Towards a Collaborative Memory: German Memory Work in a Transnational Context 9781800735965

Table of contents :
CONTENTS
List of Figures and Tables
Acknowledgements
Note on Translations
List of Abbreviations
Introduction. German Memory Work in a Transnational Context
Chapter 1. Towards a Collaborative Memory: A Framework and a Method
Chapter 2. Tracing the Shape of Transnational Collaboration
Chapter 3. Narratives of a Shared Past: Central and Eastern European, Western European and Post-Soviet Memory Zones
Chapter 4. Narratives of Their Present and Future: East Asian and MENA Memory Zones
Chapter 5. Connecting Memory: Transzonal Brokers
Chapter 6. The National in the Transnational: Intrazonal Brokers
Conclusion. A Collaborative Memory Not Yet Achieved
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Towards a Collaborative Memory

Worlds of Memory Editors: Jeffrey Olick, University of Virginia Aline Sierp, Maastricht University Jenny Wüstenberg, Nottingham Trent University Published in collaboration with the Memory Studies Association This book series publishes innovative and rigorous scholarship in the interdisciplinary and global field of memory studies. Memory studies includes all inquiries into the ways we – both individually and collectively – are shaped by the past. How do we represent the past to ourselves and to others? How do those representations shape our actions and understandings, whether explicitly or unconsciously? The ‘memory’ we study encompasses the near-infinitude of practices and processes humans use to engage with the past, the incredible variety of representations they produce and the range of individuals and institutions involved in doing so. Guided by the mandate of the Memory Studies Association to provide a forum for conversations among subfields, regions and research traditions, Worlds of Memory focuses on cutting-edge research that pushes the boundaries of the field and can provide insights for memory scholars outside of a particular specialization. In the process, it seeks to make memory studies more accessible, diverse and open to novel approaches. Volume 9 Towards a Collaborative Memory: German Memory Work in a Transnational Context Sara Jones Volume 8 Carnivalizing Reconciliation: Contemporary Australian and Canadian Literature and Film beyond the Victim Paradigm Hanna Teichler

Volume 5 The Mobility of Memory: Migrations and Diasporas across European Borders Edited by Luisa Passerini, Milica Trakilović and Gabriele Proglio Volume 4 Agency in Transnational Memory Politics Edited by Jenny Wüstenberg and Aline Sierp

Volume 7 Nordic War Stories: World War II as History, Fiction, Media, and Memory Edited by Marianne Stecher-Hansen

Volume 3 Resettlers and Survivors: Bukovina and the Politics of Belonging in West Germany and Israel, 1945–1989 Gaëlle Fisher

Volume 6 The Struggle for the Past: How We Construct Social Memories Elizabeth Jelin

Volume 2 Velvet Retro: Postsocialist Nostalgia and the Politics of Heroism in Czech Popular Culture Veronika Pehe

TOWARDS A COLLABORATIVE MEMORY German Memory Work in a Transnational Context

Sara Jones

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

First published in 2022 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2022 Sara Jones All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Jones, Sara, author. Title: Towards a Collaborative Memory: German Memory Work in a Transnational Context / Sara Jones. Other titles: German Memory Work in a Transnational Context Description: New York: Berghahn Books [2022] | Series: Worlds of Memory; 9 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022016541 (print) | LCCN 2022016542 (ebook) | ISBN 9781800735958 (hardback) | ISBN 9781800735965 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Germany (East)—Historiography. | Historical museums—Political aspects—Germany (East)—History. | Germany. Bundesbeauftragter für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der Ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik. | Stiftung Gedenkstätte Berlin-Hohenschönhausen. | Stiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur (Germany) | Historiography—Political aspects—Germany. | Memorialization—Political aspects—Germany. | Collective memory—Poltical aspects—Germany. | Germany (East)—Public opinion, Foreign. | Memorialization—International cooperation. Classification: LCC DD281.6 .J66 2922 (print) | LCC DD281.6 (ebook) | DDC 943.00072—dc23/eng/20220506 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022016541 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022016542 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-80073-595-8 hardback ISBN 978-1-80073-596-5 ebook https://doi.org/10.3167/9781800735958

CONTENTS

List of Figures and Tables

vi

Acknowledgements

ix

Note on Translations

xi

List of Abbreviations

xii

Introduction. German Memory Work in a Transnational Context

1

Chapter 1. Towards a Collaborative Memory: A Framework and a Method

27

Chapter 2. Tracing the Shape of Transnational Collaboration

52

Chapter 3. Narratives of a Shared Past: Central and Eastern European, Western European and Post-Soviet Memory Zones

92

Chapter 4. Narratives of Their Present and Future: East Asian and MENA Memory Zones

119

Chapter 5. Connecting Memory: Transzonal Brokers

141

Chapter 6. The National in the Transnational: Intrazonal Brokers

170

Conclusion. A Collaborative Memory Not Yet Achieved

200

Bibliography

210

Index

231

FIGURES AND TABLES

Figures 1.1

Meaning structure in cross-border collaborations

37

2.1

Key to regions for all visualisations

64

2.2

BStU 2009–10 Component 1

65

2.3

BStU 2009–10 Component 2

66

2.4

BStU 2009–10 Component 3

66

2.5

BStU 2011–12 Components 1 and 2

68

2.6

BStU 2013–14 Components 1 and 2

69

2.7

BStU 2015–16 Component 1 with and without the GFO, the German government and the KAS

70

2.8

Hohenschönhausen 2009–10 Component 1

71

2.9

Hohenschönhausen 2011–12 Component 1 with and without the German government, the GFO and the KAS

72

2.10 Hohenschönhausen 2013–14 Component 1 with and without the German government, the GFO and the KAS

73

2.11 Hohenschönhausen 2015–16 Components 1–3

74

5.1

Meaning structure in the networks

142

5.2

The GFO egonet within the BStU networks 2011–12 and 2015–16

145

5.3

The GFO egonet within the Hohenschönhausen networks 2013–14 and 2015–16

146

5.4

The FES egonet in the BStU network 2011–12

152

Figures and Tables • vii

5.5

The KAS egonets in the Hohenschönhausen networks 2009–10 and 2013–14

154

5.6

The KAS egonet in the Stiftung Aufarbeitung network 2011–12

157

5.7

The German government egonet in the Hohenschönhausen networks 2009–10 and 2011–12

159

5.8

The German government egonet in the BStU networks 2013–14 and 2015–16

160

6.1

The INR egonet within the BStU network 2009–10

173

6.2

The INR egonet within the BStU network 2013–14

174

6.3

The INR egonet within the BStU network 2015–16

175

6.4

The IICCMER egonet within the Stiftung Aufarbeitung network 2015–16

181

6.5

The Tunisian civil rights activists egonet within the BStU network 2011–12

186

6.6

The Tunisian government egonet in the Hohenschönhausen networks 2011–12 and 2013–14

190

6.7

The Contre l’oubli egonet in the Hohenschönhausen networks 2011–12 and 2013–14

191

Tables 2.1

Numbers of actors and ties over time

53

2.2

Number of regions over time

54

2.3

Regions in the 2009–10 networks (% of all actors)

55

2.4

Regions in the 2011–12 networks (% of all actors)

55

2.5

Regions in the 2013–14 networks (% of all actors)

55

2.6

Regions in the 2015–16 networks (% of all actors)

55

2.7

Actor type over time (% of all actors), BStU

57

2.8

Actor type over time (% of all actors), Hohenschönhausen

57

2.9

Actor type over time (% of all actors), Stiftung Aufarbeitung

57

viii • Figures and Tables

2.10 Top five most between central actors in the BStU networks over time

61

2.11 Top five most between central actors in the Hohenschönhausen networks over time

62

2.12 Top five most between central actors in the Stiftung Aufarbeitung networks over time

63

2.13 EI Index output for region, all networks

76

2.14 BStU regional RCTA over time

78

2.15 Hohenschönhausen regional RCTA over time

81

2.16 Stiftung Aufarbeitung regional RCTA over time

83

2.17 Regional homophily of actors with the highest BC in BStU networks

86

2.18 Regional homophily of actors with the highest BC in Hohenschönhausen networks

87

2.19 Regional homophily of actors with the highest BC in Stiftung Aufarbeitung networks

88

3.1

Clustering of plot elements in the post-socialist/CEE region

95

3.2

Number of actors from each region involved in the Meetings of Memorial Sites in each time period

102

3.3

Clustering of plot elements in the post-Soviet region

105

3.4

Clustering of plot elements in the Western European region

111

4.1

Clustering of plot elements in the East Asia region

121

4.2

Clustering of plot elements in the MENA region

131

5.1

Actors with a high BC according to region (all networks)

143

5.2

The German government egonet composition by region in the Stiftung Aufarbeitung networks (mean)

162

6.1

‘Eastern’ and MENA actors with a high BC (all networks)

171

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book has been a long time in the making. It started with an idea sparked by reading press releases on the Hohenschönhausen Memorial website in 2013 and has required learning new methodologies and engaging with new disciplines and approaches. I am grateful to the University of Birmingham for providing me with a period of study leave to support the writing of this book. As relationships and networks are central to the work presented here, so have they been crucial to the completion of this project. I would like to thank the numerous conference and seminar organisers who have given me the opportunity to try out the ideas and methods underpinning this research, only some of whom can be named here. The panel at the German Studies Association Conference in 2013 organised by Helga Welsh was pivotal in the development of this work. Jenny Wüstenberg spoke on that panel and it was her research that introduced me to the potential of Social Network Analysis for the study of memory. Jenny’s support, scholarship and friendship since then have been enormously important to me. I am also grateful to the coordinators of the COST network ‘In Search of Transcultural Memory in Europe’, Barbara Törnquist-Plewa and Tea Sindbæk Andersen, for providing me with the opportunity to present and publish some of my initial findings in the volume The Twentieth Century in European Memory. Working on publications using the methodologies and frameworks of this book for The Changing Place of Europe in Global Memory Cultures, edited by Christina Kraenzle and Maria Mayr, and Transnational German Studies, edited by Rebecca Braun and Ben Schofield, as well as the special issue of Revue d’études comparatives Est-Ouest, edited by Raluca Grosescu, Laure Neumayer and Eva-Clarita Pettai was invaluable in refining my approach. I am indebted to the editors for their careful and thoughtful readings of my work. The input and feedback of the Critical Thinking on Memory and Human Rights Working Group of the Memory Studies Association has been inspiring. Particular thanks go to Lea David, whose work has been instrumental in my own approach to the nexus of memory, transitional justice and democratisation. Presenting the book at the Bristol Christmas Lecture in 2020 provided

x • Acknowledgements

me with an opportunity to get feedback on the then fragmented manuscript: many thanks to Robert Vilain, Debbie Pinfold and the Department of German for the invitation. I have been fortunate enough to have generous and thoughtful feedback from a number of colleagues on draft work for this book, especially Mónica Jato and Maria Roca Lizarazu (who both read the full manuscript). Discussions with friends, colleagues and students on memory studies, networks, transnational exchange and decoloniality have transformed my perspective on how Germany approaches its past. There are too many wonderful people to name here, but I’d especially like to thank Astrid Erll, Anissa Daoudi, Ute Hirsekorn, Jo Kreft, Emilie Pine and Emanuelle Rodrigues Dos Santos. Conversations on networks with Jutta Vinzent, who sadly passed away in November 2021, were also important for developing my approach. Working with the production and series editors at Berghahn Books and the advice of the anonymous reviewers has made this a better book. A large part of the writing of this volume took place in the winter and spring of 2020–2021, when our worlds shrank and our responsibilities grew. It was a time when our relationships became harder to maintain, but more crucial than ever. I would thus also like to thank the network of strong women who supported each other in that time. I could not have finished this book without the garden writing clubs and online ‘fighting’ (exercise) clubs: thanks go especially to Jenny Arnold, Charlotte Galpin, Tara Talwar Windsor, Laura Randall, Catherine Byerley, Charli Connor, Laura Cristescu and Angela Murray, who kept me going during the darkest months. My parents have always been there to encourage and support me, and my husband Sean is the rock and the glue that makes it all possible. I dedicate this book to my children, Alys and Rosa, who came into this world in the time it has taken to research and write this book, and who have made me see life, love and relationships in new ways.

NOTE ON TRANSLATIONS Unless otherwise stated, all translations from German, French and Romanian are my own. Where the meaning of a term is ambiguous or difficult to render in English, I have retained the original in brackets in the text. With the exception of the German Foreign Office, the abbreviations for German institutions are derived from their original German names.

ABBREVIATIONS

BC BNC BpB BStU CDU CEE CNRS CR DHI DHM DPRK ECCHR ENOA ENRS FES GDR GFKE GFO GI GIZ HBS HSS HSH HVGP ICR IfZ IGFM IHRA

Betweenness Centrality Betweenness Network Centralization Index Federal Centre for Civic Education Federal Officer for the Files of the State Security Service of the Former GDR Christian Democratic Union of Germany Central and Eastern Europe National Centre for Scientific Research (France) Civil Rights German Historical Institute German Historical Museum Democratic People’s Republic of Korea European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights European Network of Official Authorities in Charge of the Secret Police Files European Network of Remembrance and Solidarity Friedrich Ebert Foundation German Democratic Republic Society for the Promotion of Culture in United Europe German Foreign Office Goethe Institut Society for International Cooperation Heinrich Böll Foundation Hanns Seidel Foundation Memorial Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Humboldt-Viadrina Governance Platform Romanian Cultural Institute Institute for Contemporary History International Society for Human Rights International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance

Abbreviations • xiii

IICCMER IIPN INR ISTR KAS LStU MENA NGO PEMC PRC RBS RCTA RoK SBU SED SNA SPD Stift. IRZ ZZF

Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile International Institute of Political Murder Institute for National Remembrance Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes Konrad Adenauer Foundation Regional Office for the Files of the State Security Service of the Former GDR Middle East and North Africa Nongovernmental Organisation Platform of European Memory and Conscience People’s Republic of China Robert Bosch Foundation Relational Contingency Table Analysis Republic of Korea Security Service of Ukraine Socialist Unity Party of Germany Social Network Analysis Social Democratic Party of Germany German Foundation for International Legal Cooperation Centre for Contemporary History

INTRODUCTION German Memory Work in a Transnational Context

8 In May 2020, in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, a white police officer killed George Floyd, a Black man who had been arrested on suspicion of using a counterfeit bill. Derek Chauvin kneeled on Floyd’s neck for over nine minutes as he pleaded that he could not breathe. Floyd’s death sparked waves of protest worldwide against police brutality and (institutional) racism and in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. In some cities, protestors directed their rage towards a culture of memorialisation that continued to celebrate those whose wealth and power had been built on the enslavement of other human beings. Societies across the Western world were called upon to address the legacies of colonialism that still persisted in their cultures, institutions and public space, and many were looking for answers on just how that might be done. For some, the answer was to look to Germany. In 2019, Susan Neiman published a book with the title Learning from the Germans: Confronting Race and the Memory of Evil, which explores what Germany’s experience of dealing with the legacy of Nazism can offer to American memory culture in particular.1 In June 2020, she repeated that argument in an opinion piece in The Guardian with the title ‘Germany Confronted Its Racist Legacy: Britain and the US Must Do the Same’.2 In her book, Neiman concludes that the German example cannot offer a simple ‘recipe for confronting other historical evils’ and that it is crucial to attend to cultural and national difference.3 Nonetheless, the suggestion that German memory culture represents a model that others might follow was a familiar one. Katrin Hammerstein and Julie Trappe cite Péter Esterházy as having described Germans as ‘world champions

2 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

in mastering the past’.4 Mischa Gabowitsch also notes this tendency to view Germany as ‘the master atoner’.5 However, Gabowitsch argues that for the ‘German model’ to be used as an international ‘yardstick’ for achieving atonement, it ‘is typically stripped of its contradictions, short-comings, historical context, and nuance’.6 Gabowitsch observes that this idea of Germany as ‘master atoner’ is both politically and economically invested, ‘atoning for the past is a prominent part of [Germany’s] nation brand’7 – something referred to by Stuart Taberner as an element of ‘soft power’.8 Others have described it as an ‘export hit’.9 But if German memory is a product to be ‘exported’, how does this ‘export’ travel? What are the channels of distribution? Who are the exporters and who are the importers? Is it the same product globally? This book seeks to explore these questions and unpicks what it might mean to learn from the Germans in transnational context. Based on an analysis of approximately 800 cross-border cooperations between German mnemonic actors and actors located elsewhere in the world, it offers a detailed empirical study of how German institutions focused on the history and memory of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) – a history that I describe as occupying an ‘in-between’ status in German memory culture – collaborate transnationally. I explore the ways in which these institutions perceive their export of the ‘German model’ in different contexts and if and how those exported goods are received. The book shows how the German actors divide the world rhetorically and how those divisions structure transnational networks. In order to do this, I develop an innovative methodological framework for the study of transnational memory, combining quantitative and qualitative approaches. The study of German memory in transnational context also allows me to present and explore the original theoretical concept of ‘collaborative memory’ and to consider if and how collaboration can support a ‘decolonial cosmopolitanism’ in the practice of memorialisation and transitional justice.10 The methodological and theoretical frameworks presented here have applicability well beyond the German context and might be used to study exchange of memory across borders in other geographical locations. Memory is very frequently practiced transnationally; it is the aim of this book to offer a new methodological and theoretical framework for exploring memory that is ‘unbound’ by borders.11

From Colonial Amnesia to the Legitimacy of Comparison If German memory culture is a finished product, ready to be picked up and used in a new context, then its flaws and blindspots will travel with it. As Neiman and others were calling for the United States and the United Kingdom to

Introduction • 3

look to Germany as the masters of memory, commentators writing principally from within Germany pointed towards Germany’s ‘colonial amnesia’, as it was termed by Henning Melber and Reinhard Kössler. Melber and Kössler note the external perception that Germany’s approach to its racist past is ‘exemplary’; however, they point to several ‘glaring lacunae’ in this memory culture, notably Germany’s experience as a colonial power between 1884 and 1919, including the genocide committed against the Herero and Nama peoples in what is now Namibia.12 In 2015, the German government admitted that the violence had been genocidal and in May 2021 the German and Namibian governments reached an official agreement, which included an official apology and the payment of €1.1 billion in aid by Germany to Namibia. Nonetheless, that agreement has been criticised for not involving directly the descendants of the victims, for packaging the financial recompense as welfare rather than reparations and for not addressing the issue of land restitution.13 The Black Lives Matter movement inspired reflection and change in Germany too, notably the renaming of Berlin’s Mohrenstraße to AntonWilhelm-Amo-Strasse in honour of Germany’s first Black scholar. However, we can hardly say that the German authorities were leaders or exemplars in their response. Campaigners had long pointed towards how offensive and outdated the street name was;14 however, it was not until August 2020 that the decision was finally made to change it. Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst and Joachim Zeller argue that postcolonial activism is not well embedded in broader public discussion and there remains widespread nostalgia for, or whitewashing of, German colonial history.15 As recently as December 2019, the right-populist antiimmigration party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), invited Bruce Gilley – the author of an article published in 2017 arguing the ‘case for colonialism’ – to give a public lecture in the party’s chamber in the Bundestag. The lecture had the programmatic title: ‘The Balance of German Colonialism: Why the Germans Don’t Need to Apologise for the Colonial Era and Certainly Don’t Need to Pay for It!’16 In December 2020, the Humboldt Forum (digitally) opened its museum of non-European art, which included a number of artefacts acquired from Africa and Asia during German colonialism. The museum has been controversial since its inception, igniting debates around the decision to demolish the GDR Palace of the Republic, recreate the baroque facades of the Prussian Palace (demolished by the GDR regime), and around issues of restitution and decolonising European museums – including a number of Benin Bronzes, whose repatriation to Nigeria has since been agreed.17 One contributor to the debate on the restitution of artefacts was the prominent Cameroonian scholar of postcolonialism Achille Mbembe, who argued that to truly decolonise, we must get beyond the ‘corrosive’ concept of ownership and possession. Mbembe proposed a ‘limitless circulation of cultural artefacts’, including European ones.18

4 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

In 2020, Mbembe moved to the centre of German public discussion on the nation’s culture of memory.19 He was invited to speak at the Ruhrtriennale, one of the key cultural events of the Ruhr region in August 2020 (which was ultimately cancelled due to the COVID-19 crisis). However, his selection as speaker met with protests, including on the part of Felix Klein, the Federal Commissioner for Jewish Life and the Fight against Antisemitism.20 Mbembe’s critics pointed towards his (alleged) association with the group ‘Boycott, Disvestment and Sanctions’ (BDS), which is viewed by many as antisemitic. Others accused him of relativizing the Holocaust in his academic work through (implicit) comparisons to apartheid in South Africa, or through equating the State of Israel with the apartheid regime.21 The spokesperson for cultural policy of the regional Social Democratic Party of Germany’s (SPD) parliamentary group, Andreas Bialas’ response is particularly revealing: ‘North-Rhein Westphalia provides funds and then something is done that contradicts the basic consensus [Grundkonsens] of the country.’22 As prominent memory studies scholar Aleida Assmann stated in her contribution to the Mbembe debate, ‘the consensus about the singularity of the Holocaust has become an affirmation that has become embedded in the identity of the nation’.23 Mbembe’s detractors extended their criticism of his work to include criticism of postcolonial studies as a whole: Alan Posener, for example, described the decision to invite him as a result of one of the ‘blind spots’ of ‘so-called postcolonial studies’.24 The responses of scholars who have worked at the intersection of Holocaust and postcolonial studies are therefore of particular interest. Prominent among them is Michael Rothberg, who published a piece focused on the Mbembe debate on the Swiss blog Geschichte der Gegenwart (History of the Present) in September 2020. Rothberg traces the development of German memory culture and, in particular, debates on the uniqueness and comparability of the Holocaust, from the ‘Historians Debate’ of the mid1980s to the Mbembe debate of the 2020s. In the 1980s, the question at stake was the legitimacy of comparing the crimes of National Socialism with those of Stalinism, an effort that was underpinned by revisionist tendencies and that many saw as an attempt to relativise the Holocaust. In the intervening thirty-five years, Rothberg argues, the Holocaust has come to play a central role in German – and indeed international – memory culture. However, in the 2020s, the central position of the Holocaust in German memory has shifted under the weight of calls for ‘more attention to colonialism, slavery and anti-black racism’, which complicates the ‘question of the centrality of the Shoah’.25 In his article, Rothberg makes the point that working through the past – or Aufarbeitung – has moved from being an initiative driven by civil society actors and has become state policy.26 This state policy is perhaps most succinctly

Introduction • 5

defined in the Federal Memorial Concept, which was most recently updated in 2008. Here, memorial policy is defined as being based on an ‘anti-totalitarian consensus’ that sits in opposition to both the National Socialist and GDR regimes (which are thereby positioned as totalitarian). However, it simultaneously stresses the uniqueness of the Holocaust and the need to find a balance between acknowledging the human rights abuses committed in the GDR without trivialising the crimes of National Socialism in comparison. However, the Federal Memorial Concept remains silent on memory of the crimes of colonialism. It is this ‘consensus’ that the (conservative) critics of Mbembe appear to be defending; as Rothberg notes, they accept German responsibility for the Holocaust, but in a targeted way ‘in order to avoid further responsibilities and their ethical and political implications’.27 Early in 2021, Rothberg himself moved to the centre of these debates following the publication of his book Multidirectional Memory (originally published in 2009) in German translation. Multidirectional Memory had long since become a standard reference in anglophone memory studies. In his work, Rothberg explores the dialogical exchange between memories of the Holocaust and of colonialism, arguing against an understanding of collective memory as a ‘zero-sum struggle over scarce resources’ and instead asking us to consider it ‘as subject to ongoing negotiation, cross-referencing, and borrowing; as productive and not privative’, that is, as relational.28 Rothberg’s book was subject to fierce criticism by journalist Thomas Schmid in a Die Welt blog post published in February 2021. Schmid describes Rothberg as the ‘current guru of NGOs and left-liberal cultural milieu also in Germany, who comfort themselves with the deceptive certainty that we can connect all the experiences of suffering in the world with one another and thereby make the world a better place’. However, it is not only Rothberg’s (in Schmid’s view) naïve optimism that is the subject of criticism; Schmid also perceives a risk that a multidirectional approach will end up flattening out the differences between genocides, human rights abuses and other atrocities, and will open the door to a trivialisation of the Holocaust. Indeed, Schmid argues that antisemitism is at the core of postcolonial studies, accusing the discipline of ‘envy of the Jews (and Israel)’ for their status as victims.29 Writing in the Tageszeitung, Tania Martini was similarly critical of Rothberg’s approach. She ascribes to postcolonial studies the argument that ‘racism is so strong because everyone is constantly preoccupied with the Shoah’, a line of reasoning that she describes as ‘foolish’. Martini has some sympathy for the view that memory of the Holocaust functions as a ‘screen memory’, blocking memory of the violence of German colonialism. However, she sees this as quite different from the view that asserting the uniqueness of the Holocaust is an attempt to distract from apparent German complicity in the expropriation of the Palestinians, which is how she characterises Rothberg’s position. She ungenerously

6 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

describes the concept of multidirectional memory as ‘mixing up everything with everything and thereby relativizing’.30 There were robust defences of Rothberg’s work by, for example, Gerhard Harnloser and Micha Brumlik, who noted that a commitment to multidirectionality did not necessarily detract from the singularity of the Holocaust, or indeed other instances of genocide and mass violence.31 Charlotte Wiedemann argued that the comparison with the Historians Debate of the 1980s was misleading: where revisionist historians attempted to use comparison in order to relativise the Holocaust and to allow Germany to take less responsibility, what was being asked of German memory culture in 2021 was to accept more responsibility for its violent pasts. She points out that ‘no-one in Germany has to decide between a particular sensitivity towards the Shoah and empathy for the consequences of colonialism’.32 Indeed, in a piece coauthored with the historian of German colonialism Jürgen Zimmerer, whose work was also subject to criticism in the debate on Rothberg’s book, Rothberg strongly rejects the accusation that he calls into question the singularity of the Holocaust. Rothberg and Zimmerer stress that ‘singularity’ and ‘relationality’ are not mutually exclusive and that the attacks on their work present a deliberately distorted picture of it, which serves to ‘save’ German national identity by stressing the ‘normality’ of its history (including colonialism), with Auschwitz as an aberration.33 The debate reached a peak in May 2021 with the publication of historian Dirk Moses’ article ‘The German Catechism’, which also appeared on the blog Geschichte der Gegenwart. Moses writes pointedly of what he considers the ‘articles of faith’ of German national memory of the Holocaust – the ‘catechism of the Germans’. He describes the response to Mbembe, Rothberg and Zimmerer as ‘nothing less than a public exorcism performed by the selfappointed high priests’ of this catechism. According to Moses, the ‘catechism’ has five elements: the uniqueness of the Holocaust as the first attempt in history to annihilate a people solely on ideological grounds; the nature of the Holocaust as a civilisational rupture and therefore as ‘the moral foundation of the nation’; Germany’s ‘special responsibility to Jews in Germany, and a special loyalty to Israel’; the distinct nature of antisemitism as a prejudice; and the belief that ‘antizionism is antisemitism’. Moses contends that these ‘articles of faith’ were initially resisted by (conservative) adherents to the old catechism, which held that the Holocaust was ‘a historical accident committed by a small group of fanatics’. However, over the course of time and as a result of numerous public debates around Germany’s Nazi past, they too had come to accept that Germany’s national image as part of its ‘geopolitical legitimacy’ was best served through acceptance of the new ‘articles of faith’. However, Moses notes that it is becoming ever more difficult for the ‘high

Introduction • 7

priests’ to discipline a new multicultural generation, for whom the ‘catechism’ does not reflect their lifeworld. He concludes that ‘the time has come to set it aside and renegotiate the demands of historical justice in a way that respects all victims of the German state and Germans of all kinds’.34 There were robust responses both for and against Moses’ polemic, many of which appeared on the New Fascism Syllabus blog, curated by Canadian scholar Jennifer Evans.35 The respondents on New Fascism Syllabus considered the framing of Moses’ argument, the particular emphasis and apparent lack of balance, the ways in which Holocaust memory has been used in battles for human rights in other contexts, and the failure of Holocaust memory to generate empathy for other suffering.36 What does this all mean for German memory in a transnational context? Jonathan Bach notes that new discussions about colonial legacies, such as those described here, ‘raise the stakes for the future of Germany’s global reputation as a normative model for democratic confrontations with difficult pasts’.37 Citing Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy’s influential report on the need to confront the legacy of colonialism, in particular in European museum collections, Bach argues that what is needed is a ‘new relational ethics’. He adds that ‘such an ethics is not meant to rectify the “blind spot in our culture of remembrance” (as German culture minister Monika Grütters put it), but to draw attention to the ways in which blind spots are created’.38 As Rothberg and Zimmerer contend in their 2021 article: ‘Germany’s memory culture is often presented as a model to follow. However, we must finally also name its limits and gaps.’39 The analysis in this book shows how those blindspots, limits and gaps are reflected in the transnational cooperation of German mnemonic actors in the years leading up to these most recent debates, which themselves demonstrate that this ‘export hit’ is far from a fixed and stable ‘product’.

Remembering the GDR in the United Germany The book undertakes this analysis through what might be an unexpected focus: state-mandated memory of the GDR. Rather than looking at the transnational activity of institutions dealing with the Holocaust, which (still) sits at the centre of German memory,40 or with the history of colonialism, which sits at its periphery, I focus on memory of the GDR, which occupies a space in-between. As noted above, memory of the GDR is a key focus of the Federal Memorial Concept; however, it is framed from the outset as secondary to the memory of the Holocaust. It is worth citing the Memorial Concept at some length in this regard:

8 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

The understanding of one’s own history contributes to the identity formation of every nation. For us Germans, part of that are the lessons that the founding generation of the Federal Republic of Germany drew from the criminal rule of National Socialism. The unwavering respect for human dignity, the consciousness for the meaning of freedom and the values of the Basic Law are the fundamental principles of our democratic order. The historical heritage of the reunited Germany also includes since 1990 the communist dictatorship in the former Soviet Zone of Occupation/GDR. The antitotalitarian consensus that is founded on the Basic Law binds democratic parties today in the knowledge of the inhumane character of this dictatorship.41

The Memorial Concept goes on to emphasise the ‘incomparability of the Holocaust’ and to assert that the genocide of the European Jews has a ‘singular significance in the German, European and worldwide culture of remembrance’,42 adding that it is ‘also’ the duty of ‘state and society to remember the injustice of the SED dictatorship’. The Memorial Concept can be viewed as a documentation of the state-sanctioned position on German memory of the twentieth century; in it, the GDR is framed as ‘totalitarian’ and memory of human rights abuses committed by the Socialist Unity Party (SED) regime as a duty. However, in this document, the Federal Parliament is also very careful to set limits to any comparison between the crimes of National Socialism and state socialism through its emphasis on the uniqueness of the Holocaust and its centrality to German memory and identity. Indeed, the assertion in the Memorial Concept that all ‘democratic parties’ are united in their recognition of the character of the GDR as a dictatorship in which citizens suffered manifold abuses of their human rights suggests a consensus that does not reflect reality. There continue to be significant divisions within German politics and society about what kind of society the GDR was and how it should be remembered. On the one hand, victim groups and former dissidents often argue for a greater recognition of their suffering under the SED and complain that the failures of transitional justice have frequently left them at a material disadvantage in comparison with the perpetrators of those abuses.43 In some cases, this demand for recognition calls into question the apparent consensus around the uniqueness of the Holocaust and its central role in German and European memory.44 On the other hand, former GDR citizens who did not find themselves in opposition to the regime contest the purely negative portrayal of their past that does not reflect their lived experience. The latter sometimes manifests itself in a nostalgia for the GDR, or Ostalgie. As Patricia Hogwood argues, ‘east Germans often experience, construct and evaluate memories of the GDR quite differently from west Germans and the FRG state’, but these discourses ‘have lacked an equivalent state “partner” to reinforce their political weight’.45

Introduction • 9

This nostalgia has been fuelled by a sense of resentment and an identity developed in defiance of what is perceived as western dominance or even colonisation of the former east.46 Konrad H. Jarausch notes that ‘many Easterners were overwhelmed by the imposition of Western patterns’ and were alienated by the ‘discrediting of the GDR through media scandalization’.47 The economic disparities between the old and new Federal states contributed to a sense among eastern Germans of being ‘second class citizens’.48 Writing in 2013, Jarausch notes that relatively few eastern Germans had gained political prominence in the united Germany, with the evident exceptions of Angela Merkel and Joachim Gauck.49 He concludes that ‘there is no denying that united Germany is governed by Western elites, that the media slight Eastern topics, and that disparities in wealth continue between the old and new states’.50 Christian Schweiger connects the dominance of the ‘institutional pathway’ of the West German Federal Republic with a ‘self-perception of East Germans as dislocated, second-class citizens’ that, in turn, fuels support for anti-immigrant politics in the new Länder.51 Memory of the GDR in the united Germany is therefore far from settled; it is also subject to change. The processes of memorialising the victims of the GDR and dealing with the perpetrators of human rights abuses began even before the state officially ended,52 and the immediate post-Wende period was also marked by a number of efforts to address the recent past. One of the earliest events in this process was the passing of the Stasi Records Law in late 1991 and the foundation of the office of the Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the Former GDR (Bundesbeauftragter für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen DDR (BStU)), one of the key institutions studied in this book. The creation of the BStU regulated access to the Stasi records for victims and, under certain circumstances, perpetrators, media and researchers. It also facilitated early lustration, that is, the exclusion from positions of responsibility of individuals who had prior involvement with the Stasi. Transitional justice was also attempted in a series of trials, initially against the direct perpetrators of state violence (notably border guards) and later against those who had created and sustained the structures in which such violence took place, including members of the GDR leadership. In 1992, the Federal Parliament launched the first of two Parliamentary Commissions of Enquiry (Enquête Commissions): ‘Working through the History and Consequences of the SED Dictatorship’. This was followed by the second Commission in 1995: ‘Overcoming the Consequences of the SED Dictatorship in the Process of German Unity’. One outcome of the latter was the creation in 1998 of the Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship – another of the central institutions considered in this study.53

10 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

Official memorialisation of the GDR in the first fifteen years following unification was characterised by an emphasis on the history of repression, ideology and the dictatorial regime on the one hand, and high profile intellectuals on the other hand.54 The third key institution studied in this book – the Stasi prison Memorial at Berlin-Hohenschönhausen – epitomises this approach. This focus on the repressive aspects of the dictatorship stood in contrast to a concentration on everyday life and a sense of ‘normality’ within the constraints of the dictatorship, which found expression in popular media and culture as well as in a number of private museum initiatives. The most successful of these is the DDR Museum in Berlin, which aims to provide an ‘interactive’ experience of history, allowing visitors to sit in a reconstruction of a typical GDR flat or pretend to drive a Trabant.55 This emphasis in state-mandated memory was set to change in the mid2000s. In 2005 – in the midst of debate around the role and function of the BStU, the Hohenschönhausen Memorial and the memorial in the former Stasi headquarters in Normannenstraße – Christina Weiss, then Federal Commissioner for Culture and Media (SPD), called into being the ‘Expert Commission for the Creation of a Historical Network “Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship”’. The ‘Sabrow Commission’ (named after its chair, the historian Martin Sabrow) published its recommendations in May 2006. The Commission argued that there was a continued division between eastern and western perspectives on the GDR and expressed concerns about the ‘trivialisation’ of the dictatorship, including through ‘the uncritical collections of GDR everyday culture’. As a countermeasure, the Sabrow Commission recommended the inclusion of ‘everyday life in the dictatorship’ in state-supported initiatives.56 A shift in political constellations, especially the appointment of CDU politician Bernd Neumann to the position of Federal Commissioner for Culture and Media, meant that the impact of the Sabrow Commission report was muted, including in the subsequent revision of the Federal Memorial Concept in 2008.57 As we have seen, the Memorial Concept emphasises the centrality of the Holocaust in German national memory culture, but also the need to remember the GDR as a dictatorship. Where memories of the everyday are included, they are to be represented within the context of the dictatorial regime.58 It is here that this book picks up the story, in 2009, described by some as a ‘Supergedenkjahr’59 – a ‘super commemorative year’ – marking twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, sixty years since the founding of the Federal Republic (and GDR), and seventy years since the start of the Second World War. Hope M. Harrison notes key shifts in official commemorations of the GDR in this period, in particular towards a greater emphasis on the East German opposition and its role in the state’s demise. Despite some reservations, this was welcomed by many former dissidents and civil rights activists,

Introduction • 11

who had previously felt that their experiences had been neglected in official commemorations.60 This ‘celebratory narrative’ continued into the commemorations in 2014 and was combined with a rhetoric that also recognised the contribution of non-German actors, especially in other Central and Eastern European countries, to bringing down the Wall.61 By the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the Wall in 2019, the memory of the ‘Peaceful Revolution’ as a ‘positive founding myth’ was complicated by continued dissatisfaction among many eastern Germans and by the move to the far right of some of the civil rights activists who had fought for democratic renewal in the GDR.62 This included (as discussed below) some of those associated with the Hohenschönhausen Memorial. These narrative shifts have been accompanied by developments in the memorial and museum landscape. Notably, a number of state-mandated museum projects have opened that incorporate everyday life as part of their focus. This includes the Museum in the Kulturbrauerei with its permanent exhibition ‘Everyday Life in the GDR’ and the exhibition in the departure hall at the former border crossing point on Berlin’s Friedrichsstrasse, known as the Palace of Tears. The latter originally had the title ‘Border Experiences: Everyday Life in Divided Germany’ (since changed to ‘Site of German Division’). Nonetheless, as I have shown elsewhere, the presentation of the ‘everyday’ in these sites is very much one of the extraordinary experiences of ordinary people, the penetration of the dictatorship into their daily lives, and/ or their efforts to experience ‘normality’ by finding ways to escape the reach of the state.63 In keeping with the emphasis on the ‘positive founding myth’ of the ‘Peaceful Revolution’ and overcoming of the dictatorship, the period following 2006 also saw a renewed focus on memory of the Berlin Wall. This included the passing of the Overarching Plan (Gesamtkonzept) for Commemorating the Berlin Wall in 2006 and the construction of the Berlin Wall Memorial and Documentation Centre at Bernauer Straße, which opened (in part) in time for the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Wall in 2009.64 The years following 2008 were also marked by protracted discussion around the proposed Freedom and Unity Monument in Berlin, the construction of which (after numerous delays) began in May 2020.65 In the sphere of transitional justice, the 2010s saw renewed discussions around the moving of the Stasi files from the archive of the BStU to the Federal Archive. In 2014, the Federal Parliament tasked a commission of experts to discuss the future of the BStU in this regard. The Commission’s recommendations were published in April 2016. They included moving the administration of the Stasi files to the Federal Archive (albeit retaining the name and location(s) of the Stasi Records Archive).66 In 2019, the Federal Parliament confirmed its decision to follow these recommendations, although the Stasi Records Law itself will remain in effect. The reform was finalised in

12 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

November 2020 and the move of the files was complete on 17 June 2021. The Federal Commissioner for the Stasi files became the Federal Commissioner for the Victims of the SED Dictatorship, a transformation that is seen by some as marking a ‘normalisation’ of GDR memory. In the words of Richard Schroeder, Vice Chair of the Expert Commission, ‘such a special authority [i.e. the Stasi Records Authority] is something for special times. It is not something for normal times’.67

Remembering the GDR in Transnational Context How does remembrance of the GDR in Germany relate to the transnational or supranational context? In an article published in 2007, Andrew Beattie observes parallels between German debates about memory of National Socialism and communism and those taking place at a European level. In both, a ‘widespread sense of western superiority’ is challenged by eastern perspectives that appear to contest the dominant view of the Holocaust as a singular event with a unique position in national and European memory. Beattie argues that in the German and European contexts, an ‘inaccurate east-west dichotomy legitimises pressure on the eastern side to conform to a seemingly unquestionable but, in fact, contested western norm’.68 Similarly, Harrison describes Germany as occupying ‘a fault line in debates over memory policy … with the West German focus on Holocaust memory being challenged by a new East German focus on communist memory’. She notes that it was more difficult for Germany, as a perpetrator nation, to explicitly (or indeed implicitly) compare National Socialism and communist crimes than it was for other countries in Central and Eastern Europe. Nonetheless, given the dominance of Holocaust memory, eastern German actors felt compelled to engage in such comparisons in order to have their voices heard.69 As indicated by Beattie, this conflict between East and West also took place at a supranational level. In an essay published in 2012, Aleida Assmann describes two ‘memory hotspots’ (Erinnerungsbrennpunkte) in Europe: the Holocaust and the Gulag. She adds that the apparent incompatibility of these two ‘hotspots’ prevents the formation of a common European identity founded on a common culture of memory.70 Both Assmann and Claus Leggewie describe the Holocaust as the ‘negative founding myth’ of Europe, something that Leggewie considers is based on the ‘template’ provided by Germany’s coming to terms with the past.71 Leggewie calls for Europeans to commemorate not only the Holocaust and the Gulag, but also other genocides and mass violence, including the crimes of colonialism. However, in his seven concentric rings of European historical consciousness, the Holocaust

Introduction • 13

occupies the centre, the crimes of communist regimes and parties the second ring, and the memory of colonialism the fifth. In short, in European memory, as in German memory, the Holocaust is at the core and colonialism at the periphery: memory of the human rights abuses committed under communism sits at a place in-between.72 Nonetheless, the accession to the EU in 2004 of countries formerly on the Eastern side of the Cold War divide was followed by shifts in the EU’s politics of history, driven principally by actors from Central and Eastern European countries. Mnemonic activists from the region sought to have their perspective on the history of the twentieth century incorporated at a European level and contested the dominance of Holocaust-centred memory. Here too, there was an equation of the ‘German’ model with the European: Aline Sierp notes that ‘what seems to be feared most is that the same nation that caused the destruction of large parts of the European continent [i.e. Germany] will now try to impose its “negative nationalism” upon the rest of Europe’.73 Several scholars have traced these efforts to ‘wrench the “European mnemonical map” apart’ and the (albeit limited) transformation of EU memory politics as a result.74 Maria Mälksoo describes Eastern European actors as ‘subalterns’ in this context, ‘seeking recognition from and exercising resistance to the hegemonic “core European” narrative of what “Europe” is all about’.75 It should be borne in mind that these ‘subalterns’ were also institutional actors within the structures of the Council of Europe, the European Parliament, the EU Council and the European Commission.76 Laure Neumayer describes the results of this mnemonic activism as ‘a gradual, albeit contentious, change in the official remembrance of Communism’.77 Evidence of this change can be seen in a series of (highly contested) declarations and resolutions in the mid-2000s. In 2005, the European Parliament issued a resolution with the title ‘The Future of Europe Sixty Years after the Second World War’, which acknowledged explicitly (and for the first time) the suffering and injustice experienced by Eastern European countries under Stalinism.78 In January 2006, this was followed by a resolution by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe that condemns the crimes committed by totalitarian communist regimes and states that the victims of those crimes ‘deserve sympathy, understanding and recognition for their sufferings’.79 In 2008, the ‘Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Totalitarianism’ was adopted at a conference organised by the Czech Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes (ISTR) and signed by prominent former dissidents, human rights activists, historians and representatives of national memory institutes, including Joachim Gauck (former head of the BStU). The Declaration demanded that ‘consciousness of the crimes against humanity committed by the Communist regimes throughout the continent

14 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

must inform all European minds to the same extent as the Nazi regimes crimes did’, adding that there ‘are substantial similarities between Nazism and Communism in terms of their horrific and appalling character’. It called for 23 August to be adopted as a day of national remembrance of the victims of totalitarian regimes and the establishment of an Institute of European Memory and Conscience.80 In April 2009, the European Parliament published the ‘Resolution on European Conscience and Totalitarianism’, which, Neumayer argues, represents ‘an undisputable discursive shift towards an interpretation of Communism centred on its criminal nature and its structural proximity to Nazism’.81 The Resolution did not respond to all the demands of the Prague Declaration and stressed the singularity of the Holocaust. Nonetheless, the outcomes of the Resolution included the establishment of 23 August as a day of remembrance, something that is controversial in Germany,82 and the creation of the pan-European network, the Platform for European Memory and Conscience.83 The Platform networks mnemonic actors from across Europe, but with a distinctly Central and Eastern European focus and with an emphasis on the history and memory of communism.84 As the unification of Germany challenged and transformed the dominant national memory culture, so did ‘the accession of Eastern European states [allow] for a competing interpretation of the past – that of “Nazism and Stalinism as equally evil” to gain ground’.85 In both the German and EU contexts, the dominant framework is still that of the uniqueness of the Holocaust. Nonetheless, the emphasis on Central and Eastern Europeans as the victims of communism, often presented as an external and alien ideology, has fed (and been fed by) a nationalist politics of memory in post-socialist countries. In these narratives, memory of the Holocaust (and especially local complicity in the genocide of the European Jews) is marginalised, or the focus is on positive memory of local acts of heroism.86 There is another structural similarity between German national memory and memory at the European level. Oriane Calligaro traces the memory politics of the EU from its focus on memories of the Holocaust to the addition of memories of the crimes of communism. She notes that ‘essential aspects of this dark side of European history remain absent from this new approach, especially concerning the negative action of Europeans abroad, like slavery, imperialism and colonialism’.87 Charles Forsdick, James Mark and Eva Spišiaková argue that the successful advocacy for memory of the crimes of communism actually further occluded the memory of colonialism by reinforcing ‘the importance of the suffering of Europeans over those who had been the victims of European imperialism’. Sierp also notes the dearth of commemoration of the violence of colonialism at the EU level in comparison to the vig-

Introduction • 15

orous condemnation and remembrance of the crimes of National Socialism and communism.88 The focus on memory of the Holocaust and Stalinism, she argues, has translated into a form of colonial amnesia, which assumes its worst form in racist stereotypes. As in the German national context, she perceives a shift in debates within European institutions around this issue, although these have not yet translated into significant policy initiatives.89

The Case Studies The extent to which German mnemonic actors cooperate across borders is vast; I have therefore selected three case studies to form the basis of my study. Gabowitsch notes that part of the German model of ‘success’ relates to ‘an unusually dense network of institutions dedicated to atonement, ranging from individual memorials to large-scale foundations, most of which work closely with international partners’.90 This is no less true of memory of the GDR and it is three of these institutions that form the focus of this study: the Federal Commissioner for the Files of the State Security Service of the Former GDR (BStU), the Memorial Berlin-Hohenschönhausen and the Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship (Stiftung Aufarbeitung). These three organisations are either federal institutions or are supported financially by the federal government, and can thus be regarded as ‘state-mandated’.91 They have different functions: that of archive, memorial and state-mandated institute respectively. As will be seen, they also occupy different political different positions with regard to German and European memory cultures, making a comparison of their activity particularly fruitful. The BStU, Hohenschönhausen and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung engage extensively in transnational collaboration, as will be seen throughout this study. Jarausch argues that ‘in the German context the transition was … overshadowed by the discussion of the progress of unification, which inhibited a comparative perspective’.92 If we consider the processes and institutions of transitional justice and memorialisation, we can see that there have in fact been efforts to include the GDR in a number of comparative analyses, particularly with regard to other Central and Eastern European countries.93 There have also been studies that take a transnational perspective on the cooperation of state-mandated memory institutes, some of which consider the BStU as a model for other actors.94 Nonetheless, transnational cooperation remains under-researched, particularly when the partnerships are with actors outside of Europe.95 This is a further empirical gap that this book seeks to fill. In what follows, I will sketch the history and function of these institutions and how they position themselves politically.

16 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

Federal Commissioner for the Files of the State Security Service of the Former GDR Securing access to the files of the hated East German secret police, the Stasi, was one of the key aims and achievements of the civil rights activists of 1989 and was by no means straightforward.96 The creation of the office of the Federal Commissioner for the Files of the State Security Service of the Former GDR (BStU) to administer access to the files and the passing of the Stasi Records Law in 1991 to regulate that access has been described as ‘an unprecedented act of civic empowerment’.97 The remit of the BStU was focused on the administration of the files for victims, lustration, media and research; however, it also extended beyond that to include a public history function involving events, exhibitions and publications. The BStU was a Federal institution, supported financially and institutionally by the state. However, it was also part of the legacy of 1989 and the efforts towards democracy of the civil rights groups that were so central to bringing down the GDR regime. The institution saw this legacy as central to its identity. Permanent exhibitions in its national and regional headquarters combined a focus on the history of the Stasi with an emphasis on the storming of the Stasi archives in 1989/1990.98 In the decision to move the Stasi archives from the BStU to the Federal Archives, the authors stressed the symbolic value of the BStU as ‘the greatest achievement of the Peaceful Revolution’.99 The selection of Commissioners has also reflected this role. Joachim Gauck (served 1991–2000) is a former GDR civil rights activist and was spokesperson for New Forum (Neues Forum), an oppositional political group that emerged in the wake of the regime’s collapse. Marianne Birthler (served 2000–2011) is also a human rights activist, cofounder of the group Church Solidarity (Solidarische Kirche), which campaigned for more democracy in the GDR, and a politician of Alliance ’90. Roland Jahn (served 2011–2021) was also active in the opposition in the GDR and in 1982 was imprisoned for displaying the flag of the Polish union movement Solidarity. In 1983, the GDR regime revoked Jahn’s citizenship; he was forcibly expatriated to West Berlin, where he continued to support East German dissidents. The BStU was therefore both integrated into the pan-German institutional approach to remembering the GDR and positioned itself as a representative of the former GDR opposition, the proponents of which are not always in alignment with the dominant narrative about memory of state socialism, and how it can and should fit into memory of the twentieth century. How does the BStU negotiate this position in its publications in the period under investigation here (2009–2016)? In the ninth activity report, covering the period from May 2007 to March 2009, the BStU constructs itself explicitly as part

Introduction • 17

of the emerging network of institutions in Central and Eastern Europe that have been set up to manage the files of the communist state security services. Indeed, it describes the German approach as ‘exemplary’ for other countries in this context and the BStU as the initiator for the European Network of Official Authorities in Charge of the Secret Police Files (ENOA). The report notes that the work of the ENOA has been supported by the fact that the ‘European Parliament is addressing for the first time the era of communist tyranny in Europe and in a resolution in April 2009 made clear statements about working through this past’.100 In the tenth activity report, covering the period from April 2009 to December 2010, the BStU is explicit about perceived deficits in German and European cultures of memory: Just as the West is a long way from recognising the GDR as a part of German history, so it seems that the history of the former communist-ruled countries in Central and Eastern Europe do not belong to European history from the perspective of Paris, Stockholm or Rome.

The report cites a speech by Jorge Semprún, a former prisoner in the Buchenwald concentration camp in Weimar, given on the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of the camp: ‘We hope that by the next commemoration in 10 years’ time, 2015, the experiences of the Gulag will be integrated into our collective European memory. We hope, that next to the books of [Holocaust survivors] Primo Levi, Imre Kertész or David Rousset, the ‘Story from Kolyma’ by [Gulag survivor] Warlam Schalamow will have taken its place.’ The report goes on to emphasise that the BStU is viewed in Germany and internationally as a role model in this context.101 In its selfpresentation, the BStU thus positions itself as a central part of Germany’s global reputation as the ‘masters of atonement’, and yet also as critical of a memory culture within Germany and Europe that – in this narrative – does not yet allow sufficient space for memory of the crimes of communism alongside those of National Socialism.

The Memorial Berlin-Hohenschönhausen The Memorial Berlin-Hohenschönhausen is located in the largest former remand prison in the GDR. The site was also used as a special camp (Speziallager) by the Soviet occupation and as a remand prison of the Soviet People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) and the Ministry for Internal Affairs (MVD) between 1946 and 1951. The complex was closed in 1990 and, following pressure from former prisoners and civil rights activists, the prison buildings were listed as protected in 1992. The site

18 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

was made accessible to those interested in its history from 1995, initially with the support of victim organisations. In line with the recommendations of the second Parliamentary Commission of Enquiry, in 2000 the Berlin Parliament passed the Law for the Creation of the Foundation ‘Memorial Berlin-Hohenschönhausen’.102 The Director of the Memorial from the inauguration of the Foundation in 2000 until 2018 was the historian Hubertus Knabe.103 In that period, Knabe was a prominent figure in memory-political debates regarding the GDR and (as we will see) was very much the public face of the Memorial, strongly influencing the ways in which it was presented and received. In press interviews given at the beginning of his tenure, he described the prison as the ‘Dachau of communism’, and National Socialism and SED socialism as two sides of the same totalitarian coin.104 In this way, he positioned himself firmly on the side of those victims of the SED regime who advocated for a recognition of their suffering alongside (and in some cases as equal to) that of the victims of Nazism. The publication by Knabe in 2007 of Die Täter sind unter uns [The Perpetrators Are among Us], which fiercely criticised the (in his view) failure to bring to justice the perpetrators of human rights abuses in the GDR, is exemplary of his position as a victim advocate.105 This narrative about the GDR past is reflected, to a significant extent, in the exhibition of the Memorial106 and, as will be seen in Chapter 3, in the texts produced by the institution in relation to cooperation with (especially) Central and Eastern European and post-Soviet partners. This stance has long been controversial.107 However, in 2018, the position of the Memorial in relation to the state socialist and National Socialist pasts moved to the centre of public discussion. The Memorial felt compelled to distance itself from its own support association (Förderverein) following statements by its Chair, Jörg Kürschner, in support of the AfD. This was viewed as especially problematic, given the AfD’s tendency to trivialise National Socialism and compare the GDR to the present-day Federal Republic.108 In the same year, Hohenschönhausen sacked one of its longstanding tour guides (and former political prisoner), Siegmar Faust, after statements he made in an interview with the Berliner Zeitung that appeared to support Holocaust-denier Horst Mahler and suggested a need to draw a line under the memory of National Socialism.109 In the autumn of 2021, the Memorial was once again in the national and regional press. This was not only in relation to the ongoing controversy surrounding Knabe’s dismissal following allegations of sexual harassment against his deputy, Helmuth Frauendorfer,110 but also after the discovery that AfD representative Rainer Schamberger had been posing as a victim of the Stasi and working as a guide at the Memorial since 2017.111

Introduction • 19

Nonetheless, despite this critical position towards the dominant memory culture in Germany, in the period under investigation here, Hohenschönhausen simultaneously positions itself as a representative of that memory culture and highlights the esteem in which it is held internationally. In the fifth activity report of the Memorial, covering the years 2009–10, Klaus Wowereit (SPD) – then Mayor of Berlin – noted Hohenschönhausen’s very recent collaborations with partners in post-‘Arab Spring’ countries.112 He highlighted that Berlin memorial institutions are sought-after for advice and practical support. He went on to suggest that this international collaboration was taking place in a context in which memory of the GDR was settled in German and European memory cultures, and was now being exported: Following a phase of inner-German debate and discussion about the SED dictatorship and a European comparison [Abgleich] of experiences of communist dictatorships, this discourse – it seems – is now gaining a global dimension.113

In the sixth activity report (covering the years 2011–12), Knabe stresses the ‘exemplary’ status of the Memorial for other countries and extends this to German memory culture as a whole.114 The seventh activity report (2013–14) links the two, claiming: ‘The fact that “Aufarbeitung made in Germany” enjoys an excellent reputation worldwide, is also due to the Memorial Berlin-Hohenschönhausen.’115

Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship Created in 1998, the Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship (Stiftung Aufarbeitung) is one of the key outcomes of the two Parliamentary Commissions of Enquiry related to the GDR past that took place in the 1990s (see above). The Stiftung Aufarbeitung has a mandate to promote the ‘comprehensive reappraisal of the causes, history and consequences of the dictatorship in the Soviet Zone of Occupation and the GDR, to accompany the process of German unity and to contribute to the reckoning with dictatorships at an international level’.116 Carola S. Rudnick divides the duties of the Stiftung into six areas: advancement of initiatives aiming to work through the GDR past; support for victim groups; delivery of its own educational initiatives, particularly against ‘totalitarian tendencies’; promotion of research; archiving of materials; and establishment of a culture of commemoration with regard to the GDR past.117 The Stiftung fulfils this remit through its own activities – organising events, exhibitions, networking and maintaining archives; however, it also plays a central role in distributing

20 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

government funding to other actors, including academics, memorials, museums and victim organisations.118 Anselma Gallinat notes that the Stiftung Aufarbeitung has a wider remit than the BStU and ‘is able to initiate and influence national events’, but adds that ‘it appears to have little visibility in local and national media, as well as the grassroots of society’.119 In its activity reports in the period under investigation here (2009–16), the Stiftung Aufarbeitung emphasises that it is a creation of the German Parliament and that its role is to promote ‘broad society-wide discussion around the causes, history and consequences of communist dictatorships in the Soviet Zone of Occupation, GDR and Central and Eastern Europe, as well as about German and European division, including its end’.120 This self-conception places German history, including the history of the GDR, firmly in the context of the history of Central and Eastern Europe. Indeed, the Stiftung Aufbeitung describes itself as ‘a mediator between institutions working through the past at home and abroad, and as a co-ordinator of international cooperation in the process of dealing with dictatorships’.121 The Stiftung Aufarbeitung is the institution in which we see the closest alignment between the narratives about the twentieth century emphasised in documents such as the Federal Memorial Concept and the narratives within the self-presentation of this organisation. Indeed, Rudnick describes the Stiftung as ‘representing institutionally the pan-state/national history and memory politics with regard to the Soviet Zone/GDR’.122 The introduction to the Stiftung’s 2009 activity report, which emphasises the importance of the twentieth anniversary of 1989 in that year, is instructive in this context. As in the national celebrations around 2009, the focus is on celebrating the achievements of the revolutions across Central and Eastern Europe, ‘which created the conditions not only for the self-democratisation of East Central Europe and the overcoming of European division, but also for the unification of Germany’.123 This celebration is prefaced with a recognition of German guilt: ‘without the Second World War, begun by Germany in 1939, there would have been no European and German division, the people in East Central Europe would not have had to live under communist dictatorships for more than four decades’.124 As in the ‘official’ memory, the need to remember the GDR and its end is emphasised; however, this does not displace the centrality of the Second World War and the Holocaust in the national culture of remembrance. As will be seen in the course of this book, the Stiftung Aufarbeitung works closely with actors and groups who take what might be considered the ‘Eastern’ position in European memory debates, and it organises and is involved with events that reassert that position. Nonetheless, within those events and collaborations, representatives of the Stiftung Aufarbeitung itself often reiterate the ‘western’ position espoused by the Memorial Concept and, at the same time, assert the status of Germany as a model for remembrance.

