Gemeinsame Vergangenheit—getrennte Erinnerung? Der Nationalsozialismus in Gedächtnisdiskursen und Identitätskonstruktionen von Bundesrepublik Deutschland, DDR und Österreich by Katrin Hammerstein (review)

This Heidelberg University dissertation in contemporary history is an ambitious project, comparing the changing memory cultures and "mastering of their common past" (Vergangenheitsbewältigung) of the three succession states of the "Grossdeutsches Reich"—the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and Austria to boot. While previous approaches to World War II memory have dealt with one of these states (the "divided memory" of the title) or a German-German comparison, Hammerstein compares the memory cultures of all three states and their increasing "intertwining" (Verflechtungen) since the late 1980s.

Hammerstein sets out to define the official historical memory narratives these three states invented after World War II. While the FRG constructed the image of the "demonic Führer" who seduced and victimized the Germans, the GDR focused on the anti-Nazi resistance of the Communists and the country's founding as an "anti-fascist" peace state not responsible for any German war crimes, and Austria constructed and savored its image as Hitler's "first victim." Hammerstein challenges M. Rainer Lepsius's famous dictum that the three states failed to address their National Socialist past. While the West Germans "internalized" their Nazi past, the GDR "universalized" it, and Austria "externalized" it (9, 492–94). She then sets out to fine-tunes this thesis by dwelling on their "interdependencies" and "connected memories" (339) since the 1980s.

The trajectories of these memory narratives are well known. Hammerstein does not dwell on any of the counter-narratives that exist too for this earlier period. In Austria, for example, the returned émigré Günther Anders vigorously challenged the consolidation of the official "victim's myth" in the early 1950s by stressing fascism's "afterlife" in Vienna. Jason Dawsey had demonstrated how Anders's trenchant critique of Austria's "selective remembrance and collective forgetting" needs to be included in the trajectory of Austrian "Vergangenheitsbewältigung" ("Where Hitler's Name is Never Spoken: Günther Anders in 1950s Vienna," Contemporary Austrian Studies vol. 21, 212–39). In the 1960s an entire group of "anti-Heimat Literatur" writers including Lebert, Aichinger, Bachmann, and Bernhard also challenged the official "victim's doctrine" and deconstructed the provincialism of the Austrian Heimat.

The core of Hammerstein's study is a detailed analysis of the "memory marathon" of the 1980s (153), when the memories of the three states were slowly transformed and converging and "transfers" were made between them in their memory cultures. The screening of the U.S.-made Holocaust series on German and Austrian television shocked the audiences and raised anew the issue of responsibility for the Holocaust. Austrians began questioning their "victim's doctrine" by discussing their role as "perpetrators" (171). The "dictate of anniversaries" in the 1980s led to questioning the memory myths in all three states. In 1985 the fortieth anniversary of the end of World War II was commemorated; Germans discussed whether it represented "liberation or defeat" (239). In his masterful speech, German president Richard von Weizsäcker clearly came out on the side of May 8 representing the "liberation from the inhuman National Socialist tyranny." The GDR celebrated May 8 as "the day of victory over Hitler fascism and liberation of the German people." Austrians hardly addressed May 8 but instead dwelt on May 15, 1955, the thirtieth anniversary of the signing of the Austrian State Treaty, as their "actual day of liberation."

The election of Kurt Waldheim as president in 1986 finally brought the Austrians out of their long denial of the part they played in the National Socialist regime. During the ugly election campaign Waldheim's potential involvement in war crimes in the Balkans campaign and his denial of ever having done more than "his duty" as a soldier demonstrated to Austrians the absurdity of their "victim" status. The FRG vigorously debated the role of "Herr Kurt" in World War...