Scientific – 1 The Germans' sense of guilt Institute for State Policy "My honor is called repentance" Machine Translated by Google 400 participants in Berlin as well as academies for The IfS has been working on the escalation since May 2000. developed. The present study is part of of the project »Institute for State Policy (IfS)« The means of this work are studies, an original project political and metapolitical issues. Journal – »Secession«, colleges with up to Pupils and students. The IfS operates independently of political parties and lives You can find more information at Funding. www.staatspolitik.de. exclusively supported by private individuals Machine Translated by Google Working Group 2: Political Culture "My honor is called repentance" Institute for State Policy , Schnellroda Manor, 06268 Albersroda, Fax 034632 90942, www.staatspolitik.de The Germans' sense of guilt Scientific Series – Issue 11 Machine Translated by Google Partial photomechanical reproduction is permitted for scientific purposes. © Institute for State Policy · 2007 Rittergut Schnellroda · 06268 Albersroda · Fax 034632 90942 · www.staatspolitik.de All rights reserved. ISBN 978-3-939869-11-5 Contents 8. Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 4. German Guilt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 4.1 “Voluntary Custody” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 4.2 Pride in Guilt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 4. 3 Guilt Desire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 4. 4 Shame or Guilt Culture? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 3. What is guilt? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 1. The “Wilkomirski Case” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2. Globalized Guilt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 2.1 Concern for the Victims . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 2.2 Guilt Cult . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 2.3 “Politics of Guilt” 9 2.4 “I apologize.” 10 5. Free speech in Merkur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 6. The Path to the Holocaust Memorial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 6. 1 The Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 6. 2 The First Competition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 6.3 The second competition 33 6.4 The decision 36 6.5 The inauguration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 7. Psychopathology of a People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Machine Translated by Google Institute for Political Science · My honor is remorse 1. The "Wilkomirski Case" This changed on August 27, 1998, when author Daniel Ganzfried, himself the son of Holocaust survivors, presented compelling arguments against the story of Binjamin Wilkomirski in the Swiss weekly Weltwoche . According to Ganzfried, Wilkomirski's real name was Bruno Grosjean, the illegitimate son of Swiss woman Yvonne Grosjean, born on February 12, 1941, in Biel, in western Switzerland. After a stay in an orphanage in Adelboden, he was taken in by the childless and The book is primarily written in autobiographical form and deals with Wilkomirski's childhood experiences, which, according to his own account, he was only able to reconstruct fragmentarily through decades of research. It was the time of National Socialism and the Second World War, and Wilkomirski was Jewish during this period. The descriptions of his suffering, in Riga and through two concentration camps in Poland, are graphic. Blood spurts from the victims' necks in black fountains, brain matter spills from the skulls of infants, and rats crawl from women's wombs. This, however, does not detract from the historical authenticity attributed to the book. Wolfgang Benz, historian and head of the Berlin Center for Antisemitism Research, recognizes in the fragments “a portrayal that conveys to the reader comprehensible insights into the complex tragedy like hardly any other document.”2 While there are probably some who harbor doubts about the authenticity of Wilkomirski’s recollections, they do not speak out audibly – or simply remain silent. In 1995 , the book Fragments: From a Childhood 1939– 1948 was published by the Jewish publishing house, part of the Suhrkamp group . It was not a bestseller, but a book that garnered attention and received favorable reviews in major newspapers.1 The author of the book lives in Switzerland; his name is Binjamin Wilkomirski. In the following years, Wilkomirski received several awards, including the National Jewish Book Award in the USA in 1996. His book was compared to the memoirs of Anne Frank, Ruth Klüger, Primo Levi, and Imre Kertész. Wilkomirski appeared on many occasions — on television, in front of school classes, and at academic events on the Shoah — as a contemporary witness and expert. The excerpts were translated into nine languages. At