HELMUT KOHL: IN SEARCH OF A UNIFIED PAST

By

BRIANNA LEA WEBB

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS IN HISTORY

WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY Department of History

MAY 2017

© Copyright by BRIANNA LEA WEBB, 2017 All Rights Reserved

© Copyright by BRIANNA LEA WEBB, 2017 All Rights Reserved

ii

To the Faculty of Washington State University: The members of the Committee appointed to examine the thesis of BRIANNA LEA

WEBB find it satisfactory and recommend that it be accepted.

Raymond C. Sun, Ph.D., Chair

Steven D. Kale, Ph.D.

Brigit A. Farley, Ph.D.

Rachel J. Halverson, Ph.D.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This thesis is a testament to the significant improvement I experienced during my time as

a M.A. student at Washington State University. My growth as a student, writer, and researcher

would not have been possible without the help of my adviser, Dr. Raymond Sun, who offered a

lot of time and thought in the past two years. I owe my biggest thanks to him, where my

appreciation cannot be properly described with words.

I would also like to thank the members of my committee, Dr. Steven Kale, Dr. Brigit

Farley, and Dr. Rachel Halverson, for enthusiastically and critically engaging with me and my

research. There is a tremendous amount of gratitude for the entire History Department at

Washington State University for providing a friendly and supportive environment, and giving me

a chance to mature as a student. Especially with friends like Calen Rau, Renée Torres, Karl

Krotke-Crandall, and Megan Ockerman, I was never lacking in support, encouragement, and

laughter.

Finally, there is tremendous love and appreciation for my family being the best support-

system I could imagine. Thank you to my parents, Lisa and Ira “Butch” Webb, who never

doubted me for a second, and constantly reminded me of my achievements and how proud they

were. And thank you to Jake, Stacy, Rachel, and Lori, my incredible siblings, for tolerating me

and helping me endure the struggles that I encountered. I cannot imagine my success without my

family, and I dedicate this thesis to them.

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HELMUT KOHL: IN SEARCH OF A UNIFIED PAST

Abstract

by Brianna Lea Webb, M.A. Washington State University

May 2017

Chair: Raymond C. Sun

World War II forced the German people to contend with the death and destruction that

their country caused and endured, and during the postwar years the division between East and

West German memory only perplexed the Germans’ past. When West German Chancellor

Helmut Kohl gained chancellorship in 1982, he strove for integration, and wanted to achieve

unity not only through economics and policies, but also through monuments and memorials. The

focus of this research will trace Kohl’s memorial endeavor, where he tried to establish a unified

narrative of struggle and victimization for Germans through a series of commemorations during

the 1980s and 1990s. By examining the Bitburg affair in 1985, the Neue Wache memorial, and

the Holocaust Memorial dedicated in Berlin, I investigate how Kohl attempted to use sites of

memory to manipulate the past in such a way as to achieve unity in memory and national

identity. With a conservative agenda, and the effort to emphasize German suffering rather than

focusing on the Holocaust, these attempts were often met with controversy, which not only

shaped the Kohl government’s later monument building projects, but also demonstrates the

problematic nature of trying to create a singular interpretation of a nation’s past.

The three sites of memory represent Kohl’s changing ambitions, and his learning curve

when confronting Germany’s war past. The Bitburg affair is the beginning of Kohl’s memorial

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journey, where Kohl tried to achieve unity by equalizing German victims and relativize the

Holocaust for the sake of United States Cold War relations. Unsuccessful in that attempt, and

with reunification in 1990, Kohl used the Neue Wache to establish a “clean” site of memory that

represented a collective German identity for West and East Germans. With relative success, and

the lack of proper memorialization for the Holocaust, the final memorial project for Kohl is the

Holocaust Memorial, where Jews, Germans, and international audiences alike can visit a

common site. For Kohl, the underlying goal in all three cases is that Germany needed a unified,

and usable, past.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................................. iii

ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................... iv

LIST OF FIGURES ...................................................................................................................... vii

CHAPTER

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................1

CHAPTER TWO: THE 1985 COMMEMORATIONS IN BITBURG AND BERGEN-BELSEN ............................................................................................................................22 CHAPTER THREE: MOVING ON FROM BITBURG: CREATING A MEMORIAL INSIDE THE NEUE WACHE ..........................................................................................43 CHAPTER FOUR: “A WAVING FIELD OF PILLARS”: THE “MEMORIAL TO THE MURDERED JEWS OF EUROPE” .................................................................................77 CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION .................................................................................106

REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................114

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LIST OF FIGURES

Page

Figure 1.1: Map of Germany ...........................................................................................................3

Figure 2.1: Map of major camps in Greater Germany, 1944 .........................................................34

Figure 3.1: Neue Wache Memorial, Berlin ....................................................................................45

Figure 3.2: Pietà by Käthe Kollwitiz, Neue Wache, Berlin ..........................................................46

Figure 3.3: Neue Wache Façade, Berlin ........................................................................................48

Figure 3.4: Inside the Neue Wache, June 1931 .............................................................................53

Figure 3.5: Berlin, Kranzniederlegung im Ehrenmal, March 12, 1933 .........................................54

Figure 3.6: Berlin, Neue Wache Unter den Linden, September 30, 1970 .....................................57

Figure 3.7: Inside the Neue Wache, Berlin ....................................................................................58

Figure 3.8: Pietà, Neue Wache in Berlin .......................................................................................59

Figure 3.9: Käthe Kollwitz, The "Grieving Parents,” Vladslo, Belgium .......................................62

Figure 3.10: Women with Dead Child, Käthe Kollwitz, 1903 ......................................................63

Figure 3.11: Original bronze statuette of the Pietà by Käthe Kollwitz .........................................64

Figure 3.12: Close-up of Pietà, in the Neue Wache, Berlin ..........................................................66

Figure 4.1: Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas, Berlin ...................................................78

Figure 4.2: Christine Jackob-Marks Holocaust Memorial concept drawing .................................86

Figure 4.3: Map of Berlin ..............................................................................................................87

Figure 4.4: Rose at the “Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe,” Berlin ..............................90

Figure 4.5: Inside the stelae in the “Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe,” Berlin ............92

Figure 4.6: Entrance to the information center ..............................................................................93

Figure 4.7: “Room of Dimensions” and Room of Families” .........................................................94

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CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

On the fortieth anniversary of the end of World War II, West German Chancellor Helmut

Kohl invited United States President Ronald Reagan to West Germany to participate in a series

of ceremonies. The aim was political—both Kohl and Reagan needed a public gesture that

reinforced Cold War relations between the two nations to achieve individual aims. For Reagan, it

would allow him to move forward with his Strategic Defense Initiative, a missile program that

would strengthen the U.S. nuclear power in Europe against the Soviet Union. As for Kohl, it was

important to strengthen relations with the U.S. to secure the Federal Republic of Germany’s

influence in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and to become fully westernized

and normalized.1 The commemorations were to take place at the Kolmeshöhe military cemetery

in Bitburg, a town near the border of Luxembourg. However, Jewish communities in the U.S.

and Germany, along with veterans, learned about the forty-nine SS soldiers that were buried

along with the German Wehrmacht soldiers, and demanded that Reagan change his visit to avoid

commemorating individuals held responsible for the Holocaust.

During an acceptance speech for the Congressional Gold Medal of Achievement at the

White House on April 19, 1985, Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel

questioned Ronald Reagan: “Mr. President, am I dreaming? Is this but a nightmare?... I belong to

a traumatized generation; to us symbols are important… Your place is with the victims of the S.

S. We know there are political and even strategic considerations—but this issue… transcends

politics, and even diplomacy. The issue here is not politics but good and evil, and we must never

confuse them.”2 As a survivor of the Holocaust, Wiesel expressed the sentiment that many

1 For more information of the political motivations for the commemorations in 1985, see

“Chapter Two: The 1985 Commemorations in Bitburg and Bergen-Belsen.” 2 Elie Wiesel, From the Kingdom of Memory: Reminiscences (New York: Summit Books, 1990),

176.

2

Jewish people felt, and this feeling intensified when a concentration camp, Bergen-Belsen, was

added to the visit to offset the controversy. This addition heightened the controversy, for when

the SS soldiers in Bitburg were placed alongside the victims of Bergen-Belsen, two groups were

being honored together: the victims of the Holocaust, and the perpetrators. Reagan’s visit to

Germany resulted in a political debacle, with outrage from Jewish communities both within

Germany, and internationally. The high level of critique and opposition to the commemorations

exposed Germany’s battle with the past, and forced Kohl to realize that Germany did not have

the proper commemorative site that narrated a usable past for Germany.

3

Figure 1.1: Map of Germany. Photo from maps-of-europe.net.

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Bitburg marks the beginning of Helmut Kohl’s search for a unified past, and his desire to

create a memorial that would provide a stable and unifying symbol of German war memory.

Transitioning from Cold War politics to reunification in 1990, the Kohl administration attempted

to create a traditional ritual space to establish a single German memory of the Second World

War, and thereby reinforce a new, unified German identity. The division of Germany was a

consequence and a reminder of National Socialism, thus the desire to create a memorial that

overcame that past, and create a narrative that included both Germanys. That memorial would be

the “Zentralen Gedenkstätte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland für die Opfer des Krieges und der

Gewaltherrschaft” (“Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany for the Victims of

War and Tyranny”), commonly referred to as the Neue Wache memorial, dedicated on

November 14, 1993. The memorial contains the enlargement of Käthe Kollwitz’s statuette, Pietà,

inside the historical structure, the Neue Wache. For Kohl, the Neue Wache memorial would

achieve what Bitburg failed to do—act as a central monument to all the victims of war and

tyranny, and act as a common site for the unification of the German people and reconciliation of

victims and perpetrators. Kohl used the site to construct a useable past for a recently unified

Germany. After decades of division, and the Bitburg incident in 1985, Kohl believed that a

memorial that unified both victims and Germans would allow the nation to accept its past, and

look forward to a unified future.

Kohl’s hopes for the Neue Wache turned out to be wishful-thinking—during the

dedication, protestors gathered at the site, and objected to the building, the purpose of the

memorial, and the sculpture inside. Kohl had hoped to create a unifying site of war memory for

Germany, but instead generated more divisive debate owing to both the memorial’s location and

the symbolism of the Pietà. The building itself has its origins in Prussian militarism, being a

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guardhouse for the king’s soldiers. Additionally, since the Weimar Republic, the site housed

memorials for the Weimar Republic, the National Socialists, and the German Democratic

Republic, representing the troubled and militaristic history that Germans struggled to contend

with. The Jewish communities were the most vocal critics, claiming that the sculpture excluded

the Jewish victims due to its overtly Christian symbolism. This led to Kohl’s final memorial

attempt—the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. Consisting of concrete pillars (stelae), architect

Peter Eisenman hoped to produce an uneasy and open-ended atmosphere within an outwardly

rational and ordered design. For Kohl, the Holocaust Memorial would be a common space that

Germany, and the capital of reunified Germany, needed to confront its past, and where East and

West Germans alike could recollect memories associated with the Holocaust.

This leads to the question of: what is the significance of choosing a national memory at a

particular time in a particular place? By examining these memorials, I argue that these sites are

representative of a selective memory Kohl tried to propagate, where the collective identity is one

that represents German unity and normalization as a modern nation. German normalcy can be

defined as establishing a presence in the global community as a free democratic nation, and

shedding the pariah label that came with the guilt associated with World War II and the

Holocaust. Kohl used, redesigned, and created official sites of memory explicitly linked to the

war and the Holocaust, to advance this political agenda.

Kohl’s intentions changed over the decades, using World War II sites of memory for

Cold War politics, reunification politics, and normalizing the German past. Therefore, the

success—or failure—of one memorial influenced the design and intended audience for the next.

With the Bitburg cemetery incident, Kohl sought to reinforce relations with the United States at a

point in the Cold War where East and West tensions were high. This attempt was unsuccessful

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considering Kohl linked Holocaust victims and SS soldiers together. Realizing that Germany did

not have a proper commemorative site that could be visited by foreign dignitaries, Kohl wanted

to create a memorial to fulfill such purposes. The desire heightened after reunification in 1990,

and resulted in designs for the Neue Wache. The latter was also confronted with controversy, as

critics from the Jewish population, and those whose family members were not associated with

combat roles, questioned how effectively the memorial represented these victims. With the

questionable success of the Neue Wache, I argue that the Holocaust Memorial was the final and

most ambitious attempt to create a site that, as a national Holocaust memorial, would symbolize

Germany’s normalization through its embrace of this most troublesome chapter of its past. This

site was also met with controversy from the design process to completion. More than a decade

after its opening, it is still debated whether it accurately and effectively represents the Holocaust

experience.3

German Postwar Memory

Germany has struggled for over half a century with how to properly commemorate, or

even discuss, its responsibility for the Second World War and the Holocaust. World War II

forced the German people to contend with the death and destruction that their country caused and

endured, and during the postwar years the division between East and West German memory only

perplexed the Germans’ past. When dealing with their history, Germans developed the term

3 The most recent controversy is with Björn Höcke, member of the Alternative for Germany

party, where he criticized how Germany has confronted its guilt, and that the Holocaust Memorial is a “monument of shame.” This is explained more in “Chapter Five: Conclusion.”

7

Vergangenheitsbewältigung, which translates to “mastering the past.” It can be argued that the

legacy of Nazism is the “unmasterable past” for Germans.4

The official break between West and East Germany occurred in 1947 when the Allied

forces could not come to an agreement at the Moscow meeting—the Soviet Union wanted

restoration and reparations for its economy, while the Western allies wanted the revival of the

German economy.5 While this created the initial split of Germany, it was not until the Berlin

Crisis in May 1949 that the desire for a West and East German state heightened. The West

German parliamentary council in Bonn formally passed the “Basic Law,” which officially

established a West German government. The Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) was

established on September 15th, 1949, and Christian Democratic Party member, Konrad

Adenauer, became the FRG’s first Chancellor. As a response, Stalin announced plans for a

complementary East German state. The German Democratic Republic (GDR) was formally

created on October 7, 1949, led by Walter Ulbricht as Head of State.6

The division of Germany went well beyond the political and ideological struggles that

were inherent in the Cold War. The division also occurred in memory, with the FRG and the

GDR developing unique strategies to address the past. In East Germany, the communist regime

focused on commemorating the international character of Nazi victims. They then used their

memorials to impart three basic messages: 1) fascism was responsible for war crimes; 2) the

German working class aided by German Communist Party and Soviets resisted Nazi rule; and 3)

4 Charles S. Maier, The Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust, and German National Identity

(Cambridge: Harvard Press, 1988). 5 Tony Judt, Postwar Europe: A History of Europe Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books,

2005),124. 6 Judt, Postwar Europe, 146-147.

8

communism (which triumphed over fascism) would prevail over Western Imperialism.7

Therefore, East Germany could claim that there was no Holocaust problem, for it was an

antifascist state. By focusing on specific war memories, East Germans experienced collective

amnesia about their role in Hitler’s Germany.8

The GDR authoritarianism established an official, state-sanctioned memory into all

aspects of war remembrance, maintaining the antifascist discourse, which also maintained its

legitimacy. By linking West Germany and the Nazi legacy, the GDR attempted to

simultaneously distance themselves from Germany’s criminals and de-legitimize West Germany

along the lines of the Cold War.9 East Germans viewed West Germany as the successor state of

Nazism, and affirmed themselves as the resistors or victims of fascism. Embracing these two

labels (or myths) established the commemorative trend of German suffering in East German

society.10

Immediately after the war, GDR Head of State Walter Ulbricht spoke of the need for

shame and guilt for Nazi crimes, and embraced socialist values for the recovery of Germany.

With the advent of the Cold War, the antifascist rhetoric heightened in intensity as an ideological

justification throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and served as validation for the postwar

dictatorships of Eastern Europe. Additionally, it created a social cohesion between East German

intellectuals, political elites, and citizens. A slight shift occurred during the 1980s when GDR

identity was being built on antifascism alongside the revival of German cultural heritage. East

7 Claudia Koonz, “Between Memory and Oblivion: Concentration Camps in German Memory,”

in Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity, ed. John R. Gillis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 266.

8 Jeffrey Herf, Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), 101.

9 Siobhan Kattago, Ambiguous Memory: The Nazi Past and German National Identity (Westport: Praeger, 2001), 80.

10 Maier, The Unmasterable Past, 2.

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German’s instrumental interpretation of the Nazi past made antifascism the foundation for East

German identity, but identifying a German heritage transformed the GDR from a socialist state

to a socialist nation.11

West German memory can be described as deeply internalized and conflicted, where

tension between acceptance and repression of the past coexisted. Immediately after the war,

much of the guilt came from the Allies during occupation, where supervised processes of

reconstruction and de-Nazification occurred. This included the Nuremburg trials in 1945-1946,

where the magnitude of Nazi war crimes was broadcasted to the world, and made Germany the

world pariah. Then, with the division of Germany on the onset of the Cold War, the FRG

adopted the policy of avoidance, including efforts to end the purging. In fact, during the

Adenauer era the basic elements of the policy for the past included amnesty, integration, and

demarcation of the present from the past. The goal was to move forward, and to break West

Germany from the war years.12 West Germans used the building of the FRG to start over, and

Stunde Null (zero hour) represented the start of the “forgetfulness narrative” that fostered

selective remembrance in West Germany.13

During the 1950s, West German memory embraced the narrative of German

victimization, and emphasized this to suppress the perpetrator label. According to Robert

Moeller, Germans embraced victimization because trauma and suffering are powerful forces

when shaping communities of memory.14 Therefore, politicians, historians, and artists

11 Kattago, Ambiguous Memory, 111. 12 Norbert Frei, The Politics of Amnesty and Integration, trans. Joel Golb (New York: Columbia

University Press, 2002), xii-xiii. 13Robert G. Moeller, War Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of

Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 17. Stunde Null was a term associated with the end of World War II, and represented the discontinuity between Nazism and postwar reconstruction, especially for restarting of German memory.

14 Moeller, War Stories, 12.

10

propagated the narrative of German suffering, and created the misidentification of victims and

perpetrators. Politicians under Adenauer supported selective remembrance and pushed to

suppress the crimes of the Third Reich to establish a new Republic.15

West German memory shifted from repression and victimization during the 1950s to

mourning and confrontation with the war generation during the 1960s and 1970s. In 1961, the

Adolf Eichmann trial made the Holocaust an international affair, and then became the dominant

feature of twentieth-century German history, and the major challenge to West German

memory.16 A new generation of Germans born after the war started to question how to remember

the Nazi past, the Holocaust, and proper conceptions of a normalized German national identity.

This continued into the 1970s, where the Holocaust was central to collective German memory

and identity, and forced Germans to embrace responsibility within remembrance. West German

memory still included guilt and avoidance, but it was reduced and replaced with the examination

of German perpetrators, and to integrate Nazism into German history. Memory of the Nazi past

expanded to politics and society, and groups such as the Social Democrats and the New Left

challenged the relationship between democracy and memory, and argued that more democracy

required more memory and more justice.17

Also during this time, the ascendency of Willy Brandt as the FRG Chancellor represented

openness and confrontation with the Nazi past to normalize West German relations with Eastern

Europe as part of his policy of Ostpolitik. Brandt argued that public memory in West Germany

15 Herf, Divided Memory, 7. 16 Herf, 334. Adolf Eichmann was a German SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel), and

one of the major organizers of the Holocaust. In May 1960, Israeli Security Service agents seized Eichmann in Argentina, and took him to Jerusalem for trial in Israeli court. Eichmann was found guilty for his charges and sentenced to death. On June 1, 1962, Eichmann was executed by hanging, and remains the only time Israel has enacted a death sentence.

17 Herf, 334-335.

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should be part of a program of daring more democracy. Brandt and his foreign policy adviser

Egon Bahr argued that public reflection on the Eastern Front during World War II—where the

bloodiest and most intense fighting occurred—was necessary to rebuild trust and normalize West

German relations with Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.18 Ostpolitik looked beyond the Cold

War period, and brought attitudes of remorse and atonement to overcome the “underbalance of

trust” that resulted from criminal activities during the Nazi period, and which had “disgraced the

German name.”19

The West German struggle with how to remember the Nazi past reached a critical point

in the 1980s. While some still tried to disassociate West Germany from the Nazi past, there was

a growing interest in the Holocaust and National Socialism, creating public debate.

Conservatives discussed how to incorporate the Nazi past by embracing German responsibility of

the Holocaust to create a more positive German memory. This conflict is best explained through

the Historikerstreit (Historians’ debate) of the mid-1980s, where revisionist historians and

German nationalists endeavored to “normalize” German history in rendering it qualitatively no

different from histories of other modern nations. The Historikerstreit started in 1986 when

Jürgen Habermas challenged a series of assertions made by historians Ernst Nolte and Andreas

Hillgruber, who tried to justify or rationalize Nazi motivations behind the Holocaust by

equalizing Hitler to other tyrannical regimes, such as the Soviet Union. In doing so, the debates

among intellectuals called for a reevaluation of Germany’s Nazi past. The main issues brought

up in the Historikerstreit were history, memory, and national identity, where conservative

18 During World War II, the term Lebensraum dominated war policy and tactics in the Eastern

Front, which viewed the space in Eastern Europe and Western Soviet Union as desirable land for the expansion of Germany and the Third Reich.

19 Herf, 344. Ostpolitik (Eastern policy) was the normalization of relations between the Federal Republic of Germany and Eastern Europe, particularly the German Democratic Republic, beginning in 1969 under West German Chancellor Willy Brandt.