Introduction • 21

The Structure of This Book The remainder of this book will proceed in six chapters. In Chapter 1, I position the study in the context of existing research on transnational memory and outline the theoretical framework used to explore the cross-border collaborations of the three central institutions. The framework draws on concepts developed in relational sociology to show how those ‘transactions’ can be understood as relationships embedded within a network structure that is determined by (and reinforces) cultural blueprints about the relationship between East and West, and North and South. Together, the structure, relationship cultures and cultural blueprints make up the ‘meaning structure’ of the networks. I outline the original concept of collaborative memory and suggest that in order for memory to be ‘truly’ collaborative, it must be underpinned by a ‘decolonial cosmopolitanism’. The chapter goes on to explain the new methodological approach developed for this study, which combines quantitative social network analysis with qualitative narrative research. Chapter 2 presents the key results from the quantitative social network analysis. It gives an overview of the constitution of the networks with regard to the regional location of the actors and actor type. It uses measures of ‘betweenness centrality’ to show which actors are in positions of brokerage within the networks. Analyses of components and homophily demonstrate that the cross-border collaboration of the three central institutions takes place within relatively discrete ‘memory zones’; that is, actors from a given region are far more likely to be brought into collaboration with actors from the same region than actors from a different one. However, this is not the case for Western European actors: Western Europe does not, to any significant extent, represent a ‘memory zone’ in these networks and German actors coded as ‘western’ function as ‘brokers’ in potential positions of power between them. Chapters 3 and 4 explore these ‘memory zones’ in more detail by examining the actors, activity types and topics dominant within them, and the stories told by the German actors about the collaborations in a given zone. In this way, I build up a picture of how the German actors perceive the relationship culture within the cooperations and how they structure the world rhetorically. Chapter 3 shows how the Central and Eastern European/post-socialist zone is presented as being based on a culture of exchange between equals, motivated by a desire to move the memory of communism further to the centre of national and European memory cultures. A similar narrative is dominant in the post-Soviet zone; however, when the collaborators are located outside of or on the periphery of Europe, they are positioned rhetorically as junior partners and as catching up with the German expertise. Finally, Western Europe is shown to exist everywhere and nowhere in the networks. Western European

22 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

actors (especially German ones) are present; however, Western European history is only rarely a referent, unless it is in relation to the history of the East. Chapter 4 turns to the memory zones located outside of Europe: East Asia and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Here we see a dominance of official visits by governmental actors and nongovernmental organisations (NGOs), accompanied by a narrative of non-German actors learning from a supposedly model German memory. In the East Asian memory zone, the focus is not on the past, but on an imagined future time in which the dictatorship in the Democratic Republic of Korea will be overcome, or on the present and the human rights struggles in the contemporary People’s Republic of China. The focus in the MENA zone is also on the present; the BStU and Hohenschönhausen become agents of transitional justice and democratisation rather than agents of memory. They narrate the collaborations as being motivated by the export of German experiences of transition to passive recipients in the post-‘Arab Spring’ world. In Chapters 5 and 6, I turn my attention to the perspectives of other central actors within the networks. Chapter 5 explores the involvement of German governmental and paragovernmental actors as transzonal brokers between the memory zones. The chapter demonstrates that the BStU, Hohenschönhausen and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung are transformed by these brokers into agents of transitional justice and democratisation. The central institutions become representatives of German memory as a product to be exported and as an instrument of ‘soft power’. Chapter 6 turns its attention to the intrazonal brokers within the networks – that is, the actors who play a central role in specific memory zones. It explores how the ‘exports’ of memory are received in different contexts and shows that in this reception, the specificity of the national is reasserted in the context of the transnational. It identifies the potential for ‘true’ collaboration in the networks under study, but argues that this is undermined if both sides are not transformed. The Conclusion brings these threads together and explores in particular the questions raised by the ‘epistemic coloniality’ evident in the ways in which the German actors rhetorically structure the world – that is, the assumption that Western constructions of knowledge are universal. It asks what is lost through this epistemic perspective and what might be gained by a provincialisation of the European (or German) approach. In this vein, it considers how we can work towards a ‘decolonial cosmopolitanism’ and what role the construction of a truly collaborative memory might play in that process.

Introduction • 23

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

Neiman, Learning from the Germans. Neiman, ‘Germany Confronted Its Racist Legacy’. Neiman, Learning from the Germans, 376. Hammerstein and Trappe, ‘Aufarbeitung der Diktatur’, 9. See also Taberner, ‘Contrite Germans?’, 308. Gabowitsch, ‘Replicating Atonement’, 9. Christoph Cornelissen also notes this tendency to view Germany as a model, but argues that the development of the German approach to coming to terms with the past was part of a broader transnational (Western European) development. See Cornelissen, ‘Vergangenheitsbewältigung’, 34. Gabowitsch, ‘Replicating Atonement’, 7. Gabowitsch, ‘Replicating Atonement’, 13. Taberner, ‘Contrite Germans?, 311. Wüllenkemper, ‘Exportschlager Aufarbeitung’. Mignolo, ‘Cosmopolitanism and the De-colonial Option’, 127. Bond, Craps and Vermeulen, Memory Unbound. Melber and Kössler, ‘Colonial Amnesia’. See also Melber and Kössler, ‘Koloniale Amnesie’. Melber, ‘Germany and Namibia’; BBC News, ‘Germany Officially Recognises Colonial-Era Namibia Genocide’; Neues Ruhrwort, ‘Historiker’. Steckenbiller, ‘Berlin’s Colonial Legacies’. Bechhaus-Gerst and Zeller, ‘Einführung’, 16. Melber, ‘Germany and Namibia’, 9. See Gilley’s speech at: http://www.web.pdx.edu/~gil leyb/BundestagTalkFull.pdf (retrieved 22 February 2022). See Bach, ‘Colonial Pasts in Germany’s Present’, 62–65; Zeller, ‘Weltkulturmuseum?’; BBC News, ‘Benin Bronzes’; Zimmerer, ‘Germany Is Returning Nigeria’s Looted Benin Bronzes’. Cited in Zeller, ‘Weltkulturmuseum?’, 599. I am very grateful to Johanna Kreft for providing me with access to her carefully curated list of contributions to these debates. See, for example, Klein, Gerk and Aguigah, ‘Schwere Vorwürfe’; Klein, Buschow and Dudin, ‘Auf Staatskosten Hass auf Israel verbreiten lassen?’. See, for example, Hoffmans and Laurin, ‘Wer diese Haltung unterstützt’; Bahners, ‘Unter Antisemitismusverdacht’. Cited in Hoffmans and Laurin, ‘Wer diese Haltung unterstützt’. Assmann, ‘Polarisieren oder solidarisieren?’. Posener, ‘Es reicht mit dem steuerfinanzierten Israelhass!’. See also Elbe, ‘Die postkoloniale Schablone’. For a defence of postcolonial studies in this context, see Melber, ‘Mächtige Mentalitäten’. Rothberg, ‘Vergleiche vergleichen’. Rothberg, ‘Vergleiche vergleichen’. Rothberg, ‘Vergleiche vergleichen’. See also Rothberg, ‘Das Gespenst des Vergleichs’. Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory, 3. Schmid, ‘Der Holocaust war singulär’. Martini, ‘Diffuse Erinnerung’. Hanloser, ‘Bloß nicht multidirektional’; Brumlik, ‘Verschränkte Archive’. Wiedemann, ‘Lob der Verunsicherung’. Zimmerer and Rothberg, ‘Enttabuisiert den Vergleich!’. Moses, ‘The German Catechism’.

24 • Towards a Collaborative Memory 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48.

49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67.

New Fascism Syllabus, ‘The Catechism Debate’. See Jennifer Evans’ excellent summary of the debate: Evans, ‘Ends and Beginnings’. Bach, ‘Colonial Pasts in Germany’s Present’, 59. Bach, ‘Colonial Pasts in Germany’s Present’, 64. Rothberg and Zimmerer, ‘Enttabuisiert den Vergleich!’. See Langenbacher, ‘Still the Unmasterable Past?’, 35. Deutscher Bundestag, Fortschreibung der Gedenkstättenkonzeption, 1. Deutscher Bundestag, Fortschreibung der Gedenkstättenkonzeption, 2. Clarke, Constructions of Victimhood, 8–9; Wüstenberg, Civil Society and Memory, 237. Clarke, Constructions of Victimhood, 18. See also the discussion of the debates on the commemoration of the victims of communism in the Federal Parliament in the early 2000s in Harrison, After the Berlin Wall, 225–35. Hogwood, ‘Selective Memory’, 37. Cooke, Representing East Germany. Jarausch, ‘Growing Together?’, 1 and 3. Jarausch, ‘Growing Together?’, 7. Following the conventions of much Anglophone scholarship in the GDR, I will use the lower case ‘eastern German’ to mean the territory of the United Germany that was formerly the GDR, and the upper case ‘East German’ to refer to the state that existed between 1949 and 1990. Jarausch, ‘Growing Together?’, 5. See also McAdams, ‘The Last East German’, 59. Jarausch, ‘Growing Together?’, 17. Schweiger, ‘Deutschland einig Vaterland?’, 18. See Assmann, Das neue Unbehagen, 119; Faulenbach, ‘Eine neue Konstellation?’, 42; Wüstenberg, Civil Society and Memory, 239. There is a wealth of literature exploring processes of transitional justice in post-socialist Germany. Major examples include Beattie, Playing Politics with History; McAdams, Judging the Past in Unified Germany. Großbölting, ‘Die DDR im vereinten Deutschland’, 35. See, for example, Arnold-de Simine, ‘“The Spirit of an Epoch”’; Bach, What Remains, 45–89; Ludwig, ‘Representations of the Everyday’; Wüstenberg, Civil Society and Memory, 229–31; Zündorf, ‘Vitrine oder Wühltisch’. Sabrow et al., Wohin treibt die DDR-Erinnerung?, 34–35. Rudnick, Die andere Hälfte der Erinnerung, 100. Clarke with Wölfel, ‘Remembering the German Democratic Republic’, 9–10; Beattie, ‘The Politics of Remembering the GDR’, 32–33; Christoph, ‘Aufarbeitung der SEDDiktatur’, 30. Großbölting, ‘Die DDR im vereinten Deutschland’, 39. Harrison, After the Wall, 376. Harrison, After the Wall, 380. Wüstenberg also notes the significant development of Checkpoint Charlie as a complex site of remembrance. See Wüstenberg, Civil Society and Memory, 231–34. Harrison, After the Wall, 408. Jones, ‘(Extra)ordinary Life’; Jones, ‘Uneasy Heritage’. See Harrison, ‘The Berlin Wall’; Saunders, Memorializing the GDR, 243–48; Schlusche, ‘Remapping the Wall’. See Saunders, Memorializing the GDR, 268–80; RBB24, ‘Bau des Einheitsdenkmals beginnt’. Deutscher Bundestag, Bericht der Expertenkommission. See Deutscher Bundestag, Beschlussempfehlung; BStU, ‘BStU in Zukunft’; Schroeder cited in Leinemann, ‘Ende der Aufarbeitung?’.

Introduction • 25 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84.

85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91.

92. 93.

94. 95. 96. 97. 98.

Beattie, ‘Learning from the Germans?’. See also Mark, The Unfinished Revolution, xv–xvii. Harrison, After the Wall, 227. Assmann, Auf dem Weg, 41. Assmann, Auf dem Weg, 29; Leggewie, ‘Seven Circles of European Memory’. Leggewie, Der Kampf um die europäische Erinnerung, 12–14. The seven rings are (in order from centre to periphery): Holocaust, gulag, ethnic cleansing, war and crises, colonial crimes, history of migration, and European integration. Sierp, History, Memory, and Trans-European Identity, 138. Mälksoo, ‘The Memory Politics of Becoming European’, 653. Mälksoo, ‘The Memory Politics of Becoming European’, 655. Neumayer, ‘Integrating the Central European Past’. Neumayer, ‘Integrating the Central European Past’, 347. See Mälksoo, ‘The Memory Politics of Becoming European’. Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, ‘Resolution 1481 (2006)’. Senate of the Parliament of the Czech Republic, ‘Prague Declaration’. Neumayer, ‘Integrating the Central European Past’, 356. Wüstenberg, Civil Society and Memory, 258; Assmann, Das neue Unbehagen, 165. European Parliament, ‘Resolution of 2 April 2009’. Neumayer, ‘Integrating the Central European Past’, 358. On the Platform of European Memory and Conscience, see: Platform of European Memory and Conscience, ‘Agreement Establishing the Platform of European Memory and Conscience’; Büttner and Delius, ‘World Culture’. Mano Toth notes that those Western European members of the Platform (including President Göran Lindblad and Stéphane Courtois) were ‘known more widely for their strong positions on communism than for voicing their views about other totalitarian systems’ – Toth, ‘Challenging the Notion’, 1045. Littoz-Monnet, ‘The EU Politics of Remembrance’, 1183. E.g. Clarke and Duber, ‘Polish Cultural Diplomacy and Historical Memory’, 52; Hackmann, ‘Defending the “Good Name”’, 587–606; Kridle, ‘Polityka Historiczna’; Subotić, ‘The Appropriation of Holocaust Memory’. Calligaro, ‘Which Memories’, 64. Sierp, ‘EU Memory Politics’. Forsdick, Mark and Spišiaková, ‘Introduction’. Gabowitsch, ‘Replicating Atonement’, 14. Beattie uses this term to differentiate it from ‘official memory’ and to indicate ‘where state organs subsidize or otherwise endorse the activities of third parties’. In this study, I will use it to include both government and government-supported institutions. See Beattie, ‘The Politics of Remembering the GDR’, 25. Jarausch, ‘Growing Together?’, 2. For example: Barahona de Brito, González-Enríquez and Aguilar, The Politics of Memory; Bernhard and Kubik, Twenty Years after Communism; Borneman, Violence, Justice, and Accountability; McAdams, Transitional Justice and the Rule of Law; Rosenberg, The Haunted Land; Stan, Transitional Justice in Eastern Europe; Stan and Nedelsky, Postcommunist Transitional Justice. For example, Dujisin, ‘A History of Post-communist Remembrance’; Welsh, ‘Beyond the National’. Some exceptions are my own publications on this topic. See Jones, ‘Cross-border Collaboration’; Jones, ‘Memory Relations’; Jones, ‘Towards a Collaborative Memory’. For a detailed account, see Miller, ‘Settling Accounts with a Secret Police’. Müller, ‘East Germany’, 266. See Jones, The Media of Testimony, 103–4.

26 • Towards a Collaborative Memory 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124.

Deutscher Bundestag, Beschlussempfehlung, 1. BStU, Neunter Tätigkeitsbericht, 6. BStU, Zehnter Tätigkeitsbericht, 10. For a description of the history and development of the Memorial, see: Rudnick, Die andere Hälfte der Erinnering, 227–331; König, Die Gestaltung der Vergangenheit, 254–78; Verheyen, United City, Divided Memories?, 163–73. Knabe was removed from office in 2018 after accusations of sexual harassment were made against his Deputy Helmuth Frauendorfer. Knabe was held responsible for not having taken appropriate action when the accusations were first made. Rudnick, Die andere Hälfte der Erinnerung, 292. Knabe, Die Täter sind unter uns. See Jones, The Media of Testimony, 130. For critical views on Hohenschönhausen’s approach, see Hofmann, ‘Zur Auseinandersetzung’; Kappeler and Schaub, ‘Mauer durchs Herz’. Beitzer, ‘Wenn AfD-Anhänger über Diktaturen aufklären’. Decker, ‘DDR-Dissident’. See, for example, Wurtscheid, ‘Untersuchungsausschuss’. See, for example, Wittge, ‘AfD-Mann als falsches Stasi-Opfer enttarnt’. Indicating that he was writing as the report was being published in 2011–12. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, 5. Tätigkeitsbericht, 7 Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, 6. Tätigkeitsbericht, 9–10. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, 7. Tätigkeitsbericht, 6. Stiftung Aufarbeitung, ‘Stiftungsauftrag’. Rudnick, Die andere Hälfte der Erinnerung, 77. See Wüstenberg, Civil Society and Memory, 213. Gallinat, Narratives in the Making, 44. Stiftung Aufarbeitung, Tätigkeitsbericht 2009, 9. Stiftung Aufarbeitung, Tätigkeitsbericht 2012, 9. Rudnick, Die andere Hälfte der Erinnerung, 80. Stiftung Aufarbeitung, Tätigkeitsbericht 2009, 6. Stiftung Aufarbeitung, Tätigkeitsbericht 2009, 6.

Chapter 1

TOWARDS A COLLABORATIVE MEMORY A Framework and a Method

8 The exploration of cross-border collaborations locates this book in the context of transnational memory. ‘Transnational’ here is understood to mean ‘economic, social and political linkages between people, places and institutions crossing nation-state borders and spanning the world’.1 In the transnational approach, nations are thought of ‘as inherently and externally relational, embedded and contextualised’.2 The emergence of memory studies as a discipline, particularly in the tradition of Jan and Aleida Assmann, has meant that much of the work that appeared in the ‘memory boom’ of the 1990s and the early 2000s has as its focus the nation state as the presumed container of memory culture. The Assmanns’ development of the concept of ‘cultural memory’, building on Maurice Halbwachs’ work on ‘collective memory’, drew attention to the ways in which mediated remembrance of the past could be foundational to a group’s collective identity and therefore to the politics of the present.3 These observations have become axiomatic for memory studies and the link between past and present is central to most, if not all, of the work in this diverse field.4 For those working in cultural, social or political studies, the dominant tendency – at least in the early years of the development of this field – was to assume that the primary ‘group’ whose identity was underpinned by memory was defined by the borders of the nation. Researchers explored political narratives, cultural production, social phenomena and interpersonal communication within the borders of a given country or national group, understanding ‘national memory’ to be the framework within which those memories were being produced.5

28 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

This work has advanced our understanding of the ways in which memories are produced and circulate in different social and cultural structures, and the impact that the past can have on political processes in the present. It has shown how memory is everywhere and how it is malleable and changeable depending on the needs of the present moment. Nonetheless, Chiara De Cesari and Ann Rigney were right to argue in 2014 that ‘the time is ripe to move memory studies itself beyond methodological nationalism’.6 Indeed, memory studies has in the last fifteen years shifted increasingly towards an exploration of the ways in which memories are not contained or produced solely within national borders. People move through migration, travel and conflict, cultural products created in one national location may be received in and circulate in another, narratives about the past can be appropriated and borrowed outside of the national context in which they are produced. A growing body of work has emerged in memory studies that attempts to study, describe and explain these movements. This has resulted in a number of new conceptualisations of how memory moves or is communicated across borders. In what follows, I briefly reflect on some of those key ideas and indicate how my concept of ‘collaborative memory’ is located within and seeks to advance them. Following these theoretical reflections on what it means to study memory in relation, I propose a new method for identifying and exploring those relationships.

Towards a Collaborative Memory: Conceptualising Memory in Relation There are multiple starting points for rethinking memory outside of the national framework. One such starting point is the observation that our world is interconnected in myriad ways through processes of globalisation. Ulrich Beck describes this as cosmopolitanism made reality and argues that this new reality requires the development of a ‘cosmopolitan vision’.7 Aleida Assmann and Sebastian Conrad also focus on issues of globalisation, arguing that ‘the globalization process has placed a question mark over the nation state as the seemingly natural container of memory debates’.8 Importantly, in the context of cross-border collaboration, they attribute this shift in part to increasing ‘synchronic interactions and entanglements’ between actors, debates and narratives about the past located in different national contexts. For Assmann and Conrad, this shifts our attention from the temporal connection between past and present to the spatial dimension of memory dynamics. Eşref Aksu is sceptical about the prospects for a ‘global collective memory’, arguing that it is difficult to see how the ‘political nature of the selection of memories’ and the role of collective memory in positioning one collective in opposition to

A Framework and a Method • 29

another could be sustained at a global level.9 More promising, Aksu argues, is the idea of a ‘networked and global(ising) institutional memory’, driven by elites who ‘exert disproportionate influence over memory-building and memory-keeping at massive scales’.10 Aksu gives the example of Holocaust memory as a narrative that ‘seems to derive its “global” strength from the institutional memories propagated by particular elite formations’.11 In so doing, he draws on the work of Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider, who argue for an understanding of memory in the ‘global age’ in terms of ‘cosmopolitanism’ (drawing on Beck), that is, ‘a process of “internal globalization” through which global concerns become part of local experiences of an increasing number of people’.12 The concept of ‘cosmopolitan memory’ does not mean that national memories are no longer of significance, but that they are ‘subjected to a common patterning’.13 Levy and Sznaider argue that this ‘common patterning’ is driven by memories of the Holocaust, which ‘have evolved into a universal code that is now synonymous with an imperative to address past injustices’.14 They contend that this ‘memory imperative’ has emerged from Holocaust memory to ‘become a decontextualized code for human-rights abuses as such’.15 The authors emphasise that this ‘globally available repertoire of legitimate claim making’ does not mean the end of national memory, rather nations (and the individuals within them) engage with and appropriate this repertoire in a differential way.16 Cosmopolitan memory is characterised by a concern for victims (rather than ‘heroes’), reflexivity and a recognition of the pain of the ‘other’, especially where that suffering is the result of the actions of one’s own nation or national group.17 Levy and Sznaider link cosmopolitan memory to the global spread of human rights norms, identified by Lea David as being underpinned by the ‘German model’ that demands that societies approach difficult pasts through three interlinked frameworks: ‘facing the past’, ‘justice for victims’ and the ‘duty to remember’.18 The idea of cosmopolitan memory can be extended to the concept of ‘never again’, which Alejandro Baer and Sznaider describe as a ‘situated ethics’, which is nonetheless universal: Remember atrocity, honor the victims, learn for the future – these have become morally relevant universals. And it seems a truism today that reconciliation between former enemies can only be achieved when justice is being done to all former victims. But on the other side, cultural conventions, local contingencies and lived experiences give these universals of Never Again particular, contextual, situated meanings.19

Baer and Sznaider add that ‘the Holocaust has become the paradigmatic Never Again from which all other “never agains” in the plural derive’.20 They describe how memory activists on the ground move between ‘the universal

30 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

and the particular’, adding that they come to ‘these activities with pre-set categories informed by universalized Holocaust discourse’.21 We see here that ‘universal’ means concepts that have emerged out of responses to a European catastrophe; ‘particular’ means traumatic experiences that sit outside of this context. Indeed, this conceptualisation of memory as ‘cosmopolitan’ has met with criticism for eliding the Eurocentric origins of cosmopolitanism and of many of the central principles of the memory regime it engenders (for example, the Freudian origins of the demand that we ‘face the past’).22 Others point towards the ways in which a memory regime centred on the Holocaust has fostered the forgetting of colonialist brutality.23 For Amos Goldberg, it has become a ‘reassuring narrative’ for the people of Europe, as it allows them to consider themselves ‘attractive and moral’ in their remembrances of a problematic past, even as this identity is undermined by ‘the treatment by Europe of the peoples formerly under colonial rule and of non-European migrants and in particular Muslims within Europe’.24 Goldberg describes Holocaust memory as ‘the fundamental foundation of Western antifundamentalism’, whose ‘sanctity’ as a singular event cannot be called into question; to do so would also call into question the rights regime that has been linked to its particular form of memorialisation.25 David describes this regime as a form of ‘moral remembrance’, based on an ideology of human rights that attempts to standardise the ways in which states remember traumatic pasts, but that may in fact end up ‘enforcing divisions on the ground’.26 Moreover, the cosmopolitan approach has been seen as depoliticising memory according to a neoliberal agenda: in this argument, the human rights regime it supports focuses attention away from justice based on social and economic rights, and towards political and civil rights. This in turn justifies the need for international humanitarian interventions, generally by countries of the Global North into countries of the Global South.27 Anna Cento Bull and Hans Lauge Hansen juxtapose cosmopolitan modes of memory – propagated by ‘extraterritorial elites’ – with what they term ‘antagonistic ones’. The latter are those ‘constructed by populist neo-nationalist movements’, which tend towards exclusion of external and internal others.28 Cento Bull and Hansen propose a third mode of memory in this context, ‘agonistic memory’, which might sit between these two poles. Agonistic memory focuses on historical context, agency and acknowledging the perspectives and humanity of both victims and perpetrators: it is reflexive, dialogic and multiperspectivist.29 Cento Bull and Hansen’s intervention moves us away from the juxtaposition between ‘elite’ and ‘populist’ memory politics; however, it is not clear how it might also move us beyond the focus on Europe and the Eurocentric origins of cosmopolitanism that their model critiques. More promising in this regard are frameworks that consider how (especially)

A Framework and a Method • 31

Holocaust memory intersects with memory of conflicts and trauma enacted elsewhere in the world. Influential in this context is Michael Rothberg’s work on ‘multidirectional memory’, which explores modes of memory that might be considered ‘reflexive, dialogic and multi-perspectivist’, as demanded by Cento Bull and Hansen. Moreover, Rothberg moves the exploration of Holocaust memory beyond Europe by considering how ‘complex acts of solidarity’ allow memories of the Holocaust to be connected to and reveal memories of other traumatic pasts.30 Rothberg’s work provides a way for researchers to explore memory as subject to ‘ongoing negotiation, cross-referencing, and borrowing; as productive and not privative’.31 In this regard, Rothberg is describing a form of relationality: a reflexive link between two forms of remembrance that inflect and transform one another.32 Indeed, the question of transnational remembering always contains within it the question of a relationship between different objects of study. As Jenny Wüstenberg notes, ‘the practices and relevant places [of transnational memory] form transnational mnemonic spaces that are inherently relational in nature’.33 The definition of the transnational always contains a reflection upon and a relationship with the national. In the introduction to the edited collection Transnational Memory, Chiara De Cesari and Ann Rigney note the ‘dialectical role played by national borders’. They add that the ‘transnational dynamics of memory production operate in conjunction with the continuous presence and agency of the national, with which it thus remains deeply entangled’.34 Preferring the framework of transculturality, Lucy Bond and Jessica Rapson describe the relationship between memory cultures as ‘essentially dialogic’.35 The idea of the nation is not abandoned in this approach; rather, it is ‘contextualised between the local and the global’ (or ‘glocal’).36 The relationality of memory is seen not only in terms of scales (local, regional and global), but also in the very processes of making memories at an individual, social and collective level. Halbwachs recognised the ways in which an individual constructs their memories in relation to their membership of different groups. Building on Halbwachs, Jan Assmann divided collective memory into communicative and cultural or political memory.37 According to Aleida Assmann, communicative memory is seen to be produced through conversation and to change in the process38 – in essence, a form of relationality. From a different disciplinary perspective, Sue Campbell more explicitly explores the nature of individual remembrance as relational. She states that her aim is to get beyond the dichotomy of the debate around recovered/false memory and to explore the nature of all remembrance as containing a relational or social dimension.39 Cultural and political memory is produced to shore up a sense of self, an idea of what the group is, and often this is with reference to what the group is not – that is, in relation to an ‘other’. The concept of histoires croisées, as

32 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

explored by Michael Werner and Bénédicte Zimmermann, considers ‘social, cultural, and political formations, generally at the national level, that are assumed to bear relationships to one another’.40 Werner and Zimmermann write that ‘when societies in contact with one another are studied, it is often noted that the objects and practices are not only in a state of interrelationship but also modify one another reciprocally as a result of their relationship’.41 Crucial to an exploration of histoires croisées is the concept of ‘intersection’ or ‘intercrossing’, and key to this approach is the idea that through interaction, the elements that intersect are changed in the process: ‘the idea of intercrossing identifies first an interaction that – and this is one of its decisive characteristics – modifies the elements that are interacting’.42 Within memory studies, an increasing number of models are being developed that address the concept of relationality explicitly. One of the earliest examples is Jeffrey Olick’s work on ‘process-relationalism’. Memory, Olick argues, is not a ‘thing’, but a series of interconnected processes, a ‘variety of practices that comprise remembering’.43 Olick introduces four ‘counterconcepts’ that aim to move our study of collective memory away from a substantialist and towards a relational approach: field, medium, genre and profile. Together, these four concepts produce ‘figurations of memory’.44 Gregor Feindt et al. propose ‘four devices that serve as a heuristic in the study of memory’s entanglement: chronology against time, conflict, generations, and self-reflexivity’.45 Their approach stresses ‘the (inter-) relational character’ of memory.46 Most recently, Astrid Erll has developed the concepts of ‘mnemonic relationality’ and ‘relational mnemohistories’ with reference to cultural artefacts and narratives and with the purpose of directing our attention ‘towards acts of connecting and blending, co-constructions and negotiations that are necessary for bringing heterogeneous mnemonic elements into meaningful relations with one another’.47 Erll argues that ‘writing mnemohistory through the lens of relationality promises to provide a sense of how all remembering is grounded in diverse forms of interrelation’.48 Both Olick and Erll draw explicitly on concepts developed in the field of relational sociology, indicating how this disciplinary area might be made productive for memory studies.49 In his ‘Manifesto for a Relational Sociology’ (1997), Mustafa Emirbayer juxtaposes the relational approach with the substantialist. In the substantialist approach, the focus is on the attributes of isolated units; in the relational approach, it is the relationships – or transactions – between those units that takes precedence: The very terms of units involved in a transaction derive their meaning, significance, and identity from the (changing) functional roles they play within that transaction. The latter, seen as a dynamic, unfolding process, becomes the primary unit of analysis rather than the constituent elements themselves.50

A Framework and a Method • 33

The focus on transactions or relationships positions relational sociologists between ‘atomists’ and ‘holists’ in the longstanding debate about the primacy of social structure or individual agency. Atomists ‘reduce the social world to the actors who compose it’; holists, in contrast, treat ‘societies as wholes greater than the sum of these individual parts’. Nick Crossley contends that the relational approach brings these two positions together by focusing on agency within structure, that is, on networks of relationships between individual actors: ‘actors collectively drive interactions and networks. But not qua individual atoms. They are entangled and precisely inter-act’.51 There are two important factors here for our study of memory at and across borders. First, the focus on agency in structure, which might allow us to respond to the recent calls for memory studies to focus on the actors of transnational memory without ignoring the embeddedness of those actors in local, national, regional and transnational frameworks, and the importance of the relationships between them. As Aline Sierp and Jenny Wüstenberg argue: ‘It is not sufficient to study actors: we need to understand how different actors – be they civic, intellectual, artistic, or institutional – are linked locally and across territorial, cultural, and institutional borders.’52 It is not about ‘getting rid of structure altogether but how to understand it in a relational sense, as shaped by agency and shaping agency in turn’.53 Second, the relational approach suggests a focus on networks as the starting point for empirical analysis and thereby on (social) network analysis as a framework and methodology. Social Network Analysis (SNA) in itself is not – as will be discussed below – a fixed methodology; rather, it is a perspective that ‘takes as its starting point the premise that social life is created primarily and most importantly by relations and the patterns they form’.54 The relations and patterns explored in this book are those formed in and through the cross-border collaborations of the BStU, Hohenschönhausen and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung. These collaborations are viewed as ‘interconnections’, or points of ‘transaction’, at which different actors meet. For relational sociologists, the dynamics of human interactions are what ‘make and remake societies continually’;55 and it is the dynamics of interactions between mnemonic agents which make and remake transnational memory. The concept of ‘collaborative memory’ seeks to capture this complexity. Defined as the ‘the act of working with another person or group of people to create or produce something’,56 the term ‘collaboration’ points towards the agentic nature of the relationships being described: the cooperations here are entered into purposefully and strategically by those involved. And yet, at the same time, the concept of collaboration points towards the interweaving of these different agencies, their dependence upon one another and, importantly, the ways in which those interconnections can be productive, in the sense of creating something new.

34 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

In this respect, the term is not intended to be normative; rather, it should be understood as a framework through which such interconnections, transactions and cooperations can be analysed. Cross-border collaborations create and are enabled by a network structure in which mnemonic agents occupy a particular position, and that position can both enable and constrain their action. As noted by Alexandra Marin and Barry Wellman, ‘differences in available opportunities mean that uniformly rational actors will make different choices and will experience different consequences even when they make the same choices’.57 One key question is what it is that determines the position of the different actors within the network; that is, why particular actors occupy positions of power and brokerage where others do not. This can be reframed as the question of what role culture plays within network structures. Emirbayer and Jeff Goodwin seek to develop a strategy for synthesizing social structural and cultural analysis, which, they argue is the only approach that ‘can adequately explain the formation, reproduction, and transformation of networks themselves’.58 Emirbayer and Goodwin argue that network analysts need to avoid a dualism between social structure and the cultural and intersubjective dimensions of relationships, and the privileging of one above the other. They note that ‘culture and social relations empirically interpenetrate with and mutually condition one another so thoroughly that it is well-nigh impossible to conceive of the one without the other’, but also that ‘cultural discourses, narratives, and idioms are also analytically autonomous’.59 These cultural discourses ‘both constrain and enable … actors in much the same way as do network structures themselves’.60 We can link this to Sierp’s observation that ‘actors seeking to influence any form of memory must take into account existing “cultural maps,” bear in mind normative expectations, and directly address existing institutions (at multiple scales) if they want to be successful’.61 Indeed, studying relations is not only about studying concrete relationships between individuals; rather, it is also about relations that are embedded within what Jan Fuhse and Sophie Mützel term ‘cultural blueprints or models for social relationships’ (e.g. between employer and employee, parent and child, within marriage, friendship etc.).62 In our context, this means considering the relations produced in discourses about East and West, and North and South. As Lucy Bond, Stef Craps and Pieter Vermeulen note – citing Wulf Kansteiner – ‘it is important not to lose sight of the hegemonic dynamics of certain memory regimes and the power differentials between different memories and memory agents’.63 In their outline of the ‘relational turn’ in political science, Scott D. McClurg and Joseph K. Young describe relationality as being at the core of the concept of ‘power’; we might add that power is also at the core of the concept of relationality.64 The three institutions that form the focus of this study are situated at an intersection between two different relational frame-

A Framework and a Method • 35

works. As discussed in the Introduction, the division of European memory politics between East and West constructs Western hegemons opposed to Eastern subalterns, particularly around the memory of National Socialism and Stalinism. The BStU, Hohenschönhausen and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung position themselves to varying degrees on the ‘Eastern’ side of this conflicted relationship, as advocates for memory of the GDR that is – in this narrative – being marginalised by the state and nostalgic citizens alike. On the other hand, they also participate in a discourse that frames Germany as an exemplar of a model mode of remembrance from which others might learn, constructing a relation of teacher to student. This model is based in the experience of remembering and commemorating the Holocaust, and might be understood as ‘cosmopolitan’ in the definition outlined above.65 These diverging narratives position these institutions between East and West in terms of intra-European memory politics. However, given the global scope of the cross-border collaborations explored in this book, we also need to consider how they are embedded in relations between the Global North and the Global South.66 A key cultural blueprint or map in this regard is that of coloniality, which also frames a relationship of power. Coloniality here is not understood as equal to colonialism; that is, it does not depend on a prior relationship of coloniser/colonised. Rather, it refers to the continued ‘fictions of modernity’ in which ‘Western Europe and more recently the U.S. were the point of arrival for the rest of the planet. Society would be organized the same way, and subjects and subjectivities would all be European clones’.67 In this understanding, coloniality is (also) epistemic; it is a perspective that centres constructions of knowledge born in one part of the world (Europe, or the ‘West’) and assumes them to be universal. Epistemic coloniality positions some as able to know ‘and to persuade the many that knowledge is universal, not local’, and that ‘universality of knowledge is legitimized by actors and institutions that are in a position to assert it’.68 As Aníbal Quijano puts it, ‘European culture became a universal cultural model’.69 ‘Cosmopolitan memory’, if it takes as its blueprint the European experience of the Holocaust, risks being one such form of epistemic coloniality. Indeed, the concept of (European) cosmopolitanism – as expounded for example by Ulrich Beck – has come under attack for its Eurocentrism. Tracing a lineage between Enlightenment ideals of cosmopolitanism and contemporary ‘globalisation’, Walter Mignolo argues that ‘cosmopolitanism’ was a part of ‘Western expansion … whose implementation was through the “civilizing mission” rather than by free market in economy and democracy in politics’.70 Gurminder K. Bhambra notes that in the writings of Beck and Jürgen Habermas, ‘“being cosmopolitan” (as a practice) is associated with being in Europe and cosmopolitanism (as an idea) is seen as being of Europe’.71 Bhambra argues that this version of cosmopolitanism emphasises

36 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

European particularism and occludes the history of European domination; in so doing, it risks becoming a ‘neocolonial cosmopolitanism’. From quite different theoretical perspectives, both Mignolo and Bhambra outline how cosmopolitanism would need to be thought anew in order to move away from this unidirectionality. For Bhambra, this would be a cosmopolitanism ‘that took seriously its colonial histories and multicultural present; that is, one that understood its cosmopolitanism in postcolonial terms’.72 Mignolo advocates for a ‘decolonial cosmopolitanism’, which is ‘pluri-versal’ and based on multiple ‘localisms’ connected by a decolonial thread that makes it – paradoxically – also global.73 He argues that ‘cosmopolitanism can only work if there is no master global design’, noting that this is ‘a tough call for those who believe that his/her party, religion, or ideology is the best for everybody and has to be imposed for the well-being of all and for universal peace’.74 We might add to that list those who believe that a particular approach to coming to terms with violence, trauma and authoritarianism, developed in response to tragedy in one part of the world, is also ‘best for everybody’. Collaboration does not sit outside of these cultural blueprints or maps; the analytical power of ‘collaborative memory’ lies in its ability to highlight the unevenness that usually underpins the relationships that form the networks through which transnational memory is constructed. Collaborative memory has the potential to be ‘multidirectional’ in Rothberg’s terms, that is, to be an ‘ethical vision based on commitment to uncovering historical relatedness’.75 However, for this to be so, the actors involved need to recognise the local origins, or provinciality, of their approach to the past and the processes of addressing it, and to be ready to hear and learn from the other. Quijano argues that the ‘relation between European cultures and the other cultures was established and has been maintained, as a relation between “subject” and “object”’.76 For memory to be truly collaborative, in its ethics as well as in its practice, the relationships that underpin it must be between two agentic subjects and be based on a ‘decolonial cosmopolitanism’. This book explores the extent to which the narratives and structures underpinning the cross-border collaborations of the three central institutions is likely to enable or constrain such relationships with actors in different parts of the world. As will be seen, in the German context at least, a truly collaborative memory in this sense is still an aspiration rather than a reality on the ground.

Studying Collaborative Memory: Towards a Method How can ‘collaborative memory’ be explored in empirical terms? As explained in the Introduction, this book examines the transnational networks created by and through the cross-border collaborations of the BStU, Hohenschön-

A Framework and a Method • 37






 
   

 
 

 
 



  
   

  
    







 


Figure 1.1 Meaning structure in cross-border collaborations. © Sara Jones

hausen and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung. It seeks to consider what Fuhse has described as the ‘meaning structure’ of the networks – the ways in which network structure, the roles and identities of different actors within that network, the interpretation of relationships by the actors, and the culture and symbols diffused in the network are intertwined.77 Figure 1.1 visualises the components of meaning structure in these networks and the interaction between them, the terms of which will be developed in the course of this study. In order to excavate and analyse meaning structure, I have developed an innovative method that is outlined below and exemplified in the rest of this book. This is but one approach to collaborative memory; however, it is one that might be adapted to and find application in multiple other contexts. In what follows, I will sketch the detail of that method in terms of rationale, data collection and data analysis. I have collected this information here for ease of reference; more information on particular algorithms or analytical techniques can be found in the subsequent chapters. As noted above, what distinguishes a network approach from any other is the focus on relationships – or ‘transactions’ – rather than on the substantive features of a given actor or set of actors. Network analysis is not a method in itself; instead, it is an approach that might comprise multiple methods. SNA is often associated with complex quantitative techniques. These are what Peeter Selg appears to have in mind when he states that ‘the majority of SNA

38 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

is “inter-actional”’, which he opposes to ‘trans-actional’. In the former, there are substantive actors (A and B) and the ties are simply something ‘added to them’. In the ‘trans-actional’ approach, ‘both nodes and ties (or actors and their relations) should be considered as mutually constitutive processes’. Selg argues that SNA therefore needs to be combined with other approaches, including interpretative and narrative ones based on qualitative methods. 78 Indeed, as Betina Hollstein notes, SNA has from its inception also made use of qualitative and interpretative approaches, particularly for data collection.79 In terms of data analysis, quantitative approaches are well suited to the systematic exploration of large volumes of data and detecting patterns of action within them; in our context, identifying the structure of the networks under study and the relationships within them. On the other hand, qualitative approaches are essential to explore actor perceptions and their interpretation of the relationships in which they are involved. 80 Silvia Domínguez and Hollstein thus advocate combining quantitative and qualitative research for a fuller analysis,81 and it is just such a mixed methods approach that will be taken in this book. As advocated by Fuhse and Mützel, I bring together aspects of personal (in this case institutional) networks, formal network analysis and qualitative methods.82

Defining the Network Before considering those analytical approaches in more detail, we need to understand, first, what is meant by a network and, second, how the network was defined for the purposes of this book. Turning to the first question, my definition of network is drawn from SNA; it is a bounded social structure that comprises a set of nodes (actors) and a set or sets of ties between them (relationships).83 This approach is rather different from that of Actor–Network Theory (ANT), as delineated most prominently by Bruno Latour. In ANT, the world is ‘made of concatenations of mediators where each point can be said to fully act’. Importantly, a network in this understanding includes both human and nonhuman actors.84 Moreover, as Fuhse and Mützel note, ‘in ANT, the term network is used as an evocative image, a conceptual heuristic, and a descriptive tool’. In contrast, ‘the aim of relational sociology is to simultaneously address structure and meaning in networks’, often through the mapping of concrete ties between actors at a given moment using the quantitative tools of SNA.85 Although there are some affinities between Latour’s concept of society as produced through assemblage and the emphasis on relationships in the network approach, this distinction is fundamental; each of the nodes in the networks described in this book represents the action of a person or group of people affiliated to a particular institution and engaged

A Framework and a Method • 39

in action on behalf of that institution. I do consider non-embodied aspects of that interaction – notably, the topic of the collaboration and the activity undertaken. However, I view these as the product of the relationality between the actors and institutions involved; topics and activities are part of the network culture, but not part of the network structure. Important in this regard is the concept of ‘relationship culture’ as proposed by Fuhse, which ‘comprises a relational definition of the situation. This definition of what the relationship is about lies at the core of the relationship’.86 The relationship culture is constructed in the process of interaction, but also prior to it as a function of the expectations of what an interaction between those actors would entail, something Fuhse – drawing on Erving Goffman – refers to here as ‘culturally available “frames”’ and that I will refer to as ‘cultural blueprints’.87 In our context, it is in part those expectations – alongside the agency of the actors involved to negotiate those expectations – that determine what is discussed in a collaboration and how. To give an example, we see a more frequent discussion of human rights and/or reunification in cooperations between the Stiftung Aufarbeitung and Hohenschönhausen and actors located in East Asia than is the case for collaborations with actors located in Europe. We can connect this to the particular relationship culture between these two regions, which – the analysis shows – is constructed as being focused on East Asian actors (principally from the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of Korea) learning from the German actor in an effort to address supposed parallels between historical and current division, and left-wing dictatorship. This explains what a network is for the purposes of this study; however, we also need to understand how the networks under scrutiny are bounded. How can we identify them and what are their borders? The aim of the network approach is to explore an actor’s position within (transnational) structures, the embedding of culture and power in the relationships of which those structures are comprised, and the impact of that ‘meaning structure’ on the ways in which memory is diffused and enacted across the world. Nonetheless, in order to understand those transactions, we first have to understand who the actors are in a substantive sense; that is, in order to explore how collaborative memory works on the ground, we first have to know who is involved in the collaboration, and what identities and narratives they bring to it. In this sense, contained within a study of the transnational, transregional and transsectoral must be a recognition of the ways in with the national, regional and sectoral also determine the politics and practice of memory. This poses a methodological problem for the scholar wishing to embark on a network approach to transnational memory. Studying the collaborations between memory entrepreneurs across the globe would require a large, multilingual team with an understanding of the numerous cultural and political

40 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

contexts in which memory activism takes place. It would also – as the small snapshot given in this book attests – be a vast undertaking. The scope of the network to be studied therefore needs to be limited in some way. One solution, taken notably by Wüstenberg, is to focus on the activity of alreadyexisting networks: for Wüstenberg, memory-political networks located within Europe.88 The limitations of this approach are that it excludes collaborations outside of these networks, which – as this book amply demonstrates – are extensive, and it focuses attention on the particular region in which the network is positioned. In the case of Wüstenberg’s work, this concentrates attention on collaboration within Europe and discussions of European memory. While this is important, it directs attention away from the ways in which European mnemonic actors also cooperate with partners outside of Europe.89 The work presented in this book demonstrates that a comparison between the activities of European (in this case German) actors within and outside of Europe is essential for understanding how network meaning structure can influence memory practices. This study thus takes a quite different approach to limiting the scope of the networks to be examined. I have selected three German institutions, each of which plays a central role in the memory of state socialism in Germany, and explore the ways in which these institutions collaborate across borders over an eight-year period (2009–16). As indicated in the Introduction, German memory culture is seen to be both unique and exemplary, and the German approach to working through the history of National Socialism and state socialism is frequently presented as a model for other countries and contexts. In terms of the study of memory regions, Germany is particularly interesting as its memory of state socialism is divided between east and west, with the dominant narrative being viewed by some as framed by a western perspective that subsumes eastern experience into its own paradigms. This method takes seriously the importance of national discourses in shaping the activities of mnemonic actors; nonetheless, it explores these discourses in a relational context and across national, regional and sectoral boundaries. However, it needs to be recognised that the extent of the networks explored in this book are limited by the activities of the three central institutions; in essence, these are ‘ego-networks’ representing the connections created by and around a single actor.90 The collaborative activities of these three institutions also create relationships between other actors; for example, a podium discussion organised by the Stiftung Aufarbeitung will create a connection between the speakers and the Stiftung, but also between the speakers and one another. These other actors are ‘alters’ in the ego-network, and the relationships created between them are traced and included in my analysis. This means that ‘whole network’ analyses can meaningfully be carried out on the data.91 However, it must be kept in mind that the network does not represent the full extent of

A Framework and a Method • 41

the transnational collaboration of these alters, who almost certainly engage in collaborative activity outside of the networks created by these three institutions (as indicated in Chapter 6). It also means that the qualitative analysis focuses (albeit not exclusively) on the relationship culture and expectations as narrated by the German actors. Further research is required to explore in more detail how actors in multiple different contexts negotiate, contest and redefine that culture and those expectations. My argument in this book is based on the ways in which these German actors – located between east and west – engage with actors in different parts of the world and during a period of rapid evolution of national memory politics.92

Quantitative Analysis: Studying Network Structure The quantitative part of my analysis seeks to trace the structure of the networks created by and through the collaborative activity of the BStU, Hohenschönhausen and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung. To do this, I first need to identify the relationships and connections created by the cross-border collaborations of the three institutions, and code them in a format that can be used for the network visualisations and analysis. The data collection was based on publicly available material about the activities of the institutions. This included: four biennial activity reports for the BStU and Hohenschönhausen, and the eight annual activity reports of the Stiftung Aufarbeitung; press releases for all three institutions; reports on and summaries of events for the Stiftung Aufarbeitung (including links to programmes and advertising materials); and annual summaries published on the website of the BStU.93 The activity reports were read in full and text relating to cross-border cooperation was extracted. Press releases, reports on events and items in the annual summaries were included in the corpus if the title suggested that they involved transnational collaboration in some form. From these data, evidence of relationships between different participants in the collaborative event was gathered and entered into an adjacency matrix created using Excel.94 For each institution, four matrices were produced, each recording the relationships created by that institution’s collaborative activity in a two-year period: 2009–10, 2011–12, 2013–14 and 2015–16.95 This was to allow me to track changes in the networks over time and to make the data more manageable (as will be outlined in Chapter 2, several of the matrices contained hundreds of actors). The matrices recorded both connections to the central actor, or ‘ego’, and connections between the other actors (alters) and each other. I included both German and non-German actors participating in the cross-border collaborations identified. As will be seen in the course of this book, recognising the role of German governmental actors and political

42 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

foundations in particular is essential to understanding the meaning structures within the networks. The primary focus of this study is institutions (understood as concrete organisational units) as actors in memory politics. With Till Hilmar, I view institutions as providing ‘grounds and resources’ through which individuals can ensure their memory-political activity gains ‘symbolic weight in the civic sphere’. Certain individuals may indeed have the social and political capital needed to make their voices heard on the public stage; however, for the most part, ‘organizations are the agents through which individuals can make collective representations work in a meaningful and generalizable way’.96 Institutions may be represented in collaborative events by several different individuals. Therefore, in order to ensure the full activity of each institutional actor was captured, individuals were recorded according to their institutional affiliation (at the time of collaboration) rather than their own name. This information was occasionally impossible to find out in retrospect, particularly for early career academics, who may not have been in secure positions when they participated. In these cases, the name of the individual was used. Quite frequently, a participant in a cross-border collaboration was identified only by their function – for example, ‘Tunisian civil rights activists’. In these cases, this designation was used to define the actor in the matrix. Where an actor was so ill-defined as to not provide any useful information on the what and why of transnational cooperation (for example, ‘a Korean delegation’), the collaboration was not included in the data processing for the quantitative analysis (though it was included in the qualitative analysis). This was more common in the texts produced by the Stiftung Aufarbeitung, which, as will be seen, reported generally far more transnational activity. The German government (understood in the broadest sense to include all those involved in the governing of the country) is a unique case in these networks, as it is in many ways an actor across these collaborations. Each of these institutions receives substantial financial support from federal and/or regional funds, and the BStU and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung are federal agencies. However, the government was only included as a node in a specific cooperation if a governmental actor was named explicitly as having participated in some way. Often, this was an individual, such as a particular member of the Federal Parliament; in other cases, it was a specific ministry or office. These were considered disparate enough to group under a single institution heading (‘German government’), allowing me to capture the role of German state actors as a group in the network analysis; a more granular (qualitative) analysis of who exactly was involved can be found in Chapter 5. An exception is the German Foreign Office, which is defined separately across the matrices. It was apparent from the start of the data collection that this actor was especially prominent in

A Framework and a Method • 43

cross-border collaborations, and this importance could only be fully highlighted if it was assessed separately. A tie between two actors was recorded if there was evidence in the text of a connection between them. For smaller collaborations involving only a few actors, this generally meant recording a tie between each individual or institution. For larger collaborations, the decision-making process was more complex. Conferences were recorded in full (that is, with all listed actors) where they were initiated, organised and/or funded by the central actor, focused on a topic of transnational interest, and included enough non-German participants to be considered ‘international’. This bar was set fairly low and conferences with at least two non-German speakers were included. Relationships were only coded between actors listed in the programme or conference report (it would have been nearly impossible to identify all attendees in retrospect and, in particular, the relationships between them). For a multipanel conference, I recorded a tie between the organisers and all speakers, and between speakers who sat on the same panel. The view was taken that in large conferences, it is unlikely that all participants will meet and create even weak bonds with one another; however, it is likely that participants speaking on the same panel will do so. The second phase of the data processing was the production of ‘attribute matrices’97 for memory region and type of actor (henceforth referred to as ‘region’ and ‘type’). Attribute matrices allow measures of shape, size and centrality to be combined with data about the individual actors involved in the network. Region was defined geographically, but also by memory politics, that is, similar concerns and approaches in working through the past and shared historical experience. Fifteen regions were identified: Western Europe, post-socialist/Central and Eastern Europe (CEE, states formerly in the Soviet sphere of influence, but not in the Soviet Union), post-Soviet, Southeast Europe (defined here as the nations of the former Yugoslavia), Scandinavia, Southern Europe, North America, the Caribbean, Central and South America, Middle East/North Africa (MENA), Central and South Africa, Southeast Asia, East Asia, Oceania and multiregional. In most cases, the geographical location of an actor was used to determine the region to which it belonged. Notably, this is more complex for German actors who were divided between Western European and post-socialist/CEE to reflect the historical division of Germany and the division in German memory politics. This was done by biography for individuals (that is, with consideration to where they were socialised) and for institutions according to location (that is, on the territory of the former FRG or GDR), or according to the focus of their activities (that is, whether or not their focus is memory of the GDR). Thus all three of the institutions that form the core of this study were coded as post-socialist/

44 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

CEE. The decision was made to define all pan-German actors (notably most governmental institutions) as Western European. As discussed in the Introduction, the western perspective remains dominant in political discourse in the united Germany and thus actors that are ostensibly pan-German are most likely to draw on western narratives about the past. The regions are necessarily very broad and I do not wish to imply that there are no memory-political differences and debates within them, or indeed within countries other than Germany. It is also clear that I have differentiated within Europe more than other contexts and this is likely to mask fractures in memory narratives elsewhere. The purpose of identifying regions is to group the actors with whom these institutions work in order to highlight the patterns in collaboration. The identification of memory regions thus emerges from this collaborative activity and replicates its (sometimes problematic) logic. As will be seen in Chapter 2, the transnational collaborations of all three institutions extend beyond but have their focus within Europe – it was therefore possible (in terms of total numbers) and necessary to differentiate more finely between the regional distribution of European partners. It is one of the core purposes of this book to explore how memory regions are (de)constructed by transnational collaboration and how cooperations in different regions are given meaning by the actors involved. Defining actor ‘type’ was significantly more complex. Principally, this attribute referred to the core activities of the actor, combined with information about their funding source. I identified nineteen different types: archives; state-funded institutes and commissions; government; embassies; political foundations; private (or industry) foundations; nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) and civil/human rights groups; networks; museums and memorials; artists or arts institutions; media and journalists; eyewitnesses; victims associations; educational institutions (excluding higher education); academic and higher education institutions; think tanks; church organisations; private companies; and international courts. Several actors engaged in a range of activity that would place it in different categories. In these cases, a decision had to be taken on a case-by-case basis as to what the core (selfdefined) motivation and aims of the actor were. An actor was considered to be ‘state-funded’ if they received financial governmental support on an ongoing and substantial basis (rather than one-off project funding, for example). ‘Government’ comprised all state actors, including those operating at a transnational level (for example, within the EU) and excluding embassies. The NGO category included nonstate-funded societies and groups, taking the view that such organisations constitute a core part of what might be termed ‘civil society’. Academic/higher education was applied to organisations that had as their core activity independent higher-level research and teaching (as opposed to broader public or political education or commissioned research).

A Framework and a Method • 45

Once the twelve adjacency matrices and twenty-four attribute matrices were complete, these were imported into the SNA software UCInet and converted to UCInet datasets. A series of mathematical algorithms were run on the datasets, producing descriptive statistics, and the networks were visualised using UCInet’s sister programme, Netdraw.98 The outcomes of this analysis are discussed throughout this book and in dialogue with the findings of the qualitative analysis described below.

Qualitative Analysis: Studying Relationship Culture As explained above, in order to understand networks in their full formation as ‘configurations of social relationships interwoven with meaning’,99 this quantitative analysis of network structure and the position of different actors within it needs to be combined with an exploration of ‘relationship culture’: the ways in which the relationship is defined and understood by the actors.100 The relationship culture draws in turn on ‘cultural blueprints’ that exist prior to the network, but may also be redefined within it. In order to identify relationship cultures, we need to develop a mode of analysis that complements, but also goes beyond, consideration of the number of actors of different types involved in the networks and mathematical analysis of their structural positions. We need to know what these activities were, what they are about and – crucially – how they are interpreted and understood by the actors involved. For this, we need to turn to qualitative techniques. Important in this context is that the chosen qualitative approach retains a commitment to relationality – that is, that it considers what is created at the points of intersection between actors rather than focusing on the actors alone. As Marin and Wellman argue, ‘social network analysis is neither a theory nor a methodology. Rather, it is a perspective or a paradigm. It takes as its starting point the premise that social life is created primarily and most importantly by relations and the patterns they form’.101 The qualitative method used in this book therefore focuses on both the attributes of the actors and what is produced in the relationships between them in terms of activities, themes and narratives. The text corpus is the same as that used for the quantitative analysis – that is, publicity material and activity reports relating to cross-border collaborations involving the three main institutions in the period 2009–16. As noted above, this means that we are dealing here with relationship culture as it is defined by the German actor in material that can broadly be described as ‘promotional’. This enables me to answer the questions posed in the Introduction about how these state-mandated institutions, whose work focuses on memory of the GDR, frame and put into practice memory-political activity in and through collaborations with partners across the globe. It per-

46 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

mits discussion of how this relationship culture, as narrated by one side of the transaction, reflects and refracts cultural blueprints regarding relations between East and West, and North and South. Nonetheless, we must recognise that one side of the conversation is missing. Where material is available, I reconstruct some of this missing voice in my analysis of the key brokers in the networks in Chapters 5 and 6; nonetheless, further research is needed to explore in detail if and how the non-German partners accept, negotiate or contest the definitions offered by the German institution. As observed by Raluca Grosescu, Sophie Baby and Laure Neumayer, cross-border collaborations are marked by both a ‘globalization of memory and justice paradigms’ and a ‘fragmentation’ of those paradigms as they are contested by regional and local practices and understandings.102 The text corpus was divided into twelve files – one for each two-year period for each institution – and the files were uploaded to the content analysis software Nvivo. The files were then divided into ‘cases’ – each case contained the text relating to a single collaborative activity. The cases were then coded as a whole (that is, all text for a given activity). The codes were divided into five areas: region, actor type, activity, topic and narrative. For all five areas, a collaboration could be tagged with multiple different codes. ‘Region’ and ‘actor type’ used the same categories as those described above. One key difference is that I did not code ‘region’ for the German actors (eastern or western) involved in the cooperation. This is because I am interested principally in the nature of the collaborations as transnational, that is, in what narratives, activities, topics etc. are common for cooperations with actors located in different (non-German) regional contexts. Coding the German actors as either post-socialist/CEE or Western European would have unnecessarily complicated this analysis. Codes grouped under ‘Activity’ were used to identify the kind of collaboration described in the text broadly understood. The codes used were: Arts Based; Conference; Education; Exhibition; Media Event; Official Visit; Official Cooperation; Proclamation; Public Event; and Research Project. Codes grouped under ‘Topic’ were used to identify the broad subject of those activities. There were a large number of codes in this area, indicating a degree of diversity in what these collaborations were about: Alltag; Antisemitism; Aufarbeitung; Cold War; Democratic Transition; Dictatorship; European Memory; Hidden Histories; Human Rights; Left Extremism; Memorialisation; National Socialism; Opposition; Past Crimes; Political Imprisonment; Reconciliation; Reunification; Revolution; Secret Police; State Archives; and Totalitarianism. The identification of activity and topic was essentially descriptive and involved working through the texts inductively, making decisions about how the different collaborations being described could be categorised and grouped in ways that allowed the material to be synthesised and compared.

