Witnessing Totalitarianism: Fascism, Communism, and their Aftermath in German-language…

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The memory of National Socialism has been as mainstay of post-1990 German politics and culture. However, at least with the end of the Cold War, national German memory culture has also been challenged by non-national perspectives, especially by the necessity to commemorate the entanglement of National Socialism with Communist totalitarianisms and to situate German memory culture within a Central and Eastern European context. To engage with this tension, we will read theoretical texts that continue to inform current memory debates (Arendt, Mitscherlich), recent social sciences approaches to transgenerational transmissions of psycho-social sequelae of perpetration and complicity (Welzer & al., Mihai, Gobodo-Madikizela), and literary texts that have brought transgenerational transmissions into the focus of public attention (Bernhard, Sebald), in order then to focus on contemporary German-language texts that negotiate the difficulties of commemorating totalitarianisms.