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intellectuals wanted to move outside a burdened past to create a common history, as well as a

new understanding of German nationhood and national identity. The Historikerstreit went

beyond history, representing the larger confrontation in the political divide between left and right

wings in West German politics.20

Kohl’s 1980s politics sought to reconfigure national identity by de-centering the

Holocaust memory with German suffering. Helmut Kohl became Chancellor of West Germany

as a member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in 1982. From the beginning of his term,

Kohl saw unification as a long-term objective, and constantly pursued engagement with the

GDR.21 Kohl presented the CDU as an entity that represented a conservative and patriotic set of

values, with a strong commitment to NATO partners, and to normalizing the past by reinventing

its cultural memory.22 Many of the motivations behind the Bitburg commemorations came from

Kohl’s political agenda, his attention to creating a German identity, aims for reunification, and

strengthening relationships with the West.

Striving for German normality, Kohl was influential in the creation of West German

memory. Throughout his career as Chancellor, Kohl’s concern was the continuity of the German

nation, and German identity. He reshaped the memory of National Socialism to emphasize the

suffering of German civilians and soldiers, along with the suffering of Nazi victims. This also

matched with his conservative agenda, where Kohl stressed the continuity between German

history and the democratic stability of the FRG. During the 1980s, reframing German memory of

the Second World War and the Holocaust became central to Kohl’s political agenda: by

20 Peter Baldwin, Reworking the Past: Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Historians’ Debate (Boston:

Beacon Press, 1990), 4. 21 David F. Patton, Cold War Politics in Postwar Germany (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999),

107. 22 Christian Wicke, Helmut Kohl’s Quest for Normality (New York: Berghahn Books, 2015), 77.

13

confronting and overcoming the past, the FRG could establish a positive German national

identity.23

Kohl’s first confrontation with the past, and his realization that Germany needed a proper

memorial site, was at Bitburg in 1985. For Kohl, Bitburg was the opportunity to accept and move

on from the past, and start anew with the West German identity. By asking Reagan to lay a

wreath in honor of German soldiers buried at the cemetery, Kohl sought to put an American

imprimatur on West German conservative sentiment. For the United States, accepting the

invitation to Bitburg would solidify Kohl’s support for the installation of medium-range missiles

in Germany. During this time, Reagan held a hardline stance to the Soviet Union, and on the

fortieth anniversary of the end of World War II, Kohl wanted to reinforce the nature of the

German-United States relationship, and Germany’s relationship to the war with U.S. approval.

Therefore, Reagan’s scheduled visits to Bergen-Belsen and Bitburg were highly political in

nature, acting as a means for both Reagan and Kohl to solidify relations between the United

States and West Germany to pursue Cold War aims. Kohl wanted to use Reagan’s visit to

reinforce West Germany’s status in the Western world, and with NATO; Reagan used this

opportunity to advance his nuclear weapon aims in Europe. As the following chapters will

describe, Bitburg exposed the contentious and divisive nature of German commemoration for

World War II and the Holocaust, and prompted Kohl’s search for a unified past.

Historiography and Methodology: Intersection of Memory and History

The following chapters examine the ways in which Kohl attempted to direct Germany’s

troubled relationship to the Holocasut and the Second World War, notably through the

23 Kattago, Ambiguous Memory, 46.

14

construction of two major monuments in Berlin. Therefore, this thesis falls within two main

fields of scholarship: memory studies and postwar German studies. The combination will aid in

understanding the societal constructs of memory, and how sites of memory are also influential

conduits when creating (or manipulating) memory for Germans during the twentieth century.

Memory studies is not unique to the field of history—sociologists, anthropologists, and

psychologists have also participated in developing memory theory. The complexities of Kohl’s

commemorations and the memorials he directed can be best understood through this prism of

memory studies, specifically the theoretical work concerning the construction of collective

memory and identity.24 Maurice Halbwachs developed the notion of collective memory, and

explains in his seminal work On Collective Memory that individuals and communities recollect

memories through frameworks (families, classes, and religion), which allows one to construct

memory and an identity within that particular framework.25 Therefore, collective memory is a

shared identity or history that can only exist among a common cohort of individuals who

exchange their memories through language. Halbwachs argues that collective memory is

inherently a social construct, and that memory can only exist with these societal forces. He says

that there is “no memory without perception” and the instant an individual is located in society it

is impossible to distinguish the interior observations (what is in one’s mind) from the exterior

observations.26 National memorials are constantly revisited in ceremonies of commemoration,

reinforcing Halbwachs’ concept of “frameworks of collective memory” in which official acts of

remembrance impart a normative understanding and memory of the past, connected to social

24 Individual and private memory exists, but this thesis will focus on official and public memory

in Germany. 25 Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, ed. and trans. by Lewis A. Coser (Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1992), 39. 26 Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, 168-169.

15

identity and inscribed, or absorbed, through individual acts of remembrance in a social

(collective) setting.27

Halbwachs’ concept of collective memory plays a vital role in postwar identity in

Germany, and issues of remembrance for the Holocaust. After World War II, and again after

reunification, Germans struggled with remembrance, and how to fashion collective memory to

create a usable past, and a workable identity, in wake of enormous traumas of Nazism, war,

Holocaust, and guilt as a perpetrator nation. Collective memory, then, is a constructed identity

that unites individuals or groups. However, to establish a collective memory, it requires selective

forgetfulness.28 French anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot in his seminal work Silencing the

Past is insightful when examining the multiple functions of constructed memory and

forgetfulness. According to Trouillot, “Silences are inherent in history because any single event

enters history with some of its constituting parts missing. Something is always left out while

something else is recorded.”29 Trouillot attributes this action to power—the unequal production

of history reflects the contributions of competing groups and individuals, some possessing more

power to create a narrative. Trouillot argues that for official memory, individuals who choose

what to remember or forget are usually elites possessing enormous power. Thus, the creation of

official memory as a dominant narrative for a society is constructed, shaped, and has an agenda,

usually with political motivations. Therefore, the presence and absence of facts embodied in

sources or archives are not natural, but instead, created.30 Silencing and erasure is prompted by

human beings, who participate in history as both the narrator and the actor; and human beings in

27 Halbwachs, 172. 28 Ibid, 182-183. 29 Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston:

Beacan Hill, 1995), 48. 30 Trouillot, 48.

16

this case are not restricted to the professional historian. Trouillot explains that the public is just

as likely to contribute to history, for there is an overlap between history as a social process and

history as knowledge, and participants can enter the production of a narrative before a historian

does.31

Both “silencing” and collective memory can be applied to location and structures, upon

which French scholar Pierre Nora built his theories. According to Nora, memorials, termed lieux

de mémoire, are sites of memory (typically monuments, landscapes, or buildings) and are usually

in opposition to history, acting as a reconstruction of the past. Opposed to memory that is

“organic” and “true,” history is reconstructed, artificial, and sterile.32 For Nora, “Memory is life,

borne by living societies founded in its name… open to the dialectic of remembering and

forgetting, unconscious of successive deformations, vulnerable to manipulation and

appropriation, susceptible to being long dormant and periodically revived.”33 In short, memorials

are sites of memory that selectively represent the past while simultaneously displacing the

responsibility for remembrance away from the people and onto the site. People continually

construct the lieux de mémoire, appropriating them into national, individual, or societal agendas.

Kohl exemplifies common political usage of major sites of memory to serve presentist national

or social agendas. Kohl used each site of memory discussed in this thesis for remembrance and

mourning for World War II and the Holocaust, while simultaneously acting as a political

motivator to bring unification and national cohesiveness to a reunified Germany.

In addition to the political agenda behind the memorials, Kohl wanted to create a space

appropriate for the performance of memory. This can be considered a ritual space, an idea

31 Ibid, 25.

32 Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,” in Representations, 26 (1989): 7.

33 Nora, “Between Memory and History,” 8.

17

sociologist Paul Connerton developed in his work titled How Societies Remember. For

Connerton, collective memory is organized through commemorative ceremonies and bodily

practices. In other words, commemorative acts (parades, memorial services, rituals, etc.) are also

performative, which can also be labeled as a “habit” or ritual activity, which creates memory.34

Connerton also argues that present society is established on the basis that all societies try to

determine a “beginning,” and is connected to bodily practices, which creates a pattern of social

memory.35 Therefore, memory is not only personal and cognitive, but also socially habitual—

each individual thinks or acts in behavior that is incorporated into our bodies as a habit.

Recently, history scholars have developed the concept of memory in landscapes and

monuments, most notably Jay Winter with his Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning. Winter

examines how individuals coped and remembered their losses through a study of bereavement,

which was so widespread and horrific because the First World War affected all European

society. Winter argues that World War I marked a drastic change in twentieth-century warfare,

and ruptured modernist and traditional forms of remembrance. This is not to say that traditional

forms of remembrance were obliterated—in fact, many nations embraced the traditional and

patriotic forms of remembrance. Winter analyzes the development of memory sites, and argues

that traditional forms were reconfigured to match these sites’ fixation on mourning the war dead,

which is a unique occurrence, influenced by the Great War.36

Robert G. Moeller, in his text War Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal

Republic of Germany, examines the concept of “selective memory,” where groups and

individuals focus on unifying memories, and choose to suppress memories that represent a

34 Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 5. 35 Connerton, How Societies Remember, 13. 36 Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History

(Cambridge University Press, 1995), 3-4.

18

negative or guilty past.37 An example would be West Germany during the 1950s, where West

Germans chose to repress memories of responsibility and guilt for genocide, and focused on

memories that involved German as victims, such as the Allied bombings.

James E. Young has contributed to the embodiment of memory in architecture, and how

memorials or monuments construct a narrative that can create political dissent. Known for his

texts At Memory’s Edge, The Texture of Memory, and Stages of Memory, his work deals

predominantly with Holocaust memorials, and how those have been accepted and perceived by

the general public, along with the political implications in memorials. Young explores

monuments’ transitions from sites that represent national traumas or tragedies to sites of

collective remorse. He suggests that memorials create memory spaces, but also to come to terms

with the past, in the best case to facilitate active remembrance, healing or closure.38 Young

discusses catastrophic memory associated with the Holocaust, and explains his direct

involvement in how nations—ranging from Germany to Israel, Poland to the United States—

have created memorials expressive of their unique national histories and responsibilities

regarding the Holocaust. Overall, there are many political connotations that accompany the

construction of a memorial, and the narrative it conveys is an intricate matter that does not have a

simple answer.

In addition to these seminal texts, this thesis is influenced by studies on postwar German

memory. One influential text is Jeffrey Herf’s Divided Memory, which gives a comparative study

of East and West German public memory of the Second World War. In this text, Herf exposes

37 Moeller, War Stories, 16. 38 James E. Young, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (New Haven:

Yale University Press, 1993), At Memory’s Edge: After Images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), and Stages of Memory: Reflections on Memorial Art, Loss, and the Spaces Between (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2016).

19

the developments of postwar memories of World War II and Nazism through public memory,

manifesting in different forms in East and West Germany. Additionally, both East and West

Germans went through politically and ideologically influenced amnesia over aspects of World

War II and the Holocaust throughout the Cold War, stating “Contemporary enemies had replaced

the shared enemy of the past.”39

There have been other influential works that focus on how Germans addressed the past in

postwar Europe, including works by A. James McAdams and Konrad Jarausch.40 Instead of

looking at how German memory was divided throughout the Cold War, Jarausch and McAdams

look at how Germans tried to achieve unity after reunification in 1990. While these works are

essential for understanding how the Kohl administration addressed the integration of East

Germans, their emphasis is placed on politics and economics. For this reason, my research will

contribute to this discussion by looking at the attempt for unification through the creation of a

common German memory of World War II and the Holocaust that had divided the nation, and

how Kohl used memorials to achieve unity amongst other political maneuvers.

Chapter Outline

In this thesis, I will examine Kohl’s journey to shape German memory through the

purposeful use of World War II and Holocaust memorials and commemorations to achieve a

unified memory, and to reinforce German normality. Each chapter will examine a specific site of

memory to examine how Kohl used it to further his political agenda, and how each site

39 Jeffrey Herf, Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys (Cambridge: Harvard

University Press, 1997), 101. 40 For more information, see A. James McAdams, Judging the Past in Unified Germany (New

York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), Konrad H. Jarausch, The Rush to German Unity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), and K. H. Jarausch, After Hitler: Recivilizing Germans, 1945-1995, translated by Brandon Hunziker (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).

20

influenced, or was influenced by, subsequent memorials. “Chapter Two: The 1985

Commemoration in Bitburg and Bergen-Belsen” will center its focus on the Bitburg and Bergen-

Belsen commemorations in 1985, and how the visit represented the intent of strengthening

relations with the West. During this time, U.S. President Ronald Reagan held a hardline stance to

the Soviet Union, and on the fortieth anniversary of the end of World War II, Kohl wanted to

reset the nature of the German-United States relationship, and Germany’s relationship to the war

with U.S. approval. As Kohl’s first attempt for creating a new German memory, I will trace the

events of May 5, 1985 and why linking Bergen-Belsen and the cemetery in Bitburg created a

furor. I will argue that it was this event when Kohl realized that a German past needed to be

constructed, and sparked Kohl’s desire to create an official German memorial.

The next chapter, titled “Chapter Three: Moving on From Bitburg: Creating A Memorial

Inside the Neue Wache,” will examine Kohl’s transformation of the Neue Wache as a site for

official German memory. The Neue Wache was the first attempt in creating a memorial

motivated by the politics of reunification, and was built with the intent to appeal to both

Germanys. I will look at the relative success of the Neue Wache memorial, in terms of

representation of the German past, and analyze the major controversy for themes, arguments, and

political goals of critics surrounding its dedication in 1993. Here, this chapter will provide an

analysis of memory by looking at the site based on history of the location, the utilization of

Käthe Kollwitz’s Pietà, and Kohl’s politics. In addition, it will look at the symbolism in the

Pietà itself, Käthe Kollwitz and how her art appealed to both East and West Germans, and

analyze how the sculpture was representative for some sectors of society, but intrinsically

excluded others.

21

The final Chapter, titled “Chapter Four: ‘A waving field of pillars’: the ‘Memorial for the

Murdered Jews of Europe,’” will look at creation process for the Holocaust Memorial, and the

controversy that surrounded this site as well. Similar to the Neue Wache, the Holocaust

Memorial would provide a common space for all Germans to visit in order to approach the past.

Being an extension of reunification politics, the Holocaust Memorial was the final attempt for

Kohl to create a memorial that would normalize Germany’s past. This memorial takes on a

different stylistic and organizational approach, with the design being abstract and controlled by a

citizen’s group. While Kohl remained an influential participant, the decision and design process

was arguably a drastic change due to the grievances that resulted from Kohl’s control over the

Neue Wache. This chapter will examine how the Holocaust Memorial tried to address both

German national and international audiences, represented a maturation of Kohl’s memorial

vision, and possibly functioned as a means of conciliations for the Neue Wache controversy.

Overall, Kohl used the Holocaust Memorial as an attempt to find a solution to Germany’s

memorial “problem,” and this chapter will evaluate the premise of finding a solution, and its

effectiveness as a memorial for the Holocaust.

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CHAPTER TWO: THE 1985 COMMEMORATIONS IN BITBURG AND BERGEN-

BELSEN

On May 5, 1985, President Ronald Reagan unwittingly participated in a political

spectacle, evolving into a diplomatic disaster for both Reagan and West Germany. On the

fortieth anniversary of the end of World War II, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl urged Reagan

to visit the Kolmeshöhe military cemetery in Bitburg after visiting the concentration camp

Bergen-Belsen on the same day. The Bergen-Belsen visit was doomed to be a disaster even

before Reagan arrived. The visit to the concentration camp was a form of appeasement to those

outraged with Kohl and his decision to use Bitburg for a political ceremony despite the discovery

of forty-nine Waffen-SS soldiers. A group of Jewish protestors, barred from the camp grounds

during the ceremony, entered Bergen-Belsen to reclaim the memory of the site after the

ceremony was over.1 And despite the protests by American and German Jews, Kohl persuaded

Reagan to accompany him to honor the buried soldiers as a symbolic gesture that reinforced

Cold War relations between the two nations. However, this act was taken as more than a

conciliatory gesture. When the events at Bitburg were placed alongside those at Bergen-Belsen,

spectators read it as two groups of victims were being honored: concentration camp prisoners

and German SS soldiers.2 Therefore, the visit to both locations placed moral equivalence

1 “Cemetery Protests Reportedly Barred,” The New York Times, May 5, 1985, accessed April 24,

2016, http://www.nytimes.com/1985/05/05/world/cemetery-protests-reportedly-barred.html. 2 Rudy Koshar, From Monuments to Traces: Artifacts of German Memory, 1870-1990 (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 2000), 256.

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between the prisoners and SS in German and American memory—both groups were

commemorated equally.3

The effort by Kohl to turn the concentration camp into political platform did not succeed,

because the Holocaust memorial and the German military cemetery held contentious

memories—the Jewish population would not tolerate linking dead Waffen-SS soldiers and Jews.

Ultimately, Reagan and Kohl’s effort to use a Holocaust memorial as a setting to mark a forty-

year alliance during the Cold War failed. Additionally, in the previous decades both Germanys

struggled to confront their past, and especially in West Germany where most discussions related

to the Holocaust and National Socialism tried to identify Germany’s role as perpetrators, as

victims of Nazism. Kohl recognized the necessity in engaging with, and learning from the past,

saying in his address at Bergen-Belsen that Germans have a “historical responsibility… We bow

in sorrow before the victims of murder and genocide.”4 The ceremony evoked public fury and

displayed that Germans (and Americans) would not allow a blatant forgetting or

misremembering of the Holocaust at these powerful sites of memory. Kohl’s rhetoric of remorse

failed to convince his critics. His mission was in fact to move on beyond a fixation on German

remorse to a normal identity and integrated partnership with the U.S. and NATO.

Bitburg and Bergen-Belsen as platforms for a reconciliation ceremony exposed the

complexity of the sites of memory, and made Kohl realize that Germany lacked the proper

3 Sasha Kanick (MA, WSU 2012) did an extensive study on the 1985 commemorations at

Bitburg, and compared the events to U.S. President Barack Obama and Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Buchenwald concentration camp visit in June 2009. It is Kanick’s work that inspired me to pursue the events that happened in 1985. For more information, see Kanick’s MA Thesis: Sasha Rosemary Kanick, “The Politicization of Holocaust Memory: A Comparative Study of the Use of Holocaust and World War Two Memorials by American and German Heads of State in 1985 and 2009,” (master’s thesis, Washington State University, 2012).

4 “Address by Chancellor Helmut Kohl to President Reagan during the Visit to the Former Concentration Camp at Bergen-Belsen, May 5, 1985,” in Bitburg in Moral and Political Perspective, Geoffrey H. Hartman, ed (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 252-253.

24

location that possessed a usable past for Germany. Therefore, Bitburg marked Kohl’s attempt to

normalize the Nazi past, but he encountered resistance when he honored the German Wehrmacht

distinct from the Nazi regime, while simultaneously honoring the SS men. Especially in the eyes

of Kohl, he believed that Germany should have a memorial site where Germans and foreign

dignitaries (such as Reagan) could pay respects to the war dead. Having an official memory that

represents a shared experience between both West and East Germans would be an important step

towards the normalization of Germany, which would result in better relations with nations not

only in the European community, but also with the United States. However, Germany possessed

a past that was harder to normalize—a memorial honoring the war dead and heroes would mean

memorializing fallen soldiers and participants in Hitler’s campaign to conquer Europe and

murder its Jews. Bitburg reminded Kohl of this predicament, so afterwards, creating a proper

memorial became Kohl’s ultimate aim in normalizing Germany’s past. Overall, Bitburg marks

the first, faltering step in Kohl’s efforts to use sites of memory to confront Germany’s complex

and divided past to create a narrative for a normalized Germany.

The Politics of Memory

The origins of this trip can be traced to the fortieth D-Day ceremonies in Normandy, in

which the Western Allies did not invite Kohl to the ceremonies in June 1984. Disappointed with

his government’s failure to convince the Western Allies to invite him, Kohl planned a series of

commemorations with Reagan at Kolmeshöhe cemetery near Bitburg. Plans for the visit started

on November 30, 1984 when Reagan met with Kohl in Washington, D.C., and Kohl stressed the

importance of having a commemorative ceremony for the fortieth anniversary of the end of

World War II. And basking in the success of Kohl’s and French President Francois Mitterrand’s

25

visit to the World War I battlefield at Verdun in September 1984, Kohl believed that a similar

visit with Reagan in West Germany would display West Germany’s strong alliance with the

U.S.5 For Kohl, this would establish German normality while also being a means for

reconciliation in relations with the United States and the West. In other words, this visit would

solidify the Federal Republic of Germany’s (FRG’s) full acceptance as a key partner of NATO,

and simultaneously reinforce bilateral relations with the United States, especially important

considering Reagan wanted to install missiles in West Germany.6 Additionally, the reconciliation

ceremonies at Bitburg and at Bergen-Belsen coincided with the Bonn economic summit in May

1985, which was an event that aimed to solidify Western economic unity.

Kohl’s 1980s politics reflected the more direct approach to confronting the Nazi past that

prevailed since the 1970s, and carried over some of Wilhelm Brandt’s Ostpolitik.7 Much of the

motivations behind Bitburg comes from Kohl’s politics, with his attention to creating a German

identity, aims for reunification, and strengthening relationships with the West.8 Kohl shaped

West German memory to emphasize the suffering of German civilians and soldiers, along with

the suffering of Nazi victims.9 Bitburg would allow Kohl to create a new West German identity,

while publicly displaying support for Reagan and the Western alliance.

5 Richard J. Jensen, Reagan at Bergen-Belsen and Bitburg (College Station: Texas A&M

University Press, 2007), 17. 6 Christian Wicke, Helmut Kohl’s Quest for Normality: His Representation of the German Nation

and Himself (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2015), 190. The missiles were part of the Strategic Defense Initiative, proposed by Reagan, which would strengthen the U.S. nuclear power in Europe against the Soviet Union.