A Framework and a Method • 47

The identification of narratives was also done inductively; this required an analysis of the meaning-making interwoven with the description of what happened and what it was about. The method used to identify meaning is developed from narrative analysis. Narrative analysis has a longstanding tradition in the humanities and has become increasingly used in the social sciences,103 also leading to some fruitful crossover between the two.104 Narrative approaches have also been used within network analysis to explore a crucial part of ‘relationship culture’; that is, ‘what ties “mean” to network members from their subjective point of view’ and the ways in which ‘network structure is rooted in, and shaped by, the meanings that ego attaches to ties and the ways in which they subjectively categorise them’.105 Harrison C. White views ‘stories’ or narratives as central to the ways in which intersubjective ties form identities.106 Narrative research is located firmly within a constructivist or postmodern and interpretative paradigm, which looks not for a ‘real, essential and objective reality reflected in narratives’; rather, ‘it proposes a subjective and relativist reality, largely invented by narratives’.107 In our context, the researcher is not looking for information on the ‘real’ motivations behind cross-border collaborations or for an authentic insight into their purpose; rather, she is interested in how the narrators (here the authors of the reports and press releases or those cited in them) give meaning to these cooperative activities. Narratives are made up of plot elements (events, people, time, etc.), but importantly ‘the same set of events can be organized around different plots’.108 This is especially significant when the narratives being constructed are not about the self, but about what society is, was and should be. What are being narrated in the documents under consideration here are cooperations between memory entrepreneurs in different national contexts. These are stories about the motivations of these collaborations and their outcomes, but they are also stories about the nature of the past and the processes of coming to terms with it that are located in a national, transnational and global political context. In this way, these narratives also relate to questions of power. These stories locate institutions, nations and regions in terms of success and failure. They give an account of which approaches to the past work and which do not, and they identify who should be listening to and learning from whom. The narratives identified in the texts were grouped into ten categories, the most salient of which will be described in more detail in the course of this study: Common Histories; Expert Exchange; Learning from BStU; Learning from CEE; Learning from Hohenschönhausen; Learning from Others; Learning from the Germans; Learning from the Stiftung; Other Histories; and Supporting Global Human Rights. Conducting text analysis in Nvivo allows us to use the content analysis tools provided by the software to compare different codes and, in particular,

48 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

to analyse the relationships between them using the technique of ‘matrix coding’. It helps us to manage large volumes of text and track broad patterns across them, and to visualise how different regions, activities, topics, actor types and narratives are connected to one another. The potential of this approach will be explored and exemplified throughout this book. Nonetheless, the systematisation of this analytical process should not be taken as an effort to turn a qualitative process into a quantitative one. The researcher is very much present in the analysis: she decides whether an event should be categorised as a ‘conference’ or a ‘public event’ and whether the narrative attached to that event suggests that the partner should be learning from the BStU alone or, more generally, from a supposed ‘German’ approach to the past. These decisions were systematised as much as possible; however, it remains the case that this aspect of the research is based on text interpretation. This does not detract from the value of the findings. Language, discourse and narrative constitute our lived reality, including the networks and relationships of which we are part and it is important that we develop tools to analyse those processes. For this reason, when I present the results of the qualitative study (e.g. the results of the matrix coding), I present these as reflecting dominant patterns and trends in the texts, not as a precise basis for comparison between different codes and the relationships between them. These patterns and trends are then exemplified with more detailed textual analysis across the study.

Notes 1. Vertovec, Transnationalism, 1. 2. Assmann, ‘Transnational Memories’, 547. 3. Halbwachs, On Collective Memory; Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis; Assmann, ‘Collective Memory and Cultural Identity’; Assmann, Der lange Schatten; Assmann, ‘Transformations between History and Memory’. 4. For an interesting discussion on if and how memory studies can be thought of as a discipline or field, see Dutceac Segesten and Wüstenberg, ‘Memory Studies’. 5. Examples of this tendency are the works on ‘realms of memory’ in different contexts, which began with Pierre Nora’s multivolume study of French national memory, Les Lieux de mémoire (seven volumes, the first of which was published in 1984 and the last in 1992). See, for example, François and Schulze, Deutsche Erinnerungsorte; Sabrow, Erinnerungsorte der DDR; Péporté et al., Inventing Luxembourg. 6. De Cesari and Rigney, ‘Introduction’, 2. 7. Beck, Der kosmopolitische Blick. 8. Assmann and Conrad, ‘Introduction’, 6. 9. Aksu, ‘Global Collective Memory’, 318–19. 10. Aksu, ‘Global Collective Memory’, 331.

A Framework and a Method • 49 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47.

Aksu, ‘Global Collective Memory’, 329. Levy and Sznaider, The Holocaust and Memory, 2. Levy and Sznaider, The Holocaust and Memory, 3–4. Levy and Sznaider, Human Rights and Memory, 4. Levy and Sznaider, Human Rights and Memory, 4. Levy and Sznaider, Human Rights and Memory, 5; Levy, Heinlein and Breuer, ‘Reflexive Particularism’. Levy, Heinlein and Breuer, ‘Reflexive Particularism’; Levy and Sznaider, Holocaust and Memory, 194–95. David, The Past Can’t Heal Us, 53–62. Baer and Sznaider, Memory and Forgetting, 4. Baer and Sznaider, Memory and Forgetting, 11. Baer and Sznaider, Memory and Forgetting, 24. David, ‘Against Standardization of Memory’, 309–10; David, The Past Can’t Heal Us, 62. It should be noted that Levy and Sznaider distance themselves from Kantian cosmopolitanism and its focus on ‘a universalistic notion and … a polis extending around the globe’. See Levy and Sznaider, Holocaust and Memory, 2. Forsdick, Mark and Spišiaková, ‘Introduction’; Lentin, ‘Postracial Silences’. Goldberg, ‘Ethics, Identity, and Antifundamental Fundamentalism’, 15. Goldberg, ‘Ethics, Identity, and Antifundamental Fundamentalism’, 21. David, The Past Can’t Heal Us, 1–2. Cercel, ‘Whither Politics, Whither Memory?’. For a discussion of the disjuncture that might result in this regard between the aims of survivors and the aims of human rights activists, see Glucksam, ‘My Grief, Our Grievance’, 192. See Cento Bull and Hansen, ‘On Agonistic Memory’, 390. Cento Bull and Hansen, ‘On Agonistic Memory’, 390–400. Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory, 21. Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory, 3. We should note here the body of work that explores the intersection between Holocaust and postcolonial studies. The following are just a few examples: Craps, Postcolonial Witnessing; Cheyette, Diasporas of the Mind; Sanyal, Memory and Complicity; Silverman, Palimpsestic Memory. Wüstenberg, ‘Introduction’, 16. De Cesari and Rigney, ‘Introduction’, 6. Bond and Rapson, ‘Introduction’, 19. Bond and Rapson, ‘Introduction’, 9. Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis; Assmann, ‘Collective Memory and Cultural Identity’; Assmann, ‘Communicative and Cultural Memory’. See Assmann, Der lange Schatten, 28; Welzer, Das kommunikative Gedächtnis; Welzer, ‘Re-narrations’. Campbell, Relational Remembering. Werner and Zimmermann, ‘Beyond Comparison’, 31. Werner and Zimmermann, ‘Beyond Comparison’, 35. Werner and Zimmermann, ‘Beyond Comparison’, 46. Olick, The Politics of Regret, 10. Olick, The Politics of Regret, 116. Feindt et al., ‘Entangled Memory’, 24. Feindt et al., ‘Entangled Memory’, 27. Erll, ‘Travelling Memory in European Film’, 6.

50 • Towards a Collaborative Memory 48. Erll, ‘Homer: A Relational Mnemohistory’, 279. 49. The potential of this approach is also highlighted by Wüstenberg. See Wüstenberg, ‘Introduction’, 14. 50. Emirbayer, ‘Manifesto’, 287. Notably, Emirbayer states that such a relational approach would call into question the concept of nations as ‘unproblematic, unitary entities’. Emirbayer, ‘Manifesto’, 285. 51. Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology, 1. See also Donati, Relational Sociology, 4–5. Donati traces the development of relational sociology (as he conceives it) from the work of George Simmel to postmodernist approaches. See Donati, Relational Sociology, 6–12. 52. Sierp and Wüstenberg, ‘Linking the Local and the Transnational’, 326. 53. Wüstenberg, ‘Introduction’, 17, emphasis in original. See also Dujisin, ‘A Field-Theoretical Approach’, 24–43. Dujisin suggests a ‘relational and sociological’ approach drawing on Bourdieusian theory of field and habitus. 54. Marin and Wellman, ‘Social Network Analysis’, 22. 55. Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology, 13. 56. Definition taken from Oxford Advanced American Dictionary: https://www.oxfordlearn ersdictionaries.com. 57. Marin and Wellman, ‘Social Network Analysis’, 17. 58. Emirbayer and Goodwin, ‘Network Analysis’, 1411. 59. Emirbayer and Goodwin, ‘Network Analysis’, 1438, emphasis in original. 60. Emirbayer and Goodwin, ‘Network Analysis’, 1440. 61. Sierp, ‘Conclusions’, 342. 62. Fuhse and Mützel, ‘Tackling Connections’, 1079. See also Crossley, Towards Relational Sociology, 16. 63. Bond, Craps and Vermeulen, ‘Introduction’, 6. The question of power differentials is also noted by Wüstenberg (‘Introduction’, 15) and Wüstenberg and Sierp’s edited volume (Agency in Transnational Memory Politics) is structured thematically around power dynamics between actors. Wüstenberg also notes the power dynamics at play between different scales of memory in Wüstenberg, ‘Locating Transnational Memory’, 378. 64. McClurg and Young, ‘Editors’ Introduction’, 39. 65. As we see in the Introduction, this mode of memory is in fact sometimes referred to as the ‘German model’. Gabowitsch, ‘Replicating Atonement’; David, The Past Can’t Heal Us, 7. 66. We might consider this intersection as a version of what Tomáš Profant describes as the ‘postcolonial crossroads’. See Profant, New Donors. 67. Mignolo and Walsh, On Decoloniality, 119. An example of this in practice is found in Wolfgram, Antigone’s Ghosts. Wolfgram offers a fascinating insight into the ways in which culture can determine the receptiveness to ‘Western’ modes of remembrance; however, the implication in the introduction to his volume is that it is these modes to which all cultures should be aspiring. 68. Mignolo, On Decoloniality, 207. See also Mitova, ‘Decolonising Knowledge’, 198–99. 69. Quijano, ‘Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality’, 169. For a discussion of the relationship between postcolonialism and decoloniality, see Bhambra, ‘Postcolonial and Decolonial Dialogues’. 70. Mignolo, ‘Cosmopolitanism and the De-colonial Option’, 112. 71. Bhambra, ‘Whither Europe?’, 193, emphasis in original. 72. Bhambra, ‘Whither Europe?’, 199. 73. Mignolo, ‘Cosmopolitanism and the De-colonial Option’, 127. 74. Mignolo, ‘Cosmopolitanism and the De-colonial Option’, 127. 75. Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory, 29. 76. Quijano, ‘Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality’, 174. 77. Fuhse, ‘The Meaning Structure of Social Networks’.

A Framework and a Method • 51 78. Selg, ‘Two Faces of the “Relational Turn”’, 29–30. 79. Hollstein, ‘Qualitative Approaches’, 404. See also Fuhse and Mützel, ‘Tackling Connections’, 1067. 80. See e.g. Mische, ‘Relational Sociology’, 90. 81. Domínguez and Hollstein, Mixed Methods Social Networks Research. 82. Fuhse and Mützel, ‘Tackling Connections’, 1080. 83. Wasserman and Faust, Social Network Analysis, 9; Crossley et al., Social Network Analysis for Ego-Nets; Prell, Social Network Analysis, 4. 84. Latour, Reassembling the Social, 59, emphasis in original. One example of the use of ANT in memory studies is Frauke Wiegand’s study of the dynamics of memory assemblage in and through the Regina Mundi Church in South Africa. See Wiegand, ‘The Agency of Memory Objects’. 85. Fuhse and Mützel, ‘Tackling Connections’, 1074. 86. Fuhse, ‘The Meaning Structure of Social Networks’, 60, emphasis in original. 87. Fuhse, ‘The Meaning Structure of Social Networks’, 60. 88. Wüstenberg, ‘Vernetztes Gedenken?’. 89. The same critique could be made of Till Hilmar’s recent analysis of networks of recognition between European institutions dealing with memory of Nazism and/or communism. See Hilmar, ‘Links to the Past’. 90. For more on ego-nets, see Crossley et al., Social Network Analysis for Ego-Nets; Prell, Social Network Analysis, 118–33; Hanneman and Riddle, ‘A Brief Introduction’. 91. Crossley et al., Social Network Analysis for Ego-Nets, 82. 92. For a detailed discussion of the selection of the three institutions, their position within national memory politics, and of the rationale behind the chosen timeframe, see the Introduction. 93. Texts from this corpus produced by the BStU, Hohenschönhausen and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung and cited directly in this book are listed in the Bibliography under ‘Primary Sources’. Further sources (notably event reports published on the H-Soz-Kult list) are listed by author name. The full dataset is available from the author on request. 94. For more on creating adjacency matrices, see Prell, Social Network Analysis, 81–83; Hanneman and Riddle, ‘A Brief Introduction’, 336–38. 95. The adjacency matrices can be downloaded from the University of Birmingham edata Repository: https://doi.org/10.25500/edata.bham.00000725 (retrieved 28 February 2022). 96. Hilmar, ‘Links to the Past’, 253. 97. For more on attribute matrices, see Prell, Social Network Analysis, 81–83; Hanneman and Riddle, ‘A Brief Introduction’, 336–37. 98. Borgatti, Everett and Freeman, Ucinet 6 for Windows; Borgatti, Netdraw Network Visualisation. 99. Fuhse, ‘The Meaning Structure of Social Networks’, 51. 100. Fuhse, ‘The Meaning Structure of Social Networks’, 60. 101. Marin and Wellman, ‘Social Network Analysis’, 22. 102. Grosescu, Baby and Neumayer, ‘Justice, Memory and Transnational Networks’, 307. 103. For example, Clandinin and Connelly, Narrative Inquiry; Butler-Kisber, Qualitative Inquiry; Andrews, Squire and Tamboukou, Doing Narrative Research. 104. For example, Czarniawska, Narratives in Social Science Research. 105. Crossley et al., Social Network Analysis for Ego-Nets, 106–7. See also DiMaggio, ‘Cultural Networks’, 295–96. 106. White, Identity and Control. 107. Spector-Mersel, ‘Narrative Research’, 208, emphasis in original. 108. Czarniawska, Narratives in Social Science Research, 7.

Chapter 2

TRACING THE SHAPE OF TRANSNATIONAL COLLABORATION

8 The first step in piecing together the ‘meaning structure’ of the networks created by and through the cross-border collaborations of the BStU, Hohenschönhausen and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung is the analysis of network structure. This chapter offers a preliminary exploration of the networks and presents the results of the quantitative analyses; in so doing, it sets the scene for the detailed qualitative analysis in Chapters 3–6. My discussion is divided into two sections. In the first, I focus on the size and shape of the networks, the key actors, and the make-up of the network in terms of region and actor type. This part is organised according to the different quantitative measures run on the twelve networks (one for each of the three institutions in each of the four time periods). A detailed explanation of these measures will be provided in the course of the chapter. In brief, I will first consider ‘egonet composition’ for region and type, and will use this measure to track patterns and shifts in the make-up of the networks over time. I will then analyse ‘betweenness centrality’, which can give an initial indication of the actors in a position of brokerage in the different networks. Finally, I will explore ‘components’; this measure can reveal the shape of the network, patterns in each institution’s collaborative practice and particular clusters of cooperation. The second section of this chapter picks up on the identification of regional clusters, highlighted by the analysis of components, and explores this further through measures of ‘homophily’ – that is, same-to-same connections. The quantitative analysis of ‘memory zones’ in this chapter creates the framework through which different relationship cultures are examined in the rest of this book.

Tracing the Shape of Transnational Collaboration • 53

The Networks: Size, Shape and Actors In order to understand the detail, we need to start with an overview of the size and complexity of the networks under discussion. Table 2.1 provides information on the total number of actors in each network – that is, for each institution in each time period – and the total number of ties (that is, relationships) between them. We can already make a few general observations based on this data. While there are peaks and troughs for all three institutions, it is clear that the Stiftung Aufarbeitung consistently works with a far larger number of partners in its transnational collaborations and creates a far larger number of ties between the nodes in its network. In this sense, it can be described as the most prominent transnational actor considered in this book. In terms of the total number of actors, the Stiftung Aufarbeitung is followed (by quite some distance) by the BStU and then Hohenschönhausen, although one or the other has played a more prominent role at different points in time. On the other hand, in terms of total number of ties (that is, relationships between actors), the figure for the BStU is, on average and for most time periods, lower than that of Hohenschönhausen. This already indicates that these two organisations collaborate across borders in different ways. The BStU works with more actors, but creates fewer ties between them, suggesting a higher number of discrete projects with a small number of actors in each. Hohenschönhausen, in contrast, works with fewer actors, but connects them with one another more frequently. This suggests a smaller number of events and projects with a larger number of actors in each. The higher rate in collaborative activity in terms of the number of actors and ties in 2009–10 for both the BStU and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung indicates that the twentieth anniversaries of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the unification of Germany saw an intensification of commemorative activity, including across borders, for these two institutions. Table 2.1 Numbers of actors and ties over time

BStU

HSH

SA

2009–10

2011–12

2013–14

2015–16

Mean

148 actors

91 actors

44 actors

59 actors

85.5 actors

730 ties

440 ties

166 ties

236 ties

393 ties

63 actors

70 actors

62 actors

64 actors

64.75 actors

574 ties

458 ties

480 ties

268 ties

445 ties

332 actors

163 actors

298 actors

245 actors

259.5 actors

4,060 ties

1,138 ties

2,860 ties

2,458 ties

2,629 ties

54 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

Egonet Composition This broad overview does not tell us much about who the collaborative partners of these organisations were; for this, we need to consider what is termed ‘egonet composition’. Egonet composition is a fairly straightforward measure of the make-up of an (ego)network according to a given attribute – that is, it tells you the preponderance of an actor with a particular attribute within that network (here, region and actor type). I ran egonet composition analyses in UCInet for each of the twelve networks; in what follows, I provide the results for the whole network for each institution in each period. Region I will first explore the make-up of the networks according to the regional location of the actors involved. Table 2.2 Number of regions over time 2009–10

2011–12

2015–16

Mean

BStU

13

11

2013–14 8

13

11.25

HSH

10

11

11

12

11.00

SA

13

9

14

16

13.00

Table 2.2 shows the information on the total number of regions represented in each network in each period. It is noteworthy that the mean number of different regions represented in the networks of each of the institutions is relatively similar (despite the significantly higher number of actors in the Stiftung Aufarbeitung matrices). What does this look like if we break the data down to show which regions are most involved in collaborative activities with these three memory actors? Tables 2.3–2.6 show information on region composition for the BStU, Hohenschönhausen and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung for the four time periods under consideration. In order to simplify the data, I have only included those regions that were represented by at least 5% of the actors within at least one of the networks for that period. It is striking that in terms of region, we see an increase in the diversity of the transnational collaborative activity of these institutions over time. In 2009–10, only four regions were represented by at least 5% of actors in the network of at least one of the three institutions. In 2011–12 this figure is six, in 2013–14 it is seven and in 2015–16 it is eight. Key regions across the networks include post-socialist/CEE, Western Europe, post-Soviet, MENA, East Asia and (to a lesser degree) Central and South America. Nonetheless,

Tracing the Shape of Transnational Collaboration • 55

Table 2.3 Regions in the 2009–10 networks (% of all actors) BStU

Hohenschönhausen

Stiftung Aufarbeitung

Post-socialist/CEE

32

41.9

37.5

Western Europe

29.3

29

37.5

Post-Soviet

10.9

9.7

12.4

4.1

6.5

1.5

East Asia

Table 2.4 Regions in the 2011–12 networks (% of all actors) BStU

Hohenschönhausen

Stiftung Aufarbeitung

Post-socialist/CEE

30

33.3

31.5

Western Europe

20

33.3

33.3

Post-Soviet

4.3

20.4

East Asia

10

2.2

2.9

6.2

MENA

20

8.7

1.2

0

5.8

0

Southeast Asia

Table 2.5 Regions in the 2013–14 networks (% of all actors) BStU

Hohenschönhausen

Stiftung Aufarbeitung

Post-socialist/CEE

46.5

16.4

39.7

Western Europe

25.6

23

27.9

Post-Soviet

4.7

8.2

14.5

East Asia

4.7

8.2

5.1

MENA

7

North America

2.3

6.6

2

Central and South America

7

6.6

2.7

19.7

0.7

Table 2.6 Regions in the 2015–16 networks (% of all actors) BStU Post-socialist/CEE

12.3

Hohenschönhausen

Stiftung Aufarbeitung

34.9

31.6

Western Europe

29.8

11.1

34.8

Post-Soviet

12.3

11.1

14.8

East Asia

8.8

14.3

North America

5.3

1.6

2

Central and South America Southeast Europe Multiregional

4.1

5.3

7.9

1.2

10.5

4.8

2.9

3.5

6.3

2.9

56 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

there is a clear dominance of Western European and post-socialist/CEE actors across all three institutions throughout the timeframe under consideration: this would evidently include all German actors and in this sense reflects the primary location of the central institutions, as well as the focus of their activity on remembrance of a Central European state socialist dictatorship (that is, the GDR). It is clear from this data that memory of the GDR is – perhaps unsurprisingly – most frequently positioned within the context of European, and especially Central and Eastern European, memory. Indeed, if we combine post-socialist/CEE with those regions also in the Soviet sphere of influence (post-Soviet and Southeast Europe), this larger ‘Eastern’ region is represented by more than 50% of collaborators in the Stiftung Aufarbeitung networks. The picture for the BStU and Hohenschönhausen is more mixed. While ‘Eastern’ (in the sense described above) actors represent more than 50% of Hohenschönhausen’s collaborators in both 2009–10 and 2015–16, this figure is only 37.6% and 24.6% in 2011–12 and 2013–14 respectively. For the BStU, ‘Eastern’ actors represent 42.9% and 51.2% of the total number of collaborators in 2009–10 and 2013–14, but only 32.2% and 35.1% in 2011–12 and 2015–16. This focus on the former Soviet sphere of influence seems to shift in these periods to a more or less substantial increase in cooperation with Western European partners and a significant increase in cooperation with nonEuropean partners. In the case of Hohenschönhausen, these are partners in the MENA region (throughout 2011–14) and in the case of the BStU, MENA in 2011–12 and a very diverse set of regions in 2015–16. This gives a first indication that there may be a movement in modes of remembrance between European and non-European contexts, and that movement may – at certain moments – incorporate a re-emphasis away from ‘Eastern’ actors and narratives. In the course of this book, I explore this dynamic further and consider in detail if and how the ‘relationship cultures’ produced through transnational collaboration are inflected by region in terms of topics, actors, narratives, and structures of power and influence. Type Central to this ambition is a sense of who is involved in the transnational collaborations of the three central institutions. This is where an analysis of egonet composition according to ‘type’ of actor can be useful. As there are relatively few differences in the range of actor types between the institutions in the different time periods, it is more interesting to compare how the actor types fluctuate over time for each institution individually rather than comparing the institutions directly with one another. Tables 2.7–2.9 show the percentage representation for each actor type in the named institution as it changes over

Tracing the Shape of Transnational Collaboration • 57

Table 2.7 Actor type over time (% of all actors), BStU 2009–10

2011–12

2013–14

2015–16

Mean

Academic

23.5

12.1

9.1

10.3

13.8

Government

14.1

16.5

31.8

22.4

21.2

NGO/Civil Rights (CR)

10.1

15.4

11.4

12.1

12.3

15.9

8.6

11.2

State-funded institutes

9.4

11

Embassies

8.7

15.4

6.8

15.5

11.6

Media

6.7

5.5

2.3

8.6

5.8

Archives

6.7

3.3

6.8

5.2

5.5

Table 2.8 Actor type over time (% of all actors), Hohenschönhausen 2009–10 Academic Government NGO/CR

2011–12

2013–14

2015–16

20.6

8.6

8.1

7.8

11.3

9.5

15.7

11.3

17.2

13.4

10

14.5

7.8

11.7

14.3

Mean

State-funded institutes

6.3

8.6

11.3

12.5

9.7

Embassies

3.2

11.4

22.6

7.8

11.3

Media

12.7

4.3

4.8

10.9

8.2

Arts

12.7

10

9.7

4.7

9.3

Memorials

11.1

12.9

12.9

17.2

13.5

Table 2.9 Actor type over time (% of all actors), Stiftung Aufarbeitung 2009–10

2011–12

2013–14

Academic

23.6

35.6

27.9

Government

13.5

6.7

6.7

NGO/CR

10.1

9.2

State-funded institutes

9.5

Embassies

2015–16 31

Mean 29.5

4.1

7.8

6

14.3

9.9

8.6

10.4

9.4

9.5

8.8

2.5

9.1

4.1

6.1

Media

6.8

9.8

11.1

4.5

8.1

Arts

4.1

9.8

6.7

8.6

7.3

Memorials

3.4

8

10.7

11.8

8.5

58 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

time. I have only included those actor types who were represented by a mean of at least 5% of the total number of actors across the four time periods. There are few immediately obvious patterns in the types of actors involved in the collaborative activity of these institutions; however, some general conclusions can be drawn. The BStU collaborates most frequently with institutions that we might understand as state or state-mandated actors: governments, embassies and state-mandated institutes make up on average 44.0% of its collaborators over the eight years. There is some fluctuation and the general trend is for an increase in the number of governmental actors, and a decrease in the number of state-mandated institutes. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given its function, it cooperates with a larger proportion of archives than either of the other two institutions (where this group does not, on average, make up even 5% of the total number of actors). Hohenschönhausen also cooperates frequently with state or statemandated partners, with these groups being represented by a mean of 34.4% of the actors in each network. Nonetheless, and again reflecting its own actor type, Hohenschönhausen also counts a considerably higher (and increasing) proportion of memorials within its network than either the BStU (mean = 4.1%) or the Stiftung Aufarbeitung. Hohenschönhausen is also more likely to work with arts-focused individuals and institutions than either the BStU (mean = 1.3%) or – to a lesser extent – the Stiftung Aufarbeitung, although decreasingly so. The peak in the proportion of embassies (2013–14) collaborating with Hohenschönhausen can be explained by a single event in that period: a visit by a large group of diplomats in January 2013.1 However, the gradual decline in the proportion of academic collaborators following a peak in 2009–10 is noteworthy. In contrast, the most striking feature about the type of actors that make up the Stiftung Aufarbeitung’s networks is the high proportion of academic actors throughout, which is indicative of collaborations fundamentally focused on academic research and networking. State or state-mandated organisations (as defined above) make up on average 23.4% of the total number of actors in the Stiftung Aufarbeitung’s networks – while this is still almost one-quarter, it is considerably lower than the corresponding figure for the BStU and Hohenschönhausen. We can also observe a steadily increasing proportion of memorials and museums actors in the networks of this institution.

Centrality: Identifying Brokers The patterns in actor type can give us initial indications of the focus of activity of these three institutions. In the course of this book, I contextualise these broad findings through a closer exploration of how actor type relates

Tracing the Shape of Transnational Collaboration • 59

to different locations, regions, narratives, activities and topics – that is, how the relationship between actors from different countries, regions and sectors transforms the processes of mnemonic entrepreneurship. However, in many ways, simply counting the number of actors of a particular type is a rather crude measure of who is important in a given network. That there are a large number of academic actors in the Stiftung Aufarbeitung matrices, for example, does not tell us much about which (if any) of those academic actors is most influential or important within that network. For this, we need to consider the concept of ‘centrality’. Centrality measures can give information about which actors are in a position of influence within a network according to different definitions. Given the focus in this study on relationality in transnational memory, I consider an actor to be influential if they frequently sit at a point of intercrossing; that is, where they connect two other actors who are not otherwise connected in the networks under examination. In SNA, such actors are viewed as having the potential to act as ‘brokers’ between actors in different regions and sectors. In order to identify actors in such positions of brokerage, we need to measure what is known as ‘betweenness centrality’ (BC). As the name suggests, BC measures how often a given actor sits between two other nodes in the network – that is, the extent to which they connect one actor with another. An actor with a high BC in our networks is one who is brought into collaboration with the central actor on multiple different projects with different actors in each. In the network map, it connects the actors in one project with the actors in another. We cannot know in reality if such a connection actually takes place. However, we can say that actors with a high BC have the opportunity to draw on resources from and provide resources to multiple different groups. Such resources might be material (in the form of funding, for example), but also include symbolic and narrative resources relating to the past and the processes of remembrance.2 Using UCInet, I ran BC analyses on each of the twelve networks. Given how the data was collected (that is, as the egonets of the three main institutions), BC can only be made meaningful if the central institution is removed from the matrix before running the analysis. The very nature of an egonet means that all nodes are connected to the ego; its presence therefore distorts the analysis of connectedness in these terms.3 However, the network that remains is still the network created by and through the central institution (so we cannot say anything about connections beyond that network). In what follows, I will present the results by institution. Tables 2.10–2.12 show the actors with the top five highest BC scores in the network of the central node in each of the four time periods under consideration. To allow comparison across the networks, the figures have been normalised according to network size. Tables 2.10–2.12 also give a value for ‘betweenness network centralization index’ (BNC Index). This figure records the extent to which nodes

60 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

within the network are ‘between’ other nodes expressed as a percentage of the maximum possible (giving an indication of average BC for the network). The discussion here summarises the patterns in this data and lays the groundwork for considering the significance of regional location of these central actors in the remainder of this book. BStU The first notable aspect of the BC measures for the BStU is the large jump in the BNC Index in 2015–16. The relatively low BC scores in the earlier periods indicate a quite loosely connected network, with few brokers bridging collaborations with different partners. This pattern of collaboration appears to shift in 2015–16, when we see a much more connected network in which a number of influential actors link otherwise discrete projects with one another. In terms of the specific actors who are in positions of brokerage, we see some common patterns over time. German governmental actors, including the German Foreign Office (GFO), as well as paragovernmental actors (i.e. the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES), a political foundation associated with the Social Democratic Party of Germany) are in such a position in the network in three of the four networks under consideration (2011–16). These actors do not have remembrance of the past as an explicit part of their activities. Instead, as will be discussed in the course of this book, their activity within the networks created by and through the BStU most frequently takes place within the framework of their efforts towards democracy promotion. In 2009–10, we see on the other hand an emphasis on post-socialist/CEE and post-Soviet actors: the Institute for National Remembrance (INR, Warsaw) and the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes (ISTR, Prague), both Polish and Czech state-funded institutes, the Russian NGO Memorial, the history festival Geschichtsforum 1989/2009,4 and the Czech government. We might interpret this as further evidence of the importance of shared remembrance of 1989 to the BStU’s activity in this period. In this regard, the shift in 2011–12 to include several MENA actors in positions of brokerage shows how the focus of transnational collaboration can move with changed geopolitical contexts; in this case, the popular protests and demands for democratic change in the MENA region, which became known as the ‘Arab Spring’. In 2013, we see a return to the post-socialist/CEE and postSoviet focus: this includes governmental actors from Poland (in 2013–14) and Croatia (in 2015–16). With regard to actor type, the post-socialist/CEE actors tend to be state or state-funded institutions (this is not the case for the post-Soviet actor, which is an NGO). In contrast, the actors from the MENA region are civil society actors. The designation ‘Tunisian and Egyptian civil rights activists’ (taken from the text corpus) brings several actors together

Tracing the Shape of Transnational Collaboration • 61

Table 2.10 Top five most between central actors in the BStU networks over time 2009–10

2011–12

2013–14

2015–16

BNC Index = 3.61%

BNC Index = 3.17%

BNC Index = 1.71%

BNC Index = 23.00%

1

INR (Warsaw)

3.745

GFO

3.307

German government

1.742

GFO

24.091

2

ISTR (Prague)

3.732

Tunisian CR activists

2.694

Polish government

0.813

Memorial

15.584

3

Geschichtsforum 1989/2009

3.595

ISTR, Prague

1.532

INR (Warsaw)

0.581

INR (Warsaw)

13.571

4

Czech government

2.560

Egyptian CR activists

1.302

5

Memorial

1.178

FES

1.149

[All other actors have a BC value of 0]

Croatian 11.364 government German 10.736 government

under a single heading and is likely to include multiple groups with different agendas and interests in this sphere (see Chapter 6). Hohenschönhausen Turning to Hohenschönhausen, in terms of the BNC Index, we see development in the opposite direction to that seen in the networks created by and through the collaborative activity of the BStU. The BNC Index is relatively high in the period 2009–14 and drops dramatically in 2015–16, indicating that the network created by and through Hohenschönhausen’s collaborative activity is less connected in this period. In terms of the specific actors who are seen to be influential in the networks (according to their BC score), we see a similar pattern to that identified in the networks created by and through the BStU in terms of region, but a greater diversity in terms of actor type. As in the BStU networks, German governmental or paragovernmental actors act as brokers across the time periods, including the GFO, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS, a political foundation aligned to the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU)) and the German Embassy in Albania. However, nonstate German actors also play an important role in the Hohenschönhausen networks and are drawn from a range of sectors: the Free University (Freie Universität, Berlin), the Robert Bosch Foundation (RBS, a private company-linked foundation), actors from the museum and arts sectors (the Literaturhaus Berlin, the Käthe Kollwitz Museum, Deutsche

62 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

Table 2.11 Top five most between central actors in the Hohenschönhausen networks over time 2009–10

2011–12

2013–14

2015–16

BNC Index = 29.33

BNC Index = 19.22

BNC Index = 29.14

BNC Index = 1.38

1

Free University

30.339

German government

20.237

GFO

30.386

Albanian 1.481 government (=1)

2

KAS

24.153

Tunisia government

17.954

Topography of Terror

19.774

Estonian Embassy (=1)

1.481

3

German government

11.803

Deutschlandfunk

15.935

Contre l’oubli

18.465

Vilnius University (=3)

1.269

4

RBS (=4)

6.414

Deutsche Kinemathek

10.009

Tunisia. government

12.119

German Embassy Albania (=3)

1.269

5

Herta Müller (=4)

6.414

Tunisian CR activists

6.629

KAS

11.299

GFO

1.005

Literaturhaus Berlin (=4)

6.414

Käthe Kollwitz Museum (=4)

6.414

Kinemathek and the Topography of Terror), and the radio station Deutschlandfunk (a section of Deutschlandradio whose remit is politics and culture). We also see the shift towards actors from the MENA region in 2011, which in the case of Hohenschönhausen continues into 2013–14. In these periods, Hohenschönhausen cooperates with both governmental actors from the region and civil rights groups/NGOs – including within the project Contre l’oubli, coorganised by Hohenschönhausen with Tunisian partners (see Chapter 6). The period 2015–16 sees a shift back to ‘Eastern’ and intra-European partnerships; however, here the most influential actors are post-Soviet partners in the Baltic countries and actors located outside of the EU, that is, in Albania.5 The Stiftung Aufarbeitung The BNC Index for the Stiftung Aufarbeitung is fairly stable over time, albeit with a slight increase in 2011–12. This suggests a degree of consistency in the ways in which this institution cooperates across borders. In terms of size, it sits between the BStU and Hohenschönhausen, indicating a moderate degree

Tracing the Shape of Transnational Collaboration • 63

Table 2.12 Top five most between central actors in the Stiftung Aufarbeitung networks over time 2009–10

2011–12

2013–14

BNC Index = 12.88

BNC Index = 20.4%

2015–16

BNC Index = 12.5%

BNC Index = 12.83%

German government

20.673

Deutsche 12.845 Gesellschaft e.V.

University of 13.417 Hamburg

8.447

Memorial

15.848

German government

Boysen

9.523

BStU

7.785

KAS

12.359

ENRS

9.062

German government

8.146

4

German government

6.648

Humboldt University

8.935

IfZ (Munich)

7.136

Berlin Wall Foundation

6.199

5

Hannah Arendt Institute

5.519

Evangelische Akademie

7.805

KAS

5.711

IICCMER

5.657

1

ZZF

2

Collegium Hungaricum

3

13.228

12.088

of connection between the different projects and activities that make up the networks. Looking at the specific actors who occupy positions of brokerage across the time periods, we once again see that German governmental and paragovernmental partners (i.e. the KAS and BStU) play an important role in the networks created by and through the collaborative activities of the Stiftung. Nonetheless, it is German partners from a range of other sectors who dominate these networks in terms of brokerage. This includes: actors from within the academy (the Centre for Contemporary History (Zentrum für zeithistorische Forschung, ZZF), the Hannah Arendt Institute, Humboldt University, the Institute for Contemporary History (Institut für Zeitgeschichte, IfZ) and the University of Hamburg); the pan-European Network of Remembrance and Solidarity (ENRS, focused on the history and memory of communism and National Socialism with an emphasis on Central and Eastern Europe); and the Berlin Wall Foundation (Stiftung Berliner Mauer, dedicated to the history and memory of the Berlin Wall). There are also a number of what might be loosely grouped as civil society actors: the Evangelische Akademie (linked to the Protestant Church and promoting discussion on contemporary social, economic, political and scientific questions); Deutsche Gesellschaft e.V. (an organisation devoted to the promotion of political, cultural and social relations in Europe, particularly in the context of historical division); and the author and journalist Jacqueline Boysen.

64 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

!






    


  

   
 
 
   





  


Figure 2.1 Key to regions for all visualisations. © Sara Jones

Turning to the actors located in or focused on non-German contexts, these are exclusively post-socialist/CEE and post-Soviet partners: the Hungarian cultural institute Collegium Hungaricum, the Romanian state-funded Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile (IICCMER, focused on the history and memory of communism) and Memorial. Overall, the exploration of centrality further highlights the specialisation of the Stiftung Aufarbeitung on questions relating to the history and memory of left-wing authoritarianism within Europe. Interestingly, despite the dominance in terms of sheer numbers of academic actors within these networks, academics do not dominate in terms of who acts as a broker in the network (with some notable exceptions highlighted above). Instead, we see a significant number of state-mandated or state-funded institutions (including memorials) and prominent civil society actors in such positions of influence.

Components Centrality measurements are a useful way of indicating which actors in the network occupy an influential position and identifying patterns in the structure of the network in these terms. However, they cannot tell us much about which groups of actors are being connected by these institutions and individuals –

Tracing the Shape of Transnational Collaboration • 65

!-$%$.-"*,/(    $,'!-
)%
,#/! )%
/$,!-. 
)-.%./.! &,%)%)

,#/! .$*'%
)% !/.-$') "/)& 
,' 
, )%
!%+1%# 1!$
 
%!0 !(*,%' *0 
 ,.%-'0  

Figure 2.2 BStU 2009–10 Component 1. © Sara Jones

that is, who and what they sit ‘between’. This aspect can be explored further through an analysis of ‘components’. In SNA terms, a component is a segment of an egonet in which all the actors are connected by a path that does not go through the central node. In other words, it is a part of the network in which the actors are connected to one another through a set of relationships that does not include the BStU, Hohenschönhausen or the Stiftung Aufarbeitung.6 The component is still part of the network created by and through the central actor and cannot tell us anything about transnational collaborations beyond that network; however, breaking the network down into components can reveal more about the shape of that collaborative activity and the kinds of actors who are being connected to one another through it.7 The individual components are visualised as network maps in Figures 2.2–2.11. In order to highlight the key patterns in these maps, I have indicated the regional location of the nodes by shape (see the key in Figure 2.1) and the BC by size: the larger the node, the greater the BC measure. In order to ensure readability of the network maps, I have only labelled the most central actors, as defined for each figure below. The BStU In 2009–10, the network produced by and through the BStU breaks down into three major components, one of which is significantly bigger with fortyfive of the actors (the other two contain fifteen and nine respectively). These components are shown in Figures 2.2–2.4; I have labelled actors with a BC higher than seventeen. The fragmentation of this network, with less than

66 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

 
 





Figure 2.3 BStU 2009–10 Component 2. © Sara Jones

    


Figure 2.4 BStU 2009–10 Component 3. © Sara Jones

half of the actors connected in clusters that are linked beyond the connection to the central node, indicates that in this period, the BStU tended to work on discrete projects with groups of different actors, something that is also reflected in the low BNC Index. Moreover, if we look at the three major components in detail, we can see that when connections are made, they tend to be made between actors located in the same or similar region. In Com-

Tracing the Shape of Transnational Collaboration • 67

ponents 1 and 2, we see a dominance of post-socialist/CEE and post-Soviet actors with a scattering of Western European (in fact, principally German actors coded as ‘western’) and multinational (that is, European) institutions, and, in Component 2, the Israel-based Yad Vashem (coded as MENA) and the Spanish Centro Documental de la Memoria Histórica (coded as Southern Europe). It is the post-socialist/CEE actors in particular who have the highest BC in these components – that is, who are most likely to sit between different groups; however, those different groups are most frequently located in ‘Eastern’ regions. Component 3 is made up of a perhaps more diverse group of actors (although still with an ‘Eastern’ focus); however, this component is essentially a network created by the involvement of the KAS in several different collaborative activities with the BStU. The picture for the networks created by and through the BStU in 2011–12 looks at first sight rather different. In this period, the network breaks down into two major components with twenty-five and eighteen actors respectively. Figure 2.5 shows these components; I have labelled actors with a BC higher than twenty. That these components contain fewer than half of the total number of actors in this network indicates that, also in this period, the kinds of collaborative activities with which the BStU engages are discrete events with different actors in each. A closer look at the two components further highlights this. Component 1 is made up almost entirely of Western European (in fact, German) and MENA actors. The German actors are all government, state-mandated institutions, or political foundations. It is the presence of the political foundations, the KAS and the FES, which connects other regions to this component (actors in Albania, coded as post-socialist/CEE, and in the Republic of Korea, coded as East Asia). In contrast, Component 2 is made up almost entirely of post-socialist/CEE actors. This analysis of components suggests that while the collaborative activity of the BStU may be global in scope, in its activities it tends to act regionally, connecting actors from one region with actors from the same region. Following Jenny Wüstenberg (drawing on Stefan Troebst), I will describe these clusters within the networks as ‘memory zones’.8 In this book, I use the term ‘memory zones’ to describe areas of the network in which there is a dominance of actors from one particular geographical/historical region (as defined in Chapter 1), connected with actors from the same geographical/historical region. The network created by and through the transnational collaboration of the BStU in 2013–14 is similarly fragmented, with only two small components emerging, with seven and nine actors respectively (incorporating less than half of the total; see Figure 2.6). Due to this fragmentation, I have labelled all actors with a BC higher than 0. The larger of the two components is held together by the German government – representing two collaborations including this actor – and the smaller is essentially the result of two activ-

68 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

Figure 2.5 BStU 2011–12 Components 1 and 2. © Sara Jones

ities that both include the INR (Warsaw). Again, this indicates a series of discrete activities with different actors in this period. If we look at the two components, we can see that these components are made up exclusively of post-socialist/CEE and Western European actors, reflecting the construction of ‘memory zones’ seen in the earlier networks. A quite different style of collaboration emerges if we look at the network created by and through the BStU in 2015–16. Here there is one major component that contains thirty-three nodes – that is, more than half of the total number. This reflects the spike in the BNC Index seen in our measure of centrality. There are also a greater number of different regions represented in

Tracing the Shape of Transnational Collaboration • 69


 



 



 

Figure 2.6 BStU 2013–14 Components 1 and 2. © Sara Jones

this component (Western European, post-socialist/CEE, multiregional, Scandinavia, North America, Southern Europe, post-Soviet, Southeast Europe, East Asia, and Central and South America). This would suggest that in this period, the BStU was working more truly transnationally, in the sense of connecting actors from different regions. Nonetheless, a closer examination of the visualisation shows that there is a degree of clustering between actors from the same region and, importantly, that it tends to be German (para) governmental actors that connect different regions – notably, the German government actor group, the GFO and the KAS. Figure 2.7 shows what this component looks like first with those actors included and then with them removed. I have labelled actors with a BC of higher than 10. The removal of the three German (para)governmental actors clearly highlights how it is these institutions that are holding the ‘memory zones’ together in the original component. Without them, the component breaks down into groups from a single region, or that bring together Western European (in fact, German) or multiregional (that is, EU) actors with actors from one principal region (Central and South America, post-Soviet, Southeast Europe, East Asia) or – in the case of the fragment centred around Memorial and the INR – a group of regions that we might define, in the sense described above, as ‘Eastern’. Hohenschönhausen The networks produced by and through Hohenschönhausen in the eight years under analysis tell a similar story in terms of regional distribution; however, the shape of the collaborative activity appears to be rather different.

70 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

Figure 2.7 BStU 2015–16 Component 1 with and without the GFO, the German government and the KAS. © Sara Jones

In 2009–10, the Hohenschönhausen’s network was centred on a single large component containing forty-eight of the sixty-three actors, revealing a highly connected network that is also reflected in the high betweenness centrality. This component is shown in Figure 2.8; for the purposes of readability, here I have labelled actors with a BC of higher than 100. The connectedness of this network suggests that Hohenschönhausen works on larger collaborations and/or collaborations that include many of the same actors. In terms of regional distribution, the major component in this period is made up almost entirely of post-socialist/CEE, Western European and post-Soviet actors. This reflects the overall constitution of the network, as discussed above; however, it also indicates that, as in the networks created by and through the BStU,

Tracing the Shape of Transnational Collaboration • 71



   

     



 



 


Figure 2.8 Hohenschönhausen 2009–10 Component 1. © Sara Jones

Hohenschönhausen (re)constructs regions of memory in its transnational activities. It is also noteworthy that the only actors in the component that do not represent these three regions (the Spanish Embassy (coded as Southern Europe), Wang Wanxing and Bei Ling (coded as East Asia)) are connected by the German government, once again highlighting the brokerage role played by this actor group. The network produced by and through Hohenschönhausen in 2011–12 is very similar in terms of its shape. Again we see one large component that includes forty-five of the seventy actors in this network. In the visualisation of this component in Figure 2.9, I have labelled actors with a BC of over 50. At first sight, the regional distribution appears to be more varied, reflecting the differentiation seen in the ego-composition analysis. Seven regions are represented: Western Europe, post-socialist/CEE, transregional, MENA, postSoviet, East Asia, and Central and South America. However, a closer look at the component once again reveals that there is regional clustering and that it is a particular set of actors who are connecting the different groups: once again, the German government, the GFO and the KAS. The second image in Figure 2.9 shows what the component would look like with these actors removed: the division between regions is much clearer here. In particular, the two larger segments fall neatly into one focused on CEE/post-Soviet and Western European (in fact, all German) actors and the other (almost) entirely on MENA and Western European (in fact, all German) actors. The exception is the LStU Sachsen in the MENA-dominated component; a German collaborator coded as ‘post-socialist/CEE’.

72 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

Figure 2.9 Hohenschönhausen 2011–12 Component 1 with and without the German government, the GFO and the KAS. © Sara Jones

A very similar pattern emerges in 2013–14. Again one large component (containing forty-six out of a total of sixty-two actors) is held together by a distinct group of German actors: the GFO, the German government and the KAS. The removal of these actors results in a certain degree of fragmentation into ‘memory zones’. Figure 2.10 represents Component 1 with and without the GFO, the German government and the KAS. For these purposes, we can ignore the cluster of different embassies from multiple regions (seen to the bottom right of the component, connected by the GFO), which, as described above, is the result of a single diplomatic visit in January 2013. Nonetheless, what is interesting here is that the segment of this component that contains all of the actors representing the MENA memory region also contains several

Tracing the Shape of Transnational Collaboration • 73

Figure 2.10 Hohenschönhausen 2013–14 Component 1 with and without the German government, the GFO and the KAS. © Sara Jones

German actors coded as ‘eastern’. In other words, the collaborations in which Hohenschönhausen was involved (or in many cases instigated) also contained other institutions similar to itself (German, focused on memory of repression in the GDR) – these include the BStU, the Berlin Wall Memorial and the Stasi Museum. I have labelled these eastern German nodes in Figure 2.10, alongside those actors with a BC higher than 20. As suggested by the sharp drop in BNC Index in 2015–16, Hohenschönhausen’s collaborative activity in this period is more fragmented. The network breaks down into multiple small components: the largest two with twelve (out of sixty-four) actors and the next largest with only six. The visualisation of these components seen in Figure 2.11 shows that once again, these com-

74 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

   






 



 

Figure 2.11 Hohenschönhausen 2015–16 Components 1–3. © Sara Jones

ponents are defined by discrete activities in a particular region (especially post-socialist/CEE) or connected by one key governmental or paragovernmental actor: the GFO or KAS. Given this fragmentation, in Figure 2.11, I have labelled all actors with a BC of higher than 0. The Stiftung Aufarbeitung The size of the networks constructed by and through the Stiftung Aufarbeitung means that the maps produced by these collaborations are extremely complex and are not therefore amenable to visual analysis. Identifying the key components does little to alleviate this problem, as all four of the networks include one large component that incorporates well over half of the total number of actors. This indicates that the Stiftung Aufarbeitung works using large-scale activities, which frequently involve some of the same actors (as indicated by the centrality analysis). Almost all regions represented in the network as a whole are represented in these principal components. A fuller analysis of the ways in which regions are (or are not) connected for all three institutions will be carried out mathematically in the next section.

Creating Regions of Memory The BStU, Hohenschönhausen and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung can thus be seen to operate globally; yet, each institution also focuses its activities on actors located in a particular region or regions. For the BStU and Hohen-

Tracing the Shape of Transnational Collaboration • 75

schönhausen (whose collaborations are smaller in terms of numbers than the Stiftung Aufarbeitung), this regional focus may shift with changing political contexts (for example, the ‘Arab Spring’) or commemorative events (for example, in 2009 as a Supergedenkjahr). Visualisation of the principal components of the networks created by and through the transnational collaborations of these memory political institutions indicates that while this activity might indeed be global in scope, it is regional in focus – that is, the networks tend to connect actors from one region with actors from the same region. In what follows, I further explore this aspect of network structure. I test the observation that there are regional clusters in the networks using the mathematical tools provided by SNA, principally the measure of homophily. This measurement allows me to explore how frequently actors located in particular regions are connected with actors within the same region in our networks and if such same-with-same connections are more common that we would expect. In this way, an exploration of homophily allows me to identify ‘memory zones’ where they exist in the networks and, at the same time, to locate those actors that sit between the zones.

Connecting the West with the Rest: Exploring Relationships between Regions Homophily is a measure of ego-alter similarity; it allows us to explore the extent to which the actors to which a node has a direct tie share a particular attribute with that node. In the context of this book, that means the extent to which a particular actor is located in the same region as the actors to which it is directly connected. As the aim is to explore the creation of ‘memory zones’ across the network, I am principally interested in the homophily of the alters in the network and not (only) of the central institution. In this sense, all of the nodes are considered ‘egos’ for the purpose of this analysis. A quantitative analysis of ego-alter similarity according to a categorical attribute (here ‘region’) can be run using UCInet. This was carried out for each of the twelve networks explored in this study. The analysis was run on the networks with the central node (that is, the BStU, Hohenschönhausen or the Stiftung Aufarbeitung) removed. Given the way in which the networks were produced, all nodes have ties to the central institution and therefore to the post-socialist/CEE region. Its presence would therefore distort the results – giving a higher homophily for those actors in the post-socialist/CEE region and a lower score for those outside of it. There are multiple measures of homophily and I will discuss only a selection of these in this chapter. The ‘EI Index’ is useful to explore homophily within the network as a whole; it indicates whether this is higher or lower than would be expected if the actors were randomly distributed.9 The EI Index is expressed as a number from 1 (no alters with the same categorical

76 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

Table 2.13 EI Index output for region, all networks Network

EI Index

Expected EI Index

P< = Ob.

BStU 2009–10

0.183

0.592

0.000

BStU 2011–12

-0.338

0.662

0.000

BStU 2013–14

-0.400

0.477

0.000

BStU 2015–16

0.410

0.734

0.006

HSH 2009–10

0.271

0.470

0.014

HSH 2011–12

-0.025

0.544

0.000

HSH 2013–14

0.620

0.758

0.016

HSH 2015–16

-0.268

0.663

0.000

SA 2009–10

0.215

0.407

0.000

SA 2011–12

0.366

0.494

0.012

SA 2013–14

0.170

0.482

0.000

SA 2015–16

0.200

0.511

0.000

attribute – complete heterophily) to -1 (all alters share the categorical attribute – complete homophily). As Table 2.13 shows, the EI Index was in each case lower than would be expected. This supports an overall tendency towards a grouping of actors from the same region, even where the EI Index for the network is positive (suggesting heterophily overall).10 The EI Index is a useful measure of whether there is more (or less) homophily in the network as a whole than we would expect if the nodes were randomly connected. The UCInet procedure also gives the EI Index per group (here, per region), which can tell us if a given region has overall a high or low level of homophily. However, the EI measure does not take into account the frequency with which a given region is represented in the network. If there are more representatives of a region (for example, in our networks Western European and post-socialist/CEE actors), then each representative has a higher chance of connecting to another like itself and that would be reflected in the result. This is where another permutation test provided by UCInet can be useful: the relational contingency table analysis (RCTA). The RCTA measures the number of ties between actors in each of the different regions (e.g. region 1 with 1, 1 with 2, 1 with 3 and so on) and compares this with the expected number of ties between actors in those regions in a randomly distributed network.11 The observed values are divided by the expected ones: a value of 1 indicates that there is no difference between the observed and expected value, a value of greater than 1 indicates that there are more ties between actors in

Tracing the Shape of Transnational Collaboration • 77

two given regions than we would expect, and a score of less than 1 indicates there are fewer ties. If we read the observed/expected (O/E) scores for the ties between actors in the same region (that is, homophilic ties), we get an indication of whether the number of these is larger or smaller than would be provided in a random and independent distribution of the actors – that is, if actors in that particular region show more or less homophily than would be expected given the number of actors from that region in the network. The output of the RCTA also allows us to see where actors from a particular region are connected to actors from a different region to an extent that is greater than expected. In this way, we can build up a picture of the grouping of regions within the network. I ran an RCTA for each of the twelve networks according to the attribute ‘region’. The results for each institution are presented in Tables 2.14–2.16 below. I have only presented data for those regions that are represented by at least 10% of actors in one of the four time periods and at least 5% in the particular time period under analysis. The very small number of actors for some of the other regions makes it difficult to draw firm conclusions about how they are integrated into different groupings in the network. Tables 2.14–2.16 show the O/E for the ties between these different regions; I have underlined the homophily scores.12 We see fairly consistent regional homophily across the networks created by and through these institutions: only four of the measures show a lower number of same-to-same ties than would be expected in a random and independent distribution. While the EI Index suggests heterophily in the networks as a whole, where there are a significant number of actors in the network from a given region, these tend to form intragroup ties. Nonetheless, as will be discussed below, for each institution, the level of homophily is not equal across the different regions. The BStU Turning first to the networks created by and through the BStU, we see a tendency towards a greater level of homophily for post-socialist/CEE, postSoviet and non-European actors than for those in Western Europe, as shown in Table 2.14. The only instance in which Western European actors show more homophily than other regions is in 2013–14. An analysis of the underpinning data indicates that this is the result of a single event in September 2014 that brought the heads of state of a number of Western European countries into contact with the then Federal President, Joachim Gauck.13 The homophily of Western European actors is slightly higher than that of actors located in East Asia in the network created by and through the BStU in 2011–12. However, we should note that actors in East Asia were not significantly connected to

78 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

Table 2.14 BStU regional RCTA over time BStU 2009–10 (p = 0.00390)

Western Europe

Western Europe

1.04

Post-Socialist/CEE

PostSocialist/ CEE

MENA

PostSoviet

1.14

n/a

0.86

n/a

n/a

1.14

2.46

n/a

0.98

n/a

n/a

MENA

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

Post-Soviet

0.86

0.98

n/a

2.87

n/a

n/a

Southeast Europe

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

East Asia

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

MENA

PostSoviet

PostSocialist/ CEE

Southeast Europe

East Asia

BStU 2011–12 (p = 0.00010)

Western Europe

Western Europe

1.81

0.19

3.08

n/a

n/a

0.57

Post-Socialist/CEE

0.19

5.00

0.00

n/a

n/a

0.00

MENA

3.08

0.00

4.99

n/a

n/a

0.00

Post-Soviet

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

Southeast Europe

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

East Asia

0.57

0.00

0.00

n/a

n/a

1.71

MENA

PostSoviet

PostSocialist/ CEE

Southeast Europe

East Asia

BStU 2013–14 (p = 0.01900)

Western Europe

Western Europe

6.57

1.19

0.00

n/a

n/a

0.00

Post-Socialist/CEE

1.19

1.45

0.00

n/a

n/a

0.00

MENA

0.00

0.00

0.00

n/a

n/a

0.00

Post-Soviet

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

Southeast Europe

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

East Asia

0.00

0.00

0.00

n/a

n/a

7.53

Southeast Europe

East Asia

Tracing the Shape of Transnational Collaboration • 79

BStU 2015–16 (p = 0.33117)

Western Europe

Western Europe

0.96

Post-Socialist/CEE

PostSocialist/ CEE

MENA

PostSoviet

Southeast Europe

East Asia

2.64

n/a

2.20

1.54

0.62

2.64

3.74

n/a

0.53

0.00

0.00

MENA

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

Post-Soviet

2.20

0.53

n/a

4.98

0.00

0.00

Southeast Europe

1.54

0.00

n/a

0.00

8.72

0.00

East Asia

0.62

0.00

n/a

0.00

0.00

2.62

any other region in that period (indeed, the only other connections were to Western Europe with an O/E of 0.57). Similarly, in 2013–14, MENA actors did not form any collaborative relationships (other than with the BStU) and the intraregional score of 0 reflects this absence rather than an absence of homophily per se. In short, actors from these regions tended to be involved in bilateral connections with the BStU rather than in cooperations with multiple actors. The second aspect to note is that Western European actors tend to create ties with actors in a wider variety of other regions than actors from any other location.14 As we have seen, these Western European actors are frequently German governmental or paragovernmental actors defined in the terms outlined in Chapter 1 as ‘western’. These results thus confirm the observations above that such German actors play a particular role in the networks created by and through the BStU, and that in this position they have access to and can provide narratives and (material or symbolic) resources for actors from multiple regional contexts. While it might not be surprising that other German actors play an important role in the networks created by and through this institution, it is interesting that we do not see this effect for the post-socialist/CEE region; actors from this region have few connections with partners outside of the post-socialist/CEE context across the time period.15 This suggests that German collaborators coded as ‘eastern’ (other than the BStU) do not occupy similar positions of influence and are only rarely involved in the cooperations involving these powerful pan-German partners. Höhenschonhausen The pattern of regional homophily looks quite different when we turn to look at the networks created by and through Hohenschönhausen.

