The culture wars in the Federal Republic have been based on the struggle between Non-German Germans who advocated transforming the national culture and German Germans who resisted such a transformation. These rival projects were as much theological as political. Non-German Germans advocated an anamnestic memory culture committed to retrospective solidarity with the victims of the Holocaust, whereas German Germans urged an amnesiac memory that expressed the identity needs of the “perpetrator collective.” These polarized positions reflected the underlying structure of postwar German memory but began to dissolve with the generational change early in the twenty-first century. With the evolution of basic trust in the republic's institutions, the consensus about how its political culture began was fashioned.

Contesting sacrifice

Martin Walser was not alone in criticizing the Non-German German memory culture. Hermann Lübbe sympathized with Walser's situation when he was attacked in 1999. “It is bizarre,” Lübbe wrote, “to regard one's own crimes as memorializable.” As with Walser, the problem lay with Non-German Germans' disordered relationship to nation and memory. “We are embarrassed and feel pushed around by the arrogance with which the converted puffs himself up into the ideal of moral certainty.” In their hands, the Berlin memorial became a weapon with which they could manipulate their fellow citizens. “The memorial serves as the opportunity to accuse others about their moral shortcomings in their relationship to the past. One's own idea of the memorial represents the better conscience for which the others ought to strive.”