7 Wilhelm Brandt outlined a policy towards Poland in 1969, which would soon transform into Ostpolitik, which was a détente in Europe and laid the foundations for a peace and cooperation between East and West Germany. For information on how Ostpolitik influenced German memory, see “Chapter One: Introduction.”

8 Christian Wicke, Helmut Kohl’s Quest for Normality (New York: Berghahn Books, 2015), 77. 9 Siobhan Kattago, Ambiguous Memory: The Nazi Past and German National Identity (Westport:

Praeger, 2001), 46.

26

In 1985, some Germans on the political right believed their nation could move on from

the legacy of Nazism and World War II, and move towards the future.10 As leader of the

dominant Christian Democrats (CDU), Kohl was a driving force behind this attempt at historical

revisionism. Since the start of his position in office in 1982, Kohl advocated (in terms of

memory) forgetfulness and amnesty to reach future peace and German normalcy. Establishing

strong relations with the United States was necessary in reaching German normalcy, and

prompted Kohl to invite Reagan in a reconciliation ceremony.

Most recent literature on German memory studies examines how the collective and public

memory of both world wars were constructed. While these studies are paramount for creating an

understanding of how the war was remembered in Germany, it is necessary to see how Bitburg

and Bergen-Belsen (as sites of memory) did not contribute toward a cohesive national collective

memory, but instead illustrated the complexities and political divisions of engaging with

Germany’s wartime past. These two commemorations triggered a shift in German memory

during the 1980s, and altered (or revealed) how the German public remembered its past. Along

with Historikerstreit and preservations of Holocaust sites, such as Bergen-Belsen, the

controversy at Bitburg evoked discussions on memory and victimhood, proving how improper

remembrance could create global backlash. When Kohl and Reagan commemorated the SS

soldiers at Bitburg, this was a direct approach to the Nazi past. Kohl intentionally persisted in

honoring the SS under the premise that all Germans were victims of the Nazis, and readjusted the

responsibility and guilt for Nazism and the Holocaust to the detriment of a “usable” past.

10 For a detailed overview on the development of West German memory in the post-World War II

years see the Introduction. It is important to note that prior to Kohl’s Chancellery, the Federal Republic addressed the past by reinventing it, or through selective remembrance that focused on German suffering. Starting in the 1960s, memory slowly shifted to Holocaust remembrance, which changed German identity from victims of Nazism to perpetrators.

27

Bitburg acted a political platform for Reagan, with the aim to advance the U.S. nuclear

weapon arsenals in Europe, known as his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), nicknamed “Star

Wars” by its critics. Reagan is known for his conservatism, and his vocalized anticommunist

views, and emphasized the dichotomy between the West and the East. On multiple occasions,

Reagan stressed the United States’ goal to overcome tyrannical systems, such as the Soviet

Union and communism. Reagan promoted this through a “Peace through Strength” foreign

policy, which used SDI to promote democracy to quell the Soviet influence in Europe.11 This

meant a committed alliance with the FRG to protect West Germany from communist influence.

In Reagan’s remarks to the West Germans in 1982, he stated, “In our times, Berlin, more than

any other place in the world, is such a meeting place of shadow, tyranny and freedom. To be here

is truly to stand on freedom’s edge and in the shadow of a wall that has come to symbolize all

that is darkest in the world today.”12 This statement illustrates Reagan’s devotion to alliance with

the FRG, and this strong commitment swayed Reagan to join Kohl in Bitburg, despite the

political backlash that ensued in 1985.

The political motivation behind Bitburg is evident through correspondence between

Reagan and Kohl in the months leading up to the visit. The political aims of the reconciliatory

ceremonies were to strengthen the relationship between West Germany and the United States,

which would in turn establish normalcy for West Germany. Part of the political aims were

pointed towards a strong and unified stance between the U.S. and West Germany towards the

Soviet Union. In a letter dated March 29, 1985 from Kohl to Reagan, Kohl expressed full support

11 Douglas Brinkley, The Boys of Pointe Du Hoc: Ronald Reagan, D-Day, and the U.S. Army 2nd

Ranger Battalion (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2005), 3. 12 Ronald Reagan, “Remarks to the People of Berlin, June 11, 1982,” in The American Presidency

Project, University of California Santa Barbara, accessed March 18, 2017, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=42623.

28

for American bargaining objectives, in particular the “enhancement of strategic stability between

the United States and the Soviet Union and the attainment of large reductions in intercontinental

strategic and intermediate-range nuclear missiles.”13 Kohl also emphasized that “Alliance

solidarity will be crucial for successful negotiations,” and he supported “swift progress” for U.S.

intermediate-range weapons.14 It is obvious in Kohl’s reiteration for support that he highly

valued the relationship between the United States and West Germany—again, reinforcing a

relationship with the West was critical for the normalization of Germany.

Reagan recognized this, and expressed appreciation for Kohl’s support. Reagan stated in

a letter addressed to Kohl on April 1, 1985: “On a more serious note, allow me to express my

personal gratitude for all you have done to preserve and enhance the spirit of friendship and

cooperation between our two countries. At a time when the great challenges before us hold the

potential for great achievements, I sincerely believe that the Alliance, the United States and the

Federal Republic are fortunate to have a man of your vision and leadership helping us to meet

them.”15 While Reagan appeared to be sincere and valued the relationship with Kohl, there were

obvious political motivations. In a memorandum sent by Reagan’s Executive Secretary Nicholas

Blatt to the White House on March 21, 1985, it stated that a personal message would be “an

appropriate gesture of appreciation for the Chancellor’s steadfast support of the Alliance and for

the top priority he has assigned to maintaining the closest possible cooperation between us and

the FRG,” and that “A word of thanks for his attention to these details would be taken by the

Chancellor as a sign of personal attachment and help cement further the close ties which he

13 Sommer, Peter: Files, Federal Republic of Germany I 1985, Ronald Reagan Library, letter,

March 29, 1985. 14 Ibid. 15 Sommer, Peter: Files, Federal Republic of Germany I 1985, Ronald Reagan Library, letter,

April 1, 1985.

29

works assiduously to maintain.”16 In other words, both the United States and Kohl saw the

significance of participating in a ceremony that commemorated not only the conclusion of World

War II, but also the improving relations between the U.S. and West Germany. Politics were even

applied to more personal and light-hearted messages—a second memorandum to Reagan about

writing a birthday note wanted to remind him that the “birthday message also includes a word of

thanks for Kohl’s personal involvement in arranging the schedule for your state visit to the FRG

following the Bonn Summit.”17 In short, it is obvious that both Kohl and Reagan had high

political motivations behind the May 5, 1985 visit. For Reagan, it was maintaining a relationship

in Europe that would maintain a hardline stance against the Soviet Union; and for Kohl, it was

strengthening the German-US relationship for full acceptance in the post-war international

community post-World War II.

Closer to Reagan’s visit, Kohl and Reagan were more expressive of how Reagan’s visit

was important for the demonstration of reconciliation between the United States and West

Germany. Reagan stated prior to his visit in a letter for Kohl: “I fully support issuance of a

declaration commemorating the end of World War II, emphasizing the process of reconstruction

and reconciliation and the fruits of peace, freedom and prosperity enjoyed by our peoples for the

past forty years.”18 From this statement, it is evident that both Kohl and Reagan had full

intentions of using commemorations and memory in Bitburg as political means to buttress

16 Sommer, Peter: Files, Federal Republic of Germany I 1985, Ronald Reagan Library, letter,

March 21, 1985. 17Sommer, Peter: Files, Federal Republic of Germany I 1985, Ronald Reagan Library, letter,

March 29, 1985. 18 Sommer, Peter: Files, Federal Republic of Germany I 1985, Ronald Reagan Library, letter,

March 29, 1985. The letter is undated, but in his closing Reagan stated, “I look forward to seeing you in a few days,” indicating that this letter was sent close to May 5, 1985.

30

relations with West Germany and the United States, and to construct a future with stable

relations.

The Ceremonies

In search for a proper site for the ceremonies, Kohl left the decision to the Reagan

administration. Not only does this exhibit the power relationship between Kohl and Reagan, but

can be argued that this contributed to the overlooking of SS dead at Bitburg, and was a display of

Kohl’s inattention to detail and tactical political mistake that would have repercussions. The

decision was left to White House Deputy Chief Michael Deaver, who traveled to West Germany

to select the site. In February 1985, he chose the military cemetery Kolmeshöhe in Bitburg, due

to its close proximity to an American military base. The original plan included only this location

with a wreath-laying ceremony to honor the war dead, and symbolic handshakes between a

German and American war veteran.19 In April of 1985, the White House announced that Reagan

would visit the war cemetery in Bitburg. There was a setback, when American Jews and veterans

learned that forty-nine SS soldiers were buried in this cemetery alongside the dead Wehrmacht.

The cemetery was already under scrutiny when White House spokesperson Larry Speakes

announced plans for the trip on April 11 in Santa Barbara, California. During the press

conference, Speakes was asked the identity of the soldiers buried in Bitburg, for there were

newspaper reports that the cemetery contained only graves of German soldiers. It was not known

at this point that the SS soldiers were buried at this location. The news broke when reporters

investigated the site the weekend of April 13-14. Amongst the SS solders was Sergeant Otto

Franz Begel, who had earned the German Cross for killing ten Americans in one day.20

19 Jensen, Reagan at Bergen-Belsen and Bitburg, 53. 20 Jensen, 54-55.

31

Many protested and demanded that Reagan change his plans to visit the cemetery. This

included conservative groups within the United States, such as the American Legion who

believed that the president was being insensitive to history by spending “part of his German trip

honoring Nazis.”21 One of the most predominant adversaries was Holocaust survivor and Nobel

Prize winner Elie Wiesel, who made a public statement at the Ceremony for Jewish Heritage at

the White House on April 19, 1985. Responding to the plans to visit Bitburg, Wiesel stated: “I

belong to a traumatized generation. And to us, as to you, symbols are important… I am

convinced, as you have told us earlier when we spoke that you were not aware of the presence of

SS graves in the Bitburg cemetery… But now we all are aware. May I, Mr. President, if it’s

possible at all, implore you to do something else, to find a way—to find another way, another

site. That place, Mr. President, is not your place. Your place is with the victims of the SS.”22

Through this statement, it is obvious that the Jewish population (with Wiesel as its

spokesperson, in this case) rejected their implicit equivalency with the SS. Reagan ignored

Wiesel’s pleas, and continued to Germany—politics triumphed over everything in this case. The

level of controversy with the subsequent discovery that the SS soldiers in question had

participated in a massacre in June 1944 in the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane, a site

preserved in ruins as a national memorial.23 The objection was straightforward—the presence of

21 “About Cemeteries,” Wall Street Journal, April 19, 1985, in Bitburg in Moral and Political

Perspective, Geoffrey H. Hartman, ed (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 173. 22 “Remarks of Eli Wiesel at Ceremony for Jewish Heritage Week and Presentation of

Congressional Gold Medal, White House, April 19,” in Bitburg in Moral and Political Perspective, 243. 23 James M. Markham, “SS Unit’s History Overlooked in U.S. Plan on German Visit,” in The

New York Times, April 28, 1985, accessed April 28, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/1985/04/28/world/ss-unit-s-history-overlooked-in-us-plan-on-german-visit.html?pagewanted=all. On June 10, 1944, Oradour-sur-Glane in Nazi occupied France was completely destroyed when 642 of its inhabitants were massacred by the SS soldiers. The town is preserved in its post-massacre state, by the demand of Charles de Gaulle, to preserve the damage Nazi Germany did to France. For more information on the preservation of this site, see: Sarah Farmer, Martyred Village: Commemorating the 1944 Massacre at Oradour-Sur-Glane (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).

32

the SS soldiers made the cemetery unacceptable for a symbolic ceremony of reconciliation due to

the collective remembrance of the war that existed in Germany at this time. Germans, Jews, and

the world community viewed the SS soldiers as the perpetrators of the Holocaust, and therefore

the ceremony was a direct confrontation with the past. The controversy forced Kohl to realize the

difficulties of reorienting Germany’s collective war memory.

Despite the controversy around Bitburg, Reagan continued with his plans for a visit.

Reagan stated at a press conference that “those young men [SS soldiers] are victims of Nazism

also… They were victims, just as surely as the victims of the concentration camps.”24 Again,

here victims and perpetrators are being equalized, consistent with Kohl’s narrative of Germany

being a nation of victims who had been oppressed by a tyrannical Nazi regime. To compensate

for the dispute around Bitburg, Reagan revised his itinerary to include a commemorative

ceremony at one of the most notorious concentration camps, Bergen- Belsen.

On the original itinerary, Reagan’s administration team included a visit Dachau during

Reagan’s visit. However, German political advisers in Kohl’s office deemed the visit unwise, for

it would conjure up memories and emotions with the Holocaust that Kohl tried to avoid,

especially with worldwide film coverage and photographs of the visit. Reagan also expressed

concerns for visiting a concentration camp, fearing that it would invoke memories of the

Holocaust that would be unpleasant, and impose feelings of guilt instead of focusing on the

FRG’s forty years of success.25 Since protests would not subdue, Bergen-Belsen was added to

the day’s itinerary to (unsuccessfully) balance out the controversy surrounding the Bitburg plans.

24 Gerald M. Boyd, “Reagan Likens Nazi War Dead to Concentration Camp Victims,” in The

New York Times, April 19, 2985, accessed March 17, 2017, http://www.nytimes.com/1985/04/19/us/reagan-likens-nazi-war-dead-to-concentration-camp-victims.html.

25 Wicke, Helmut Kohl’s Quest for Normality, 191.

33

Kohl and Reagan agreed that including a concentration camp would be suitable. Reagan

explained in an interview with representatives of Foreign Radio and Television at the White

House on April 19: “I received a cable from Chancellor Kohl, that… such a visit to—and it will

be Bergen-Belsen—was included in the trip, and I immediately accepted. I thought it was

appropriate in that way.”26 The decision to use Bergen-Belsen as the compensatory site of

specifically Holocaust memory raises questions, since it is a site that is engrained in British

history, for it was the 11th Armored British Division that liberated the camp on April 15.

Therefore, Americans had not associated themselves with Bergen-Belsen by the 1980s, and only

worsened Reagan and Kohl’s attempt to cultivate Holocaust remembrance.27

26 “Interview of President Reagan by Representative of Foreign Radio and Television, White

House, April 29, 2985,” in Bitburg in Moral and Political Perspective, 251. 27 Ilya Levkov, Bitburg and Beyond: Encounters in American, German and Jewish History (New

York: Shapolsky Publishers, 1987), 23-24.

34

Figure 2.1: Map of major camps in Greater Germany, with Bergen-Belsen indicated in Northern Germany. Photo from United States Holocaust Museum.

The two ceremonies were held on the same day, and Reagan and Kohl started at Bergen-

Belsen and laid wreaths. Each gave very brief statements; Kohl, speaking first, emphasized the

role the United States played in liberating the German nation from Nazism, and the necessity to

preserve the relationship between Germany and the U.S. Kohl said, “You, Mr. President,

represent a country which played a decisive part in liberating Europe and ultimately the

Germans, too, from Hitler’s tyranny,” and that “The supreme goal of our political efforts is to

render impossible any repetition of that systematic destruction of human life and dignity… the

Americans and Germans therefore stand together as allies in the community of shared values and

in the defense alliance in order to safeguard man’s absolute and inviolable dignity in conditions

35

of freedom and peace.”28 In this statement, Kohl acknowledged Nazism as the perpetrator behind

the suffering of the victims in Bergen-Belsen, but did not define the victims. Reagan, in turn,

credited Kohl with the moral courage to confront the Nazi past by stating: “Chancellor Kohl, you

and your countrymen have made real the renewal that had to happen. Your nation and the

German people have been strong and resolute in your willingness to confront and condemn the

acts of a hated regime of the past.”29 In both speeches, Kohl and Reagan address the necessity

and the progression towards approaching the actions Germany was responsible for during World

War II.

Kohl and Reagan made similar speeches at Bitburg, with Kohl emphasizing

reconciliation, and Reagan said that they were there to honor the thousands of German soldiers,30

and to “mourn the human wreckage of totalitarianism.”31 Bitburg heightened the level of

controversy around the commemorations, despite it being brief. The events that unfolded at

Bitburg and Bergen-Belsen placed oppressors and victims on the same level, making it difficult

to assign collective responsibility or human agency. It also implicitly suggested that Nazi crimes

were not unique, given other massacres and violence that ensued throughout the twentieth

century. It also came to symbolize the dilemma of forgetting and remembering in Germany.

28 “Address by Chancellor Kohl to President Reagan during the Visit to the Former Concentration

Camp at Bergen-Belsen, May 5, 1985,” in Bitburg in Moral and Political Perspective, 252-253. 29 “Remarks of President Reagan at Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp, May 5 1985,” in Bitburg

in Moral and Political Perspective, 254. 30 Reagan also claimed Wehrmacht innocence, saying that they too were victims of a tyrannical

force. At this point, it was not well known that the Wehrmacht participated in heinous acts alongside the SS.

31 “Remarks of President Reagan,” in Bitburg, 259.

36

Being a nation housed both the victims of Nazi suppression and the perpetrators, discussing the

past brought an overwhelming sense of guilt. 32

For Kohl, the point of Bitburg was reconciliation; Kohl wanted to find a common ground

between victims and perpetrators, to achieve commonality and downplay and relativize the

Holocaust and German responsibility. This goal fell within Kohl’s memory politics during the

1980s, with the aim to de-center Holocaust memory and emphasized German suffering along

with Nazi victims.33 Bitburg was Kohl’s attempt to normalize the German past, and publicly

acknowledge that the FRG accepted its dark past, and was fully dedicated to the Western alliance

during the Cold War. Kohl used Bitburg and the memory of the past to mark a shift in West

German memory that would invoke a positive national identity elevated from the Nazi past, and

looked forward to a unified and less problematic national identity. For Kohl, Bitburg was the

symbolic act that would mark the end of German guilt, symbolize the normalcy of the FRG and

its participation in the West, and start a German identity that was unburdened by the Nazi past.34

Kohl reiterated the theme of reconciliation, stating in his address at the cemetery that

“Bitburg can be regarded as a symbol of reconciliation and of German American friendship.”35

Kohl also stated that the visit to the graves is a “reaffirmation… and a widely felt gesture of

reconciliation between… the people of the United States of America and us Germans,

32 Discussed in this chapter is predominately the Jewish reaction, and how many Jewish

individuals and organizations were offended by the ceremonies. What is not discussed here is that there was the first SS Panzer Corps reunion in Nesselwang, Germany one week after the ceremonies. As of now, it is known that they met, but more research is necessary to look at this as a radical confrontation with the Nazi past, in which Kohl and Bitburg opened the “window of opportunity.”

33 This conservative outlook on German identity and memory was the precursor to Historikerstreit, the conservative debate the equalized German responsibility for the Holocaust to other regimes, such as Stalin and the Soviet Union. For more information, see “Chapter One: Introduction.”

34 Kattoga, Ambiguous Memory, 49. 35 “Address by Chancellor Helmut Kohl to German and American Soldiers and Their Families at

Bitburg, May 5, 1985,” in Bitburg in Moral and political perspective, 257.

37

reconciliation which does not dismiss the past but enables us to overcome it by acting

together.”36 In response to the criticisms, Kohl expressed in a meeting with TIME magazine that

his objective was “reconciliation over the graves of the past,” and that he wanted to

“commemorate the day as one of remembrance, and far from denying the horrible acts

perpetrated by Nazism.”37 Interestingly (and not surprising), when asked about the symbolism

behind visiting Bitburg and the timing of “reconciliation,” Kohl addressed the U.S. missile

deployment in Western Europe instead of the issue of addressing the Nazi past. Additionally, he

claimed that the controversy at Bitburg was representative of the shifting generations in

Germany. Kohl blatantly stated that he considered establishing closer ties between the FRG and

the West “irreversible and part of our basic political philosophy,” also saying that it is a

“declaration of love for the Americans.” A major objective at Bitburg was to show U.S.

forgiveness for Germany’s past, and to prove that Germany was escaping the “dark ages of the

Nazi era.”38 This expresses the desire for German normality, and overcoming the “dark ages”

that plagued Germany up to that point.

Reagan expressed “great sadness that history could be filled with such waste, destruction,

and evil.” He was direct about the guilt of the SS soldiers, stating that “The crimes of the SS

must rank among the most heinous in human history.”39 This was accompanied with a

redemptive narrative for the sake of friendship with West Germany, and the president concluded

by stating, “The War against one man’s totalitarian dictatorship was not like other wars. The evil

36 Ibid, 256. 37 “Helmut Kohl: My Objective Was Reconciliation,” in Time Magazine, May 6, 1985, accessed

April 24, 2016, http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,967530,00.html. 38 Ibid. 39 “Remarks of President Reagan at Bitburg, May 5, 1985,” in Bitburg: In Moral and Political

Perspective, 259.

38

of Nazism turned all values upside down. Nevertheless, we can mourn the German war dead

today as human beings crushed by a vicious ideology.”40

The Aftermath

As stated before, the series of commemorations at both sites was a public relations

disaster, and proved that heavy resentment for National Socialism existed in German memory.