80 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

As we can see in Table 2.15, there is a significant level of homophily across the regions and timeframes. However, in contrast to the networks created by and through the BStU, the regional homophily of the Western European region tends – with the exception of 2015–16 – to be higher than expected more often than the equivalent measure for the post-socialist/CEE region. Moreover, the data appear to show a considerable shift in the transnational collaborations of this institution away from a higher than expected prevalence of ties between actors from Western Europe and post-socialist/CEE regions (or western and eastern Germans) and towards more intragroup connections between post-socialist/CEE and post-Soviet actors in 2015–16. Actors from Southeast Europe also have a greater number of ties than expected with actors from the post-socialist/CEE group in this period (O/E = 1.25). This is the same timeframe in which the proportion of Western European actors in the network created by and through Hohenschönhausen decreases significantly. Thus, whereas from 2009–14 the data suggest a relatively strong degree of cooperation between Eastern and Western actors, in 2015–16, the data indicate the construction of an ‘Eastern’ zone of memory (post-socialist/ CEE, post-Soviet and Southeast Europe) that is more discrete. Western European actors (including German actors coded as ‘western’) are less frequently included in cooperations in this period, and where they are, they tend to be connected to actors from non-European regions. The results of the RCTA provide further evidence of the collaboration of Western European actors with actors from a wider range of regions than the other groups: beyond those seen in Table 2.15, there are also a higher than expected number of connections between Western Europeans and: actors in the post-Soviet region (O/E = 1.70) and Central and South America (O/E = 1.27) in 2011–12; multiregional actors in 2013–14 (O/E = 1.10); and multiregional (O/E = 1.96) and Central and Southern African (O/E = 3.93) actors in 2015–16. This does not appear to be the case in 2013–14, where actors in the MENA, post-Soviet and East Asia regions were also connected at a significant level to actors in a quite diverse range of regional contexts. In addition to those seen in Table 2.15, this includes connections with actors in the Central and South African, Caribbean, North American, Central and South American, and multiregional contexts. Nonetheless, what we are seeing here is the effect of the visit to Hohenschönhausen of a large number of diplomats from a large number of different countries in January 2013 (described above). This large-scale, multiregional event is not typical and involved actors from otherwise underrepresented regions (notably the Caribbean and Central and South America), alongside others from those more commonly (but not most commonly) represented (that is, MENA and post-Soviet). Of those regions represented by at least 10% of actors in the Hohenschönhausen network in at least one of the time periods, it is the MENA region

Tracing the Shape of Transnational Collaboration • 81

Table 2.15 Hohenschönhausen regional RCTA over time HSH 2009–10 (p = 0.04540)

Western Europe

Post-Socialist/ CEE

Western Europe

1.92

1.92

n/a

1.25

0.23

Post-Socialist/CEE

1.92

1.11

n/a

0.75

0.16

MENA

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

Post-Soviet

1.25

0.75

n/a

1.12

0.00

East Asia

0.23

0.16

n/a

0.00

1.40

Post-Socialist/ CEE

MENA

Post-Soviet

East Asia

HSH 2011–12 (p = 0.02300)

Western Europe

Western Europe

3.07

1.30

1.27

n/a

n/a

Post-Socialist/CEE

1.30

1.16

0.11

n/a

n/a

MENA

1.27

0.11

6.84

n/a

n/a

Post-Soviet

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

East Asia

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

Post-Socialist/ CEE

MENA

Post-Soviet

East Asia

HSH 2013–14 (p = 0.02910)

Western Europe

Western Europe

1.46

0.80

1.68

0.58

0.44

Post-Socialist/CEE

0.80

1.14

0.92

0.20

0.00

MENA

1.68

0.92

2.04

0.82

1.23

Post-Soviet

0.58

0.20

0.82

1.02

2.45

East Asia

0.44

0.00

1.23

2.45

3.07

Post-Socialist/ CEE

MENA

Post-Soviet

East Asia

HSH 2015–16 (p = 0.00010)

Western Europe

Western Europe

1.31

0.36

n/a

0.00

3.06

Post-Socialist/CEE

0.36

4.05

n/a

0.00

0.00

MENA

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

Post-Soviet

0.00

0.00

n/a

5.24

0.00

East Asia

3.06

0.00

n/a

0.00

1.53

MENA

Post-Soviet

East Asia

82 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

that shows the highest degree of homophily. Actors from East Asia also show a moderate to high tendency to form ties with other actors from the same region across the networks (where they are included). Western and Eastern European actors are brought into dialogue in the networks between 2009 and 2014, as discussed above; however, when actors who are not part of these zones of memory are included in the networks created by and through Hohenschönhausen, they tend only to be connected with actors like themselves in terms of regional affiliation and/or Western European actors. We know from the analysis of components that the latter frequently means German governmental or paragovernmental institutions. Homophily is seen across the network; however, Hohenschönhausen cooperates with non-European actors in more consistently distinct regional groupings than is the case for European actors, both Western and Eastern. The Stiftung Aufarbeitung The picture looks different again when we turn to the Stiftung Aufarbeitung. Despite the overall heterophily indicated by the EI Index, when we compare the observed level of homophily for the different regions with the expected level, we again see clustering of actors according to their regional location. Western and Eastern European institutions and individuals tend to form same-to-same connections and cross-group connections with one another more often than would be expected, given their frequency in the network. The O/E value for the connections between European (Western and Eastern) and multiregional actors was also higher than 1 across the time periods. Such actors are frequently pan-European institutions (e.g. the EU Commission or the ENRS). This indicates a preference for intra-European cooperations that bring together East and West. Nonetheless, the levels of homophily and intra-European heterophily across the time period is relatively weak (albeit variably so). It is therefore worth considering what other key partnerships Western European and post-socialist/CEE actors develop. Turning first to the other major regional group within the Stiftung Aufarbeitung networks, post-Soviet actors, we see some unanticipated results. I noted above that post-socialist/CEE and post-Soviet actors might be positioned in a structurally similar way in the network, forming an ‘Eastern’ zone of memory that would account for a large percentage of the actors in the networks overall (as seen in the Hohenschönhausen network in 2015–16). However, the RCTA suggests that post-Soviet actors are in fact more likely than would be expected to connect with Western European than to postsocialist/CEE ones, and indeed show relatively low homophily (or even heterophily), indicating that they also do not cluster among themselves. They are also consistently connected more often than would be expected with mul-

Tracing the Shape of Transnational Collaboration • 83

Table 2.16 Stiftung Aufarbeitung regional RCTA over time SA 2009–10 (p = 0.00230)

Western Europe

Post-Socialist/ CEE

Post-Soviet

East Asia

Western Europe

1.33

1.03

1.06

n/a

Post-Socialist/CEE

1.03

1.21

0.73

n/a

Post-Soviet

1.06

0.73

1.61

n/a

East Asia

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

SA 2011–12 (p = 0.31847)

Western Europe

Post-Socialist/ CEE

Post-Soviet

East Asia

Western Europe

1.25

1.29

1.20

0.53

Post-Socialist/CEE

1.29

1.41

0.63

0.00

Post-Soviet

1.20

0.63

0.97

0.00

East Asia

0.53

0.00

0.00

0.71

SA 2013–14 (p = 0.00960)

Western Europe

Post-Socialist/ CEE

Post-Soviet

East Asia

Western Europe

1.08

1.07

0.89

0.53

Post-Socialist/CEE

1.07

1.83

0.35

0.44

Post-Soviet

0.89

0.35

1.12

0.00

East Asia

0.53

0.44

0.00

5.54

SA 2015–16 (p = 0.00020)

Western Europe

Post-Socialist/ CEE

Post-Soviet

East Asia

Western Europe

1.61

1.18

0.86

n/a

Post-Socialist/CEE

1.18

1.68

0.60

n/a

Post-Soviet

0.86

0.60

0.96

n/a

East Asia

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

84 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

tiregional actors; this would include the ENRS, a network that is European in scope, but focused on post-socialist and post-Soviet cultures of remembrance.16 Given that post-Soviet actors are the only other highly significant group in these networks, this once again suggests a particular position for the Western European and multiregional nodes whereby they connect and have access to a wider range of different regional actors, and thereby (potentially) different narratives and material or symbolic resources. The second group that is represented by more than 5% of actors in the given time period – that is, institutions and individuals located in East Asia in the periods 2011–12 (6.1%, ten actors) and 2013–14 (5%, fifteen actors) – shows no consistency. In 2011–12, this group shows a high level of heterophily and in 2013–14 a high level of homophily in their connections. The RCTA reveals that in 2011–12, actors from this group in fact form no connections with actors from any other group, except for Western European (nine connections formed). This indicates that the majority of collaborations are bilateral with the Stiftung Aufarbeitung, but that where another actor is involved, that actor is invariably Western European. In contrast, in 2013–14, actors from East Asia form numerous same-to-same connections, and some connections to both Western European (17, O/E = 0.53) and post-socialist/ CEE (20, O/E = 0.44) actors – albeit not as many as might be expected. A look at the data indicates that this is the result of three large-scale events that were focused on and included actors from this region: the ‘Causes, History and Consequences of the Cold War in Comparative Perspective: GermanyKorea’ conference in July 2013;17 the ‘Human Rights and North Korea’ symposium in May 2014;18 and the reception to the Stiftung Aufarbeitung of diplomatic representatives from multiple countries, including the Republic of Korea, in March 2014.19 The remaining eleven activities involving representatives from institutions located in East Asia were bilateral cooperations with the Stiftung Aufarbeitung. As will be discussed in Chapter 4, like the BStU, the Stiftung Aufarbeitung tends to have a very specific mode of collaboration with institutions and individuals in this region (principally from the Republic of Korea) that involves information-gathering visits to the Stiftung Aufarbeitung on the part of individuals or small delegations. The larger events in 2013 and 2014 represent an exception to this pattern. In summary, the RCTA indicates that European (and especially Western European) actors appear to play a unique role within each of the networks. With the exception of the networks created by and through Hohenschönhausen, actors from Western Europe tend to be connected more often than would be expected with actors from a wide range of other regions, and less often with actors like themselves – the reverse is true for actors from other parts of the world. In the case of Hohenschönhausen, there is a greater tendency for Western European actors to group together; however, they are still

Tracing the Shape of Transnational Collaboration • 85

connected with multiple regions and the homophilic grouping is often in the context of extra-European cooperations.

Influential Actors: Brokers in the Networks Western Europeans thus appear to sit frequently between regional clusters in the network: we know from the analysis of the components that this most often means German governmental or paragovernmental actors. As discussed above, an actor whose position in the network is one of linking different groups is likely to have a high betweenness centrality. In order to explore this relationship between connectedness and regional clustering in more detail, it is therefore useful to look at the homophily of those actors identified as having a high BC in the networks. To do this, we can use a different measure of homophily: Yules Q. Yules Q represents homophily as a measure of the number of same-to-same ties with reference to the total number of nodes with a given attribute in the network as a whole – that is, like the RCTA, it takes into account the overall make-up of the network. Yules Q gives a figure ranging between -1 and 1. A positive Yules Q score indicates homophily (a greater number of same-to-same connections than would be expected) and a negative Yules Q score indicates heterophily (a lower number of same-tosame connections than would be expected). Complete homophily (connections only to alters with the same categorical attribute) would give a Yules Q of 1, while complete heterophily (no connections to alters with the same categorical attribute) would give a Yules Q of -1.20 Tables 2.17–2.19 show the Yules Q for the top five most between central nodes in the networks over time. The boxes are shaded according to region: West (darkest grey), post-socialist/CEE (medium grey), MENA (lightest grey) and post-Soviet (no shading). Within each table, I have provided an average Yules Q score for the actors in each regional grouping. What is immediately noticeable is that in the networks created by and through all three institutions across the eight-year period, the mean homophily of post-socialist/CEE, non-European and post-Soviet actors in connecting positions is higher than that of Western European (in fact, entirely German) actors in similar positions. Indeed, where post-socialist/CEE, non-European and post-Soviet actors show mean homophily in the networks created by and through all three institutions, German actors coded as ‘western’ and with a high BC show on average an (albeit mild) heterophily in the networks created by and through the activities of the BStU and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung, and very low homophily in those created by and through the activities of Hohenschönhausen.21 There are some notable outliers: for example, the German government in the 2013–14 BStU network (Yules Q, 0.88), and several German actors in

86 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

Table 2.17 Regional homophily of actors with the highest BC in BStU networks 2009–10

2011–12

2013–14

2015–16

INR (Warsaw)

0.40

GFO

0.31

INR (Warsaw)

0.52

GFO

-0.18

Czech government

0.71

Tunisian CR activists

0.89

German government

0.88

INR (Warsaw)

0.51

ISTR (Prague)

0.76

ISTR (Prague)

0.87

Polish government

0.48

German government

-1.00

Geschichtsforum 1989/2009

0.53

Egyptian CR activists

0.58

Memorial

0.39

Memorial

0.20

FES

-1.00

Croatian government

-1.00

Mean Yules Q

Western Europe

CEE

MENA

Post-Soviet

-0.20

0.42

0.74

0.30

the Hohenschönhausen networks (KAS in 2009–10 (Yules Q, 0.63); the German government in 2011–12 (Yules Q, 0.65); Deutschlandfunk in 2011–12 (Yules Q, 0.78); KAS in 2013–14 (Yules Q, 0.53); and the GFO in 2015–16 (Yules Q, 0.56)). The difference is also far less stark in the networks created by and through the Stiftung Aufarbeitung, where we see only mild heterophily and homophily respectively – a further indication that there is more EastWest cooperation in these networks. Nonetheless, the trend is clear: if German actors coded as ‘western’ in the networks play a connecting function (i.e. have a high BC), they tend to sit between different regions. This is not the case for post-socialist/CEE (including eastern German), post-Soviet or non-European institutions in similar positions structurally. In essence, what the data suggest is that German actors coded as ‘western’ are brought into cooperations by and through the BStU, Hohenschönhausen and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung – institutions focused on eastern modes of remembrance – as intermediaries between regions of memory. The networks created by the cross-border collaborations of these institutions construct memory zones in diverse contexts; that is, they bring about a clustering of institutions located in a given area of the world. However, Western Europe is not to any significant extent one of these zones of memory. Instead, western/ pan-German actors are located within and between other narratives about traumatic pasts and the processes of working through them. In this particular

Tracing the Shape of Transnational Collaboration • 87

Table 2.18 Regional homophily of actors with the highest BC in Hohenschönhausen networks 2009–10

2011–12

2013–14

2015–16

Free University

0.36

German government

0.65

GFO

-0.49

Albanian government (=1)

0.64

KAS

0.63

Tunisian government

0.91

Topography of Terror

0.11

Estonian Embassy (=1)

0.90

German government

0.30

Deutschlandfunk 0.78

Contre l’oubli 0.60

Vilnius University (=3)

0.85

RBS (=4)

-0.46

Deutsche Kinemathek

0.03

Tunisian government

0.46

German Embassy in Albania (=3)

1

Herta Müller (=4)

0.72

Tunisian CR activists

0.96

KAS

0.53

GFO

0.56

Lit.-haus Berlin (=4)

-0.46

Käethe Kollwitz -0.46 Museum (=4) Mean Yules Q

Western Europe

CEE

MENA

PostSoviet

0.16

0.79

0.73

0.88

sense, these German institutions are in an especially powerful position within the networks: they have access to diverse (material and symbolic) resources and narratives, and, importantly, the opportunity to influence the stories told about the past and the processes of coming to terms with it in diverse contexts.

Conclusion: Regions of Memory and Western Brokers There are some key differences in the who, where and how of the transnational collaborative activity of the three institutions examined here. While the collaborations of all three institutions are global in scope with a focus on actors located in Central and Eastern European or post-Soviet contexts, we see a degree of specialisation. Notably, where the BStU and Hohenschönhausen both shifted attention to a certain degree towards post-‘Arab Spring’

88 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

Table 2.19 Regional homophily of actors with the highest BC in Stiftung Aufarbeitung networks 2009–10

2011–12

2013–14

2015–16

ZZF

0.26

German government

0.11

Deutsche 0.56 Gesellschaft e.V.

University of Hamburg

0.17

Collegium Hungaricum

0.22

Memorial

-0.08

German government

-0.03

Boysen

0.02

BStU

0.11

KAS

-0.39

ENRS

0.31

German government

-0.30

German government

0.00

Humboldt University

-0.03

IfZ, Munich

0.14

Berlin Wall Foundation

-0.01

Hannah Arendt Institute

0.06

Evangelische Akademie

-0.30

KAS

0.12

IICCMER

0.21

Mean Yules Q

Western Europe

CEE

MENA

PostSoviet

-0.01

0.23

n/a

0.12

countries in 2011–12 (continuing into 2013–14 for Hohenschönhausen), this is not the case for the Stiftung Aufarbeitung, which shows more consistency in its regional focus. In terms of ‘type’, all three actors connect with multiple different sectors; however, each has a certain degree of focus on actors of the same ‘type’ as itself. The BStU collaborates with (proportionally) more archives than either of the other two institutions, and Hohenschönhausen with more memorials and museums. The Stiftung Aufarbeitung is especially interesting in this regard. While it is a state-funded institute, it evidently takes seriously its mandate to support academic research into the history and memory of the GDR, as evidenced by its transnational support of academic networking. Nonetheless, it is noteworthy that while academics dominate the networks created by and through the Stiftung Aufarbeitung in absolute terms, they are not necessarily the most central actors: this position is instead occupied by a group of quite diverse (principally German) collaborators, with whom the Stiftung Aufarbeitung works on a repeated basis and who connect multiple groups within the networks. Turning to the shape of the networks created by and through these institutions, we see that Hohenschönhausen and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung tend to create more highly connected networks, indicating that they work on mul-

Tracing the Shape of Transnational Collaboration • 89

tiple and/or large-scale projects with at least some of the same participants. In contrast, the networks created by and through the transnational collaborations of the BStU tend to fragment more rapidly, indicating a preference for smaller-scale cooperations with distinct groups of partners. On average, the actors within the networks constructed around Hohenschönhausen and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung are thus more likely to sit between different groups and therefore have access to more diverse material, symbolic, and narrative resources. Nonetheless, despite these differences, there are a number of patterns that emerge across the transnational collaborative activity of the three institutions. In terms of region, as noted above, the most prominent are Western Europe (principally German) and post-socialist/CEE. This is perhaps unsurprising given the focus of these three institutions on the memory of a dictatorship located in the Soviet sphere of influence, but on territory that is now part of a country generally considered to be Western European. What is more interesting is the ways in which these regions are (or rather are not) connected within the networks. We can see from the analysis of homophily that these three institutions have a strong tendency to only connect ‘like-with-like’ in this respect: post-socialist/CEE actors are generally brought together with other post-socialist/CEE actors, MENA collaborators are connected with other MENA collaborators. In this way, these networking activities construct regions of memory that reflect and cement pre-existing narratives – or relationship cultures – about who shares a common past: they define cultures of remembrance, just as they are defined by them. The transnational collaborative activity of these institutions may be global in scope, but it is regional in function. A second important shared feature in this regard is the central role played by German actors coded as ‘western’, especially state actors and political foundations, in connecting these otherwise divided regions. Powerful German actors are frequently present in components and activities that are otherwise focused on a different region. The fact that it is frequently the same actors – notably, the German government, the GFO and political foundations – means that these institutions occupy positions between different (regional) groups. This indicates that they have potential access to a wider range of material, symbolic and narrative resources; however, it also means they have the potential to disperse their own material, symbolic and narrative resources amongst a wider range of actors. The positions occupied by these actors is therefore one of potential influence and power. Western Europe is not constructed as a distinct region of memory (or ‘memory zone’) to any significant extent in these networks. Instead, these powerful western or pan-German actors function as brokers. In this way, the collaborative activity of the BStU, Hohenschönhausen and the Stiftung

90 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

Aufarbeitung becomes a conduit for, for example, the GFO, the German government and the KAS to connect with mnemonic actors in multiple regions: this suggests that in many cases, it is these institutions that are the ‘exporters’ of German memory. We do not see eastern German (i.e. post-socialist/CEE) actors in the same position structurally, unless they are part of pan-German institutions. Where post-socialist/CEE actors have a high betweenness centrality, they tend to sit between actors from within the post-socialist/CEE region. It might not be surprising that German governmental and paragovernmental actors are heavily involved in the collaborative activities of these three state-funded organisations. However, this unique structural position suggests that the narratives produced by these influential actors might dominate the collaborative activities through which the network is created. These observations raise a number of questions: how do the three core institutions approach collaboration in the different regional components? Do memory actors, narratives, topics and activities change at different points of regional ‘intercrossing’? In other words, do we see different relationship cultures emerging in the different components? What is the role of these central German – governmental and paragovernmental – actors in different collaborative activities? What can this tell us about how memory is constructed relationally? In order to answer these questions, Chapters 3 and 4 explore the relationship cultures within the different memory zones as they are narrated by the central German actor. Chapters 5 and 6 return to the question of key brokers, and consider their role in the networks under study and the potential influence of these actors in the evolution of meaning structures.

Notes 1. Including representatives from the embassies of Ghana, Myanmar, Lithuania, Peru, Republic of Korea, Canada, Egypt, Belarus, Jamaica, Iraq, Yemen, Morocco and Mongolia. See Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, ‘Diplomaten aus 37 Ländern’. 2. BC works only with unvalued networks and the protocol automatically binarizes the data. For more on BC, see Prell, Social Network Analysis, 103–7; Hanneman and Riddle, ‘Concepts and Measures’, 366–67. 3. See Crossley et al., Social Network Analysis for Ego-Nets, 82. 4. Coorganised by the Federal Centre for Civic Education (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung), the Federal Culture Foundation (Kulturstiftung des Bundes), the Stiftung Aufarbeitung, the IfZ (Munich), the ZZF (Potsdam), Humboldt University, Maxim Gorki Theater, the organisation Against Forgetting – For Democracy (Gegen Vergessen – Für Demokratie) and the German Historical Museum (DHM, Deutsches Historisches Museum). 5. Note: there are only eight actors in this network with a BC of over 0.

Tracing the Shape of Transnational Collaboration • 91 6. Except where these three organisations are alters in one another’s egonet. 7. For more on components, see Prell, Social Network Analysis, 153–55; Hanneman and Riddle, ‘Concepts and Measures’, 354. 8. Wüstenberg, ‘Vernetztes Gedenken?, 101. 9. The EI Index indicates the EI ratio for the whole network. The EI ratio is a quite straightforward measure that subtracts alters that have the same categorical attribute (i.e. here are located in the same region) as the node in question (the ‘ego’) from the number that do not and divides this by the total number of ties. The expected EI Index is the mean result obtained through a permutation test. In a permutation test, the network is redrawn with randomly permuted connections a set number of times (here 5,000) and the relevant measure (here the EI Index) taken for each permutation. 10. The last column of Table 2.13 indicates the number of times the measurement taken in each permutation obtained a value less than or equal to the observed. This is expressed as a probability and can be used as a p value: a p value of less than 0.05 is taken to indicate statistical significance. 11. The expected number and p value are again determined by a permutation test (10,000 permutations of the network). 12. I also give the p value obtained from the permutation tests. In all but two of the networks, the p value is low enough for us to be confident in the statistical significance of the findings. 13. A visit of the heads of state of Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Belgium and Luxembourg on the initiative of the Federal President, Joachim Gauck, to the Documentation and Memorial Centre in Rostock on the 18 September 2014. See BStU, Zwölfter Tätigkeitsbericht, 92. 14. Alongside those seen in Table 2.14, an O/E score of higher than 1 was given for Western Europe with: multiregional (O/E = 1.14), Southern Europe (O/E = 1.14), East Asia (O/E = 1.14) and Central and South Africa (O/E = 1.14) in 2009–10; and multiregional (O/E = 1.54), Scandinavia (O/E = 1.54, Southern Europe (O/E = 1.54) and Central and South America (O/E = 1.54) in 2015–16. 15. The only partners to which post-socialist/CEE actors have more connections than would be expected (beyond those seen in Table 2.14) are those that are multiregional (principally European institutions). The O/E scores for this region are: 1.35 (2009–10); 1.14 (2011–12); 0.00 (2013–14); 5.61 (2015–16). 16. O/E = 1.76 in 2009–10; 1.62 in 2011–12; 1.50 in 2013–14; 1.07 in 2015–16. For more on the ENRS, see Büttner and Delius, ‘World Culture’. 17. Universität Tübingen, ‘Ursachen, Geschichte und Folgen’. 18. Stiftung Aufarbeitung, ‘Internationales Symposium: “Menschenrechte und Nordkorea”’. 19. Stiftung Aufarbeitung. ‘Internationale Diplomaten zu Gast’ 20. Note that this is the inverse of how EI is represented. 21. The ENRS is multiregional, bringing together actors from the post-socialist/CEE and post-Soviet regions. It has therefore been included in the means for both.

Chapter 3

NARRATIVES OF A SHARED PAST Central and Eastern European, Western European and Post-Soviet Memory Zones

8 The analysis of homophily within the networks created by and through the BStU, Hohenschönhausen and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung demonstrates quantitatively that this transnational collaboration is constructed by and constructs ‘memory zones’, within which actors tend to be connected primarily with partners from their own region. This is particularly the case for non-European actors (East Asia and MENA). Western Europe in contrast is not to any significant extent one of these regions; instead, powerful Western European actors (primarily German actors coded as ‘western’) occupy positions in-between regions, acting – in SNA terms – as brokers between different groups. The mathematical measures discussed in Chapter 2 are important in terms of what they reveal about how the networks are constructed; however, they tell us little about how that structure can influence the transnational cooperation that takes place within the network and the meaning of the collaborations for the actors involved. Do these memory zones differ from one another in practice? If so, how? What stories are told about the collaborations within each memory zone? Which activities, actors and topics are most prevalent within those narratives? As described in Chapter 1, individuals are embedded not only in networks, but also in ‘cultural blueprints’, and the two are intertwined. The cultural blueprints in which a network is embedded also interpenetrate the ‘relationship culture’ within a given connection; that is,

Narratives of a Shared Past • 93

the definition of what the relationship is about.1 Relationship culture is an essential part of the meaning structure and entails the understanding on the part of the participating actors of what the cooperation is for. It comprises the ways in which the actors define and understand the relationship; it is a narrative made up of plot elements including the actors involved, the topics discussed and the activity undertaken. In the present chapter and the next one, I explore the relationship cultures within the networks by examining the ways in which region, narrative, actor, activity and topic intersect. My focus is on those regions represented to a significant degree in two or more of the three institutions: post-socialist/Central and Eastern Europe, post-Soviet, Western Europe (Chapter 3), East Asia and MENA (Chapter 4). In each case, I use matrix coding to explore which narratives, actors, activities and topics appear most frequently in collaborations with actors located in different regions. Matrix coding reveals how often a given code or file correlates with another given code or file. For example, it can tell us how often a collaboration in the four BStU networks was coded with the activity type ‘conference’ and the region ‘post-socialist/CEE’. This figure can then be compared to the average prevalence of the activity type ‘conference’ across the BStU, which indicates in turn where there is a clustering according to region. For each institution, I first ran matrix coding for the files for all four networks against, respectively, narrative, actor, activity and topic in order to allow me to calculate network averages for each code. I then ran matrix coding for region against – sequentially – narrative, actor, activity and topic, and compared the results to the average figures. Tables 3.1, 3.3 and 3.4 in this chapter and Tables 4.1–4.2 in the next chapter indicate where there was a higher than average prevalence of a particular narrative, actor, activity or topic for the region under discussion. Following this exploration of the extent to which the different plot elements appear within each region, I conduct a qualitative narrative analysis of the texts produced about a selection of cross-border activities in order to show how actor, activity and topic are interwoven in the stories produced about the collaboration by the central German actor. The aim is to give an impression of what the collaborations and the narratives that accompany them look like in detail, and a sense of how they are used in different regional contexts. This allows us to begin to refine our understanding of the relationship cultures that are dominant in each region. My focus here is on the data produced by the central institutions – that is, the German partners: I am telling this story from their perspective which may differ to that of their collaborator (as explored in Chapters 5 and 6). This is important for understanding how these German actors approach cross-border collaboration, their understanding of why they reach out to actors located in different contexts, and what they anticipate the outcomes of these connections to be.

94 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

Narrating Common Histories and Expert Exchange in Central and Eastern Europe I turn first to the region that is most dominant in the cross-border collaborations across the three central institutions: post-socialist/CEE. Table 3.1 presents the outcomes of the matrix coding, as described above. What is important to remember in this analysis is that I did not code the German institutions according to region. This means that the post-socialist/CEE and Western European regions discussed in this chapter are made up of nonGerman actors. Table 3.1 indicates that the dominant relationship culture – as perceived by the central actor – across all three German institutions was one of ‘common histories’. In other words, the texts produced about the collaborations in the post-socialist/CEE region by the BStU tell a story of a shared past that motivates cooperation in the present to address that past. In the case of the BStU, this is accompanied by a narrative of ‘expert exchange’, in which the ‘experts’ are assumed to be on both sides of the partnership. This narrative of ‘sameness’ and ‘shared expertise’ is supported by the kinds of actors involved in these collaborations. In each case, this includes academics alongside actors of the same ‘type’ to the central institution – that is, as state-funded institutes (in the case of the BStU and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung) or memorials (in the case of Hohenschönhausen).2 The activities that are dominant in this region across the three central actors are those that are inherently about collaboration and exchange between equal partners: conferences, public events (often panel discussions), research projects and official cooperations. The topics under discussion in the collaborations relate to the common past (and, in the case of Hohenschönhausen, a common view of that past as totalitarian) and/or to the particular expertise of the central actor. The prevalence of the topic of revolution within the transnational cooperations of the BStU and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung hints at the importance of the twentieth and twenty-fifth anniversaries of 1989 in the cross-border activities of these institutions in this region. In short, the plot elements – activities, actors and topics – support narratives of commonality and equality. What does this relationship culture look like in detail? The following is extracted from the information published by the BStU relating to a conference held on 29–31 May 2009 as part of the History Forum 1989/2009 (Geschichtsforum 1989/2009) under the title ‘The 1989 Year of Revolution in Eastern Europe as a Caesura in European History’: The democratic revolutions in the East of Europe stood at the end of a long-lasting decline of the communist dictatorships. Each one took its own specific course. What began in the USSR as reform at the top of the ruling communist

Narratives of a Shared Past • 95

Table 3.1 Clustering of plot elements in the post-socialist/CEE region

BStU

Narratives

Actors

- Common Histories - Expert Exchange

- State-funded Institutes - Academic

Activities -

Conference Exhibition Public Event Research Project

Topics -

Opposition Revolution Secret Police State Archives

Hohenschön- Common Histories hausen

- Academic - Memorials

- Conference - Official Cooperation - Research Project

- Aufarbeitung (working through the past) - European Memory - Memorialisation - Past Crimes - Totalitarianism

Stiftung Aufarbeitung

- State-funded Institutes

-

- Revolution

- Common Histories

Arts-Based Conference Exhibition Public Event

party was carried in Poland in particular by a strong union-led opposition. In many countries the upheaval proceeded without loss of human life. However in Romania, Lithuania, Latvia and not least in the collapsing Yugoslavia, the violent apparatus of the old regime attempted to stop the advance of the democratic forces with armed force. Despite each running its specific course, all the revolutions were closely connected with one another … At the BStU conference, in seven panels, a total of 27 internationally renowned researchers from eight countries will explore and discuss these cross-border connections.3

In this short excerpt, we clearly see the way in which the BStU narrates a shared history between different post-socialist/CEE (including eastern German), post-Soviet and Southeast European partners, based on the common experience of state-socialist (or, here, communist) rule and its end. Differences between these histories are acknowledged; however, the text still constructs the idea of an ‘Eastern’ region of memory in which these differences are outweighed by commonalities. The title of the conference refers specifically to 1989, centring that date (and especially the fall of the Berlin Wall) as the key turning point for all the named national contexts, despite the fact that the transitions in these contexts began and ended at different moments. The title also references 1989 as a caesura in ‘European History’, suggesting that the sense of a common history might be extended to include

96 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

nations not in these ‘Eastern’ contexts. However, a look at the conference programme indicates that ‘Europe’ here principally means ‘Eastern Europe’.4 In addition to Germany, six of the eight countries represented by the panellists are in CEE or post-Soviet countries: Latvia, Poland, Romania, the Czech Republic, Ukraine and Hungary. The only non-CEE/post-Soviet speaker (in terms of institution) was Viktor Zaslavsky, a Russian-born academic who at that point worked at the Free International University for Social Studies ‘Guido Carli’ in Rome. Three panels focused on specific countries or groups of countries: the Soviet Union (in terms of Glasnost); the GDR; and Poland, Czechoslovakia and Romania. On the other panels, papers focused on the GDR, Poland, Ukraine, Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia. There is little sense in the construction of this programme that the events of 1989 also involved and impacted on Western Europe; Western European partners are not brought into these discussions. The only explicit reference to the West in the programme was in the title of a paper to be presented by Axel Janowitz of the BStU on the topic of ‘The GDR Ministry for State Security: A Topic for Political Education in East and West?’. This connects to the rhetoric of the BStU in this period regarding the desirability of integrating East and West in terms of German and European memory. However, this goal does not seem well supported by either the structure of the BStU networks – which tend to create a distinct ‘Eastern’ ‘memory zone’ with regard to which actors are connected with which others (as seen in Chapter 2) – or by the narrative construction of these collaborations, which creates a sense of common history from which Western Europe is excluded. We see a very similar narrative of expert exchange and common histories in texts relating to the formal European networks of which the BStU is part. On 14 January 2010, the BStU met with a delegation from the Polish Institute for National Remembrance (INR), headed up by its then President Janusz Kurtyka, in order to formally hand over the chairing of the European Network of Official Authorities in Charge of the Secret Police Files (ENOA). The text about the meeting also provides information about a collaborative research project: In this network, institutions from seven Central and Eastern European countries work together. They are tasked in their countries with making an important contribution to the working through [Aufarbeitung] of the communist dictatorships with the help of the archives left behind by the secret police … On the occasion of the visit, the BStU presented a reader which it had produced, in which the participating institutions give an overview of their work. The reader offers a comparison of the respective legal foundations, tasks, structure, file access and emphases of each organisation’s work.5

Here we see how the work of the ENOA constructs a Central and Eastern European memory community, made up of state-funded institutes who col-

Narratives of a Shared Past • 97

laborate on a past that is constructed as being of the same kind; that is, ‘communist’, a ‘dictatorship’, and dominated by a ‘secret police’ (note that in the original German, this term is plural). The description of the reader presents the collaboration in terms of continuity: that shared past leads to shared experiences in the present. The narrative implies that there are some differences in laws, structures and foci for each actor, but that they are tasked with the same thing: working through those common histories using a resource that is available in each context (i.e. secret police archives). This blurs key differences between the members of the ENOA and the different contexts in which those archives were produced and restored after transition. As Georges Mink argues, the state institutions set up to deal with the files of communist secret services after 1989 show both an ‘institutional isomorphism’ and an ‘institutional irrendentism as an effect of each country’s specific political situation’.6 Western Europe as a region of memory is also excluded from the texts produced by Hohenschönhausen with regard to large-scale cooperative activities with European partners. However, in this context, that exclusion frequently takes place at the level of rhetoric rather than in terms of the individuals involved in the discussion. As we have seen in Chapter 2, in the period 2009– 14, Hohenschönhausen often brought together Eastern and Western partners; nonetheless, this does not mean that what we might describe as Eastern and Western memory politics were equally represented in these cooperations. One notable example is the Fifth Hohenschönhausen Forum, which took place on 7 November 2012 under the title: ‘Working through the Communist Past as a European Task’. The conference brought together academics, representatives of government, political foundations and state institutes, and journalists. The presentation of this event suggests that Europe as a whole is responsible for addressing the crimes committed under state socialism and that, thus far, it has failed in carrying out this responsibility. The press release notes: It is more than two decades since the communist dictatorships in Europe were toppled. However, the crimes committed in that period have still not really been worked through. As a rule, the perpetrators remain unpunished. Even in democracies, the functionaries still occupy important positions. For the most part, the victims are recompensed inadequately. Has Europe failed in working through the communist past?7

The Hohenschönhausen Forum is, we learn, an opportunity for ‘renowned experts from home and abroad’ to ‘develop visions and ideas for what a pan-European memory culture should look like’. This memory culture – it is suggested – should ‘take the crimes of communism and National Socialism equally into account’.8 The detail of the programme for this event indicates how Western European (principally German) and post-socialist/CEE partners are brought into dialogue with one another. The country locations represented along-

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side Germany are France, Switzerland, Poland and the Czech Republic. Of the non-German Western European countries in this list, France was represented by the controversial historian Stéphane Courtois, whose Black Book of Communism is resolutely anti-communist. The Black Book has been used to legitimise the equation of communism and Nazism, and to identify the former ‘with crime, terror and repression’. As Valentin Behr et al. demonstrate, the transnational circulation of this volume fostered memory of the crimes of Eastern European communism at a European level.9 Switzerland was represented at the Hohenschönhausen Forum by Frank Meyer, a (West) German-born Professor of Law at the University of Zürich. The German representatives were divided between western and eastern in the terms described in Chapter 1, but with an emphasis on the former. They included leading representatives of the federal and regional legal systems, Die Welt journalist and historian of the Nazi era Sven-Felix Kellerhoff, academics from Regensburg, Hamburg, Bremen and Potsdam, radio editor Norman Seitz, the regional office of the Stasi archive in Thüringen, and a representative of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS, which coorganised the event), Rita Schorpp. Without a full recording of the event or the papers presented, it is difficult to be certain about the direction of discussion; however, it is clear that Hohenschönhausen frames the Forum at least in retrospect as a discussion about the future of European memory that does indeed bring together East and West (Germany), but that is centred on a framework that is more aligned with the anti-communist rhetoric of the Eastern ‘subalterns’, as identified by Mälksoo, rather than the ‘western norm’ described by Beattie (see the Introduction).10 In this framework, anti-communism is set in opposition to ‘Western norms’ of remembrance in which the equation of communism and National Socialism is largely avoided. Alongside the inclusion of Courtois on the programme, this is also seen in the presence of representatives of several other post-socialist/CEE state-mandated institutions. Łukasz Kamiński of the INR spoke about the ‘Punishment of Totalitarian Crimes in Poland’. Pavel Žáček of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes in Prague gave a paper with the title ‘Experiences with Lustration in the Czech Republic’. Göran Lindblad, the Swedish-born President of the Platform for European Memory and Conscience (PEMC), discussed the question ‘How Can the EU Promote the Replacement of Elite Groups in East and Central Europe?’. 11 As noted by a number of scholars, the work of these state-supported institutes, including within the PEMC, is frequently underpinned by a similar anti-communist rhetoric regarding the failures of European memory.12 Anti-communist and state-supported institutions were also those most often involved in transnational research cooperations with Hohenschönhausen in this period, another key activity type identified in the coding. For example, in June 2014, Knabe and then Federal President Joachim Gauck

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presented a project that aimed to record the names of the victims of communism and that was developed in cooperation with the House of Terror museum, located in Budapest. Elsewhere I have noted the anti-communist approach of this museum, which emphasises the crimes of Stalinism over those of Nazism (and in the process comes close to equating the two) and that was opened by rightist President Viktor Orbán in the final stages of an election campaign.13 The cooperation is described as follows in Hohenschönhausen’s activity report for this period: The cooperation with memorials and institutions for working through the past in other formerly communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe has grown further in importance in the reporting period. The Europeanisation of working through the past [Aufarbeitung] opens up new perspectives for the memorial, because it places its work in international comparison … One example of this is the close cooperation with the House of Terror in Budapest, a museum that was erected in the former headquarters of the Hungarian secret police. In the context of a visit to the Memorial by the Hungarian President János Áder, the suggestion was made to put together a common register of those persecuted under communism [Verfolgte des Kommunismus] … In the longer term, the aim is to produce a European register, in which other states will also participate.14

As with the Hohenschönhausen Forum, what we see here is the projection of a shared history – the history of ‘communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe’ – and a collaboration underpinned by the goal of ‘Europeanisation’ of that history. We learn that the collaboration is based on ‘personal contacts’, ‘close cooperations’ and ‘synergies’: there is no indication that one side learns exclusively from the other. As Behr et al. note of the Black Book of Communism, efforts to ‘reveal’ communist crimes through acknowledging victims who have – in this account – previously been concealed emulate ‘mnemonic practices found in Holocaust remembrance’.15 The particular mode of the ‘Europeanisation’ of memory proposed here, a listing of the names of victims of communism (initially in Germany and Hungary and later across the continent) thus draws an implicit connection between the crimes of communism and those of National Socialism. How does this compare to the narratives produced by the Stiftung Aufarbeitung in relation to its cooperations with post-socialist/CEE partners? As we can see in Table 3.1, the cross-border activities of the Stiftung Aufarbeitung in this region include a relatively high percentage of conferences, involving both academics (as the largest group overall in the Stiftung Aufarbeitung’s cooperations) and state-funded institutes, and the narrative most often used to narrate such cooperations is one of common histories. A key example of this interweaving of activity type, region and narrative is seen in

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the descriptions of and reports about the International Meeting of Memorial Sites, coorganised by the Stiftung Aufarbeitung with the Memorial Kreisau, Evangelische Akademie Berlin and the Memorial to the German Resistance (and in some years further partners). These events bring together academics and practitioners from different European contexts to discuss the history and memorialisation of National Socialism and state socialism/communism, ‘as well as other forms of totalitarian domination and the resistance to it’. The format combines formal papers with tours of local sites and the presentation of artistic work or new practice. The event in 2009 (26–28 March) focused on ‘the different perceptions and interpretations of the past in the states of Europe formerly under communist control in a pan-European perspective’. In the programme announcement, the organisers elucidate what they perceive as the core issues of European memory culture: For six years, the Memorial of the Kreisau Foundation, in cooperation with partners from Germany, has organised an East-West European exchange of experiences around questions of dealing with history and the transmission of memory of dictatorship in historical-political education. In terms of topic, the East-West European Meeting of Memorial Sites in 2009 will deal with the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939, its interpretation and consequences in different countries … Especially in Germany, the memory of communism and National Socialism continue by and large to be considered in isolation … This interpretation is understandable in the case of Germany, even if it also merits reflection; however, with reference to East Central Europe it conceals a significant factor: the states of East Central Europe, especially Poland, Ukraine and the Baltic States, interpret the history of the Second World War as a double occupation. The question of how differently this history is perceived in the various countries will be the topic of the Meeting of Memorial Sites in 2009.16

This narrative is interesting in several respects. It points towards the conflict in European memory between East and West, and positions Germany firmly on the Western side of that divide. It describes both positions as ‘understandable’; however, it is only the Western position that requires ‘reflection’. The concept of a ‘double’ (and by implication ‘equal’) occupation is not questioned. This conceptualisation thus weaves a complex position between acknowledging and challenging the memory culture perceived as dominant in the German national context. The Stiftung Aufarbeitung produces considerably more documentation about the events they organise and coorganise than do either of the other institutions, and this frequently includes conference reports. These reports – produced by different authors aligned to the Stiftung Aufarbeitung – allow us more insight into what was discussed at the events and how these are framed in retrospect. The report for the 2009 Meeting of Memorial Sites was written

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by Ronny Heidenreich and Cornelia Liebold.17 The first noteworthy aspect is that the authors describe the focus of the conference as specifically memory of the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939, contrasting the supposed absence of this aspect in European memory culture with the extensive efforts to mark the anniversaries of the 1989 revolutions. The Nazi-Soviet Pact is referenced in the original publicity material as a key focus point; however, as we have seen, the purpose of the conference is drawn much more broadly to consider East-West memory conflicts. Heidenreich and Liebold also note that the organisers managed to gather more than fifty ‘representatives of museums, memorials and initiatives for working through the past from Central and Eastern Europe’. Indeed, all of the eleven listed presenters bar one were actors from the post-socialist/ CEE or post-Soviet region. The exception in this regard was Bernd Faulenbach, whose institutional affiliation is given as the University of Bochum (where he is Professor Emeritus), but who was also at the time Vice President of the Stiftung Aufarbeitung itself. The summary of Faulenbach’s presentation suggests a close alignment with the dominant memory-political discourse in Germany.18 He is reported as concluding that a point had been reached when the Nazi-Soviet Pact could be discussed in a manner that ‘established the indisputable nature of the crimes of National Socialism, but also recognised other complexes of crimes (Verbrechenskomplexe)’.19 Nonetheless, the overall focus of the conference on the Pact, alongside the dominance of post-socialist/CEE and post-Soviet actors, shifted the narrative from that of an East-West dialogue in the initial publicity material to a conversation within an almost exclusively Eastern zone of memory. This is a dynamic that appears to have been recognised by the participants. Heidenreich and Liebold note that in the concluding session, the suggestion was made to expand the circle of participants for the next event: ‘especially dialogue with Western Europe should be brought more strongly into focus’. 20 The relational contingency table analysis (RCTA), discussed in Chapter 2, indicates that this ambition was not achieved in the Stiftung Aufarbeitung network as a whole: the observed/expected values for connections between the post-socialist/CEE region and Western Europe, and the post-Soviet region and Western Europe in fact tend to reduce over the eight-year period rather than increase, suggesting fewer connections between these regions rather than more. But what about this event series in particular? The Meeting of Memorial Sites in March 2010 was held under the title: ‘European Post-War Development in East and West Europe – 65 Years since the End of the War between Perceptions of Victory, Liberation, Occupation and Subjugation’. This title suggests a pan-European approach; however, the description of the event modifies this to note that the focus is on ‘the different perceptions and interpretations of the past in European states previously under communist

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Table 3.2 Number of actors from each region involved in the Meetings of Memorial Sites in each time period Region

2009–10

2011–12

2013–14

2015–16

Western Europe

11

7

8

13

‘Eastern’ (PostSoviet + CEE)

16

16

25

21

North America

0

1

0

0

Scandinavia

0

1

0

0

Southern Europe

0

0

0

3

Southeast Europe

0

0

0

2

rule from a pan-European perspective’.21 The emphasis was – we learn – to be on Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and the Soviet Zone of Occupation. In terms of speakers, the conference report lists seven from post-socialist/CEE or post-Soviet contexts and only three from Western Europe: of these, all three spoke about the memory of National Socialism (in Germany and France respectively) rather than offering a Western perspective on the memory of communism.22 This pattern continued in future years: topics that are framed as pan-European in the texts produced by the Stiftung Aufarbeitung were discussed by groups of scholars and practitioners who were predominantly drawn from post-socialist/CEE and post-Soviet contexts. Table 3.2 shows the number of actors from each region included in the annual cooperations in each two-year period. One notable feature is that the number of actors involved in the conferences (or at least the numbers named as speakers or participants on the programmes) increased over time. Nonetheless, we can see that, as in 2009–10, in 2011–12 and 2013–14, post-socialist/CEE and post-Soviet actors continued to dominate in this subnetwork. This is despite the fact that some of those Western European actors were involved as organisers (Evangelische Akademie Berlin and Memorial to German Resistance). Notably, these are German

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organisations coded as ‘western’ that – as we have seen in the quantitative analysis – appear to play a particular role in the networks under discussion. As Table 3.2 indicates, we do see a slightly changed pattern in 2015– 16. Although post-socialist/CEE and post-Soviet actors still dominate, the organisers appear to have constructed a programme that includes actors from other European regions, notably Southeast Europe and Southern Europe (i.e. Italy). In 2015, the topic of the Meeting was ‘Disappeared Places. Reception and Memory of Places of Totalitarian Violence’. In the conference report, the keynote speech, given by French-German historian Étienne François, is described as being framed very broadly by the idea of ‘disappeared places’ and as including discussion of Carthage and the First Temple. The framing of the conference thus focused on a concept rather than a region or historical event, which may explain the participation from a wider range of regional partners (including post-socialist/CEE, post-Soviet, Western Europe and Southern Europe).23 In 2016, the Meeting focused on: ‘Reconciliation with the Past? Approaches to Resistance and Collaboration in Different National Narratives’.24 Once again, this more conceptual approach attracted a wider range of speakers (from post-socialist/CEE, post-Soviet, Southeast Europe, Western Europe and Southern Europe) with a focus on comparing the role of resistance and collaboration in different contexts. We may tentatively suggest that this shift indicates a changed approach for this institution and this ongoing project, and it is one that may foster a more genuinely pan-European exchange of ideas.

Post-Soviet Partners In-Between Spaces Post-Soviet actors appear to occupy the same or similar structural position as those from the post-socialist/CEE region in the narratives about the Meetings of Memorial Sites produced by the Stiftung Aufarbeitung. This stands in contrast to what was observed about the connection between these regions in my discussion of the RCTA in Chapter 2: overall, in the networks created by all three central institutions, post-Soviet actors are in fact connected less often than would be expected with post-socialist/CEE actors and more often with Western European actors. What can the matrix coding tell us about the similarities and differences in the relational cultures in the two regional memory zones? Table 3.3 indicates the narratives, actors, activities and topics that feature in conjunction with collaborators from the post-Soviet region at a rate above the average for the network overall. Interestingly, in the case of the Stiftung Aufarbeitung, these data confirm the similarities in the positioning of post-socialist/CEE and post-Soviet actors observed in the analysis of the International Meeting of Memorial Sites

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above: the narratives and activity types most commonly used in cooperations with post-Soviet actors are very similar to those used for post-socialist/CEE actors. Nonetheless, we do see some variation in terms of the actors involved and the topics discussed: instead of a clustering of state-funded institutions and discussion of revolution, there is an above-average number of academics and NGOs in this zone, and a focus on the issue of ‘past crimes’. In the networks created by and through the BStU and Hohenschönhausen, the post-Soviet actors appear to occupy a more liminal position. In the network created by the BStU, post-Soviet actors are engaged most often through official visits, as well as through exhibitions and public events; that is, by a combination of activities that are inherently based on cooperation and exchange (the latter two) and those that may imply a more timelimited, unidirectional transfer of knowledge and experience (official visits). The cooperations with post-Soviet actors tend to be narrated in the mode of common histories; however, the use of the narrative of expertise is less common than for the cooperations with post-socialist/CEE actors. In terms of who these actors are, we see again a clustering of NGOs, alongside government representatives (including embassies); this is significantly different from the research-based focus in the post-socialist/CEE region, shown by the increased selection of academics and state-funded institutes as partners. We can also observe that the topics discussed shift from the specific (archives, the secret police, the revolutions of 1989) to the more abstract (opposition). This liminality is seen even more clearly in the data produced from the cross-border collaborations of Hohenschönhausen. The activities used most frequently in cooperations with post-Soviet actors all have collaboration and expert exchange at their core: arts-based, conferences, exhibitions and public events. Nonetheless, there are fewer official cooperations and research projects shared with partners from the post-Soviet region than the post-socialist/CEE region. The dominant narrative is – as in the post-socialist/CEE region – common histories; however, it sits alongside narratives of ‘other histories’ (suggesting a lack of commonality) and ‘supporting global human rights’ more generally (i.e. not on the basis of a shared past). The clustering of topics reflects Hohenschönhausen’s preoccupation with the position of communism in European memory and its drawing on theories of totalitarianism, as seen in the discussion of the Hohenschönhausen Forum above. However, as is the case with the BStU cooperations in the post-Soviet region, the actors involved include an increased number of government representatives and NGOs, and less focus on academics. This would suggest that there is a degree of ‘sameness’ perceived between these actors and post-socialist/CEE collaborators, but also key differences in the ways in which (and with whom) that ‘sameness’ is explored in practice. What do these collaborations with post-Soviet partners look like in detail?

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Table 3.3 Clustering of plot elements in the post-Soviet region Narratives

Actors

BStU

- Common Histories

- Government - Embassies - NGOs

- Official Visit - Exhibition - Public Event

- Aufarbeitung - Opposition

Hohenschönhausen

- Common Histories - Other Histories - Supporting Global Human Rights

- Government - NGOs - Memorials

-

Arts-Based Conference Exhibition Public Event

- European Memory - Past Crimes - Totalitarianism

- Academic - NGOs

-

Arts-Based Conference Public Event Research Project

- Past Crimes

Stiftung Aufarbeitung

- Common Histories

Activities

Topics

Turning first to the BStU, we can observe a positioning of post-Soviet actors as ‘like us’ – that is, sharing a common history and common approach to working through that history – but also as at the start of that process and therefore in need of support from ‘us’. In this narrative, the post-Soviet actors are constructed as ‘catching up’ with the German one. For example, a meeting and panel discussion between German and Ukrainian experts are narrated as follows: On 16 December 2009, in the Ukrainian Embassy, Ukrainian and German experts will discuss questions about access to the Ukrainian secret police files from the period 1917 to 1991. At the beginning of 2009, the president of Ukraine signed the degree ‘on the downgrading, publication and research of documents related to the Ukrainian liberation movement, political repression and catastrophic famine in Ukraine’. In that document, it is set down that the Ukrainian security service (SBU) must, within a year, make public 800,000 volumes of documents that had previously been classified as ‘secret’ or ‘top secret’. From Tuesday, 15 December 2009, a delegation from Ukraine is a guest [in Germany] for the purpose of expert discussion and an exchange of experiences with the Federal Office for the Stasi Files.25

The event was coorganised with the European Exchange (an organisation focused on ‘the democratic development of Europe and its neighbourhood’, particularly Eastern Europe)26 and the Heinrich Böll Foundation (HBS, associated with the German Green Party). What we see here is a presentation of the Ukrainian partners as experts and the event as an opportunity for

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‘exchange’ and ‘discussion’. However, at the same time, the Ukrainian partners are noted as being at the beginning of that expertise and experience – the files in Ukraine had not yet opened. The discussion will focus on the Ukrainian files, we are told; however, the positioning of the different actors implies that it will be the German partner providing the majority of ‘experience’ to the post-Soviet ‘guest’. In this regard, it is notable that the 2015–16 activity report states that the newly formed Institute for National Remembrance in Ukraine was to take over the state archives relating to repression in the former Soviet Union. The reader learns that ‘the BStU and other German institutions have previously supported efforts in Ukraine to open the documents from the time of the USSR’ – something that is continued through a ‘study week’ undertaken by representatives of the Institute to the BStU in January 2016.27 We see a similar dynamic in the presentation of a trip by a group of Georgian historians and memory activists to the BStU in Berlin in November 2010: A group of young historians from Tbilisi used the opening of the archives in the country [i.e. Georgia] to promote the topic of ‘working through Stalinism in Georgia’. In 2009 they founded the independent ‘Soviet Past Research Laboratory’. Through painstaking detailed work in state and private archives, as well as interviews with eyewitnesses, the ‘Laboratory’ – supported by the Heinrich Böll Foundation – created the foundations for differentiated research into the phenomenon of Stalinism and its impact on Georgian society. This project was presented to the Federal Officer [for the Stasi files] on 30 November 2010 in the central archive of the BStU. At the same time, the participants discussed the possibilities of working through the past through the means of a state authority [einer staatlichen Behörde] and civil society organisations.28

The Georgian project is described in positive terms; nonetheless, it is not clear if it is ‘presented’ to the BStU for the purposes of informing the German partner or in order to receive feedback and advice from them. The way in which the post-Soviet partners are presented as less experienced than their German counterparts – the Georgian historians are quite literally ‘young’ – and as being at the start of their journey towards working through the past suggests that the latter is the case. Tomáš Profant notes a similar dynamic with regard to the position of Central and Eastern European donors of development aid, who are presented as ‘new’ to the field. He notes that ‘the representation of certain actors as experienced and other actors as inexperienced endows the experienced ones with the power to decide what constitutes the right knowledge’.29 Post-Soviet memory activism is in this way narrated as based on common histories, but as emergent rather than established. It is also noteworthy that, unlike in the post-socialist/CEE-focused cooperations, we see the involvement of a German political foundation.

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There is a distinction here between these small-scale cooperations with particular post-Soviet partners and the inclusion of post-Soviet partners in larger-scale events (especially conferences), as described in the context of the post-socialist/CEE memory zone. In larger events, the post-Soviet participants are incorporated more equally as partners with a common history and expertise to share. In this sense, whether or not the post-Soviet partners are narrated as equals depends to a certain extent on who else is involved. In the networks narrated by Hohenschönhausen, we see a differentiation in terms of the specific country location of the post-Soviet partner; that is, the post-Soviet region is further divided. Collaborations with Baltic countries are narrated in a very similar way to (or indeed as part of ) cooperations with partners located in the post-socialist/CEE region; that is, as motivated by common histories or on the basis of sharing expertise. We can see this in the narration of bilateral projects such as the ‘Chronicle of Violence – Lithuania 1939–1941’ exhibition developed by the Centre for Genocide and Resistance Research (described by James Mark as ‘strongly anticommunist’)30 and shown by Hohenschönhausen from October 2009 to January 2010. The exhibition was set in the context of the anniversary of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, that is, of a shared European past; however, it is clear that the expertise comes from the Lithuanian partner.31 We can observe a similar pattern in the texts about larger-scale projects. One notable example highlights the impact of EU structures in this regard. In 2013, the Memorial began an international research project, supported financially by the European Commission, initiated by the PEMC, and in cooperation with the Museum of Occupation in Latvia and the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and Memory of Exile in Romania (IICCMER). The Museum of Occupation presents the history of the occupation of Latvia by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. As Regina Fritz and Katja Wezel note, its very name conveys ‘a historical-political statement’; one of the key themes of the exhibition is the ‘relationship between and the similarity of the two systems’, that is, communism and National Socialism.32 James Mark describes the Latvian museum as ‘fundamentally anti-Communist’ and as an example of how ‘an increasingly globalized Holocaust memory was “domesticated” to suit different contexts’.33 The IICCMER was established in 2005, initially as the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes in Romania. It describes its principal function as being ‘investigating and identifying human rights violations and abuses during the [communist] dictatorship’, including supporting the prosecution of perpetrators. The state socialist (or, in the IICCMER’s terms, ‘communist’) regime is named without hesitation as ‘totalitarian’.34 The collaboration between these two institutions and Hohenschönhausen researched the compensation mechanisms for victims of communism

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in eleven countries (Bulgaria, Germany, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, the Czech Republic and Hungary), highlighting problems and deficiencies alongside exemplary solutions. The project concluded in 2015 and the major output was an approximately 500-page report for the European Commission. It is clear from the narrative that Hohenschönhausen played a leading role in the project, including defining how it would be conducted. Nonetheless, in the summary of the project, the authors note: The project was the Memorial’s first international collaborative project on a European level. Through the close cooperation over two years with experts in communism from numerous EU states, it contributed significantly to the intensification of relationships with the European partner institutes.35

Both post-socialist/CEE and post-Soviet partners are presented as being equal ‘experts’ who work together with Hohenschönhausen on the basis of a shared history to intervene in memory politics (and more specifically the politics of compensation) at a European level. There is no clear distinction made between partners from different countries or regions (as this study defines them). On the other hand, other partners from other post-Soviet contexts are less clearly brought into a narrative about a common past in the publicity materials of the Memorial and are positioned instead as ‘other’. This is notably the case with partners in the Russian Federation and in collaborations narrated using the second narrative dominant in Hohenschönhausen’s cooperations in this region: ‘Supporting Global Human Rights’. Of the six activities coded with both ‘post-Soviet’ and ‘Supporting Global Human Rights’, four relate to activists in present-day Russia. On 7 March 2012, the Memorial organised a panel discussion relating to the Russian presidential elections, pointing towards the growing resistance in Russia to the extension of the presidential term that allowed Vladimir Putin to return to power. The panel discussion was followed by a screening of the film Der Fall Chodorkowski (The Chodorkowski Case) by director Cyril Tuschi. The panellists were Tuschi, the Russian human rights activist Irina Scherbakowa (from the human rights organisation Memorial), the author and publicist Sonja Margolina, and Wolfgang Eichwede, the Founding Director of the Research Centre for Eastern Europe at the University of Bremen. The panel was chaired by Norbert Seitz from the radio station Deutschlandfunk, which also broadcast the event.36 There is no sense in the narrative that this relates to a common past, but rather to combating authoritarianism in the present: ‘Three days after the presidential elections the discussion focused on the consequences of those elections for the future of political culture in Russia and the continuing

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popular protests after the manipulated parliamentary elections at the end of 2011.’37 In this case, Russian partners are involved in the event as speakers on the panel. Other examples of this narrative are what I term ‘rhetorical partnerships’; that is, there is no actual meeting (and for this reason such partnerships are not included in the quantitative analysis discussed in Chapter 2). A notable example is Knabe’s reported expression of concern for the members of punk rock band Pussy Riot after the arrest of its members in 2012. According to a press release produced by the Memorial, Knabe wrote to the Ambassador of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Grinin, asking to be allowed to visit the group. He is reported as stating: As Director of the Memorial in a former central prison of the GDR State Security Services … respect for the basic right of free speech is, also in today’s world, very close to my heart.38

Here, the Memorial positions itself rhetorically as part of a global network of individuals and organisations fighting for democracy and human rights – it is this fight that unites the network and not shared histories. As we have seen above, in large-scale collaborations organised by the Stiftung Aufarbeitung – such as conferences or public events – the postSoviet actors are often positioned structurally and narratively in a similar way to post-socialist/CEE actors, creating an ‘Eastern’ zone of memory. However, the RCTA discussed in Chapter 2 indicates that they are in fact more frequently (than would be expected) connected to Western European or multiregional actors than to post-socialist/CEE ones. The data indicate that these connections are principally fostered through the same large-scale events; however, given that the number of post-socialist/CEE and Western European collaborators within the Stiftung Aufarbeitung networks is roughly the same and, as described above, post-socialist/CEE actors tend to dominate events such as the Memorial Meetings, this cannot be the full picture. In terms of activity type, alongside conferences and public events, artsbased activities and projects cluster around cooperations with partners located in the post-Soviet region. In terms of arts-based activities, the majority are focused on art, especially visual arts and film, from or about the Russian Federation. These can in turn be divided into two approaches: artistic events integrated into broader programmes and stand-alone activities. In the first of these, the events are narrated in much the same way as those broader programmes – that is, as based on common histories. The post-Soviet partner is integrated narratively into an ‘Eastern’ zone, which also includes postsocialist/CEE actors. One example is the international literature festival, coorganised with the Literaturbüro Freiburg under the title ‘Please Change! [Bitte wenden!] 20 Years after the Fall of the Wall in Literature’ in June 2009.

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The event brought together twelve authors from eight CEE/post-Soviet countries (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Russia and Ukraine) to ‘describe and interpret the epochal turning point of 1989/1990’.39 An example of the second approach is the showing in June 2016 of the documentary film The Power of Memory: Commemorating the GULAG in Russia, produced by Kerstin Nickig. In this context, memory of the Soviet Union is narrated as an ‘other history’ instead of a ‘common’ one. This is seen, for example, in the description of the panel discussion that followed the showing of the film, in which a group of experts on Russia, ‘discussed current interpretations of Soviet history in Russia and their effects on the current and future self-understanding of the country’.40 Here, Russian memory culture is presented as speaking only to itself, despite the fact that the panellists themselves were either Germans with expertise on Russia (Anke Giesen of the Otto-von-Guericke University in Magdeburg and the journalist Boris Reitschuster) or representatives of organisations that promoted links between Germany and Russia (Stefan Melle of the organisation German Russian Exchange (Deutsch-Russischer Austausch) and Jörg Morré, Director of the German-Russian Museum in Berlin-Karlshorst). The data show that official visits are also common in the Stiftung Aufarbeitung’s collaborations in this memory zone (albeit not more common than the network average). A quite different pattern emerges if we explore activities coded as both ‘post-Soviet’ and ‘Official Visit’. Notably, we see collaborators from a greater range of country locations. Alongside the partners from the Baltic States and the Russian Federation, visitors are received by the Stiftung Aufarbeitung from Kazakhstan, Belarus, Ukraine, Armenia, Moldova and Georgia. Often the text associated with these visits is very limited, meaning that it is difficult to identify the core narrative. However, it is notable that out of the twelve activities coded at these two nodes, five are coded as ‘Learning from the Stiftung’ and three at ‘Common Histories’, with one activity (the visit of a group of diplomats to learn about the plans for the Stiftung Aufarbeitung in 2014) coded as both.41 This suggests once again an ‘in-between’ position for the post-Soviet region in the construction of memory regions within these institutions. It is both part of the core (part of European common histories) and part of the periphery (an ‘other’ that might learn from Europe).

Everywhere and Nowhere: Western Europe What about partners located to the West of the post-socialist/CEE region – do they also occupy this liminal position? I argued in the previous chapter that Western Europe was not to any significant degree constructed as a ‘zone of memory’ in the networks created by and through the three central organ-

Narratives of a Shared Past • 111

Table 3.4 Clustering of plot elements in the Western European region Western Europe

Narratives

Actors

Activities

Topics

BStU

- Learning from the BStU

- Government - Academic

- Exhibition - Public Event - Research Project

- Opposition - Secret Police

Hohenschönhausen

- Learning from HSH

- Government - Academic

- Conference - Official Visit

- Democratic Transition - Political Imprisonment

Stiftung Aufarbeitung

- Common Histories - Expert Exchange

- Academic

- Arts-Based - Conference - Exhibition

- Cold War

isations, despite Western European (and especially German) partners constituting one of the largest groups within the network. This argument was based on the position of Western European actors as brokers in the network rather than as part of a regional cluster. Is this supported by the narratives attached to collaborations? It is important to remember in this regard that the qualitative coding does not include regional coding for German partners, whether they be western or eastern. This means that the narratives attached to the code ‘Western Europe’ are used in contexts in which non-German Western European actors are involved. The matrix coding displayed in Table 3.4 indicates that in the case of the BStU and Hohenschönhausen, the dominant narrative in this context is ‘learning from the self ’ and that there is a clustering of collaborative partners from government and academia. For the Stiftung Aufarbeitung, it is instead ‘common histories’ and ‘expert exchange’ with predominantly academic partners. The activities undertaken and topics discussed with partners in this region vary significantly across the institutions, although we can see some reflection of the core remit of each (opposition and the secret police for the BStU and political imprisonment for Hohenschönhausen). What does this look like in practice? An examination of activities coded in conjunction with the region ‘Western Europe’ in material produced by the BStU over the eight-year period of this study confirms the absence of a Western European zone of memory. Non-German Western European partners are brought into collaborations as experts on or as hosts of the display of memories of other pasts, or they are presented as archivists or academics whose interest is abstracted rather than connected to a particular history. We learn of archive visits by ‘colleagues in the discipline’ (Fachkollegen) to the BStU:

112 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

archivists from the Federal Archive as well as colleagues from Western democracies, such as Norway and the Netherlands, South Korea and several countries in Latin America. Guests from countries in Central and Eastern Europe with comparable experience with dictatorship … but also from other regions in the world, such as Brazil and Iraq, were guided through the archive.42

In June 2009, the BStU hosted delegates of the ‘German-French Dialogue for the Future’ – the ‘Dialogue’ is a seminar programme organised by the Robert Bosch Foundation, with the French Institute for International Relations and the German Council on Foreign Relations, which brings together young executives from the two countries to ‘discuss political, economic and social matters of current interest on the European and the international level’.43 The main purpose of the BStU event was to discuss life in the GDR, without any obvious connection to the history and memory of France.44 The BStU exhibitions were hosted in The Hague (October 2009), Brest (November 2009–February 2010), London (February 2010), Antwerp (June 2010), Brussels (January 2010), and Graz (October 2011). These exhibitions focused on the GDR past rather than on any common heritage between Germany and the partner country. The partners were supplied with knowledge and material about the GDR for its own sake rather than to contribute to an understanding of the pasts of the countries in which they are located; this is learning driven by curiosity and not learning driven by necessity. The narratives constructed around collaborations with Western European partners by Hohenschönhausen show a similar pattern. On the one hand, there are Western Europeans involved in large-scale events, such as the Hohenschönhausen Forum discussed above, in which the narrative is of and about Eastern Europe. On the other hand, we see one-off visits to Hohenschönhausen to learn about its work or the GDR past, again without any direct link being drawn to the histories of the partner country – for example, the British Ambassador on 30 March 2011 or the head of the government of Liechtenstein on 30 January 2013.45 The picture looks rather different if we turn to the narratives constructed around collaboration with Western European partners by the Stiftung Aufarbeitung. Western European partners are brought into large events such as the Memorial Meetings analysed above. As we have seen, these events are presented as dealing with pan-European memory – that is, including Western European memory – and as bringing Western and Eastern partners together in order to do so. However, the lens through which that memory is seen tends to shift the focal point of that memory to the East. I have demonstrated how this works in the Memorial Meetings; we also see it in events such as the conference on ‘The Relationships between the SED and the Communist Parties in Western and Southern Europe from 1969 to 1989’, hosted by the Stiftung Aufarbeitung in April 2010.46 This conference considered communist parties

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in France, Italy, Spain, Britain and Greece; however, it considered them only in relationship to the SED. In the report on the May 2013 conference ‘What Was Communism? Ideology and Practice’, Ulrich Huemer notes that the aim was to consider ‘what explains the fascination with communist ideology and if and where it still holds power in Eastern and Western European societies’. However, according to Huemer, this was not reflected in the conference programme: ‘Western Europe was barely mentioned in the presentations, instead the conference limited itself to those countries in which communist parties held power for decades.’47 In addition to these larger-scale events – as with the BStU and Hohenschönhausen – we also see Western partners acting as hosts for events and exhibitions produced by or with the Stiftung Aufarbeitung about the GDR, but with no obvious connection to the hosting country (e.g. exhibitions in Amsterdam in 2009, Luxembourg in 2010 and London in 2012, or a conference in Bath in 2009). The dominance of ‘common histories’ as a narrative in collaborations with Western European partners thus needs to be relativized. While the Stiftung Aufarbeitung indicates a desire to integrate East with West and, in particular, to tell stories of how Western Europe was part of the story of Eastern Europe, in practice, the West is still frequently bracketed off or its stories told only in relation. The Stiftung Aufarbeitung appears to have shifted this position over the course of the eight years; this is seen especially in its increasing interest in the transnational and its turn in 2015/2016 to the history of the Cold War (seen in the clustering of this topic in activities in this region). Just three years after the ‘What Was Communism?’ event, the June 2016 workshop on the ‘East-West Conflict in European Communism’ included considerable discussion of Western European communist parties in their own right and not (only) in relation to those in the East.48

Common Histories, Liminality and the Disappearance of the West This detailed exploration of the different narratives produced in partnerships with actors located in different regions demonstrates how the network structure is interwoven with relationship culture. This allows us to begin to identify the ‘meaning structure’ of the networks under study. These meaning structures are made up of the intersection of the structural position of different actors, relationship cultures and the cultural blueprints from which these relationship cultures draw.49 Emirbayer and Goodwin note that such formations can both constrain and enable actors ‘by ordering their understandings of the social world and of themselves’.50 There is no single narrative that these institutions tell about their transnational collaborations, their approach to working through the past within it or their motivations for working with

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others. Instead, the regional location of the different actors, the activities underpinning the collaboration and the stories told about them are closely interwoven. The structure of the networks creates ‘zones of memory’, which allows these relationship cultures to emerge and, in turn, existing relationship cultures to underpin the structuring of the network. This chapter has explored the relationship cultures within three of these zones: post-socialist/ CEE, post-Soviet and Western European. Each collaborative relationship is unique; however, the qualitative analysis allows us to see patterns across the texts – patterns that reflect broader cultural blueprints about the relationship between East and West, and about who belongs to the core of Europe and who sits at its periphery. These statemandated institutions focused on memory of the GDR shift in their selfpositioning between East and West. Cooperations with partners located in the post-socialist/CEE region are based on activity types that foster collaboration and expert exchange, and are described in terms that emphasise a common history and a common goal to reassert the significance of that history for a European memory that – it is claimed – tends to exclude it. In this way, the Eastern actors, including the eastern German ones, are positioned as ‘subalterns’– they are on the periphery of European memory looking into a Western core. On the other hand, it is this ‘Eastern’ region of memory that is constructed as being at the core of the transnational collaboration of these three institutions. Post-socialist/CEE actors are presented as natural partners, ‘sister’ organisations with shared histories and common goals. Scholars have long noted the ‘historical orientalization’ of Central and Eastern Europe, which has positioned the region as on the margins or periphery of Europe and that, as Barbara Samaluk notes, is predicated on ‘colonial binary logic’.51 With reference to art history, Piotr Piotrowski describes Central and Eastern Europe as being constructed as a ‘close other’ or ‘notquite-other’: ‘outside the center but still within the same cultural frame of reference’.52 In the immediate post-Cold War period and in the context of Eastern enlargement of the EU, post-socialist countries were constructed in the Western imaginary as poor, underdeveloped and in need of Western assistance.53 In the immediate post-1989 period, this ‘Western assistance’ involved support from Germany in the fostering of transitional justice and democratic renewal, including through the work of the German political foundations.54 Ann L. Phillips notes that in the process, Western actors proceeded with a degree of ‘hubris’ and ‘were not receptive to the ideas and experiences that Central and Eastern Europeans brought to their own transition’.55 We no longer see this narrative of a unidirectional transfer of ideas from West to East in the relationship cultures of the BStU, Hohenschönhausen and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung with partners located in the post-socialist/CEE region. Instead, (eastern) Germany itself is positioned as part of Central and Eastern Europe,

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and the region as a whole as being at the centre of the network and aspiring to its ‘rightful’ place at the core of European history and memory. Post-Soviet actors occupy a liminal space in this discursive positioning. In some circumstances and for partners located in certain countries, they are constructed as part of this ‘Eastern’ region – notably for actors in those countries that are part of the EU. Partners located elsewhere in the post-Soviet region are positioned as latecomers, facing similar questions and issues to the post-socialist/CEE actors, but in need of support from them. This highlights the dynamic nature of core–periphery dynamics, as noted by Pamela Ballinger.56 Ballinger notes that the concept of the ‘East’ has not disappeared in the course of EU enlargement; however, it has shifted and been transformed.57 The analysis of the relationship cultures between the BStU, Hohenschönhausen and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung and post-Soviet partners indicate how the discourse of what Ballinger terms ‘easternism’58 is differentiated within the narratives produced by these institutions. We might also understand this using Attila Melegh’s concept of the ‘civilizational or East-West slope’, which, he argues, ‘provided the main cognitive mechanism for reorganizing international and socio-political regimes in the Eastern part of Europe’ after the Cold War. According to this model, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe were discursively positioned along a slope of ‘“developed to non-developed” status’.59 Those countries now within the EU are constructed in the texts produced by the BStU, Hohenschönhausen and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung as having ‘caught up’, as having moved up the ‘slope’, as equal partners in their approach to the past. On the other hand, those on the borders of the EU are narrated as being at the beginning of their transition to a mature memory culture, or, in the case of the Russian Federation in particular, as stuck in an authoritarianism that positions it as ‘other’. These countries remain in what Melegh describes as the ‘“in-between”, transitional categories, gray zones which are problematic, insecure and vague’.60 Here the German actor plays the role of supporter or teacher, rather than as co-learner. We can thus understand the post-Soviet region as occupying the first concentric ring around the network’s post-socialist/CEE core. Western Europe in contrast is both everywhere and nowhere. Western actors are involved in many of the collaborations in the post-socialist/CEE and post-Soviet regions; however, Western Europe as a historical referent itself is only rarely present (with some emerging exceptions around the Cold War). It might be argued that this is not surprising given the focus of these institutions on the history and memory of a regime located to the east of the Cold War divide. However, this neglects the interweaving of Western and Eastern European histories throughout the twentieth century and the role of the West in the political, social and cultural developments in the East.61 Moreover, as will be explored in the next chapter, these institutions do look

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beyond the borders of (Eastern) Europe in their search for collaborators. The BStU, Hohenschönhausen and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung work with partners in Colombia, Peru, the Republic of Korea and Egypt on topics related to pasts of those countries, but there is little evidence of them engaging in similar ways with actors in Belgium, France or the United Kingdom. That lack of engagement raises questions about the cultural blueprints underpinning the relationship cultures within these networks and the extent to which they are inflected by an epistemic coloniality that continues to view the West as the subject rather than the object of knowledge. Indeed, Melegh argues that his concept of the ‘East-West slope’ can be usefully connected to understandings of ‘coloniality’ and its creation of ‘hierarchical visions of social development’.62 Melegh notes that most authors writing about coloniality ascribe to Central and Eastern Europe a ‘separate category in the Eurocentric imaginary of the world’ and as a transitional space between the ‘“real” East and the “real” West’.63 In the narratives produced by our three central actors, the post-socialist/CEE region, alongside EU actors in the post-Soviet region, are positioned as fully developed, as at the top of the civilizational slope and as fully able to work through their own intertwined histories through collaboration with one another (and largely without the support of Western actors). Yet, these post-socialist actors simultaneously position themselves as in opposition to a hegemonic Western discourse that – in this narrative – marginalises memory of communist crimes. What we see in the narratives produced by the BStU, Hohenschönhausen and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung about post-socialist remembrance and East/West European conflict is therefore a battle between unequal equals: in this account, postsocialist/CEE actors are unequal to Western ones in terms of discursive power, but equal in terms of achievement of ‘memory standardisation’.64 However, post-Soviet actors outside of the EU remain in the transitional space identified by Melegh: ‘not quite’ equal, ‘not quite’ achieving memory standards, but en route to doing so. I will now explore how these narratives and the relationship cultures they define compare to those produced in collaboration with partners outside of Europe – that is, in regions located in the ‘“real” East’ in the European imaginary.

Narratives of a Shared Past • 117

Notes 1. Fuhse, ‘The Meaning Structure of Social Networks’, 60. 2. The BStU was coded as an ‘archive’ in the quantitative and qualitative analysis; however, it would also qualify as a state-funded institute. 3. BStU, ‘Das Revolutionsjahr 1989 in Osteuropa’. 4. The conference programme was provided in BStU, ‘Das Revolutionsjahr 1989’. 5. BStU, ‘Vorsitz des Europäischen Netzwerkes’. 6. Mink, ‘Is There a New Institutional Response?’, 1015. For a comparison of the Polish INR and the BStU in particular, see also Dakowska, ‘Aufarbeitung “made in Poland”’; Stola, ‘Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance’. 7. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, ‘5. Hohenschönhausen-Forum’. 8. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, ‘5. Hohenschönhausen-Forum’. 9. Behr et al., ‘Anti-communist Consensus’, 57. 10. Mälksoo, ‘The Memory Politics of Becoming European’; Beattie, ‘Learning from the Germans?’. 11. The full programme is provided in Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, ‘5. Hohenschönhausen-Forum’. 12. See, for example, Dujisin, ‘A History of Post-communist Remembrance’; Büttner and Delius, ‘World Culture’. 13. Jones, ‘Staging Battlefields’, 103–4. See also Fritz and Wezel, ‘Konkurrenz der Erinnerungen?’, 239–45; Mark, The Unfinished Revolution, 74–79; Subotić, ‘The Appropriation of Holocaust Memory’, 7–8. 14. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, 7. Tätigkeitsbericht, 83–84. 15. Behr et al., ‘Anti-communist Consensus’, 58. 16. Stiftung Aufarbeitung, ‘7. Ost-westeuropäisches Gedenkstättentreffen’. 17. Heidenreich and Liebold, ‘Tagungsbericht’. 18. Indeed, Faulenbach is the originator of the so-called ‘Faulenbach formula’, which finds expression in the Federal Memorial Concept and states that in remembering the history of the twentieth century in Germany, National Socialism should not be relativised, nor should the crimes of communism be trivialised. See Faulenbach, ‘Eine neue Konstellation?’, 43. 19. Heidenreich and Liebold, ‘Tagungsbericht’. 20. Heidenreich and Liebold, ‘Tagungsbericht’. 21. Stiftung Aufarbeitung, ‘8. Internationales Gedenkstättentreffen’. 22. Stirn, ‘Die europäische Nachkriegsentwicklung’. 23. Stiftung Aufarbeitung, ‘13. Ost-westeuropäisches Gedenkstättentreffen’. 24. Stiftung Aufarbeitung, ‘14. Ost-West-Europäisches Gedenkstättentreffen’. 25. BStU, ‘Datenschutz und das Recht auf Zugang’. 26. See European Exchange, ‘About Us’. 27. BStU, 13. Tätigkeitsbericht, 74. 28. BStU, Zehnter Tätigkeitsbericht, 100. 29. Profant, New Donors, 2. 30. Mark, ‘What Remains?’, 278; Mark, The Unfinished Revolution, 102–6. 31. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, 5. Tätigkeitsbericht, 27. 32. Fritz and Wezel, ‘Konkurrenz der Erinnerungen?’, 234. 33. Mark, The Unfinished Revolution, 114. 34. IICCMER, ‘About Us’. 35. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, 7. Tätigkeitsbericht, 83.

118 • Towards a Collaborative Memory 36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64.

Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, ‘Wachwechsel im Kreml’. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, ‘Wachwechsel im Kreml’. Tageszeitung, ‘Knabe denkt an Pussys’. The authors were Juri Andruchowytsch (Ukraine), Attila Bartis (Hungary), Marcel Beyer (Germany), Kurt Drawert (Germany), Georgi Gospodinov (Bulgaria), Oleg Jurjew (Russian Federation), Wojciech Kuczok (Poland), Dan Lungu (Romania), Herta Müller (Germany), Thomas Rosenlöcher (Germany), Kathrin Schmidt (Germany) and Jáchym Topol (Czech Republic). Stiftung Aufarbeitung, Tätigkeitsbericht 2009, 77. Stiftung Aufarbeitung, ‘Die Macht der Erinnerung’. See Stiftung Aufarbeitung, ‘Internationale Diplomaten zu Gast’. BStU, Zehnter Tätigkeitsbericht, 49. Robert Bosch Stiftung, ‘German-French Dialog for the Future’. See BStU, Zehnter Tätigkeitsbericht, 98. See Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, ‘Britischer Botschafter besucht Gedenkstätte’ and Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, ‘Liechtensteins Regierungschef besucht Gedenkstätte’. Jüngling, ‘Die Beziehungen zwischen der SED und den kommunistischen Parteien’. Huemer, ‘Was war der Kommunismus?’. Stiftung Aufarbeitung, ‘Internationaler Workshop’. Fuhse, ‘The Meaning Structure of Social Networks’, 51–73. Emirbayer and Goodwin, ‘Network Analysis’, 1440–41. Samaluk, ‘Migration, Consumption and Work’, 97. Piotrowski, ‘Toward a Horizontal History’, 52–53. Samaluk, ‘Migration, Consumption and Work’, 100 and 103. That this discourse of backwardness is not new is demonstrated by, for example, Larry Wolff’s analysis of the construction of Eastern Europe in the Enlightenment: Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe. Dakowska, ‘German Political Foundations’; Phillips, ‘Exporting Democracy’, 70–98; Welsh, ‘Beyond the National’. Phillips, ‘Exporting Democracy’, 76. Ballinger, ‘Whatever Happened to Eastern Europe?’, 59. Ballinger, ‘Recursive Easts’, 5. Ballinger, ‘Recursive Easts’. Melegh, On the East-West Slope, 1. Melegh, On the East-West Slope, 6. See, for example, Gille, ‘Is There a Global Postsocialist Condition?’. Melegh, On the East-West Slope, 24. Melegh, On the East-West Slope, 24. David, The Past Can’t Heal Us, 1.

Chapter 4

NARRATIVES OF THEIR PRESENT AND FUTURE East Asian and MENA Memory Zones

8 The previous chapter explored the relationship cultures of three memory zones: post-socialist/CEE, post-Soviet and Western European. It demonstrated that the BStU, Hohenschönhausen and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung (to varying degrees) position the post-socialist/CEE memory zone at the centre of the network and located (eastern) Germany as part of that centre. The post-Soviet zone occupies a liminal position; while those actors that are located in EU Member States tend to be incorporated into the centre, post-Soviet actors in countries outside of the EU are often othered as backward and in the process of developing mature memory cultures. In these contexts, the central German actor positions itself as mentor and supporter rather than as equal partner or ‘sister’. Western Europe, on the other hand, is everywhere and nowhere. Western European actors are frequently involved in cross-border cooperations with actors in diverse regions; however, Western Europe itself is only rarely present as a historical referent. The present chapter will expand this analysis to consider the two other memory zones in which there are significant collaborations: East Asia, and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). All three central institutions cooperate with a number of partners located in East Asia (as will be seen, principally the Republic of Korea and the People’s Republic of China). The BStU and Hohenschönhausen also engage in a number of partnerships in the MENA region, particularly in the period 2011–14 around the series of popular uprisings that became known as the ‘Arab Spring’. The chapter will proceed in a

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similar way to the previous one. For each region, matrix coding for ‘region’ against ‘narratives’, ‘actors’, ‘activities’ and ‘topics’ is used to indicate which codes cluster in the collaborations of each institution with partners in East Asia and MENA respectively. This is followed by a detailed narrative analysis of selected cooperations in that memory zone in order to explore how these plot elements are interwoven to suggest a specific relationship culture.

East Asia: Learning from the Germans and Looking to the Future Turning first to the East Asia memory zone, the results of the matrix coding (Table 4.1) indicate from the outset that there are clear differences in the relationship culture between the three central institutions and partners from this region, as compared with collaborators in post-socialist/CEE contexts. For the BStU and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung, the relationship culture in this region is principally narrated with the German actor in the position of teacher – either in its own right as an expert in the field or as a representative of a specifically German way of dealing with difficult pasts. Hohenschönhausen differs slightly in this regard. ‘Learning from’ narratives were also common in this region for this actor (albeit not more common than the average for the network); however, we see a particular clustering around a narrative of support for global human rights. In terms of actors, all three institutions collaborate more often than average with NGOs in this region, and the BStU and Hohenschönhausen also work with representatives of embassies. Alongside actors from these groups, Hohenschönhausen and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung cooperate with actors like themselves – that is, memorials and state-funded institutes respectively. The BStU is the only one of the three actors to collaborate to a significant extent (i.e. more often than the network average) with academics in this region. Official visits dominate in terms of type of activity undertaken with partners in East Asia; these sit alongside public events and arts-based activities for Hohenschönhausen. In terms of topic, we see a clear divide between the BStU and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung, where the focus is on reunification, and Hohenschönhausen, where a diversity of topics are covered, all of which appear to reflect the dominant narrative of support for global human rights, which would include those imprisoned for political reasons in contemporary authoritarian regimes. What we observe here is that there are two distinct types of relationship culture in this memory zone. In the collaborations organised by and through the BStU and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung, that relationship culture is based on a transfer of knowledge from the German partner to the collaborator in East Asia through official visits and on the topic of reunification. In cooperations organised by and through Hohenschönhausen, there is a second relationship

Narratives of Their Present and Future • 121

Table 4.1 Clustering of plot elements in the East Asia region East Asia

Narratives

Actors

Activities

Topics

Government Embassies Academics NGOs

- Official Visit

- Aufarbeitung - Reunification

BStU

- Learning from the BStU - Learning from the Germans

-

Hohenschönhausen

- Supporting Global Human Rights

- Embassies - NGOs - Memorials

- Official Visit - Arts-Based - Public Event

-

Stiftung Aufarbeitung

- Learning from the Stiftung - Learning from the Germans

- State-Funded Institutes - NGOs

- Official Visit

- Reunification

Dictatorship Human Rights Opposition Political Imprisonment

culture, which is based on a narrative that positions Hohenschönhausen as a supporter of human rights globally. This manifests itself through arts-based engagement and public events that address the themes of dictatorship, opposition and political imprisonment. What do these different narratives look like in the texts produced by the three central institutions? Reunification In order to understand these two distinct relationship cultures, we need to establish the particular context in which the East Asian partners are positioned. An analysis of egonet composition indicates that, for all three institutions, the dominant country location for partners from this region is the Republic of Korea (RoK). Over all time periods, 52.6% of the BStU’s partners from the East Asia region are located in the RoK. The same figure for Hohenschönhausen is 45.0% and for the Stiftung Aufarbeitung, it is a massive 92.5%. All of the activities coded with both ‘reunification’ and ‘East Asia’ included collaborative partners from the RoK: this comprised six activities organised by or with the BStU, seventeen by or with the Stiftung Aufarbeitung, and none by or with Hohenschönhausen (highlighting that the relationship culture narrated by this institution differs in significant ways). What does that mean for our understanding of the German actors’ approach to these partnerships? Since the country’s transition to democracy in the late 1980s, there has been significant controversy within the RoK about how various periods of its history should be remembered. Guy Podoler notes that this has included

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demands to work through the legacy of the dictatorship, the memory of Japanese colonialism (in particular, the sexual slavery of Korean women and girls) and the relationship with Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, also known as North Korea). However, the country remains divided between those who would pursue a policy of retributive justice, those who prefer an approach based on historical reconciliation and those who view the past in a more favourable light. Podoler describes the first two groups as ‘progressives’ and the latter as ‘conservatives’.1 The ‘conservatives’ are more bellicose in their criticism of the dictatorship in the DPRK. Indeed, attitudes in the RoK to the DPRK and reunification are far from uniform. While the government’s ultimate goal remains unification with the North, South Koreans (especially younger citizens) perceive that the divide between North and South is increasing over time, in part as a result of differing political and values systems between the two countries and a decreasing perception of ethnic affiliation. Many in the RoK are also concerned about the economic cost of a future unification and do not view inter-Korean relations as the chief priority for the country.2 When the German actors engage in transnational collaborations with actors from the RoK, they therefore enter complex and contested historical-political terrain. How do they describe this engagement? I will turn first to the collaborative activities of the BStU with partners located in RoK. In the 2009–10 activity report, we learn the following: The experiences of German reunification play an increasingly important role for many visitor groups from South Korea. For example, in April 2009 a group of officials and political experts – who spent several weeks in Germany, guided by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation – informed themselves about aspects of the reunification of Germany. The topic, ‘State Security Service and the SED’ was dealt with in a discussion in the Berlin Information and Documentation Centre lasting several hours.3

We also learn that this was followed by a visit in May and July 2010 by five further groups from the RoK, ‘who informed themselves about fundamental questions relating to German reunification, the politics of convergence, the constitution of a shared way of life after the Peaceful Revolution, the themes of reconciliation and Aufarbeitung, but also the administrative workings of the BStU’.4 We might note here the involvement of a German paragovernmental actor, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES) – a political foundation linked to the Social Democratic Party of Germany. The FES does not describe remembering the history of dictatorships and authoritarian regimes as part of its mission; instead, we can understand its involvement here as part of its work in the region to promote ‘a social and participative democracy … and

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to contribute to the easing of tensions and cooperation on the Korean peninsula’.5 This is not about the Korean past, but about drawing lessons from the German past for the Korean future. The BStU’s 2015–16 activity report puts the comparison between the German past and Korean future more explicitly: ‘Delegations from South Korea came more frequently than average because of the particular situation of the division of Korea, especially in order to inform themselves about comparisons with German division and the networking within the Eastern Bloc.’6 The narrative here is not one of a common history in the sense of a synchronous shared past, but of a common structural experience – that is, division into capitalist and communist parts. The united Germany has, in this narrative, overcome this division and now has something to teach the RoK, which is constructed as the Asian counterpart of the former West Germany. By implication, the GDR is presented as the equivalent of the oppressive DPRK. We do not get a sense in these narratives that the path to unification is debated in RoK, or that the German ‘model’ is seen by some as inappropriate for the Korean context, due, in part, to the perceived absence of social and economic unity.7 We see a similar narrative produced around the collaborations of the Stiftung Aufarbeitung with partners in the RoK. One significant event with partners from this country was a conference on 19 October 2009 entitled: ‘Insurmountable? On Dealing with Division in Korea’. The narration of this event in the publicity material is interesting in the way that it both creates connections with Germany and yet ‘others’ the experience of the partners. The event is first positioned in the context of the celebrations marking the twentieth anniversary of 1989, in which ‘in Germany and Europe numerous events remember the collapse of the communist dictatorships and the overcoming of German and European division’. However, the narration goes on to position the discussion as focused not on a comparison, but solely on the ongoing state of division in Korea – ‘venturing a glance beyond the European nose’. The discussants were all Korea experts, albeit in some cases representing German organisations. The panel included: Kim Young-Il, head of the human rights NGO ‘People for Successful Corean Reunification’ (PSCORE); You Jae Lee of the University of Bonn; Hartmut Koschyk, Member of Parliament for the CDU, Vice Chair of the Board of the Stiftung Aufarbeitung and Chair of the German-Korean Parliamentary Society; and Bernhard Seliger of the Hanns Seidel Foundation (HSS), who has travelled repeatedly to the DPRK.8 Once again, we see the involvement of a German political foundation, this time connected to the Christian Social Union. Like the FES, the HSS does not state its mission in the RoK as being related to the past; rather, it is related to ‘reintegration of North Korea into international cooperation’. More explicitly, the Foundation describes its support for the ‘process of reconciliation on

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the Korean peninsula’ and ‘sharing of German experiences of division and unification and promotion of discussion about the possible implications for Korea’.9 The HSS explicitly references the German past; however, the focus is very much on the future of the RoK. Nonetheless, the detailed report on the Stiftung Aufarbeitung event, written by Andreas Stirn, makes it clear that parallels between Germany and Korea were at the centre of the discussion. Koschyk is reported as emphasising ‘that we can turn to the experiences of Germany with its divided past when we are dealing with the division of Korea’. Stirn goes on to note that the discussion turned to the potential for change in the DPRK, brought about by the contact with Western and Chinese visitors to the country. He adds: ‘many in the audience may have found themselves reminded by these words of the new “Ostpolitik” of the social-liberal coalition under Willy Brandt with their strategy of “Change through Convergence”’, thereby equating the GDR with the DPRK. Stirn notes that similar comparisons and equivalences were drawn in discussions of aid provided to the DPRK and the concerns among the population of the RoK regarding the possible financial cost of reunification. Again, Stirn does not indicate that this included substantial critique of the German approach other than an oblique reference to the unfulfilled promise of ‘blooming landscapes’.10 This narrative of Korean collaborators learning from the German past as they look towards a possible future united (capitalist) Korea runs throughout cooperations across the eight years explored in this study. This includes, in particular, official visits by Korean delegations to the Stiftung Aufarbeitung. We learn of a: ‘longstanding deep interest in German unification and Aufarbeitung in South Korea’ (activity report for 2011);11 that it is ‘above all the pre-history and the process of revolution and unification that are interesting for the many representatives of government ministries, universities and other governmental and nongovernmental institutions in South Korea’ (activity report for 2016).12 The Stiftung Aufarbeitung reports that South Korean officials visited the organisation to learn about specific aspects of reunification and working through the past (e.g. two delegations of experts in 2012 and a further delegation in 2013, interested in legal factors).13 In 2015, the Stiftung Aufarbeitung co-produced an exhibition with the Museum of Contemporary History in Seoul; the exhibition ‘was dedicated to questions of German and Korean division and presented the process of German unification’.14 Podoler notes that the Seoul Museum of Contemporary History has been the locus of fierce contests between conservative and progressive actors in the RoK regarding the ‘proper way’ to tell the nation’s history and has faced criticism in particular for its perceived emphasis on the memory of economic progress over that of democratisation. In this context, Podolar describes the approach of the Museum as ‘present-centred’.15

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Human Rights We see a distinct difference in the types of activity and the narratives constructed around them in collaborations involving Hohenschönhausen and East Asian collaborators in this period. While ‘Official Visits’ are the most common form of collaboration (although not more common than the network average) – as they are for the BStU and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung – ‘Arts-Based’ and ‘Public Events’ also cluster in activities between Hohenschönhausen and its partners from this memory zone. In terms of narratives, ‘Learning from the Self ’ is most common (but below the network average for this narrative); however, unlike the BStU and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung, this is very closely followed by a narrative of ‘Supporting Global Human Rights’. As indicated above, the RoK is also a significant location for collaborations involving Hohenschönhausen; however, collaborations with partners in the RoK do not focus on the topic of reunification. A closer look at a selection of the collaborations can show how these differences impact on the ways in which these relationships are narrated by Hohenschönhausen. There are four activities involving partners from RoK. Delegates from the RoK were among the seventy diplomats and ambassadors from thirty-seven different countries who visited the Memorial in January 2013 (see Chapter 2): the speech given by Knabe on this occasion suggests that the Memorial is part of an international network of countries working through dictatorships (‘we have established relations to countries all over the world’) and that Germany serves as a model: After the end of a dictatorial regime the problems are very similar all over the world. The questions arising are: How can you punish those responsible for torture, murdering and corruption? How can you organize the personal change in the public administration? How can you compensate the victims – and how can you inform the society about the past? In Germany we have a lot of experiences in these issues, which we offer to share with you.16

The Memorial also notes visits from Korean journalists in 2015–16 (without providing any further information).17 The focus of the remaining two activities is the human rights abuses suffered by people in the DPRK rather than the prospect of reunification. In September 2016, Knabe travelled to RoK to speak at a conference in Seoul that explored ‘the human rights abuses in the GDR and in North Korea’. He also visited the Museum of Contemporary History and the Memorial in the Seodaemun Prison, and was interviewed by North Korea Reform Radio (a dissident radio broadcaster based in Seoul). The topic of reunification is not mentioned in Hohenschönhausen’s report on the visit.18 In June 2011, Hohenschönhausen showed an exhibition with the title ‘A People behind Bars: The Misery of the Work Camps in North

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Korea’. A panel discussion was organised to coincide with the exhibition; the panel included a representative of Amnesty International, the South Korean journalist Ha Tae-Keung, the former camp inmate Kim Hye-Sook, and Jörn Rohde, head of the East Asia division of the German Foreign Office (GFO).19 We once again see the involvement here of a German political actor whose stated remit does not explicitly include memory of the past, instead focusing on building democracy and supporting human rights in the present and – specifically in the context of the RoK and the DPRK – working towards a future moment of reunification of the country. The GFO describes its common interests with the RoK as including ‘the strengthening of democracy and human rights’ and notes that: Especially the common experience of national division unites Germany and Korea. Experts from politics and academia have been exchanging expert opinion on questions relating to unification annually since 2011 in the GermanKorean Consultation Body and are developing suggestions for an inner-Korean process of rapprochement.20

With reference to the DPRK, the GFO notes that Germany’s aim is to ‘encourage North Korea to enter into a dialogue with the international community about the human rights abuses in the country’.21 As the title of the exhibition displayed at Hohenschönhausen and the composition of the panel would suggest, the focus of this activity is very much on current human rights abuses in North Korea rather than on the past: as with the other collaborations with partners located on the Korean peninsula, the possibility of reunification is not thematised. The narrative around the exhibition works to ‘other’ the Korean experience to a significant degree, describing the horror of the camps as ‘unimaginable’ and noting that the majority of the German population know little about this reality. However, in one of the texts produced by the Memorial about the collaboration, parallels are more explicitly drawn between the GDR and the DPRK: [The exhibition] showed – for the first time in Berlin – drawings and exhibits of released or escaped prisoners from North Korea. In an, in some cases, shocking way, the images offered insight into life and death in the communist work camps … Kim Hye-Sook, an escaped camp inmate, then reported about her 28-year imprisonment in a forced labour camp. In the ensuing discussion, former SED victims asked Ms Kim amongst other things how she would react if she – as happens in Germany – encountered in a reunited Korea her unpunished torturers on the street.22

What we see here is an interesting interweaving of the North Korean present with the German past as it impacts on the German present. In a narrative sleight of hand, the experiences of those persecuted by the SED are equated

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with those currently in the work camps of the DPRK: the GDR in this account is indisputably totalitarian. That equation of the GDR and DPRK is then used to critique the transitional politics of Germany, which – it is suggested – has failed to prosecute adequately the perpetrators of human rights abuse. This is a narrative that was common in tours within the Memorial and in particular in Knabe’s publication Die Täter sind unter uns (The Perpetrators Are among Us).23 Instead of learning from the German case, this narrative suggests that Germany might learn from the experiences of those suffering under dictatorships in the present. Alongside the RoK, Hohenschönhausen also collaborates to a significant extent with partners located in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan: actors in these locations make up 30% of collaborators in the East Asia region. Hohenschönhausen’s cooperations in this region are positioned within a complex and longstanding battle over the sovereignty of Taiwan, transitional justice and memory with regard to historical human rights abuses under Taiwanese authoritarianism (known as the ‘White Terror’), and debate about ongoing human rights abuses in the PRC.24 In many cases, the structure of and narrative about the cooperations with Hohenschönhausen is very similar to that seen in the partnerships of the BStU and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung with actors in the RoK: official visits by representatives of organisations located in East Asia keen – in these accounts – to learn from the German partner. For example, in the 2009–10 activity report, we learn that on 23 April 2010, ‘the managers of the Jingmei Museum – a former prison in Taipei in which members of the opposition and other critics of the Taiwanese military dictatorship were imprisoned – visited [Hohenschönhausen] in order to learn about the Memorial’s concept for communicating its history’.25 Jingmei is a state-supported site in Taiwan and in 2011 was merged with the prison on Green Island to form the National Museum of Human Rights.26 On the other hand, Hohenschönhausen also engaged in more publicfacing events reflecting on authoritarianism in the PRC. For example, in April 2012, the Memorial organised a reading by the exiled Chinese author Bei Ling. Bei Ling was a prominent member of Beijing’s literary underground, who in 1989 coauthored an article entitled ‘Suggestions for Reform’ with the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo (alongside other Chinese intellectuals in exile) in response to the Tiananmen Square massacre – after which his passport was revoked and he began his life in exile in the United States. Bei Ling returned to the PRC in 1993 (having had his passport returned) and in 2000 was jailed for ‘illegally publishing’ his literary journal Tendency in the country. Following international outcry, he was released and exiled to the United States. He is cofounder of the publishing house Tendency, based in Taiwan, which focuses on writing by exiled writers, including those banned in the PRC.27 The reading organised by Hohenschönhausen is narrated as

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follows: ‘China – the economic power – repeatedly shows its true face as a communist, totalitarian regime. Something that the writer and publisher Bei Ling also experienced.’28 By referring to China in the same terms as used by the Memorial for the GDR (‘communist’, ‘totalitarian’), this text explains the event through reference to a shared concern to address the injustices of such regimes: one historical and one still in existence. The critique of Germany implied in the collaboration with partners in the RoK is to some extent echoed in this narrative. The Memorial notes that the exclusion of Bei Ling from the London and Frankfurt Book Fairs at the behest of the PRC was also discussed at the event: ‘according to Bei Ling, both Fairs worked closely with the Chinese censorship agencies in the planning of the events’.29 The reference to ‘censorship’ in particular suggests a complicity on the part of these Western actors with the limitations on freedom of speech in the PRC. We see a similar narration in the Memorial’s protest against the Chinese regime’s imprisonment of Bei Ling’s coauthor Liu Xiaobo, who was denied the right to collect the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to him on 10 December 2010 – his chair at the award ceremony remained symbolically empty. Liu Xiaobo was sentenced in 2009 to eleven years in prison for ‘inciting subversion’ following his involvement in a manifesto calling for political reform, known as ‘Charta 08’.30 On 9 December 2010, Hohenschönhausen organised a podium discussion on the occasion of Human Rights Day (10 December) with the title ‘What Does the Chinese Opposition Want? The Nobel Peace Prize Winner Liu Xiaobo and the Democracy Movement in China’. The panel was made up of Bei Ling (who had written a biography about Liu Xiaobo), Wang Wanxing (who had been imprisoned in psychiatric custody for thirteen years), the Member of Parliament for the Green Party Viola von Cramon, and the Czech dissident Jiří Vančura. What is particularly interesting here is that the connection with the European context is implied not through the German experience, but through the Czech one. This is seen in the presence of Vančura on the panel and by the comment in the Memorial’s description of the event that: ‘Liu Xiaobo was one of the principal authors of the Charta 08, in which over 300 intellectuals demanded a democratisation of China, with reference to the Czechoslovakian Charta 77.’31 The implication is that the shared Central and Eastern European experience – of which eastern Germany is part – provides a model for democratisation processes elsewhere. The narration of this event also positions the Memorial as part of a global network of activists campaigning for an end to authoritarian rule and against human rights abuses. This is seen even more clearly in the following year, on the anniversary of Liu Xiaobo’s award and on Human Rights Day. On 10 December 2011, the Memorial placed an empty chair outside the Chinese Embassy in Berlin as part of a transnational protest:

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On 10 December 2011, the International Day of Human Rights, colleagues from the [Memorial] Foundation took part in a further action for Liu Xiaobo. At the initiative of the Supporters [Förderverein] of the Memorial, on this day human rights activists in Rome, Brussels, Washington and Berlin placed symbolically empty chairs in front of Chinese embassies and similar institutions.32

In this way, as with the narration of Knabe’s support for Pussy Riot in postSoviet Russia, the Memorial is constructed rhetorically as a (central) part of a global community of activists; however, this is done through the description of events that do not involve any actual in-person cooperation. This connection is made explicit in the narration of a further event in support of Liu Xiaobo – a reading from his work on 20 March 2011, part of a transnational event in which 115 institutions from 73 different countries participated. Here, the narration of the reading makes a clear link between the past represented by the Memorial and the Chinese present: ‘in order to make the experiences of the SED dictatorship productive for the present, the Memorial also made reference to contemporary human rights abuses’.33 The description of the event to mark Human Rights Day in December 2016, which also focused on Liu Xiaobo, once again references the parallels between Charta 08 and Charta 77. However, the panel of experts put together to discuss Liu Xiaobo’s ‘fate’ on this occasion was made up exclusively of China experts, whose expertise would once again seem to put the focus on the present and the issue of human rights. The speakers were: Liao Yiwu, a writer living in exile in Germany since 2011; Tienchi Martin-Liao, the Chair of the Chinese PEN; Dirk Pleiter, a China expert from Amnesty International; and Ruth Kirchner, the ARD Radio Correspondent in Beijing.34 In sum, the cooperations of the three central institutions with multiple partners in the East Asia region indicate that the narratives produced around these cooperations are inflected not only by the regional location of the partners (and the perception of the German partner about that region), but also by the contemporary politics of the countries in which the partners are positioned. In the case of partners located in both the RoK and the PRC, there is a sense of ‘learning from’ the German past and, indeed, from the central institution. However, in the case of the RoK, the non-German and German partners are constructed as fighting on the same side of a global effort to support human rights: the learning on the part of the Korean partners is for an imagined future time, in which the dictatorship in the North is overcome. In this regard, the DPRK is ‘othered’ and the RoK is presented as a collaborator seeking entry into a community of human rights activists whose activism is based on a Western norm. In the case of Hohenschönhausen’s collaborations with Chinese actors, on the other hand, the German partner is narrated as part of that international community, but Chinese partners are only included within it to the extent that they are in opposition to the Chinese regime.

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There is no recognition in the texts produced by Hohenschönhausen that different conceptualisations of human rights based on Chinese traditions might be at work in the activism of actors from that country.35 The learning in this context is learning for the present: it is the activism itself that is imagined to play a role in overcoming the authoritarian regime.

Doing It Right and Learning from the Germans in MENA The final region with which we see significant collaborative activity by more than one of the three central institutions is the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The Stiftung Aufarbeitung does not work with partners from this region to any significant extent, so the discussion here will focus on the BStU and Hohenschönhausen. Table 4.2 indicates the outcomes of the matrix coding for this region against narratives, actors, activities and topics: here we see considerable differences to the patterns observed in the matrix coding for the intra-European cooperations in particular. However, the relationship cultures of the two institutions with partners in this region are very similar. The narrative that clusters in this region for both institutions is ‘Learning from the Germans’; this ‘learning’ takes places primarily with the involvement of government representatives, embassies and NGOs. The topic of discussion tends to be working through the past and democratic transition. Official visits are a common activity in this region for both partners, although not more common than the network average in the case of Hohenschönhausen. The latter also tends to work through official collaborations, exhibitions and research projects – that is, activities that we might expect to generate narratives of more sustained and collaborative action. As indicated by the analyses of egonet composition in Chapter 2, the cooperations between Hohenschönhausen and the BStU with partners in the MENA region took place principally in the 2011–14 period. This locates them in the context of the wave of protest and demonstrations in the region, which became known as the ‘Arab Spring’. The events of the ‘Arab Spring’ were sparked by the self-immolation of Tarek al-Tayeb Mohamed Bouazizi in the Tunisian town of Sid Bouzid in December 2010 following the abusive confiscation of his scales and vegetables by the police. Bouazizi’s death was followed by demonstrations and protests in his hometown that focused on mass unemployment, poverty and economic inequality. The demonstrations spread across Tunisia and – to varying degrees – beyond its borders to other countries in the region: Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Algeria, Iraq, Mauritania, Morocco, Sudan and the Gulf States. Jason Brownlee, Tarek Masoud and Andrew Reynolds note that ‘in the first thirty months

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Table 4.2 Clustering of plot elements in the MENA region MENA

Narratives

Actors

Activities

Topics

BStU

- Learning from the Germans

- Government - Embassies - NGOs

- Official Visit

- Aufarbeitung - Democratic Transition - Revolution

Hohenschönhausen

- Learning from the Germans

- Government - Embassies - NGOs

- Official Cooperation - Exhibition - Research Project

- Aufarbeitung - Democratic Transition

after December 2010, approximately 90,000 people in sixteen countries died in Arab Spring related violence, but autocrats only fell in four’.36 Those four countries were Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen: in all except Tunisia, this democratic flourishing was short-lived. Despite similarities in terms of regime type and the manner of protest, there is a great deal of variation across the region as regards the success (or otherwise) of the demonstrations and their impact on the structures of power.37 The majority of the cross-border collaborations of the BStU and Hohenschönhausen in this period (2011–14) and region are with actors located in Tunisia (38% for the BStU and 67% for Hohenschönhausen) and Egypt (24% for the BStU and 17% for Hohenschönhausen). The demonstrations in Tunisia successfully overthrew the authoritarian and repressive regime of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and, as noted above, resulted in a transition (in the period under study) to more democratic structures, although economic equality did not follow.38 Tunisian society remains divided between ultraconservative and liberal groups, which has sometimes resulted in or been exacerbated by violent incidents.39 The transition to democracy in Tunisia incorporated (albeit highly politicised) transitional justice, truth-telling and national reconciliation as part of that process,40 and Tunisian officials expressly looked to the international community for transitional justice frameworks and models.41 In Egypt, the instigation of free and fair elections led to the rise of the Freedom and Justice Party, linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, under President Mohamed Morsi. Morsi was overthrown in a military coup in July 2013 and President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi was installed in June 2014: el-Sisi’s rule has seen a return to authoritarian practices and hopes for democratic reform have since dwindled.42 Notably, the volatile political situation severely impacted on the work of German political foundations in the country: the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS) was forced to close its offices in Cairo in December 2011 and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation relocated its office from Cairo to

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Amman in 2016.43 Nascent transitional justice in Egypt was described by Michael Wahid Hanna in 2014 as ‘politicized and limited’ and ‘employed not to further the legitimate aims of transitional justice, such as the rule of law, accountability, truth-telling and national reconciliation, but to advance narrow interests and often as a means to inhibit systemic reform’.44 What does the involvement of the BStU and Hohenschönhausen within this complex political context look like in practice? How are the relationship cultures with partners in the MENA region described by the central German actors? The 2011–12 activity report describes the beginnings of the BStU’s work in the MENA region as follows: Shortly after the unrest in the Middle East, nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) got in touch with the authority [i.e. the BStU]. Requests came in particular from Egypt. In the first instance, Egyptian civil rights initiatives were provided with English-language informational materials via nongovernmental organisations. The Foreign Office also got in touch with the BStU in the context of the task force ‘Transformation Partnership’. The experiences that Germany and this authority had gathered since 1989 were to be passed on to the Egyptian public and to state institutions. Eventually it emerged that an experienced member of the BStU would meet multipliers and activists on the ground in order to report on ways of making archives accessible and on experiences from the time of the Peaceful Revolution and the upheavals in Germany. The Konrad Adenauer Foundation was responsible for the organisational aspects in Cairo.45

The collaboration is seen to be initiated by a desire on the part of the nonGerman actor to learn from the experience of the BStU following the revolutionary movements of the ‘Arab Spring’ and with a view to gaining support for postconflict transition. Moreover, this presumed expertise is expanded into a national expertise. The ‘upheavals’ (Umbruch) of 1989 are now presented as a pan-German history that can be passed on to the non-German actor with the support of the German state and political structures, represented by the GFO and the KAS, who act as intermediaries. As seen in its involvement in the Korean peninsula, the GFO’s remit in the MENA region does not officially involve historical memory. The body’s cooperation with the MENA region through the ‘Transformation Partnership’ was instead defined in July 2020 as focusing on the ‘promotion of democracy and civil society, human rights, guidance on constitutional and judicial matters, administrative reforms, equal opportunities for women, the media, scholarships and research collaboration’.46 Similarly, and in line with the other political foundations, the KAS does not explicitly include historical memory or transitional justice as part of its activities in this region; rather, the focus is on promoting ‘struc-

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tural changes’ by ‘empowering social actors and institutions that advocate change’. The KAS describes itself as being guided in this by the ‘objectives of German foreign, security and development policy as well as its Christian Democratic mission statement characterized by the values of freedom, justice and solidarity’.47 The collaboration with the actors in this region is not presented by the BStU as an exchange; knowledge, in this narrative, only travels in one direction. The MENA actors are in turn ill-defined, described only by their function (NGOs or civil rights activists), and we learn nothing of the specific aims of their activities or potential political affiliation. This framing is dominant throughout the texts relating to the BStU’s collaborations with partners from the region throughout the 2011–14 period. The BStU reports that in May 2011, Egyptian civil rights activists visited the BStU to learn about the legal framework for dealing with the Stasi files: ‘after the storming of the headquarters of the Egyptian secret service, interest has grown in the Arab world for the work of the Stasi Records Authority’.48 We might note the slippage here between ‘Egypt’ and the whole of the ‘Arab world’, indicating again a lack of differentiation between the partners from this region on the part of the German actor. The BStU reports that in December 2011, a senior employee of the authority travelled to Tunisia to speak at a conference initiated by the Society for International Cooperation (GIZ) entitled ‘Transitional Justice: From a Civil Initiative to Political Commitment’. The BStU employee’s role is described as ‘reporting on the German experiences’ rather than as an exchange of expertise.49 On 16 May 2012, the Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Files met with the Director and other representatives of (undefined) ‘Tunisian culture institutes, who were interested in German strategies for dealing with the past in general and memorial culture in particular’.50 Again, we see the shift from the specific expertise of the BStU to the idea of a German model underpinned by German experience. Similarly, the 2013–14 activity report notes that the BStU received visitors from the Tunisian Ministry for Human Rights and Transitional Justice – a body that Christopher Lamont and Hannah Pannwitz describe as seeking in particular to ‘build on international experiences of transition’ and normative frameworks of transitional justice, at the expense of localised demands.51 The BStU describes the representatives of the Ministry as ‘interested in the work of the agency and the whole memorial landscape in Germany’.52 Interestingly, in some texts, this narrative of learning from the Germans merges into a narrative of learning from Central and Eastern Europe more broadly. For example, the Director of the BStU received a group of activists from Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen on 10 May 2011. The visit was organised by the FES, further highlighting the involvement of (western) German political actors in this region. The activity report narrates:

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Additionally, participants discussed the costs of working through the past. Using the example of Central and South-Eastern Europe, we were able to show that working through the past is possible also with smaller institutions, as long as the independence of the files [Aktenhoheit] is secured.53

Here, Central and Eastern Europe is positioned as having collective knowledge that can be transferred to the non-European partners. Germany is both included in and separated from that region. It has a shared approach, but, it is implied, larger and better-funded institutions. Despite the wider range of activities deployed in cooperations with partners located in the MENA region, we see a very similar narrative in the texts produced by Hohenschönhausen about its collaborations with actors in this region, albeit with some key variations. A particular focus for the institution was an ongoing collaboration with multiple partners located in Tunisia, including close cooperation with particular organisations and visits to the Memorial by a number of Tunisian officials (see Chapters 5 and 6). The beginning of this collaboration is narrated as follows: Due to the collapse of the dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt the interest in this region in working through the past increased rapidly. Germany was a sought-after example in the search for experiences and role models. With the Federal Foreign Minister Dr Guido Westerwelle as intermediary, the Director of the Memorial Dr Hubertus Knabe was invited to Tunisia as early as three months after the fall of the Ben-Ali dictatorship.54

The work with Tunisian partners is described as being ‘developed in close coordination with the Foreign Office’ and as ‘of significance also for other states who have been able to cast off their dictatorships’.55 As in the cooperations involving the BStU, we see the position of the GFO as a broker in this collaboration, including an indication that this actor has a role in shaping the form that the cooperation takes. On 6–8 December 2012, Hohenschönhausen coorganised a conference in Tunisia with the Tunisian civil rights organisation Le Labo’ democratique, entitled ‘Against Forgetting – No Future without Memory’ (‘Contre l’oubli – Keine Zukunft ohne Erinnerung’). There is some sense of an exchange of ideas in the text produced by Hohenschönhausen about this event; the conference is described as having the aim of ‘introducing the discourse around dealing with the SED dictatorship and discussing the Tunisian ideas, concepts and perspectives around dealing with the Ben-Ali dictatorship’.56 Nonetheless, the dominant narrative is of the Tunisians learning from the German approach in general, and Hohenschönhausen and its then director in particular. We might also note that even here, the discourse around memory of the GDR is ‘introduced’ (vorgestellt), suggesting something fixed. In contrast, the approach to the Tunisian past is to be ‘discussed’ (diskutiert), implying that these perspectives and ideas can still be shaped.

