Jeffrey K. Olick
“What responsibility do ordinary people bear for atrocities committed in their
names? According to modern democratic sensibilities, responsibility is an
individual affair. The idea, as in Exodus (20:5), that the sins of the fathers
could be delivered unto the third and fourth generations goes against the grain.
It seems to be part of the collectivistic thinking that characterizes modernity
off its rails, a pre-modern remain that produces outbursts of racism,
nationalism, and genocide. That is not to say that we are not interested in
accountability for political crimes. International human rights entrepreneurs
have pressed for holding dictators accountable and have supported efforts to
obtain reparations and other forms of redress. But we are very careful to avoid
charges of “collective guilt,” which often sound more like the problem than the
solution. We don’t want to start a culture war or clash of civilizations!
. . . In contrast to the Mitscherlichs, Sebald is thus very much a man of his
times, free of the older orthodoxies of the West German memory wars. For
decades, the politics of memory in West Germany was divided between those who
feared “too much” memory and those, like Jung and the Mitscherlichs, who
believed Germans needed to work through their (collective) guilt if they were to
overcome the symptoms of repression. Sebald does indeed pose a strong ethical
and political-cultural imperative to remember, but his lecture was controversial
because the lost memory it laments is that of German suffering, which heretofore
has been the rallying cry of the extreme right. In this regard, Sebald is only
one example of a surprising recent interest in the memory of German suffering
from the left. . . . How legitimate is this new interest in German suffering,
previously associated with nationalist revanchism and discreditable positions?
The answer depends on the purpose. . . .”
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Ethics, Reconciliation, Transitional Justice, Security, Human Rights, Ethics, Germany
