ZGram - 10/27/2004 - "There's More To German History Than Hitler & The Holocaust"

Fri Oct 29 10:36:29 EDT 2004

Zgram - Where Truth is Destiny:  Now more than Ever!

October 27, 2004

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Another article that shows that hard-core Hitler-bashing is wearing 
thin in Europe:

[START]

There's More To German
History Than Hitler
& The Holocaust

By Michael Burleigh
The Telegraph - UK
10-26-4

British history teachers recently went to Berlin to learn to be nicer 
about the Germans. The latter are feeling aggrieved about how we 
learn their past. This initiative is in response to the concerns of 
the German foreign minister that children in this country are 
learning too much about Hitler and the Second World War. The man with 
the bad moustache is ubiquitous, largely because of the easy 
availability of film footage for bad television.

I agree with these worried Germans, although it is important to 
record that many Germans have an equally unhealthy fascination with 
the Third Reich, too. Just open any copy of Der Spiegel or Die Zeit, 
or look at the number of German books on these themes.

The British history teachers attended classes in a German secondary 
school, where the subject under discussion was fiscal policy in 
18th-century France. A British teacher emerged, mind reeling, saying 
that such topics would "bore our kids stiff", this being "one of the 
reasons we teach the Nazi era - it's so dramatic". That, in essence, 
is the problem, namely pandering to the consumer's low tastes.

Of course, there was plenty of drama in, for example, the barbarian 
invasions of the late Roman Empire, the Reformation and Counter 
Reformation, or the French Revolution. The British teacher's comment 
is too indulgent of the child's point of view. It also assumes that 
the most extreme episodes in history are more fundamentally revealing 
of the human condition.

In fact, such "drama" all too easily degenerates into a lurid 
historical pornography, peculiarly appealing to an adolescent mindset 
attracted to the kitschy glamour of swastikas and jackboots. 
Over-exposing generations of British children to the deviance of the 
Nazis also contributes to the perpetuation of crude stereotypes about 
Germany, ignoring the fact that there was plenty of criminality to go 
around before, during and afterthe Second World War.

German children are taught a broad history curriculum, which includes 
such "boring" subjects as the formation of nation states, the 
separation of church and state, the growth of democracy, and tax 
collection, too. They acquire a balanced understanding of the complex 
European history that has produced us all.

This summer, I was impressed by a group of German teenagers in the 
vaults of a medieval Italian church, who were au fait with Latin 
inscriptions and knew everything about the obscure saints depicted on 
the walls, one of them being Thomas † Becket.

As a former historian of 15th-century Germany myself, I think British 
children might be similarly encouraged to learn about Germany's rich 
medieval history, whose glories include the cathedrals of Bamberg, 
Cologne and Ulm, and the forbidding Prussian fortresses of the 
Teutonic Knights. Our own Reformation is incomprehensible without 
knowing something of Luther. Then there were the great court 
civilisations, including the prince-bishops and secular rulers who 
patronised, among others, Bach, Mozart and Goethe, not to speak of a 
Prussian king who wrote rather fine music himself. If the fragmented 
nature of Germany's principalities sows too much confusion in young 
minds, then there is much to admire after 1870 when it became a 
unitary state.

There was more to 19th-century Imperial Germany than a bid for world 
power, namely an academic, theological and scientific culture that 
was the envy of the world. Students of the novelist George Eliot will 
not get very far without knowing about earth-shattering developments 
in 19th-century German theology. The greatest historian of the Roman 
Empire is probably still Theodore Mommsen. Which education system 
produced Einstein?

Then there are the astonishing economic and political achievements of 
Germany after 1945, in which, after 12 years of totalitarianism, West 
Germany was successfully re-integrated into the civilised free world. 
Children here should know about Adenauer as well as Hitler. How 
freedom was extended after re-unification to include those 
languishing in the communist East is a surely a story with "drama" 
enough? That is almost ancient history now to most children I know.

I suspect that Anglo-German teacher exchanges will simply result in 
tinkering with the current predictable and weary subject matter. At 
most, the Germans will be acknowledged as victims of Allied area 
bombing or the rampaging Soviets.

Rather, we need to pursue the private initiatives taken by Prince 
Charles, with the help of a number of historians, to restore the 
chronological and geographical breadth, cultural depth, and humanity 
of history teaching.

David Starkey's important new television series Monarchy is a giant 
step in the right direction, since it establishes the richness and 
venerability of Anglo-Saxon culture and state-formation, something 
that children should surely know about so as to begin to understand 
their fundamental identity.

There is much more at stake here than what teachers may drone on 
about during a damp afternoon in Derby.

The Government has recently instituted ceremonies for new British 
citizens. Both new citizens and those who are citizens already need 
to learn about the events and values that have made us what we are.

One of these events is undoubtedly this country's role in the Second 
World War. We should hardly be ashamed of this. But that conflict is 
not the sum of either the British or German past, which for much of 
the time was characterised by mutual admiration rather than conflict.

We do not study the history of America exclusively through the prism 
of Vietnam. So children should not be studying German history solely 
through the lurid lens of the Third Reich. If German schoolchildren 
visiting Britain are being insulted, and worse, because of an 
obsession here with the Nazi past, then it is time for history 
teachers to start learning a painful lesson themselves.

- Michael Burleigh is on the Academic Advisory Council of the 
Institut f¸r Zeitgeschichte in Munich

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml;sessionid=3ZQOYXBRC5EQ1QFIQMF
SM5WAVCBQ0JVC?xml=/opinion/2004/10/27/do2701.xml&sSheet=/portal/2004/10/27/
ixportal.html&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=19185

[END]