consciousness. And so why do you think is it exactly now important to have a new historical consciousness? And how was it specified at this very moment of time?

[Jurgen Zimmerer]

Well, as I tried to outline in my introductory chapter, I think from a pacific German position, we are having a new historical identity or we are basing Germany on a new historical identity. I call it historical core or the identity core of the Berlin Republic. Now I think 30 years after unification, 30 plus years after unification, we can actually see a shift from a, from a very self critical approach to our history to one which is, which I think is a lot more self confident and which I think is, is a schlustrich debate without we'll call you drawing a line and, or stopping the safe critical engagement we are calling it. So on the surface, political rhetoric tells us that we will always send our identity around a critical engagement with the Holocaust and Nazism under Third Reich. But in reality Berlin has been rebuilt in the last decades in an architecture of Imperial Germany Pre World War I. And you can see that the Humboldt Forum, the city palace of the Hohenzollern, the last German Imperial dynasty, which has been rebuilt where the palace of the Republic stood. And the palace of the Republic was a central building for the German Democratic Republic for East Germany. And after unification this was destroyed, was taken away versus it was asbestos, it could not be saved. And then instead of putting for example a monument, a critical monument for the victims of Nazism there van rebuilt the Imperial palace and one built the memorial for the murdered Jews of Europe, but not in the central line from the Brandenburg Gate to the Alex. So you could walk, you could have two completely separate walks in Berlin. One you can go to the memorials for the victims, mainly the Jewish victims, but also Sinti and Roma victims. But you could also walk from the Brandenburg Gate through Berlin without encountering the destruction and the memorials of World War II and the German century of racist violence. And that is very telling. And the Humboldt Forum, which should also was supposed to house as housing the Ethnological Museum, is connecting the Berlin Republic to Berlin's great time or Germany's great time as a cultural nation and a nation of science. And I think that this is actually quite a departure from at least the identity of the Bonn Republic where I grew up.

[Miriam Shawy Schultz]

Yeah, this is something actually that we wanted to talk to you about, of course, since your expertise is in German colonialism and you have been responding to the so called Humboldt Forum in the Middle of Berlin. So the Humboldt Forum, as you've kind of indicated already, is of course very telling about the recent shifts in German historical consciousness and political agendas. And I guess the two cannot be thought of as independent from one another. So maybe we can talk a little bit more about the Humboldt Forum and its relationship also to the memorial of the murdered Jews. And also maybe the Neue Wache, which is exactly opposite of the Humboldt Forum, of course, which ultimately is a memorial to all victims of war and kind of, I guess, for right wing people, the embodiment of a memorial for German victimhood in the Second World War. So, yeah, how about we explain for an American audience maybe exactly what the Humboldt Forum is when it came about and again, how you interpret the shifts and symbolism of it, maybe.

[Jurgen Zimmerer]

May I just go back to the last question, because I forgot. My second point is at one point is this and Neues Deutsches Gestichen in a conservative way. But we also have now a discussion or the realization that Germany is a society which is demographically quite different from the German society. Pre1945, 25% of all the Germans have. We call it migrant background, which means, therefore one of the parents or grandparents has been born outside Germany. And I think that we have a debate where also those people, and that is back to this ownership question, wanted to be heard. And we need, that is the normative part of the book. We need a new German history consciousness because we need to include those. Because the debate or our, our concept of German historical identity is shaped by a Germany of 1945, and that is ethnically cleansed German society because the Jews were driven out of a murder, a lot of other people were driven out. That though the fiction of a homogeneous German society is actually a Nazi fiction and it's a folkish concept. And we are discussing our historical consciousness in this folkish terms up to today. And so I also wanted to set a counterpoint to that and saying, no, if you are of Italian background, Turkish background, Vietnamese background, whatever, you are born in this country, you are German. It's time that we also include their stories, including their traumas, into what German historical identity is.

[Miriam Shawy Schultz]

Yeah, absolutely. No, I totally agree. This is one of the major contributions and interventions of this book and also shown in the kind of contributing authors that are presented here that are representing the diversity of German scholarship. Of course.

