Talk:Historikerstreit

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"By the mid-1980s, right-wing German historians started to feel enough time had passed and it was time for Germans to start celebrating their history again"

That's pleasantly sarcastic, but an exaggeration nonetheless. How do others feel about this sentence? 134.106.199.31 15:56, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

In fact, there was something very naive about Nolte's essentially populist demand that the time had come to draw a line under the Nazi past. Perceptions of the past simply don't work like that. It's tough, very tough for young Germans to be 'burdened' with Germany's past, but one can't just declare it 'history' as opposed to 'politics' (or whatever) and expect the world to leap to attention.
Some comments on the extraordinarily vicious tenor of much of the debate might be useful.
It seems to me that the article should be linked to 'Vergangenheitsbewältigung'. Norvo 02:31, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

this is a starting point and I'm sure there is a lot to change (my english for example). I wrote it because I think it should be linked in some kind with Vergangenheitsbewältigung and Geschichtsaufarbeitung.

I did copy editing, but someone needs to make sure I didn't distort anything! Also, there needs to be more information here, and a for-sure balanced approach. Halcatalyst.

I' sorry but Nolte did not argue that Auschwitz were no worse than the Gulag Archipelago, he said the Gulag Archipelago was the original one and Auschwitz a "reaction". He said you have to see what happend in that time for a better understanding - so he finally saw the terror of Stalins Russia and concluded the terror of Nazi Germany was a reaction to prevent the same things in Germany. But I'm not familiar enough with his argumentation (and my english...) that's because I don't want to change the article directly.

Thanks for getting this article started! It's useful for people in the English-speaking world (the US in particular) to see how the Holocaust influences German thought and politics decades later. I've edited it to make the English clearer. I hope I haven't changed the sense of what you meant to say. Please let me know if there are any places that need improvement. FreplySpang (talk) 03:55, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm glad you worked on it. It's very good. I think there is no need to change something, but I'm not really a specalist.

I'm currently writing an essay on the Historikerstreit for my German class. I'm going to do a bit of work first on the structure of the article as it stands, and one I've done more reading I may flesh out the details as well. 60.240.224.177 02:26, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Left and right, POV, and other issues

I think the article might need to be revised regarding its classification and categorization. "Right" and "left" only have political meaning within a given context and are often ambiguous. "Right" can refer to anything from Nazism and fascism to libertarianism, neo-liberalism, religious conservatism, etc. Likewise, "left" can refer to anything ranging from Stalinism to anarchism, liberalism, democratic socialism, social liberalism, secular humanism, moral relativism, etc.

What seems to be described in this article is a debate between functionalism versus intentionalism. The functionalist side seems to be generally labeled as "left" while the intentionalist side is labeled "right." I think it would make more sense to the readers if they were labeled "functionalist" and "intentionalist" rather than "left" or "right," while a section could discuss how each side's views relate to the larger German political landscape.

It's also confusing, because the group which is described as "right" seems to include advocates of two very different positions. One seems to be the clasic intentionist position - "Hitler and the other Nazi-elite masterminded it," while the other seems to be a variant of the functionalist position - "the German populace as a whole is indeed responsible, but they did it in response to a threat or percieved threat from despotic communism." So it looks to me like there are at least three distinct positions on this issue.

I've also noticed that the overall tone of the article seems to side more with the group described as "leftist." (Perhaps this is why the views of the other two groups have been akwardly conflated?...)

All and all, I think the article needs attention and cleanup.

ENpeeOHvee 22:17, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

ENpee, I fully agree with your remark that the article needs a differenciation in terms of scientific categories and not in terms of political camping. In fact, the notion of the historians being labeled left- or right wing rose within the discussion itself ideologising the opponent. It was thus a dialectic twist of the discussion itself and not any deliberate political stand that the participants brought into the discussion. As you seem to have quite an elaborate analytical inside into the issue and as you seem a native speaker, why not edit the text yourself? Also, placing a link to the [functionalism versus intentionalism] side in WIKI would seem a good idea, respectively expanding that link with a section pointing at the Historikerstreit.

