Political Influence and German Holocaust Memory: A Historiography

Abstract

The way the world remembers the Holocaust has been ever-changing since the end of the
Second World War. Throughout Holocaust discourse, the word “memory” takes on many different
meanings. From cultural memory to public memory, there are many subcategories that break down
the meaning of memory and how it functions as a conceptual lens to understand how societies
remember their histories. Memory is used for many different roles including serving the past and
the present, and for political interests. With such an all-encompassing topic, its scholarship is
certainly brimming with information and ideas amongst scholars of various disciplines. Through
their work, they have established endless ways in which memory is utilized and defined for
individuals, the public, political actors, for commemoration, and memorialization. This essay
analyzes the work of scholars of Holocaust memory in Germany who largely focus on the sites
and expressions of memory in Germany’s capital city, Berlin. Scholars such as James E. Young,
Jeffrey Blustein, Jan Weiner Müller, Mark Callaghan, Aleida Assmann, Siobhan Kattago, and
Jennifer Jordon address the connectiveness of German national identity and political involvement.
They stress that German collective memory related to the construction of national identity in the
postwar era and that the erection of Holocaust memorials in Berlin and throughout the country was
an attempt to consolidate and address national guilt. As Germany worked to face Nazi history
through memorialization, it becomes abundantly clear that there are many layers of heavy political
involvement in shaping German memory on both national and international levels.

This article will discuss the work of sixteen books that examine political involvement in
memory work in Germany.