The Berlin Republic

On September 10, 2001, the guest list for the ceremonial opening of the Jewish Museum Berlin (JMB) was printed in the Berlin section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The headline read The Berlin Republic. How did this come about?

On the occasion of the JMB’s 25th anniversary, we look back at the years surrounding the museum’s founding – from the post-reunification period of the 1990s to the early 2000s. The intense and at times bitter debates about National Socialism and the Holocaust ranged from Martin Walser’s “Auschwitz as a moral cudgel” (Moralkeule Auschwitz) to Daniel Goldhagen’s "willing executioners" (willige Vollstrecker) and the crimes of the Wehrmacht, from restitution and compensation to remembrance in public space. While Steven Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List (German premiere in 1994) brought about a shift in the role of contemporary witnesses, the trial of Holocaust denier David Irving, concluded in April 2000, set new legal precedents.

Looking back on these debates, it becomes clear that the culture of remembrance – today often criticized as hegemonic and ritualized – has not long been taken for granted in German society. Since the end of the Second World War, it has been fought for by various victim groups, often against significant political resistance. In the reunification years of the 1990s, the engagement with National Socialism, the Holocaust, and Jewish history was finally institutionalized and anchored at the federal level – albeit still politically contested – a development to which we also owe the founding of the JMB.

In a panel discussion with key participants and observers of the memory-political debates of the 1990s and 2000s, we revisit the turbulent years surrounding the opening of the Jewish Museum Berlin.

Guests:

Heinrich Wefing, journalist, Head of the Politics Department at DIE ZEIT 

Inka Bertz, former Head of the Art Collection at the JMB 

Michael Wolffsohn, Historian and Author

Moderator: Shelly Kupferberg