As I was not logged in yet this comment is unintendedly anonymous.I logged in just now. Bloom2006 10:56, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

hi all cool article good work.Hypnosadist 00:59, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Fully agree with Enpee's comments. Although the debate may have opposed mostly left-wing historians on one hand, with right-wing historians on the other hand, to use these terms too much (as does the article, which could limit itself to a sentence concerning political affiliations) leads one to think that arguments are tied to the left/right dichotomy (i.e. one who would support the uniqueness of Holocaust compared to others genocides would be left-wing, while one who would compare it to others genocides would be

right-wing; this is obviously false, left-wing historians, as well as Hannah Arendt who is more or less of a liberal, left-wing tendency, have underlined roots of the Holocaust in colonial genocides (such as the Herero genocide). Tazmaniacs 15:39, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

In the context of historiography, isn't "liberal" normally the opposite of "left-wing"? I would not describe Hannah Arendt by any means as a "left-wing" historian (or political scientist, which is what she was - she was not a historian). I would add that I don't think the issue of the Historikerstreit was really about whether the Holocaust was unique. It was largely about the ways that people like Nolte, Hillgruber, and Stürmer were contextualizing it, and particular with efforts to relegitimize the actions of the Wehrmacht during the war in terms of anti-communism. john k 16:26, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Careless editing

In the External Links shortly after the article was created nearly two years ago, a "Buffyg" added an exhortation that "strongly recommended" or "strongly "advised" readers to read more about "his [Nolte's] publishers". This is blatantly inappropriate advocacy. Not only that, but it was inaccurate to write "his publishers" in place of "its publisher", "it" being the article. It was ONE article, an interview with Nolte, and ONE publisher. When I say, "with the cumulation of edits increasingly misleading", I mean that as other articles and books by Nolte have been added to the entry, this exhortation would naturally be interpreted to refer to ALL the publishers who published the various Nolte citations.

In general, the citations for this entry have been shabbily done, in contrast to the body of the entry. Hurmata 02:10, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Origins heading

On rereading, I have realized the first paragraph was incoherent. The phrase "the dominant interpretation of Nazism" was uninterpretable: first, what *was* this interpretation according to the contibutor; and, dominant among *which* historians: European historians generally, or just the foreign ones alluded to in the preceding sentence? Furthermore, the contributor does not make clear how the Marxist and liberal assessments correspond to the two major questions identified at the start of the paragraph. In fact, the phrase "dominant interpretation . . . was splitted [sic] . . . " is grammatically ambiguous. From the context, it probably means, "there were two rival interpretations competing to be accepted as the dominant [i.e., overwhelmingly accepted] one" -- and this would then be poor grammar; but grammatically, it could also mean "there was already a dominant interpretation, which was represented by Marxist and liberal variants". Since I have no genuine familiarity with this area of history, all I have done was try to render the paragraph self consistent, without quite knowing what the previous contributors meant to claim. Hurmata 04:44, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Herero and Nama genocides, the Armenian genocide

In the more recent parts of the existence of this article, somebody has added mention of the genocides perpetrated against Herero and Nama tribes of Germany's colony of Southwest Africa. The article notes that one of the issues in the Historikerstreit was the validity of equating other genocides to the genocide of the European Jews. Earlier versions of this article mentioned the Armenian and Kampuchean genocides. I have just deleted the mention of the genocides in Southwest Africa. The only reason to do so is skepticism as to whether they *were* invoked by any participants in the Historikerstrei. If not, then it would be misleading to invoke them in this article -- without an explicit annotation that it is the article which is invoking the Southwest African genocides.

All we need is a reference from a Historikerstreit document confirming which genocides were specifically cited. By the way, it would be nice to confirm that the Armenian and Kampuchean genocide were specifically invoked. But it is likely they were, because the Kampuchean was fresh in people's minds, having occurred just ten years earlier, and the Armenian was well known. But the Herero and Nama genocides are hardly known outside of Germany and Namibia. The articles on it in both English Wikipedia and German Wikipedia fail to mention that any agitation about it took place between about 1910 and 1997. Therefore, please just find where a Historikerstreitler invoked it. Thank you. Hurmata (talk) 04:07, 11 May 2008 (UTC)