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
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... never really materialized.20 A major problem with both these readings concerns the failure to elucidate what is meant by democratization . While the first evinces a pessimistic estimate of the capacity of Germans to become democrats and ...
... never as a means merely .... The State is made for man , not man for the State .... Democracy means freedom : All men should participate actively in selecting leaders , in shaping the laws and in discharging the responsibilities of ...
... 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 one's " own " victims were ...
... never actually inflicting physical harm on human beings ? " 9 Moreover , this interplay between leading a " middle - class " existence and retaining anti - Jewish stereotypes , between thought and action , has always been the most ...
... never had the opportunity to yield to this state of mind ; either they had abandoned Hitler in the dying years of the regime or they had , at a somewhat later stage , embarked on a path of economic recovery which forestalled melancholic ...
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 |