Narratives of Their Present and Future • 135

It is through this cooperation with Tunisian partners that we see the broader range of activities deployed in Hohenschönhausen’s collaborations with actors in this region. The partnership, developed through the two-year GFO-funded project Contre l’oubli, with the non-profit organisation Association for the Promotion of Democracy in Tunisia (Verein zur Förderung der Demokratie in Tunesien) and the beier+wellach company, included a conference, a documentary film, the recording of interviews and video testimony by political prisoners, touring exhibitions and the production of a Handbook for Working through Dictatorship, published by Sven Felix Kellerhoff in 2013.57 The project is referred to in the texts produced by the Memorial in terms that suggest a unidirectional passing on of expertise rather than an exchange of ideas. For example, we learn of a four-day visit by Tunisian experts in 2012 in which the Memorial ‘acted in an advisory capacity’. The press report continues: The consultations are part of a new project, in which Germany’s experiences in working through the past are to be passed onto state and societal institutions in Tunisia. ‘We would like the Arab Spring to have long-term stability. For that to happen, working through the overthrown dictatorships is indispensable. That’s why we are getting involved here’, said the Director of the Memorial Hubertus Knabe.58

Here we see that it is not (only) the expertise of Hohenschönhausen and its Director that – according to this narrative – drives the cooperation; rather, it is Hohenschönhausen’s position as a representative of German memorial cultures. This is emphasised further in the kinds of support offered, which go beyond the immediate remit of the Memorial: for example, on a visit to Tunisia in October 2011, Knabe is reported as offering to assist the Tunisian government in the drafting of a law to protect the secret police files.59 The reference to secret police files and to political prisoners implicitly makes connections to the GDR past. Knabe makes this connection explicit on a trip to Tunisia in April 2011, organised by the HSS, during which he called for the creation of a memorial on the site of the former prison of the Ministry for the Interior – a site that would be comparable to Hohenschönhausen itself. Knabe is reported as stating: ‘It upsets me that we Germans happily holidayed in a country in which human rights were trampled upon to this extent. What my Tunisian conversation partners have told me, reminds me in many respects of the GDR.’60 This is a similar narrative to that produced on cooperations with partners in the RoK. The narrator draws links between the German past and the very recent history of the partner country, and in so doing constructs a narrative in which the partner country can learn from the German experience of dealing with that past in order to address issues in its present. What is not suggested to any significant extent in these texts is that the German partner in turn acquires new ideas for addressing German history from the Tunisian

136 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

partner, or that Germany history and Tunisian history are interconnected more than merely rhetorically. It is also interesting in this context that Tunisia is framed as a holiday destination for Germans and that it would have been the task of the German holiday-makers to address the human rights abuses rather than the Tunisians themselves.61 One exception to this absence of learning on the part of the German actor is a comment by Knabe reportedly made in reference to the visit to Tunisia in April 2011. In an article for the Tagesspiegel, Andrea Nüsse notes that alongside explaining how German experiences might be useful for Tunisa, Knabe commented: ‘in contrast to what happened in Germany, the Tunisians continued their revolution beyond the collapse of the ruling elite and banned the former ruling party’.62 The suggestion of a ‘completed’ revolution in Tunisia resonates with the concept of an ‘unfinished revolution’ in Central and Eastern Europe,63 and clearly implies a need to ban the SED successor parties in order to achieve full social renewal. In this respect, this is not a recognition that Knabe or the Memorial has learnt from the Tunisian partner; rather, the different approach of the collaborators is used to criticise the Left Party in Germany and to advocate for their exclusion from post-unification politics. It is worth noting that this suggests an incomplete knowledge of the political context in post-Arab Spring Tunisia, which has also been described using the concept of ‘unfinished revolutions’.64 Ibrahim Fraihat explains how the debates in Tunisia on transitional justice and lustration resulted in a ‘robust transitional justice law’, which nonetheless only applied to those who ‘were involved in violations and corruption’. While some advocated in the immediate aftermath of the uprisings for the ban from politics of all members of the former administration, Tunisia ultimately rejected such far-reaching lustration. Although it is the case that members of the Democratic Constitutional Rally (the ruling party overthrown in the uprisings) were excluded from the 2011 parliamentary elections, this did not equate to a policy of complete exclusion, as former party members reappeared on the political scene and regrouped in a number of new party formations. As in Germany, former regime officials were held accountable (or not) for specific actions rather than prior membership of a particular group.65

Conclusion: Learning from the Past of the Centre for the Present of the Periphery The analysis in this chapter and the previous chapter has demonstrated that the relationship cultures – as perceived and presented by the central German institution – vary across the different memory zones identified quantitatively in Chapter 2. If we take the BStU, Hohenschönhausen and the Stiftung

Narratives of Their Present and Future • 137

Aufarbeitung – located in the post-socialist/CEE region – as the centre of our network, we see an increasing narrative of difference and othering from core to periphery. The post-socialist/CEE memory zone is occupied by actors presented as partners with shared histories and experiences, working together to have those histories recognised within a dominant memory culture often portrayed as indifferent to them. Collaborations with many actors in the post-Soviet zone, particularly those within the EU, are narrated in a similar way; however, those partners in countries outside of Europe or on its margins are positioned as ‘catching up’ or – in the case of Russia – as ‘other’. In this way, the post-Soviet zone occupies a semi-periphery in terms of the stories that are told by the central institution about its partnerships. The periphery is occupied by actors located in non-European contexts: East Asia and MENA. Here, official visits dominate in terms of activity type, and governmental actors and NGOs are the most common partners. The German actor coded as ‘eastern’ – that is, the BStU, Hohenschönhausen or the Stiftung Aufarbeitung – shifts its self-positioning in the stories it tells about collaborations in these memory zones: the BStU, Hohenschönhausen and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung are no longer Eastern subalterns challenging a Western European hegemon as unequal equals; instead, they are part of this ‘Western norm’ of remembrance. These institutions become exemplars of a Western mode of memory – epitomised in Germany’s approach to its National Socialist and state socialist dictatorships – from which these non-European partners are expected to (want to) learn, for their futures and for their present. The topics for discussion are no longer focused on historical memory; rather, the emphasis is on democratic transition and national renewal. In essence, the BStU, Hohenschönhausen and – to a lesser extent – the Stiftung Aufarbeitung modify their self-representation from that of agents of memory to agents of transitional justice. In this way, the non-European partners are constructed as deficient and the transformative effect of the relationship as happening only on one side of the partnership. It is here that we see the impact of epistemic coloniality at its strongest; the relationship culture as perceived by the German partner is one in which the non-European actor is presumed to be playing catch-up with a European norm of remembrance deemed universal. There is no sense in this narrative that the German and non-European partner share historical experiences (beyond the general experience of dictatorship and division); European colonialism is entirely missing from these networks as a historical referent. Indeed, as was shown in Chapter 3, Western Europe as a region of memory is largely absent from these texts.66 If Western Europe does have a history in these narratives, it is almost always the history of National Socialism and the Second World War, and, more specifically, how that relates to post-socialist/ CEE and post-Soviet memories of the same period. There is no space in these

138 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

collaborations for exploring older histories of human right abuses committed by (Western) European countries in the context of imperial expansion, even when the cooperations are with actors located in postcolonial contexts. In this context, it is noteworthy that cooperations in these regions more frequently involve – or are instigated, managed and funded by – powerful German political actors, such as the German Foreign Office, or the political foundations, which have democratisation as their remit, rather than historical memory per se. These are the brokers in these memory zones, the actors with high betweenness centrality who are in a position of power in terms of having access to and the ability to influence narratives from multiple contexts. These actors are not as prominent in intra-European collaborations, where other actors occupy these connective positions (with some exceptions, as we will see). Who are the brokers in these networks? What role do they play in the construction of relationship cultures and meaning structures? What are their aims and objectives? How are they involved in the ‘export’ of German memory? The next two chapters explore these questions in detail by zooming in on those actors identified in Chapter 2 as having a high betweenness centrality. In this way, they complete our understanding of the meaning structures of the networks created by and through the transnational collaborations of the BStU, Hohenschönhausen and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung by examining those actors that connect and interconnect the regional memory zones.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

Podoler, ‘The Past under the Shadow’. Jiyoon et al., ‘South Korean Attitudes’. BStU, Zehnter Tätigkeitsbericht, 101–2. BStU, Zehnter Tätigkeitsbericht, 102. Friedrich Ebert Foundation, ‘Referat Asien und Pazifik’. BStU, 13. Tätigkeitsbericht, 75. Niederhafner, ‘The Challenges of Reunification’. Stiftung Aufarbeitung, ‘Unüberwindbar?’ Hanns Seidel Foundation, ‘Korea’. Stiftung Aufarbeitung, ‘Unüberwindbar?’. Event Report by Andreas Stirn. Stiftung Aufarbeitung, Tätigkeitsbericht 2011, 82. Stiftung Aufarbeitung, Tätigkeitsbericht 2016, 77. Stiftung Aufarbeitung, Tätigkeitsbericht 2012, 123; Stiftung Aufarbeitung, Tätigkeitsbericht 2013, 124. 14. Stiftung Aufarbeitung, Tätigkeitsbericht 2015, 74. 15. Podoler, ‘The Past under the Shadow’, 435. 16. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, ‘Speech of Dr. Hubertus Knabe’. Speech originally given in English.

Narratives of Their Present and Future • 139 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, 8. Tätigkeitsbericht, 87. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, 8. Tätigkeitsbericht, 100. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, ‘Ein Volk hinter Gittern’. German Foreign Office, ‘Deutschland und Südkorea’. German Foreign Office, ‘Deutschland und Korea’. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, 6. Tätigkeitsbericht, 40. Knabe, Die Täter sind unter uns. See Dittmer, ‘Introduction’; Stolojan, ‘Transitional Justice and Collective Memory’; Biddulph and Rosenzweig, Handbook on Human Rights in China. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, 5. Tätigkeitsbericht, 14. Stolojan, ‘Transitional Justice and Collective Memory’, 34. International Publishers Association, ‘Freedom to Publish’. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, ‘Lesung mit Bei Ling’. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, 6. Tätigkeitsbericht, 50. Human Rights Watch, ‘Liu Xiaobo’. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, 5. Tätigkeitsbericht, 36–37. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, 6. Tätigkeitsbericht, 44. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, 6. Tätigkeitsbericht, 44. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, ‘Gedenkstätte erinnert an Verfolgung in China’. For an overview of debates around human rights and, especially, Confucianism, see Angle, ‘Human Rights and Chinese Tradition’. Brownlee, Masoud and Reynolds, The Arab Spring, 10. Brownlee, Masoud and Reynolds, The Arab Spring, 11. For a good account of the trajectory of the Arab Spring, see also Bayat, Revolution without Revolutionaries, 8–12. Serrano, ‘Tunisia’s Decade of Democracy’. Fraihat, Unfinished Revolutions, 78. Fraihat, Unfinished Revolutions, 74. Lamont and Pannwitz, ‘Transitional Justice as Elite Justice?’, 280. Brownlee, Masoud and Reynolds, The Arab Spring, 4. Kubbara, ‘International Actors’. Hanna, ‘Egypt and the Struggle’, 172. BStU, Elfter Tätigkeitsbericht, 102. German Foreign Office, ‘Middle East and Maghreb’. Note: this website has been updated since the time of writing – this version was last retrieved 13 July 2020. See also Lettau and Knoblich, ‘Foreign Cultural Policy’, 92; Ratka, ‘Germany and the Arab Spring’, 64. KAS, ‘Naher Osten und Nordafrika’. BStU, ‘BStU-Jahresrückblick 2011’. BStU, Elfter Tätigkeitsbericht, 103. BStU, Elfter Tätigkeitsbericht, 103. Lamont and Pannwitz, ‘Transitional Justice as Elite Justice?’, 280. BStU, Zwölfter Tätigkeitsbericht, 93. BStU, Elfter Tätigkeitsbericht, 102. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, 6. Tätigkeitsbericht, 81. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, 6. Tätigkeitsbericht, 10. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, ‘Deutsch-tunesische Konferenz in Tunis’. Contre l’oubli Facebook page; beier+wellach, ‘Contre l’oubli’; Gedenkstätte BerlinHohenschönhausen,‘Contre l’oubli’; Kellerhoff, Aus der Geschichte lernen. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, ‘Gedenkstätte unterstützt Vergangenheitsbewältigung in Tunesien’. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, ‘Direktor besucht Gefängnis in Tunis’.

140 • Towards a Collaborative Memory 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, ‘Direktor regt Gedenkstätte in Tunesien an’. Many thanks to Maria Roca Lizarazu for pointing this out to me. Nüsse, ‘Von Hohenschönhausen nach Tunis’. See especially Mark, The Unfinished Revolution. Fraihat, Unfinished Revolutions. See Fraihat, Unfinished Revolutions, 170–76; Lamont and Pannwitz, ‘Transitional Justice as Elite Justice?’. 66. A text search of all documents in Nvivo for the term ‘kolonial*’ returned zero results.

Chapter 5

CONNECTING MEMORY Transzonal Brokers

8 The preceding chapters have allowed us to build up a picture of the meaning structure of the networks studied in this book from the perspective of the German actors. Chapter 2 highlighted the network structure and its division into memory zones, and Chapters 3 and 4 allowed us to begin building a picture of what the relationship cultures in those zones look like, how the central actors divide up the world through their collaborations and the stories they tell about them, and how that relates to the cultural blueprints underpinning East/West and North/South relationships. Figure 5.1 illustrates the meaning structure of the networks, highlighting the four memory zones and the dominant relationship cultures within them. The memory zones are not completely discrete; they are connected by actors who act as bridges between them and are therefore in a position of potential influence. The actors functioning as brokers between memory zones have access to narratives and resources emerging from different parts of the network. Brokers exist not only between memory zones, but also within them. Actors involved in multiple cooperations with actors from the same region are also in a position of influence, but that influence is restricted to that memory zone: we might therefore distinguish between transzonal and intrazonal brokers. The analysis of homophily in Chapter 2 indicated that where German governmental and paragovernmental actors coded as ‘western’ most often function as transzonal bridges, actors positioned in the post-socialist/CEE, post-Soviet and MENA zones are more likely to function

142 • Towards a Collaborative Memory


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intrazonally. As they connect otherwise unconnected actors, both types of broker are likely to have a higher than average betweenness centrality (BC), as described in Chapter 2: these central actors are listed in Table 5.1, divided according to regional location and institution. The actors italicised in Table 5.1 are those that will form the basis of my analysis in this chapter. We can see that the most between central actors are all located within one of the four memory zones analysed in Chapters 3 and 4, or are German actors coded as ‘western’. As there are only a few post-Soviet and Southeast

Connecting Memory • 143

Table 5.1 Actors with a high BC according to region (all networks) Region

Actors BStU: Institute of National Remembrance (INR, Warsaw), Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes (ISTR, Prague), Czech government, Polish government, Croatian government, Memorial, Geschichtsforum 1989/2009

‘Eastern’ (post-socialist/ CEE and post-Soviet)

Hohenschönhausen: Herta Müller, Albanian government, Estonian Embassy, Vilnius University, German Embassy Albania Stiftung Aufarbeitung: Collegium Hungaricum, BStU, Berlin Wall Foundation, Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile (IICCMER), Memorial, Humboldt University, European Network Remembrance and Solidarity (ENRS) BStU: German government, German Foreign Office (GFO), FriedrichEbert Foundation (FES)

(western) German

Hohenschönhausen: German government, GFO, Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS), Free University, Robert Bosch Foundation, Literaturhaus Berlin, Käthe Kollwitz Museum, Deutschlandfunk, Deutsche Kinematek, Topograpy of Terror Stiftung Aufarbeitung: German government, KAS, Deutsche Gesellschaft e.V., Evangelische Akademie, Centre for Contemporary History (ZZF), Hannah Arendt Institute, Institute of Contemporary History (IfZ, Munich), University of Hamburg, Boysen BStU: Tunisian civil rights (CR) activists, Egyptian CR activists

MENA

Hohenschönhausen: Tunisian government, Tunisian CR activists, Contre l’oubli

European actors, I have combined these three groups into an ‘Eastern’ zone. As will be seen in Chapter 6, when it comes to central actors in the networks, these nodes are positioned in a similar way, including a degree of liminality for those partners on the margins of the EU. None of the most between central actors are located in the East Asian region, which highlights the tendency of collaborations with partners in this region to be bilateral between the central German actor and the East Asian collaborator. The purpose of this chapter and the next one is to explore the role and function of these actors in the networks in more detail. In this chapter, I explore the transzonal brokers – that is, the German actors that connect multiple memory zones. I zoom in on selected actors in specific, representative, collaborative activities in order to examine in detail their approach, the

144 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

topics they address, who they connect with whom and what stories they tell about these cooperations. My focus in this chapter is on the German governmental or paragovernmental actors as those are the ones with the most institutional power. The aim of this chapter and the next one – focusing on the non-German intrazonal brokers – is to fill in the detail of this last aspect of the meaning structures of the networks studied in this book and to shift the focus from the perspective of the BStU, Hohenschönhausen and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung to these other key figures.

The German Foreign Office (the BStU and Hohenschönhausen) Among the German governmental and paragovernmental actors that are central to the networks produced by the collaborative activity of the BStU and Hohenschönhausen, two actors appear in the list of the top five most between central actors more than once for both institutions: the GFO and German government representatives. In this section, I will focus on the first of these. The GFO had a high BC in the BStU networks in 2011–12 and 2015–16 and in the Hohenschönhausen networks in 2013–14 and 2015–16. As was noted in Chapter 4, the interest of the GFO in its partnerships with the BStU and Hohenschönhausen does not tend to lie in memory and memoralisation per se; rather, the emphasis is on the promotion of democracy and support for human rights. In cooperations with the GFO, the BStU and Hohenschönhausen shift their self-presentation from agents of historical memory to agents of transitional justice. What does this look like in detail and how does the GFO’s position as broker impact on our reading of these transnational collaborations? Figures 5.2 and 5.3 visualise the GFO’s egonets in the BStU and Hohenschönhausen networks in the two periods during which it was a central actor. For both institutions, we see two quite distinct patterns of engagement. In the BStU network in 2011–12 and the Hohenschönhausen network in 2013– 14, the GFO’s egonet is highly connected, with numerous links between the alters, indicating that the GFO was involved in a number of different cooperations that incorporated several participants. In the case of the BStU, these participants are nonetheless located exclusively in the MENA region or are German actors, principally other German governmental or paragovernmental organisations. In other words, the GFO is in a position of brokerage between the BStU and actors in the MENA memory zone in partnerships that also frequently involve other actors like itself. In the Hohenschönhausen network in 2013–14, the GFO is connected to a wide range of regional actors: multiregional, post-socialist, post-Soviet, MENA, Southeast and East Asian, Caribbean, Central and South American, North American, and Central and South

Connecting Memory • 145

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African. Nonetheless, we can see that a large part of this diversity comes from a single collaboration: the visit of a large number of diplomats from a range of different countries to Hohenschönhausen in January 2013 (see Chapter 2): if that cluster is removed, the remaining actors are predominantly German actors coded as ‘western’, multiregional or from the MENA region. In contrast, in the BStU network in 2015–16, the GFO is involved in collaborations with actors from multiple regions – Scandinavia, East Asia, post-Soviet, Southern Europe, Western Europe, Southeast Europe and North America – but, with some exceptions, these alters do not tend to be connected to one another. This indicates that the GFO is playing a different brokerage function, that is, between the BStU and single actors in regions across

146 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

Figure 5.3 The GFO egonet within the Hohenschönhausen networks 2013–14 and 2015–16. © Sara Jones

the world. Similarly, in the Hohenschönhausen network in the same period, the GFO has ties to partners in diverse contexts. However, there are far fewer actors (only four in total) and only a single tie between the alters. In sum, in the period in which the BStU and Hohenschönhausen were most involved in projects and partnerships within the post-‘Arab Spring’ world, the GFO facilitated the inclusion of the BStU and Hohenschönhausen in dense networks with partners from that region (alongside other German actors). At other times, the GFO’s brokerage role tended to foster less dense networks, but with a wider range of partners. In this way, the priorities of the GFO structure – at least in part – the collaborative networks of the central organisations.

Connecting Memory • 147

The detail of the BStU and Hohenschönhausen collaborations involving the GFO can highlight this further. Turning first to the BStU, in 2011–12, these include the cooperations fostered by the GFO through the ‘Transformation Partnership’, which – as described in Chapter 4 – focused on the promotion of democracy and human rights in the region following the events of the ‘Arab Spring’. Edmund Ratka describes the ‘Transformation Partnership’ as part of an explicit embracing of the protest movements in the Arab World and as evidence of Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle having ‘found his topic’ and seizing ‘the opportunity to present Germany as a herald of transformation in the Southern Mediterranean’.1 Part of this was, as Meike Lettau and Caroline Knoblich note, the availability of funds for semi-autonomous organisations ‘to develop and implement new culture-specific programs aiming at encouraging and strengthening democratic practices and actors’.2 The GFO is, as we have seen, ascribed the role of initiator in the narrative that the BStU attaches to these collaborations: it makes contact with the BStU in order to involve it in the ‘Transformation Partnership’ in a series of events over the course of the two-year period. In April 2012, the GFO arranged for activists from Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Mauritania to visit the BStU as one part of a programme of activities under the title ‘Democracy and the Role of Women in the Maghreb’.3 Representatives from the BStU were invited by the GFO to contribute to an education programme for Tunisian diplomats, focusing on ‘processes of transformation and knowledge gained from the German process of working through the past’.4 In December 2012, the GFO supported a panel discussion about current events in Tunisia and Egypt, organised by the GermanArab Society (Deutsch-Arabische Gesellschaft), and including Roland Jahn, Ruprecht Polenz (Member of the Bundestag for the CDU and Chair of the Committee on Foreign Affairs), former Justice Minister Herta DäublerGmelin (Social Democratic Party, SPD) and ‘ambassadors and ministers from both countries’ (i.e. Tunisia and Egypt). The panel discussion was broadcast by Deutschlandfunk.5 It is striking here that the German participants are named in the BStU’s narrative and those from the MENA region are not, adding to the sense that the Tunisian and Egyptian actors lack agency. The GFO’s role as coordinator appears to be reflected in the topics that are the focus of these cooperations; that is, there is an emphasis on democratic transition following revolution, including questions around women’s rights, which – as the BStU narrative notes – is not one of its ‘classical themes’.6 In collaborations in 2015–16, the GFO continued to play the role of broker between the BStU and other alters. However, here we see a wider geographical scope. The 2015–16 activity report notes that the BStU participated in a programme initiated by the GFO and the Europäische Akademie entitled ‘Academy for Good Governance’, in which civil servants and lawyers

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from Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova participated (the narrative of ‘learning from the Germans’ is particularly striking here).7 The GFO is also described as arranging for the BStU to participate in a number of ‘discussion circles’ (Gesprächsrunden) as part of its programme for diplomats, resulting in visits from the Croatian Foreign Minister, the US, Swedish, Spanish and Swiss Ambassadors, and Archbishop Eterović, the Vatican Ambassador.8 November 2016 also saw a GFO-organised visit of a Russian delegation to the BStU, including representatives of Memorial and other (unnamed) civil society activists.9 We see a similar pattern of engagement in the Hohenschönhausen networks. Alongside the visit of the large group of diplomats described above, the GFO facilitated the visit of the Tunisian Minister President Hamadi Jebali and Tunisian Ambassador Elyes Ghariani to the Memorial in November 2013. During the visit, they were introduced to the collaborative project Contre l’oubli, which was financed by the GFO and supported by the design company beier+wellach.10 The project – which is discussed in more detail in Chapter 6 – resulted in 2013 in two German-Arabic exhibitions with the titles ‘Life in the Dictatorship: Political Persecution in Tunisia’ and ‘Working through Dictatorial Pasts in Germany’, and also brought the Memorial into collaboration with a number of other partners, as can be seen in Figure 5.3. The GFO was also engaged in partnerships between Hohenschönhausen and actors outside of the MENA region. In December 2013, the Memorial coorganised an event in collaboration with Amnesty International and Deutsche Kinemathek that involved a screening of Ekaterina Kibalchich’s 2011 documentary Belarussian Dream and a panel discussion including Carola Söller (Amnesty International), Christian Mihr (Reporters without Borders), Aliaksandr Atroshchankau (‘European Belarus’) and Mathias Roth (Country Representative for Belarus in the GFO).11 Here it was Hohenschönhausen that acted as facilitator, bringing the GFO into the cooperation; however, in common with the MENA activities, this was prompted by specific geopolitical events, namely the attacks on activists, journalists and lawyers in Belarus. In 2015–16, there were four collaborations involving the GFO in the Hohenschönhausen networks. The first was a visit in April 2015, coordinated by the GFO, of twenty diplomats to Hohenschönhausen; however, these are not further defined in the texts, so have not been included in the data.12 The second event was a visit in November, also coordinated by the GFO, of a delegation from Ethiopia, including the Attorney General and the Deputy Chief of Police.13 In 2015, the GFO supported a longer-term project relating to memorialisation in Albania and involving beier+wellach.14 Finally, at the start of 2015, the GFO asked Hohenschönhausen to produce a funding application for a German-Colombian cooperation with the aim of working through the recent history of violence in Colombia. The Memorial developed a plan

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with the title ‘That’s Enough! – Dealing with the Past as Conflict Prevention’, which foresaw a collaboration with the Centre of Memory, Peace and Reconciliation (Centro de Memoria, Paz y Reconciliación) in Bogotá to produce a mobile memorial and a website. However, the Memorial reports that the project could not be realised because the GFO withdrew support after the appointment of Tom Koenigs (Green Party) to the position of Special Envoy of the GFO for the Colombian peace process.15 This history of a failed collaboration highlights the political nature of the GFO’s role as a broker. In short, the GFO acts principally as an intrazonal broker and that brokerage role is reflected in the cooperations in which it is involved. These are not about historical memory and shared pasts for the most part; rather, they are about democracy promotion (including transitional justice) and/or training and informing non-German officials in and about German modes of governance. Particularly in the case of efforts towards democracy promotion and its intertwining with memory and memorialisation, we can explore this through the lens of ‘moral remembrance’ and its presumed role in supporting democratic transition. As Lea David describes: the global memorialisation agenda … is closely connected with, and gains its power and legitimacy from, the transnational human rights regime. Approaches such as peacebuilding, transitional justice and conflict transformation, management, resolution and reconciliation are, broadly speaking, offspring of the presumption … that the implementation of human rights values and norms is a condition for the proper memorialisation of atrocities.16

In the human rights regime (or ‘ideology’, in David’s terms),17 the protection of human rights is taken to be an essential part of democratic transition, and memorialisation of past abuses is assumed to be crucial to the protection of human rights, including a component of retributive or restorative justice (or both). The GFO, which in its transnational engagement might be considered a part of the ‘human rights infrastructures of the world polity’,18 integrates the BStU and Hohenschönhausen into the global human rights regime and in so doing contributes to defining the collaborative activity in those memory zones within which the GFO performs this brokering role. As I have noted, the BStU and Hohenschönhausen become agents of transitional justice rather than agents of historical memory, and in so doing they position themselves in terms of the ‘cosmopolitan imperatives’ of which – David notes – transitional justice is reflective and to which it contributes.19 If we understand the BStU and Hohenschönhausen’s activities in the MENA region between 2011 and 2014 in particular as part of the promotion of democracy, brokered and supported by the GFO, we can subject their activities to some of the same critiques as have been applied to other engagements for democracy in the region. Sheila Carapico notes that democracy

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promotion – often conducted through ‘epistemic communities’ of ‘knowledgeable specialists’20 – ‘produces and reproduces codes and categories of information and disseminates professional practices’.21 She notes that the logic of Western assistance in transnational democracy promotion is that ‘good people look to great powers for expertise, support, and inspiration’, but that this narrative ‘does not travel well, or translate well’.22 We might note the similarity between this narrative and that produced by both the BStU and Hohenschönhausen with reference to their engagement in the MENA region, which in turn reflect that produced by the GFO. The GFO describes the ‘Transformation Partnerships’ as a route to supporting ‘civil society movements on behalf of democracy, development, human rights, equality and equal opportunities for women and men and for basic political freedoms’.23 Carapico contends that during the events of the ‘Arab Spring’, popular slogans in Arabic did not, in fact, ‘vocalize demands for “democracy” so much as regime change, social justice, popular self-determination, constraints on policy brutality, and decent standards of living’.24 Ibrahim Fraihat argues that following the ‘Arab Spring’, the people of those countries affected ‘are not certain whether they want Western-style democracy, something akin to Turkey’s Islamic model, their own version of democracy, or perhaps not democracy at all’.25 Indeed, democracy promotion through cultural diplomacy – as seen in the ‘Transformation Partnerships’ – is not an entirely (or even principally) altruistic endeavour; rather, it is bound up with efforts to promote German (economic) interests and influence.26 We might therefore ask to what extent this advice and guidance based on the ‘German model’ of memory standards was welcomed by those on the ground. The texts produced by the BStU and Hohenschönhausen cannot (or rather do not) tell us this. However, we see an indication in a Deutschlandfunk article by Cornelius Wüllenkemper that there may have been some friction. Wüllenkemper notes the involvement of both the BStU and Hohenschönhausen in ‘exporting’ the German model of memory to countries in the Global South, including Tunisia. He quotes Knabe (with reference to Hohenschönhausen’s involvement in the ‘Transformation Partnership’) as having commented: ‘Overall I would state that on balance the Transformation Partnership in the area of working through the past has proceeded somewhat haltingly and should have produced more concrete outcomes.’ Knabe cites the example of the memorial that he proposed be set up – following the model of Hohenschönhausen – in the remand prison of the Ministry for the Interior. Instead of following his advice to retain the site as it had been found – ensuring its ‘authenticity’ in Knabe’s terms – the Ministry for the Interior had invited school pupils to redecorate the walls with flowers and suns as a form of ‘rededication’ of the site. Knabe describes himself as ‘shocked’ by this action and as having written to the Tunisian Minister for the Interior to explain the importance of ‘authenticity of place’ for the long-term ‘believ-

Connecting Memory • 151

ability’. As Wüllenkemper notes, the German model for opening the Stasi files was also ultimately deemed inappropriate for the Tunisian context due to cost and the continuity of the operations of the security services.27 I will explore this potential friction between the ‘German model’ and the aims and actions of Tunisian civil rights activists further in my analysis in Chapter 6 of the position of some of these actors in the BStU and Hohenschönhausen networks, and the texts that they produce about and around these cooperations.

Political Foundations The Friedrich Ebert Foundation and the BStU The position of the GFO as initiator in the BStU network also brings the German political foundations into the cooperations: in the case of the ‘Transformation Partnership’, it is the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS) – affiliated to the Christian Democratic Party. Ratka notes that the political foundations are among the ‘preferred policy instruments’ of the GFO, including in its implementation of the ‘Transformation Partnerships’ in the MENA region.28 Indeed, one of the strengths of the political foundations is seen to be their ability to create a space for networks of local activists to emerge.29 The KAS was the initial on-the-ground organiser in the BStU’s participation in the ‘Transformation Partnership’ in Egypt. As was noted in Chapter 4, the KAS was later forced to close its offices in Cairo: some observers on the ground felt this was the result of misjudgements by the Foundation regarding the political situation and the desire to do ‘too much too soon’.30 The analysis of betweenness centrality in Chapter 2 reveals that another political foundation also played a central role in the networks produced by and through the collaborative activity of the BStU in 2011–12: the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES – affiliated to the Social Democratic Party). The FES will form the focus of my analysis here: Figure 5.4 shows the Foundation’s egonet in the BStU network in this period. We can see that the FES’s connections were principally with MENA actors, with the exception of a single tie to Korean government representatives. The shape of the egonet indicates one larger collaboration involving civil rights activists from different MENA countries and two small-scale partnerships, brokering a connection between the BStU and one other actor. The larger collaboration is that mentioned in Chapter 4 in which a group of activists (bloggers, journalists, political scientists and members of opposition parties) from Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen visited the BStU, at the invitation of the FES in May 2011.31 The FES also brokered a connection with Iranian journalists, opposition activists, women’s rights activists and spiritual leaders living in exile, who visited the BStU in November 2011 to speak about ‘dealing with

152 • Towards a Collaborative Memory






 













Figure 5.4 The FES egonet in the BStU network 2011–12. © Sara Jones

the past, dictatorship, and about the work of the BStU’.32 Finally, the FES organised for a delegation from the Ministry for Reunification of the Republic of Korea to visit the BStU in April 2011 to speak about the recurring subject of Korean reunification in the future and German experiences in the past.33 Ola Ashraf Kubbara notes that the FES was also active in Egypt following the ‘Arab Spring’, but was able to judge and adapt to the emerging political environment, ensuring its survival. Its aim, according to a FES representatives cited in Kubbara, was not to bring about democracy (as that was the job of the Egyptian people), but to ‘bring different people together, people with dissimilar mentalities and backgrounds, and facilitate dialogue, discussions and communication among them’.34 The brokerage activities of this political foundation in this period can be seen as part of that ambition, not only in the MENA region, but also for other parts of the world with open questions relating to democracy and human rights. However, we should note that all of these cooperations are narrated by the BStU through the framework of a unidirectional transfer of knowledge that centres on the idea of ‘learning from the Germans’. The Konrad Adenauer Foundation and Hohenschönhausen The second political foundation that plays a central role in the networks studied here is the KAS. The KAS appears as an actor in the collaborations of the BStU in the MENA region, as noted above. It is also one of the top five most

Connecting Memory • 153

between central actors in the Hohenschönhausen networks in 2009–10 and 2013–14. It might be anticipated (in the latter period at least) that this central position relates to Hohenschönhausen’s activity in the MENA region, given the role of the political foundations in the ‘Transformation Partnerships’. However, as Figure 5.5 below shows, this is not the case. Instead, the KAS is, in both periods, connected almost exclusively to Western European (mostly German), post-socialist/CEE and post-Soviet actors. The only exception is a link in 2013–14 to the German-Colombia Forum. Knabe was invited to the Forum, at the recommendation of then Federal President Joachim Gauck, to speak at an event entitled ‘Reconciliation, Responsibility and Memory: German Experiences and Colombian Perspectives’. The narrative here of exporting knowledge and experience from the Global North to the Global South is embedded in the very title of the event and its division between ‘experience’ (past) and ‘perspective’ (future). Nonetheless, the report on the event produced by the KAS suggests a negotiation between different positions on issues around reconciliation, memorialisation and transitional justice.35 The KAS’s central position in the Hohenschönhausen network in 2009–10 was in fact afforded by its support for the Hohenschönhausen Forum in both years. The Forum has been an annual joint venture between Hohenschönhausen and the KAS since 2008 and is essentially a conference combining one or two keynote talks with a series of panels.36 In 2009, the Forum took place under the title ‘Emerging from the Ruins – Is There a Risk of a Renaissance of Communism?’. One keynote talk was given by Stéphane Courtois (author of the controversial Black Book of Communism) on the subject of the ‘causes of dictatorship denial [Diktaturverklärung] in Europe’. The second was provided by Wolfgang Böhmer, Minister President of Sachsen-Anhalt (CDU), who ‘emphasised how misleading the dream of social equality is’. Other speakers included Patrick Moreau (French National Centre for Scientific Research, CNRS), Vlastimil Havlík (Masaryk University), Gert Pickel (University of Leipzig), Werner Große (Mayor of Werder an der Havel), the authors Sonja Margolina and Richard Wagner, and the journalist Richard Herzinger.37 In 2010, the Forum had the title ‘Incomparable? National Socialism and Communism in the Twentieth Century’. The keynote talk was given by Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga, former President of Latvia. The panels were dedicated to: ‘Ideology – Communist and National Socialist Political Imaginaries in Comparison’; ‘Practice – Communist and National Socialist Methods of Rule in Comparison’ (broadcast by Deutschlandfunk); and ‘Legacy – Dealing with National Socialism and Communism in the Present’. Speakers included theologian Ehrhart Neubert, Eckhard Jesse (Technical University, Chemnitz), Klaus Schroeder (Free University), Barbara Zehpfennig (Passau University), Jörg Baberowski (Humboldt University), Horst Möller (IfZ, Munich), Karol Sauerland (Jan Evangelist Purkyně University) and Valters Nollendorfs

154 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

Figure 5.5 The KAS egonets in the Hohenschönhausen networks 2009–10 and 2013–14. © Sara Jones

(Museum of the Occupation, Latvia). The subjects discussed, the titles of the panels and the composition of the speakers indicate that these events were underpinned by a politics of memory that draws on a model of totalitarianism in which National Socialism and communism can and should be compared, and that views the far left as an equal (if not more serious) danger to liberal democracy as the radical right.38 The KAS’s involvement in these events as coorganiser suggests a support for this narrative of European memory on the part of the political foundation. We can explore this further through an analysis of the KAS’s write-up of the Fora recorded in its online archive. With reference to the 2009 Forum, the KAS titled its write-up ‘The Utopia of Equality’, echoing the claim attributed

Connecting Memory • 155

to Wolfgang Böhmer by Hohenschönhausen; notably, Böhmer is an (eastern German) member of the political party to which the KAS is affiliated.39 The report itself is essentially a summary of the different positions taken by a handful of the speakers: the use of quoted speech and the subjunctive ensures that these positions are attributed to those individuals rather than to the KAS. Nonetheless, the selection of which talks to highlight places the emphasis on the continued dangers of ‘left ideology’ (Knabe), the need for comparisons with National Socialism (Courtois), the need to strengthen democratic institutions (Große and Margolina) and the hypocrisy of millionaires who call themselves ‘comrades’ (Wagner). Similarly, the KAS report on the 2010 meeting is entitled ‘Race Struggle Next to Class Struggle’, implicitly answering the question of comparability posed in the title of the event itself. Indeed, the report makes clear that the event confirmed the justifiability of comparing the two regimes. The author of the KAS text notes that panellists pointed towards key differences, including in the aims of the respective ideologies. Nonetheless, this difference is relativized through a quotation from Schroeder: ‘Even someone who murders for a supposedly good cause, as my students often justify the crimes of communism, is still a murderer, and even one person dying for an ideology is one too many.’ Schroeder heads up the Research Centre SED-State (Forschungsverbund SED-Staat) at the Free University, which works predominantly within totalitarian theory as its principal framework. Moreover, he was nominated by the CDU to sit on the 2010 ‘Commission of Enquiry into Working through the Post-Wende Period’ in Brandenburg, showing his closeness to the political position of that party. Situating the discussion explicitly within debates around European memory, the KAS report cites Nollendorfs as arguing that the crimes of communism are often trivialised in the West, where the emphasis is placed on National Socialism; however, in those countries that experienced Stalinism, ‘the Holocaust has lower priority than the Gulag’.40 In 2013–14, alongside the collaboration with the German-Colombian Forum described above, the KAS’s high betweenness centrality is given by its support for an event in September 2014 with the title: ‘Poland under Two Dictatorships: From the Hitler-Stalin Pact, through the Warsaw Uprising to the Fall of Communism’. The speakers at this podium discussion were, alongside Knabe, Andreas Nachama (Topography of Terror), Andrzej Paczkowski (Polish Academy of Sciences and Collegium Civitas in Warsaw) and Paweł Ukielski (Warsaw Rising Museum). The event was held in the KAS’s Academy in Berlin. The title of this event implicitly suggests a comparison (and even a continuity) between National Socialism and communism – an impression that is reinforced by the description of the event that draws a neat line between 1939 and 1989, and asks what Poland’s ‘double experience of total-

156 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

itarianism’ means for the historical image of Europe. 41 There is no report on the event from the KAS’s perspective; nonetheless, we can see that in this period too, the KAS supported Hohenschönhausen in activities in Germany that take a particular – centre-right – position on national and European memory politics. In essence, the narrative constructed by the KAS aligns with that produced by Hohenschönhausen. Indeed, we can argue that the Foundation’s rhetoric is ‘Eastern’, in the sense that it positions itself on the side of a group of – in this narrative – ‘subaltern’ actors fighting to have memory of communism recognised in European memory. In this way, the KAS functions much as our central actors: it supports a narrative that implicitly criticises national memory within Europe and yet – as we see in its involvement elsewhere in the networks – fosters transnational collaborations with the aim of ‘exporting’ the ‘German model’ to non-European contexts. The German political foundations played a significant role in supporting the post-socialist transition to democracy in Central and Eastern Europe. Ann L. Phillips argues in this context that democracy promotion strategies in CEE were undermined by a lack of receptiveness ‘to the ideas and experiences that Central and East Europeans brought to their own transition’.42 With regard to memory politics at least, this analysis of transnational cooperations between German and CEE partners suggests that this is no longer the case for the KAS. The Konrad Adenauer Foundation and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung The KAS also has a high betweenness centrality in one further network studied here: that produced by and through the transnational collaboration of the Stiftung Aufarbeitung in 2011–12. Figure 5.6 shows the KAS’s egonet in the Stiftung network in this period. We can see that the Foundation acts as a broker between a relatively diverse group of actors, but principally with those in the post-socialist/CEE and post-Soviet regions. Figure 5.6 also indicates that the KAS was involved in collaborations of various sizes with the Stiftung Aufarbeitung. The detail of these reveals a similar twofold pattern of engagement to that observed in the Hohenschönhausen networks. July 2011 saw the sixth edition of the German-Russian Historians Conference in Tutzing, which was coorganised by the Academy for Political Education in Tutzing, the German-Russian Museum in Berlin-Karlshorst, the KAS and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung. The title of the conference in 2011 was ‘Sites of Memory of the Twentieth Century in Russian and German Memory: 1941–1961–1991’. Once again, the title draws an unbroken line from the events of the Second World War, through the building of the Berlin Wall and to the fall of communism, suggesting a comparison (or even equation) of the different regimes in Russia and Germany in these periods.43 The seventh edition of the conference series in September 2012 included the German Histor-

Connecting Memory • 157

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ical Institute in Moscow and the University of Chelyabinsk as coorganisers. In December 2011, the KAS coorganised with the Stiftung Aufarbeitung, the Romanian Embassy and the Romanian Cultural Institute in Berlin (ICR Berlin) an event that aimed to give ‘Romanian initiatives to work through the past a platform’. The event included presentations by Bogdan Murgescu (University of Bucharest) and Cristian Iacob Bogdan of the IICCMER. The International Institute of Political Murder (IIPM) presented the film The Last Days of the Ceausescus produced by Milo Rau, founder of the IIPM, and supported financially by the KAS.44 As will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 6, the KAS’s Romanian office collaborates frequently with the IICCMER on a range of projects focused particularly on memory of communism in that national context. Moreover, the Foundation was a partner in the display of an exhibition about the history of communism in Bulgaria, which is discussed in more detail below. Alongside these cooperations with multiple partners, the KAS also brokered smaller-scale collaborations. Korean NGOs (which are not defined any more clearly in the text) visited the Stiftung Aufarbeitung in August 2011.45 The KAS was involved in the visit of politicians and journalists from Kazakhstan to the Stiftung Aufarbeitung (date not given).46 The KAS and the Goethe Institute in Alexandria invited Jens Hüttmann (Representative for School Education in the Stiftung) to speak about working through the SED dictatorship at an event in the city. This is a rare example of the Stiftung Aufarbeitung reporting on its own engagement in the MENA region following the ‘Arab

158 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

Spring’. Interestingly, we see in the narrative that it constructs around this event a tension between genuine knowledge exchange and a focus on learning from the German experience: ‘The exchange between German and Egyptian perspectives is intended to inspire dialogue about a historical-political Aufarbeitung in both countries, in order to communicate and discuss the experiences gained in the German transformation process.’47 In sum, the KAS functions in the Stiftung Aufarbeitung networks in a similar way to its brokerage role in the Hohenschönhausen networks. The narrative of totalitarianism and anti-communism tends to be less pronounced in the texts produced by the Stiftung Aufarbeitung, which is positioned quite differently in political terms to Hohenschönhausen (as was seen in the Introduction). Nonetheless, as in the Hohenschönhausen networks, the KAS facilitates large-scale cooperations focused on an ‘Eastern’ perspective on European memory that draws together memory of National Socialism and communism into a single narrative, or that emphasises the brutality of communist regimes in countries such as Romania (in which the KAS is notably active in memory politics). On the other hand, the KAS brokers cooperations between the Stiftung and partners outside of Europe, including the MENA region, in which the Stiftung Aufarbeitung functions as a representative of a ‘German’ model of memory from which others are presumed to (want to) learn.

German Government Representatives The BStU and Hohenschönhausen The analysis of KAS’s involvement in the Hohenschönhausen and Stiftung Aufarbeitung networks has highlighted the importance of domestic politics within Germany for the transnational collaboration of the three institutions that are at the centre of this study. German government representatives as a group have a top five betweenness centrality in the BStU networks in 2013– 14 and 2015–16, and in the Hohenschönhausen networks in 2009–10 and 2011–12. In the Stiftung Aufarbeitung networks, the German government as a node has a high betweenness centrality in all periods. As was discussed in Chapter 1, the German government is in reality an actor in all of the cooperations studied here, as it provides financial and institutional support to all three central actors, which are – to varying degrees – also federal institutions. Therefore, I only recorded the German government as an actor when a named representative took part in the collaboration (for example, the involvement of Wolfgang Böhmer in the Hohenschönhausen Forum in 2009, as described above). Figures 5.7 and 5.8 show the egonets of the German government as a single node in the networks of Hohenschön-

Connecting Memory • 159

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hausen (2009–10 and 2011–12) and the BStU (2013–14 and 2015–16) respectively. The pattern of engagement of governmental actors within the networks of these two organisations is very similar, so I will discuss them alongside one another. In both the Hohenschönhausen and BStU networks, we see a similar engagement by the German government to that of the KAS in the Hohenschönhausen and Stiftung Aufarbeitung networks; that is, a combination of involvement in larger-scale events and facilitation of smaller-scale cooperations, especially with non-European partners. Indeed, in some cases, it is the same events. Wolfgang Böhmer’s collaboration in the Hohenschönhausen

160 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

Figure 5.8 The German government egonet in the BStU networks 2013–14 and 2015–16. © Sara Jones

Forum in 2009 alongside the KAS is mirrored in 2012 by the involvement of Saskia Ludwig, CDU Regional Party Leader in Brandenburg, in the fifth edition of the Forum, which focused on ‘Working through the Communist Past as a European Task’ (see Chapter 3). We also see the KAS’s cooperation in a collaboration with Peruvian civil rights activists and Hohenschönhausen in November 2011. The KAS invited Knabe to participate in a workshop in Lima related to the efforts to build a memorial to the victims of the violent conflict between the Maoist ‘Shining Path’ terrorist organisation and the military in the country – a project supported by EU and German governmental

Connecting Memory • 161

funds. Knabe’s function is described as being one of offering advice from the perspective of German experience.48 Cooperations outside of the European context also brought actors from other political parties into the Hohenschönhausen network, as seen in the collaboration of Green Party representative Viola von Cramon in the activities concerning human rights in the People’s Republic of China, as was described in Chapter 4. Here, Hohenschönhausen is facilitating the engagement of the government representative with a diverse range of actors rather than the other way round. In the BStU network in 2013–14, a large-scale collaboration explicitly involving a German governmental actor took place in September 2014 when the Federal President, Joachim Gauck, invited heads of state from Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Belgium and Luxembourg to the BStU Documentation and Memorial Centre in Rostock. They discussed, among other things, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the events of 1989.49 In 2015–16, the largest of the BStU’s transnational cooperations that included a named representative of the German government were two visits by Roland Jahn with SPD Member of Parliament Josip Juratovic to Croatia and Serbia. In the first, in September 2015, Jahn met with the Croatian Minister for Justice. In the second, Jahn travelled to Belgrade, where he visited the head of the Centre for Democracy and the Director of the Centre for Human Rights.50 Jahn also accompanied a delegation of the Ministry for the Economy and the Federal Commissioner for the New Federal States to take part in the German-Korean Consultation Body for Reunification in May 2015; he spoke on the subject of ‘Transparency of State Activity and Protection of Privacy’.51 Finally, Member of Parliament Johannes Selle (CDU) invited Jahn to join a parliamentary delegation on a visit to Tirana in June 2015, where he spoke to the President and the Minister President of the country.52 In this way, the BStU, as a statemandated institution, is incorporated directly into the processes of policy elaboration and implementation of diverse governmental actors with regard to both the transnational politics of history and the politics of democratisation. The inclusion of the BStU in these events – especially the Rostock visit in 2014 – indicates the extent to which German processes of working through the past in general and this institution in particular are viewed by governmental actors as a source of national prestige. This may have been especially the case for Joachim Gauck, given his personal history as the first Commissioner of the institution that is sometimes still referred to as the Gauck Office. The Stiftung Aufarbeitung The role of these state-mandated institutions in facilitating government policy elaboration is seen even more clearly in the networks produced by and through the transnational collaborations of the Stiftung Aufarbeitung. The

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Table 5.2 The German government egonet composition by region in the Stiftung Aufarbeitung networks (mean) Western Europe

31%

Post-Socialist/CEE

49%

Multiregional

5%

North America

2%

MENA

1%

Post-Soviet

9%

Southeast Europe

1%

East Asia

2%

extensive reporting on the events provided by the Stiftung Aufarbeitung also allows us to retrace how those actors positioned themselves within the discussions between diverse partners. Governmental actors are deeply embedded in the Stiftung Aufarbeitung’s networks, meaning that visualisations of the egonets are extremely dense and difficult to interpret. For that reason, I ran an egonet analysis indicating to which regions German government representatives were most connected; the analysis provides the number of connections to a given region as a proportion of the total number of ties to that actor. The results can be seen in Table 5.2: the figures are given as a mean percentage over the eight-year period. We can see that German government representatives are distributed across the network, connecting to actors from different memory zones. Their connections to Western European and post-socialist/CEE actors are at roughly the same rate as or higher than the proportion of those actors within the network; however, the node ‘German government’ connects to actors from the other major regions (post-Soviet and East Asia) less frequently than might be expected. For that, German government representatives are involved in collaborations with actors in a number of less frequently represented zones: multiregional, North America, MENA and Southeast Europe. Who are these actors and how are they integrated into the Stiftung Aufarbeitung’s networks? Given the very large number of collaborations involved, I will analyse a representative selection in detail. As might be anticipated, the central position of the German government as an actor is the result of the involvement of a number of government represen-

Connecting Memory • 163

tatives in events organised by the Stiftung Aufarbeitung and involving a large number of other actors. One example of this is the conference in April 2010, coorganised with the Society for the Promotion of Culture in United Europe (Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Kultur im vereinten Europa, GFKE) under the title ‘Europe Remembers for the Future’. In its description of the event, the Stiftung Aufarbeitung asserts that the memory of communism ‘has not yet taken its place in European memory’ and that the GFKE has taken steps towards promoting discussion of the European ‘double memory’. Among the more than thirty speakers from various institutions across Europe were Eckart von Klaeden (CDU, Minister of State) and Cornelia Rogall-Grothe (State Secretary, Ministry of the Interior).53 In July 2010, the Stiftung Aufarbeitung was a coorganiser of a large conference on the topic of ‘Memory of the Second World War – Memorials and Museums in Eastern Europe’, which strayed somewhat beyond its focus on memory of state socialism. The event was organised with a significant number of partners: the Memorial Foundation for the Murdered Jews of Europe; the Global and European Studies Institute at the University of Leipzig; the ENRS; the German Historical Museum; the Bertelsmann Foundation; the German-Russian Museum in Karlshorst; the Centre for Historical Research in Berlin; the Polish Academy of Sciences; the Foundation for German-Polish Cooperation; the Foundation Memory, Responsibility and Future; and the Humanities Centre for the History and Culture of East-Central Europe at the University of Leipzig. It was also supported by the GFO, the Foreign Ministry of the Republic of Poland, the Foreign Ministry of the Russian Federation and the Federal Commissioner for Culture and Media, who was represented by Ingeborg Berggreen-Merkel. Berggreen-Merkel opened the conference alongside the Foreign Minister, Guido Westerwelle.54 We see a similar pattern of engagement – large-scale events supported by and including representatives of the German government – across the networks. However, governmental actors are also involved in smaller cooperations relating to their particular area of expertise. For example, the Stiftung Aufarbeitung collaborated on an exhibition about Bulgaria’s communist past, which was opened in Sofia in October 2012.55 A German version of the exhibition was then shown in Berlin in March 2013 in cooperation with the German Society in Berlin-Mitte, and was presented to Gernot Erler, the Chair of the German-Bulgarian Forum of the German Parliament (SPD).56 Erler was also included in a ‘Lunch Break’ organised by the GFO on the subject of German–Russian relations. The meeting included Markus Meckel from the Stiftung Aufarbeitung, the Hungarian author György Dalos and the journalist Michael Thumann.57 An exhibition by the Polish photographer Tomasz Kizny with the title ‘The Great Terror, 1937–1938’ was shown in Germany for the first time in March 2015 in the House of Brandenburg-Prussian

164 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

History in Potsdam. The exhibition comprised photographs of individuals who had been falsely convicted and murdered under Stalinism. At the opening event, speeches were given by Kurt Winkler (Head of the House of Brandenburg-Prussian History) and Sabine Kunst (SPD, Minister for Science, Research and Culture in the Region of Brandenburg). Both are reported by the Stiftung Aufarbeitung as pointing towards the significance of the date – 5 March 2015 – that is, the anniversary of Stalin’s death. The Stiftung Aufarbeitung report adds: ‘Despite the 70th anniversary of the liberation from Nazi tyranny, we must not [according to the speakers] lose sight of the other crimes of the twentieth century, because it should always be our aim to foster a pluralist culture of memory.’ Kunst positions her role as regional Minister within this broader discourse by noting: ‘German and especially Brandenburg history, particularly the time of Soviet occupation and the early years of the GDR, cannot be understood without including Stalinist terror.’58 From this centre-left politician – in a former East German region – we see a negotiated position that starts by emphasising the memory of National Socialism and the Holocaust, but permits room for other pasts to be remembered alongside (but not in competition with) that history. It is also noteworthy that she places ‘Stalinist terror’ principally in the 1940s and 1950s, suggesting that the later GDR should not be understood within this framework. It is not only with reference to post-socialist or post-Soviet histories that we see this form of engagement between the Stiftung Aufarbeitung and government representatives. In March 2011, the Stiftung Aufarbeitung coorganised an event with the GFO, the Heinrich Böll Foundation and the Robert Havemann Society on the subject of human rights before and after 1989, which sought to explore the extent to which the revolutions of 1989 had pushed questions of human rights to the centre of international politics. The Stiftung Aufarbeitung report on the event can provide some insight into the discussions that took place at the event and the involvement of governmental actors within them. It notes that the events of the ‘Arab Spring’ (which was at that point ongoing) took centre stage in the discussions, including within the welcome speech given by Markus Löning, Federal Commissioner for Human Rights Policy and Humanitarian Aid within the GFO. Löning outlined the GFO’s approach to collaboration with partners in Tunisia: ‘I believe it is important that we bring our experiences with transformation there [because] the European model is successful.’ The slippage between ‘our’ (meaning the GFO) and the ‘European model’ is noteworthy here. The panel also included Volker Beck, Member of Parliament for the Green Party and member of the Human Rights Committee of the Federal Parliament. Beck is reported as responding to an intervention by former GDR civil rights activist Gerd Poppe, who argued that we need to avoid loading human rights discourse with ‘Western values, after all, they are “universal rights”’. The question arises

Connecting Memory • 165

as to how these universal rights can be universally implemented, for example, in China. Beck answered with reference to the dissidents imprisoned in China that human rights policy can be symbolic: ‘the least we can do is to signal that we have not forgotten them’.59 The central position of governmental actors within the Stiftung Aufarbeitung networks indicates that it functions as a state-mandated institute in a more extensive way than we have seen with either Hohenschönhausen or the BStU. Government representatives from across party-political lines are brought into events organised by the Stiftung Aufarbeitung and vice versa. The governmental actors facilitate Stiftung Aufarbeitung events not only through financing (as a state-mandated institution), but also through lending their particular expertise, political standpoint and cultural capital by acting as speakers and panellists. In return, these governmental actors are given the opportunity to further those political interests by disseminating their arguments about the past, present and the relationship between the two to a wider audience. In some cases, this is about the politics of history and in others, it is about the politics of democracy promotion and human rights. In this way, the Stiftung Aufarbeitung functions as a multiplier or medium for governmentlevel policy debate in these areas and – through its reputation and its ability to bring together well-known actors from across sectors – also lends its own cultural capital to those discussions. We can see from the few examples given above that this means governmental actors have the opportunity to influence the narratives about the past and present that are transmitted by the Stiftung Aufarbeitung through its transnational collaborations. However, where the involvement of both the KAS and government representatives within Hohenschönhausen networks tended to be related to a focus on centre-right politics, the governmental actors that are brought into cooperations with the BStU and (especially) the Stiftung Aufarbeitung are drawn from across the (middle of ) the political spectrum.

Conclusion: The Politics of Transnational Memory The analysis of the brokerage roles of (other) German governmental and paragovernmental actors in the networks produced by the transnational collaboration of the three central institutions highlights the state-mandated nature of these three organisations. The GFO, political foundations and other government representatives are deeply embedded within the networks of the BStU, Hohenschönhausen and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung. These actors function as transzonal brokers, facilitating interactions between the central institution and partners in multiple memory zones, and they are actors of choice in collaborations that are organised by the central actors independently. In the

166 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

process, they structure the nature of these collaborations, the type of activity and the topic of discussion, based on government priorities and interests in a particular region. In this way, we see how these institutions function as policy instruments not only domestically, but also transnationally. The BStU, Hohenschönhausen and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung are institutions through which German governmental and paragovernmental actors can implement politics of memory and memorialisation. The analysis of the network produced through transnational collaboration shows how government representatives are brought into large-scale cooperations with international partners and are thereby given a platform to disseminate and elaborate political positions. These are political positions on the past and the place of the GDR within German and European memory culture; however, they are also political positions on democracy promotion in the present and how it can be informed by the German past. Particularly in the case of Hohenschönhausen, we see an alignment between the centre-right position taken by the Memorial and its then director and the political position of the governmental and paragovernmental actors with which it collaborates. Indeed, in general, the cooperation between the BStU, Hohenschönhausen and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung and other representatives of German government is focused on the centre of the political spectrum. Notably, we do not see any politicians from the far left (even though they are represented in the Bundestag in this period) or from the political foundation associated with the Left Party, the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. We also see a second mode of transnational collaboration between German governmental and paragovernmental actors and the BStU, Hohenschönhausen and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung. The GFO, political foundations and representatives of government from across the political spectrum (with some exceptions, as noted above) facilitate networking between these mnemonic actors and partners across the world, particularly in countries in the Global South that are experiencing moments of transition. In this process, political differences within German memory culture, particularly around memory of the GDR, are smoothed over. Moreover, as Alice von Bieberstein points out in reference to similar engagements by German actors in Turkey, ‘the historical responsibility ceases to apply to the self or to the present moment, but becomes a valuable experience that demands to be shared and passed on’.60 These institutions become unambiguous representations of the German success story, examples of how to successfully transition from dictatorship to liberal democracy, which is, in turn, promoted as the ideal form. We can see at work here what Attila Melegh describes (drawing on Karl Mannheim) as the ‘liberal, humanitarian utopia’, which is also ‘an ongoing narrative of transition’.61

Connecting Memory • 167

In essence, the BStU, Hohenschönhausen and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung – as representatives of an export-worthy ‘German model’ of memory – become instruments of ‘soft power’ for the German governmental and paragovernmental actors. Joseph Nye describes soft power as the ability to get ‘others to want the outcomes you want’, and this is achieved by making those outcomes appear attractive. 62 Nye adds that ‘in behavioural terms, soft power is attractive power. In terms of resources, soft-power resources are the assets that produce such attraction’.63 The action of the German governmental and paragovernmental actors within the networks studied here suggests that they view the BStU, Hohenschönhausen and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung as being such resources – that is, that they will attract actors in transitional societies to follow a mode of memorialisation and justice that serves particular outcomes. Those outcomes in turn are underpinned by assumptions about the aim of the transition and on conceptualisations of memory and memorialisation that are based on European understandings of trauma, justice and human rights. Does this strategy work? How are the ‘exports’ of German memory received in different contexts? How are these cooperations perceived by the non-German partners? The final chapter of this book aims to offer a tentative answer to these questions through exploring the perspectives of a selection of the intrazonal brokers. These are actors central to the networks of the BStU, Hohenschönhausen and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung; however, they are non-German partners who connect alters within a particular memory zone rather than bridging the gaps between them.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

Ratka, ‘Germany and the Arab Spring’, 64. Lettau and Knoblich, ‘Foreign Cultural Policy’, 89. BStU, Elfter Tätigkeitsbericht, 103. BStU, Elfter Tätigkeitsbericht, 103. BStU, Elfter Tätigkeitsbericht, 103. BStU, Elfter Tätigkeitsbericht, 103. BStU, 13. Tätigkeitsbericht, 74. BStU, 13. Tätigkeitsbericht, 75. BStU, 13. Tätigkeitsbericht, 75. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, ‘Ehemaliger tunesischer Ministerpräsident’. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, 7. Tätigkeitsbericht, 48. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, 8. Tätigkeitsbericht, 19. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, 8. Tätigkeitsbericht, 20. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, 8. Tätigkeitsbericht, 97. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, 8. Tätigkeitsbericht, 98–100.