the 1996 Salzburg Festival, Elfriede Jelinek included the book in her reading program alongside texts by Paul Celan and Elie Wiesel. Wilkomirski gave so- called "oral history" interviews, recorded on video, for Steven Spielberg's "Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation" and the Holocaust Museum in Washington. Machine Translated by Google Jörg Lau attempts to answer Hilberg's question in the same issue . The Swiss authorities eventually even arrange for a DNA test on Wilkomirski and his still- living biological father, which comes back positive. Wilkomirski firmly rejects the accusations. He was adopted by the wealthy Dössekker couple. He only knew concentration camps as a tourist. In April 1999, the historian Stefan Mächler was commissioned by the Liepman literary agency, which had brokered Wilkomirski's manuscript to publishers, to conduct a comprehensive investigation of the case. Like Ganzfried, he also concluded that the alleged autobiography was fabricated in all essential points.3 However, unlike Ganzfried, he did not see Wilkomirski as a "coldly calculating, systematically proceeding forger," but instead came to the realization that the alleged "experiences" in Poland corresponded with events from his childhood in Switzerland, thus resulting in a shift towards a Holocaust biography, which the Swiss psychoanalyst Mario Gmür describes as a "conviction illness" as follows: The "borrowed Jewish Holocaust biography [...] also promises a great secondary gain in an environment where the Holocaust is receiving increasing public, media, and literary attention." [...] The insignificant victim role of the illegitimate and adopted child is exchanged for the more dramatic, more sensational victim role of the Holocaust victim."4 However, the private criminal complaint against Dössekker (alias Wilkomirski) for fraud and unfair competition was discontinued in December 2002 due to a lack of criminally relevant elements.5 Thus, even Raul Hilberg, a renowned expert in Holocaust research, rightly questions how it could have happened that no one at the publishing houses and institutions that provided Wilkomirski with a platform questioned the apparently inconsistent story of the alleged Holocaust victim. For Norman Finkelstein, the author of "The Holocaust Industry," Wilkomirski's book is an "archetypal Holocaust memoir"— poorly written and successful. Daniel Ganzfried even speaks of a "Holocaust travesty" produced by the local cultural establishment.7 Once his biographical claims proved untenable, Wilkomirski retreated to the standpoint of a literary figure — allegedly, the reader was free from the outset to perceive the book as literature or as a personal document. Furthermore: “It is medically proven that I was abused from childhood onward. [...] Whether this happened in a camp or in a barn is irrelevant to me.”6 and mentions in this context the concept of "pride in guilt" – as Characteristics of how the Holocaust is dealt with in a more sensitive public: "It is no coincidence that all reviewers describe the text as moving They evaluated the report card and disregarded stylistic scruples [...]. ÿ ÿ MY HONOR IS REGRET · INSTITUTE FOR STATE POLITICS Machine Translated by Google Institute for Political Science · My honor is remorse to exploit the resulting uncertainty. But one would imagine the case symbolic reparations, the self- commitment to remembrance Such a reserve is driven by highly respectable motives: the guilt felt by the descendants of the perpetrators (but also the victims), the desire for – in short, all those behavioral dispositions that are often referred to as 'affectedness' It's too easy to reduce it to a clever fraud. wanted."8 to be ridiculed. Wilkomirski is a virtuoso at using this attitude to his advantage. Machine Translated by Google ÿ ÿ MY HONOR IS REGRET · INSTITUTE FOR STATE POLITICS 2. Globalized debt Is this unique characteristic threatened by competition? If we are to believe the German- Israeli historian Dan Diner, there is reason to fear that the “increasingly self- confidently articulated memories of the colonial victims of overseas European expansion” will stand on equal footing with the “memories of the Second World War with the Holocaust as its core memory” that apply to the West.10 But this danger is apparently not so great. The worldwide, uniform reactions to Wilkomirski's book make it clear that the shock it provoked was not a phenomenon limited to Germany. The "fraud" operated globally. This would not have been possible with eyewitness accounts of other historical events, either now or at any other time. Here, the much- discussed globalization, which makes historical narratives and memories consumable worldwide, plays a significant role. Mediated by the media and fostered by the cultural mixing of immigrant societies, collective memory can no longer remain confined to nation- state- defined territories