[Henriette Deserter]

So I was wondering maybe also when we speak about the different memories within German history and the different like memorial lines, if you maybe can also elaborate on the specificity of the divided Germany or the reunited Germany. What that means in terms of the official narrative and which is something that we maybe can also see very well at the aforementioned Humboldt Forum and the previous palace Terra Public.

[Jurgen Zimmerer]

Yeah, interesting is that we have amongst the debates, the historical debates with flare up now the last couple of months is all the one about East Germany, East German history and East German identity. So it's again felt that basically unification was also a takeover of East Germany by West Germany, including by West German historians. I'm not a specialist in this field, so I'm basically summarizing the contributions in the book mainly by Katharina Varda and Patrice Poutrus on. On Sasha Kowalchuk, who makes strong cases of East German voices being ignored in the public German discourse and of the history of violence, of racist violence which accompanied unification being basically ignored in all the public narratives. And incidentally, just last Friday we had a public debate on the book here in Hamburg with Katharina Warder and Patrice Putrus to black East Germans who strongly make the case that I feel excluded. They felt excluded. They were born in Germany, in East Germany, they grew up in East Germany, but. But they felt that the whole euphoria about unification was not including them. And the racist violence which we are witnessing now and which is increasing has deep roots, although in this unification and before and in the 1990s we had this racist violence in west and east and people murdered. We have the NSU, this right wing terror group for 10 years traveling through Germany and murdering people. And it seems that in the international project, the post unification national project, this is largely ignored because we said, I mean every year we have a celebration for unification and it's never about unifying Germans of. Of diverse cultural or ethnic or whatever you call it, backgrounds. It's only about East Germans, white East Germans and West Germans. And that is not reflecting more than Germany.

[Miriam Shawy Schultz]

Yeah, this is maybe a good segue to actually talk about the structure of the book. So the book is divided into five subsections with a total of 23 chapters. As I said, the authors are very diverse. And so it starts with a section on the German Empire and its continuities. This is also where you are featured with your chapter. It then discusses National Socialism and the Second World War and in a separate section the Holocaust and Multidirectional Memory. And then there's a section on east and West Germany and reunification and finally the so called Berlin Republic. So Marginalization and a New Master Narrative is the subtitle of the section. Categorization and Periodization is of course itself a choice. So were there debates of how to structure the book, why structure it this way? Was this kind of the clear way from the start? Or were the debates maybe also with the publishers, how do the chapters themselves build onto each other and also these categorizations? And then finally, yeah, as I've mentioned before, were there alternative ideas maybe for structuring the book, let's say along discursive categories rather than chronological and thematic lines?

[Jurgen Zimmerer]

Well, first of all, I think the book is aiming at a broader audience. So it's not, not meant or only for academics. And that why I thought that going along a chronological line, which is also part of the core of the debates, I mean, I was orienting on what are the debates which I could identify what are not controversies and debates, although they should be like Islam belongs to Germany. The chapter on that is something which never reached, never became a public debate for historians because it was immediately pushed back. But we should always talk about Islam as part of Germany and various groups. I mean, I say Islam and then we talk about Turkish identity. That is in itself is narrowing it. It's just really meant as opening up debates. And we had debates on what I think on colonialism. We had debates on the Hohenzollern, which is the attempt of the last German imperial dynasty to get a lot of their palaces and artwork back which were confiscated in East Germany because by law they categorized the Hohenzollern as helpers of the Nazis and therefore their land was taken away and they are now suing to get it back with the argument that they were not supporting Hitler. And that is a public debate and a lawsuit. And that's why, why that's one choice. We had a debate on Christopher Clark and the Sleepwalkers and the origin of World War I. So this has in the past, for the immediate post war historians generation, very important debate who is responsible for World War I. Because it was quite clear who's responsible for World War II. At least in Europe it's the Germans and elsewhere maybe the Japanese, but in Europe it's Germans. But the argument was that World War II and Nazism originates somewhat in World War I, in the loss of World War I. So whoever is responsible for World War I is also indirectly responsible for Nazism and indirectly responsible for the Holocaust. Though a lot of Germans in the historians in the 19th and 50s and 60s were arguing that Germany is not responsible for World War I. And then came Fritz Fischer, actually a former colleague of mine at the University of Hamburg, who in the 1960s, wrote two books saying that Germany was responsible for World War I because of the war aims. And there was a Fischer controversy, one of the first huge controversies on German historical identity. Then I think it became widely accepted Germany is responsible. And then along came Christopher Clark, a colleague from Cambridge, who wrote a book, Sleepwalkers in 2013, right. For the centenary of the outbreak of World War I, which could be read like, no, it's not just Germans. It's more a systemic failure. And that it became immediate best seller in Germany, sold hundreds, thousands of copies because it was understood by a lot of Germans as we are not responsible, not so responsible for world War. For World War I. And so we also have a debate on that. And that's sort of. And that goes through all the chapters which you outlined. And you can see that most of it are political controversies which then are translated into historical questions.

