Prof. Marcuse
Oct. 13, 1998
UCSB Hist 133C
GERMAN HISTORY SINCE 1945

Lecture 5: Coming to Terms with the Past

1. Administrative / Announcements / Preliminary
   • Journals due, guest speaker and Q1 on Thursday (Nuremberg, estab. democratic state)
   • Education abroad program
   • Wed./Thu., Oct. 21/22: Classroom walkout to protest Prop. 209 (no ethnicity in admissions)
   • Film "The Promise" will be shown twice: Tue and Wed., Oct. 20/21, Moeller, "War Stories," ____?
2. Legacies of Nazism and World War II
   • characteristics of Nazism:
   • physical legacies
   • mental/psychological legacies
3. Heinrich Böll: Billiards at Half-Past Nine (1959): The Personal as an allegory of the Political.
   • Allegory: representing truths with fictional figures and symbols
   • Symbols
     • abbey/cake
     • lamb/sheep
     • beast (buffalo)
     • sex/love/human relationships
     • generations: parents, children, grandchildren
     • blood, the boar; colors
4. Coming to Terms with the Past
   • Nazism as glory
   • Nazism as selfishness, corruption, opportunism
   • Nazism as crime, violence, destruction, inhumanity
   • Nazism as …