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Ambiguous Memory: The Nazi Past and German National Identity, by Siobhan Kattago. Westport, CT: Preager Publishers, 2001. 196 pp. $64.00 cloth. ISBN: 0-275-97343-3.
Germany, the country often referred to as Land der Richter and Denker (nation of poets and thinkers), today may perhaps more accurately be characterized as Land der Streiter (nation of debaters), where with predictable frequency debates erupt and debaters argue over the social, political, and cultural implications and consequences of Germany's darkest capital of history, national socialism and the Holocaust, and how to come to terms with it. These debates seem to be oscillating between self-victimization and self-flagellation, and have gained renewed urgency after unification. They also have attracted much scholarly attention. What seems to be particularly interesting when analyzing these debates is the question of how democracies are able to work through and incorporate aspects of their history into their national self-understanding that do not symbolize glorious accomplishments but rather, national trauma. How do especially the elites deal with these important and serious questions of national memory and identity, and how are these issues reflected in political culture? It does not come as a surprise that Ambiguous Memory is motivated by these kinds of questions as well. The central task of the book is to illuminate the impact that the tenacious process of Vergangenheitsbewaltigung, or coming to...