and events.9 Indeed, a transnational memory structure is emerging, in which a quasi- cosmopolitan memory is developing: the basis for a corresponding solidarity, which is also reflected in the increasing willingness to intervene on humanitarian grounds worldwide. However, one thing must not be lost sight of: As a “perpetrator nation”, the Germans form the negative center of this transnational memory structure, and therefore the call to get involved for humanitarian reasons is fundamentally binding for Germans. Rather, Diner's aim is to cement the historical- political hegemony of the Holocaust by pointing to its vulnerability. The Egyptologist and religious scholar Jan Assmann, author of the seminal book *Cultural Memory * (1992), recently expressed the view that Holocaust remembrance could become a new world religion: "My thesis is quite certain that in 1000 years the Holocaust will be an absolutely central element of memory. After all, the death of Christ endured for 2000 years."11 Against this backdrop, it becomes understandable why an article on the Holocaust appears almost daily in the *New York Times* ,12 why there is a Holocaust memorial in every major American city, and why critical voices regarding the uniqueness of the Holocaust are ostracized there as well. The emergence of this new civil religion can be divided into four steps, all of which are interrelated. The worldwide “concern for the victims” (1), the Machine Translated by Google This is likely a reaction, primarily among foreign youths, of weariness with the double standards of the adult world, which disappears as soon as they themselves want to belong.16 In 2002, the religious anthropologist René Girard pointed out this fact in his book I Saw Satan Fall Like Lightning from Heaven . 2.1 Concern for the victims the resulting “cult of guilt” of the perpetrators (2), which triggers a “politics of guilt” based on victimhood (3) and ultimately results in a publicly offered apology (4). How could it come about that what Wilkomirski recounted was believed not only in Germany but also in the rest of the world? The author of the fragments , regardless of his own psychological deformation, adopted a mechanism that, since the late 1960s, has transformed from an elite phenomenon into a mass phenomenon and has dominated the world ever since: concern for the victims. Under the term "concern for the victims" he describes the development of humanism and humanitarianism on Christian soil: "Over time, it has produced a society incomparable to all others. This thesis only becomes comprehensible when read against the backdrop of the aforementioned transnational structure of memory. Before a certain point in time, someone who published their victim biography would have garnered only pity, but probably more likely derision. Furthermore, the concept of victimhood changed after the Second World War: from the sacrifice one makes to the victim one is. Since there is no longer any sacrifice to be made, no one wants to be a perpetrator in this sense, but rather a victim if possible. If this is impossible in a given situation, things become complicated: "I know someone who hesitates to overtake people with walking disabilities for fear of appearing superior to them due to their better health, because triumphs can be hurtful and create guilt in the one who offends."15 The dominance of such lines of thought is not altered by the fact that the mockery of "victims" is once again enjoying great popularity within certain youth cultures. It has united the world.”13 Nowhere, in no place and at no time, has this phenomenon existed with the force we know. “Beyond the recently overthrown absolutes of humanism, rationalism, revolution, and even science, the doctrine of the missing absolute, once promised to us, does not exist. Rather, there is concern for the victims, and it dominates, for better or for worse, the global monoculture in which we live. Globalization is an outflow of this concern, and not the other way around.”14 The “praise of sacrifice” can perhaps be most clearly demonstrated using the example of the women’s movement, because it encompasses everything one can associate with it. Institute for Political Science · My honor is remorse Machine Translated by Google ÿ ÿ MY HONOR IS REGRET · INSTITUTE FOR STATE POLITICS When the Bundestag member Henry Nitzsche (then CDU) spoke at a local party event on the topic of "patriotism" in June 2006 about a paralyzing "cult of guilt" from which the country needed to "come down," public outrage rained down six months later after the speech became public.24 Nitzsche is by no means alone in his criticism of the developments in the current historical policy of the Federal Republic. These offer the greatest global incentive for identification. Moreover, the “jealous rejection of any normalization of the taboo” suggests that “it expresses something like an elite theory of victimhood.”20 