Memory and Representation in Contemporary Europe

The Persistence of the Past

Siobhan Kattago

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317097594
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

Why do certain places and not others symbolically capture the past and freeze time? Likewise, why does the process of memory, as a fluid and changing activity, seem to prevent its own solidification? Memory and Representation in Contemporary Europe reflects not only on the persistence of the past as a theme linked to modernity, media and time, but also discusses the politics of memory within a changing Europe. Drawing on the theoretical work of Hannah Arendt, Isaiah Berlin and Zygmunt Bauman, Siobhan Kattago uses examples from both Germany and Estonia in order to address the multiple layers of Europe's totalitarian past. Through reflecting on the legacy of totalitarianism and the revolutions of 1989, it becomes clear that the issue is less of whether one should remember, but rather how to internalize the various lessons of the past for the future of Europe. Memory and Representation in Contemporary Europe thus offers the reader occasions upon which to take stock of different but overlapping contours of past and present in contemporary Europe.

Chapter 1
The Slippery Slope of Memory

Anniversaries provide the occasion to look back and reassess the past from the perspective of the present. One doesn’t just look back from any place or time, but from a particular location and particular time in the present. Our point of recollection, remembrance, and reassessment is ‘the now’—however fleeting or fixed we may perceive that moment to be. With the mass demonstrations of ordinary East European citizens for freedom in 1989, the fall of communism has brought about a more open society in each of the former communist countries with the exception of Belarus. Each former communist country has its own national story of suffering and liberation within the larger tapestry of that ‘place’ called East and Central Europe, the Soviet bloc or former Soviet Union. Twenty years on, prepositions of pre and post are still used: pre-war, post-war, post-communist, post-Soviet. Each preposition qualifies and emphasizes the transitional aspect of time. Pre and post link the noun to a bounded period of time: World War II and communism.

1989 is seen as an annus mirabilis or year of wonders, representing the dramatic break from communism, state-planned economies as well as re-entry into Europe. Twenty years on, freedom seems to have lost some of its magnetic and miraculous attraction. Amidst relatively low voter turnout, economic downturn and disappointment with the difficulties in adapting to new economic and social conditions, anniversaries and commemorations provide an occasion to rethink some of the reasons for democratic change. In any transition, advisors come and go, but the major cast of characters stays largely the same. The drama of revolutionary politics cannot compare with the mundane reality of everyday party politics. Since there is not a director with a God’s eye view who can call for new actors, a certain process of selection has to take place within the national cast of characters. In the last 20 years, both the communist and Nazi pasts have been opened up for historical examination and a renewed discussion of totalitarianism has emerged. Although modern technology provides individuals with unprecedented means to capture and freeze moments of the past, how experiences of war and communism are interpreted and woven into meaningful narratives is far from neutral. The dangers of opening up Pandora’s box occurs when individuals fall inside and remain fixated in the past, seeking revenge rather than reconciliation and justice. Particularly because memories of the past invoke truth and facticity, the stage is set for clashing interpretations. All too often, national stories fall into the narrative of winners and losers, liberators and occupiers, friend and foe.

Too much memory makes one a slave to the past, while forgetfulness denies history and one’s own link to the past. As Nietzsche cautioned in the 19th century, a balance between the historical and unhistorical is required for the health of individuals, cultures and nations. Criticizing the tendency to diminish the present in the shadow of the past, Nietzsche characterizes the feverish quality of a hyper historical sense. ‘There is a degree of insomnia, of rumination, of historical sense which injures every living thing and finally destroys it, be it a man, a people or a culture’ (Nietzsche 1980: 10). Granted that Nietzsche’s reflections are general and not intended for contemporary discussions of democracy and memory—his metaphor of a balance between memory and forgetting is more relevant that ever.

Coming to Terms with the Past: Whether, When, Who and How

Questions about how to come to terms with a difficult past have been associated with many goals: truth, justice and recognition of guilt as well as consolidation of democracy, national healing, cleansing and reconciliation. Timothy Garton Ash raises the important question of whether there indeed exists a clear correlation between how a nation comes to terms with its past and the consolidation of a democratic culture. Since World War II, West German discussions of how to come to terms with the past have come under the framework of Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit or Vergangenheitsbewältigung. Do the rule of law, pluralism and tolerance have anything to do with how nations come to terms with their troubled pasts? (Ash 2001/2002: 38) If Spain is an example of a stabile democracy that chose not to immediately examine the Franco years, Germany is an example of the opposite: a seemingly relentless confrontation with the Nazi past and one of the most successful open democracies.

