The Disappearance of the Holocaust
On the Transformation of Memory
Collective conceptions of history are currently undergoing a phase of readjustment, including those pertaining to the Holocaust. As recently as the turn of the millennium, regular declarations were heard that this crime would be of central importance to European self-understandings going into the future. Regardless of what one may think of attempts to derive some positive »European identity« from this mass murder and the process of »coming to terms« with it, these expectations are no longer being voiced today. On the contrary, the significance of the Holocaust to pan-European memory appears to be dwindling. The same holds true for its function as an icon of memory.
This project focuses on the causes of this transformation, which affects not only the memory of the event but also, on a related level, its interpretation. This work is not aimed primarily at short-term political shifts, but rather on the epistemic conditions enabling the remembrance and commemoration of the Holocaust. By reconstructing the circumstances under which, beginning in the 1970s, the Holocaust was able to become a central icon of memory of the twentieth century, some of the epistemic preconditions underlying the recognition of the crime can be illuminated. These conditions are then placed in relation to the socioeconomic, political, and medial transformations of the present, which are once again changing horizons of expectation, social guiding principles, semantics, as well as individual and collective positions.
The specific period of investigation reaches from the 1970s to the present, yet the historical background resonates back to 1942/43, when news of the systematic mass annihilation began reaching the Allies. Since this project addresses an international phenomenon, it adopts a spatially transnational perspective, encompassing not only Germany and Europe, but also the United States and parts of the postcolonial world.
