Giesen, Bernhard. “The Trauma of Perpetrators.”

Using the reformulation of German national identity after the Holocaust as a paradigm case, Giesen explores a theory of collective perpetrator trauma, and develops an overview of subsequent phases a society passes through in the aftermath of perpetrator trauma. He describes the importance of collective trauma and triumph in forging a collective identity and discusses Germany’s unique position within Europe through three traumatic events in German history: its belated origin as a nation state (its cultural rather than political unity, and the resultant importance of nature and the discourse of purity and pollution), its lack of a successful revolution (German democracy was born out of defeat rather than revolution – only the Nazis can be said to have successfully established a new German regime through a triumphant revolution that rooted itself effectively in cultural memory and identity, thus forever tainting the idea of revolution and democracy with the Nazi legacy), and most importantly, the Holocaust, to which Giesen devotes the last five sections of this chapter.

Giesen recognises five distinct stages in Germany’s attitude to its Nazi past, that overlap and often coincide with generational turnovers:

1) Denial of the trauma – characterised by an inability to mourn, a ruined moral identity, a communicative silence and a collective sense of shame. This “coalition of silence” (65) included the Allied forces, especially concerning the Holocaust. This phase gave rise to exculpatory narratives such as demonisation of the Nazis (as opposed to the innocent, unknowing majority of Germans, seduced by the Nazis and thus victims themselves) or that of individual criminal guilt whenever a former Nazi resurfaced (with the German public as neutral third party wielding the law).

2) Public conflicts and rituals of confession – characterised by the new generation, born after the war, whose radical renunciation of their parents’ past and attempts to morally dissociate themselves from the stigma of collective German shame and guilt brought the traumatic past back into the public debate. Willy Brandt’s Warschauer Kniefall initiated a new narrative that no longer saw collective guilt as the sum total of actively involved individuals, but as a social ritual that could enable a collective healing process.

3) Objectification in scholarly debates and museums – characterised by the narrativisation and memorialisation of the German past for an audience no longer haunted by personal memories (as in phase 1) or stigmatised by collective guilt (as in phase 2); fuelled by the decreasing numbers of those with (in)direct lived experience of the events. New evidence blurred the formerly clear distinctions between victims and perpetrators (e.g. forgotten German victims of bombing and rape; refugees; but also Jewish collaborators).

4) Mythologising – characterised by media representations of the Holocaust, and the Holocaust becoming part of the public domain of memory and even entertainment, although not uncontroversially: accusations of instrumentalisation and trivialisation abound.

5) The adoption of a universalistic identity – characterised by Karl Jaspers’ idea of the metaphysical guilt of all human beings, facing the flaws of the human race rather than implicitly believing in its irresistible progress, and instead actively recalling the past to prevent a repetition of it. This phase is marked by the construction of collective identity through public, ritualised confessions of guilt (usually by individuals who are themselves considered innocent).

Giesen ends the chapter by reflecting on factors influencing a nation’s willingness to accept collective guilt, such as the passing of time, the phase of latency, cultural differences, internal communication, and global observation.

This chapter by Giesen gives a highly detailed, informative and perceptive overview of Germany’s process of dealing with its tainted past and working through its trauma of perpetration, and how this influenced Germany’s current collective identity, contextualising it in the troubled history of German democracy. Especially the last section is relevant to perpetrator studies; this is the phase in which the importance of studying the past, or rather the perpetrators, to prevent a fatal repetition is finally recognised – which is one of the fundamental recognitions of perpetrator studies.

Author of this entry: Eline Reinhoud

Giesen, Bernhard. “The Trauma of Perpetrators: The Holocaust as the Traumatic Reference of German National Identity.” Triumph and Trauma. (London: Routledge, 2016): 59-79.