Geschichtspolitik: Towards a Responsible Politics of the Past

In July, during a press conference following an all-night negotiation in Brussels on the Greece bailout, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was asked to comment on the French minister of the economy’s comparison of the harsh conditionality of the Greece deal with the Versailles Treaty. Merkel’s answer was curt: ​“I do not engage in historical comparisons, in particular when I have not drawn them up myself.” This is vintage Merkel irony. But historical comparisons are all the rage at the moment. Most popular is the ​“Munich” comparison and the related charge of ​“appeasement.” This year, the Munich analogy has been used, for example, against those unwilling to supply the Ukrainian government with weapons. As Brookings foreign policy analyst Jeremy Shapiro quipped, ​“On Twitter, it’s always 1938.”

The historian Margaret MacMillan once argued that ​“the past can be used for almost anything you want to do in the present.” History does not simply exist, as something objective, distant and fixed, ready to be analyzed dispassionately by professional historians. Rather, the past is subjective and malleable.

How key players of the present interpret the past determines the identity of a country, the basic values driving its domestic and foreign policies, and its place in the world. This is a highly political process. The German language has a term for this process: Geschichtspolitik, which means ​“politics of history” or ​“politics of the past,” phrases that are used interchangeably in this essay.

Unsurprisingly, Geschichtspolitik has great importance in Germany. The nation views itself as having a singular responsibility due to the millions of people killed in World War II and for a genocide of industrial scale. In addition, unified Germany engages in the politics of the past with regard to the communist dictatorship of the German Democratic Republic. Indeed, the debate on what German history means for the present is very much alive. Consider the key foreign policy debates in Germany this year: on the war in Ukraine and Germany’s relationship with Russia; on Greece and the future of the euro and the European project; on the influx of refugees from the Middle East and how this will change Germany; on intervention and the use of force in Syria. Most recently, Merkel had to respond to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assertion that a Palestinian leader had convinced Hitler to exterminate the Jews, rather than to expel them.

All key global powers have their unique triggers and reference points in their respective politics of history.

Debates in the United States on the legacy of segregation and racism arose again this year during the Ferguson riots. The country also engages in regular debates on the legacies of the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, the abuse of US power, the meaning of American exceptionalism and its justifications, and whether and how the US can manage a peaceful geopolitical transition in the context of a rising China.

Brazil debates its legacy of colonialism (including persistent racism, which, some argue, Brazilian elites have not faced up to) and, more recently, the military dictatorship. President Dilma Rousseff is herself a victim of torture, and there are lively debates on whether she was a terrorist or a legitimate opposition fighter. These debates flared again when a National Truth Commission released a report on abuses under the military dictatorship last year.

India also discusses its legacy of colonialism. In addition, it debates the legacies of partition as well as what kind of country it is and the role of Hindu nationalism in this self-imagination (and whether, for example, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s reading of history is inclusive to the extent that non-Hindu Indians have a place in it).

China’s politics of the past often uses its subjection to Western and Japanese humiliation and aggression as a key reference point. Less so does it discuss the millions of victims of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution under Mao’s rule. The current government also discourages an open discussion of what it calls the 1989 ​“Tiananmen incident.” Recently, President Xi Jinping demanded a ban on textbooks that transport ​“Western values” – a particular use of the politics of the past by the government. In line with this, Xi also calls for the arts to serve a particular role in the politics of history: ​“Contemporary arts must also take patriotism as a theme, leading the people to establish and maintain correct views of history, nationality, statehood and culture while firmly building up the integrity and confidence of the Chinese people.”

In Russia this year, the politics of the past took center stage during the 9^th of May parade, in remembrance of the country’s victory in WWII and the fact that the Soviet Union paid the highest price in terms of lives lost (a fact often overlooked in the West). There exist questions of how the country should deal with Stalinism’s millions of victims and the legacy of the Soviet Union. Was the peaceful demise of the Soviet Union a miracle of world history that should be celebrated, or was it the greatest imaginable tragedy, as Putin has suggested? The politics of the past also comes to life in the ethno-nationalist arguments on whether the annexation of Crimea and the intervention in Eastern Ukraine were justified.