Questions such as whether to open or close communist-era archives are particularly relevant because they raise the question of the truthfulness of the files and the entire process of informing. Trials are an important part of criminal justice, but can also lead to revenge and theatrical drama. Likewise, lustration as a kind of ritual purging is structurally unable to deal with the complexity of particular situations. What seems to be the most balanced and beneficial for the long-term health of a democracy are historical commissions. By listening to witnesses, who have lived through both the periods of communism and National Socialism, as well as interpreting archival material, a fuller understanding of the past may be reached. Moreover, historical commissions present a greater possibility for finding a balance between the sacralization and trivialization of memory.

For Ash, the issue of how memory is related to democracy basically boils down to four questions: whether, when, who and how (Ash 2002). The first, and probably most important question is whether one should address the past at all or simply ignore it. Before addressing the subtleties of how much or little to remember, one has to address whether it is beneficial to recall the past or whether amnesia and a ‘new beginning’ foster a peaceful society. Is it better to remember everything or ‘forgive and forget?’ Historically, the aim of a shared future has often resulted in state-sponsored forgetfulness. As early as 403 BC, with the restoration of Athenian democracy after oligarchy and civil war, amnesia was declared as a way in which to prevent revenge and promote reconciliation. Moreover, the Athenians installed an altar to Lethe, the goddess of forgetfulness on the acropolis as a sign that forgetfulness is necessary for a new beginning (Misztal 2005: 1324, Connerton 2008: 61-62). The Treaty of Westphalia ending the Thirty Years War in 1648 included an injunction that both sides should forgive and forget. When Charles II became king of England in 1660 he declared ‘an act of full and general pardon, indemnity and oblivion’ (Connerton 2008: 62). For Ernst Renan, national cohesion requires both shared memories and a certain degree of forgetfulness. ‘Yet the essence of a nation is that all individuals have many things in common, and also that they have forgotten many things’ (Renan 1990: 11). Indeed if one considers the liberal idea of the social contract, whether in the form of Thomas Hobbes or John Rawls, a period of willed forgetfulness is deemed necessary for future social cohesion. As Winston Churchill proclaimed in his 1946 Zurich speech, if Europe is to recover from the horror of war, a ‘blessed act of oblivion’ would be necessary. Such oblivion shouldn’t conflict with the pursuit of justice, but instead prevent a vicious cycle of revenge and violence. ‘If Europe is to be saved from infinite misery, and indeed from final doom, there must be this act of faith in the European family, this act of oblivion against all crimes and follies of the past’ (Churchill 1946). From the opposite perspective, Karl Jaspers makes a powerful argument for the necessity to remember. In his book written immediately after the war, The Question of German Guilt, Jaspers outlines levels of individual guilt. Due to the crimes committed during National Socialism, each individual has a responsibility to remember—the issue becomes what kind of guilt is associated with the past: criminal, political, moral or metaphysical (Jaspers 1961). The democratic revolutions in Eastern Europe have been a watershed in claims for memory rather than forgetting. From the building of monuments and history museums, the writing of history books, films and documentaries to the academic discipline of memory studies, more memory seems to equal more democracy.

The second question that Ash raises is that of timing. When should the past be dealt with: immediately, in the near future or at some later time in the distant future. The question of timing is notoriously political because it implicates most directly those who served in the old regime. Thinkers, such as Hermann Lübbe suggest that a certain period of silence is necessary for democratic stability (Lübbe 2007). Without arguing for a magical amount of time, Lübbe cautions against disturbing the fragile texture of a new democracy with meddlesome questions about the past. German democratic stability is rooted in the official silence of the 1950s. Lübbe makes the compelling argument that future unity is more important that the seductive lure of revenge, scapegoats, and witch hunts. Here the argument to wait is as old as the adage that one should wait before reacting in a rash moment of anger. In essence, rational reflection requires a certain period of silence. In essence, ‘time heals all wounds.’ From the opposite spectrum, political thinkers such as Gesine Schwan argue that silence may just as easily be construed as justice postponed, amnesty or amnesia. Silence damages the political culture of a fragile democracy not only in the current generation but in future ones as well. Not acknowledging the past immediately results in silenced guilt (Schwan 2001). Thinkers who argue against waiting to confront the past harken back to a Freudian model of repression and the return of the repressed if the past is not immediately confronted. If not adequately acknowledged or dealt with, the past haunts and distorts the present and the future. From the point of view of historical scholarship, waiting limits what one can research. ‘The witnesses die; others forget, or at least, rearrange their memories; and it is the worst horrors that are often the least well documented in the archives’ (Ash 2002: 268).