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[Henriette Deserter]

Yeah, well, I mean speaking of this field of the causalities and responsibilities that you just outlined, also political politics at the moment have changed so fast between the start and the end of the book. And also they changed in very disturbing and unfortunate directions. You mentioned them earlier, already. So. So maybe, and this might be a cheeky question because it's a very complex field. We know. But it would be interesting for our listeners who are not so familiar with the German particular Staatzrisson. The raison d'. Etat. Maybe you can explain a little bit what the Staats raison means. And if you want to, we would also be curious in the second step how you would or how you see the debates that have erupted with regards to the staatz raison since October 7th.

[Jurgen Zimmerer]

Well, the Staatsres what it means basically is that in 2008 Chancellor Merkel went on a state visit to Israel and declared that the safety, the security of Israel is part of the German. Reason of state. And that was quite a strong statement, which basically is interesting because as some said, so what does it mean? What is the consequence? And Merkel, and that is quite typical of her, I think, never responded to that. And there was no debate, basically. I think Markle will be remembered as a German chancellor who depoliticized politics. And I think that terrible legacy in a way that there are no debates because for Merkel a lot of things were without alternative. That was one of. Is one of the key concept. There's no alternative to do this or that. Which is interesting because in democracies there are always alternatives. That's the essence of democratic political culture. And I think what she did with Staats Rasson is again saying Germany commits itself that because of the moral responsibility or the responsibility for the Holocaust, will defend Israel or the security of Israel at any cost. I mean that is the meaning of it, but it was not specified. And up to October 7th, this terrible Hamas terrorist attack, I think that nobody discussed it because it was more or less meaningless because Israel seemed so strong and German seemed militarily so weak that you could not imagine what could Germany possibly do. That has changed now with October 7th and the Staatsress is now used to say maybe that it's part of an interesting term because democracies normally don't have Staatzl the term itself is from pre modern times because you said there are interests of the state which are so central for the state, as somebody put it, that that means that Germany would defend Israel at all costs because it understands that German security is. Is linked to Israel's security. And I think that this is basically basically problematic because nobody in Germany is prepared to do that because they never talked about it. What does it mean? Only the RFD in 2008, the right wing German party said that would mean German soldiers in Israel defending Israel. Now I think by all means that German soldiers in Israel are perhaps an image which neither the Germans nor the Israeli nor anybody else would really like to see. And I can't really see that. But it's used in Germany now to limit the Discourse of what can be said and what can be publicly discussed. And that is quite a step into illiberalism. In the last couple of weeks, which had a longer, longer history and part of the historical debates about bembe, about the documenta 15, about multidirectional memory of my friend and colleague Michael Rosberg and so which are now, now sort of disciplined. Everybody says, oh it's part of the Staatzer, we cannot discuss it. What does it mean? And the problem is now that that is now quite divisive for German society. I mean, because in defense or in following the Staatzer. So German politicians and we have a left green liberal government. We don't have a conservative right wing government. The opposite are basically saying we should limit the right of expression of Germans of Palestinian or Arab Islam origins because it goes counter to the Staatzer. So Staatzerizon is now used as a justification for limiting the freedom of expression. And that is quite problematic. And again you have this focus plus Jewish, which I mean needs to be said at this moment, but meaning that other parts of Germans are not proper Germans. We certainly have a huge debate whether people of Arabic background who voice their support for Palestinians should be stripped of their German citizenship. This is quite a, quite a shocking debate because it says because we learned out of our history we stripped them of their citizenship. Although the limits or the German Grundgesettes also states that it's extremely difficult to strip somebody of his or her citizenship as a consequence of Nazism because so many Germans, many Jews lost their citizenship because the Nazis or the Germans non Jewish Germans declared them at not being proper Germans. Now this process is repeating in itself in defense of the Staarzerism.