Therefore, especially in the 1960s and 70s, the phenomenon arose that many Germans desperately wanted to become Jews: “Conversion to Judaism not only means entering another religion, it is also a change to the right side of history, from the national community of perpetrators to the community of suffering victims.”21 can be described as a general societal emancipation. “Those who are victims of circumstances, of patriarchy, of capitalism, of early childhood education, expect acquittal at trial.”17 In the “therapeutic society” expressed therein, the concept of the subject, from whom responsible action could be demanded, moves away: “The status of victim makes one unassailable and absolves one.”18 This practically invites efforts to participate. Since there is a palpable desire “to sanctify the victims of the Holocaust as the chosen ones of an event with messianic significance,”19 In this context, the sociologist Peter Furth referred to Peter Weiss's novella "My Village ," in which Weiss recounts a visit to the Auschwitz memorial: "A man who escaped through timely emigration retrospectively visits the site of his potential annihilation and, in order to erase the difference between himself and the victims, attempts something impossible: He tries to experience the visit as a remembrance, thus providing a model of identification through empathy, in which reverent empathy is supposed to accomplish what is actually the domain of remembrance."22 This makes possible, on the one hand, feelings of guilt of a comprehensive nature, but on the other hand, also the suggestion of the victim role.23 The difference to Wilkomirski also becomes clear: It lies, firstly, in the fact that the author identifies with the victims but does not claim to have been one himself. And last but not least, the difference lies in the public reaction, which at the time was limited to a few people with an interest in literature. Numerous observers before him have expressed similar views. In 2002, the legal scholar Heinz Nawratil published a book entitled * The Cult of Guilt*, in which he examines this phenomenon in detail.25 What is interesting in our context is that this "cult of guilt" is not 2.2 Guilt Cult Machine Translated by Google He notes with surprise that even states that have no Nazi crimes to their name are making similar efforts to protect democracy from a relapse into such times. This creates a paradoxical situation: “Far more interesting than discussing why minorities seek help from other groups or distrust the majority population that supports such controls is the question of why majority societies accept them at all. Such acceptance is historically exceptional.”26 According to Gottfried, The object of veneration for political correctness is no longer God, but one's own history. The Bible and the narrative of the Fall of Man are replaced by a historiography centered on one's own guilt. In Germany, this historiography is even legally protected in key aspects. Alongside Christian doctrine as the religion of the West, a new quasi- religion is establishing itself throughout the "Western world": political correctness. This is not a German phenomenon, but a global one. Similar self- destructive dynamics exist in other European countries, such as France and Great Britain. There, the bizarre excesses of the dictates of political correctness have , in some cases, reached even more critical proportions than they currently do in Germany. This suggests that it could be the effect of a deeper, transnational problem within modern society, or particularly within the Western cultural sphere — a consequence of the globalization of guilt. It is not difficult to identify structural similarities to other religions. From a psychological perspective, religions and their cults can be understood as ultimate worldview orientations, as institutions that provide meaning and thus absorb uncertainty. Through participation in religious rituals, the individual is confronted with the transcendent reality of society. Through repeated ritual engagement, the individual experiences security in their worldview and integration into a social community. This can prevent a constant questioning of one's own worldview. However, enforcement and monitoring – as in other countries – lies in the hands of influential networks and lobby groups. 2.3 “Politics of Guilt” The American political scientist Paul Edward Gottfried, son of Jewish- Austrian emigrants, focused his attention in his 2004 book * Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt* on the American excesses of political correctness , which he calls the war against the "scourge of prejudice." Ultimately, Gottfried aims to highlight a worldwide trend toward the "therapeutic state." Institute for Political Science · My honor is remorse Machine Translated by Google Another phenomenon of globalized guilt is the desire to offer vicarious apologies for past events. “Meanwhile, it seems, the process of internationalizing past- political apology practices is unstoppable. It has long since crossed the boundaries of Christian- influenced cultural spheres.”32 In an insightful study, the philosopher Hermann Lübbe analyzed the “new political ritual of repentance,” which has found its unmistakable expression in the “I apologize”: “A new, now ritualized element of international relations is becoming visible.”33 Lübbe is of the opinion that this is not an imitation of German coming to terms with the past and the resulting morality. Rather, it is a matter of In addition to the well- known German manifestations of this phenomenon, Gottfried also mentions "atonement marches" by "organizations of American Protestants" through Europe and the Middle East to "apologize to the descendants of the Muslim and Jewish victims of the Crusades."27 Here, Gottfried also sees the cause of this disposition: in the "diffuse feeling of personal guilt" that most Protestants carry with them because they do not have a sacrament of penance, which distinguishes them from other Christian denominations.28 Since the "sense of guilt" is not limited to Protestants, one can additionally quote Peter Furth, who sees the role of love of humanity growing through demythologization: "In the Christian sense of guilt, such a hybrid responsibility for guilt was inherent that only extreme hypocrisy could conceal the gap between the claim to responsibility and the power to be accountable for it."29 In this sense, Gottfried also sees liberalism as the general cause of the aforementioned phenomenon. Under this term, he encompasses two tendencies that have been considered political standards since the 20th century: egalitarian education as a prerequisite for democracy and the scientification of thought in the sense of objectification. This creates gaps as soon as the individual asks the question of meaning, gaps which can be conveniently filled with guilt as a post- metaphysical ultimate orientation. He argues that it is not a continuation of classic immigration motives, but a genuine novelty. He sees the cause as a "publicly displayed sense of guilt" relating to historical events. However, the question posed above cannot be definitively answered rationally, as it ignores “why people confess guilt for deeds they did not commit. Public penance serves primarily as self- promotion for those who consider themselves ‘virtuous.’”30 What was still grounded in faith in God and served personal perfection for 18th- century Puritans has itself become a matter of faith. The obvious consequence of this attitude is that politics no longer protects the interests of the community, but ultimately undermines its very foundations.31 2.4 “I apologize” 10ÿ MY HONOR IS REGRET · INSTITUTE FOR STATE POLITICS Machine Translated by Google INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS · MY HONOR IS REGRET 11 A way out: "Concern for the victims" would be pointless without perpetrators. Since their very pronounced. But she occasionally even puffs herself up in a Pharisaical manner to some extent. Because the others have also discovered their guilt, that's the gist of it. Moreover, each case has its own unique and incomparable reasons. A general transformation of political culture can be observed, which is presenting itself to a global public in the truest sense of the word for the first time. Lübbe diagnoses a very “demanding process” characterized by a civil- religious component. “The new practice of civil penance removes from human history the manifold veils of justification for suffering. It trivializes the past by bringing to mind the stories of suffering, which cannot be relativized by recourse to perpetrator motives that can be historicized.”34 The past has been assigned a new role. Whereas history was once considered, depending on the interpretation, as "giving meaning to the meaningless" (Theodor Lessing), "Last Judgment" (Kleist), or "revelation of reason" (Hegel), and thus largely beyond human control, today it is a one- way street toward democracy and human rights, where those who stray from the path face serious consequences. We still draw on the deeds of our ancestors, but under reversed circumstances: our fathers must be guided toward our virtue. Lübbe therefore establishes a connection to so- called "progressive moralization," which uses this path to legitimize its actions for a better future. Cora Stephan speaks of a global obsession with guilt: "The tears of the white man wet the globe, and often they are crocodile tears." Saying ‘sorry’ for a little bit of genocide usually costs nothing, but makes a great moral impression.”35 Ultimately, the formula is: exaltation through humiliation, or, in Nietzsche’s words: “He who humiliates himself wants to be exalted.”36 To criticize the eagerness to admit guilt – that's just how the Japanese are, or always. Pride in