UCSB
Hist 133C
Prof. Marcuse
German History since 1945
Jan. 20, 2000
Lecture 4: What was Nazism? Views from Before and After
Q1
What was Hanna's secret? same as: Why did Hanna sign up with the SS for guard duty?
What feeling came to pervade Michael and the people involved in the trial on a daily basis?
Schlink discussion (
see also comments at amazon.com, and Apr. 1999 on
www.h-net.msu.edu/~german/
)
Your reactions? Favorite passages?
My "most telling" passages
147f: "frozen" scenes of atrocities
169: Form
and
issue of the generational conflict in 1960s West Germany
Questions from Oprah (
http://Oprah.com/obc/pastbooks/bernhard_schlink/obc_pb_19990226_ques.html
)
Ursula Duba (born in Cologne, Germany in 1939; "discovered" Nazism in 1958)
Poem "A Slice of Bread" (in:
Tales from a Child of the Enemy
)
What's the point?
What was Nazism?
From the perspective of the late 1920s? (For Hanna Schmitz? Ursula Duba's father?)
From the Allied perspective during the war? In 1945?
The "Three Founding Myths" of post-1945 West Germany (see Reader no. 3)
N=glory (repressed)
consequence:
N=selfishness, opportunism (forgotten)
N=atrocious crimes (ignored)
consequence:
N=brutal repression (feeling of victimization; or resisted)
consequence:
N=integral part of German history (rediscovered in 1960s)
consequence: