The East German revolution of 1989 and the ensuing unification of the two Germanys in 1990 was the most significant caesura in recent German history. Since 1990 all those images and perceptions of Germany that had been established during the decades of the Cold War have had to be revised. One of the most important changes that took place in the course of the transition from a divided Germany to the Berlin Republic concerned the way in which Germans see themselves and would want to be seen from outside. Since the Wende or turning-point of 1989/90, this changed perception has manifested itself in new readings of contemporary history and in new interpretations and public representations of the past.

In the immediate postwar years and the following decades of division, the caesura of 1945 dominated perceptions of German history and became the crucial reference point for historiographical examination. Initially, many Germans experienced 1945 as the collapse of the nation; intellectuals later conceived of the year as constituting a breach of civilisation; since the mid-1980s it has been widely perceived by postwar Germans as a liberation from National Socialism. Given the singularity of its crimes, the Nazi dictatorship was often read as the catastrophic climax of, or even as the synonym for, German history as a whole. From the beginning of their existence, the Federal Republic and the Democratic Republic were therefore eager to justify their democratic self-understanding and their historical legitimacy through the negation of their predecessor, the Third Reich.