fulfilling one's duties arises and makes one inclined to favor subjects with less pronounced [qualities/ dispositions]. The dilemma of German guilt pride meant we had to add something in order to criticize others: "German civil penitence has meanwhile..." Having to play current politics, they are left with only the option of... to apologize and base their policies on this. This fragile construct is reinforced by taboos, which are again justified by referring to the victims. What gets lost in the process is the central concept around which they are arguing. Everything revolves around blame. Identity limited to being a perpetrator, and yet they still play their role in the Once again, the Roman Church."37 A cycle has been created without Machine Translated by Google As an acknowledgment of human sinfulness, it liberates the Christian from the life of natural inclinations and interests and elevates him above the masses bound to the concern for survival.39 Morality is thus given; the actions of other people then play no role in our moral conclusions. However, it is undeniably true that what others (and I, too) think plays a role in our morality. The Greeks therefore did not isolate a “privileged conception of moral guilt” and thus pursued a realistic, human conception of morality. What I do points to what has been done to others as a result, but also to what I am. “The structure of shame contains the possibility of controlling guilt and learning from it, because through it we gain an understanding of our ethical identity, through which guilt acquires meaning. Shame can understand guilt, but guilt cannot understand itself.”40 Thus, we can feel shame without being guilty. Guilt can draw attention to those who have been wronged or harmed, and it demands reparation in the name of what happened to these people. But as such, it does not enable us to understand our relationship to such events, nor does it help to recreate the self that did these things or the world in which it must live. Only shame can do that, since it includes a conception of who I am and how I relate to others.38 The concept of guilt is tied to Christianity. The ancient Greeks did not recognize guilt. They subsumed guilt under the concept of shame (aidós), which therefore meant more than just shame. To understand the mechanisms of guilt, the concept of shame is illuminating. "For modern moral consciousness, guilt seems to be a clearer moral feeling than shame. But this appearance is only created because guilt presents itself as if it were, unlike shame, more isolated from one's self- image, that is, more isolated from one's desires and needs; moreover, guilt seems to obscure a large part of ethical consciousness." The exclusive use of the word "guilt" is the result of a simplification that can only truly be afforded to the believer, because religious enlightenment bestows upon him the knowledge of the moral law, which he then simply has to follow. To put it polemically: "The feeling of guilt is the pride of the Christian. It does not drag him down, but is the source of his strength." The guilty party has done something that excludes them from the community. This is a definition of guilt that has persisted throughout history like an anthropological... 3. What is guilt? 12ÿ MY HONOR IS REGRET · INSTITUTE FOR STATE POLITICS Machine Translated by Google In Christianity, the individualization of guilt continues, in particular it is linked to original sin, the supra- individual guilt as being solely mine. Since it is up to the individual to expiate this inherited guilt through baptism and God's grace, the representation of guilt (pillory, execution) disappears from the public sphere and persists in the "private" realm. Only with the conflicts waged as people's wars in the 19th century (War of Secession, Boer War) and especially with the outbreak of the First World War was the concept of guilt once again transferred to collectives, which presupposed the application of moral standards to the political sphere.42 Max Weber (Politics as a Vocation) remarked after the end of the First World War that guilt is not a political category. It prevents the war from truly ending ("morally buried") with peace.43 In other words: This general view underwent a change in the 5th century BCE. Initially, the "inner" aspect came to the fore in Judaism: guilt and repentance became individualized. Against the principle of genealogical collective liability, the individual's responsibility for guilt emerged. "The fathers ate herring, and the children's teeth were set on edge." (Ezekiel 18:2 and Jeremiah 31:29) Ezekiel contradicted this and established a new law of responsibility for guilt: "This proverb shall no longer be valid among you in Israel. For behold, all lives are mine; the life of the father is mine, and the life of the son. The soul that sins shall die." (Ezekiel 18:3-4) The constant in this context is irrelevant. It is immaterial that various cultures lacked a concept of guilt in our specific, Christian- influenced understanding. The basis of guilt is the violation of agreements, of whatever kind, that constitute the community. The response to guilt consisted of "connective justice," as Jan Assmann expressed it, which unites guilt and atonement in every society. This is addressed either by the victim themselves (or their family), the state, or God. In this understanding of guilt, the individual plays a subordinate role to the whole, the community. The emphasis of guilt lies on the "outside," the community, the "in- between." The "inside" of the individual plays no role. Guilt has a supra- individual character; it is not free will that causes guilt, but rather divine mandate or external coercion. Hellenism also undergoes this transformation: Everyone stands with their conscience. Individually before the gods, no community can justify or punish him. “Conscience is the inner locus of self- assessment, which makes guilt a matter for the individual, quite independent of the usually inescapable fact that it also exists externally or in between as a ‘burden’ or ‘defilement.’”41 Now the individual can contribute to the assessment and management of guilt; “connective justice” has found its place in the individual; in conscience, the community itself is present. INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS · MY HONOR IS REGRET 13 Machine Translated by Google 14ÿ MY HONOR IS REGRET · INSTITUTE FOR STATE POLITICS of people."47 Guilt is an instance beyond law and justice. A is considered appropriate.46 The jurist and philosopher Gottfried Dietze Do not follow extortion- like behavior, in which someone is forced to do something cannot result in."49 In the case of the regulations that were finally formulated after the Second World War and this biblical sense of guilt, which he, following Kant, considers A recourse is now made to the biblical concept of guilt, since only it is considered valid. The relationship raises the question of guilt.48 What remains, however, is the moral A cure for guilt is not in sight, because it usually leads to Extortion, which presupposes a criminal act by the victim, is a politically instrumentalized “collective guilt of the Germans” was found and The trivial insight that only individuals can incur guilt no longer held true.44 Legally, however, this conviction persists, as otherwise our entire legal system would be turned upside down. Thus, in 1952, the Federal Court of Justice defined: “Guilt is culpability. With the judgment of guilt, the perpetrator is accused of not having acted lawfully, since he chose wrongdoing even though he could have acted lawfully, of having chosen justice.” 45 The disadvantage is that a debt is attributed to someone, which could even result in criminal charges. Following Nicolai Hartmann, he identifies a "life- hostile tendency". is poorly defined. Therefore, one can do anything without concrete consequences. Blackmail that is turned into a political instrument: "The malice of described as the "accuser within us." "Guilt is a human scourge." Machine Translated by Google Where do such shifts in public reaction come from? Jörn Rüsen, historian and president of the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities in Essen, Both of these topics are repeatedly discussed and regularly serve as fodder for exclusionary campaigns should anyone express even the slightest doubt about these assumptions. Opinions that caused public outrage in the 80s and 90s were completely accepted years before. The accusation of absolute guilt against Germany is composed of two assumptions: the singularity of the crimes and the collective guilt of the Germans. A remarkable example of this is the memoirs of the Jewish emigrant Joseph Dunner. Two passages are particularly noteworthy: “Lenin and Stalin had taught their followers to see not fellow human beings, but ‘parasites,’ in Tsarists as well as in all those who resisted their dictates: parasites that could be liquidated without committing an immoral act. Messrs. Hitler, Goebbels, and Streicher had taken this lesson to heart and applied it with particular relish to the Jews.”50 What Ernst Nolte would be forever ostracized for fifteen years later is established here: that there is a causal nexus between communist crimes and the persecution of the Jews. The same author had published a heretical essay in the Congress Weekly, the central organ of the World Jewish Congress, on January 28, 1952, in which he stated, among other things: “Was the majority of the German people Nazis? Are all Germans responsible for Dachau and Auschwitz, for the torture cells and gas chambers of the Hitler regime? My answer to this is a clear no.” What is interesting here is less the statement itself than the justification Dunner gives for it: that the Germans were at the mercy of the Nazis and had