The third question is who should judge the past: the leaders of the new democratic government, ordinary citizens, the international community, the media, parliament or the victims? Who should judge raises difficult moral questions of acceptance, mercy and forgiveness. Should those without experience living in a totalitarian regime judge the crimes of communism?

What right have we, who never faced the dilemmas of living in a dictatorship, to sit in judgement on those who did? Do we know how we would have behaved? Perhaps we, too, would have become party functionaries or secret police informers? So what right do we have to condemn? (Ash 2002: 270)

Given the complexity of the communist dictatorship and totalitarian experience of living under both Nazism and communism, the question of ‘who’ should judge the past is linked to historical truth and justice. A lasting legacy of the war and communism in the Baltic States are the demographic changes resulting in large Russian-speaking minorities. As the riots surrounding the removal of the Bronze Soldier in Tallinn demonstrated, clashing memories are most volatile when linked to ethnic differences. If May 9 is remembered as a sacred day of victory for many Russians living in the Baltic States, it is marred by loss and occupation for many Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians. Likewise the fact that the governments of Lithuania and Estonia chose not to attend the ceremonies commemorating the 60th anniversary of Victory Day in Moscow on May 9, 2005 revealed splits in how ‘the end’ of the war was remembered, interpreted and judged.

Finally, there is the question of how the past should be examined and judged: through trials, purges or history lessons. Each way has its own strength and weakness. Moreover, each path is dependent upon the countries transition to democracy. Ranging from the Nuremberg trials to Czech lustration and the East German Commission of Enquiry, the results are varied. Truth and History Commissions offer the most neutrality and greatest potential to learn about how regimes maintained power. For Ash, the most neutral judge of the past is the historian, rather than the politician or criminal judge. ‘In fact I do think that if you ask “who is best equipped to do justice to the past?” the answer is, or at least should be, historians. But this is also a heavy responsibility’ (Ash 2002: 281). Partially in response to international criticism about the lack of knowledge of war crimes and in an earnest attempt to document publicly recent history, each of the Baltic States established historical commissions in the 1990s to investigate the Nazi and Communist occupations. The work of these commissions may, like the Entquete Commission in the former GDR (1995), provide a forthright historical analysis of the communist regime and post-war years. Although the Estonian commission is criticized for being more of a positivist fact-finding commission than providing in-depth historical analysis, it is the first attempt by Estonian historians in an international commission to examine the legacies of the war and occupations in Estonia. As Ash notes, historical commissions are one important way to understand the past. They complement trials, monuments, public debates, documentaries and the academic writing of history (Ash 2002: 265-282).

Uniqueness of Memory: Interpreting and Internalizing the Past

If, for Maurice Halbwachs, all memory is influenced by social frameworks, it is later with the work of Pierre Nora that the fascination with memory is linked to transformations in modern time (Halbwachs 1980, Nora 1989). In addition to calling attention to the locality of memory with his phrase ‘place of memory’ (lieu de mémoire), Nora emphasizes the cultural and mythical power of memory. ‘This upsurge in memory intersects, it seems to me, with two major historical phenomena which have marked the age, one temporal and one social’ (Nora 2002: 4). The first major transformation is a perceived acceleration of time. Modernity is more about rapid change than permanence, whether scientific, technological, social or political. In the quest for some place of certainty within an ever-accelerating world, people look towards the past for stability. Uncertainty towards a future where today’s know-how may already be obsolete makes the past appear more stabile. The acceleration of time has two opposing consequences: either the past appears more stabile than the present and future, or the present is dramatically distanced from the past because it seemingly has nothing to do with the present. As a result of the closeness or distance of the past, the word ‘memory’ seems to have taken on a life of its own. “‘Memory” has taken on meaning so broad and all-inclusive that it tends to be used purely and simply as a substitute for “history” and to put the study of history at the service of memory’ (Nora 2002: 5). In addition to the acceleration of time, the upsurge in memory is also linked to the democratization of history. Merging with identity politics of minority groups and history from below, one consequence of the democratization of memory is a plurality of memories. ‘Unlike history, which has always been in the hands of the public authorities, of scholars and specialized peer groups; memory has acquired all the new privileges of a popular protest movement’ (Ibid., 7).