This is evident from the series of protests that were scheduled both prior to and after the

commemorations at both Bergen-Belsen and Bitburg. On the day of the visit, hundreds of Jewish

protestors from the United States, Europe, and Israel lined the roads to and from the military

cemetery to express their outrage at Reagan and Kohl for honoring the Waffen-SS soldiers. The

authorities in Bitburg were lenient, and allowed the protestors to stay, unlike the scene at

Bergen-Belsen where hundreds of Jewish protestors were removed by the police. In Bitburg,

there was a report of a man shouting at Reagan, saying: “Why did you do it? The SS killed my

father.”41 Similar to Bergen-Belsen, several demonstrators donned yarmulkas and recited

Kaddish. There was supposed to be a Kaddish—a prayer service for the dead—for the Holocaust

victims at Bergen-Belsen, but dissipated when the Jewish leaders who were supposed to lead this

group were amongst a group of protestors in Hannover. After Reagan and Kohl left the site, there

was a Kaddish recited at the concentration camp. The subsequent visit to Bitburg made the issue

of Nazi memory worse, by commemorating SS soldiers responsible for the Jewish victims that

Kohl and Reagan had just memorialized. Henry Siegman, the executive director of the American

40 Ibid, 259. 41 “Hundreds of Jewish Protestors Express Outrage, Anguish at Reagan and Kohl for Visiting

Bitburg,” in The Jewish Telegraph Agency, May 5, 1985, accessed April 26, 2016. http://www.jta.org/1985/05/06/archive/hundreds-of-jewish-protestors-express-outrage-anguish-at-reagan-and-kohl-for-visiting-bitburg

39

Jewish Congress, stated in a Jewish Telegraph Agency (JTA) article: “I and countless other Jews

like me cannot accept to see the President of the United States pay tribute to a cemetery where 49

former SS are buried.”42

West German and American government authorities prohibited protests at Bitburg and

Bergen-Belsen, which deepened the offense felt by Jews. Kalman Sultankik, the then vice

president of the World Jewish Congress, said that when Kohl and Reagan visit, the sites will be

“Judenrein” (“free of Jews”). In the same article, Sultankik stated that 28,000 Jews had said that

they would boycott the ceremonies, and others wanted to demonstrate against it. The protestor’s

main message was that “Reconciliation cannot take place over the graves of murders.”43

Not only did the events at Bitburg have immediate political consequences for both

Reagan and Kohl, but the Bitburg incident also helped initiate an intellectual debate over the

Nazi past. In the Historikerstreit (historians’ dispute) of the mid-1980s, revisionist historians and

German nationalists endeavored to “normalize” German history in rendering it qualitatively no

different from histories of other modern nations. In doing so, the debates among intellectuals

called for a reevaluation of Germany’s Nazi past. The Historikerstreit goes beyond history,

representing the larger confrontation in the political divide between left and right wings in West

German politics.44

At a dinner to welcome Reagan and his wife Nancy to the FRG, West German President

Richard von Weizsäcker gave a statement in the evening of May 5, 1985 about the relationship

between the United States, West Germany, and the past. During his welcoming speech,

42 “Reagan’s Visit to Bergen-Belsen,” in The Jewish Telegraph Agency, May 6, 1985, accessed

April 25, 2016, http://www.jta.org/1985/05/06/archive/reagans-visit-to-bergen-belsen. 43 “Cemetery Protests Reportedly Barred,” in The New York Times, May 5, 1985, accessed April

26, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/1985/05/05/world/cemetery-protests-reportedly-barred.html. 44 Baldwin, Reworking the Past: Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Historians’ Debate (Boston:

Beacon Press, 1990), 4.

40

Weizäcker recognized the challenges Germans face when addressing the past. He affirmed, “The

suffering caused to our Jewish fellow men in the name of Germany, epitomized by the

Holocaust, to the Russians, the Poles and nearly all our neighbors, but also the suffering of

countless Germans because of persecution, death and the loss of their homeland—none of this

will ever be erased from memory… All of us in Germany, whether old or young, face up to this

dark chapter in our history. We all bear responsibility for its consequences [emphasis from

original source].” 45 In other words, Weizsäcker believed that all Germans have a duty to

remember the Nazi past, and it is a past that all Germans must confront despite their relationship

to World War II. This is another direct confrontation with the past, and proved that there was a

collective sentiment in Germany that Germans needed to take responsibility for the burdens of

their history. What Weizsäcker said here contradicted what Kohl did in Bitburg—while Kohl

tried to use Bitburg to absolve the past, Weizsäcker rejected this notion, and believed that

acceptance, responsibility, and remembrance is the only solution to moving forward.

The Bitburg and Bergen-Belsen visits were Helmut Kohl’s first attempt to normalize the

German past, while being a highly political maneuver to strengthen relations with the United

States. After World War II the German people had to contend with the death and destruction that

their country caused and endured, and during the postwar years the division in German memory

only perplexed the Germans’ past. At Bitburg, Kohl placed oppressors and victims on the same

level, making it difficult to assign collective responsibility for the past. Additionally, he implied

that Nazi crimes were not a unique occurrence considering Kohl was willing to commemorate SS

soldiers responsible for the Holocaust.46 Not only did this create debate among the Jewish

45 “President Weizsäcker’s Speech Bruehl, Germany, May 5, 1985,” in Bitburg and Beyond, 175.

See full speech in Appendix. 46 Koshar, From Monuments to Traces, 257.

41

protestors that accompanied Kohl and Reagan at Bitburg and Bergen-Belsen, but also altered the

way Germans thought about Nazism, the Holocaust, and World War II guilt.

Lessons of Bitburg

The Bitburg affair had many political consequences for both Reagan and Kohl. Bitburg is

considered Reagan’s first political failure in his second term in office, especially when compared

to a highly successful speech for the D-Day commemoration at Point-du-Hoc. On June 6, 1984

in France, Reagan displayed his profound orating ability in front of a crowd of U.S. D-Day

veterans, along with representatives from former wartime Allies, Great Britain and France. He

effectively used a central site of American World War II memory to “re-ignite American

patriotism” after the Vietnam War in the 1970s, and to relate the United States to the present by

evoking collective memory that narrates the United States’ role as a liberating force in Europe.47

Reagan used language to exploit World War II to promote United States strength, linking

liberation on D-Day to liberation from the Soviet Union in 1984.48

As for Kohl, instead of de-centering the Holocaust in German identity, the Bitburg affair

exposed the complex relationship between politics and memory, and brought Holocaust

memorialization to the forefront. Bitburg arguably fueled the Historikerstreit in 1986, which

questioned whether Nazi crimes were unique to Germany, or if it was comparable to other

genocides, such as Stalin’s purges of kulaks in 1929-1933.49 Moreover, the 1985 visit proved that

47 Brinkley, Boys of Point Du Hoc, 9-12. 48 For Reagan’s entire speech, see: “Remarks at a Ceremony Commemorating the 40th

Anniversary of the Normandy Invasion, D-Day,” June 6, 1984, Reagan Library Archives, accessed March 18, 2017, https://www.reaganlibrary.archives.gov/archives/speeches/1984/60684a.htm, or see the video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEIqdcHbc8I, provided by the Reagan Foundation.

49 For more information on the Historikerstreit, see “Chapter One: Introduction,” or see: Peter Baldwin, Reworking the Past: Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Historians’ Debate (Boston: Beacon Press, 1990).

42

the international community was a powerful critic, and that including German SS soldiers with

the victims of Nazism raised questions of victimhood, and complicated memories not only within

Germany, but also abroad.

It is important to view Bitburg as not only a foreign relations disaster, but also as a

turning point in German attitudes towards its past. For Kohl, the failure of his foray into memory

politics spurred him to seek out a common memorial site that would avoid similar confrontations

that resulted from Reagan’s visit. The effort by Kohl to turn the concentration camp into political

platform failed, because the Holocaust memorial and the German military cemetery held

contentious memories—the Jewish population would not tolerate linking dead Waffen-SS

soldiers and Jews. By trying to move beyond the past, the ceremony evoked public fury and

displayed that Germans (and Americans) would not allow a blatant forgetting or

misremembering of the Holocaust at these powerful sites of memory. While the political

connotations around the Bitburg commemorations are obvious, it is essential to examine these

events to survey the level of controversy and public reactions to understand how Germany felt

about discussing their past through such commemorative actions and venues. This provides a

foundation on how Kohl used memory, and how Bitburg and the 1980s marked the transition in

German memory. Instead of achieving normalcy through the commemorations on May 5, 1985,

the political blunder at Bitburg cemetery, and the intellectual debates on how to remember the

German past, sparked a desire for a proper German memorial. That memorial would be the Neue

Wache memorial, placed in the center of Berlin.50

50 Koshar, 258.

43

CHAPTER THREE: MOVING ON FROM BITBURG: CREATING A MEMORIAL

INSIDE THE NEUE WACHE

On November 14, 1993 Helmut Kohl, accompanied by a large crowd, gathered at the

Neue Wache (“New Guardhouse”) in the new capital of Berlin. Kohl attempted to memorialize a

past that had long been divided by the Cold War, to create a new, coherent national memory for

the recently reunified German state. Kohl dedicated this building, which had stood for decades

and had been used by several German regimes, as the “Cultural Memorial to the Victims of War

and Tyranny,” giving a new life and purpose to this time-honored fixture of Berlin’s

commemorative landscape. Inside, an enlargement of Käthe Kollwitz’s Pietà acted as a

centerpiece, sitting underneath an oculus, exposed to the elements. Outside, a large crowd

gathered around the Neue Wache while Kohl and other German officials were inside

participating in the ceremony. The protestors shouted occasional chants, and behaved

eccentrically at times, forcing security officers to prevent protestors from entering the site,

resulting in a “heavy police presence around the ceremony.”1

Kohl’s commemorative project was not without its critics. Both at the site and in the

press, protestors objected to the building, the purpose of the memorial, and the sculpture inside.

While important, the case of the Neue Wache is not necessarily unique in German history. The

nation’s difficult twentieth century has made public remembrance problematic, as epitomized by

Kohl’s controversial reimagining of a monument used by both the Nazis and the Soviet-aligned

German Democratic Republic. Kohl had hoped to create a unifying site of war memory for

1 Tyler Marshall, “Past Torments as Berlin Honors War Dead: Germany: WWII Memorial, also

dedicated to victims of tyranny, is inaugurated. It has evoked “hysterical” debates,” in Los Angeles Times, November 15, 1993, accessed May 2, 2016.

44

Germany, but instead generated a heated and divisive debate about Germany’s totalitarian past

and its democratic future.

Striving for German normality, Kohl was influential in the creation of West German

memory. Throughout his career as Chancellor, Kohl’s concern was restoring the sense of

continuity of the German nation, and German identity. A key tactic in doing so was normalize

and relativize the Nazi era. He reshaped the memory of National Socialism to emphasize the

suffering of German civilians and soldiers, along with the suffering of Nazi victims. This also

matched with his conservative agenda, where Kohl stressed the continuity between German

history and the democratic stability of the FRG. During the 1980s, this revised, conservative

version of German war memory became representative of Kohl’s political agenda: by

confronting and overcoming the past, the FRG could establish a positive German national

identity.2 The political blunder at Bitburg represents the culmination of these political

confrontations. Kohl and Reagan’s attempt to honor the buried soldiers as a symbolic gesture

that reinforced Cold War relations between the two nations, illustrated the complexities of the

German past, and how divisive commemoration in Germany could be. The effort by Kohl to turn

Bitburg and Bergen-Belsen into political platforms failed, because the Holocaust memorial and

the German military cemetery held contentious memories—the Jewish population would not

tolerate linking dead Waffen-SS soldiers and Jews.

2 Siobhan Kattago, Ambiguous Memory: The Nazi Past and German National Identity (Westport:

Praeger), 46.

45

Figure 2.1: Neue Wache Memorial, Berlin. Photo by author.

46

Figure 3.2: Pietà by Käthe Kollwitz, Neue Wache, Berlin. Photo by author.

The Neue Wache memorial would achieve what Bitburg failed to do—act as a central

monument to all the victims of war and tyranny, and facilitate reconciliation of victims and

perpetrators for a recently reunified Germany. Unification in 1990 further stressed Kohl’s desire

to establish a sacred space, or site of memory, to enact and ritually perform the themes of a

unified German national memory. After decades of division, the Bitburg incident in 1985, and

the Historikerstreit, Kohl believed that a memorial that unified the victims of Nazism and

German victims of war would allow the nation to accept its past, and look forward to a unified

47

future.3 Along with the economic and social adjustments after reunification in 1990, the Kohl

administration attempted to create a traditional ritual space to establish a single German memory.

The division of Germany was a consequence and a reminder of National Socialism, thus the

desire to create a memorial that overcame that past, and created a narrative that included both

Germanys.4

Despite Kohl’s intentions with the Neue Wache, protestors criticized the memorial at its

dedication. The outrage of protests can be summed up in two major points. The first concern was

with the choice to use the Neue Wache as the site for the memorial. The Neue Wache represents

a Roman castrum, with Greek porticoes in the rear and back made from stone, while the façade

consists of brick.5 The Kingdom of Prussia constructed the Neue Wache as a guardhouse in

1818, and had been used for military purposes, and renovated to suit changing regimes and

political ideologies throughout the decades. Entrenched in German military history, and used

prominently by Nazis, many felt that the Neue Wache’s shadowed history made it entirely

inappropriate as a memorial site for the victims of the Second World War. Specifically, critics

charged that the Neue Wache did not properly represent the non-combatants of war, and instead

emphasized the Prussian militarism responsible for two world wars and the Holocaust. In fact,

the structure has served various purposes as a site of memory, and the layers of this accumulated

history obscured Kohl’s desire for the Neue Wache to present a single, unifying memory for

3 For a detailed summary of the Historikerstreit, see “Chapter One: Introduction.” It is important

to identify it as an essential turning point for German memory since revisionist historians and German nationalists tried to normalize German history by making it qualitatively no different from histories of other modern nations. By comparing Nazi actions to the Soviet Union, amongst others, the “Historians’ Debate” called for a reevaluation of Germany’s Nazi past.

4 Karen Till, “Staging the Past: Landscape Designs, Cultural Identity and Erinnerungspolitik at Berlin’s Neue Wache,” in Ecumene 6, 3 (1999): 262.

5 A Roman castrum is a building reserved for military use during the reign of the Roman Empire. Porticoes (singular: portico) are traditional Greek temple style, usually consisting of the iconic pillars placed in the façade.

48

newly reunited Germany. The Neue Wache was built in celebration of the Prussian army’s

victory over Napoleon, renovated during the Weimar Republic to honor those who died during

World War I, used by the Nazis for militarist and political rituals, and then appropriated by the

German Democratic Republic (GDR) for ceremonies and a memorial for the victims of fascism.

Therefore, the building represented the complex militaristic history that Germany struggled to

confront, which only burdened the site further, receiving objections from Germans, and Jews.6

Figure 3.3: Neue Wache Façade, Berlin. Photo by author.

The next factor was the sculpture itself, with a bronze enlargement of Käthe Kollwitz’s

statuette Pietà installed inside the center of the structure. In Kollwitz’s Pietà, the son illustrated

6 Brian Ladd, The Ghosts of Berlin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 217.

49

in the sculpture is huddled on the ground between the legs of his mother. His legs are drawn up

close to his body, which is entirely enclosed by his mother’s embrace. Exposed to the elements,

the sculpture sits in the center of the stone-lined chamber, directly under the oculus enduring the

various weather conditions in representation of the pain and suffering the Germans endured in

World War II. Many saw the imagery of a mother embracing her son as being entrenched in

Christian imagery—the Pietà is a subject in Christian art where the Virgin Mary cradles the dead

body of Jesus, an image from the New Testament. This implicitly excluded the Jewish

population. Furthermore, many believed that the sculpture did not properly represent the women

and children that died from bombings, mass executions, and during the refugee crisis created

following mass expulsions of Germans from Eastern Europe after World War II. Therefore, a

select group of Germans thought that the image was exclusive to soldiers and the mothers of the

soldiers. Because of this, and because the sculpture had its origins before the Second World War,

critics deemed the sculpture as inappropriate. In short, by using a militaristic location and an art

piece that reflected motherhood and Christian motifs, the memorial did not properly reflect the

multiplicity of war experiences in German society. This is why some groups felt excluded in the

memorial, and why protestors criticized the dedication. This was not only limited to on-site

demonstrations. There was also criticism in the press, with the most common criticism being that

it “fails to differentiate between victims and perpetrators.”7

The Neue Wache was more than a simple site of commemoration, but rather an important

tool for reshaping post-unification German memory and identity. Kohl intended to construct a

useable past for a recently unified Germany that intentionally sidestepped much of the nation’s

most controversial episodes. Kohl believed that a memorial that unified both victims of Nazi

7 Stephen Kinzer, “The War Memorial: To Embrace the Guilty, Too?” in New York Times,

November 15, 1993, accessed April 12, 2016.

50

ideological and military policies would allow the nation to accept its past, and look forward to a

unified future. The Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge (German War Graves

Commission) also gave input, and believed that a national commemorative site for the German

war-dead would act as a unifying symbol for Germany.8 Unification of Germany became the

political motivation behind this memorial, with Kohl hoping that using a site where its history

reflected Germany’s history itself would unify Germans and memory. Kohl believed that it could

be a central monument that served the purpose of unification along with reconciliation of victims

and perpetrators, and unify everyone through hatred of tyranny and war.9 This political

motivation is essential with memorials, particularly the Neue Wache memorial since Germany

was still recovering from decades of division, and Kohl strove for the cohesiveness that is

foundational in a nation. Moreover, the Neue Wache was a continuation of the events that

unfolded in Bitburg. Instead of complementing the Cold War politics like Bitburg, the Neue

Wache was built in the post-reunification political atmosphere. This heightened the Neue

Wache’s purpose as acting as a memorial that unified German memory, as well as Germany as a

nation. Therefore, the Neue Wache would be established as a “lesson” of the Bitburg incident,

where Kohl hoped to establish an official site of memory for a recently unified Germany.

However, the Neue Wache (like Bitburg) was a confrontation with Germany’s complex memory

and history, and therefore would ignite powerful criticism from those who feared that it would

ultimately lead to a normalizing and neutralizing of the Nazi past.

8 Henry W. Pickford, “Conflict and Commemoration: Two Berlin Memorials,” in

Modernism/modernity, vol. 12, 1 (2005): 149, accessed December 14, 2015, DOI: 10.1353/mod.2005.0048.

9 Young, “Germany’s Holocaust Memorial Problem—and Mine,” in At Memory’s Edge (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 186.

51

The Neue Wache: A Complex History

The Neue Wache has been renovated many times, its function being changed because of

the varying ideologies and leadership throughout the nineteenth and twentieth century. It is no

wonder it became a point of contention when it reached its latest renovation in 1993, for its

history represents an amalgamation of Prussian, German nationalist, Nazi, and communist

ideology, which are intimately tied to the First and Second World Wars. This did not deter

Kohl’s decision to use the structure for the memorial. With Kohl’s conservative ideologies, he

saw the Neue Wache as the ideal choice for the memorial site. By placing a memorial in a

building of Prussian origins, it would honor national traditions, and recognize a heritage

connected to a noble German past (that is, a past before the decades affected by the world

wars).10 In fact, it is the Neue Wache’s location, architecture, and the relationship between the

military, people, and government that has made the location appealing as a war memorial in the

national scope.11

Originally built in 1818 to house the Prussian king’s soldiers, it simultaneously acted as a

national monument, commemorating the victory over Napoleon. Commissioned to architect Karl

Friedrich Schinkel, the design envisioned the structure as part of the Unter den Linden, acting as

a monumental display of royal power and German pride.12 The site itself is down the street from

the Brandenburg Gate, and accompanies other important public historical sites, such as the

German Historical Museum, and Humboldt University. In 1816, King Friedrich Wilhelm III

10 Ladd, The Ghosts of Berlin, 218. 11 Wallis Miller, “Schinkel and the Politics of German Memory: The Life of the Neue Wache in

Berlin,” in A User’s Guide to German Cultural Studies, edited by Scott Denham, Irene Kacandes, and Jonathan Petropoulos (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997), 238.

12 Till, “Staging the Past,” 257. Unter den Linden is a boulevard in the center of Berlin, where one can find important institutions and structures such as the Neue Wache, Humboldt University, and the Brandenburg Gate.

52

commissioned Schinkel as part of a renovation of the entire center of Berlin. After the

Napoleonic Wars, the King wanted to transform Berlin as a display of military prowess, and as a

capital that belonged to a strong nation. The Neue Wache, when completed in 1818, would act as

a catalyst for the transformation of Berlin.13

The Neue Wache would house the company that guarded the king, acting as one of the

central locations where soldiers could report each day.14 Once the monarchy ended in 1918, the

Neue Wache no longer functioned as a guardhouse, and took on its present-day ceremonial

function. With the establishment of the Weimar Republic after World War I, the building

underwent new renovations. The year 1930 marked the official transition of the structure’s

function to being a site of memory, when the Weimar Republic decided to turn the guardhouse

into a national memorial, the “Memorial Site for the Fallen of the World War (Gedächtnisstätte

für die Gefallen des Weltkrieges). The Republic’s version of the Neue Wache can be considered

an attempt at internal consolidation by the Weimar government during a time of fragmentation

resulting from the economic and political interwar crisis.15 The memorial emphasized the role of

German soldiers as “Germania’s lost sons,” remembering the soldiers who defended the German

homeland. The interior was redesigned by Heinrich Tessenow in 1931, including a large gold-

and-silver plated oak wreath placed upon a black granite cube, alone in the center of the structure

illuminated by an oculus.16 The oculus was the only source of natural light, for Tessnow sealed

off the original side windows, and the entrance was replaced by iron-rod gates.17

13 Miller, “Schinkel and the Politics of German Memory,” 228-232. 14 Ladd, The Ghosts of Berlin, 218. 15 Sean A. Forner, “War Commemoration and the Republic in Crisis: Weimar Germany and the

Neue Wache,” in Central European History 35, 4 (2002): 516. 16 Jay Winter explains in his text Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning that the oak was a symbol of

nationalist ideals, and was considered the German tree. This symbol had become common at memorials in German World War I cemeteries, becoming associated with death.

17 Miller, 240.

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Figure 3.4: Inside the Neue Wache, June 1931. Photo courtesy of the Deutsches Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archive), through Wikimedia Commons.