168 • Towards a Collaborative Memory 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

David, The Past Can’t Heal Us, 2–3. David, The Past Can’t Heal Us, 22. David, The Past Can’t Heal Us, 41. David, The Past Can’t Heal Us, 48. Carapico, Political Aid and Arab Activism, 9. Carapico, Political Aid and Arab Activism, 17. Carapico, Political Aid and Arab Activism, 200–1. Bundesregierung, Globalisierung. See also Lettau and Knoblich, ‘Foreign Cultural Policy’, 92; Ratka, ‘Germany and the Arab Spring’, 64. Carapico, Political Aid and Arab Activism, 209. Fraihat, Unfinished Revolutions, 19 Lettau and Knoblich, ‘Foreign Cultural Policy’, 91. Wüllenkemper, ‘Exportschlager Aufarbeitung’. See Jones, The Media of Testimony, 99–125 for a discussion of the rhetoric of authenticity at Hohenschönhausen. Ratka, ‘Germany and the Arab Spring’, 64. For a discussion of the role of the political foundations in democracy promotion in the MENA region, see Marzo, ‘Supporting Political Debate’; Kubbara, ‘International Actors’; Holthaus, ‘Furthering Pluralism?. Marzo, ‘Supporting Political Debate’; Kubbara, ‘International Actors’. Kubbara, ‘International Actors’. BStU, Elfter Tätigkeitsbericht, 102. BStU, Elfter Tätigkeitsbericht, 103. BStU, Elfter Tätigkeitsbericht, 104. Kubbara, ‘International Actors’. KAS, ‘Zweites Deutsch-Kolumbianisches Forum’. KAS, ‘Hohenschönhausen Forum’. The Hohenschönhausen documentation of these events indicated that after 2012, the events did not take a sufficiently transnational approach to be included in the analysis. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, 5. Tätigkeitsbericht, 33. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, 5. Tätigkeitsbericht, 33. KAS, ‘Utopie der Gleichheit’. KAS, ‘Rassenkampf neben Klassenkampf ’. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, ‘Polen unter zwei Diktaturen’. Phillips, ‘Exporting Democracy’, 76. Stiftung Aufarbeitung, Tätigkeitsbericht 2011, 142. Stiftung Aufarbeitung, Tätigkeitsbericht 2011, 142. Stiftung Aufarbeitung, Tätigkeitsbericht 2011, 145. Stiftung Aufarbeitung, Tätigkeitsbericht 2012, 10. Stiftung Aufarbeitung, ‘Die Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur und der arabische Frühling’. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, ‘Gedenkstätte berät peruanische Wahrheitskommission’. BStU, Zwölfter Tätigkeitsbericht, 92. BStU, 13. Tätigkeitsbericht, 74. BStU, 13. Tätigkeitsbericht, 73. BStU, 13. Tätigkeitsbericht, 74. Stiftung Aufarbeitung, Tätigkeitsbericht 2010, 90. Stiftung Aufarbeitung, ‘Erinnern an den zweiten Weltkrieg’. Stiftung Aufarbeitung, Tätigkeitsbericht 2012, 86. Stiftung Aufarbeitung, ‘Bulgariens verbotene Vergangenheit’. Stiftung Aufarbeitung, Tätigkeitsbericht 2015, 8. Stiftung Aufarbeitung, ‘Der “Große Terror”’.

Connecting Memory • 169 59. 60. 61. 62. 63.

Stiftung Aufarbeitung, ‘“Unteilbar?”’. Von Bieberstein, ‘Memorial Miracle’, 248. Melegh, On the East-West Slope, 20 Nye Jr., Soft Power, 5. Nye Jr., Soft Power, 6.

Chapter 6

THE NATIONAL IN THE TRANSNATIONAL Intrazonal Brokers

8 The previous chapter explored those actors that function as brokers between the memory zones in our networks, and highlighted how they influence the form and subject of the collaborations and the stories that are told about them. These are principally institutionally powerful German governmental and paragovernmental actors who work with and through the BStU, Hohenschönhausen and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung in their processes of policy elaboration or even implementation. However, these are not the only actors with a high betweenness centrality in the networks: partners located in the postsocialist/CEE, post-Soviet and MENA regions also play a central role in the transnational collaborations examined here. However, the analysis in Chapter 2 indicated that this role is principally one of intrazonal brokerage – that is, they connect actors from the same regional context as themselves. This final chapter zooms in on a selection of these actors and their cooperations to explore what this intrazonal bridging looks like in practice. In the process, it explores the collaborations from the perspective of these non-German actors, allowing us to ask if the relationship culture as perceived by the BStU, Hohenschönhausen and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung was seen in the same way by their collaborative partners in different parts of the world. This permits me to go some way towards understanding the impact of these intersections and the ‘German model’ as an ‘export hit’. Table 6.1 offers a reminder of the top five most between central actors in the ‘Eastern’ (post-socialist/CEE and post-Soviet) and MENA regions for the

The National in the Transnational • 171

Table 6.1 ‘Eastern’ and MENA actors with a high BC (all networks) Region

Actors BStU: Institute of National Remembrance (INR, Warsaw), Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes (ISTR, Prague), Czech government, Polish government, Croatian government, Memorial, Geschichtsforum 1989/2009

‘Eastern’ (post-socialist/ CEE and post-Soviet)

Hohenschönhausen: Herta Müller, Albanian government, Estonian Embassy, Vilnius University, German Embassy Albania Stiftung Aufarbeitung: Collegium Hungaricum, BStU, Berlin Wall Foundation, Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile (IICCMER), Memorial, Humboldt University, European Network Remembrance and Solidarity (ENRS) BStU: Tunisian civil rights (CR) activists, Egyptian CR activists

MENA

Hohenschönhausen: Tunisian government, Tunisian CR activists, Contre l’oubli Stiftung Aufarbeitung: n/a

networks of each of the three institutions. I have italicised those that will be the subject of detailed analysis in this chapter. This selection covers each of the three central institutions for each region (where relevant). For the ‘Eastern’ actors within the BStU and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung, I focus on state-mandated institutions, given their centrality in the transnational networking of memory, and for Hohenschönhausen, I explore a particular collaboration that incorporates a number of the between central actors. For the MENA actors, my focus is on Tunisian partners (both governmental and nongovernmental). The selection is based in part on the availability and accessibility (including linguistic) of materials that can indicate the perspective of the non-German actor on the cooperations in which they play a role.1

Post-socialist/CEE and Post-Soviet Actors The Institute for National Remembrance and the BStU Of the actors in the ‘post-socialist/CEE and post-Soviet’ group, the one that appears as the most between central in the BStU networks is the Warsaw branch of the Polish Institute for National Remembrance (INR, Warsaw). The INR is in the top five most between central actors in 2009–10, 2013–14 and 2015–16. It is clear that this actor is an important collaborator for the

172 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

BStU. What kind of institution is it and how does it approach memory politics? The Polish INR was founded in 1998 and began operating in the early 2000s. Valentin Behr argues that its creation represented a ‘decisive breakthrough’ in the ‘idea of institutionalizing state policy on the past’.2 Its primary purpose was regulating access to the files of the secret police and, as such, the BStU was seen as a model.3 However, its remit goes well beyond this (as does that of the BStU) to include the prosecution of the ‘crimes against the Polish nation’ during Nazism and communism, academic research and public history. The prosecutorial powers – a responsibility not shared with the German authority4 – was a particular target of criticism by left and liberal intellectuals, who feared a politicisation of transitional justice.5 It should also be noted that the Polish INR includes the history and memory of National Socialism more centrally in its remit than does the BStU. Dariusz Stola describes the Polish INR as a ‘ministry of memory’, highlighting how (conservative) politics and the study of the past have been closely interwoven in this institution.6 The academic and public history outputs of the Polish INR have a prominence not enjoyed by work produced by historians in the BStU, which some attribute to the unevenness with which resources are distributed in Polish academic structures.7 Observers note that the research produced by the Polish INR tends towards a polarisation of the (totalitarian) state and (freedom-loving) society, and with a focus on the apparatus of state security on the one hand and anti-communist opposition on the other.8 The politicisation of the Polish INR in this direction was seen especially under the tenure of Janusz Kurtyka as Director of the Institute from 2005 until his death in April 2010. Kurtyka was very close to the nationalistconservative Law and Justice Party (PiS) and steered the Polish INR to support PiS’s anti-communist politics of history.9 Georges Mink notes that Kurtyka’s successor, Łukasz Kamiński (Director 2011–16), made ‘significant changes’, including supporting a greater range of debate and a refocusing away from prosecution of perpetrators and towards victims.10 The close cooperation with the BStU as explored in this study spans the directorships of Kurtyka and Kamiński. What does it look like in detail and in what ways did the INR play a brokerage role in the networks constructed by and through the collaborative activities of the BStU in 2009–10, 2013–14 and 2015–16 respectively? A first step to answering these questions is an analysis of the connections formed between the INR and other actors through these collaborations. Figures 6.1–6.3 show the INR (Warsaw)’s egonets in the three periods (excluding the BStU). The egonets demonstrate clearly that the INR had access to a number of different groups and actors through its collaborations with the BStU on multiple projects, and that these actors are representative of a number of different memory zones, which nonetheless all sit within Europe.

The National in the Transnational • 173

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Figure 6.1 The INR egonet within the BStU network 2009–10. © Sara Jones

If we look at the specific collaborative activities involving the INR, we can get a clearer picture of how this actor operated within the network created by and through the BStU. Many of these collaborative activities were bilateral with the BStU and focused on the role of the two institutions as archives of secret police files; the cooperations tend to be framed as being motivated by a desire to share expertise. Nonetheless, such bilateral cooperations by definition do not place the INR in a position ‘in-between’; in order to understand the Institute’s role as a broker, we need instead to look at its cooperations with the BStU involving at least one other partner. It is these collaborations that are visualised in Figures 6.1–6.3. Several of these larger projects highlight the central role played by the INR in the European Network of Official Authorities in Charge of the Secret Police Files (ENOA). For example, the meeting of the ENOA in June 2009 comprised an internal discussion among network members and an externally facing conference with the title: ‘What Should Our Children know? Historical-Political Education about Secret Police in Communist Dictatorships’. The internal discussion focused on ‘a common strategy for working through the past at a European level’, including plans following the European Parliament ‘Resolution on European Conscience and Totalitarianism’ of 2 April 2009 (see the Introduction). In the externally facing part of the event, Kamiński presented the state of play regarding historical and political education in Poland on a panel alongside representatives from several of the other state-mandated institutes in the region: the INR in Slovakia, the Historical Archive of the State Security Service in Hungary, and the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes in Prague.11

174 • Towards a Collaborative Memory




   









 Figure 6.2 The INR egonet within the BStU network 2013–14. © Sara Jones

In 2015, the cooperation of ENOA members (including the Polish INR and the BStU) also resulted in a joint exhibition, ‘“By Any Means” – Communist Secret Police and People’s Everyday Life’. The exhibition was opened in October 2015 with a podium discussion entitled ‘The Transparency of the Clandestine: The Eastern European Secret Police Archives and Democratic Change’ that brought together Kamiński with historian Horst Möller and representatives of the practice-oriented research institute Swiss Peace (Elisabeth Baumgartner) and Memorial (Nikita Petrov). The exhibition is described as showing the ‘concrete effects of secret police repression’ and as providing the visitor with an insight into the ‘commonalities in the orientation of the different secret police services, but also to perceive their country-specific characteristics’.12 The exhibition was later displayed in Brussels in the Hessen Regional Representation at the EU. At an event marking its opening there (coorganised by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation), the exhibition was presented by representatives of the INR (Krzysztof Szwagrzyk), the Historical Archive of the State Security Service in Hungary (Cseh Gergő Bendegúz) and Roland Jahn.13 This confirms Zoltan Dujisin’s observation of the importance of state-mandated institutes such as the INR as anti-communist ‘memory entrepreneurs’ at the European level, and the role of cross-institute exchange and learning in this context.14 This cross-institutional cooperation sometimes took place outside of the structures of the ENOA; for example, a collaboration with the International Literature Festival in September 2010 brought the INR’s Kazimierz Wóycicki together with Wolodymyr Wjatrowytsch, then head of the Security Service of

The National in the Transnational • 175



 

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Figure 6.3 The INR egonet within the BStU network 2015–16. © Sara Jones

Ukraine (SBU) archive, and Alexander Daniel of Memorial to discuss ‘repression of artists and writers’ in post-socialist and post-Soviet contexts.15 Both before and after taking over the Directorship of the INR in 2011, Kamiński represented the Institute at a number of events and thereby formed connections with partners both within and outside of the ENOA. For example, in March 2014, he spoke alongside the former Solidarność member Jozef Pinior (then a Polish Senator), Wolfgang Templin (GDR civil rights activist and Director of the Warsaw office of the Heinrich Böll Foundation) and the BStU’s Roland Jahn at an event coorganised by the Heinrich Böll Foundation and the Polish Embassy. The event focused on the ‘effects of the Polish union movement on the people in the GDR and the countrywide persecution of those sympathising with the movement by the MfS [Ministry for State Security]’ and was introduced by Tytus Jaskułowski of the Hannah Arendt Institute in Dresden. The discussion took place alongside the display of the ‘Learn Polish’ exhibition produced by the BStU, which was shown at offices of the Heinrich Böll Foundation.16 What we see here is a combination of two different modes of collaboration. First, the BStU and the INR cooperated in this period as two central members of the ENOA, both of which have served as examples to others in positive and negative terms.17 Second, the INR (Warsaw) – most commonly via its Director – appears to function as one of the BStU’s ‘go-to’ collaborators when the topic at hand is the intertwining of Polish and (East) German histories. It is this combination that makes the Warsaw-based INR central to the network created by and through the BStU. However, this central position is largely limited to connections within the post-socialist/CEE and (Euro-

176 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

pean) post-Soviet regions. With regard to the latter, it is interesting to note that the Russian human rights organisation Memorial appears to occupy a similar position in the BStU networks. Far from being supported by the Russian state, Memorial as an organisation has faced repressive measures at the hands of the authoritarian government; in 2016, Memorial International was declared a ‘foreign agent’ by the Russian Federation’s Ministry for Justice. In December 2021, shortly before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Russian government ordered its closure. Nonetheless, the organisation is the ‘go-to’ partner for the BStU in cooperations relating to the Soviet Union or the Russian Federation and it is thereby involved in multiple cooperations, but principally with other post-Soviet or post-socialist/CEE partners (including the Polish INR). How are these cooperations perceived by the INR? In a questionnaire completed by the INR in October 2020, the Institute listed its transnational partners as being located in ‘Australia, Canada, Hungary, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Georgia, Slovakia, Romania, Norway, Denmark, Italy, France, Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus and the US’.18 This is notably a wider geographical reach than the Institute acquires through collaborations with the BStU; nonetheless, we can see that the Institute’s activity is generally focused on post-socialist/CEE and post-Soviet space. The cooperations with anglophone countries discussed in more detail in the questionnaire – Australia, the United States and Canada – appear to centre on memory of the Holocaust: named partners include the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Pilecki Project Committee and the Association of Australian Jews and Their Descendants. The questionnaire response also notes participation within the ENOA, the Platform of European Memory and Conscience (PEMC) and the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). Interestingly, the questionnaire response seems to differentiate between partners and international actors who visit the INR: cooperations of the latter kind are described as including ‘study visits of representatives of such countries as Albania, China, South Korea and Taiwan, interested in the Polish model of systemic transformation’. We see here an echo of the ‘learning from the Germans’ narrative also common in the BStU’s cooperations with partners in non-European contexts. In this way, the INR presents itself as a representative of a ‘Polish model’ that might stand alongside the ‘German model’ as a mode of remembering the past from which others are presumed to learn. When asked to name the most important partners in the questionnaire, the INR cites the major transnational networks of which it is a member: the ENOA, the PEMC, the IHRA and the ENRS. When asked specifically about Germany, the INR representative completing the questionnaire names organisations associated principally with the history and memory of National

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Socialism – ‘Arolsen Archives, the Central Office of the State Justice Administrations for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes, the former German camps as well as archives in Germany’ – and also lists those German institutions that are members of the PEMC. The BStU is mentioned, first in reference to the past – ‘it should also be emphasized that the creation of the Institute of National Remembrance was modeled on the German Gauck Institute’ – and second in passing as one of the organisations with which the ‘scientific division’ of the INR cooperates. In its description of its cooperations with German partners, the INR’s focus is thus on the crimes of National Socialism and deaths during the Second World War, and collaboration with German archives and research centres to uncover and commemorate these. Indeed, throughout the questionnaire, the aim of transnational exchange is cited as ‘presenting the truth about totalitarian regimes throughout Europe’ and ‘the pursuit of historical justice, compensation for the victims, as well as the settlement of crimes and criminals’, with no clear separation of the crimes and criminals of communism and National Socialism in this context. Collaboration with transnational partners in general is rated as ‘very beneficial’ and with German partners in particular only as ‘beneficial’. It is unclear why this differentiation is made; however, we might conclude that German partners are seen as important, but not the most important. In short, at least retrospectively, the BStU are not described as one of the ‘go-to’ German partners of the INR, even if the network data suggest that the reverse is the case, at least in the 2009–16 period: the INR is a prominent partner for the BStU. Instead, in the INR’s questionnaire response, the BStU is positioned as historically important, but now only relevant as part of the European networks (the ENOA and the PEMC). We need to take into account that the survey was completed in 2020 and the networks studied here are constituted by collaborations between 2009 and 2016; nonetheless, it is interesting that Germany is principally associated with working through the history of National Socialism and that the BStU (focused on state socialism) is not – perhaps as a result – seen as a central partner. In this regard, it is worth exploring the perspective of the INR on the cooperations with the BStU identified above. This is possible through the news archive on the INR website: a search for the term ‘BStU’ returned eleven results, eight of which are about events in the relevant period. These comprise: the launch of the ENOA ‘Reader’ in 2010, which outlines the legal foundations, structures and activities of each member institution;19 the visit of Kamiński to the BStU in 2011;20 the opening of the exhibition ‘Cold War: A Short History of the Divided World’ at the BStU branch in Rostock in December 201221 and Cottbus in October 2013;22 the display of the ‘Learn Polish’ exhibition at the INR in February 2014 and Kamiński’s involvement in the panel discussion linked to the opening of the exhibition at the Hein-

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rich Böll Foundation in March 2014;23 two articles relating to the European Memory of Nations Awards, of which the BStU is a partner;24 and the meeting of the ENOA in October 2015, including the INR’s participation in the panel discussion ‘Transparency of the Clandestine’ and the exhibition ‘By Any Means’.25 Here we see narratives that reflect those produced by the BStU. The emphasis is on cooperation within the ENOA when it comes to the collaborations fostered through that network – a cooperation that is underpinned by shared historical experience. For example, with reference to the ‘By Any Means’ exhibition, we are informed: ‘the exhibition created jointly by the European Network portraits [sic] the work of the Communist secret police, its repressive methods and their impact on people’s everyday life’.26 Here the phrase ‘communist secret police’ groups together all of the state security services in each of the former communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe (or at least those where the successor state is now a member of the ENOA). When describing the ‘Learn Polish’ exhibition, the emphasis is again on shared historical experience and, in particular, the ways in which the East German opposition learned from their counterparts in the Polish People’s Republic: the press announcement of the exhibition opening in the Heinrich Böll Foundation is entitled ‘Berliners Are Learning Polish’.27 In the article on the opening of the exhibition in Warsaw, the exhibition is described as showing the ‘attitudes of the GDR citizens towards “Solidarity”: respect, admiration and even envy. Although some of the evidence indicate [sic] anti-Polish prejudices, for most residents of East Germany the “Solidarity” carnival [sic] was hugely important – it brought hope for change, encouraged to [sic] political action and added courage’.28 What we see here is that there is a match between the ways in which the BStU narrates the relationship culture constructed by these cooperations and the way in which the INR describes the same events. However, there is a mismatch between the centrality of the INR in the networks created by and through the BStU’s collaborations, its role as an intrazonal broker in the post-socialist/CEE zones and a transzonal broker between the post-socialist and post-Soviet zones, and the relative absence of the BStU from the INR’s own narration of its transnational activity. Further qualitative research would be needed to be certain of the reasons for this. However, we might hypothesise that it relates to the BStU’s in-between status as an example of what Dujisin describes as ‘state-sponsored and anticommunist memory institutes’,29 and its position in a national memory culture that is often perceived as a model of the ‘Western’ mode of remembrance, which privileges the Holocaust as a unique event. Thus, when asked about German partners, the representative of the INR completing the questionnaire considered primarily the work that the Institute carries out transnationally on the history and memory of National Socialism, and not the activity conducted in relation to state socialism/com-

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munism. This is in spite of the fact that the INR describes the BStU as the Institute’s ‘German equivalent’ in the press release regarding the ‘Learn Polish’ exhibition in Warsaw.30 This apparent contradiction is particularly interesting in a context (that is, 2020) when the Polish government was facing significant international criticism of its attempt to curb discussion of Polish complicity in the Holocaust.31 The restrictions on Holocaust remembrance can be seen as a refusal of the kind of self-critical memory culture for which Germany is so celebrated and have been described by David Clarke and Paweł Duber as being ‘in opposition to the cosmopolitan memory discourse’.32 The framing of German collaboration in the INR questionnaire may be in part indicative of the dominance of Holocaust memory in Germany to the extent that it is the primary point of reference, even for an organisation that describes itself as being modelled on an institution focused on memory of communism. On the other hand, it may be an attempt by the INR at a time of crisis to assert its (cosmopolitan) credentials among the international network of organisations focusing on memory of the Holocaust and the Second World War. ‘Eastern’ Actors and Hohenschönhausen The ‘Eastern’ actors in the Hohenschönhausen networks (with the exception of Herta Müller) are all connected within two collaborations in 2015–16. The first of these relates to a ‘Europe-wide’ study on the position of victims of communism in post-socialist and post-Soviet contexts33 carried out by the Hohenschönhausen Memorial – in collaboration with a number of other similar organisations – and funded by the European Commission. The results of the study were presented at an event in the Estonian Embassy in Berlin on 12 November 2015 entitled ‘Traumatised, Impoverished, Abandoned? The Situation of the Victims of Communism in Europe’. The event included a panel with the Estonian EU Representative Tunne Kelam, the Hungarian historian and Programme Director of the House of Terror Gábor Tallai, Wolfgang-Christian Fuchs, President of the International Association of the Victims of Communist Tyranny, and Knabe. The Lithuanian historian Monika Kareniauskaité of Vilnius University presented a project that aimed to collect the names of the victims of communism in an international database. It is through this latter project that Vilnius University is connected to other actors within the Hohenschönhausen network, including the ENRS and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung.34 The second event in 2015–16 that created actors with a (relatively) high betweenness centrality is a longer-term cooperation with partners working in Albania. Hohenschönhausen describes these cooperations in a narrative that is more common to the post-Soviet memory zone; that is, one in which

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the non-German partner is described in terms that suggest a similar history, but a liminal position on the East-West slope and in need of help to ‘catch up’. In the 2015–16 activity report, the Memorial notes that ‘support for overcoming the past in Albania was of particular importance in the reported period’. The Albanian Ministry for Culture is described as turning to the German Embassy in Tirana for support in building a memorial in the former remand prison of the Sigurimi (the Albanian communist secret police), which resulted in an invitation by the Embassy for Hohenschönhausen (or, more specifically, Knabe) to visit the site. Whilst there, Knabe met with representatives from the Albanian Ministry for Culture, the Director of the Institute for the Study of the Crimes and Consequences of Communism, and visited the former residence of Enver Hoxha, the Memorial to the Victims of Communist Persecution in Shkodra, as well as an empty prison in Spaç, which is intended to be transformed into a memorial.35 Following this visit, Hohenschönhausen worked with the beier+wellach company, which had also been involved in its collaborations in Tunisia. The cooperation was supported financially by the GFO and aimed to evaluate the plans in Albania and to produce recommendations for realising the memorial in Tirana. The evaluation resulted in further engagement in Albania, again supported by the German Embassy in Tirana and the GFO: the Memorial signed contracts with a historian and documentary filmmaker from Albania to research the site and conduct eyewitness interviews, and helped organise events to discuss the plans with victims and academic experts. Hohenschönhausen even produced recommendations for an altered tour, which were discussed in a four-day workshop in June 2016. However, it is at this point that the report provides an indication that this approach to exporting the (or rather a) German model through collaboration was also not entirely welcome in this context: ‘because the Albanian curator was only partially prepared to take up the suggestions, the Memorial later reduced its engagement to commenting on plans and renounced its originally planned leading role in the realization of the museum’.36 The failure of this cooperation in terms of producing the results intended by Hohenschönhausen – that is, the attempt to transfer its model of memorialisation to the Albanian context – suggests that a collaboration underpinned by an idea of a unidirectional process of ‘learning from the Germans’ will not always be welcomed by local actors in different contexts. As discussed below, we see similar frictions in Hohenschönhausen’s efforts to support memorialisation in Tunisia. The IICCMER and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung The final actor from the post-socialist/CEE region to be explored in detail here is the IICCMER, which was in the top five most between central actors in the Stiftung Aufarbeitung network in 2015–16. I have selected this as a

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further example of an anti-communist and state-mandated institute involved in the networks, but one situated in a different national context from the INR, with a slightly different remit and, in the examples that I discuss here, engaged with a different German actor. The IICCMER was established in 2005 by conservative coalition partners of President Traian Băsescu, who, as Dujisin notes, ‘sought to refashion himself as an anticommunist’. Băsescu subsequently launched the Presidential Commission for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania. Dujisin argues that ‘the commission and the memory institute represented rival attempts to monopolize the symbolic capital of anticommunism’.37 Nonetheless, these were brought together when the head of the Commission, Vladimir Tismăneanu, was appointed as head of the Institute in 2010. Tismăneanu, a historian with a firm anti-communist position, steered the Institute towards implementing the recommendations of the Commission and becoming an active figure in the ‘Europeanization of antitotalitarianism’.38 Figure 6.4 represents the IICCMER’s egonet within the Stiftung Aufarbeitung network in 2015–16. As there were a large number of actors in this egonet, in order to ensure readability, I have only labelled those actors with a betweenness centrality of higher than 0 (see Chapter 2). The visualisation represents the outcome of a number of collaborations involving both the Stiftung Aufarbeitung and the IICCMER and multiple other actors. It is this inclusion in several different activities that gives the Romanian actor its high BC. The largest event is the annual East-West European Memorial Meeting in Kreisau/Krzyżowa in March 2015 coorganised by the Stiftung Aufarbeitung with the Kreisau Initiative, the Evangelische Akademie Berlin, the German War Graves Commission and the ENRS. The

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event was attended by Radu Preda, the then director of the IICCMER, and artistic consultant Irina Hasnas Hubbard. Preda and Hubbard presented the memorial in the former prison at Râmnicu Sărat and spoke alongside representatives from other memorialisation initiatives (the Commission for Questions of Human Rights in Sverdlovsk and the German-Polish ‘Meetingpoint Music Messiaen’ initiative).39 Preda also represented the IICCMER at the East-West European Memorial Meeting in March 2016: in that year, the event was coorganised by the Stiftung Aufarbeitung, the Kreisau Foundation, the Kreisau Initiative, the Evangelische Akademie Berlin, the INR (Wrocław) and the German War Graves Commission. The theme was resistance and collaboration, and the emphasis in the marketing materials produced by the Stiftung Aufarbeitung is on cross-country exchange between experts with the aim of identifying ‘to what extent collaboration and resistance are a part of national historical narratives and how these phenomena are perceived in a transnational perspective’. Preda spoke on a panel entitled ‘Fascists, Terrorists, Resistance Fighters or Collaborators? Interpretation, Misuse and Instrumentalisation of History in Current Conflicts and Historical-Political Debates in Europe’. Fellow panellists were Ukrainian journalist Juriy Durkot, Paweł Ukielski of the Polish INR, and writer/journalist Verena Boos.40 A similar major event attended by Preda was a conference coorganised by the Stiftung Aufarbeitung, the German Institute for Human Rights, the Humboldt-Viadrina Governance Platform (HVGP) and the Foundation Memory, Responsibility and Future as part of its series on ‘Transitional Justice’ in December 2015. The event was entitled ‘Experiences with Working Through State Violence and Human Rights Abuses’. The Stiftung Aufarbeitung opens its advertising of this event with the comment: ‘internationally, the processes of working through the past in Germany after the Second World War as well as after the end of the SED dictatorship are seen as examples to follow’. However, the purpose of the series is described as being to identify deficits as well as successes in the German model and to explore the experiences of other countries in this context. A particular focus is on the contribution of memorials and educational initiatives to working through the past, alongside legal prosecutions and reparations programmes. In this way, the Stiftung Aufarbeitung notes that ‘the series makes important contributions to exchange between international processes of working through the past, which has grown considerably in importance in the last two decades’. The contributors are described as ‘experts’ and in this event included, alongside Preda: Anja Mihr of the HVGP, Verena Boos, Rainer Eppelmann (Stiftung Aufarbeitung), Beate Rudolf (German Institute for Human Rights), Nenad Vukosavljević (Center for Nonviolent Action, Belgrade/Sarajevo) and writer/ journalist Jacqueline Boysen.41

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The perspective of the IICCMER on its collaborations in this period can be assessed through a study of its activity reports and press releases for the years 2015 and 2016. In the preamble to the 2015 report, one of the guiding principles of the Institute is described as: establishing an extensive and comprehensive system of partnerships with similar institutions in the country and abroad with national and international foundations and organizations, with state or private institutions that have relevant materials for the study of communism in Romania.42

We might understand the IICCMER’s involvement in the large-scale events organised by the Stiftung Aufarbeitung as a part of that ambition. Nonetheless, despite presenting a significant number of events in some detail, the cooperations with the Stiftung Aufarbeitung are not referenced in the activity reports and it is not named as a partner. The only reference to collaboration with the Stiftung Aufarbeitung in the annual summaries is the workshop series ‘Advocating for a Museum of Communism in Romania’, which ran from March to May 2015. The objectives of this series are described in terms of gaining advice and guidance from existing institutions for the creation of a Museum of Communism in Romania.43 This was to be achieved through the creation of ‘an international network of specialists to contribute to the development of appropriate concepts for the representation of the traumatic past, providing us with their own experience and expertise in the field’.44 A press release from 3 June 2015 indicates that the Stiftung Aufarbeitung was represented by Nikolas Dörr.45 The Stiftung Aufarbeitung itself describes Dörr’s involvement as part of the ‘international networking with institutions dedicated to the history of communism’ that is central to working through the consequences of communism that ‘had a global impact directly and indirectly’.46 We do find a comment relating to the 2015 Memorial Meeting in Kreisau/Krzyżowa in the press releases archived on the IICCMER’s website (but not to the 2016 edition of the series); however, rather than an account of the conference, the press release is a summary of an article by Preda on the subject of ‘Sites of Memory’. Preda focuses particularly on how debates around memory and memorialisation relate to the Romanian context and the proposed Museum of Communism. The press release opens with a nod to the Memorial Meeting, but otherwise does not reference the conference: ‘I [Preda] recently attended a meeting of the heads of memorial sites in Eastern and Western Europe in Poland. For almost a decade and a half, museum specialists have been exchanging experiences in Kreisau on a subject that remains highly sensitive.’47 Indeed, there is a focus in the IICCMER’s activity reports for 2015–16 on events in or about Romania and with Romanian

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partners, with only a handful of references to international or transnational events.48 The only non-Romanian official partner (that is, listed under the rubric ‘Partners’) is the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, which cooperates on an ongoing basis with the IICCMER on a number of projects including CPD for teachers of history, summer schools, symposia, conferences and exhibitions. The IICCMER explains the collaboration by citing a common focus on a ‘respect for human rights, social justice, democratic freedom and responsibility in society’.49 These events largely take place within Romania and have a focus on Romanian history. We might therefore be tempted to conclude that the absence of any significant discussion of the events organised by the Stiftung Aufarbeitung is due to a focus on the national rather than the transnational context. In other words, although the IICCMER clearly does collaborate with non-Romanian partners, in its self-presentation, it focuses on its work within the country. However, this assessment is complicated by the significant number of similar events (in terms of activity type, at least) that are reported in the IICCMER’s press releases. We learn about conferences attended by IICCMER representatives in, for example, Valencia,50 New York,51 Cleveland52 and an ENRS conference in Budapest.53 There are also a significant number of references to the work of the PEMC, of which the IICCMER is a founding member. In July 2015, the IICCMER reports the praise received from the PEMC for the work it had done towards the prosecution for crimes against humanity of Alexandru Vişinescu, former commandant at the Râmnicu Sărat prison.54 A press release in May 2016 calls for contributions to the competition for young people to design a European memorial to the victims of totalitarianism, launched by the PEMC in collaboration with the Slovak Ministry of Justice (on behalf of the Slovak Presidency of the Council of the EU) and the European Shoah Legacy Institute.55 The IICCMER reports on a ‘Festival of Freedom’ held in Bratislava in November 2016 organised by the INR in Bratislava, which, the IICCMER notes, ‘is, like the IICCMER, a member of the Platform of European Memory and Conscience, whose Executive Director, Neela Winkelmann, also spoke on behalf of the partner institutions’.56 The Stiftung Aufarbeitung is not a member of the Platform; indeed, Dujisin notes that there was a failed attempt by the Stiftung to join the network in the early years of its activity, which was hindered by a different approach to the histories of Nazism and communism, the justifiability of a comparison between the two, and the politicisation of memory.57 To be clear, there is no evidence in my data of a major conflict between the Stiftung Aufarbeitung and the IICCMER in particular; indeed, as noted above, the IICCMER invited the Stiftung Aufarbeitung to contribute to the workshops on the proposed Museum of Communism. Nonetheless, in its reporting of transnational activity – with its focus on the national and its embeddedness in

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a network of which the Stiftung Aufarbeitung is not part – the relationship with the German partner moves into the background.

MENA Actors Tunisian Civil Rights Activists and the BStU It is at this point that we can turn to our central actors outside of the European context – that is, the MENA actors in the networks of the BStU and Hohenschönhausen. In the case of the BStU, these were Tunisian and Egyptian civil rights activists. My focus here will be on the Tunisian actors; this group had the highest betweenness centrality of the two. Ibrahim Fraihat notes that Tunisian civil society organisations played a crucial role in promoting peace and reconciliation in the country after the 2011 uprisings, and that their activities included seeking advice from international actors and ‘coordinating educational trips and site visits to countries that have undergone political transitions in the past, such as Peru and South Africa’.58 Figure 6.5 shows the egonet of this actor-group in the BStU network in 2011–12. What we see here is, on the one hand, the reflection of the network brokered by the GFO (as discussed in Chapter 5) from the perspective of the Tunisian civil rights activists involved in it and based on the same collaborations. On the other hand, the Tunisian actors are also brought into cooperations with the BStU by other key actors. As we saw in Chapter 4, on 10 May 2011, the Tunisian civil rights activists were among a group invited by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES) to a discussion with a representative of the BStU about power struggles after the removal of dictatorships, dealing with the former elites and the costs of working through the past. In February 2012, a group from Tunisia were visitors to the BStU for the purpose of a ‘discussion and tour of the archives’: the group included representatives of Le Labo’ démocratique and the Chair of the Tunisian Centre for Transitional Justice (Centre de Tunis pour la justice transitionelle), plus other lawyers, civil rights activists, journalists and bloggers.59 Le Labo’ and the Centre for Transitional Justice are two of the few named actors from the MENA region in the texts of the BStU. Le Labo’ states its aim as being to contribute ‘to the establishment and entrenchment of an innovative and living democracy’.60 On its website, under ‘themes’ Le Labo’ lists ‘security and justice’ and ‘international relations’. The President of Le Labo’, Farah Hached, is reported as describing the BStU as a model for the work of Le Labo’, but that it had since realised that model is not appropriate to the Tunisian context: ‘in the meantime we’ve established that we cannot implement that [an organisation like the BStU] in Tunisia, at least not at the

186 • Towards a Collaborative Memory


  




 

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moment. This institution requires a budget that we simply cannot muster and which we would prefer to spend on health care and schools’.61 We see a preference here for social and economic justice over lustration and retributive justice. This is not to say that there is not an interest in the role of memory in transitional justice from within the Tunisian organisation: under the project heading ‘Political Police’, Le Labo’ lists several events relating to uncovering the crimes of the state security services and the role of archives within that process. The BStU is mentioned in reference to the visit in February 2012, which is described here as being organised by Le Labo’ in partnership with Hohenschönhausen. The Tunisian partner is defined in more active terms: ‘we sent a delegation of Tunisian experts, members of civil society, and a representative of the Tunisian Ministry of Education’.62 In the BStU text, the same event is reported as follows: ‘a group of visitors from Tunisia spent time at the BStU for the purpose of a conversation and tour of the archive. The Chair of Le Labo’ démocratique was among them’.63 Le Labo’s press release for the visit lists the delegates by name and affiliation64 and gives an indication of the relationship culture between the Tunisian and German partners from the perspective of Le Labo’. The purpose of the trip is described as follows: This study trip will allow the delegation to analyse the successes but also the flaws in the German experience in the matter of transitional justice and to draw conclusions for Tunisia. This is the first step in a series of expert exchanges between Germany and Tunisia as part of a global reflection on the preservation of memory and transitional justice.65

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We see here a reiteration of the narrative of ‘learning from the Germans’. However, this is combined with the assertion of equal expertise on the part of the Tunisian collaborator, the recognition of ‘flaws’ in the German model (and therefore the right to reject it as appropriate for Tunisia) and – importantly – the positioning of this bilateral dialogue in the context of a ‘global’ discussion to which the Tunisian collaborator also contributes. The press release also notes that the trip will be ‘an introduction to the workshops on the question of the archives of political police services, which are organised by Le Labo’ démocratique as part of its programme on political police and democratic transition’.66 It is not clear for whom this ‘introduction’ is intended – the delegates, the German collaborators or both; however, it is an indication that the process of learning is assumed to be two-way. The BStU is not referenced again in Le Labo’s project on the political police: interestingly, cooperations in 2013 and 2014 were instead with the Polish Solidarity Fund PL, Aide polonaise and the Polish Embassy in Tunisia. Indeed, the documents and publications produced by Le Labo’ highlight two issues: first, transitional justice is one of the organisation’s primary concerns, which reflects the transformation of the BStU and Hohenschönhausen into agents of transitional justice in their cooperations in the MENA region in general and with this partner in particular; and, second, Le Labo’s approach was one of fact-finding and a study of examples from a variety of contexts, with Germany being just one in this respect. To give an example of this narrative, in a text produced in December 2011 with the title ‘The Archives of the Political Police as Part of Transitional Justice’, Hached describes Le Labo’s objective as being to ‘find the method best adapted to Tunisia with regard to the archives of the political police’. Other contexts referenced in the document include Russia, Iran, Guatemala, Iraq, Spain and Poland, alongside Germany. Hached notes a problem that she perceives as particular to Tunisia – that is, ‘the economic links between individuals and the “families” [which] may appear as even more important than the fact of having been an informant’.67 This appears to be a reference to the prevalence of ‘crony capitalism’ in the Ben Ali regime, in which the rulers’ families and entourage took control of key industries and sectors (for example, telecommunications, oil, banking, tourism and the media), making it almost impossible for private entrepreneurs to conduct business without an association with one of the ‘families’. Habib Nassar notes that ‘corruption networks and systems of repression overlapped with each other and were tightly intertwined’, meaning that ‘no meaningful transitional justice process could overlook the economic dimension of authoritarianism in the region’.68 In an intervention produced for an event organised in December 2012 by UNESCO and the Tunisian National Archives under the title ‘Archives and the Right to Know’, Hached highlights even more clearly the particularity of

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the Tunisian situation. She notes that the files produced by the political police are ‘living documents’ still in use by the intelligence agencies, making their suitability for transitional justice problematic and the German model inappropriate.69 Similarly, a text produced in November 2012 by Samah Krichah, a member of Le Labo’s advisory board, focuses on the relationship between transitional justice and memory. The piece was presented at a conference organised by the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ) and the European Inter-University Centre for Human Rights and Democratisation on the topic: ‘Rule of Law and Transitional Justice: Towards Triangular Learning’. With reference to the archives of the political police, Krichah cites three existing models: Spain, Germany and Romania. Germany is noted particularly for its culture of educating about the past, including – in a clear nod to Hohenschönhausen – through the use of former prisons as memorials. Nonetheless, Krichah points towards some of the particular features of the transition in Tunisia: ongoing violence, the need for conciliation rather than reconciliation among a people united in their oppression under Ben Ali, and the different views among Islamists and communists, particularly concerning reparations.70 Far from being the passive students of a ‘German model’, these actors present themselves as part of a global network of transitional justice activists and as seeking out and assessing the pros and cons of approaches taken in contexts across the world. Contre l’oubli, Tunisian Government Representatives and Hohenschönhausen Le Labo’ is not one of the most between central actors in the Hohenschönhausen networks; however, it too is one of the few named Tunisian citizen’ rights actors in the texts produced by Hohenschönhausen about its work in the region. Le Labo’ collaborated with Hohenschönhausen in the context of the conference ‘Against Forgetting – No Future without Memory’ held in Tunisia on 6–8 December 2012. As was described in Chapter 4, Hohenschönhausen presents this collaboration in a narrative that describes the German model as being ‘introduced’ and the Tunisian approach as being ‘discussed’, setting up an implicit hierarchy between the two. The narrative produced by Le Labo’ is rather different. The objectives of the event are described as follows: Discuss ideas, perspectives, and challenges concerning overcoming the Tunisian and German dictatorships through contributions by state officials, historians, academics and members of civil society, coming from various political positions.71

Here, processes of coming to terms with the past in both national contexts are up for discussion and actors from both sides are presented as having diverse forms of expertise.

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The collaboration with Le Labo’ was part of Hohenschönhausen’s major cooperation in the region; that is, the GFO-supported project Contre l’oubli, which brought together German and Tunisian actors to work towards agreed project outcomes (see Chapter 4). The project was initiated at the end of 2011 and its activities were concentrated in 2012–13. The activity of Contre l’oubli is closely entwined with the collaborations between Hohenschönhausen and Tunisian governmental actors; therefore, I will discuss the two alongside one another. Figures 6.6 and 6.7 shows the egonets of the Tunisian government group and Contre l’oubli in 2011–12 and 2013–14, the periods in which the partnership was most active and the Tunisian actors occupied a central position. I will turn first to the Tunisian governmental actors. In June 2012, Ridha Ibn Mahmoud, the Tunisian State Secretary for Justice, visited the Memorial, as did Habib Essid, the Tunisian Minister of the Interior. They were followed in September 2012 by Saïd Mechichi, State Secretary for Reform in the Tunisian Ministry of the Interior. Mahmoud’s visit is connected in the texts produced by the Memorial to the Contre l’oubli project and its financing by the GFO.72 In October 2011, Knabe visited the site of the remand prison of the Tunisian secret services at the invitation of Essid; following this visit, Knabe called for a Memorial similar to Hohenschönhausen to be built on the site.73 Throughout 2013, several delegations of Tunisian actors visited the Hohenschönhausen memorial and in each case were informed about the Contre l’oubli project by one of its representatives, usually its head, Hamza Chourabi. In May 2013, visitors to the Memorial included representatives of the transitional government in Tunisia and civil society organisations. This delegation also visited the Berlin Wall Memorial, the Topography of Terror, the Stasi Museum, the BStU and the Federal Centre for Civic Education (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, BpB), where they learnt about the work of the Stiftung Aufarbeitung. The narrative in the Hohenschönhausen text about this visit is very much one of ‘learning from the Germans’ and Sofiene Abidi, the Tunisian representative of the Ministry for Human Rights and Transitional Justice, is reported as stating that ‘this has been a fruitful visit that has shown us paths to awakening national memory. We want the Ministry to foreground these aspects more for the future’.74 May 2013 also saw the visit to the Memorial of Leila Bahria, Tunisian Secretary of State, accompanied by the Tunisian Ambassador Elyes Ghariani. Bahria is reported as hoping that: ‘Tunisia manages to build a memorial to all the suffering of political prisoners in order to safeguard the memory for young people and for future generations.’75 In June 2013, this was followed by the visit of the Tunisian Prime Minister Ali Larayedh, the Foreign Minister Othmane Jerandi, and the Economic and Social Minister Ridha Saidi. According to the text produced by Hohenschönhausen, Larayedh expressed the wish for a similar memorial in Tunisia.76 In September 2013, a delega-

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Figure 6.6 The Tunisian government egonet in the Hohenschönhausen networks 2011–12 and 2013–14. © Sara Jones

tion comprising government representatives and NGOs visited the Memorial in the context of the ‘German-Tunisian Academy for Good Governance’ programme organised by the Europäische Akademie.77 Finally, in November 2013, Hamadi Jebali, the Tunisian Minister President, and Ambassador Ghariani visited the Hohenschönhausen memorial and were informed about the Contre l’oubli project by Chourabi. The visit was also organised by the Europäische Akademie and Jebali had been invited to Germany by the Körber Foundation and the GFO.78 If we turn to the Contre l’oubli egonets themselves, what we see is a greater diversity of actors than is common in cooperations between the BStU, Hohenschönhausen and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung and partners outside of

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Figure 6.7 The Contre l’oubli egonet in the Hohenschönhausen networks 2011–12 and 2013–14. © Sara Jones

the European context. This is particularly the case in 2013–14. The majority of ties are with other MENA actors or with German ones; however, these are both ‘western’ and ‘eastern’ German actors and are drawn from a range of sectors. The Contre l’oubli neighbourhood in network terms is more diverse than that of other MENA actors. Part of that diversity is the result of the involvement of Contre l’oubli actors in the visits of the Tunisian government representatives, as described above, which also included a number of other partners. Nonetheless, Hohenschönhausen also reports numerous highly collaborative events involving Contre l’oubli actors in a diverse set of activities. The texts produced by

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Hohenschönhausen describe the visit of the Tunisian delegation in February 2012 (outlined above with reference to the BStU) as a ‘prelude’ to or (elsewhere) actually ‘part of ’ the project, but do not name the organisers or delegates. The panellists of a podium discussion following the screening of the film Memory at Risk in Kino Arsenal – an event that is linked to the Tunisian visit – are named as Farah Hached, Mokthar Trifi and Radhia Nasraoui.79 The Hohenschönhausen text does not report which organisations these individuals represent; however, these are respectively Le Labo’ démocratique, the Tunisian League for Human Rights and the Tunisian Association for the Fight against Torture. The year 2013 also saw the production of some of the key outputs of the collaboration, including the touring exhibitions ‘Life in the Dictatorship: Political Persecution in Tunisia’ and ‘Working through Dictatorial Pasts in Germany’. In the same year, Sven Felix Kellerhoff published the volume Learning from History: A Handbook for Working through Dictatorial Pasts (Aus der Geschichte lernen – Ein Handbuch zur Aufarbeitung von Diktaturen) as part of the project.80 In October 2013, Contre l’oubli finalised its poster competition for Tunisian design students: the awards ceremony took place in the context of the premiere of the documentary film Black Memory (La Mémoire noire) produced by Hichem Ben Ammar and financed by the project.81 Contre l’oubli officially concluded in February 2014 with an event in the headquarters of the GIZ. The concluding event incorporated a panel discussion with Susanne Buckley-Zistel (University of Marburg), Annelen Micus (European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, ECCHR), Chourabi and Knabe. The discussion focused on the question of whether Germany could be a model for working through the past for other countries. After the panel debate, there was a screening of Black Memory. 82 The project also financed the doctoral research of Imen Shabani on the topic of ‘Transitional Justice and the System of Reparations: Political Prisoners in Tunisia before 14 January’.83 This is a unique project in this memory zone – or indeed in the collaborations between the three central actors and partners outside of the European context in general. It intertwines governmental and NGO actors in an ongoing cooperation that involves multiple different outputs, most of which are produced in collaboration with Tunisian actors. It is brokered and financed by the GFO, but also by the Association for the Promotion of Democracy in Tunisia. Nonetheless, the relationship culture as narrated by Hohenschönhausen is still predominantly one of learning from the German partner. Is this perspective replicated by the Tunisian actors? The project’s Facebook site, which ran from January 2012 to December 2016 (that is, beyond the timeframe of the project), produced and linked content in German, French

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and Arabic relating not only to the project, but also to the wider context in Tunisia and the MENA region. We can thus view it as representing a point of intersection between the different partners: the material produced or reproduced on this site thereby sets the perspective of the German actors alongside multiple other voices.84 One of the first activities to be reported on the Contre l’oubli Facebook page is the visit of the Tunisian delegation to Berlin in February 2012. Contre l’oubli describes this visit (in both French and German) as follows: Working through a dictatorship is a complex process. There are no easy solutions. If we know the experiences of other countries, their successes, but also their failures, we can avoid mistakes. For this reason knowledge transfer, exchange and collaboration are of invaluable advantage for those responsible in Tunisia.

The authors add that further ‘expert visits’ took place in 2012 for the same purpose, including that of the Minister of the Interior and the State Secretary for Justice and the Interior. The Facebook page links to several articles that report on the conference coorganised with Le Labo’ démocratique in December 2012. Although many of these links are (at the time of writing in 2022) no longer working, this indicates the broad reception of the event in Tunisia. An article on the news and media website Tekiano gives one perspective from the Tunisian point of view. The article quotes the organisers as stating that the purpose of the event is to: Discuss ideas, perspectives and challenges regarding the legacy of dictatorships through the contributions by state officials, historians, academics, representatives of NGOs and politicians from different parties.

This description is almost identical to that given by Le Labo’ above; however, it does not include the reference to Germany. The article describes the contributions around the subject of retributive (legal) justice by Christoph Schaefgen (former German Attorney General), Nasraoui and Fadhel Sayhi (Advisor to the Tunisian Minister for Justice). Schaefgen is presented as offering advice to the Tunisian partners to ‘break with the past in terms of the treatment of victims and perpetrators’. Nonetheless, Nasraoui and Sayhi emphasised the particularity of the Tunisian situation. Nasraoui reminded the audience of the current situation in Tunisia in which the judicial system does not function on an equitable basis: ‘to this day there are questions regarding fair process and an independent justice. We note that the procedures are not respected for some individuals’. Sayhi emphasised ‘the necessity of adopting a strategy that combines the efforts of the constituent parts of society’.85

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The Contre l’oubli page also reproduces content that shows the complexity of the Tunisian transition, notably in terms of which historical traumas and periods of repression should be the focus of commemoration (a question that is also raised on a number of occasions by those commenting on the posts). Fraihat points towards the difficulty of this issue in post-‘Arab Spring’ Tunisia: the question of ‘how far back into their history to delve’ was one that preoccupied those exploring transitional justice options in the country.86 The Contre l’oubli Facebook page links to an article about the historian Ahmed Jdey, described as a partner of the Hohenschönhausen Memorial, who was involved in the visits to Berlin in March 2012 and died in July of that year. The article includes a video of Jdey’s intervention at a meeting with the GFO in which he argued that ‘although there were 30,000 Islamist prisoners, the Tunisian people suffered even more from the tyranny of their dictators … the Tunisian Revolution was triggered by what French historians called, during the colonial era, the Triangle of Death: Gafsa, Thala-Kasserine and Siliana’.87 Lamont and Pannwitz note that under both Habib Bourguiba (the first post-independence President) and Ben Ali, the regions in the interior and south of the country (where Gafsa, Thala-Kasserine and Siliana are located) suffered from significant underinvestment in comparison to those areas in the north and coastal regions. They add that it was demands for social justice that had ‘long resonated in Tunisia’s interior’ that ultimately emerged in the slogan ‘work, freedom and national dignity’ in 2011.88 In short, the demands for social and economic justice were part of the protest movement and should, the authors argue, form part of the process of transitional justice. However, what emerged after the ‘Arab Spring’ was, in Lamont and Pannwitz’s words, a form of ‘elite justice’ that is ‘framed by an international normative and legal framework that finds difficulty in giving voice to the marginalized communities that transitional justice aspires to empower’. A focus on social marginalisation gave way to a focus on historical abuses of civil and human rights.89 It is also notable that Jdey calls to mind the colonial period, something that is completely absent from the texts produced by Hohenschönhausen and, indeed, either of the other two central organisations in this study. Ratka notes that Germany’s lack of colonial past in the Arab region allowed the country ‘to present itself as a credible partner’ in terms of promoting transition to democracy in the MENA region following the ‘Arab Spring’.90 It may be the case that the lack of prior colonial relationship allowed Germany to intervene in a way that would not have been acceptable for, say, France or Italy. However, the complete absence of any discussion of colonialism in the networks studied here also suggests that the German approach can mask histories of colonial entanglements, which have a very real and ongoing impact in the present.

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Conclusion: Intersections and the National in the Transnational This final chapter has allowed us to explore in detail some of the outcomes of the intersections that are the focus of this study. Across the collaborations examined in this chapter, we see some acceptance of the self-presentation of these institutions as exemplary institutions of a German model of memory. Nonetheless, exemplary here is taken to mean representative of a way of addressing the past rather than to mean ideal forms. The interest in the ‘German model’ is not only in examples of successes, but also failures. The German experiences are explored as one model among several and the non-German partners draw on different elements of each in order to build a framework that fits with their own national context. In the process, they assert the specificity of that context and reject elements of the German approach that do not fit – sometimes to the disappointment of the German actor, who assumes the rightness of their method. The INR and the IICCMER assert more strongly than either the BStU or the Stiftung Aufarbeitung the justifiability of equating National Socialist and communist crimes. This is the focus of their transnational activity within Europe and – while they might be central actors for the BStU and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung – they do not position the BStU and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung as such in their own accounts. Instead, the INR considers its cooperations with Germany primarily in terms of memory of National Socialism, which we may understand as a response to a crisis within Polish memory culture, and the IICCMER focuses on transnational collaborations that emphasise Romanian national memory or that are positioned in the context of the anti-communist discourse of the PEMC. In the collaborations with partners in Tunisia, the Tunisian actors stress their active role in the relationships; they are not the passive recipients of German knowledge. Instead, they seek out ideas and experiences from a diversity of partners, as well as bringing their own knowledge of the cultural and political context into the discussions. They do welcome the German cooperations for the most part, but there is no sense that they accept the German model wholesale. In all three cases – Poland, Romania and Tunisia – the significance of the national is asserted within the transnational intersections. If we return to the relationship cultures as defined by the German actors – as was explored in Chapters 3 and 4 – we can see that in both European and extra-European collaborations, there is only a partial match between the relationship cultures as they are perceived by the different collaborators. In the post-socialist/CEE context, the German actors tend to narrate the cooperations as being underpinned by shared histories, knowledge exchange and – to varying degrees – a desire to bring the histories of state socialism

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and communism into the centre of European memory. The INR and the IICCMER share these goals and also appear to perceive the BStU and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung as ‘sister’ organisations. Nonetheless, these are sisters from which they have grown apart – historically significant, but not the most important collaborators in the present. Indeed, these German institutions have not tended to be at the forefront of the effort at the European level to assert the significance of the crimes of communism, which has largely been led by other post-socialist actors, notably from the Baltic States, Poland, Romania, the Czech Republic and Hungary.91 In Albania, we ultimately see a rejection of Hohenschönhausen’s efforts to export the German model. It is interesting in this context that Hohenschönhausen’s narrative positions Albania relatively far down the East-West civilizational slope. In Tunisia, the German actors largely narrate the relationship culture as being about a unidirectional transfer of expertise and experience from the German partner to the Tunisian one, that is, ‘learning from the Germans’. The Tunisian actors narrate a relationship culture in which they do actively seek German expertise; however, this is described more in terms of equal exchange. The collaborations are located within the context of a global community of transitional justice actors, of which the Tunisian partners are as much part as the German ones. Moreover, the Tunisian actors incorporate elements of past experience that are uncommon in the German narratives, including longer histories of oppression under colonialism and the importance of social and economic justice. This interweaving of concepts and ideas emerging from different places may appear to epitomise the potential of collaboration and collaborative memory to be a progressive force. However, the relationship cultures as narrated by the two sides suggest that any transfer is only in one direction. If the German actors suggest it is the Tunisians who learn – and the Tunisians agree that they do draw from the German experience where it fits – do the Germans learn anything? If not, then can we describe these cooperations as ‘truly collaborative’ in the sense described in Chapter 1?

Notes 1. I am able to read English, German, French and Romanian. 2. Behr, ‘Historical Policy-Making’, 81. 3. The function of the BStU as a model in this case is noted by a number of scholars, such as Dakowska, ‘Aufarbeitung “Made in Poland”’; Mink, ‘Is There a New Institutional Response’; and Stola, ‘Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance’, 47. 4. Dakowska, ‘Aufarbeitung “Made in Poland”’, 91; Stola, ‘Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance’, 49.

