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happened in East Germany. The revolution started from below and has
ended up as a revolution from above. It is still in progress; because they
lack an elite, the revolutionaries are perceived as West German carpet–
baggers.
As to David's description of coming to terms with the debate, and
with the past, the circumstances are different, and thus not a repetition
of history. After 1945, the German people as a whole has been forced by
the allies into de-Nazification, and
Vergangenheitsbewiiltigung.
Today, a
minority of the people, the Eastern Germans, feel forced into de–
Communization and coming to terms with its Communist past by their
luckier Western compatriots, who are the majority of their own people.
At least in the perception of many Eastern Germans, the whole debate is
purely instrumental. As David mentioned,
Vergangenheitsbewiiltigung
of the
Communist past is "managing" the past in the interest of present-day
political purposes. This is a shame, because it puts the blame of having
collaborated with the Communist dictatorship only on the Eastern
Germans. It avoids a debate about how West Germany dealt with the
Communists during the forty years of the existence of the GDR.
Igor
Webb: Thank you very much. May I open the floor to comments
and questions? Please use the microphone, because we are trying to tran–
scribe the proceedings.
Patrick
Kelly: I teach in the History Department at Adelphi. I wanted
to address a two-part question to David Gress. If one accepts your no–
tion of
Vergangenheitsbewiiltigung,
couldn't one say that people like Hill–
gruber and Nolte were participating in it, and isn't any political situa–
tion in any country to some degree over history? The Dreyfus Affair was
over whether one accepts the French Revolution or not. Much of
American history and politics today is how we deal with the legacy of
the Civil War and slavery. So I don't think that the process is unique to
Germany, although the German situation was in its way unique in what
it had to account for.
David Gress: Yes, if you take overcoming the past in a most general
sense, then of course everyone who contributes to the discussion is en–
gaging in that. But in order to make distinctions and make discussion
possible, I was focusing on the particular politicization of that exercise
and distinguishing therefore between those who want to start by under–
standing the past through what really happened, motive and morality
and so on, versus those who (and I don't think this includes very many