[Miriam Shawy Schultz]

Thank you so much. I'm really grateful for you to actually saying these things out loud. I think it really is revealing how in a sense this national memory project is tied to white supremacist ideas in the middle of society within liberalism, not on the right wing periphery. And yeah, the dangers are, yeah, just very apparent. I think this makes this book also so relevant for the international context because it shows how memory politics are tied to existence in a sense for so many in Germany, but also obviously in Israel, Palestine and elsewhere. So yeah, thank you so much. But speaking of debate, since we don't have Merkel anymore, but I'm not sure if all of Scholz's record is much better. But there is of course Jurgen Habermas and he recently came out with an open letter defending Germany's unconditional solidarity to Israel and We thought it would be interesting to kind of look at Habermas as one such figure that was deemed very progressive in the mid-1980s at the so called first historical stride. And now suddenly he must be situated in a very different political camp. It's kind of the figure of Habermas is illuminating about the shifts and developments in the German memory landscape and also politically. So we wanted to kind of discuss with you what is the Historica Stried one? What was Habermas idea there? How did he shape the German memory landscape and what is happening right now?

[Jurgen Zimmerer]

What's happening right now is interesting because as a historian I realize it's much easier to look back 30, 40, 50 years when you know what came out of it and then live through it and trying to make sense of what's going on. Start with the easy part, the historical stride one. The first historical stride started in 1968. In 1986, sorry. In 1982, Helmut Kohl of the conservative Christian Democratic Union became Chancellor and he announced that there will also be a moral turn back to the conservative values. After the 1968 and all this student revolt and all these movements and Willy Brand and new Ostpolitik, etc. Etc. He promised to turn the wheel back. And then Ernst Nolte, a historian, published an article where he said that the crimes of communism of Stalinism are more original than the crimes of Nazism, which was interpreted as saying that Nazism was a mere reaction to communism and Stalinism. And then we are back to the World War I, World War II. The original sin was Communism, not Nazism. And Habermas and Vela and left liberal progressive historians and philosophers criticized him. And that was the historical stride one. And it's commonly understood that it is sort of the moral foundation of the Federal Republic in the 80s because it established the Holocaust as a German crime without predecessors. And it's the prime responsibility of the Germans. Then there is now a telling of a new historical stripe, which depends on who you ask. Some say it started with Achil Bembe and the debate about him. Others say it started with Michael Rosberg and myself and then Dirk Moses in 21. I would say, and it's a question about relativizing the Holocaust. And I would say it starts actually with conservative persons who abused the Holocaust for political gains. And I give you two examples. One was the Humboldt Forum. We are getting back to that. When finally the Humboldt Forum, the post colonial or the colonial. The critical engagement with the Humboldt Forum could no longer be ignored. Boris Breedekampf the founding director went on the effortsetten and used newspaper leading German conservative newspaper announcing that those who criticize the Humboldt Forum and the collection of colonial artifacts are anti Semites because the collectors in the turn of the 19th century were Jewish. I think it's a complete absurd article, but it shows that accused now others of being anti Semitic. Second, since 2015 there were negotiations between Germany and Namibia on recognizing the genocide of the Hereronama and the question of reparation. The German special envoy Ruprecht Polands, a former politician in 2016 in Windhoek had a meeting with or the descendants of Narmer survivors. And you must try to picture this in your head. There is a German special envoy in charge of negotiating German guilt and responsibility towards the descendants of the survivors. And in a meeting in the German embassy the NAMA more or less said something like why do you ignore our demands for reparations? Because you also paid for the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Now, regardless of the argument, the response was quite shocking because the official German representative, the representatives of the perpetrator is the ones lectured them on how they cannot compare the suffering of their parents or grandparents to those of the Jews, because that was singular, that was unique. And he did so because that was his argument. That's why you don't have to pay reparations. Though that is a blatant abuse, I think of Holocaust and the uniqueness of the Holocaust for political gains. And I would say that's where the historical Straat Zweip Null actually started. And it centers basically around one of the questions is how do you include the reality of Germany as a migrant society, of a society, an immigration? How do you reconcile this with this idea of German historical identity and singularity? And I think that some say, well, it's about the perpetratorship of our forefathers. And that by definition excludes 25% of the current German citizens from being part of of this memory community. And I think that is at stake. And at stake is that was the argument of Thutmose, which maybe went too far in some extent, but pointed to the fact that he feared that the singularity, the uniqueness of the Holocaust was being used to silence Germans of Palestinian descent to voice their criticism of Israel, which two years ago everybody rejected, but which we more or less are seeing right now. So that's the historical Strite Zweijnull. And it's also about the Bembe debate. Cameroonian historian and philosopher Achille Bembe, who was supposed to open a a art exhibition or art festival in Germany and was then accused of being anti Semitic because he compared that was alleged the Holocaust and Israeli crimes. And the interesting thing is that I think there is a lot to be criticized. But the point was that German authorities, because the debate said. But let him ask his position and talk about it because that's a global perspective. Germany said we don't care about the global perspective. We in Germany have this understanding of what happened. And if he wants to talk in Germany, he needs to accept, accept this as a core at the starting point. And I think that is a problem of a very provincial understanding of debates, of ignoring voices from the global south, which you can also see at the documentary last year, the artwork which had then, then a few antisemitic pieces of art in it which were anti Semitic and which I think we need to accept that they were anti Semitic because people, some people rejected this, I think they were antisemitic but were then used. We need to close the entire exhibition down because we don't allow antisemitic images. And again it sort of aimed at artists or philosophers from the global South. So this is now becoming a discussion about perspectives of the global south or international perspective versus German perspectives. And I think that's repeated now in the debate about Habermas and his co authors and Samoine and thus and others who criticize them. What's at stake is is there a transnational international perspective and that there's a German perspective and does a German perspective trump the international perspective? And if so, why?