In response to the growing use of the term ‘collective memory,’ Reinhart Koselleck and Susan Sontag both argue against the salience of collective memory. For them, memory is an individual experience. At a conference held in Sofia in 2003 on the work of Pierre Nora, Koselleck presented a paper with the provocative thesis that there is no such thing as collective memory. Given his background as a historian and his own experience as a German soldier in a Soviet prisoner of war camp, Koselleck cautioned against the alluring confusion of collective memory. ‘I can only remember what I myself have experienced. Memory (Erinnerung) is bound up with personal experience’ (Koselleck 2004: 3). His memory of seeing Auschwitz from the first-hand perspective of a prisoner of war was different from the official commemorations of its liberation. ‘As commemoration, as re-commemoration, it is semantically a fully different memory from that which I have kept in my memory as a witness from the initial news’ (Ibid., 3). The collectivities that shape individual memory can be party, class, nation, union, religion—all the way up to the category of humanity. For Koselleck though, the question remains who is the subject, who remembers? The subject is the individual who may be influenced by what he terms ‘the 7Ps’: professors, priests, preachers, PR specialists, the press, poets and politicians (Ibid., 5). The seven groups in society simplify, mediate and define the terms of memory. ‘There are as many memories as there are people and each collectivity, who is convinced that they are the only one, is, in my opinion, a priori ideology or myth’ (Ibid., 6). In his opinion, there is no collective memory in the singular, but rather collective conditions that enable memory. ‘There is no collective memory; there are collective conditions which make memory possible’ (Ibid.). The role of the historian is not to support collective identity, but to try and understand the complexity of the past.

In a similar vein, Susan Sontag argues for the uniqueness of memory. Unlike Koselleck, who focuses on historical documents, Sontag bases her reflections on photography and art. Photography has the power to reduce the complexity of history into a single iconic image. She cautions against the facile equation of a photograph with historical truth. If memory is viewed in the singular, the complexity of human experience and the importance of culture are ignored. Interesting enough, while Sontag argues that ‘strictly speaking, there is not such thing as collective memory,’ (Sontag 2003: 85) Halbwachs insists on the opposite. For him, there is no such thing as a strictly individual memory; rather memory is always framed by membership in a group. ‘In reality, we are never alone. Other men need not be physically present, since we always carry with us and in us a number of distinct persons’ (Halbwachs 1980: 23). Culture, tradition and language are frameworks within which individual memories are located. Even if we experience something in private—like getting lost or taking a walk alone, the knowledge of the absent framework—be they smaller groups such as friends and family or larger groups like the nation—this knowledge of the absence of a group, constitutes a framework in absentia. ‘The thought of the absent family provides a framework…’ (Ibid., 38) Likewise, for Halbwachs, ‘… it is individuals as group members (sic) who remember’ (Ibid., 48). All memories are framed by some form of social collectivity—be it the family, religion or nation. It is only when we dream that Halbwachs admits some form of private and individual memory.

Both Sontag and Koselleck share a similar concern with the emphasis on ‘collective memory.’ Just as guilt is individual, so is memory. One should be careful of projecting individual experience onto collectivities. However, even if memory is private, one can and should learn from the larger processes of history. ‘All memory is individual, unreproducible – it dies with each person’ (Sontag 2003: 86). Collective instruction means the internalization of the past and acknowledgment of some sort of responsibility for past actions. Responsibility, unlike guilt can be collective and between generations. Likewise, collective instruction includes historical research, discussion and critical debate. The trick seems to be in distinguishing between coll...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 The Slippery Slope of Memory
• 2 Agreeing to Disagree on the Legacies of Recent History
• 3 The Ethics of Seeing: Photographs of Germany at the End of the War
• 4 The Sound of Silence: Reflections on Bernhard Schlink and Gesine Schwan
• 5 Living in the Third Person: The Uncanny Hans Schneider/Schwerte
• 6 Goodbye to Grand Narratives? Moving the Soviet War Memorial in Tallinn
• 7 Memory, Pluralism and the Agony of Politics
• 8 The Fata Morgana of Revolution
• Postscript: Europe between Past and Future
• Bibliography
• Index