1,420 words
Translated from Finis Germania by F. Roger Devlin
What does the teaching of Auschwitz actually consist of? That man, when he finds the opportunity, is capable of the worst? If anyone needs Auschwitz to learn this, let him learn it from Auschwitz. Or that in technological modernity modern technology can be used for mass murder? (more…)
The Holocaust memorial in Berlin.
1,643 words
Translated from Finis Germania by F. Roger Devlin
At regular intervals, the practiced television viewer can watch a presentation that runs approximately as follows: The Federal President delivers a historical sermon before the assembled parliamentarians in which he conjures up the spirits of the undead and announces a truth which everybody knows and all believe in. (more…)
Charles Krafft, The Cross Wasn’t Heavy
1,165 words
Translated from Finis Germania by F. Roger Devlin
There are still myths and there are still taboos. Nudity and sexual practices of all sorts are no longer among them, any more than good old-fashioned blasphemy. The Christian God, for example, can be abused at pleasure without the slightest consequences. One taboo, however, remains immoveable: anti-Semitism. (more…)
Rolf Peter Sieferle
936 words
Rolf Peter Sieferle (1949–2016) was a German historical scholar whose posthumously published book Finis Germania set off a moral panic in the summer of 2017.
A member of the generation of ’68, he was a radical in his youth, writing his doctoral dissertation on the Marxian concept of revolution. He became a trailblazer in the field of environmental history, (more…)
1,212 words
Translated by F. Roger Devlin
Translator’s Note:
Finis Germania is a very different book from the carefully referenced scholarly works which established Sieferle’s academic reputation. It is a collection of brief personal meditations on what the Germans call Vergangenheitsbewältigung: “overcoming (or coping with) the past,” (more…)