Europe's Divided Memories After 1945: Notes on the Crisis of European Integration and Memory (original) (raw)

Abstract

Overview of the reclaiming of a European memory . The paper attempts to provide a definition of the different uses of European memory and sheds light on the duality between a cosmopolitan discourse and national narratives. The paper thus explores some of the political meanings attached to "Europe" and seeks to deconstruct their use during and after the Cold War.

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References (31)

  1. European Parliament Resolution of 19 September 2019 on the importance of European remembrance for the future of Europe, <http://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/ document/TA-9-2019-0021_EN.html>.
  2. Joint Motion for a Resolution, <http://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/ RC-9-2019-0097_EN.html>.
  3. Tony Judt, Reappraisals: Reflections on a Forgotten Century, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2008. Marc Bloch, L'étrange défaite : témoignage écrit en 1940, Paris: Société des Éditions 'Franc-Tireur', 1946 <http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/bloch\_marc/etrange\_ defaite/etrange_defaite.html>; Benedetto Croce, Taccuini di guerra, 1943-1945, ed.
  4. C. Cassani, Milano, Adelphi, 2004; Croce, Scritti e discorsi politici, ed. A. Carella, Naples: Bibliopolis, 1994; Friedrich Meinecke, Die deutsche Katastrophe: Betrachtungen und Erinnerungen, Wiesbaden: Brockhaus, 1946; Karl Jaspers, Die Schuldfrage, Heidelberg: Schneider, 1946; Federico Chabod, L'idea di nazione, ed. Armando Saitta and Ernesto Sestan, Bari: Laterza, 1961, Chabod, Storia dell'idea di Europa, Bari: Laterza, 1961;
  5. Thomas Mann, Germany and the Germans, Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1945; of lesser relevance is Georg Lukács, Die Zerstörung der Vernunft, Berlin 1954 (written mostly in 1933-1942), which indicted German philosophy as such.
  6. Mark Mazower, Dark Continent. Europe's Twentieth Century, London, Penguin, 1998;
  7. S. Salvatici, Senza casa e senza paese. Profughi europei nel secondo dopoguerra, Bologna, il Mulino, 2009; K. Löwe, Il continente selvaggio. L'Europa alla fine della seconda guerra mondiale, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2013. It was only first in 1999 that a literary work was published on the allied bombings in Germany: W. G. Sebald, On the Natural History of Destruction, London: Hamish Hamilton, 2003.
  8. Mimmo Franzinelli, Le stragi nascoste. L'armadio della vergogna: impunità e rimozione dei crimini di guerra nazifascisti 1943-2001, Milan: Mondadori, 2002; Marco De Paolis, Paolo Pezzino, La difficile giustizia -I processi per crimini di guerra tedeschi in Italia 1943- 2013" Roma: Viella, 2018; Clemens Vollnhals, Evangelische Kirche und Entnazifizierung 1945-1949. Die Last der nationalsozialistischen Vergangenheit, Munich: Oldenbourg, 1989; Henry Rousso, Le syndrome de Vichy, Paris: Seuil, 1987.
  9. Norbert Frei, Vergangenheitspolitik. Die Anfänge der Bundesrepublik und die NS- Vergangenheit, Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1999; Gustavo Corni, Raccontare la guerra. La memoria organizzata, Milan: Mondadori, 2012.
  10. 7 Marcello Verga, Storie d'Europa XVIII-XXI secolo, Rome: Carocci, 2004.
  11. 8 The first public use of Europe in this sense after 1945 may well be dated from the Assembly of the Council of Europe at the Hague in 1948 when a debate on the meaning of Europe arose. There was a French version against a British version of Europe. This was followed by a debate among historians of the two countries, which has been in part outlined by Marcello Verga in chapter three of his Storie d'Europa, Rome: Carocci, 2007.
  12. 9 Paradoxically, supranationality intended as an overcoming of the nation actually allowed Germany to recover national legitimacy over time. Germans and Italians could be proud of being different from fascist Italians and Nazi Germans and radically better than their fathers because capable of cooperating with former enemies and even of sharing sovereignty with them. Germany and Italy were no longer closed nations but open ones able to accept diversity and recognise pluralism. Until 1950 Germans did not go abroad for holidays except to Switzerland and Austria; Europe's first steps facilitated their going back to Italy as tourists , and Italians warmly opened their arms to Germans, etc.
  13. Alan S. Milward, The European Rescue of the Nation-State, London: Routledge, 1992.
  14. Fritz Fischer, Germany's Aims in the First World War, New York: W. W. Norton, 1967 (original 1961).
  15. Anselm Döring-Manteuffel and Lutz Raphael, Nach dem Boom. Perspektiven auf die Zeitgeschichte seit 1970, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008; Thomas Großbölting, Massimiliano Livi, and Carlo Spagnolo (eds), L'avvio della società liquida? Il passaggio degli anni Settanta come tema per la storiografia tedesca e italiana, Bologna: il Mulino, 2013.
  16. 'Declaration on European Identity', Copenhagen, 14 December 1973, in Bulletin of the European Communities, December 1973, no. 12. Luxembourg: Office for official publications of the European Communities, pp. 118-122.
