Democratization and the Jews: Munich, 1945-1965Published for the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism Democratization and the Jews explores the ways in which West Germans in Munich responded after 1945 to the Holocaust. Examining the political and religious discourse on the ?Jewish Question,? Anthony D. Kauders shows how men and women in the immediate postwar era employed antisemitic images from the Weimar Republic in order to distance themselves from the murderous policies of the Nazi regime. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, many people?and particularly Social Democrats and members of the churches, both Catholic and Protestant?began to repudiate antisemitism altogether, appreciating the connection between liberal democracy, on the one hand, and the rejection of hatred of Jews, on the other. This change was a revolutionary moment in the democratization of the Federal Republic, as the language of liberalism merged with the spirit of democracy. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 66
... groups whose responses to the Nazi past were anything but uniform . The second question has frequently engendered two opposing views : the contention that , by pursuing a conciliatory course with regard to former National Socialists ...
... group such an attitude came naturally in consequence of antisemitism and premeditated mass murder , while for the second it did so in equal measure , in keeping with ideals that had come to pervade U.S. society long before the advent of ...
... groups or positions . We are there- fore not required to " empathize " with past actors for the sake of under- standing their objectives , yet are able to deduce these from the role of speech- acts in the wider debate . To take one ...
... group ; and fifth , most Germans " knew " the " truth , " but were unable to admit it . 41 Turning to the main work of Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich , we discover similar contentions , albeit elaborated in much greater detail ...
... groups no longer belonged ( or had never belonged ) to this moral community . Put differently , was it possible to mourn the Jews in the wake of their isolation , ostracization , and deportation to the East , especially at a time when ...
Contents
History as Pedagogy Munichs Jewish Community after the War | 38 |
History as Memory Democracy and Antisemitism 19451949 | 65 |
History and Memory in the Economic Miracle Dormancy and Difference 19491957 | 137 |
History as Change Jews as Fellow Beings 19581965 | 201 |