A new »Historikerstreit«?
Memory Wars under the Sign of the Holocaust
Past dates
9/27/23
7:30 PM
German post-war identity was shaped by its engagement with history, mainly with the Holocaust. For several years now, there has been witnessing a heated public debate that had been labelled as a new “Historikerstreit” or “Historikersteit 2.0”. But is it really about questioning the central role of the Holocaust and of Germany accepting responsibility for its past, as the allusion to first Historikerstreit of the mid-1980s suggests? Or is it legitimate to call for widening the scope of official German memory politics by including the traumas of colonialism, a necessary requisite of a (postcolonial) immigration society? For the first time, central participants of this debate, Meron Mendel and Dirk Moses, meet here to discuss directly with each other. Both contributed to the new anthology „Erinnerungskämpfe. Wem gehört die deutsche Geschichte“ (Memory struggles. Whom does German history belong to?), ed. by Jürgen Zimmerer, Stuttgart, Reclam 2023. The discussion will be hosted by Tania Mancheno and Jürgen Zimmerer. The event is part of the series “Colonial Legacy Dialogues”, a cooperation between Kampnagel and the Research Centre Hamburg's (Post-)Colonial Legacy, in which scholars, activists and artists discuss the connections and effects of colonialism in Hamburg, Germany and the Global South.
The event will be broadcast live on Zoom HERE (entry at 19:00 online).
Simultaneous interpretation will be provided at the event and online in German and English.
The event will be recorded and made available online later.