These examples demonstrate the centrality of the politics of the past in the geopolitical game between a still-dominant US, a rising China, other rising powers such as India and Brazil, and a declining but very vocal Russia. Getting the politics of the past right is an important challenge in this game and a key determinant of regional and global peace and conflict in this century. 

A Responsible Politics of the Past: Key Principles

A framework for a responsible politics of the past should be inspired by a ​“modern” enlightenment approach, in the best sense of the term. At the same time, we need to beware of ​“anti-modern” approaches to the politics of the past.

Modernity in the spirit of enlightenment means questioning – the conviction that we can and should know everything through questioning. Modernity means the decline of the old – that is, previously unquestioned myths and authorities. It means the dismantling of traditions. In the context of the politics of the past, modernity means radical questioning of all historical narratives. This is empowering for individuals, but it also creates great uncertainty, not least for the post-traditional political rule that is, to use a German term, begründungspflichtig, or ​“subject to giving reasons for the rule.”

It is difficult to base political rule upon uncertainty and the dismantling of tradition alone. This is why modernity’s preferred form of political organization, the nation-state, engages in the ​“invention of tradition.” The nation itself is an ​“imagined community,” held together by narratives explaining why individuals, who do not know each other for the most part, form a community. The German sociologist Ulrich Beck thus calls the modern nation-state and nationalism ​“halbierte Moderne,” or ​“modernity cut in half.”

For some, mild nationalism is not enough because the pressures imposed by modernity – the constant questioning and the need to ​“provide reasons” for rule – are too high. Therefore, there is always the anti-modern temptation to deal with uncertainty through what Beck calls ​“hergestellte Fraglosigkeit,” which literally translates into ​“fabricated questionlessness” (the official translation is ​“constructed certitude”). Anti-modern approaches to the politics of the past do away with the need to ask questions. They present readymade answers with regard to a country’s place in the world, its historical calling and rights, and who is right and who is wrong, who is an enemy and who is a friend. Anti-modern approaches put the past in the service of one party, one ideology or one leader.

There are a number of practices that exemplify anti-modern versus modern approaches to the politics of the past.

Pushing Away or Suppression vs. Open Confrontation of History

“Pushing away” is something that comes especially naturally if you are the perpetrator of unspeakable crimes. Germany’s initial reaction after WWII is a clear example of pushing away. In West Germany, German actions in World War II (including the genocide of Jews) were not discussed in schools. There was mostly silence in families, and the focus was on physically rebuilding a completely destroyed Germany. If the subject was discussed at all, blame was limited to a few culprits: Hitler and top Nazi leaders. In East Germany, the state presented itself as belonging to the tradition of communist resistance to fascism – as heirs of the ​“good side,” in other words. Both manners of pushing away are examples of hergestellte Fraglosigkeit, of not allowing questions.

In West Germany, this only changed when the younger generation of the 1960s began to pose questions to its parents’ generation. And only in 1985, 40 years after the end of the war, did German President Richard von Weizsäcker give the speech that embodied what had by then become the dominant approach of the younger generation: clearly stating that May 8, the day of German capitulation, was ​“a day of liberation.” He also stressed that Germans born after 1945 did not have ​“any guilt but a responsibility” to draw lessons from what happened between 1933 and 1945. The 1985 von Weizsäcker speech offered Germans a model of engaging in the politics of the past in a responsible manner.

There are other examples of pushing away or suppressing the past. Particularly fascinating is contemporary China. While President Xi uses some of the political slogans of the Mao era, it is not publicly encouraged to discuss the millions of dead resulting from the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.

Apology and Reconciliation vs. Revisionism

German Chancellor Willy Brandt falling on his knees in Warsaw. French President François Mitterrand and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl holding hands to remember the victims of World Wars I and II. These are powerful symbols of apology and reconciliation. Apology from representatives of the perpetrating nation is a precondition for reconciliation. Of course, reconciliation needs to involve not only top leadership but also broad parts of society, especially the younger generation (e.g., through exchange programs of the kind that exist between France and Germany and, more recently, between Germany and Poland).

An area where apology and reconciliation do not quite work is Japan – China relations. The Chinese view the Japanese apology as half-hearted. But even if the apology were to be perceived as whole-hearted, it is unclear whether many on the Chinese side have any interest in engaging in reconciliation.

A Single Conclusion vs. Competing Interpretations

An anti-modern understanding allows for just one interpretation of the past, often leading to the conviction that a country has a particular right to a territory or to a particular role in the world (“a place in the sun”).

A modern pluralist understanding allows for competition: there is not just one, but competing interpretations of the past. Germany, again, is a powerful example. Its phrase ​“never again” can have very different meanings: one the one hand, a pacifist commitment to ​“never again” take up arms and bring misery to the rest of the world; on the other hand, to ​“never again” allow mass atrocities to happen, which can lead to calls for political and military intervention. Both narratives are strong in Germany – and in competition.

In the US, there is debate on the meaning of American exceptionalism. But exceptionalism – that a country has an exceptional calling or mission, or even exceptional rights – is in and of itself a problematic notion. It is a monumental task to reconcile US exceptionalism with the exceptionalism of a rising China – this is, in fact, one of the biggest geopolitical challenges of the 21^st century. Both players will need to adjust their politics of the past to make peaceful coexistence possible over the medium and long terms.

The Politics of the Past as a Civic Duty

The politics of the past is an ongoing process; it is nothing a society ever gets done with. Engaging in the politics of the past should not be seen as a burden from which a country and its citizens should try to liberate themselves. Some Germans seem to view the politics of the past as a millstone hung around their necks, a constraint. To the contrary, when the politics of the past is done right, the experience can be liberating and uplifting – and due to changes in the public sphere, it is becoming less of an exclusive elite business. Citizen contributions are no longer limited to a letter to the editor or a statement in a public assembly; through social media, everyone can participate in a visible manner.

French historian Ernest Renan famously said that the nation is a ​“Plebiscite de tous le jours,” a ​“daily plebiscite/​referendum” by all citizens. This needs to be reenacted at all times. In the same way, the politics of the past is a permanent civic duty, in need of constant reenactment.

Engaging in the civic duty of a responsible politics of the past needs to be done not just nationally, but also transnationally. This can mean exchanges; joint commissions of historians to draft textbooks used in schools, as experimented with in the Balkans; and initiatives like the recently established Historians Without Borders.

In a democracy, constant engagement in the politics of the past needs to be built on dialogue – especially with each new generation and with new arrivals to a country in increasingly multiethnic and multicultural societies.

Even for democracies, providing the framework for a responsible politics of the past is very difficult. The general weaknesses that plague pluralist liberal democracies also affect the politics of the past. This includes the fact that in a pluralist society, some interests have a hard time organizing and making their voices heard. For example, in Germany, this led to certain victims of the Nazi era (e.g., Sinti and Roma, homosexuals) to not being publicly recognized in the dominant narrative for a long time.

At the same time, the politics of the past can fall prey to populist mobilization. Right-wing populists and ultra-nationalists, for example, have an easy time appealing to a sense of victimhood. One good example of this is present-day Hungary. In democracies, the politics of the past depends on responsible elite behavior. This concerns political as well as broader media elites.

It is much harder to imagine that autocracies can provide the framework for a responsible politics of the past. They lack the space for open contestation and questioning, the functioning pluralism that is part and parcel of a healthy politics of the past. That does not mean that there is zero possibility for contestation in authoritarian systems. In China, for example, you have ultra-nationalists agitating against what they see as too soft a line by the communist government vis-à-vis Japan and the US. But there will never be an open dialogue and open contestation within an authoritarian system like the Chinese one on the politics of the past (especially regarding the actions of the communist party during the Mao era). Without these checks and balances, the best hope one can have is that authoritarian elites do not fall prey to populist and ultra-nationalist temptations.

Many professional historians reject the concept of the politics of the past. They do not like to see the object of their academic work – history – subjected to cheap politics. But whatever the misgivings of historians, the politics of the past will not go away. It is an inevitable fact of life in modern politics. The key challenge is to engage in the politics of the past in a responsible manner. This means that the past must be open to questioning and contestation. It should never be in the service of one actor or one ideology.

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This essay is an abridged version of the opening lecture, delivered on September 28, 2015, at the Bonn meeting of the Humboldt Foundation’s German Chancellor Fellows.