The Week in Germany

Dear TWIG Readers,

The Berlin Wall in 1990.

(©picture-alliance/dpa)

Federal President Joachim Gauck reiterated Germany's staunch support for the European Union, as well as democratization in the Arab world and elsewhere beyond the EU's borders, during a New Year's reception for the diplomatic corps on January 8 in Berlin.

"We take seriously those who are yearning for more political and economic participation," said Gauck, who had been an anti-communist activist and civil rights leader in the former East Germany. "Support will not disappear even if their voices are suppressed."

Meanwhile, Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media Bernd Neumann on January 9 presented the Federal Cabinet with a status report that takes stock of how today's unified Germany has been coming to terms with the repressive past of the former communist East Germany. The more than 250-page report by the Federal Government, which looks back on some 20 years of progress and projects an educational roadmap for the future, was adopted by the Federal Cabinet.

Just as all German schoolchildren learn about the crimes against humanity committed by the Nazi dictatorship from 1933 to 1945, they should always be taught about the postwar communist dictatorship that controlled the former East Germany until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and German unification in 1990.

"It is especially important for the younger generation, which has fortunately been spared the experience of dictatorship, that we need those authentic places of learning marked by historic events," Neumann underscored in presenting the report to the cabinet. "A line can never and will not be drawn beneath the injustice that was committed."

The report stems from an agreement reached by Germany's governing coalition in 2009 to strengthen this kind of "Aufarbeitung," or coming to terms with the past, in an effort to counteract any transfiguration or downplaying of the former East German dictatorship.

Other countries have, according to a recent statement on the report by the German Government, moreover decided to use it as a guideline in their own efforts at "Aufarbeitung." In this vein, both Tunisia and Egypt intend to model similar government-led investigations and reports on Germany's approach.

So Germany has garnered praise not only in Central Europe for delving deeply into the oppressive legacy of the former communist East Germany, but also in North Africa and the Arab world.

Hopefully this positive effect of Germany's relentless quest and commitment to adequately addressing and learning from its own past - including fostering a perpetual awareness of it among future generations - will continue to serve as a beacon of enlightenment and freedom to peoples and nations all over the world seeking to engage in their own often painful, yet ultimately rewarding, historic domestic national dialogue.

Karen Carstens
Editor, The Week in Germany
Webteam Germany.info