Wounds of Memory: The Politics of War in Germany

by Maja Zehfuss

German memories of the Second World War are controversial, and they are used to justify different positions on the use of military force. In this book, Maja Zehfuss studies the articulation of memories in novels in order to discuss and challenge arguments deployed in political and public debate. She explores memories that have generated considerable controversy, such as the flight and expulsion of Germans from the East, the bombing of German cities and the 'liberation' of Germany in 1945. She shows how memory retrospectively produces a past while claiming merely to invoke it, drawing attention to the complexities and contradictions within how truth, ethics, emotion, subjectivity and time are conceptualised. Zehfuss argues that the tensions and uncertainties revealed raise political questions that must be confronted, beyond the safety net of knowledge. This is a compelling book which pursues an original approach in exploring the politics of invocations of memory.

Genres: History

312 pages, Hardcover

First published October 25, 2007

Reviews

[Gogolis · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent book about trauma politics. I liked the German literacy review which was based on war and memories. But I missed a more in-depth analysis of current hold on trauma among the German society. The few examples of having German troops in Bosnia or debates about Iraq were constantly repeated, so I wanted a bigger number of examples related to a memory problem in Germany. Still, I think it's a good introduction book for the memory politics studies.

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dense but important book in the wider (and indeed, it is by now very wide) field of German memory politics. I wanted more specific discussion of pre-1991 society (where are the massive Cold War peace movements?!) but for the literary analysis is very good, with all the usual theoretical trimmings included.

[Mark Swatek-Evenstein · Rating 3 out of 5]

a book that is not actually about "The Politics of War in Germany" as it claims to be, but rather about the changing memory of war and the use of such (changing) memories in political debate. it is striking for the omission of joschka fischer's claim that the lesson of world war II was not just "no more war", but also "no more auschwitz", which is why the NATO-bombing of kosovo and serbia was justified. the book discusses similiar claims made by other politicians with reference to other german military involvement in the balkans, but this is surely the most significant - and the author's attempt to discuss world war II without the holocaust, which she justifies at great length but admits to be "difficult", fails to address the most significant issues that do trouble german discussions about war. the author admits as much, and therefore is probably aware that her experiment fails in this regard, but it is annoying nevertheless. in the end, this remains an interesting book about the formation and re/de-construction of memory, though not the book the subtitle promises to be.