made normal adjustments like any other population under a totalitarian dictatorship. Before 1933, even the Jews had underestimated Hitler and done nothing against him: “I doubt whether there are many Americans, indeed whether there are many American Jews, who under similar circumstances would be prepared not only to sacrifice themselves, but also their fathers, mothers, wives, husbands, and children — just to stand up for some minority.” Klaus von Dohnanyi faced public accusations of trivialization in 1998 for similar statements when he said: “However, the Jewish citizens in Germany would, of course, also have to ask themselves whether they would have behaved so much more bravely than most other Germans if, after 1933, ‘only’ the disabled, the homosexuals, or the Roma had been deported to the extermination camps.”51 4. German guilt INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS · MY HONOR IS REGRET 15 Machine Translated by Google senior One could then move on to the next item on the agenda and let the matter rest. He distinguishes three epochs of “German historical self- understanding” (1945 to 1968, 1968 to 1989, and after 1989) and assigns them three “generations”: the war and reconstruction generation, the postwar generation, and their children. The first epoch is characterized by a “strategy of appeasement,” the second by “moral distancing,” and the third by “historicization and appropriation.” In the third epoch, the transformation of German identity takes place: “The decisive new element” is “an opening of German identity culture” to a “genealogical connection with the perpetrators.” Historical distance enabled the third generation to “come to terms” with the generation of their grandparents and parents in their historical self- understanding, instead of expatriating themselves like the second generation.52 There is some merit to this thesis, but only if one also considers the pathological aspect of this process and does not see it as an achievement. What followed from this new “identity” was not the “normality” promised by the propagandists of coming to terms with the past, but rather the refusal to “bury” the past with reunification. There is therefore a simple reason for the current increased intransigence in coming to terms with the past. Reunification rendered many cherished views obsolete and destroyed the clarity of our understanding of the world. And that is why it was no longer possible to see the division of Germany as punishment for Auschwitz and to claim that reunification would produce a new Auschwitz. For if this statement had ever been true, a clearly definable guilt would have had to exist, which would now have been atoned for, according to the principle of crime and punishment. However, another idea has challenged this construction: if the division of Germany could be overcome so easily, it could have nothing to do with German guilt, because the division did not last forever, but the guilt did. Therefore, Willy Brandt responded to the views of his advisor Günter Grass by pointing out that eternal guilt could not be atoned for by temporal circumstances.53 Brandt was proven right. Behind the facade of apparent normalization, which manifested itself particularly in Germany's involvement in military conflicts, a new conviction began to take shape in Germany: a civil religion centered on the Holocaust. Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer put it succinctly: "All democracies have a foundation, a ground. For France, it's 1789. For the USA, the Declaration of Independence. For Spain, the Spanish Civil War. Well, for Germany, it's Auschwitz. It can only be Auschwitz. The memory of Auschwitz, the 'Never again Auschwitz,' is, in my eyes, the only thing that can change that." 16ÿ MY HONOR IS REGRET · INSTITUTE FOR STATE POLITICS Machine Translated by Google INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS · MY HONOR IS REGRET 17 This voluntary acceptance of one's own guilt, especially the resistance to arguments against this guilt, also has its reasons. 4.1 “Voluntary Detention” to be the foundation of the new Berlin Republic.”54 Perhaps Fischer was not even aware at that moment that he was, in principle, cementing or even casting in concrete the chosenness of the Germans by outlining a religion of coming to terms with the past, in which the Germans would be placed first. To put it blasphemously: If Jesus had taken all guilt upon himself vicariously, the Germans would now do so, quite consciously, so to speak, self- consciously, by means of a highly problematic self- attribution. As early as 1983, the philosopher Bernard Willms described "voluntary imprisonment for guilt" as the first "mortal sin against German identity." This echoes what, for example, in the aforementioned case of Wilkomirski, was termed "pride in guilt." First, it is clear that others have an interest in generating feelings of guilt among t