“The Past that doesn’t Pass”: National Socialism in the Memory Policy of the FRG and the Historical Policy of the GDR

The article provides a comparative analysis of the coverage of the legacy of National Socialism in the memory policy of the FRG and historical policy of the GDR and various commemorative practices. The author revealed the conceptual apparatus that is used in professional historiography and public discourse. Its various contents and features of use in different chronological periods were also determined in the article. The author considered numerous methodological approaches used by researchers of memory problems. The difference between the concepts of “memory policy” and “memory culture” in content is that the first term provides for a set of government measures to preserve memory, while the second term is broader and focuses on involving public institutions and society in the discussion of “memory” problems. The article shows the differences in the attitude to the National Socialist past in the FRG and the GDR on specific examples. The author paid attention to new approaches to the memory of the World War II in modern Germany, which has resulted from the processes of migration and the transformation of the country into a multicultural community. Two factors influence contemporary debates about the politics of memory in Germany: a) globalization, cultural transfer and migration, which exacerbate conflicts in nationally oriented memory politics. Like most countries in Western Europe, Germany is an immigration country, comprising a population that can’t longer be differentiated by nations and ethnic groups. Accordingly, historical memory refers less and less to national or ethnic historical foundations, as an ever-increasing proportion of the population has a second family origin and is therefore confronted with a past that lies beyond their ethnic beliefs; b) the Russian-Ukrainian war turned attention to the crimes of National Socialism during the Second World War (1939-1945) in Eastern Europe and Ukraine in particular.