Language:
German
Year of publication:
1999
Titel der Quelle:
Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie
Angaben zur Quelle:
47,2 (1999) 213-222
Keywords:
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Commemoration
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Influence
Abstract:
This article is based on a lecture given at Heidelberg University. Suggests that, in the Nazi period, most Germans had only a fragmentary knowledge of Nazi crimes, acquired in chance experiences; Koselleck, then a soldier in the Wehrmacht, knew nothing of these crimes and felt betrayed when he learned of them after the war. The collective memory is a synthesis of individual memories, but since experience cannot be transmitted, this collective memory is one degree removed - a fact that explains the break between the war generation and the '68ers. The children have no right to blame their parents, since they did not share their experience. Nazi crimes defy all efforts to grasp them scientifically or morally, or atone for them through religion. Argues that memorials should include all the victims of Nazism, not only the Jews. In Germany they should not permit a false identification of Germans with the victims, but point to the perpetrators. Gabriel Motzkin, in a reply to Koselleck, remarks that memories cannot be divorced from a moral context, as Koselleck tries to do. A moral dimension also makes empathy possible. The postwar generation of Germans feels guilt not through identification with the perpetrators - which would be unjust - but through empathy with the victims. Holds that a memorial has impact only if it is dedicated to a specific group, in this case the Jews, as the symbolic representatives of all the victims of Nazism.
Description / Table of Contents:
Motzkin, Gabriel. Moralische Verantwortung und Diskontinuität der Erinnerung. Ibid. 47,6 (1999) 1023-1031.
URL:
Locate this publication in Israeli libraries
Permalink