The “Memorial for the Fallen of the World War” opened on June 2, 1931. Important

representatives of the Weimar Republic, the Prussian state, and the military attended. Unter den

Linden was crowded with onlookers, with marchers who were saluted by groups of National

Socialists. President Paul von Hindenburg, Prime Minister Otto Braun, and Defense Minister

Karl Eduard Wilhelm Groener spoke at the dedication, emphasizing on points of unity, strength,

and loyalty.18 The Neue Wache’s time as a memorial for the Weimar Republic was short-lived,

but Tessenow’s renovations served as a template for the following regimes to use. The first

regime was the Nazis, the entity responsible for World War II and the Holocaust. The Nazis

incorporated the building into the National Socialist society, and co-opted the Prussian legacy.

18 Forner, “War Commemoration and the Republic in Crisis,” 526-532.

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The design was acceptable to the Nazi leaders, as they kept the memorial almost unchanged, yet

the Nazi performed more ritualist activities at the location.19 Only two years after the Weimar

completed their memorial, the National Socialist regime transformed the Neue Wache into an

altar by adding a large wooden oak cross in the interior room. The structure was renamed a

Reichsehrenmal, or a “Reich” memorial of honor. This site became a site for ritualized mourning

of Germany’s heroes—Hitler and his dignitaries often visited, and laid ceremonial wreaths on

Heldengedenktag (“Hero’s Day”), which occurred annually on March 17.20

Figure 3.5: Berlin, Kranzniederlegung im Ehrenmal, March 12, 1933. Photo Courtesy of Deutsches Bundesarchiv, via Wikimedia Commons.

19 Ladd, 218. 20 Till, “Staging the Past,” 258-259. For a video of the ceremony, see: “German Heldengedenktag

1943 – Hero Day, WWII, Hitler, Goebbels, Göring,” accessed through https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1xdS8ScJcE. The video is a newsreel made for propaganda purposes during the war, and traces the ceremonies on that day placed in front of the Neue Wache. Includes footage of Hitler and his leading officials placing a wreath inside the memorial.

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During World War II, the Neue Wache received damage, and the oak wreath was stolen.

After the Second World War, Berlin’s historic district was incorporated in the Soviet occupation

zone, and became part of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). During the 1950s, the GDR

restored the bomb-damaged Neue Wache, and rededicated it in 1960 as the “Memorial to the

Victims of Fascism and Militarism.” The title and the memorial served the GDR’s political

purposes, who wanted to target and place blame for the Holocaust and World War II on the

fascist authoritarianism of the past. By associating the perpetrators with “Fascism and

Militarism,” the memorial carried high political connotations that tried to alter German memory

to place the blame directly on fascism, militarism, and even capitalism, illustrating the Cold War

tensions by ideologically centering the memorial against the FRG and NATO.

In 1969, the interior was redesigned, and a glass block replaced the previous centerpiece.

Inside the glass block an eternal flame burned, and the remains of one unknown German soldier

and one unknown resistance fighter placed under the floor’s stone. Surrounding the centerpiece

were urns containing earth from concentration and extermination camps (Auschwitz,

Mauthausen, Natweiler, Dachau, and Buchenwald), and World War II battlefields (Moscow,

Leningrad, Stalingrad, Normandy, Italy, Norway, Prague, and Berlin).21 The memorial was an

interesting and complex connection between the destruction of the war and the victors. The earth

from the battlefields are locations where the Germans faced critical defeat, and Allied

advancement. Connecting these remnants with those of the concentration camps, there is a

relationship between victims and victors in the memorial. Both are critical for propagating the

East German and Cold War narrative of the evils of capitalism and fascism.

21 Ladd, 218.

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The FRG used the Neue Wache to illustrate its militarism. Two East German soldiers

would stand guard outside the entrance every day, with a ceremonial changing of the guard, and

attracted many spectators when the soldiers goose-stepped into position.22 This continued until

1990; after the East German army disbanded, the goose-stepping guards were withdrawn and the

memorial closed. This centerpiece remained until Kohl’s redesign in 1993, where he replaced all

that was inside with Käthe Kollwitz’s Pietà—Kohl erased all that East Germany built inside. A

visit in Summer 2016 allowed the author to experience how Kohl’s redesigned memorial created

a different atmosphere appropriate to his aims. Upon entering the site, on either side of the

entrance, there is a concrete bench that many visitors sat on and admired the sculpture. Despite

the busy street and traffic noise outside, the inside is calm, and the environment is serene and

quiet. Arguably, the sense of tranquility was purposely done—the space of reflection and

peacefulness with the Pietà is a contrast to the militaristic symbols of the previous regimes. The

plans for the memorial were established in 1990—the unification treaty included a clause that the

Federal Republic would maintain the Neue Wache as a public monument. German Chancellor

Helmut Kohl implemented the project with plenty personal interventions on proposed designs, in

hopes of creating a memorial that exemplified the unification of Germany, and anticipated that it

would lead to a unified nation. Therefore, the Neue Wache was Kohl’s memorial in design and

concept, and represents his personal vision for creating a common basis for national war

memory.

22 Ladd, The Ghosts of Berlin, 217. For a video on the changing of the guard, see: “NVA

changing of the guard, East Berlin,” Summer 1989, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydeJt2dQxWg.

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Figure 3.6: Berlin, Neue Wache Unter den Linden, September 30, 1970. Photo courtesy of Deutsches Bundesarchiv, via Wikimedia Commons.

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Figure 3.7: Inside the Neue Wache, Berlin. Photo by author.

Interpretive Art as a Memorial: Käthe Kollwitz’s Pietà

When Helmut Kohl selected the Neue Wache to be the “Central Memorial of the Federal

Republic of Germany for the Victims of War and Tyranny,” he also decided to install an

enlargement of Käthe Kollwitz’s statuette referred as the Pietà. Originally a fifteen-inch

sculpture completed in 1938, on November 14, 1993 the sculpture was dedicated as a life-size

memorial aimed to demilitarize the site, and to act as a universal symbol of mourning and

maternal martyrdom. Additionally, Kollwitz was honored in both West and East Germany. East

Berlin gave the name Kollwitzstrasse to the street on which she lived in her honor.23 However,

23 Ladd, The Ghosts of Berlin, 222.

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by examining Kollwitz’s history, it is evident that the motifs Kohl tried to emphasize were not as

pure as intended. The sculpture had its origins in World War I, motivated by the trauma Kollwitz

endured after the death of her son Peter, who fought for the German army in the First World

War. Many critics deemed the Madonna design inappropriate for World War II where many

women were killed themselves in bombings and mass executions. In addition, the sculpture is

modeled after Christian imagery—Mary mourning Jesus—and implicitly excluded Jews from the

memorial.

Figure 3.8: Pietà, Neue Wache in Berlin. Photo by author. Inscription reads: “To the Victims of War and Tyranny.”

Kollwitz was born into a politically active family. Her father was a socialist, which could

be the reason for her proletarian activism. Kollwitz was recognized early in her career for her

politically charged representation of the impoverished working classes. Kollwitz’s art was

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reflective of the events that surrounded her. Much of her early work is directly related to her

socialist activism in the late nineteenth century. Kollwitz’s initial success came in the form of her

Weaver’s Revolt (1893-1897), a series of etchings based on an uprising of Silesian workers in

1844. In 1904, the Verbindung für Historische Kunst (Association for Historical Art)

commissioned her work titled Peasant’s Revolt, which was another series of etchings

representing an account of a 1535 peasant revolt in Southern Germany, led by a woman referred

to as “Black Anna.” This subject is representative of Kollwitz’s sympathies towards the

proletariat and her feminist beliefs.24

The themes of radical social activism and feminism were predominant in her art until

World War I, when the death of her son centered her focus on death, grief, and maternal bonds

with sons. Kollwitz expressed her disdain for the war in her diary, and recorded on September

30, 1914: “In such times it seems so stupid that the boys must go to war. The whole thing is so

ghastly and insane. Occasionally there comes the foolish thought: how can they possibly take

part in such madness?... All is leveled by death; down with all the youth! Then one is ready to

despair.”25 It is evident that Kollwitz had the opinion that war was pointless in comparison to the

lives of young men. Her contempt for war grew as the Great War continued, and by the end of

the war her position solidified into activism, as it is evident through a published article in the

Social Democratic newspaper, Vorwärts, where she wrote in response to a recruitment

advertisement in October 1918:

We have had four years of bloodletting—all that is needed is for one more group to offer itself up, and Germany will be bled to death… For the best men would lie dead on the battlefields. In

24 Wendy Slatkin, The Voices of Women Artists (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall,

1993), 182. 25 Käthe Kollwitz, “September 30, 1914: “Down with all the youth!” in The Voices of Women

Artists, 184-185.

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my opinion such a loss would be worse and more irreplaceable for Germany than the loss of whole provinces.

… But what about the countless thousands who also had much to give—other things beside their bare young lives? That these young men whose lives were just beginning should be thrown into the war to die by legions—can this really be justified? There has been enough of dying! Let not another man fall!26

In short, Kollwitz’s political activism emphasized her hatred and contempt for war. This soon

translated into images of war, and the poverty, grief, and death that arose from it in her

artwork.27

Kollwitz’s interest in the Pietà concept can be connected to Kollwitz’s experience of

Peter’s death. For years after Peter’s death, Kollwitz drew out designs for a sculpture that she

wished to dedicate to Peter, and the other young men buried at the Vladslo war cemetery in

Belgium. Her original intent was to include the image of Peter’s body in the sculpture, it being

stretched out while being embraced in Kollwitz’s arms, trying to evoke images of maternity and

an artistic bond between mother and son.28 The interaction between mother and son changed, but

the underlying principle of the sculpture remained the same—expressing the sadness of the

parents over a dead son was paramount. In the end, the sculptures Die trauernden Eltern (“The

Grieving Parents,” installed at Vladslo in 1932) depicted images of a mother and father together,

kneeling with undeniable expressions of sorrow. Currently one of her most famous creations, the

union of family—the mourning parents being placed in the cemetery where Peter lay—created a

26 Kaethe Kollwitz, “October 30, 1918,” in The Diaries and Letters of Kaethe Kollwitz, edited by

Hans Kollwitz, trans. by Richard and Clara Winston (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1955), 88.

27 Whitney Chadwick, Women, Art, and Society (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997), 290-291.

28 Regina Shulte and Pamela Selwyn, “Käthe Kollwitz’s Sacrifice,” in History Workshop Journal, 41 (1996): 201, accessed December 8, 2015.

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sense of intimacy that all could relate to.29 This is supported by the universal gestures that the

mourning parents are placed in, invoking a familiar position related to sadness. It is unclear

where the original inspiration for the Pietà started, but when Kollwitz complete the statuette in

1938, it carried the same emotions and symbolism as “The Grieving Parents.”

Figure 3.9: Käthe Kollwitz, The "Grieving Parents,” Vladslo, Belgium. Photo by author.

As for the Pietà, the genesis is unclear. The theme of a mother cradling a dead child

became one of Kollwitz’s most powerful images after the trauma of losing her son, taking

different forms in her career. Kollwitz first employed the theme in a drawing she titled Pietà in

29 Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1995), 113.

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1903. Transforming traditional Christian symbolism, Kollwitz appropriated the Christian motif

of the Madonna mourning the dead Christ, and molding it into a statement of motherhood. Along

with the Pietà, the sketch titled Woman with Dead Child shows another mother embracing her

dead son, and emphasizes the notion of grief and loss intensely, capturing the emotions that

come with death.30 While a direct correlation between the illustrations and the sculpture cannot

be proven, it is evident that Kollwitz had explored the artistic rendition of a mother embracing a

dead child in her earlier work, and found this as an appropriate means when expressing grief and

death of a loved one.

Figure 3.10: Women with Dead Child, Käthe Kollwitz, 1903. Image from Elizabeth Prelinger's Käthe Kollwitz

30 Elizabeth Prelinger, “Kollwitz Reconsidered,” in Käthe Kollwitz, Elizabeth Prelinger ed. (New

Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 40-42. The boy depicted in the piece is modeled after her son Peter, foreshadowing his death in the Great War.

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The Pietà installed in the center of the Neue Wache is not the original sculpture—it is an

enlargement of the original bronze relief. On October 22, 1937—the anniversary of Peter’s

death—Kollwitz mentions in her diary that she was working on the small bronze sculpture. She

says that it “has become something like a pietà. The mother is sitting and has her dead son lying

between her knees in her lap. It is no longer pain, but rather thoughtful reflection.”31 Kollwitz

never expressed intent to use the statuette in a public setting in her letters and diaries. And given

its small size, there is no indication that this sculpture was created with the intention of becoming

a public monument.

Figure 3.11: Original bronze statuette of the Pietà by Käthe Kollwitz, in the Käthe Kollwitz Museum in Berlin. Photo by author.

31 Käthe Kollwitz, Die Tagebücher, cited in Henry W. Pickford, “Conflict and Commemoration:

Two Berlin Memorials,” in Modernism/modernity, vol. 12, 1 (2005): 151.

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Kohl, believed that Kollwitz’s Pietà was a universal figure of mourning, appropriate for

all who would grieve their losses at the Neue Wache. Kohl made the following statement to the

public explaining why he chose the Pietà:

Ich finde, daß diese Skulptur auch einer Erfahrung Ausdruck gibt, die in den meisten Gedenkstätten fehlt—ich wiederhole mich—nämlich dem Wissen um die Frauen als Opfer von Krieg und Gewalt, um die Frauen, die als Mütter oder Witwen von den Schrecken dieses Jahrhunderts in besonderer Weise betroffen waren. [I find that this sculpture gives an experiential interpretation that is missing in most memorials—I repeat myself—namely the knowledge of women as victims of war and tyranny, that women were especially affected as mothers or widows by the horrors of this century.]32

In other words, the image of female martyrdom is symbolic of admiration and mourning, and

acts as a common ground for identification for all Germans. Kohl hoped the enlargement of

Kollwitz’s original bronze statuette would emphasize the grief and contrition that came from a

son’s death in the war. For Kohl, this imagery was essential for establishing a German war

memory, since these represented common feelings all Germans felt. By bringing in a maternal

image for the centerpiece, Kohl attempted to demilitarize the site; but by representing women’s

grief through a mother, the women war victims are not properly represented, and it is insinuated

that women were only victims through the death of their sons.

As stated above, the Pietà is Kollwitz’s own reinterpretation of the Madonna and the

body of Christ, except the figures in Kollwitz’s sculpture are replaced by a peasant mother and

her son. The image is a seated peasant mother, enveloped in a cloak that drapes over the torso of

the son who rests between her legs in the mother’s embrace. The mother’s hand is extended out

to touch her son’s right arm, and she holds her son’s head to her breast. The son’s body is lifeless

32 Statement by Helmut Kohl, cited in Elke Grenzer, “The Topographies of Memory in Berlin:

The Neue Wache and the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe,” in Canadian Journal of Urban Research, 11, 1 (2002): 102.

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with his head tipped back, and the mother’s eyes are closed with her brow furrowed in grief. This

was, no doubt, an emotional image, especially for those who lost a son in either world wars.

However, many viewed this intimate image as one based on Christian imagery—one can

associate Kohl’s association with the CDU, and his personal identity as a practicing Catholic, as

influence over his choice.33 By choosing this image, the Jewish community was potentially

excluded from the memorial. This contributed to the controversy expressed through media

sources, and sparked protest at the site itself.

Figure 3.12: Close-up of Pietà, in the Neue Wache, Berlin. Photo by author.

33 For more information on Kohl’s political motivations with the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), see the introduction. In short, Kohl presented the CDU as an entity that represented a patriotic set of values, and conservative and Christian values that the CDU held.

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Public Criticism

On the day of the dedication, a large crowd gathered around the Neue Wache while Kohl

and other German officials were inside participating in the ceremony. During the ceremony,

protestors objected to the dedication, and at times, challenged the police guarding the site. An

article from The Los Angeles Times stated that “Eight people were arrested after scuffles between

security officers and demonstrators,” and that there was a “heavy police presence around the

ceremony.”34 The article also stated that the memorial was not open to the public after the

ceremony, because of the security concerns the protesters imposed.35 The protests themselves

received much attention, with many newspapers around the world recording the controversy that

unfolded. Newspapers include Der Spiegel, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and

the Jewish Telegraph Agency—the latter being the most vocal considering many protesters were

from the Jewish community in Berlin. Through German and American newspaper articles, most

of the criticism can be associated to the following categories: 1) The form of the memorial,

concerning both the location and the sculpture; and, 2) concerning which dead should be

commemorated. In a New York Times article, Stephen Kinzer wrote a record of the objections

and the protests that surrounded the dedication. Kinzer explained that the protesters disapproved

of the site, the sculpture, and the inscription, for failing “to portray the horror Germans inflicted

on their own citizens and on citizens of foreign lands,” and that it “fails to differentiate between

34 Tyler Marshall, “Past Torments as Berlin Honors War Dead: Germany: WWII Memorial, also

dedicated to victims of tyranny, is inaugurated. It has evoked “hysterical” debates,” in LA Times, November 15, 1993, accessed April 12, 2016.

35 Marshall, “Past Torments as Berlin Honors War Dead.”

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victims and perpetrators.”36 Kinzer also notes that several dozen protesters arrived at the

dedication, shouting chants of “German murderers are not victims!”37

In Germany, news sources provided direct criticisms on the memorial. One critic was

historian Reinhart Koselleck, whose objections fall into the two categories stated above. In an

interview with Doja Hacker and Johannes Saltzwedel, both journalists for Der Spiegel on March

2, 1997, Koselleck gave extensive criticism of the memorial. He claimed that the memorial was

not properly thought through, and that the advisors for the memorial overlooked the “simplest

matters.” First, Koselleck said that there was uncertainty surrounding the dedication, and that the

distinction between perpetrators and victims be made, especially in the country of the

perpetrators. As for the Pietà, Koselleck argued that the sculpture excludes Jews and women. In

addition, he explained that the sculpture is appropriate for after 1918, where the mothers

mourning their sons was prevalent. After the Second World War, the model is obsolete. He

further explained that the sculpture is an inaccurate and misleading representation of the women

who died in the Holocaust and as refugees, along with the fact that the Pietà has anti-Semitic

overtones.38

While Koselleck represented the intellectual opposition to the memorial, the Jewish

population in Berlin also objected to the dedication. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency published

on article on November 16, 1993 that stated the leader of the Berlin Jewish community, Jerzy

Kanal, purposely stayed away from the memorial’s dedication, for the “murder of the (European)

36 Stephen Kinzer, “The War Memorial: To Embrace the Guilty, Too?” in New York Times,

November 15, 1993, accessed April 12, 2016. 37 Kinzer, “The War Memorial.” 38 Doja Hacker and Johannes Saltzwedel, “Denkmäler sind Stolpersteine,” interview with

Reinhart Koselleck, in Der Spiegel, March 7, 1997, accessed April 12, 2016, http://magazin.spiegel.de/EpubDelivery/spiegel/pdf/8654713.

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Jews was unique.”39 The article also included quotes from Rabbi Daniel Landes, the director of

national education projects for the Simon Wiesenthal Center.40 Landes stated that “It shows that

Germany wants to close the book on the painful memory of the Holocaust by normalizing World

War II to be a war like all of the other wars,” a criticism shared by many Jews and non-Jews

alike. The article explained that the night on November 9, the 55th anniversary of Kristallnacht, a

group of 40 demonstrators chained themselves to the monument to express discontent, but were

removed by the police.41

These articles emphasize the controversies surrounding the memorial’s dedication, and

they also represent the public memory of Germany at this time. The memorial emphasized the

need to confront the National Socialist past, and how properly to remember those impacted by

the Holocaust. Evident from the articles above, many believed the Pietà did not properly

represent most victims the memorial intended to represent. The Christian imagery created dissent

in the Jewish population in Berlin, while also implicitly ignoring the women who died during the

war as non-combatants. In addition, placing the memorial inside a historical Prussian building

indirectly associated the World War victims to the military past responsible for both world wars,

the Holocaust, the rise of National Socialism, and a recently deposed East German regime that

was a hardline Soviet-style dictatorship. The articles show that there were no objections to

having a memorial, but opposition to the symbols used to remember the victims.

39 “New Berlin Memorial to War Dead Boycotted by Most Jewish Leaders,” in Jewish

Telegraphic Agency, November 16, 1993, accessed April 5, 2016. 40 The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) is an international Jewish human rights organization

established in Los Angeles, California. It acts as an educational center for anti-Semitism and hate against Jews, while also teaching lessons of the Holocaust.

41 “New Berlin Memorial,” in Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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Perceptions after 1993

In his text At Memory’s Edge published in 2000 (seven years after the memorial’s

dedication), James E. Young noted that the political controversy around the Neue Wache

memorial had almost dissipated, and that it had become a center of artistic admiration by tourists

around the world.42 When Kohl installed the Pietà in 1993, tensions from the Cold War were

prevalent, and the World War II generation still had a significant existence in society. Therefore,

when the monument was dedicated, there was a collective group of people that associated with

the memory being conveyed. With its relevancy, the memorial was a political symbol of great

significance and sometimes intimate association. Additionally, the memorial was created very

soon after reunification, with ambitious goals of being the symbol of a unified German war

memory and identity. With the two Germanys reunited, how to convey a unified past was a very

sensitive topic. Since then, reunification has ceased to be a prevalent issue, and has been

replaced by more controversial issues, such as the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin.43

In today’s Germany, the proportion of the population directly impacted or associated with

the memorial are minimal. Over the late 1990s and early 2000s, debates about the design and

purpose of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, and a revival of memories of German wartime

victimization, displaced the controversy over the Neue Wache. The Neue Wache has become a

tourist site, being one of the stops on Berlin’s great monument tours. By looking at Berlin

traveling sites and other travel agencies that advertise Berlin, this becomes more evident. For

example, the tourism website berlin.de says the Pietà “can be admired here” and does not discuss

42 James E. Young, At Memory’s Edge: After Images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and

Architecture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 187. 43 For information on the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, see “Chapter Four: ‘A waving field of

pillars’: the “Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe.”

