Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 The Problem(s)
- 2 A Plethora of Germanies
- 3 Culture, Language, and Blood
- 4 The Gemeinschaft
- 5 Marx, the Proletariat, and the State
- 6 Hegel and the State
- 7 German Historians and the State
- 8 Meinecke and the State
- 9 The Lingering Ambiguities of the State
- 10 Materialism
- 11 Militarism and Death
- 12 Providence and Narration
- 13 Guilt and Innocence
- 14 The Indispensable Jews
- 15 The Historians' Debate
- 16 The State Today
- Notes
- Index
15 - The Historians' Debate
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2015
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 The Problem(s)
- 2 A Plethora of Germanies
- 3 Culture, Language, and Blood
- 4 The Gemeinschaft
- 5 Marx, the Proletariat, and the State
- 6 Hegel and the State
- 7 German Historians and the State
- 8 Meinecke and the State
- 9 The Lingering Ambiguities of the State
- 10 Materialism
- 11 Militarism and Death
- 12 Providence and Narration
- 13 Guilt and Innocence
- 14 The Indispensable Jews
- 15 The Historians' Debate
- 16 The State Today
- Notes
- Index
Summary
The historians' debate on the meaning, status, and above all on the supposed “singularity” of the Third Reich is an odd affair. First, in its most virulent form it occurred over a period of barely a year in 1986 and 1987. Second, and more strikingly, it was conducted in the pages of the press. That historians would continue to debate all the relevant material in academic journals and books in the years ahead may be taken as read, but when looking at the Historians' Debate as it happened in the mid-1980s we are confronted with a discussion about nation, identity, patriotism, and guilt that had exceptional resonance among the general public, and which on occasions had the feeling of a nasty, personalized spat. It left a lot of people wounded and upset. And for a time it colonized the TV chat shows.
It is fair to say that the debate kicked off properly when the sociologist and philosopher Jürgen Habermas, in an article that appeared in the pages of the liberal Die Zeit (“A Kind of Settlement of Damages: The Apologetic Tendencies in German History Writing,” July 11, 1986), attacked Ernst Nolte. Nolte had written a piece on the Third Reich for the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) (“The Past That Will Not Pass,” June 6, 1986). Habermas's attack, however, was not limited to Nolte; rather, he had a broader revisionist tendency in his sights, which included, in particular, the historians Michael Stürmer and Andreas Hillgruber. What, then, was his agenda?
This is not an unimportant question, as he was in turn attacked by the historians for an alleged lack of competence, for smuggling into the debate alien material in order to skew matters in his own interests. And, being the most important participant who was not an academic historian, he was vulnerable to the charge—at least prima facie.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Speculations on German HistoryCulture and the State, pp. 171 - 187Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2015