he suggested that the yoke of an enforced remembrance should be thrown off and abandoned—that the imposition of shame on a contemporary German public had ceased to serve any productive purpose. Walser said, “Everyone knows the burden of our history, our everlasting disgrace.” He did not, however, stop there. The daily reminders of Germany’s past, for Walser, were more of a self-serving attempt by the country’s elite to relieve “their own guilt” than anything else.
