This article gives an overview of the changing debate on
National Socialism and the question of guilt in German society.
Memory had a different meaning in different generations,
shaping distinct phases of dealing with the past, from silence
and avoidance to sceptical debate, from painful “Vergangenheitsbewältigung”
to a general memory of suffering.
In present-day Germany, memory as collective personal memory
has faded away. At the same time, literature has lost its role
as a main medium to mass media like cinema and television.
Furthermore, memory has become fragmented. Large groups of
members of the German society, like immigrants, see the past
from a different perspective altogether. Although the remembrance
of the time of National Socialism is still a distinctive part
of Germany’s political culture, it has become more generalised,
with “Holocaust memory” as a globalised symbol for a fundamental
“break” in Western culture.