The flap over “Europa, Europa” was emblematic of the larger, still unresolved process the Germans call Vergangenheitsbewatigung, or “coming to terms with the past.” Many Germans hoped that the fall of the Berlin wall might finally expurgate their Nazi ghosts. anything, angst over German history, both among Germans themselves and Germany’s neighbors, has heightened since reunification. The German government has been obliged to reassure immigrants nervous over mounting xenophobic violence-and Europeans uneasy over Bonn’s first tentative efforts at greater diplomatic influence. Every week seems to bring another evocative anniversary. In Berlin last week, German and Jewish dignitaries marked the 50th anniversary of the conference in a villa near the Wannsee lake, where Nazi leaders drew up plans to exterminate the Jews. The notorious villa itself has just been converted to Germany’s first Holocaust museum. Said Parliament president Rita Sussmuth: “No one can elude his history.”
Yet many Germans now think enough is enough. A poll released by Der Spiegel in conjunction with the Wannsee anniversary indicates that 62 percent of Germans agree that “46 years after the war’s end we shouldn’t talk so much anymore about the persecution of Jews.” Almost two thirds said Germans “don’t trust themselves to express their true opinion about Jews.”
Who spied? There is far more interest in the fresher legacy of the communist German Democratic Republic. Since the files of the former East German secret police were opened earlier this year, the press has been filled with revelations about prominent Germans who spied, or were spied upon. Coverage of the sentencing of three former Berlin wall guards to prison terms for killing an East German escapee overshadowed the Wannsee anniversary commemoration and the release of Der Spiegel’s poll. Nov. 9, once observed only as the somber anniversary of the Kristallnacht pogroms in 1938, is now more widely remembered as the joyous day the wall fell in 1989.
Supporters of a “Europa, Europa” Oscar bid saw the German film-selection jury’s decision as a concession to a growing mood of denial. “The film union decided that this movie doesn’t fit into their concept of Germany today,” says producer Brauner. And even in denying that accusation, film union director Manfred Steinkuehler, himself a historian of the Third Reich, seemed to concede the larger point: “It’s true that a majority of Germans avoid the past. Only a small courageous minority has been able to come to terms with the Nazi period.” As Nazism fades further into history, it is unlikely that this small minority will grow.
