Seven Circles of European Memory

Abstract

Europe is mainly a common market, a free zone for private and business travels, and partly a common currency. Against this conventional wisdom the author argues that Europe is more than the Euro (and the Champions League) and that it can function only with a shared memory of its conflicting past during the twentieth century. The author develops seven circles of European memory, starting with the unbalanced remembrance of totalitarian crimes (Holocaust and Gulag). He focuses then on ethnic cleansing particularly in the European periphery–the Turkish genocide against the Armenians, the civil war in former Yugoslavia, and the massacres under the colonial period in Africa. A particular aspect is the remembrance of forced and voluntary migration processes into Europe. “European” is not an artificial consensus on these aspects but a civilized way to deal with disparate views.