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what the Pietà was intended to commemorate.44 Another website is culturetrip.com, where the

emphasis in their description of the Neue Wache memorial is placed on Kollwitz, her biography,

and the Pietà instead of discussing the reason for the memorial, the audience that it approached,

or the controversy associated with the memorial in length. The website Visit Berlin offers

walking tours of Berlin for 150 Euros. On this tour, a group of individuals can be taken to the

popular Berlin sites, including Unter den Linden, the Neue Wache being one of the stops on the

boulevard. The building is open to the public, where tourists and visitors can walk up the

building and view Kollwitz’s Pietà, and “admire” the artistic work.45 The building is considered

part of historical Berlin, and much of the controversy that surrounded the memorial in 1993 has

become obsolete. While the conclusion ascertained from travel websites can be insufficient in

understanding how the general public perceives the memorial, how the site is advertised signifies

that the sculpture and the artist are what the travel websites hope to captivate an audience with,

as opposed to war memory and politics. The site is not only a memorial, but a site to admire

Kollwitz’s art.

Despite the central focus on Kollwitz’s art, the Neue Wache still acts as the central war

memorial in Germany. Here, ceremonies and visits take place, and is considered one of the more

popular war memorials in Germany. In a BBC News online publication from August 2008, BBC

created a list of the “Most Moving Memorials,” where readers submitted a selection of the “most

moving experiences of monuments.” Among the ten listed, the Neue Wache was included.46 In

addition, in 2004 Queen Elizabeth II laid a wreath at the memorial, for promoting

44 Berlin Tourismus & Kongress GmbH, berlin.de. 45 “Guided Tours: Berlin Tourist Guides,” in Visit Berlin.

http://www.visitberlin.de/en/article/guided-tours 46 “In Pictures: Your Most Moving Memorials,” in BBC News, August 12, 2008,

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/7556465.stm.

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reconciliation.47 On June 24, 2015, the Queen visited the Neue Wache again, and was received

with military honors in Berlin. Similar to her 2004 visit, the Queen went to lay a wreath at the

memorial.48

Within Germany itself, the Neue Wache still acts as a site of commemoration on

important German dates. For example, on May 7, 2005, the 60th anniversary of the surrender of

Nazi Germany and the end of WWII (May 7, 1945), German President Horst Köhler visited the

Neue Wache to commemorate the 60 years end of Nazi Germany. Joined by German Chancellor

Gerhard Schröder and other high-ranking politicians of parliament, Köhler and his congregation

moved across Unter den Linden to the Neue Wache. At the site, there was a simple ceremony

and the heads of Germany’s five main democratic institutions each laid a wreath.49 During the

commemorations, Schröder asked for forgiveness for Germany’s responsibility for the Holocaust

and World War II.50

Considering the German government used the Neue Wache for foreign relations and

commemoration on essential national-historical dates, and the site is conveyed through the media

as being moving instead of controversial, one can assume that the debate and criticism has been

suppressed, or displaced, in recent years. This could be a result of several factors. One is the

distraction of another controversy centered around the Holocaust Memorial (also in Berlin), built

within the same decade of the Neue Wache memorial dedication. Explained more fully in the

next chapter, the Holocaust Memorial met its own share of controversy and criticism throughout

47 “Queen Honours War Dead in Germany,” in BBC News, November 2, 2004,

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3973651.stm. 48 “Queen Elizabeth Received with Military Honors in Berlin,” in Deutsche Welle, June 24, 2015,

web. 49 The five included Federal President Horst Köhler, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, two heads of

the chambers of parliament and the head of the constitutional court. 50 “German President: We Will Never Forget,” in Deutsche Welle, May 7, 2005, accessed April 5,

2016.

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the design process, and at the dedication. As a continuation of Kohl’s memorial ambitions to

achieve a proper German memorial for the Holocaust, many questioned what the design

(thousands of concrete pillars) was supposed to represent.

In addition, in the late 1990s much controversy arose around the topic of “German as

Victims,” with debates over how Germans needed to commemorate other World War II legacies

besides the Holocaust. Topics included the thousands of German rape victims of the Red Army,

the suffering of German citizens at the war’s end, and the victims of Allied bombings and

expellees from eastern Europe.51 At this time, many Germans sought ways to lay their own dead

to rest, and to incorporate them into German war memory. Particularly in 1995, Germans started

to talk about the Nazi past, but paid more attention to the crimes committed against Germans,

comparing the atrocities to the crimes of Germans against Jews. Instead of focusing on the Jews

as victims, German women, men, and children who were driven out of Eastern Europe by the

Red Army became the focus of debate. Memory historian, Robert G. Moeller describes this as

being “selective” in memory, where memories of victimization gave the Germans a collective

identity as victims, and not just perpetrators of Nazism.52 German identity and memory was

shifting during the 1990s, and events such as embracing German victimization and the Holocaust

memorial potentially distracted the controversy surrounding the Neue Wache.

With the transformation of Berlin as the German capital after unification in 1990 came an

attempt to establish a ritual space, or site of memory, to enact a unified German national

51 For more information, see: Robert G. Moeller, “Germans as Victims?: Thoughts on a Post-Cold

War History of World War II’s Legacies,” in History & Memory 17, 1/2 (2005): 147-194, https://doi.org/10.1353/ham.2005.0018, Robert G. Moeller, War Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of Germany (Berkley: University of California Press, 2001), and Bill Niven, Facing the Nazi Past: United Germany and the Legacy of the Third Reich (London: Routledge, 2002).

52 Robert G. Moeller, War Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of Germany (Berkley: University of California Press, 2001), 16.

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memory. However, by using a militaristic location, and an art piece that reflected post World

War I classical Christian imagery, the memorial did not properly reflect the multiplicity of war

experiences in German society. “Silences” were created by utilizing a building and Kollwitz’s

sculpture to create a narrative that attempted to simplify and normalize the complexities of

German history, and tried to achieve a universal narrative to accelerate the unification of

Germany. The Neue Wache has a complex history with its militaristic background, and multiple

renovations by the Nazi regime and GDR associated the site with two dictatorships that

controlled Germany. This created a point of contention for those who did not want to be

associated with the German past responsible for decades of postwar suffering. As for the

sculpture, controversy centered around the charge that it failed to provide appropriate

representation to all the victims of war and fascism. The Pietà implicitly excluded the Jewish

population with its Christian imagery, and was a product of World War I. Therefore, the imagery

was not appropriate for the Second World War, where millions of Jews were murdered by the

Nazis’ genocidal policies, and millions of women were killed in addition to soldiers. The Neue

Wache is representative of a selective memory Kohl tried to propagate, where the collective

identity is one that represents German unity and normalization as a modern nation.

This attempt was met with opposition, emphasizing the point that Germans were still

trying to properly confront its Nazi past. Additionally, the public criticisms on the symbolism of

the Pietà and the Neue Wache represent the realization that there was some inherent

forgetfulness when confronting the past. The Neue Wache memorial can also fit into a wider

discussion concerning the categorization of victims and perpetrators that was starting to emerge.

At the site itself, many protestors (particularly Jewish protestors) questioned the proper

representation of the victims unassociated with combat roles.

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The dedication of the Neue Wache memorial was not seamless, contrary to Kohl’s hopes

to create a national memorial for Germany. With lessons of Bitburg influencing the construction

of the memorial, the Neue Wache exposed more complexities in confronting the past. This led to

the construction of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, where the site was strictly dedicated to the

Jewish victims that had previously been inadequately represented. The Holocaust Memorial

would be influenced by Kohl and his experience with the Neue Wache, and would be the final

attempt for Kohl to create a German national memorial that would normalize Germany identity,

and establish a proper site of memory that would allow Germans and the international

community to visit. Overall, Kohl used Bitburg and the Neue Wache as political means to

advance German normalcy. The Neue Wache was used to achieve a unified German narrative,

and represents a crucial step to understand how West Germany incorporated East German

politics, memory, and ideology into one nation. This signifies the initial means in which Kohl

furthered his goals for German normalcy in post-unification Germany, leading up to the

Holocaust Memorial.

The criticisms of the Neue Wache were short-lived. In the subsequent near-quarter

century the memorial has become integrated into the memory, political, and touristic landscapes

of Berlin. and has integrated itself into the memory and political landscape of Berlin. Being a

“normalized” site of memory, the memorial was of mixed immediate success, but greater long-

term achievement. Unlike Bitburg, and evident from the examples above, the Neue Wache is an

integral location for Germany’s commemorative landscape, being an important stop for foreign

dignitaries, such as Queen Elizabeth II. Despite the eventual success of the Neue Wache, the

controversial dedication emphasized Germany’s Holocaust commemorative struggle, where

suppressing the Holocaust in German memory only emphasized the lack of a proper memorial.

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Therefore, the Holocaust Memorial plans began in 1994, barely one year after the dedication of

the Neue Wache, taking on a new level of controversy itself. It is arguable that a major reason for

the Neue Wache’s success is the diversion of popular and political attention by the new

controversy surrounding the creation of Germany’s national Holocaust Memorial.

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CHAPTER FOUR: “A WAVING FIELD OF PILLARS”: THE “MEMORIAL TO THE

MURDERED JEWS OF EUROPE”

In May 2005, the “Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas” (“Memorial to the

Murdered Jews of Europe,” or commonly referred to as the Holocaust Memorial) opened to the

public in Berlin.1 It took over a decade to settle on a design for the memorial—the first attempt

in 1994 was a failure, the second design process in 1997 was continually confronted with

controversy, and the final location and design was criticized when it was decided in 1999. In

June 1999, the German Bundestag voted to build the memorial for the Holocaust on a five-acre

piece of real estate in the center of Berlin alongside historical landmarks, placed between the

Brandenburg Gate and Potsdamer Platz. Kohl believed the memorial would serve as an official

memorial site where foreign dignitaries could pay respects, and was a crucial step for the

normalization of Germany. Consisting of 2,711 concrete blocks (or stelae), American architect

Peter Eisenman hoped to embody an illusion of order, while simultaneously creating an uneasy

and confusing atmosphere. However, the monument has been criticized for its inability to

properly convey the scope of the Holocaust’s horrors, and for concealing the complexities of

human emotion.

Through consulting Eisenman’s statements, publications, and interviews, it is evident that

Eisenman encouraged public participation through open access to the field of stelae.

Additionally, the design lacks symbols, signs, or direct messaging on the surface, allowing

visitors to interpret their own meaning, and elicit their own memory. Underneath the memorial,

there is an information center that provides various narratives and exhibits on Jewish families

1 The site’s official title is “Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe,” but is colloquially

referred to as the Holocaust Memorial by Peter Eisenman, and by many visitors. For that reason, this thesis will refer to the site as such.

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persecuted by the Nazis. The info center is dark, and is accessed through stairs that lead

downstairs, underneath the stelae on top, and is the only part of the memorial that explains what

the memorial is for. Otherwise, the memorial was supposed to be timeless, offering an open-

ended design aimed to make visitors question the meaning of the memorial, and explore the site

unguided, and unobstructed, by inscriptions or images.

Figure 4.1: Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas, Berlin, photo by Brianna Webb

Inaugurated almost twenty years after Bitburg, and nearly twelve years after the Neue

Wache opened, the Holocaust Memorial is representative of how Kohl’s sense of memory and

skill in designing memorials had evolved. Kohl’s goal remained the same—to achieve a German

identity that normalized Germany’s place in the international community, and establish a

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commemorative site that would promote unity in German memory, and history. How he

accomplished those goals changed over two decades. In Bitburg, Kohl conflated the relationship

between perpetrators and victims, and created a political and cultural furor. While his aim in

1985 was to promote West German normalcy as a modern nation, it did not result in a unifying

identity. In fact, the commemorations in Bitburg and Bergen-Belsen were divisive. This led to

the Neue Wache, where Kohl, on his own precedent, designed a memorial in the center of Berlin,

to establish a common site for East and West German memory, and to create an appropriate

memorial site for dignitaries and international visitors alike. However, the design and location

created minute divisiveness, and once again, exposed Germany’s struggle with commemorating

the Holocaust. As described in this chapter, the Holocaust Memorial is a drastic change

compared to Kohl’s previous memorial endeavors. Instead of organizing it on his own initiative,

Kohl reached out to artists, historians, and architects to form a citizens group that would lead the

memorial design and purpose. The motivation behind the Holocaust Memorial remained to

create unifying narratives, and creating a normalized, usable past. The difference in this case is

how it was achieved.

This chapter will discuss the Holocaust Memorial as evidence that demonstrates how

Helmut Kohl used sites of memory to further his goals for establishing an official German

memory. This memorial would act as the exclamation point to Kohl’s memorial journey—the

Bundestag treated the memorial as a “final solution” to the Holocaust memorial problem.2 The

memorial challenged Germans to take a collective responsibility for the Holocaust instead of the

2 James E. Young participated in the competitions for the memorial, and was openly critical of the

concept of creating a “final solution” to the Holocaust memorial question, which is discussed more in this chapter. For more information, see James E. Young, At Memory’s Edge: After Images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), and Young, Stages of Memory: Reflections on Memorial Art, Loss, and the Spaces Between (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2016).

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guilt that both West and East Germany tucked away since World War II. For Kohl, the

transformation from guilt to collective responsibility through the Holocaust Memorial would

create a space that proves all of Germany is attempting to confront the responsibility of the

Holocaust. Internationally, the memorial would improve Germany’s status in the global

community, and like Bitburg and the Neue Wache, act as a means to normalize Germany as a

modern nation.

The Holocaust Memorial takes on a different agenda, with a less defined political goal

than Bitburg or the Neue Wache. While Bitburg was designed to reinforce Cold War relations

with the United States, and the Neue Wache intended to act as a memorial for all victims of war

and tyranny in Germany (unifying West and East Germany memory), we come to the question:

why this Holocaust memorial at this time? Memory scholar James E. Young in his text Stages of

Memory explains that the more fragmented and heterogeneous societies become, the stronger the

desire to unify experiences and memories with a common meaning created in common spaces.

Memorials, then, unify competing memories, or if not that, create a shared space for an otherwise

fragmented populace to experience their diverse pasts.3 This chapter will argue that the

Holocaust Memorial was intended to provide the common space that Germany, and the capital of

reunified Germany, needed to confront the Nazi past. The memorial is another attempt (the first

being the Neue Wache) to build a memorial that would create a site of memory that both East

and West Germans could share, and is an extension of the politics of reunification. Additionally,

the Holocaust Memorial contains a compensatory factor, for it was made specifically for the

Jews of Europe, the same group that felt excluded in the Neue Wache memorial.

3 James E. Young, Stages of Memory: Reflections on Memorial Art, Loss, and the Spaces

Between (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2016), 15.

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At first glance, the Holocaust Memorial takes on a drastically different aesthetic value

than the Neue Wache—instead of being a literal representation of the war experience, the

Holocaust Memorial is abstract, and leaves one pondering its meaning.4 Arguably, the Holocaust

Memorial’s abstract design is a result of the backlash behind the Neue Wache—Kohl may well

have realized that explicit symbolism in memorials can potentially exclude various experiences,

predominantly the Jewish memory of the Holocaust and World War II. For this reason, Peter

Eisenman’s design would allow individuals to create their own memory for the Holocaust

through a common space that would allow Germans and internationals alike to share a site for

commemoration. This was the best compromise for a memorial that tried to not only

commemorate the Jewish experience, but also allow West and East Germans to visit a common

site in the reunified capital of Germany.

The Search for the Holocaust Memorial

Original plans for the Holocaust Memorial were proposed by a citizens’ group headed by

journalist Lea Rosh and World War II historian Eberhard Jäckel in 1988. Rosh had three reasons

to create a memorial: 1) to remember the Holocaust, for Germany could not go on as if the

crimes did not happen, especially after reunification; 2) to have a memorial that honored those

who were murdered within the capital; and, 3) to restore the identity of those who were

murdered.5 Rosh and Jäckel hoped to place a memorial on the Gestapo-Gelände (Gestapo

compound), which was the former site of the Gestapo Headquarters and a vacant lot near the

4 Kohl utilized the Pietà inside the Neue Wache to elicit emotions of familial suffering, and used

the direct representation of the bond between mother and son to represent the emotions of loss. See “Chapter Three: Moving on from Bitburg: Creating a Memorial Inside the Neue Wache” for more information on the design, and Kohl’s hopes for using that sculpture.

5 Peter Eisenman: Building Germany’s Holocaust Memorial, directed by Michael Blackwood (Michael Blackwood Productions, 2005), film.

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Wall in the center of Berlin. The location already carried much controversy, with debates on how

to commemorate victims of the Gestapo. This location was a favorite district of Hitler and the

Nazi party in Berlin, and the SS occupied the district in near entirety after Hitler’s rise to power

in 1933, with the Gestapo establishing its headquarters in the former Museum of Industrial Arts

and Crafts building, which was vacated in 1933. This district remained as the nucleus of

Gestapo, Criminal Police, and SS government (and criminal) actions in Berlin until 1943, when

the Allied carpet bombing reduced the area to rubble, and further demolition in April 1949

turned the architectural evidence of the Nazi past to debris.6

The new task with the wasteland that the Gestapo-Gelände stood as became the focus for

rebuilding Berlin as a modern metropolis in the post-war era. This area also emphasized the East-

West divisions that was apparent in the 1950s and 1960s. One of the main streets, the Prinz-

Albrecht-Strasse, belonged to the Soviet sector, and the buildings along the southern edge were

under American administration. For this reason, the heart of the city remained desolate and

ruined, and acted as a buffer between the East and the West. It remained this way until 1978,

when historians, architects, and other Berliners exposed its historical significance, and

competitions for a memorial ensued in the 1980s.7 In fact, Kohl himself supported a federal

government proposal for using the Prinz Albrecht site for a new German Historical Museum.

The Bundestag halted the project, for Kohl’s opponents accused him of wanting to foster

national pride by “whitewashing the dark spots” of the German past.8

6 James E. Young, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (New Haven:

Yale University Press, 1993), 82-84. 7 A group of advocates for the confrontation with the Nazi past formed the “Active Museum of

Fascism and Resistance in Berlin.” Ironically, the Active Museum held a symbolic dig on the Prinz Albrecht site on May 5, 1985, the same day of Kohl and Reagan’s commemorations in Bitburg, where Waffen SS soldiers were buried. Whether this was intentional is unknown. For more information, see: Brian Ladd, The Ghosts of Berlin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).

8 Brian Ladd, The Ghosts of Berlin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 159.

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Finding a proper memorial for the contested and murderous past of this location proved

impossible, and the vacancy of the area soon transformed into the “Topography of Terror”

exhibit in July 1987.9 Brian Ladd describes this exhibit as “the most self-conscious attempt to

uncover the historical legacy of a particular place in Berlin.”10 The exhibition invited visitors to

explore the overgrown former Gestapo Headquarters, and it attempted to situate the legacy of the

SS and Gestapo in the geography of Berlin and Europe. Thus, this exhibit documented Gestapo

activities of espionage, repression, and terror within Berlin.11 The focus in this exhibit was on the

perpetrators, and attempted to educate visitors on how Nazi crimes were committed by the

leaders of Germany, and how the terror engrained itself into Berlin geography and society. The

Topography of Terror was popular, and the temporary exhibit had multiple extensions. In 1989,

debate ensued on how to make the exhibit permanent, preserve the site, and how to place the

location into a memorial landscape in Berlin.12 For Lea Rosh in 1988, it was still evident that the

future of the Gestapo-Gelände was under debate, and would carry too much controversy with the

construction of a Holocaust memorial.

The Gestapo-Gelände (and the contentious nature of the Holocaust Memorial) is

representative of the wider issue with Holocaust memorials, especially in Germany. This is

because the Holocaust altered the purpose of memorials and monuments’ role in society. Instead

of glorifying national events, accomplishments, or heroic individuals, the Holocaust forced the

German people to view memorials as sites of communal repentance. With German Holocaust

commemoration, the challenge was to find how Germans, as perpetrators, can remember the

victims—in essence, Germans were building memorials against themselves. Thus, Holocaust

9 Young, The Texture of Memory, 86-88. 10 Ladd, The Ghosts of Berlin, 154. 11 Ladd, 161. 12 Ibid, 164-166.

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memorials are designed to address multiple audiences—both German and international.

Additionally, memorials often represent multiple meanings, and they use symbols within

complex spaces to extract those various meanings.13 Previously concerned with absence and

irredeemable loss, German artists and architects found a countermemorial vernacular for the

expression of national shame, and the rejection of the traditional authoritarian and complacent

national shrines. The aim, then, would be to articulate the void of Europe’s lost Jews without

filling it in, and express the breach in their faith in civilization without trying to mend it.14

Perhaps the most troubling quality when it comes to Holocaust memorials is that artists

and designers tend to develop a potential for redemption. Particularly in Germany, the use of art

has been criticized for compensating mass murder, which could potentially redeem the past with

the “instrumentalization” of its memory. The Holocaust shatters any aspect of religious or

political dialectic of “from destruction to redemption.”15 In the 1980s, German artists confronted

the fundamental problem of Holocaust memorialization in the form of Gegen-Denkmäler

(“countermonuments”), which James E. Young describes as “brazen, painfully self-conscious

memorial spaces conceived to challenge the very premise of their being.”16 The intention behind

these memorials was to remind viewers of Germany’s responsibility and label as perpetrators,

forcing them to remember instead of forgetting. Artists such as Jochen Gerz, Norbert

Radermacher, and Horst Hoheisel rejected the traditional forms of public memorials, for the

13 Harold Marcuse, “Holocaust Memorials: The Emergence of a Genre,” in The American

Historical Review 115, 1 (2010): 54. 14 Young, Stages of Memory, 4. 15 Ibid, 6. 16 Young, Texture of Memory, 27. See Young’s text, The Texture of Memory, for specific case

studies on how artists used “countermonuments” in Germany to challenge Germany’s memorial problem.