  17. For a recent synthesis see Daniel W. Ellwood, Una sfida per la modernità. Europa e America nel lungo Novecento, Rome: Carocci, 2012; and Victoria De Grazia, Irresistible Empire: America's Advance Through Twentieth-Century Europe, Cambridge MA: Harvard Belknap, 2005.
  18. Pierre Nora, Présent, Nation, Mémoire, Paris: Gallimard, 2011, p. 20; see also his recent book Come si manipola la memoria. Lo storico, il potere, il passato, Milan: Editrice La scuola, 2016 (2013).
  19. See Patrick Garcia, Une politique mémorielle européenne? L'évolution du statut de l'histoire dans le discours des institutions européennes, in Robert Frank, Hartmut Kaelble, Marie- Françoise Lévy, and Luisa Passerini (eds), Building a European Public Sphere / Un espace public européen en construction, Brussels: Peter Lang, 2011, pp. 179-201.
  20. Point B of the 27 January 2005 European Parliament resolution on remembrance of the Holocaust, anti-semitism and racism, P6_ TA(2005)0018 reads: ' […] the crimes committed at Auschwitz must live on in the memory of future generations, as a warning against genocide of this kind, rooted in contempt for other human beings, hatred, anti- Semitism, racism and totalitarianism' 18 A representative example of the autonomy of memories from history is the narrative inversion in Roberto Benigni's film La vita è bella (1997), which won an Oscar and in which the extermination camp -which is supposed to be Auschwitz -is liberated by armed tanks with American insignia. Another prime example, also awarded an Oscar, is Schindler's List (1993), in which the protagonist's humanitarian contribution absolves him of his complicity with Nazism. These are important films that are shown in schools on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which promote a critical appropriation of the history of the Second World War and threaten to depoliticise the way it is seen.
  21. Luca Baldissara, Dal punto di vista del diritto. Violenza bellica e punzione dei crimini di guerra, in Rolf Petri (ed.), Balcani, Europa. Violenza, politica, memoria, Turin. Giappichelli, 2017, pp. 113-130, quotation on p. 128.
  22. Maria Mälksoo, 'The Memory Politics of Becoming European: The East European Subalterns and the Collective Memory of Europe', European Journal of International Relations 14,4 (2009), 653-680.
  23. 21 The emphasis on the Italian victims and the mitigation of Italian responsibility for the war is already evident in the wording of the 20 July 2000 Law No. 211, 'Establishment of the "Day of Memory" to commemorate the extermination and persecution of the Jewish people and the deportation of Italian soldiers and politicians to the Nazi camps', Gazzetta Ufficiale 177 (31 July 2000): 'Art. 1. The Italian Republic recognises the day of the 17 January, the day the gates of Auschwitz were demolished, as a "Day of Memory" with the aim of remembering the Shoah (the extermination of the Jewish people), the racial laws, the Italian persecution of Jewish citizens, the Italians who suffered deportation, imprisonment, and death, as well as those who even if belonging to other sides were opposed to the project of extermination and who risked their own lives to save lives and protect the persecuted. Art. 2. On the occasion of the "Day of Memory" of which see Art. 1 ceremonies, initiatives, gatherings, and common events narrating and reflecting, in particular in schools of every classification and grade, what happened to the Jewish people and to the military and political Italian deportees to the Nazi camps in order to preserve in Italy the memory of a tragic and dark period in the history of our country and Europe, so that similar events can never again occur.'
  24. Rosanvallon, Democratic Legitimacy, p. 250 of the Italian translation (La legittimità democratica, Turin:, Rosenberg & Sellier, 2015).
  25. Charles S. Maier, 'A Surfeit of Memory? Reflections on History, Melancholy and Denial', History and Memory, 5,2 (Fall-Winter 1993), pp. 136-152, reference to the published Italian translation: Charles S. Maier, 'Un eccesso di memoria? Riflessioni sulla storia, la malinconia e la negazione', Parolechiave 1995/3, pp. 35 ff.
  26. Milward, p. xi.
  27. Sonya Faure, Dessin Sylvie Serprix, Catherine Calvet, 'Henry Rousso, '"Le surinvestissement dans la mémoire est une forme d'impuissance"', Libération, 8 April 2016, <http://www.liberation.fr/debats/2016/04/08/henry-roussole- surinvestissement- dans-la-memoire-est-une-forme-d-impuissance_1444888>.
  28. Nora, Présent, Nation, Mémoire, chapter 2.
  29. Markus J. Prutsch, European Historical Memory: Policies, Challenges and Perspectives, European Parliament, Directorate-General for Internal Policies, Policy Department B: Structural and Cohesion Policies, Culture and Education, IP/B/CULT/NT/2013- 002, September 2013.
  30. Charles S. Maier, Among Empires. American Ascendancy and its Predecessors, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2006.
  31. See Michael Bauchmüller, 'Merkel hält USA für nicht mehr verlässlich', Süddeutsche Zeitung, 28 May 2017, <http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/g-gipfel-merkel-haelt- usa-fuer-nicht-mehr-verlaesslich-1.3524283>.