Unsurprisingly, the German government is fudging on reparations over the 1904 genocide. But onlookers expected it to be more forthcoming because of its tradition of Vergangenheitsbewältigung.

Only (IMO), this misreads how the German memory concept sits with reparations (thread) https://twitter.com/philipoltermann/status/1293496482033786882

Thing is, reparations have never been the main element of what Vergangenheitsbewältigung is. Yes, obviously, reparations were paid to the state of Israel and then to certain categories of survivors. Key in the intl politics of reinvention of West Germany. 2/15

As they were also key in the initiation of dialogue with international Jewish actors and organisations, it then becomes a truism that reparations for the Holocaust paved the way for the invention of Vergangenheitsbewältigung two decades later. Only that... not entirely. 3/15

Coz let’s all think about the debates around Vergangenheitsbewältigung (I’ll call it Aufarbeitung from now on - fewer characters!). Whether you talk about the first couple of controversies about responsibility (yes Jaspers, looking at you!) or even representations of guilt...4/15

Aufarbeitung is about how to live with the guilt as Germans. It turns into an intergenerational conversation in the 1960s and stays this way. In other words: Aufarbeitung is a concept used to recreate (West) German society and move forward. 5/15

So it’s collective recognition of the enormity of the crime committed and suggests that through constant introspection and acknowledgement of “responsibility”, a new generation of West Germans will be able 2 return to being political agents (remember the context of the 1950s)6/15

So this is very philosophical, right? What’s the point? And isn’t “responsibility” about reparations?

Well, not quite. 7/15

Thing about the first generation of Aufarbeitung: they come of age after reparations. They are not really that interested in whether these reparations are appropriate and really “repair” the crime (what Jewish actors talk about!). For West Germans, they’re a fait-accompli. 8/15

So they don’t need to talk about reparations, but also (and that’s the main point here!) they don’t need to talk to the victims or their descendants. There are very few Jews left in Germany and Jews elsewhere really don’t care that much about German reinvention. 9/15

So Aufarbeitung becomes mainly a German-German debate about the “German soul”. I’m simplifying for the sake of twitter, but the main thing is: it is not born out of any sense of repairing the damage to victims, but in a very limited and national conversation. 10/15

The rise of Aufarbeitung therefore did not amplify voices of Jews in Germany. It wasn’t about antisemitism as such, and Jews still had to deal with much of that (just there were so few of them that it was pretty invisible before a couple of 1980s small controversies). 11/15

Try to contrast this with memory debates in France or elsewhere, which confront (descendants of) perpetrators with (descendants of) victims who now share the same space and you realise why it’s... different. 12/15

And yet, I’d argue there’s still some good reason why observers find Aufarbeitung a model to borrow from, even though it’s no panacea for fighting either racism or really repairing historical wrongs. 13/15

Through the introduction of concepts like introspection into the political discourse, it can create a vocabulary that counters some of the nationalist egregiousness we see elsewhere. Again, it’s not bullet-proof and creates a lot of smugness. 14/15

But on the plus side: would the colonial reparation debate in Germany have gone ANYWHERE without it? I don’t think so. Aufarbeitung is still something that one can mobilise to go forward, just knowing its limitations. End