How do Germans remember Nazism?  How should Germans remember the Third Reich
and the Holocaust?  These questions have created storms of controversy in
German public and private life since 1945, especially since memories of
Nazism in the immediate postwar period diverged drastically in East and West
Germany.  The issue of how to remember the Nazi era and commemorate the
victims of Nazism has raised complicated issues of national identity in both
Germanys since the end of World War II.  For this reason, remembering the
past in Germany has been a highly political process, as Germans in East and
West attempted to construct a national and personal identity from a
problematic and traumatic history.

This course will examine the process of remembering Nazism and commemorating
its victims in both Germanys since 1945.  Combining methods from various
disciplines, including history, psychology, art history, and film studies,
the course will investigate not only the official efforts to create a
national identity from the ashes of the Nazi state, but also various
individual attempts to come to grips with the Nazi past.  Central issues of
the course include official narratives of the Nazi past in East and West
Germany, attempts to commemorate the Holocaust, the problem of memory in the
urban landscape, memory and film, and the rise of neo-Nazism.  Students will
also gain theoretical perspectives on these issues by studying theories of
collective memory and the psychology of memory in postwar Germany.