[Miriam Shawy Schultz]

Yes, there seems to be a twin figure of the so called German with migration background and postcolonial theorist and artist. And this idea of the imported antisemitism, which is also such a fraught idea, it seems to be kind of coalescing right now in these discourses. But maybe you wanna.

[Henriette Deserter]

Yeah, because you also like mentioned the current climate of debate and who is allowed to talk about what and how and also the patronizing gestures that come with it. And this is something that we discussed in preparation of this interview also a lot. And also we couldn't help to feel quite pessimistic also about your books, reservations, observations, looking at the instrumentalization of memory in the culture wars that happen in Germany at the moment and that also happen elsewhere and like when currently mere terminologies are so triggering that it feels like an actual debate is impossible to have. We were wondering if you have any idea what it would need to facilitate a public debate again or what could be like a framework to make this happen again. In this, this tensed atmosphere at the moment, like how, how could we dissolve this? Or what would be needed?

[Jurgen Zimmerer]

Yeah, that, that's a difficult, a really difficult one because I have no, no, no recipe or I've, I, I, I, I have no definite answers. I, I think about it because everybody, Germany, I don't know how it's in the US is constantly now talking about what's happening because everybody feels that we are, we are on a turning point. And I would say that the best thing is to try to understand all of the other side's position because I think it's so emotional because everybody feels so strong about it. And I think the first step would be to really understand the suffering, suffering of the other side. If we now look at the actual war, the suffering on both sides, because I think that is something Habermas could have done better. He could have said a sentence more about the suffering of the Palestinians. That would not have changed, I think the core argument, but it would have been an important gesture because, because I mean, for myself, I'm horrified by the attacks of Hamas. I think it's completely unjustifiable. It's a wild terrorist attack. And I'm also horrified by the number of civilians being killed in Gaza. And I think we need to learn maybe as intellectuals that we are horrified without having an easy answer. We sometimes just have to accept that there is a horrible situation which cannot easily be solved. And I think we try to have a strict moral positioning. That's the wrong word. I think we just try to understand the suffering and say, I mean, I don't have an answer to it. And we understand the suffering of others. And in Germany we have a problem. What I read, what I hear, what I see opposite my office is a Jewish institution and suddenly there is police there because the Jewish institutions and everything which you can identify as Jewish is under threat of attack. I think we need to understand that and as a civil society, we need to fight that. On the other hand, I hear from other colleagues that talks about all the Muslims in Germany need to distance themselves from Hamas, which basically the German Vice Chancellor Habeck has said and the German president has said is divisive. Because I mean, you cannot that just because you share a faith, you're responsible for the action of a terrorist group per your belonging to a certain group. And the irony, the deep irony is again it's said because we learned from history, but we are falling into the same trap, saying that it's a form of othering. We just declare a large part or not A small part of German society as being something different because they need now to distance themselves. Because I think everybody should distance him or herself from terrorist attacks and not just because somebody just happens to be a Muslim. And I think we need to understand that both sides. We for example, those Germans who are neither Muslim nor Jewish should understand that both sides feel threatened and that we have a duty as a society to protect. Protect both sides from any danger. And that is the. Well, that's what we need to do. That's a measure. We should or we should be measured by that.

[Miriam Shawy Schultz]

Yeah. So in the face of these quickly unfolding real life events right now, is there this one chapter where you think damn, this should be in the book as well? Yeah. We were just wondering if you wished you had included one other chapter that was maybe floating around.

[Jurgen Zimmerer]

Well, I think I regret because I think I mentioned the Staatzer song. I mentioned it in passing. I think I should have written more. I think we should have written more about the two chapters actually on multidirectional memory on an Arab or a Muslim. Jewish, Jewish solidarity in Germany. And should have maybe concentrated now a bit more on the positive example because one tends to say the controversies, what is excluded, what is thought about. But all those stories where people are trying to overcome the division. I think that perhaps I should have included more chapters on that. But. But. Well, I think nobody. When I finished in July, I did never dream that two months later or three months later we would have the test case of some of the articles.

[Henriette Deserter]

Yeah, I think we all would be happy about positive examples at the moment. But maybe this is something, if you are thinking about that anyway something that might be included in any future projects. So we were wondering, is there already anything specific you are already working on in terms of any future projects? And if so, do you want to share some information on this with us?

[Jurgen Zimmerer]

I mean it's not. Volume two is not yet in the planning because volume one came out on the 9th of September. So it's amazing are two months out now. And since I'm trying, struggling to make sense of this but I would definitely try to write a book now on this folkish concept of all this debate. Because that is what really worries me is that what we see now is that the folkish ideas is gaining ground because that is what you mentioned in passing that so called imported anti Semitism. I mean if one. There's one thing on earth Germany needs not to import, that's antisemitism. Because I mean this is really now a way of the becoming good again of Germans by now. Now pointing to the antisemitism as a problem of immigrants from Muslim countries. It's not used for Ukrainian immigrants, 1.2 million refugees or 1.5 million refugees from Ukraine in Germany since the invasion. The Russian invasion started 1 1/2 years ago. And it's not aimed at them. So it has a racist bias to it because that's people who have not white skin like Ukrainians or like proper Germans in quote, unquote. And I think that needs to be unpacked in a project.

[Miriam Shawy Schultz]

Great. Yeah, we're looking forward to it already. And this is, I guess, a great but very pessimistic way to end this really important conversation. I would like to thank you for taking the time today to talk to us, Jurgen. And so to our listener, this was Jurgen Zimmerer, and we were talking about his edited volume, Errinnerungskemphe Neues deutsches Geschichtbehurstzein, which came out with Reiklam earlier this year. We definitely recommend to buy it, read it, and if you don't know German yet, learn German to read it and send it to your friends. It's a very, very important volume with crucial ideas that definitely are not limited to Germany. But indeed, as all of these debates show, are very international already. So, yeah. Thank you again, Jurgen. And thank you to our listeners for tuning in. This was Miriam Shawley Schultz and Henriette Deserter for the New Books Network. Thank you.