Germany, Persuasion, Time Frame - understand-culture

Historical Fever

In 1874 Friedrich Nietzsche published Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für das Leben, On the Use and Disadvantage of History for Life. In the preface he writes daß wir alle an einem verzehrenden historischen Fieber leiden, that we all suffer from a consuming historical fever. He calls the historical sense of his time eine hypertrophische Tugend, an overgrown virtue.

Nur soweit die Historie dem Leben dient, wollen wir ihr dienen. We will serve history only as far as it serves life.

He expects most readers to object that his view is unworthy of the powerful historical trend of the age. That trend, he adds, had been noticeable seit zwei Menschenaltern unter den Deutschen namentlich, for two generations, especially among the Germans.

History and Consequences

On 12 March 1992 the Bundestag set up a commission of inquiry on the Aufarbeitung von Geschichte und Folgen der SED-Diktatur in Deutschland, the working through of the history and consequences of the SED dictatorship in Germany. It focused on analyzing the past and setting out the connections within the dictatorship. Its results and those of a second commission fill 32 volumes with about 30,000 printed pages.

On 10 July 2025 the Bundestag set up a commission of inquiry on the coronavirus pandemic. It is to produce ein Gesamtbild der Pandemie, ihrer Ursachen, Verläufe und Folgen, an overall picture of the pandemic, its causes, its course and its consequences. Its final report is due by 30 June 2027.

How the Present World Came to Be

The core curriculum for history at the Realschule, one type of secondary school, in North Rhine-Westphalia, in force since 2020, says what pupils gain from the subject. They perceive die historischen Wurzeln der Gegenwart, the historical roots of the present. They grasp das Gewordensein der gegenwärtigen Welt, the way the present world has come to be. In this way they learn sich in der Gegenwart zu orientieren, to find their way in the present.

There is no single English word for Gewordensein, the state of having become. The curriculum calls a reflected historical consciousness the central task of history teaching.

Heimat

In 1984 the ARD broadcast Heimat – Eine deutsche Chronik, Heimat: A German Chronicle, by Edgar Reitz. The work has eleven parts. It follows people from Schabbach, an invented village in the Hunsrück, from 1919 to 1982.

Reitz wanted to set authentic scenes against the American series Holocaust, which he found lacking in artistic truth. In 2022 Uwe Kammann, writing in epd medien, called the Schabbach chronicle eine kluge Reflexion über deutsche Geschichte von universeller Botschaft, a wise reflection on German history with a universal message.

The story ends in 1982, two years before the broadcast.

Gaps in the Path

Erzählen Sie etwas über sich! Tell us something about yourself! A German career guide calls this a classic request to applicants in the job interview. They are expected to connect their Werdegang, the path of their career, to the requirements of the job.

Longer gaps in the curriculum vitae are praktisch immer thematisiert und hinterfragt, practically always raised and questioned, the same guide writes. A gap becomes critical after three to four months without activity. The career portal of the University of Potsdam advises: Rechnen Sie damit, im Vorstellungsgespräch zu Lücken oder Brüchen befragt zu werden. Expect to be asked about gaps or breaks in the interview.

The Defendant’s Life Comes First

A guide for law students sets out the written grounds of a German criminal judgment in this order. First come the defendant’s personal circumstances. They say when and where he was born, how he grew up, what schooling and training he had, and what his family and financial situation is. His previous convictions belong to this Lebenslauf, the account of his life. Then come the facts of the case, the assessment of the evidence, the legal assessment and the sentence.

The Federal Court of Justice speaks of findings zum Werdegang, zum Vorleben und zur Persönlichkeit des Angeklagten, on the defendant’s development, his earlier life and his personality. They are needed above all when a court convicts. The law does not fix their place in the judgment. The guide recommends putting them first, because this makes the judgment easier to read.

The House of History

The Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, the House of the History of the Federal Republic of Germany, is a federal foundation set up by law. The law states its purpose: to present the history of the Federal Republic and of the GDR unter Einbeziehung der Vor- und Entstehungsgeschichte, including the history before them and of how they came about.

Its museum in Bonn opened in June 1994. The permanent exhibition Unsere Geschichte. Deutschland seit 1945, Our History: Germany Since 1945, counted 14.3 million visits until it closed in September 2024. The museum calls itself gegenwartsbezogen, related to the present. Although its staff are historians, it says, its task is gegenwärtige Ereignisse einzuordnen, to place current events in context.

In the Beginning

In 1983 the historian Thomas Nipperdey published Deutsche Geschichte 1800–1866, German history from 1800 to 1866. Its first sentence is: Am Anfang war Napoleon. In the beginning was Napoleon.

In 2000 Heinrich August Winkler published Der lange Weg nach Westen, The Long Road West, a German history of the 19th and 20th centuries. It begins: Im Anfang war das Reich. In the beginning was the Reich. What distinguishes German history from that of the great Western European nations, he writes, has its origin here.

In the preface Winkler names his questions. Germany became a nation state much later than England and France, and a democracy later still. He asks what consequences this doppelte Verspätung, double delay, hatte und bis heute hat, had and still has today.

Circumstances Handed Down

Die Menschen machen ihre eigene Geschichte, aber sie machen sie nicht aus freien Stücken, nicht unter selbstgewählten, sondern unter unmittelbar vorgefundenen, gegebenen und überlieferten Umständen. People make their own history, but not as they please. They make it under circumstances they did not choose, circumstances they find before them, given and handed down.

Karl Marx wrote this in the first chapter of Der achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, between December 1851 and March 1852. It first appeared in May 1852 in New York. The next sentence reads: Die Tradition aller toten Geschlechter lastet wie ein Alp auf dem Gehirne der Lebenden. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.

Blind to the Present

On 8 May 1985, the 40th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker spoke in the German Bundestag. It is not a matter of mastering the past, he said. Das kann man gar nicht. That cannot be done. The past cannot be changed afterwards or undone.

Then he said: Wer aber vor der Vergangenheit die Augen verschließt, wird blind für die Gegenwart. But whoever closes his eyes to the past becomes blind to the present.