The shiftedweight ofGerman history. The Historikerstreit 2.0 in the light ofchanging research, public debate and memory culture since the 1980s

Abstract

This article places the so-called Catechism Debate or Historikerstreit 2.0 in the wider context of political debates, cultural memory and historical research since the 1980s. On the one hand, it argues that the context of the Historikerstreit of the 1980s differed vastly from the later Historikerstreit 2.0. While the former was a typically West German debate among male historians during the Cold War, the latter is a much more international debate in which both male and female intellectuals participate in the context of a globalized world. On the other hand, this study shows that debates about the uniqueness of the Holocaust have never really ended since the 1980s and continue to this day. The Historikerstreit of the 1980s definitely influenced social debates, memory culture and historical research in the 1990s. In the 2000s, colonial history brought new perspectives to Holocaust and Genocide Studies paving the way for the Catechism Debate in the 2020s. Societal debates, cultural memory and historical research are more interdependent than often presumed.