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traditional forms tend to console or redeem viewers from tragedy, and can potentially seal

memory off from awareness.17

The Holocaust Memorial in Berlin can be considered an outlier, or the end of the arc in

the trend of Holocaust memorials—instead of focusing on traditional symbolism and how to

convey a narrative, the memorial allows individuals to develop distinct narratives of the

Holocaust, and perpetuates the fact that Germany’s memorial problem cannot be solved.18

Initially, Rosh and Jäckel did not have enough political backing, but the project gained the

support of the federal government and the Berlin Senate, with both political entities believing

that a memorial as such would provide a strategic distraction from the Neue Wache. Soon, the

government decided on a piece of land by the Tiergarten in the center of Berlin. 19 Within close

proximity to the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, and the historical boulevard Unter den

Linden, the Holocaust Memorial would be situated within a landscape of great landmarks within

Berlin.

In 1994, a year after the dedication of the Neue Wache, the first international competition

for designs for a national Holocaust memorial started. The competition attracted artists and

architects, and a total of 528 designs were submitted from around the world. The jury that would

have decided on the memorial consisted of fifteen members who were appointed by the

Bundestag, the Berlin Senate, and the original citizens’ group. There were debates behind the

scenes, but not visible since the jury did not want to make the decision-making process public. In

March 1995, organizers announced the jury’s decision to use a combination of two designs—the

17 Ibid, 28. 18 This is point is based on the surface of the memorial—the visitor center below the field of

stelae provides the specific narrative of the Jewish experience that can be found in most Holocaust memorials. Eisenman did not want this addition, since that would contradict his goals for the memorial, but a compromise was met with Lea Rosh, explained more in this chapter.

19 Young, At Memory’s Edge, 187.

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design that belonged to the first winner, Berlin architect Christina Jacob-Marks, would be the

primary design, but would incorporate elements from New York artist, Simon Ungers. Jacob-

Marks’ design consisted of a 108,000 square-foot and twenty-three-foot-thick tilted concrete

gravestone with the names of 4.2 million murdered Jews engraved, with eighteen boulders from

Masada in Israel scattered over its surface.20

Figure 4.2: Christina Jacob-Marks Holocaust Memorial concept drawing. Photo is a screenshot from the documentary A Jew Among Germans by PBS Frontline.

This memorial held multiple symbolisms—eighteen is the Hebrew number for life. And

Masada was the last stronghold against the Romans at the end of the Jewish revolt of 66-73 C.E.

and is the site of a collective suicide of Jews that prevented the Romans from taking them as

slaves. This narrative of self-sacrifice created discontent, for this narrative was not applicable to

the Holocaust, where millions were murdered. Immediately after the winner’s announcement,

20 Jane Kramer, “The Politics of Memory,” in The New Yorker, August 14, 1995, accessed March

26, 2017, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1995/08/14/the-politics-of-memory.

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critics deemed the gravestone as too big, too divisive, and the representation of a sealed grave

too visual. Jewish community leaders in Germany vocalized their hate for the design directly to

Kohl. The Chancellor, aghast at the “gigantic size” of the monument, rescinded the government’s

support for the winner, and postponed the project.21 Germany remained with its memorial

problem.

Figure 4.3: Map of Berlin, with the location of the Holocaust Memorial indicated by the red dot. Photo from lonelyplanet.com.

Public interest in building a memorial resurfaced in 1997, and the memorial organizers

held various colloquiums throughout the year. Scholar James E. Young reluctantly participated

in the forums, and explained his experience in his text At Memory’s Edge. Young explains that

21 “Despite Kohl’s Objections, Plans for Holocaust Memorial Continue,” in The Jewish Telegraph

Agency, July 6, 1995, accessed February 17, 2017, http://www.jta.org/1995/07/06/archive/despite-kohls-objections-plans-for-holocaust-memorial-continue.

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the forums were convened to ensure that the memorial would be built “before the Holocaust

receded further into the history of a former century.”22 Young explained that the best way for

them to proceed was by inviting the nine finalists from the 1995 competition, and invite a dozen

more architects and artists to submit new designs. Kohl’s office sent a deputy to participate in the

decision-making process, along with a speaker from the Berlin Senate.23

The 1997 competition is where the citizens’ group decided on Eisenman’s design for the

memorial. The path to Eisenman’s design was met with frustration and multiple roadblocks. An

article titled “Plans for Holocaust Memorial in Berlin Remain at an Impasse” from the Jewish

Telegraph Agency stated that at this time (April 1997), “money for the project is in place, but

plans for the memorial appear to remain at an impasse,” and that Kohl thought that the idea from

the 1995 competition of the plate with the victims’ inscribed names was “megalomania.”24

According to Young, when Eisenman proposed his design, he explained that there is not a single

answer to Germany’s memorial problem, so his design proposed multiple, collected forms

arranged so that visitors would have to find their own path to the memory of Europe’s murdered

Jews—it represented a process of finding memory, instead of a final answer.25

The memorial organization was convinced, and throughout 1998, the organization met

with Eisenman to make the proper revisions. The size was reduced (from forty-two hundred

pillars to about three thousand), and the height of the pillars lowered. However, the main concept

remained—the implied motion in the field of pillars would represent a memory that is not stable

or static in time. Visitors would have to find the memory themselves, and this disrupts the notion

22 Young, At Memory’s Edge, 191. 23 Ibid, 200. 24 “Plans for Holocaust Memorial in Berlin Remain at an Impasse,” in The Jewish Telegraph

Agency, April 17, 1997, accessed February 17, 2017, http://www.jta.org/1997/04/17/archive/plans-for-holocaust-memorial-in-berlin-remain-at-an-impasse-2.

25 Young, At Memory’s Edge, 206.

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of a single, dominant “collective memory,” and replaces it with individual memories created

through direct and active engagement with the site. In June 1999, the German Bundestag

announced its vote for Peter Eisenman’s design. The memorial would be built on the five-acre

piece of land that the committee for the memorial reserved for the memorial, across from the

Tiergarten, and down the street from the Brandenburg Gate.

The Memorial’s Design: Eisenman’s Project

After a total of twelve years of planning, and five years of construction, on May 10, 2005

the “Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe” opened. Only two days after the sixtieth

anniversary for the end of World War II, German President Wolfgang Thierse stated at the

inauguration of the memorial, “Two days ago, on 8 May, the Federal Republic of Germany

commemorated the end of the war and the liberation of our country and continent from Hitler’s

barbarism. Today we are formally opening a Memorial which recalls the worst and most

horrifying crime of Nazi Germany, the attempt to exterminate an entire people.”26 The final

memorial consists of 2,711 stelae arranged in a grid pattern covering the five acres in the center

of Berlin. Visitors can enter from all four sides of the lot, and it allows individuals to interact

without symbols or messaging that would construct a narrative. In an interview with Eisenman in

Der Spiegel, Eisenman said that he “wanted people to have a feeling of being in the present and

an experience that they had never had before. And one that was different and slightly

26 “Speech by the President of the German Bundestag Wolfgang Thierse at the inauguration of the

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe,” in official website for the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, accessed March 18, 2017, http://www.stiftung-denkmal.de/en/memorials/the-memorial-to-the-murdered-jews-of-europe/speeches-at-the-inaugiration-of-the-memorial-to-the-murdered-jews-of-europe.html.

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unsettling.”27 With approximately three feet of space for visitors to walk between the pillars,

Eisenman achieved his goal.

Figure 4.4: Rose at the “Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe,” Berlin, photo by author.

Each stela is 95 centimeters wide, and 2.375 meters long, with varying heights (ranging

from zero to four meters high). The pillars are spaced enough for individuals to pass through the

various grids. “In searching for the instability inherent in an apparently stable system,” Peter

Eisenman believed that his design would allow personal expression and interpretation that would

avoid a permanent narrative to Holocaust memory. By using the pillars, that are varied in height,

Eisenman believed that the spaces “condense, narrow, and deepen to provide a multilayered

27 “Spiegel Interview with Holocaust Monument Architect Peter Eisenman: How Long Does One

Feel Guilty?” in Der Spiegel, May 9, 2005, accessed December 15, 2016, http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel-interview-with-holocaust-monument-architect-peter-eisenman-how-long-does-one-feel-guilty-a-355252.html.

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experience from any point.” 28 The main goal, is to create a space that would evoke feelings of

loss and contemplation, elements that Eisenman believed were essential to German memory and

Holocaust commemoration.

Below the “waving field of pillars” is another part of the memorial—an information

center is open to visitors, free of charge, that provides personal histories and narratives for a

select group of Jewish families that were victims of the Holocaust. On the southern edge of the

memorial, there is a stairwell that takes visitors below to the center. Underground, the

atmosphere is very quiet, and the there is little natural or artificial light, making the atmosphere

gloomier. Visitors first encounter a foyer that provides a timeline of the Nazi Party’s reign, from

1933 to 1945 with emphasis on the escalation of violence against Jews. This was the only time

the Nazis or SS soldiers are directly discussed, for the rest of the displays center the narrative on

Jewish individuals or families that were persecuted. At the end of this foyer, there are six large

portraits of Jewish victims that represent the range of victims in the Holocaust, each representing

a specific age or gender group: men, women, children, and the elderly.

28 Peter Eisenman, Blurred Zones: Investigations of the Interstitial (New York: The Monacelli

Press, 2003), 314.

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Figure 4.5: Inside the stelae in the "Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe," Berlin, photo by author.

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Figure 4.6: Entrance to the information center, photo by author

The entire exhibit consists of four main rooms. The first room is called the “Room of

Dimensions,” which provides quotations from memoirs from those persecuted. The quotes come

from a variety of texts, such as diaries, or letters that expose the emotions many felt while being

targeted with violence or death. After the “Room of Dimensions” is the “Room of Families,”

which illustrates the transformation of Jewish lives from before persecution up until their deaths.

The room utilizes the fate of fifteen families that were persecuted by the Nazis. This room is also

dark, and the information is displayed on concrete blocks that extend down from the ceiling—

almost a continuation of the pillars from above.

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Figure 4.7: Top: "Room of Dimensions," Bottom: "Room of Families," photo by author

The third room is the “Room of Names,” where a reading of short biographies of Jews

murdered or missing are given over a speaker system. The official website for the “Memorial to

the Murdered Jews of Europe” explains that this room is still being updated, since the National

Socialists destroyed many sources of testimonies. The site also explains that the aim of this room

is to memorialize the dead individually by hearing each testimony separate from another. The

reading of the names with the life stories of the victims presented in this room would take

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approximately six years, seven months and 27 days to read.29 The final room, “The Room of

Sites,” presents historical films and photographs on 200 locations of the persecution and

destruction of Jews and other groups. The locations include concentration camps, ghettos, sites

of euthanasia, death march routes, and sites of mass shootings. There is special attention given to

the seven largest extermination camps, with reports and memories relating to these places can be

accessed in audio stations.30

As for the title of the memorial, the “Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe” suggests

that the memorial’s aim was to commemorate only the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, and

distinguishes Jews from other groups of victims. The memorial’s wide-ranging design, and its

explicit dedication to the Jewish victims of Nazism, attempted to mend the “palpable and gaping

wound in the German psyche,” where the memorial had to appear in “Berlin’s otherwise

reunified cityscape.”31 Solely commemorating the Jewish victims can be traced to the failure of

the Neue Wache, which tried to commemorate all victims of war. As explained in the previous

chapter, the Neue Wache aimed to pay tribute to all victims of war, and resulted in the Jewish

community in Berlin to criticizing the memorial’s poor representation of the Jewish experience

of the Holocaust and World War II. And going further back to Bitburg, victims were

commemorated alongside the perpetrators, and resulted in a hard-learned lesson for Kohl and

Germany—Germany needed to provide a site of remembrance for the Holocaust where the

29 The official website to the “Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe,” accessed December

15, 2016, http://www.stiftung-denkmal.de/en/exhibitions/information-centre/room-of-names.html#c1727. This room is also accessible online at www.raumdernamen.com. The goal is to have the victims and their stories available outside the memorial, and to raise funds for the production of more biographies.

30 The seven largest extermination camps are: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Sobibor, Malyj Trostenez, Majdanek, Treblinka, Belzec, and Kulmhof. There is also an audio booth for Babij Jar.

31 Young, At Memory’s Edge, 189.

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audience cannot conflate victims with the perpetrators. Therefore, identifying who the memorial

is for brings specificity to an otherwise abstract memorial.

The Public Responds

The public reaction to the memorial varied—some responded positively to the memorial,

while others were critical of the abstract design. An article in Der Spiegel recorded a variety of

reactions from German newspaper articles after the opening event. Der Spiegel itself stated:

“With Tuesday’s [May 10, 2005] official opening ceremonies for the Memorial… a long difficult

chapter in the history of the new capital has come to a close.”32 The article also quoted the

Frankfurter-Allegemeine Zeitung, who said: “Thinking back on the often rabid 17 year long

debate… it’s truly astounding how unanimous, how nearly euphoric the praise for the sprawling,

walk-in sculpture by Peter Eisenman has become.”33 The article closed by saying that the

memorial is a “structural symbol of the incomprehensibility of the crime,” and that “the

Holocaust monument isn’t there to inform us about the mass murder of the Jews,” but there “to

mobilize our feelings.”34

The memorial is not without its critics. During the process of building the memorial,

Jewish community leader Michael May stated “The process was tortuous and… shameful,” and

that “The Jews in Berlin are slightly skeptical.”35 In the same article from The Washington Post,

Craig Whitlock explained that some critics complained that it was “too stark, too visible and too

32 “German Papers: A Monument to Germany’s Holocaust Grief,” in Der Spiegel, May 11, 2005,

accessed December 15, 2016, http://www.spiegel.de/international/german-papers-a-monument-to-germany-s-holocaust-grief-a-355504.html.

33 Ibid. 34 Ibid. 35 Craig Whitlock, “Going to the Heart of the Holocaust,” in Washington Post, May 7, 2005,

accessed February 17, 2017, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/06/AR2005050601318.html.

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painful a reminder for a people who had long confronted the Nazi past,” while others said “the

monument should also commemorate the estimated 5 million other European victims of the

Nazis, including Poles, political opponents, homosexuals and members of the Roma minority,

also known as Gypsies.”36 Carolin Emcke and Stefan Berg, in their article “Extracting Meaning

from Concrete Blocks” in Der Spiegel question the effectiveness of Eisenman’s design. In fact,

they believe that the underground information center, which was included against Eisenman’s

will, “make the memorial into a memorial.”37 They called the information center the “punch line

of history” since the horrendous crime is remembered underground, and ask the question “how

exactly can it [mortal fear] be triggered by this mass of concrete…?”38 Seven years later, Richard

Brody, an American journalist, provides an outside perspective to how the memorial is being

perceived outside of Germany. In his article “The Inadequacy of Berlin’s ‘Memorial to the

Murdered Jews of Europe,’” Brody stated that without its title, “it would be impossible to know

what the structure is meant to commemorate,” and that “The metaphorical possibilities are

varied—too much so. The play of imagination that the memorial provokes is piously generic:

something to do with death.”39 In short, critics of the memorial question the ambiguous meaning

of the concrete pillars, and do not find it appropriate for the Holocaust since it does not provide a

direct form of commemoration.

Marian Marzynski is a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, and spent most of his life

avoiding Germany. Marzynski decided to visit Berlin, the capital for reunified Germany, to

36 Ibid. 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid. 39 Richard Brody, “The Inadequacy of Berlin’s ‘Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.” In

The New Yorker, July 12, 2012, accessed November 24, 2016, http://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/the-inadequacy-of-berlins-memorial-to-the-murdered-jews-of-europe.

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investigate the construction of the memorial and recorded it through a PBS “Frontline” special

titled A Jew Among Germans. Marzynski was not impressed with the memorial from the start—

he criticized the location, describing it as a “no-man’s land” where Hitler’s government once

stood, where “circuses troops pitch their tents,” and called it the “ultimate apology” for the

crimes against the Jews. Additionally, the location conflicted with the modernization of Berlin,

which Marzynski described as being distracting.40

Beyond the location, Marzynski thought critically about how the memorial should be

designed, and sought out individuals who participated in both design processes. Christina Jacob-

Marks was the initial winner, and wanted to make the memorial engraved with Jewish names.

Marzynski says that no Jews would want to be again on a “German roster.” With every name, it

brought guilt and evoked German responsibility for the murders. Dieter Ronte was the director of

the Art Museum in Bonn and acted as one of the five judges. He believed that art was a vehicle

for remembering the Holocaust. Similarly, Genzine Weimiller believed the Holocaust should be

experienced through symbols, and that it is symbols that make the Holocaust personal.

Marzynski objected to this, and later states in the film: “My problem with art… is that is can

easily create an abstraction out of memory. Art and politics: a difficult medley.”41 He ends the

film by denying the notion that the memorial should act as an answer to the “memorial problem.”

Marzynski believes that Germans should feel a “good guilt,” where Germans would remember

the Holocaust, and not move on and forget. He states: “I wish that there would be no German

celebration for the end of World War II, no government-approved memorials, no finishing

40 Marian Marzynski, A Jew Among Germans (PBS “Frontline,” 2005), film, accessed February 9,

2017, https://vimeo.com/141651576. 41 Marian Marzynski, A Jew Among Germans.

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touches. My request to the German people would be that they create for themselves a concept of

good guilt, an honorable one, and within it a proud guardianship of memory.”42

Eisenman criticized the direct symbols many advocated for, and believed that the

Holocaust requires a memorial that steps away from the traditional forms of commemoration. In

an official statement he made for the memorial, Eisenman asserted that “The enormity and scale

of the horror of the Holocaust is such that any attempt to represent it by traditional means is

inevitably inadequate… Our memorial attempts to present a new idea of memory as distinct from

nostalgia… We can only know the past today through a manifestation in the present.”43 He

further explains that this is because nostalgia is specific to feeling sentimental about the past, and

memorials for nostalgia aims to create a living memory, or recreation of the past. To Eisenman,

the Holocaust cannot be remembered in nostalgia mode, for its horror ruptured the link between

nostalgia and memory. Therefore, remembering the Holocaust can only be a “living condition in

which the past remains active in the present.”44 In the memorial, Eisenman’s goal was to have no

goal and end in space—there is only the “living memory of the individual experience,” and focus

on the present.45

In his speech at the opening ceremony for the Holocaust Memorial, Eisenman said that

the memorial held two purposes. “First was to establish a permanent memory, to record what has

been in this capital city. Second, and perhaps more importantly, was to begin a debate with the

openendness that is proposed by such a project, allowing future generations to draw their own

42 Ibid. 43 The official website for the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, accessed December 15,

2016, http://www.stiftung-denkmal.de/en/memorials/the-memorial-to-the-murdered-jews-of-europe/field-of-stelae.html.

44 Eisenman, Blurred Zones, 314. 45 Eisenman, 314.

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conclusions. Not to direct them what to think, but to allow them to think.”46 Eisenman did not

believe that the Holocaust memorial would be a “final solution” for Germany, in the way of

trying to find the proper way to commemorate their past. Instead, he hoped to drive the

discussion further by creating a memorial that would allow future generations to interpret their

individual memories, instead of subscribing thoughtlessly to a single collective German memory.

Therefore, the “waving field of pillars” that Eisenman used for his memorial represent the

fluidity and variability in the memory of the Holocaust. Eisenman stated:

The project manifests the instability inherent in what seems to be a system, here a rational grid, and its potential of dissolution in time. It suggests that when a supposedly rational and ordered system grows too large and out of proportion to its intended purpose, it loses touch with human reason. It then begins to reveal the innate disturbances and potential for chaos in all systems of seeming order, the idea that all closed systems of a closed order are bound to fail.47

While the Kohl administration, the citizens’ group that organized the memorial, and the Berlin

Senate had visions for a national memorial that would put an end to the Holocaust memorial

“problem,” Eisenman designed a memorial that would extend the possibilities of

commemoration.

Helmut Kohl’s Legacy

The Holocaust Memorial started as Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s project. Eisenman

recognized Kohl as the driving force behind this memorial, and noted that Kohl had the final say

in many of the decisions for the memorial. In fact, Eisenman believed at one point that “the

project was dead,” because it seemed to be Kohl’s endeavor, and when he lost re-election in

46 “Prof. Peter Eisenman: Architekt,” in the official website for the Memorial to the Murdered

Jews of Europe, pdf, accessed December 17, 2016, 31. 47 Eisenman, Blurred Zones, 314.

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1998, plans for the memorial hit a lull.48 It was Kohl who overlooked Lea Rosh’s citizens’ group,

who boycotted the first design process, and worked with Eisenman on the design process up until

the end of his term in office. In Kohl’s eyes, the memorial was an investment, and very important

for not only his political career and memorial ambitions, but also for Germany and the

generations after reunification. Kohl recorded in his Tagebuch (diary) on June 25, 1999, the day

the memorial was decided:

On this day, I realize once again how much time I have invested in this extraordinarily important memorial… But both of us [Kohl and Heinz Ganlinksi] combined the honest effort to educate especially the young generation about the crimes of the National Socialists and to give normalcy to the social life of our fellow citizens of Jewish heritage… I myself have participated in the annual discussion on the erection of the memorial with great commitment… I intervened massively when the first drafts for the Holocaust memorial were available because, from my point of view, they were completely unacceptable. After several talks with the American architect Peter Eisenman and long reflection, I have let myself be convinced by his ideas and accepted the revised plans.49

What is evident in this entry is that Kohl saw this memorial as a personal project, that he saw it

as important for German normality, and that he was integral to the completion and decision for

the design. In Kohl’s eyes, the memorial would act as the solution to Germany’s memorial

problem.

Compared to Kohl’s previous commemorative endeavors, the Holocaust Memorial is

very abstract, taking on a new style and inclusivity. Kohl was the driving force behind

Bitburg/Bergen-Belsen and the Neue Wache, while the Holocaust Memorial was controlled by a

citizen’s committee, consisting of historians, artists, and architects. At this point, Kohl had

48 Peter Eisenman: Building Germany’s Holocaust Memorial, directed by Michael Blackwood

(Michael Blackwood Productions, 2005), film. 49 Helmut Kohl, Mein Tagebuch, 1998-2000 (Munich: Droemer, 2000), 75-77. The text here has

been translated from its original German by the author of this thesis.

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learned that organizing and designing memorials on his own was more divisive than inclusive.

Therefore, by placing the responsibility into the hands of the citizens group, Kohl signaled that

German citizens had a significant role in what the memorial would consist of, and it would be the

product of an inclusive selection process, instead of being controlled by the former chancellor of

West Germany. This is not to say that Kohl had a lack of control of the project—evident from

the entry above, the failure of the 1995 competition, and his involvement with Eisenman, Kohl

held a very integral role in the progression of the project. The main difference this time around is

that it was not just Kohl, but also the Bundestag and German citizens. This can be credited to the

probability of a higher public buy-in for this memorial. Initiated and controlled by a citizens

group, there was higher participation from a broad political and international spectrum, with

various professionals, such as historians, artists, politicians, and architects. In the beginning,

Kohl, leader of the CDU, led the project, and it was opened under the chancellorship of Gerhard

Schröder, the leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), representing the broad

political involvement with this project.

Additionally, the abstract design contradicts the literal representation of victimhood that

the Neue Wache possesses. Instead of adopting artwork to suit the needs of a German World

War II memorial, the Holocaust Memorial is original, and specifically designed for a memorial

aimed to represent the Holocaust. While Eisenman was very adamant about making the

Holocaust Memorial an individual experience instead of creating a collective narrative, the

abstractness also benefited Kohl’s political ambitions. Without literal representation of the past,

East Germans and West Germans alike could recollect a personal experience at a memorial that

was built on a location that straddles where the former Berlin Wall used to be. In this case,

symbolism is lacking in the memorial itself, which benefits Kohl’s hope for creating a memorial

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for a reunified Germany—anyone can visit and interpret an individual experience, disregarding

ideologies or origins, in the center of the new capital of reunified Germany. However, the

location is significant within Berlin’s political and memory landscape, in relation to both the

Nazi past, and the Cold War.

Did Kohl and the Bundestag solve the memorial problem? That is still debatable; but

when Eisenman’s design was settled on, there was hope that the Holocaust Memorial had

achieved a degree of closure. The German Bundestag announced its resolution concerning the

memorial on June 25, 1999. The resolution stated the following:

With the memorial we intend to honour (sic) the murdered victims, keep alive the memory of these inconceivable events in German history; admonish all future generations to never again violate human rights, to defend the democratic constitutional state at all times, to secure equality before the law for all people and to resist all forms of dictatorship and regimes based on violence. The memorial will be a central monument and place of remembrance, connected to other memorial centres (sic) and institutions within and beyond Berlin. It cannot replace the historical sites of terror where atrocities were committed.50

What can be understood from this statement are two main points: 1) that the memorial would act

as a lesson, and bring a “never again” attitude to the German people; and, 2) complement the

other memorials dedicated for the Holocaust and World War II, most arguably the Neue Wache,

while being the centerpiece of German Holocaust and war memory. Wolfgang Thierse, former

president of the German Parliament, and originally from East Germany, was interviewed in the

documentary Peter Eisenman: Building Germany’s Holocaust Memorial and stated:

Parliament has made the important and correct decision to build in the center of the capital, a reminder of the worst crime in German history. It is an appropriate decision and I find it important that this

50 “Resolution by the German Bundestag of 25 June 1999 concerning the Memorial to the

Murdered Jews of Europe,” in the official website for the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (Stiftung Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas), accessed February 9, 2017, http://www.stiftung-denkmal.de/en/foundation/founding-chronology-of-the-foundation/beschluss.html.

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decision is actually realized. Through this memorial we show the publicly that we are not avoiding the dark passages from our history, and that we only choose the pleasant chapters from it. We’re acknowledging here that the memory of the Holocaust and the Nazi crimes are part of the political, moral, and cultural identity. Not in the sense of having a fixation with the past, but as an obligation to the present and to the future.51

The idea of confronting the past and moving forward is reminiscent of the politics of

reunification, where it was necessary for East and West Germans to reach a compromise not only

ideologically, but also in recollecting the past. Therefore, there is no doubt that one of the central

political aims behind this memorial was to reinforce the cultural and political reunification of

Germany. Wolfgang Thierse stated at the opening ceremony for the Holocaust Memorial: “The

decision to build the memorial in Berlin was one of the last resolutions passed by the Bundestag

in Bonn before its move. It was the decision to build the first joint commemorative project of

reunited Germany, and an avowal that this united Germany acknowledges its history, namely by

remembering the greatest crime of its history in its capital city, at its very center.”52 Again, the

memorial not only represented a larger issue of commemorating the Holocaust, and Kohl’s

contentious confrontations with the past, but also with the idea of reunification and rebuilding

the landscape of Berlin post-reunification.

The “Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe” is one memorial within the greater

memory landscape of Berlin. Reunification in 1990 initiated subsequent adjustments and

rebuilding of Berlin in an attempt to establish a ritual space, or site of memory, in order to enact

a unified German national memory. Helmut Kohl initiated this transformation, and started with

51 Peter Eisenman: Building Germany’s Holocaust Memorial, directed by Michael Blackwood

(Michael Blackwood Productions, 2005), film. 52 Wolfgang Thierse, “Rede zur Eröffnung des ‘Denkmals für die ermordeten Juden Europas,’ 10.

Mai 2005,” translated by Thomas Dunlap, accessed February 17, 2017, http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/docpage.cfm?docpage_id=3569.

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the Neue Wache memorial, dedicated on November 14, 1993. For Kohl, the Neue Wache

memorial would act as a central monument to all the victims of war and tyranny, and act as a

common site for the unification of the German people, especially after four decades of division

throughout the Cold War. With the Neue Wache’s relative success, Kohl used the Holocaust

memorial as a continuation of creating an official collective memory of the Holocaust, while

offsetting the controversy from the Neue Wache. Along the same reasoning, Kohl believed the

Holocaust memorial would serve as a crucial step for the normalization of Germany, by

providing a powerful symbol that would enable Germany’s social and political unity and

enhancing Germany’s credentials abroad. The Holocaust Memorial was another attempt to create

a site that had the aim to create German normalcy by having a single Holocaust memorial. Kohl

used the Holocaust Memorial to supplement to critiques that resulted from the Neue Wache,

while establishing a unified German narrative. And similar to the Neue Wache, The Holocaust

Memorial would serve as an official memorial for the Holocaust, while normalizing Germany.

The monument has been criticized for its inability to properly convey the scope of the

Holocaust’s horrors, and the abstraction conceals the complexities of human emotion. Eisenman

believed that his memorial is the perfect representation of the Holocaust, since the event reached

horrors that shattered the traditional form of remembrance. Therefore, his concept for a “waving

field of pillars” shows the fluidity of individual memory, and avoids the dangers of having a

collective memory—a struggle Germany dealt with since World War II.

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CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION

In January 2017 during a rally in Dresden, senior state party leader for the political party

Alternative for Germany (AfD) Björn Höcke declared that “German history is handled as rotten

and made to look ridiculous,” referring to the guilt associated with the Holocaust and Nazi war

crimes.1 The crowd responded with enthusiasm, chanting “Deutschland, Deutschland,” a

nationalistic behavior that is typically shunned in German politics. Höcke challenged the

collective national guilt, which has restrained German politics, and claimed Germans were “the

only people in the world to plant a monument of shame in the heart of its capital,” a direct

reference to the Holocaust Memorial.2 Höcke’s critique created a stir in Germany by challenging

Germany’s atonement for the Holocaust, and used nationalistic language that made many

concerned about the rising AfD.

Multiple political leaders and communities in Germany spoke out against Höcke and his

statements. Sigmar Gabriel, leader of the Social Democrats and Germany’s vice chancellor, took

to Facebook and shared an image of a banner across an image of Höcke reading: “To remember

the millions of victims of the Nazis is no weakness. Baiting the helpless to promote yourself is

weakness.”3 Additionally, Jürgen Kasek, the chairman of the Green Party for the state of Saxony,

voiced his disgust through Twitter, and called for the speech to be checked for possible

violations of anti-incitement laws. Kasek accused Höcke of using language that was “in the style

of national socialism.”4 Charlotte Knobloch, former president of the Central Council of Jews in

Germany, in a statement called the comments “deeply deplorable and fully unacceptable.”

1 Amanda Taub, and Max Fisher, “Germany’s Extreme Right Challenges Guilt Over Nazi Past,”

in The New York Times, January 18, 2017, accessed February 20, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/world/europe/germany-afd-alternative-bjorn-hocke.html?_r=0.

2 Taub and Fisher, “Germany’s Extreme Right Challenges Guilt Over Nazi Past.” 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid.

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Knobloch told the newspaper Stimme Heilbronn that Höcke’s speech was “unbearable agitation.”

She warned that “the AfD is poisoning the political culture and social debate in Germany,” and

that Höcke is aiming to exclude, ostracize and deprive certain social groups.5 More recently,

Thomas Opperman, chairman of the Social Democrats (SPD) said Höcke is a “Nazi,” and is

“Someone who wants to resuscitate the ethnic ideology of the National Socialists has no place in

a democratic society.”6

Almost a week after Höcke’s speech, and four days before the International Holocaust

Remembrance Day on January 27, the AfD announced that Höcke would be disciplined, but not

expelled, for the panic that resulted from his statements.7 As support for the AfD continued to

fall after Höcke’s disparaging of the Holocaust Memorial, the AfD leaders initiated proceedings

to expel Höcke from the party. A spokesman for the AfD stated that the party conducted a “legal

appraisal and political assessment” of Höcke’s speech, and decided that he should not represent

the AfD any longer.8 Currently sitting at around ten percent of the Bundestag, many are

concerned about the extreme-right party, being the largest right-wing party in Germany since the

National Socialists. This incident demonstrates that Germans still question how to properly

commemorate the Nazi past, and how to confront its history is still engrained in German politics

5 Hans-Jürgen Deglow, “Charlotte Knobloch wirft AfD-Politiker ‘völkishe Hetze’ vor,” in

Stimme Heilbronn, January 18, 2017, accessed February 23, 2017, http://www.stimme.de/suedwesten/nachrichten/pl/Charlotte-Knobloch-wirft-AfD-Politiker-voelkische-Hetze-vor;art19070,3780041.

6 “Leading German politician calls AfD’s Höcke a ‘Nazi,’” in Deutsche Welle, February 25, 2017, accessed February 25, 2017, http://www.dw.com/en/leading-german-politician-calls-afds-h%C3%B6cke-a-nazi/a-37714558.

7 Alison Smale, “German Party Won’t Expel Rightist Who Assailed Holocaust Apology,” in The New York Times, January 23, 2017, accessed February 20, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/23/world/europe/bjorn-hocke-alternative-for-germany.html?emc=eta1&_r=0.

8 “Germany’s right-wing AfD seeks to expel state leader over Holocaust remarks,” in Deutsche Welle, February 13, 2017, accessed March 19, 2018, http://www.dw.com/en/germanys-right-wing-afd-seeks-to-expel-state-leader-over-holocaust-remarks/a-37525199.

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and society. Almost twelve years after the dedication, the Holocaust Memorial is still debated

and criticized—Höcke’s sentiments proves that there is no “final solution” to Germany’s

memorial problem.

The Holocaust Memorial has also received a unique sort of attention through the forum of

social media, through platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. German satirist Shahak Shapira,

who is also a descendent of a Jewish Holocaust survivor, started a project called “Yolocaust,”

where he photo-shopped selfies taken at the memorial into photos from concentration camps.

The website, which has since been expunged of the photos, was designed so a viewer could

hover their cursor over the selfie, which would strip away the background of the memorial and

replace it with scenes from concentration camps, placing the young selfie-takers amongst the

emaciated and dead bodies. Shapira was motivated by witnessing the actions of individuals at the

site, such as jumping, juggling, or posing within the stelae, and posting the images onto social

media with questionable captions such as, “jumping on dead Jews @ Holocaust Memorial.”9

In a BBC News article, Shapira stated that “I felt like people needed to know what they

were actually doing, or how others might interpret what they were doing,” and that “The

controversy comes from the actions of the people.”10 Additionally, Shapira said his project was

9 Sited from www.yolocaust.de, the official website for this project. The images are no longer

available, but Shapira left a letter to the internet, along with select reactions to the project with a wide spectrum of responses. Shapira made a deal with the selfie-takers featured on the website, saying that they must apologize for their behavior to have the photo removed. The fact that the photos are no longer available can be taken as a positive sign. For more information, see www.yolocaust.de, or the following articles for some of the saved images: “Yolocaust: a satirist’s challenge to Holocaust tourist behavior,” in Euronews, January 19, 2017, accessed March 7, 2017, http://www.euronews.com/2017/01/19/yolocaust-a-satirist-s-challenge-to-holocaust-tourist-behaviour, and Joel Gunter, “’Yolocaust’: How should you behave at a Holocaust memorial?” in BBC News, January 20, 2017, accessed March 7, 2017, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38675835. There is also a video that includes an interview with Shapira, which can be accessed through youtube. See: “Holocaust + Selfie Culture= ‘Yolocaust,’” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjjV_X5re4g.

10 Joel Gunter, “’Yolocaust’: How should you behave at a Holocaust memorial?” in BBC News, January 20, 2017, accessed March 7, 2017, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38675835.

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motivated in part by concern in a threat to the lessons of the Holocaust, and Höcke reinforced

this sentiment with his statement just days before the “Yolocaust” website went public.11 While

some responses praised Shapira for widening discussion on appropriate behavior at Holocaust

memorials, some disagreed with this tactic, including Peter Eisenman. In a BBC News article,

Eisenman stated that he thought the website was “terrible.” He further stated that “People have

been jumping around on those pillars forever. They've been sunbathing, they've been having

lunch there and I think that's fine.”12 Eisenman compares the memorial to a Catholic church,

saying that “it’s a meeting place,” and that “A memorial is an everyday occurrence, it is not

sacred ground… there are no dead people under my memorial. My idea was to allow as many

people of different generations, in their own ways, to deal or not deal with being in that place…

but putting those bodies there, in the pictures, that’s a little much if you ask me. It isn’t a burial

ground, there are no people under there.”13

While Höcke’s criticism represents the ensuing debate on how to properly commemorate

the Holocaust within Germany, Shapira’s project is telling of how the public responds to sites

such as the Holocaust Memorial, and how younger generations remember the Holocaust through

commemorative landscapes. This is not to say the select selfie-takers Shapira used for

“Yolocaust” is representative of the entire generation—these are obvious extremes, and the some

of the individuals show a degree of disrespect for the site. Despite this, it represents the wider

question or concern of how the generations that are further removed from the Holocaust interact

with sites of memory, and what is the “proper” behavior at sites commemorating millions of

deaths.

11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid.

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Charlotte Knobloch believes that penalizing visitors for improper behavior is essential for

fostering “historical awareness and sense of responsibility” in Germany, and the German

“democratic powers must emphasize the value and necessity of a culture of remembrance and

political consciousness.”14 When speaking about a man who was fined 1500 euro ($1579) for

urinating on one of the stelae in the Holocaust Memorial, Knobloch believed that the trial was

necessary for not only legal purposes, but also to expose the lack of historical awareness and

thoughtlessness within the global community when it comes to the Holocaust and

commemorative sites.15

These present-day issues prove that Germans still struggle with how to address its Nazi

past; and the intent of this thesis has been to examine one piece of the larger issue of German

postwar remembrance and commemoration, specifically through the example of Chancellor

Helmut Kohl and his attempts to create a normalized, unifying national memory of the Second

World War and the Holocaust. Throughout the Cold War, both West and East Germany grappled

with the multiple and conflicting legacies of the war, influenced by the political divisions

inherent in the anti-capitalist and anti-communist sentiments that existed in the postwar world. In

both in the lead up to and after reunification in 1990, Kohl faced the challenge of trying to

establish a proper memorial site, untainted by the scars of the Nazi past. Kohl’s endeavors prove

that German collective memory is malleable, political, and be highly volatile, eliciting strong

emotional responses from the public. In an attempt to achieve normalcy and cohesiveness in

Holocaust and World War II commemoration, Kohl used sites of memory to mirror his political

14 Nastassja Shtrauchler, “Holocaust memorial urination trial reveals ‘lack of historical

awareness,” in Deutsche Welle, March 2, 2017, accessed March 7, 2017, http://www.dw.com/en/holocaust-memorial-urination-trial-reveals-lack-of-historical-awareness/a-37779877.

15 Ibid.

111

goals, while trying to unify West and East German narratives and techniques for commemorating

the Holocaust. This resulted in the construction of sites after Bitburg, for Kohl saw the memorial

challenge as an important obstacle for Germany to achieve a respected place in the global

community, unburdened by the improper confrontation of the guilt associated with the war and

destruction in the twentieth century.

By examining the three leading examples of Kohl’s memory politics, I have

demonstrated that all the sites—Bitburg, the Neue Wache, and the Holocaust Memorial—are

representative of a selective memory Kohl tried to propagate, where the collective identity is one

that represents German unity and normalization as a modern nation. Bitburg initiated Kohl’s

memorial legacy, while the Neue Wache represents his first attempt to establish a site that could

be used by both Germanys to remember the past, and find closure with the wartime trauma.

Finally, Kohl envisioned the Holocaust Memorial as representing the crown-jewel to his

memorial struggle—in the newly established capital of reunified Germany, having a large

memorial in the center of Berlin would allow Germany to demonstrate definitively its

commitment to fostering the memory of the Holocaust.

The three sites also demonstrate Kohl’s long-term changes in vision and tactics in

memory politics over time. Bitburg was a hard-learned lesson for Kohl in terms of how to

address German sites of memory, where he used both the cemetery in Bitburg and Bergen-

Belsen for political gain, while equalizing both SS soldiers and Holocaust victims. While this

matched with his aim to reconfigure national identity by emphasizing German suffering, the

blatant forgetting of the past proved to be detrimental to both Kohl and Reagan. Moving on from

Bitburg, Kohl realized that Germany needed a “clean” and usable site of memory to address the

past. In other words, Kohl need a location free from the scars of the Nazi past.

112

With the Neue Wache memorial, Kohl’s intentions focused on domestic politics—he

wanted to establish a site that West and East Germans could visit for a common identity in

history. The site itself is drenched in German history. The building has existed as a memorial site

for the Prussian empire, the Weimar Republic, the National Socialists, the GDR, and then

reunified Germany. Additionally, the sculpture inside is from the famous German artist, Käthe

Kollwitz, whose experience with war, death, and grief resonated with Kohl. The memorial was

dedicated to all victims of war and tyranny, which equalized all those afflicted by Nazi terror.

Kohl tried to de-center the Holocaust in German identity by emphasizing collective suffering.

This too was controversial, but to a lesser degree compared to Bitburg. Unlike Bitburg, the Neue

Wache became a long-term achievement, becoming integrated into the political and memory

landscape of Berlin.

Despite the eventual success of the Neue Wache, the controversial opening of the

memorial forced Kohl to realize that suppressing the Holocaust in German memory only

complicated the problem, rather than subduing it. Therefore, while the Holocaust Memorial had

the same political aim of creating a unifying German memory, it was also designed to address

international audiences, controlled by a citizens’ group, and took on a more abstract

representation of the Holocaust. While not definitive, it can be argued that the Holocaust

Memorial’s design—both in the process and the finished product—is a result of the lessons Kohl

learned from the Neue Wache and Bitburg. Instead of using literal representations of the past,

through cemeteries, concentration camps, and sculptures based on Christian motifs, the

Holocaust was designed to allow any generation, from any origin, to remember the Holocaust

within their own identify. Instead of finding a common identity through a structured narrative,

the Holocaust Memorial allows Germans to find a common past through individual narratives.

113

This thesis contributes to the wider discussion on how Germany addressed its past by

examining how Kohl attempted to overcome the split in narrative between West and East

Germans. By using locations and symbols that would represent unity and a shared history, the

Neue Wache and the Holocaust Memorial were designed to overcome the Cold War battles that

existed in commemoration, and achieve locations that all Germans could visit that would not

elicit divisiveness in memory. The success of the Neue Wache and the Holocaust Memorial is

still up for debate—as will most topics Holocaust related in Germany, the effectiveness (or

necessity) of such memorials is highly criticized. This thesis has aimed to elucidate Kohl’s goal

through establishing national memorials—he was searching for, and seeking to create, a unified

and usable past for late-twentieth and twenty-first century Germany.

Today, the Neue Wache continues to be the official monument for World War II in

Germany, and the Holocaust Memorial is the official memorial for the Holocaust, both integrated

into the commemorative and historical landscape of Berlin. From this fact alone, one can

conclude that Kohl was successful in his memorial endeavor. Additionally, both locations

continue to function as “live” sites of memory, with foreign dignitaries, Germans, and

international citizens visiting both locations. Again, the accurate representation of the Holocaust

and German suffering, and the success of a unified narrative is debatable. And how a monument

resonates with the viewer is entirely subjective. Despite the criticism that the Holocaust

Memorial currently receives, and criticism the Neue Wache once received, because of Kohl

Germany possesses official sites of memory that commemorate the Holocaust and World War II.

That is a legacy and an accomplishment that cannot be denied.

114

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