SUMMARY

Sixty years after the end of World War II, the Nazi past is still very present in the consciousness of German society. German models of remembrance, however, are changing. As the last generation of those who lived through the Third Reich passes away, new questions are being raised about the future meaning of its legacy.
In this essay, Norbert Frei recalls the painful process of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, coming to terms with the past, which, after a decade of neglect in the 1950s, developed in West Germany from the early 1960s onwards. Reflecting on the Nazi past became an intrinsic feature of Germany’s political culture. While this era now comes to an end, Vergangenheitspolitik (policy of the past) still has a future. Parallel to – if not competing with – the global memory of the Holocaust, vivid recollections of Allied bombing, and the flight and expulsion of Germans from Eastern Europe are regaining public salience. Driven by the protest generation of 1968, now rediscovering its war-time childhood, a readjustment of the German historical consciousness is under way.