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PARTISAN REVIEW
viewed as the excessive presence of "our historical burden, the eternal dis–
grace" in German politics and culture:
There is not a day during which we are not confronted with it. Could
it be that the intellectuals who bring the disgrace before us entertain
for a second the illusion that, because they labor in the service of hor–
rible memory, they are freed somewhat of guilt, slightly exonerated,
are even for a moment closer to the victims than to the perpetrators,
and experience a momentary diminution of the merciless confronta–
tion of perpetrators and victims? I would never have thought it
possible to leave the side of the accused. Sometimes, when I can't look
anywhere without being attacked, I must find relief in convincing
myself that a routine of accusation has emerged in the media ....No
one who is to be taken seriously denies Auschwi tz. No responsible
person raises any doubt about its horror. However, when our media
confront me daily with this past, I notice that something in me reacts
against this continuous presentation of our disgrace. Instead of being
thankful for it, I begin to look away. I would like to understand why
in our century the past is presented as it never was before. When I
notice that something in me reacts against it, I try to find motives for
the presentation of our disgrace, and am almost happy when I discov–
er that often the motive is no longer the idea that we are not
permitted
to
forget-that instead it is the instrumentalization of our
disgrace for contemporary purposes. There are always good and noble
purposes....Someone finds our means of wanting to overcome the
German division regrettable, and says that in so doing we are making
possible a new Auschwitz. Even the division itself, as long as it lasted,
was justified by prominent intellectuals wi th reference to Auschwi tz.
Walser then declared, "Auschwitz is not suitable as a routine for
threats, a means of constant intimidation, a moral club, or even an obliga–
tory ritual. What emerges from such ritualization has the quality of lip
service. But when one says that the Germans are now a normal people, an
ordinary society, one falls. under suspicion." Turning to the proposed
Eisenman design for the Berlin memorial, he referred disparagingly to "the
cementing over of the center of the capital city with a nightmare the size
of a football field" as "the monumentalization of our disgrace."
To German ears, Walser's choice of words was immediately striking. In
place of the memory of crime or shame, he chose
disgrace.
He thus implied
that memory of the Holocaust was more a matter of airing dirty laundry
in public than a moral obligation of coming German generations. The use
of the term
Erinnerungsdienst
(memory service) had unmistakable echoes of