The National in the Transnational • 197 5. Dujisin, ‘A History of Post-communist Remembrance’, 74. 6. Stola, ‘Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance’. 7. Behr, ‘Historical Policy-Making’; Stola, ‘Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance’, 55. 8. For example, Behr, ‘Historical Policy-Making’; Stola, ‘Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance’, 56. 9. See e.g. Dakowska, ‘Aufarbeitung “Made in Poland”’, 94–95; Mink, ‘Is There a New Institutional Response’, 1020–22; Dujisin, ‘A History of Post-communist Remembrance’, 75–76. 10. Mink, ‘Is There a New Institutional Response’, 1023–24. 11. BStU, Zehnter Tätigkeitsbericht, 96–97. 12. BStU, 13. Tätigkeitsbericht, 65, 68 and 73. 13. BStU, 13. Tätigkeitsbericht, 73. 14. Dujisin, ‘A History of Post-communist Remembrance’, 83. 15. BStU, ‘Marianne Birthler diskutiert’. 16. BStU, Zwölfter Tätigkeitsbericht, 83–84. 17. Dujisin, ‘A History of Post-communist Remembrance’, 84. 18. The questionnaire was designed by the author of this book to explore the perspectives on transnational cooperation (especially with Germany) of key actors in the network. The INR survey was one of the few returned and was completed in October 2020. 19. INR, ‘The Reader for the European Network’. 20. INR, ‘Meeting of the Heads of IPN and BStU’. 21. INR, ‘Opening of the Exhibition’. 22. INR, ‘Exhibition “Cold War. Short History of Divided World”’. 23. INR, ‘Berliners Are Learning Polish’. 24. INR, ‘Four Poles Nominated’; INR, ‘Memory of Nations Awards’. 25. INR. ‘Annual Meeting of the European Network’. 26. INR, ‘Annual Meeting of the European Network’. 27. INR, ‘Berliners Are Learning Polish’. 28. INR, ‘Exhibition “Learnt Polnisch”’. 29. Dujisin, ‘A History of Post-communist Remembrance’, 65. 30. INR, ‘Exhibition “Learnt Polnisch”’. 31. See e.g. Kridle, ‘Polityka Historiczna’; Hackmann, ‘Defending the “Good Name”’. 32. Clarke and Duber, ‘Polish Cultural Diplomacy’, 52. 33. Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Hungary. 34. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, 8. Tätigkeitsbericht, 46. 35. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, 8. Tätigkeitsbericht, 96–97. 36. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, 8. Tätigkeitsbericht, 97. 37. Dujisin, ‘A History of Post-communist Remembrance’, 81–82. 38. Dujisin, ‘A History of Post-communist Remembrance’, 83. 39. Stiftung Aufarbeitung, ‘13. Ost-westeuropäisches Gedenkstättentreffen’. 40. Stiftung Aufarbeitung, ‘14. Ost-West-Europäisches Gedenkstättentreffen’. 41. Stiftung Aufarbeitung, ‘Erfahrungen mit der Aufarbeitung’. 42. IICCMER, Raport de activitate 2015, 6. 43. For a discussion of the debates on a Romanian Museum of Communism, see Jones, ‘Uneasy Heritage’. 44. IICCMER, Raport de activitate 2015, 30. 45. IICCMER, ‘IICCMER în cel mai recent număr al Revistei 22’. 46. Stiftung Aufarbeitung, Tätigkeitsbericht 2015, 89–90.

198 • Towards a Collaborative Memory 47. IICCMER, ‘Preşedintele executiv IICCMER’. 48. The only international partners listed in the ICCMER’s 2015 and 2016 activity reports are: the University of Glasgow (the IICCMER participated in the ‘Explorathon – European Researchers’ Night’ in September 2015 with the project ‘Life behind Communist Bars’); the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz (a partner in the ‘The Countryside and Communism in Eastern Europe: Perceptions, Attitudes, Propaganda’ conference); the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (the IICCMER participated in the 2015 annual convention in Philadelphia with a panel on ‘Memorializing and Curating Romanian Communism’); the British Ambassador to Romania (a partner in the ‘Women under Communism: Individual and Collective Destinies’ conference in March 2016); and the Berlin Wall Foundation (Preda and Hasnas represented the IICCMER at an event to mark the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 2016). 49. IICCMER, Raport de activitate 2015, 61; IICCMER, Raport de activitate 2016, 56. 50. IICCMER, ‘IICCMER la Conferinţa Internaţională’. 51. IICCMER, ‘IICCMER, reprezentat la Conferinţa Globală’. 52. IICCMER, ‘Experţii IICCMER’. 53. IICCMER, ‘A cincea ediţie a “Simpozionului European Remembrance”’. 54. IICCMER, ‘Platforma Memoriei şi Conştiinţei Europene’. 55. IICCMER, ‘Tinerii europeni’. 56. IICCMER, ‘Reprezentanţii IICCMER’. 57. Dujisin, ‘A History of Post-communist Remembrance’, 90. 58. Fraihat, Unfinished Revolutions, 215. 59. BStU, Elfter Tätigkeitsbericht, 103. 60. Le Labo’ démocratique, ‘Le Labo’’. 61. Cited in Wüllenkemper, ‘Exportschlager Aufarbeitung’. 62. Le Labo’ démocratique, ‘Projet police politique’. 63. BStU, Elfter Tätigkeitsbericht, 103. 64. These were: Elyes Gharbi (Tunisian National Television); Farah Hached (Le Labo’ démocratique); Ahmed Jedey (Institut Supérieur d’histoire du Mouvement national); Zouhour Krarzi (Tunisian Centre for Transitional Justice); Houssem Louiz (Tunisian Psychiatry Society); Radhia Nasraoui (Tunisian Association for the Fight Against Torture); Radhia Tayaa (National Minister for Education); Mokthar Trifi (Tunisian League for Human Rights); and Lilia Weslaty (Nawaat.org). Le Labo’ démocratique, ‘Communiqué de presse’. 65. Le Labo’ démocratique, ‘Communiqué de presse’. 66. Le Labo’ démocratique, ‘Communiqué de presse’. 67. This is presumably a reference to the economic dominance of the network of businesses operated by Ben Ali’s extended family. See Hached, ‘Les archives de la police politique’. 68. Nassar, ‘Transitional Justice’, 56. 69. Hached, ‘Les défis de la législation’. 70. Krichah, ‘Politique de justice transitionnelle’. 71. Le Labo’ démocratique, ‘Festival de la mémoire’. 72. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, ‘Tunesischer Staatssekretär’. 73. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen. ‘Direktor besucht Gefängnis in Tunis’. 74. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, ‘Tunesische Expertengruppe’. 75. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, ‘Tunesische Staatssekretärin’. 76. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, ‘Tunesischer Regierungschef ’. 77. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, ‘Gedenkstätte empfängt erneut tunesische Delegation’. 78. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, ‘Ehemaliger tunesischer Ministerpräsident’. 79. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, 6. Tätigkeitsbericht, 51.

The National in the Transnational • 199 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91.

Kellerhoff, Aus der Geschichte lernen. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, 7. Tätigkeitsbericht, 81. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, 7. Tätigkeitsbericht, 48. Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, 7. Tätigkeitsbericht, 81. The page is completely accessible to the public and my focus will only be on posts by the page owners – that is, those intended for public consumption. Bsibes, ‘Festival de la mémoire’. Fraihat, Unfinished Revolutions, 135–36. Weslaty, ‘Ahmed Jdey’. Lamont and Pannwitz, ‘Transitional Justice as Elite Justice?’, 279. Lamont and Pannwitz, ‘Transitional Justice as Elite Justice?’, 278. See also Han, ‘Transitional Justice for Whom?’. Ratka, ‘Germany and the Arab Spring’, 65. See Mälksoo, ‘The Memory Politics of Becoming European’, 654; Neumayer, ‘Integrating the Central European Past’, 348–49.

CONCLUSION A Collaborative Memory Not Yet Achieved

8 At the time of writing in spring 2022, the debates in Germany about the country’s culture of memory, the legitimacy of comparison, and the relationship between memories of the Holocaust and colonialism rage on, including contributions by – amongst others – Saul Friedländer and Jürgen Habermas.1 This book contributes to these discussions from a unique perspective. Throughout the course of this study, I have built up a picture of the ‘meaning structures’ of the networks produced by and through the cross-border activities of the BStU, Hohenschönhausen and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung. The combination of quantitative and qualitative methods has revealed the structure of the networks, the relationship cultures as perceived by the German partners, and the cultural blueprints that underpin those relationships. The analysis in Chapter 2 shows that the networks are global in scope with collaborative partners located in diverse contexts all over the world. Nonetheless, the cooperations are regional in focus: partners within the networks are significantly more likely to connect with a partner in the same region that with a partner in a different one. However, this is not the case with Western European actors: Western Europe is not to any significant extent a ‘memory zone’ in these networks. Instead, institutionally powerful German actors, especially governmental and paragovernmental actors, are in positions of potential influence in the networks, functioning as transzonal brokers between the regions. Chapters 3 and 4 build up a picture of the relationship cultures in the different memory zones as they are perceived by the central German actors.

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The analysis shows how the BStU, Hohenschönhausen and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung divide the world in practice, through different kinds of activity, topics and collaborator types. It also demonstrates how these plot elements are woven into narratives that divide the world rhetorically and are underpinned by cultural blueprints about the relationships between East and West and North and South. In Chapter 3, I illustrate how intra-European collaborations are narrated through stories about a common past and its position in European memory. Central and Eastern Europe is at the core of these networks, and Central and Eastern European collaborators are presented as ‘natural’ partners in the effort to move memory of state socialism and communism further to the centre of European memory. The post-socialist/CEE actors are presented as ‘unequal equals’, as having achieved Western ‘standards of memory’,2 but as still fighting for equal recognition of their histories in Europe. Collaborations with post-Soviet actors are often narrated in a very similar way. However, in the rhetoric of the BStU and Hohenschönhausen, those on the geographical edges of Europe are frequently positioned further down the ‘civilizational slope’3 and as being in need of the support of the Germans to achieve a mature memory culture. Western European partners are involved across these intra-European memory zones; however, Western Europe as a historical referent is only rarely present, raising questions about the extent to which the West is seen as the subject rather than the object of knowledge. In collaborations with actors outside of Europe, as discussed in Chapter 4, this epistemic coloniality is seen even more strongly. In the East Asian and MENA zones, the central German actors shift from being agents of memory to agents of transitional justice and democratisation. In this process, they present themselves as representatives of a ‘German’ model, which is – in this narrative – internationally recognised and from which others are presumed to want to learn. The non-European collaborators are often nameless and presented as passive in their reception of the German expertise. The absence of Western Europe as a historical referent means that there is also an absence of references to pre-Second World War entanglements between Europe and the rest of the world: colonialism is not mentioned at all in these texts. Indeed, the analysis of pan-German actors in positions of brokerage in Chapter 5 shows how governmental and paragovernmental actors act as bridges between regions, and in the process influence the form and content of the collaborations. The BStU, Hohenschönhausen and the Stiftung Aufarbeitung become representatives of a ‘German’ model of memory, the flaws and challenges of which have been smoothed over to create an ‘export’ that (it is assumed) supports democratic transition and that is also an instrument of soft power. Chapter 6 explores the perspectives of some of these collaborative partners on the relationship cultures through which the cross-border cooperations are

202 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

enacted. The analysis indicates that the German ‘export’ is not necessarily accepted ‘as is’. Instead, partners in Poland, Romania, Albania and Tunisia reassert the significance of the national in the context of the transnational. They take from German memory culture that which seems useful to their specific national context, but reject that which does not fit with their particular political aims and cultural and social needs. Moreover, the cross-border cooperations with Germany are only a fraction of the transnational activity of these organisations – they also look elsewhere in the world for inspiration. In this regard, the German actors may present their model as a ‘yardstick’ against which others should measure their processes of working through the past; however, it is received as a ‘springboard’ – that is, ‘mined for ideas and practices that seem useful and inspiring, and which can be creatively adapted to one’s own context’.4 At first sight, this might appear to be a collaborative practice that is underpinned by a ‘decolonial cosmopolitanism’; that is, that takes place between two agentic subjects who negotiate different localisms in their efforts to develop an approach to the past that resists the imposition of any one ‘master global design’. However, in order for these intercrossings to be ‘truly’ collaborative in this understanding, both parties must recognise the provinciality of their approach to the past and be ready to set it in dialogue with concepts of memory, justice and rights emerging from other parts of the world. The analysis of how these German actors divide the world rhetorically indicates that this is not the case in the collaborations studied here. There is an epistemic coloniality underpinning the way in which the German actors perceive the relationship cultures, a coloniality that structures the world according to a core, a semi-periphery and a periphery. Those European actors at the centre of the networks are given agency. They are seen as important partners in the effort to promote memory of state socialism and communism, even if (particularly in the case of the Stiftung Aufarbeitung) there may be tensions between the national approach of the non-German and German partners. The actors in the semi-periphery are also given agency; however, this is limited in the narratives produced by the German partners through the presentation of these actors as ‘junior’ partners catching up with the memory standards determined by Western norms. The actors in the periphery have limited agency other than the action of seeking out German partners to learn the ‘right way’ to approach transition and democracy. The non-German partners create narratives that contest this rhetorical division of the world; however, with a few exceptions, the German actors present their export as universally applicable rather than as one approach emerging from a particular history and context. In the context of the debates concerning Achille Mbembe in 2020, Ralf Michaels made a similar observation about those defending the supposed consensus of German memory culture. In an article entitled ‘German Lessons

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for the Whole World’, Michaels argues that the criticism of Mbembe ‘starts with the special responsibility of the Germans for the Holocaust and postulates a specific German point of view that emerges from it, a German narrative, a German identity and a German responsibility. It ignores the particular origin of this point of view and makes it into a universalism’. Michaels adds that Mbembe’s critics demand that others not only recognise the ‘“achievements” of a specifically German “culture of memory” … but also make it into the foundation of their own thought and speech’. He notes the irony in this position given that a central tenet of decolonial thought is the need to overcome such epistemic coloniality. He makes the point that ‘if one assumes in the discussion that specifically European experiences are universal, and ignores the fact that those criticised in this way argue from a different point of view, one perpetuates coloniality and makes the debate (which is actually necessary) impossible’.5 We see this universalising and normative thinking in the ways in which the German institutions at the centre of our networks conceive of their export product ‘memory’. In its cooperations with partners located outside of Europe and to a large extent in the (in this construction) semi-periphery of post-Soviet Europe, there is little to no questioning that the ‘German model’ is to be emulated. We might understand this using Walter D. Mignolo’s rethinking of the concept of the ‘hubris of the zero point’, which he borrows from Colombian philosopher Santiago Castro-Gómez. The ‘zero point’ is the belief that one’s own (Western) position is ‘a detached and neutral point of observation’ and one’s own knowledge is therefore unsituated, emerging from outside of culture. This is contrasted with those ‘others’ whose knowledge is only relevant to the environment from which it emerges: in this construct, ‘the first world has knowledge, the third world has culture’.6 In collaborations within the ‘core’ of the networks, we see a slightly different constellation. Here, the ‘where from’ of knowledge is recognised and is situated in a particularly ‘Eastern’ experience, which challenges Western norms; however, the ways in which this experience might be best remembered is – from the point of view of the German actor at least – still located within memory standards largely determined by those Western norms. This returns us to the discussion in Chapter 1 regarding cosmopolitan memory and the ways in which it engenders a regime of ‘moral remembrance’ that claims universality, but that emerges from European – especially German – approaches to remembrance and transitional justice.7 In their studies of quite different regional contexts, both Lea David and Noga Glucksam have noted that such ‘memory standardization’ often does not meet the needs of local actors and can in fact be detrimental to fostering peace.8 In her analysis of German involvement in Turkish–Armenian memory relations, Alice von Bieberstein notes that Vergangenheitsbewältigung as modelled on the Ger-

204 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

man experience has become a ‘universal’ – that is, ‘that which we cannot not want and which hence exerts great normative power’. She adds that as this apparently universal model is ‘locally evoked and translated, it re-articulates and re-constitutes people, objects and relations, rendering some possible and visible while debilitating others’.9 Other scholars have noted that particular practices and frameworks associated with cosmopolitan memory, notably trauma theory and the gathering of victim testimony, tend ‘to take for granted the universal validity of definitions of trauma and recovery that have developed out of the history of Western modernity’ and that this can in fact result in maintaining ‘existing injustices and inequalities’.10 David traces what she terms the ‘dealing with the past agenda’ from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948 to the present and shows how the ‘German model became known as the bedrock for post-conflict reconciliation efforts’.11 David’s argument is thus underpinned by the symbiotic relationship between cosmopolitan memory and human rights discourse, which has been noted by a number of scholars. Aleida Assmann describes the memory that emerged from the German definition of ‘memory culture’ as being simultaneously the ‘foundational value’ of human rights politics and its ‘future orientation’.12 As we have seen, Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider explicitly link their conceptualisation of a ‘cosmopolitan memory’, a ‘universal code’ emerging from memories of the Holocaust, with global efforts to address past human rights abuses.13 Andreas Huyssen similarly notes the intertwined emergence of the international human rights movements and demands for the memorialisation of historical injustices.14 Indeed, as we have seen in the course of this book, the discourse of memory is intimately bound up with discourses of transitional justice, democratisation and human rights, also for the central actors in our networks. This is particularly the case for partnerships with collaborators located in (non-EU) post-Soviet, East Asian and MENA contexts, in which the focus shifts to the present and the future rather than to the past. The transnational activity of these actors can thus be viewed as part of what David describes as the ‘transnational human rights regime’.15 David identifies human rights as an ideology that, ‘through its institutionalisation, produces coercive organisational and ideological power’.16 This is, she argues, a ‘Westernled global institutionalisation of values and norms’, which includes the imperative to carry out transitional justice and memorialisation as a route to the presumed goal of ‘a Western liberal market democracy’.17 Indeed, there is a considerable body of scholarship on human rights that explores the Western foundations of what are supposedly universal norms and standards. Makau Mutua notes that at the time of the drafting of the UDHR, the ‘world was still very decidedly Eurocentric, including at the UN’. He makes the point that a large part of the world was still subjugated to colonial rule at the point that the UN, through the UDHR, determined which rights were ‘universal’.18

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Mutua argues that there is a persistent view within the human rights project that the ‘origin’ of those rights is in the Global North, while its ‘target’ is in the Global South.19 The North, he contends, views human rights as an incontestable set of rules and as similar to ‘antibiotics that would cure the “disease” whether the patient is Asian, African or Latin American’.20 It is also notable that the UDHR is the example given by Mignolo in his claim that ‘European hegemonic knowledge and modern and post-modern ideas … molded the universal concept of humanity’.21 This is not to suggest that the underlying principles of the intangibility of human dignity are not also central to the cultures of the Global South: Mutua considers that ‘human rights have a core truth that can be found in all cultures’.22 This means that these underlying principles meet with basic acceptance in most parts of the world, something that Jack Donnelly describes as ‘overlapping consensus universality’.23 Nonetheless, this ‘consensus universality’ does not mean that they can be articulated and implemented in a universal way, and the liberal tradition needs to be ‘humble enough to accept the contribution of other traditions and cultures to validate a universal corpus of human dignity’.24 José-Manuel Barreto similarly highlights the ways in which standard understandings of human rights have emerged from ‘European events and schools of thinking’ and have presented themselves as ‘universal’, eclipsing conceptualisations emerging from other parts of the world.25 One of the key results of the dominance of Western capitalist societies in the human rights project at its outset was the separation of civil and political rights from economic and social rights into two covenants: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). The latter, Mutua notes, was focused on the concerns of the Global South, but is ‘much maligned and regarded by many as the “other” covenant’.26 Western states, especially the United States, argued (and still argue) that the proposed economic, social and cultural rights would require considerable outlays of state capital to implement, which would in turn necessitate state intervention in the economy and the redistribution of wealth – things that are not compatible with the liberal free market economy.27 As Samuel Moyn argues, the rise in concern for (supposedly) universal human rights has coincided with a decreased interest in global economic justice, particularly distributive equality28 – values that were promoted especially by Muslim states in the process of drawing up the UDHR.29 Moyn contends that a human rights concept that does not call into question market economics (and a transitional justice that actively works towards it) and is founded on ‘ethically individualist grounds’ is unlikely to pose a challenge to the global hierarchies of wealth.30 Indeed, another key feature of the institutionalisation of human rights, which can similarly be traced to the dominance of Western liberalism, is the emphasis

206 • Towards a Collaborative Memory

on the individual as the bearer of rights and the need for those rights to be justiciable. This further entrenched the emphasis on civil and political rights over economic, social and cultural ones, with the latter being viewed as ‘programmatic’ rather than enforceable through the law.31 When human rights are channelled through efforts towards transitional justice and memorialisation, the regime of moral remembrance underpinned by Western philosophies and epistemologies can result in what Rosemary Nagy describes as ‘technocratic and decontextualised solutions’. These may be ‘alien and distant to those who actually have to live together after atrocity’ and often include an undervaluing of the importance of the gendered and socioeconomic consequences of that violence.32 David describes the negative ‘side effects’ of the regime of ‘moral remembrance’ that emerges from human rights ideology. These include: simplification of the categories of victim and perpetrator and a decontextualisation of human rights abuses; an assumption that Freudian-derived individual psychology is universal, resulting in a sidelining of cultural, religious and societal differences; and a focus on a single set of events, repressing other historical moments of significance for the community.33 The latter would seem particularly relevant to the application of the ‘German model’ to Germany itself: a focus on the memory of the Holocaust does not appear to permit a use of the same model for remembrance of the first genocide of the twentieth century, perpetrated by the German Empire against the Herero and Nama. However, it is not only a question of what histories might be marginalised by this emphasis on a model of rights, justice and memorialisation born of experiences in one part of the world, but deemed a universally applicable ‘export’. It also risks silencing conceptualisations of human rights and the role of memory that emerge from other parts of the world. As Barreto argues, the call to decolonise human rights is not a call to abandon Western conceptualisations; rather, the aim is to provincialise them and to set them in dialogue with other local conceptions, ‘both those coming from what was the centre, as well as those emerging from places that customarily had been reckoned to occupy the margins’.34 The substantial challenge of decolonising, as Priyamvada Gopal puts it, is ‘to identify and undo the ways in which forms of knowledge have been undermined, marginalised, dismissed or appropriated without segregating epistemological resources into a series of alternatives in the name of epistemic diversity’.35 This would necessitate a truly collaborative approach to cross-border collaboration: taking a decolonial option that would change ‘the terms of the conversation’ in order to ‘change the content’ rather than changing the content, but keeping the terms the same.36 German mnemonic actors would export the ‘German model’ – based on ‘facing the past’, the ‘duty to remember’ and ‘justice for victims37 – as one fragment of the global mosaic of rights, justice and memory. Each fragment is essential to the

Conclusion • 207

whole; however, through collaboration, they combine to support something more, something larger than the individual pieces. It is beyond the scope of this book to explore in detail what those other fragments are. However, they might include: ‘Buddhist forward-looking values’ as exemplified in Carol A. Kidron’s analysis of the descendants of survivors of the genocide in Cambodia;38 the focus of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights on duties as part of the human rights discourse;39 holistic and relational understandings of justice over abstract and specific ones in the pan-African concept of Ubuntu;40 the valuing of community and kinship as seen in Japan;41 the emphasis on human relationality within Confucianism;42 and the importance of social, economic and cultural rights as long advocated by actors in the Global South. Latin American conceptualisations of rights, memory and justice appear to have a particular history of entanglement and cross-fertilisation. Borrowings from Western philosophy developed in a unique way in the region from the sixteenth century through to the significant contribution of Latin American countries to the UDHR in the twentieth century, a contribution that synthesised civil and political rights with social and economic ones.43 In the late twentieth century, Latin American countries (notably Argentina) developed a specific model of memory, described by David as the ‘truth model’ that nonetheless drew on the German experience.44 More recently, a ‘memory alliance’ between Argentina and Spain has resulted in a transfer of concepts from the former colony to the coloniser, bringing a gradual end to Spain’s ‘pact of oblivion’.45 Moving towards a truly collaborative memory is not only about providing epistemic justice46 to postviolence communities outside of Germany and Europe. Drawing on and combining the fragment of the ‘German model’ with those fragments emerging from other conceptualisations of rights, justice and memory might offer answers to some of the seemingly intractable flaws and blindspots of German memory culture. This would include the challenge to unity posed by persistent economic inequality, the lack of reconciliation between the eastern and western parts of the country, continued right-wing violence, and the need to integrate multiple memories of oppression, including those committed under colonial rule.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4.

Friedländer, ‘Ein fundamentales Verbrechen’; Habermas, ‘Der neue Historikerstreit’. David, The Past Can’t Heal Us, 4. Melegh, On the East-West Slope, 1. Gabowitsch, ‘Replicating Atonement’, 6.

208 • Towards a Collaborative Memory 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

Michaels, ‘Deutschstunde für alle Welt’. Mignolo, ‘Epistemic Disobedience’, 160. David, The Past Can’t Heal Us, 1. David, The Past Can’t Heal Us; Glucksam, ‘My Grief, Our Grievance’. Von Bieberstein, ‘Memorial Miracle’, 238. Craps, Postcolonial Witnessing, 2. See also Rothberg, ‘Decolonizing Trauma Studies’; Visser, ‘Decolonizing Trauma Theory’. The body of literature on ‘humanitarian witnessing’ makes a similar critique regarding the appropriation of witness experiences for the purposes of humanitarian organisations whose audiences are largely in the Global North. In so doing, testimony is produced that ‘reduces violence to trauma and the subject to victim’. Fassin, ‘The Humanitarian Politics of Testimony’, 552. See also Dean, ‘The Politics of Suffering’; Kidron, ‘The Global Semiotics’. David, ‘The Emergence’; David, The Past Can’t Heal Us, 57–58. Assmann, Das neue Unbehagen, 91 Levy and Sznaider, Human Rights and Memory, 4; Levy and Sznaider, The Holocaust and Memory, 193. Huyssen, ‘Memory Culture and Human Rights’, 28. David, The Past Can’t Heal Us, 3. David, The Past Can’t Heal Us, 22. David, The Past Can’t Heal Us, 33 and 48. Mutua, Human Rights Standards, 16–19. Mutua, Human Rights Standards, 19. Mutua, Human Rights Standards, 56. Mignolo, ‘Epistemic Disobedience’, 175. Mutua, Human Rights Standards, 55. Donnelly, ‘The Relative Universality’, 291. Mutua, Human Rights Standards, 57. Donnelly also argues that each right has ‘many defensible implementations’: Donnelly, ‘The Relative Universality’, 299. Barreto, ‘Decolonial Strategies’. Mutua, Human Rights Standards, 59. See also Waltz, ‘Universal Human Rights’; Woodiwiss, ‘Human Rights’. Mutua, Human Rights Standards, 133–34. Moyn, Not Enough, 3. Waltz, ‘Universal Human Rights’. Moyn, Not Enough, 8. Woodiwiss, ‘Human Rights’, 150. For an analysis of the tension between conceptions of rights and justice based on the individual and social, and economic rights based on a collective in the Tunisian context, see Han, ‘Transitional Justice for Whom?’. Nagy, ‘Transitional Justice as Global Project’, 276 and 278. David, The Past Can’t Heal Us, 62–63. Barreto, ‘Decolonial Strategies’, 26. Gopal, ‘On Decolonisation’, 895. Mignolo, On Decoloniality, 144. David, The Past Can’t Heal Us, 1. Kidron, ‘The Global Semiotics’, 161. Mutua, Human Rights Standards, 77. See Nickson and Braithwaite, ‘Deeper, Broader, Longer’, 140. Wolfgram, Antigone’s Ghosts. Angle, ‘Human Rights in Chinese Tradition’.

Conclusion • 209 43. Carozza, ‘From Conquest to Constitutions’. 44. David, ‘The Emergence’, 5. 45. Assmann, ‘Transnational Memories’, 555. For an analysis of the intertwining of local and ‘cosmopolitan’ approaches in Argentina, see also Buchenhorst, ‘“Meanwhile in Argentina”’. 46. For an explanation of the concept of ‘epistemic injustice’, see Mitova, ‘Decolonising Knowledge’, 198–99.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources Under ‘primary sources’, I list those documents cited in the book that are produced directly by the three central actors in the networks studied and that underpin the analysis of relationship cultures. The press releases, event summaries and reports listed here were gathered from the online archives of the central institutions in the period 2013–18. These websites have changed periodically; therefore, the provision of direct URLs is in most cases not meaningful. Further material (notably event reports published on the list H-Soz-Kult) are listed by author name under ‘secondary sources’. The full text used for the analysis is available from the author of this book on request (email: [email protected]). BStU Press Releases Bundesbeauftragter für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen DDR (BStU). ‘Das Revolutionsjahr 1989 in Osteuropa als Zäsur: Internationale wissenschaftliche Tagung der Stasi-Unterlagen-Behörde während des Geschichtsforums 2009’, www .bstu.bund.de, 25 May 2009. ——. ‘Das Revolutionsjahr 1989 in Osteuropa als Zäsur: Stasi-Unterlagen-Behörde leistet wichtigen Beitrag zum Geschichtsforum’, www.bstu.bund.de, 28 May 2009. ——. ‘Datenschutz und das Recht auf Zugang zu Informationen in der Ukraine und in Deutschland’, www.bstu.bund.de, 11 December 2009. ——. ‘Vorsitz des Europäischen Netzwerkes von Aufarbeitungsbehörden an das polnische IPN übergeben’, www.bstu.bund.de, 14 January 2010. ——. ‘Marianne Birthler diskutiert europäische Dimension der Aufarbeitung der kommunistischen Vergangenheit’, www.bstu.bund.de, 13 September 2010.

BStU Activity Reports and ‘About’ Pages BStU. Neunter Tätigkeitsbericht der Bundesbauftragten für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik – 2009. Retrieved 13 March 2022 from https://www.stasi-unterlagen-archiv.de/assets/bstu/de/Downloads/bstu_09-tae tigkeitsbericht_2009.pdf.

Bibliography • 211 ——. Zehnter Tätigkeitsbericht der Bundesbauftragten für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik – 2011. Retrieved 13 March 2022 from https://www.stasi-unterlagen-archiv.de/assets/bstu/de/Downloads/bstu_10-tae tigkeitsbericht_2011.pdf. ——. ‘BStU-Jahresrückblick 2011’ (annual report). Retrieved 6 February 2016 from www .bstu.bund.de. ——. Elfter Tätigkeitsbericht des Bundesbeauftragten für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik für die Jahre 2011 und 2012. Retrieved 13 March 2022 from https://www.stasi-unterlagen-archiv.de/assets/bstu/de/ Downloads/bstu_11-taetigkeitsbericht_2013.pdf. ——. Zwölfter Tätigkeitsbericht des Bundesbeauftragten für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik für die Jahre 2013 und 2014. Retrieved 13 March 2022 from https://www.stasi-unterlagen-archiv.de/ informationen-zur-stasi/publikationen/publikation/zwoelfter-taetigkeitsbericht. ——. 13. Tätigkeitsbericht des Bundesbeauftragten für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik für die Jahre 2015 und 2016. Retrieved 13 March 2022 from https://www.stasi-unterlagen-archiv.de/informationen-zur-stasi/ publikationen/publikation/13-taetigkeitsbericht. ——. ‘BStU in Zukunft: Der Transformationsprozess’. Retrieved 13 March 2022 from https:// www.bstu.de/ueber-uns/bstu-in-zukunft.

Hohenschönhausen Press Releases Stiftung Gedenkstätte Berlin-Hohenschönhausen (Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen). ‘Britischer Botschafter besucht Gedenkstätte’, www.stiftung-hsh.de, 30 March 2011. ——. ‘Direktor regt Gedenkstätte in Tunesien an’, www.stiftung-hsh.de, 29 April 2011. ——. ‘Ein Volk hinter Gittern – Das Elend in den Arbeitslagern Nordkoreas’, www.stiftunghsh.de, 23 June 2011. ——. ‘Direktor besucht Gefängnis in Tunis’, www.stiftung-hsh.de, 4 October 2011. ——. ‘Gedenkstätte berät peruanische Wahrheitskommission’, www.stiftung-hsh.de, 24 November 2011. ——. ‘Gedenkstätte unterstützt Vergangenheitsbewältigung in Tunesien’, www.stiftung-hsh .de, 6 March 2012. ——. ‘Wachwechsel im Kreml – Die politische Kultur Russlands nach den Präsidentschaftswahlen’, www.stiftung-hsh.de, 1 March 2012. ——. ‘Lesung mit Bei Ling’, www.stiftung-hsh.de, 17 April 2012. ——. ‘Tunesischer Staatssekretär besichtigt ehemaliges Stasi-Gefängnis’, www.stiftung-hsh.de, 13 September 2012. ——. ‘Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen, ‘5. Hohenschönhausen-Forum: Die Aufarbeitung des Kommunismus als europäische Aufgabe’, www.stiftung-hsh.de, 6 November 2012. ——. ‘Deutsch-tunesische Konferenz in Tunis’, www.stiftung-hsh.de, 6 December 2012. ——. ‘Diplomaten aus 37 Ländern besuchen Ex-Stasi-Gefängnis’, www.stiftung-hsh.de, 14 January 2013. ——. ‘Speech of Dr. Hubertus Knabe, Director of the Memorial Gedenkstätte Berlin Hohenschönhausen’, www.stiftung-hsh.de, 14 January 2013. ——. ‘Liechtensteins Regierungschef besucht Gedenkstätte’, www.stiftung-hsh.de, 30 January 2013. ——. ‘Tunesische Expertengruppe beeindruckt von deutscher Erinnerungskultur’, www .stiftung-hsh.de, 14 May 2013.

212 • Bibliography ——. ‘Tunesische Staatssekretärin besucht Gedenkstätte’, www.stiftung-hsh.de, 16 May 2013. ——. ‘Tunesischer Regierungschef besucht Stasi-Gefängnis’, www.stiftung-hsh.de, 10 June 2013. ——. ‘Gedenkstätte empfängt erneut tunesische Delegation’, www.stiftung-hsh.de, 4 September 2013. ——. ‘Ehemaliger tunesischer Ministerpräsident besucht Gedenkstätte’, www.stiftung-hsh.de, 2 December 2013. ——. ‘Polen unter zwei Diktaturen: Vom Hitler-Stalin-Pakt über den Warschauer Aufstand bis zum Sturz des Kommunismus’, www.stiftung-hsh.de, 18 September 2014. ——. ‘Gedenkstätte erinnert an Verfolgung in China’, www.stiftung-hsh.de, 6 December 2016.

Hohenschönhausen Activity Reports and ‘About’ Pages Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen. 5. Tätigkeitsbericht (2009–2010). Retrieved 13 March 2022 from https://www.stiftung-hsh.de/assets/Publikationen/2012–03–19-Fuenfter-Taetigkeits bericht-web.pdf. ——. 6. Tätigkeitsbericht (2011–2012). Retrieved 13 March 2022 from https://www.stiftunghsh.de/assets/Uploads/2014–01–03-Sechster-Taetigkeitsbericht-web.pdf. ——. 7. Tätigkeitsbericht (2013–2014). Retrieved 13 March 2022 from https://www.stiftunghsh.de/assets/Publikationen/2015–07–22-TB-komplett-web.pdf. ——. 8. Tätigkeitsbericht (2015–2016). Retrieved 13 March 2022 from https://www.stiftunghsh.de/assets/Uploads/8-Taetigkeitsbericht-web.pdf. ——. ‘Contre l’oubli: Diktaturaufarbeitung in Tunisien’. Retrieved 13 March 2022 from https:// www.stiftung-hsh.de/forschung/projekte/contre-loubli-diktaturaufarbeitung-in-tunesien.

Stiftung Aufarbeitung Press Releases Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur (Stiftung Aufarbeitung). ‘Unüberwindbar? Vom Umgang mit der Teilung in Korea’, www.bundesstiftung-aufarbeitung.de, 16 October 2009. ——. ‘Die Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur und der arabische Frühling 2011 im Dialog’, www.bundesstiftung-aufarbeitung.de, 7 July 2011. ——. ‘Internationale Diplomaten zu Gast bei der Bundesstiftung Aufarbeitung’, www .bundesstiftung-aufarbeitung.de, 20 March 2014. ——. ‘Internationaler Workshop: Ost-West-Konflikt im europäischen Kommunismus’, www .bundesstiftung-aufarbeitung.de, 16 June 2016. ——. ‘Die Macht der Erinnerung – GULAG-Gedenken in Russland’, www.bundesstiftungaufarbeitung.de, 23 June 2016.

Stiftung Aufarbeitung Event Summaries (Veranstaltungsnachlese) and Reports As the event summaries and reports are undated, I have provided both the date of the event and the date on which the document was retrieved. Stiftung Aufarbeitung. ‘7. Internationales Gedenkstättentreffen Kreisau (23–28 March 2009)’ (summary), www.bundesstiftung-aufarbeitung.de, 2 October 2018.

Bibliography • 213 ——. ‘7. Ost-westeuropäisches Gedenkstättentreffen’, H-Soz-Kult, 29 January 2009. Retrieved 13 March 2022 from https://www.hsozkult.de/event/id/event-60982. ——. ‘Unüberwindbar? Vom Umgang mit der Teilung in Korea (19 October 2009)’ (summary), www.bundesstiftung-aufarbeitung.de, 2 October 2018. ——. ‘Unüberwindbar? Vom Umgang mit der Teilung in Korea (19 October 2009)’ (report by Andreas Stirn), www.bundesstiftung-aufarbeitung.de, 2 October 2018. ——. ‘8. Internationales Gedenkstättentreffen Kreisau (24–27 March 2010)’ (summary), www.bundesstiftung-aufarbeitung.de, 2 October 2018. ——. ‘Erinnern an den zweiten Weltkrieg Mahnmale und Museen in Mittel- und Osteuropa (1–3 July 2010)’ (summary and flyer), www.bundesstiftung-aufarbeitung.de, 2 October 2018. ——. ‘“Unteilbar?” Menschenrechtspolitik vor und seit 1989 (24 March 2011)’ (report, no author), www.bundesstiftung-aufarbeitung.de, 13 November 2018. ——. ‘Bulgariens verbotene Vergangenheit (13 March 2013)’ (summary), www.bundesstif tung-aufarbeitung.de, 4 December 2018. ——. ‘Internationales Symposium: “Menschenrechte und Nordkorea” (13 May 2014)’ (summary), www.bundesstiftung-aufarbeitung.de, 6 December 2018. ——. ‘13. Ost-westeuropäisches Gedenkstättentreffen Kreisau (25–28 March 2015)’ (report, no author), www.bundesstiftung-aufarbeitung.de, 14 December 2018. ——. ‘Der “Große Terror” in der Sowjetunion 1937–1938 (5 March 2015)’ (report by Vincent Kutz), www.bundesstiftung-aufarbeitung.de, 18 December 2018. ——. ‘Erfahrungen mit der Aufarbeitung von staatlicher Gewalt und Menschenrechtsverletzungen (7 December 2015)’ (summary), www.bundesstiftung-aufarbeitung.de, 18 December 2018. ——. ‘14. Ost-West-Europäisches Gedenkstättentreffen Krzyżowa / Kreisau (9–12 March 2016)’ (summary), www.bundesstiftung-aufarbeitung.de, 18 December 2018.

Stiftung Aufarbeitung Activity Reports and ‘About’ Pages Stiftung Aufarbeitung. Tätigkeitsbericht 2009. Retrieved 13 March 2022 from https://www .bundesstiftung-aufarbeitung.de/sites/default/files/uploads/files/2019–11/tb2009_0.pdf. ——. Tätigkeitsbericht 2010. Retrieved 13 March 2022 from https://www.bundesstiftung-auf arbeitung.de/sites/default/files/uploads/files/2019–11/Taetigkeitsbericht_2010_0.pdf. ——. Tätigkeitsbericht 2011. Retrieved 13 March 2022 from https://www.bundesstiftung-auf arbeitung.de/sites/default/files/uploads/files/2019–11/TB_2011_Text.pdf. ——. Tätigkeitsbericht 2012. Retrieved 13 March 2022 from https://www.bundesstiftung-auf arbeitung.de/sites/default/files/uploads/files/2020–11/tb_2012.pdf. ——. Tätigkeitsbericht 2013. Retrieved 13 March 2022 from https://www.bundesstiftung-auf arbeitung.de/sites/default/files/uploads/files/2019–11/tb-2013.pdf. ——. Tätigkeitsbericht 2014. Retrieved 13 March 2022 from https://www.bundesstiftung-auf arbeitung.de/sites/default/files/uploads/files/2019–11/tb-2014.pdf. ——. Tätigkeitsbericht 2015. Retrieved 13 March 2022 from https://www.bundesstiftung-auf arbeitung.de/sites/default/files/uploads/files/2019–11/tb-2015.pdf. ——. Tätigkeitsbericht 2016. Retrieved 13 March 2022 from https://www.bundesstiftung-auf arbeitung.de/sites/default/files/uploads/files/2019–11/2016-taetigkeitsbericht.pdf. ——. ‘Stiftungsauftrag’. Retrieved 13 March 2022 from https://www.bundesstiftung-aufarbei tung.de/de/stiftung/stiftungsauftrag.

214 • Bibliography

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INDEX 1989, 16, 20, 60, 94–6, 101, 104, 110, 123, 127, 132, 161, 164 activity arts-based, 46, 95, 104–5, 109, 111, 120–21, 125, 192 conference, 43, 46, 48, 93–97, 99–105, 107, 109, 111–113, 123, 125, 133–35, 153–57, 163, 173, 182–84, 188, 193 (see also Geschichtsforum 1989/2009; Hohenschönhausen Forum; International Meeting of Memorial Sites) exhibition, 46, 95, 104–5, 107, 111–13, 124–26, 130–31, 135, 148, 157, 163–64, 174–75, 177–79, 184, 192 official cooperation, 46, 94–95, 98–99, 104, 130–31, 135–36, 148–49, 180, 189–94 official visit, 22, 46, 58, 72, 80, 99, 104–6, 110–12, 120–22, 124–25, 127, 130–31, 133–37, 145, 147–49, 151–52, 157, 161, 176–77, 180, 185–86, 189–94 public event, 46, 48, 94–95, 104–106, 108–111, 120–21, 123, 125–29, 147–48, 164–65, 173, 178–79, 192 research project, 46, 94–97, 104–5, 107–8, 111, 130–31 actor type academic, 44, 57–59, 64, 88, 94–100, 104–5, 110–11, 120, 153–57, 163, 182, 188 (see also Centre for Contemporary History; Free University; Hannah Arendt Institute; Humboldt University; Institute for Contemporary History; University)

archives, 44, 57–58, 88, 97–98, 111–12, 173–75, 177, 187 (see also Historical Archive of the State Security Service in Hungary; Security Service of Ukraine archive) artists/arts institutions, 44, 57–58, 61, 109, 129, 174, 192 (see also Bei Ling; Deutsche Kinemathek; Kizny, Tomasz; Literaturhaus Berlin; Liu Xiaobo; Margolina, Sonja; Müller, Herta; Wagner, Richard) embassy, 44, 57–58, 61–62, 71–72, 80, 84, 87, 104–5, 109–10, 112, 120–21, 125, 128–31, 143, 145, 147–48, 157, 171, 175, 179–80, 187, 189–90 (see also Ghariani, Elyes) government, 22, 42, 44, 57–58, 60–63, 67–74, 79, 82, 85–88, 89–90, 97, 104–5, 111–12, 121, 124, 130–31, 135, 137, 141–44, 151, 158–67, 170– 71, 188–94, 200–201 (see also Alliance ’90/The Greens; Christian Democratic Union of Germany; Christian Social Union; European Institutions; Federal Parliament of Germany; German Foreign Office; Jebali, Hamadi; Social Democratic Party of Germany) media/journalists, 44, 63, 97–98, 110, 125–26, 129, 148, 151–53, 157, 163, 182, 185 (see also Boysen, Jacqueline; Deutschlandfunk; Kellerhoff, SvenFelix; Seitz, Norman) museums and memorials, 44, 57–58, 61–62, 67, 73, 88, 94–95, 99–103, 105, 107, 120–21, 125, 127, 155, 163, 180 (see also Berlin Wall: Foundation; German-Russian Museum; House

232 • Index of Terror; Memorial to the German Resistance; Museum of Contemporary History; Museum of the Occupation; Topography of Terror) nongovernmental Organisations (NGOs), 22, 44, 57, 62, 67, 104–7, 120–21, 123–24, 130–33, 137, 148–49, 153, 157, 161, 163–64, 171, 174, 181–82, 185–94 (see also Amnesty International; civil rights activists; Deutsche Gesellschaft e.V; Kreisau Foundation; Kreisau Initiative; Memorial [Russia]) political foundations, 41–42, 44, 60–63, 67, 69–74, 86–90, 97–98, 105–6, 122–24, 132–133, 135, 138, 143, 151–61, 164–67, 171, 174–75, 177–78, 184–85 (see also Friedrich Ebert Foundation; Friedrich Naumann Foundation; Hanns Seidel Foundation; Heinrich Böll Foundation; Konrad Adenauer Foundation) state-funded/mandated institute, 44, 57, 60, 64, 94–99, 104, 120–21, 157, 171–79, 180–85 (see also Collegium Hungaricum; Institute for National Remembrance; Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile; Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes) victim association, 44, 179 Actor-Network-Theory (ANT), 38–39 adjacency matrix, 41, 45 agency, 30, 33, 39, 147, 202 agonistic memory, 30–31 Aksu, Eşref, 28–29 Albania, 61–62, 67, 87, 148, 171, 176, 179–80, 196, 202 Algeria, 130, 147 Alliance ’90/The Greens, 105, 128, 149, 161, 164. See also Cramon, Viola von Alternative for Germany (AfD), 3, 18 Amnesty International, 126, 129, 148 anti-communism, 98–99, 107, 158, 172, 174, 181, 195 antisemitism, 4, 5, 6, 46 anti-totalitarian consensus, 5, 8 apartheid, 4

Arab Spring, 19, 22, 60, 75, 87–88, 119, 130–36, 146–47, 150, 152, 164, 185–94 Egypt, 130–34, 152 Tunisia, 130–31, 134–36, 185–94 Argentina, 207 Armenia, 110, 203 Assmann, Aleida, 4, 12, 27–28, 204 Assmann, Jan, 27, 31 Association for the Promotion of Democracy in Tunisia, 135, 192 attribute matrix, 43, 45 Australia, 176 authoritarianism, 36, 64, 108, 115, 120, 122, 127–28, 130–31, 176, 187 Baby, Sophie, 46 Bach, Jonathan, 7 Baer, Alejandro, 29–30 Bahrain, 130 Ballinger, Pamela, 115 Baltic countries, 62, 100, 107, 110, 196. See also Estonia; Latvia; Lithuania Barreto, José-Manuel, 205–206 Beattie, Andrew, 12, 98 Beck, Ulrich, 28–29, 35 Behr, Valentin, 98–99, 172 Bei Ling, 71, 127–28 beier+wellach, 135, 148, 180 Belarus, 110, 148, 176 Belgium, 116, 161 Ben Ali, Zine El Abidine, 131, 134, 187–88, 194 Berlin Wall, 10, 11, 53, 63, 73, 88, 95, 143, 156, 171, 189 commemoration, 10, 53, 95 Foundation, 63, 88, 143, 171 memorialisation, 11, 73, 189 betweenness centrality, 21, 52, 60–65, 85–86, 90, 138, 142, 151, 155–56, 158, 170, 179, 181, 185 BStU, 60–61, 67, 144, 151 definition, 59 measurement of, 59–60 Memorial Berlin-Hohenschönhausen, 61–62, 70, 155, 179, 185 Stiftung Aufarbeitung, 62–64, 156, 181 Betweenness Network Centralization Index BStU, 60–61, 66, 68

Index • 233 definition, 59–60 Memorial Berlin-Hohenschönhausen, 61–62, 73 Stiftung Aufarbeitung, 62–63 Bhambra, Gurminder K., 35–36 Bieberstein, Alice von, 166, 203–204 Birthler, Marianne, 16 Black Lives Matter, 1, 3 Böhmer, Wolfgang, 153–55, 158 Bond, Lucy, 31, 34 Boysen, Jacqueline, 63, 88, 143, 182 Brazil, 112 brokerage, 21, 22, 46, 58–64, 85, 87–90, 92, 111, 134, 138, 141–69, 170–99, 200 brokers intrazonal, 22, 170–99 transzonal, 22, 141–69, 178 Brownlee, Jason, 130 BStU networks actor type, 56–58 regions, 54–56 BStU Commissioner, 12–13, 16, 133, 147, 161, 174–75 (see also Birthler, Marianne; Gauck, Joachim; Jahn, Roland) history and function, 9–12, 16–17 political position, 16–17 Bulgaria, 108, 110, 157, 163 Calligaro, Oriane, 14 Cambodia, 207 Campbell, Sue, 31 Canada, 176 Carapico, Sheila, 149–50 catechism debate, 6–7 Cento Bull, Anna, 30–31 centrality, 43, 58–59, 64. See also betweenness centrality Centre for Contemporary History (ZZF), 63, 88, 143 Charta 08, 128–29 Charta 77, 128–29 Chourabi, Hamza, 189–90, 192 Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU), 10, 61, 123, 147, 153–55, 160–61, 163. See also Böhmer, Wolfgang; Koschyk, Hartmut Christian Social Union (CSU), 123

civil rights activists Colombia, 70, 148–49 Egypt, 60–62, 132–33, 151, 171 GDR, 8, 10–11, 16–17, 164, 175, 178 Iran, 151–52 Peru, 160–61 Tunisia, 60–62, 134, 151, 171, 185–94 (see also Association for the Promotion of Democracy in Tunisia; Chourabi, Hamza; Contre l’oubli; Le Labo’ Democratique; Tunisian Association for the Fight against Torture) Yemen, 151 civilisational slope, 115–16, 180, 196, 201 Clarke, David, 179 Cold War, 13, 46, 84, 111, 113–15, 177 collaboration (definition of ), 33 collaborative memory, 2, 21, 22, 28, 33–34, 36–37, 39, 207 collective memory, 5, 27–28, 31–32 Collegium Hungaricum, 63–64, 88, 143, 171 Colombia, 70, 116, 148–49, 153, 155, 203. See also civil rights activists: Colombia colonial amnesia, 3, 15 colonialism, 1–7, 12–15, 30, 35–36, 114, 122, 137, 194, 196, 200–201, 204, 207 coloniality, 22, 35, 116, 137, 201–203 components BStU, 65–69 definition, 65 Memorial Berlin-Hohenschönhausen, 69–74 Stiftung Aufarbeitung, 74 Confucianism, 207 Conrad, Sebastian, 28 Contre l’oubli, 62, 87, 135, 143, 148, 171, 188–94 core/periphery, 7, 13, 21, 110, 114–15, 136–37, 202–203 cosmopolitan memory, 29, 35, 179, 203–204 cosmopolitanism, 28–30, 35–36 decolonial, 2, 21, 22, 36, 202 Courtois, Stéphane, 98, 153–55 COVID-19, 1, 4 Cramon, Viola von, 128, 161 Craps, Stef, 34 Croatia, 60–61, 86, 143, 148, 161, 171

234 • Index Crossley, Nick, 33 cultural blueprints, 21, 34, 36, 39, 45–46, 92, 113–14, 116, 141, 200–201 cultural memory, 27 Czech Republic, 13, 60–61, 86, 96, 98, 108, 110, 128, 143, 153, 157, 171, 196. See also Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes Czechoslovakia, 96, 102, 128. See also Charta 77 David, Lea, 29–30, 149, 203–204, 206–207 De Cesari, Chiara, 28, 31 decolonising, 3, 206 democracy promotion, 60, 105, 109, 126, 132–33, 144, 147, 149–50, 152, 156, 161, 165–66, 201. See also democratisation Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), 122–27, 129 democratic transition, 11, 16, 46, 111, 121, 130–31, 137, 147, 149–50, 156, 166, 185, 187, 194, 202, 204. See also democratisation democratisation, 20, 22, 114, 124, 128, 138, 161, 185, 201 Denmark, 176 Deutsche Gesellschaft e.V., 63, 88, 143 Deutsche Kinemathek, 62, 87, 148 Deutschlandfunk, 62, 86–87, 108, 143, 147, 150, 153 Domínguez, Silvia, 38 Donnelly, Jack, 205 double occupation, 100, 107 Duber, Paweł, 179 Dujisin, Zoltan, 174, 178, 181, 184 Eastern subalterns, 13, 35, 98, 114, 137 egonet composition, 54–58, 121, 130, 162 ego-network/egonet, 40, 59, 65, 144–62, 172–75, 181, 185–86, 189–91 Egypt, 60–61, 86, 116, 130–34, 143, 147, 151–52, 157–58, 171, 185. See also civil rights activists: Egypt EI Index, 75–77, 82 Emirbayer, Mustafa, 32–33, 34, 113 empathy, 6–7 Enquête Commissions/Commissions of Enquiry, 9, 18–19, 155 entangled memory, 32

epistemic coloniality, 22, 35, 116, 137, 201–203 epistemic justice, 207 Erll, Astrid, 32 Estonia, 62, 87, 108, 143, 171, 176, 179 Ethiopia, 148 Eurocentrism, 30, 35, 116, 204 Europäische Akademie, 147, 190 European Institutions Council of Europe, 13 European Commission, 13, 107–8, 179 European Parliament, 13–14, 17, 173 European Union, 13–15, 44, 62, 69, 82, 98, 107–8, 114–16, 119, 137, 143, 160, 174, 179, 184, 204 European memory, 8, 12–15, 17, 19, 20–21, 35, 40, 46, 56, 96–99, 100–5, 112, 114, 154–58, 163, 166, 195–96, 201 European Network of Official Authorities in Charge of the Secret Police Files (ENOA), 17, 96–97, 173–78 European Network of Remembrance and Solidarity (ENRS), 63, 82, 84, 88, 143, 163, 171, 176, 179, 181, 184 Evangelische Akademie, 63, 88, 100, 102, 143, 181–82 Evans, Jennifer, 7 everyday life, 10–11, 174, 178 Faulenbach, Bernd, 101 Federal Memorial Concept, 5, 7, 10, 20 Federal Parliament of Germany, 3, 8–9, 11, 20, 42, 123, 128, 161–65 Forsdick, Charles, 14 Fraihat, Ibrahim, 136, 150, 185, 194 France, 98, 102, 112–13, 116, 153, 176, 194. See also Courtois, Stéphane Free University, 61–62, 87, 143, 153–55. See also Schroeder, Klaus Friedländer, Saul, 200 Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES), 60–61, 67, 86, 122–23, 133, 143, 151–52, 185 Friedrich Naumann Foundation, 131–32 Fuhse, Jan, 34, 37–39 Gabowitsch, Mischa, 2, 15 Gallinat, Anselma, 20 Gauck, Joachim, 9, 13, 16, 77, 98–99, 153, 161, 177

Index • 235 gender equality/women’s rights, 132, 147, 150–51 genocide, 3, 5–6, 12, 206–207 Georgia, 106, 110, 147–48, 176 German Democratic Republic (GDR) memory politics, 5, 7–15 revolution, 11, 16, 20, 94, 101, 104, 122, 124, 132, 164. See also civil rights activists: GDR German Foreign Office (GFO), 42–43, 60–62, 69–74, 86–90, 126, 132, 134–35, 138, 143, 144–51, 163–66, 180, 185, 189–90, 192, 194. See also Westerwelle, Guido German model, 1–2, 7, 13, 15, 20, 22, 29, 35, 40, 123, 125, 128, 133, 150–51, 156, 158, 167, 170, 176–77, 180, 182, 187–88, 192, 195–96, 201–207 German-Russian Museum (BerlinKarlshorst), 110, 163 Geschichtsforum 1989/2009, 60–61, 86, 94–96, 143, 171 Ghariani, Elyes, 148, 189–190 globalisation, 28, 35 Glucksam, Noga, 203 Goffman, Erving, 39 Goldberg, Amos, 30 Goodwin, Jeff, 34, 113 Gopal, Priyamvada, 206 Greece, 113 Grosescu, Raluca, 46 Große, Werner, 153–55 Guatemala, 187 Gulag, 12, 17, 110, 155 Habermas, Jürgen, 35, 200 Hached, Farah, 185–88, 192 Halbwachs, Maurice, 27, 31 Hammerstein, Katrin, 1 Hanna, Michael Wahid, 132 Hannah Arendt Institute, 63, 88, 143, 175 Hanns Seidel Foundation (HSF), 123–24, 135 Hansen, Hans Lauge, 30–31 Harrison, Hope M., 10, 12 Heinrich Böll Foundation (HBS), 105–6, 164, 175, 177–78 Herero and Nama, 3, 206 heterophily, 76–77, 82, 84–86 Hilmar, Till, 42

histoires croisées, 31–32 Historians’ Debate, 4, 6 Historical Archive of the State Security Service in Hungary, 173–74 Hogwood, Patricia, 8 Hohenschönhausen Forum, 97–99, 104, 112, 153–55, 158–60 Hollstein, Betina, 38 Holocaust memory, 4–8, 10, 12–14, 17–18, 20, 29–31, 35, 99, 107, 155, 164, 176, 178–79, 200, 203–204, 206. See also singularity/uniqueness homophily BStU, 76–79, 89 central actors, 85–88, 141–42 definition, 52, 75 measuring of, 75–77, 85 Memorial Berlin-Hohenschönhausen, 76, 79–82, 89 Stiftung Aufarbeitung, 76, 82–85, 89 House of Terror, 99, 179 human rights, 5, 7, 8–9, 13, 16, 18, 22, 29–30, 39, 46–47, 84, 104–5, 107–9, 120–21, 123, 125–30, 132–33, 135–36, 144, 147, 149–50, 152, 161, 164–65, 167, 176, 182, 184, 188–89, 192, 194, 204–207 as ideology, 30, 149, 204, 206 political and civil, 30, 205–207 regime, 30, 149, 204 social, cultural and economic, 30, 186, 194, 196, 205–207 See also Human Rights Day; Universal Declaration of Human Rights Human Rights Day, 128–29 humanitarianism, 30, 164 Humboldt University, 63, 88, 143, 153, 171 Hungary, 96, 99, 102, 107–8, 110, 173–74, 176, 196. See also Collegium Hungaricum; Historical Archive of the State Security Service in Hungary; House of Terror Huyssen, Andreas, 204 Institute for Contemporary History (IfZ, Munich), 63, 88, 143, 153. See also Möller, Horst Institute for National Remembrance (INR) Slovakia, 173, 184 Ukraine, 106

236 • Index Warsaw, 60–61, 67–69, 86, 96, 98, 143, 171–79, 181–82, 195–196 (see also Kamiński, Łukasz; Kurtyka, Janusz; Ukielski, Paweł) Wrocław, 182 Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile (IICCMER), 63–64, 107, 143, 157, 171, 180–85, 195–96. See also Preda, Radu Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes (ISTR, Prague), 13, 60–61, 86, 98, 143, 171, 173 International Meeting of Memorial Sites, 99–103, 109, 112, 181–83 Iran, 151–52, 187. See also civil rights activists: Iran Iraq, 112, 130, 187 Israel, 4–6, 67, 176 Italy, 103, 112–13, 176, 194 Jahn, Roland, 16, 147, 161, 174–75 Japan, 122, 207 Jarausch, Konrad H., 9, 15 Jebali, Hamadi, 148, 190 Kamiński, Łukasz, 98, 172–75, 177–78 Kansteiner, Wulf, 34 Käthe Kollwitz Museum, 61–62, 87, 143 Kazakhstan, 110, 157, 176 Kellerhoff, Sven-Felix, 98, 135, 192 Kizny, Tomasz, 163–64 Knabe, Hubertus, 18–19, 98–99, 109, 125, 127, 129, 134–36, 150–51, 153, 155, 160–61, 179–80, 189, 192 Knoblich, Caroline, 147 Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS), 61–63, 67, 69–74, 86–90, 98, 131–33, 143, 151–60, 165, 174, 184 Koschyk, Hartmut, 123–24 Kreisau Foundation, 100, 182 Kreisau Initiative, 181–82 Krichah, Samah, 188 Kubbara, Ola Ashraf, 152 Kurtyka, Janusz, 96, 172 Lamont, Christopher, 133, 194 Latour, Bruno, 38 Latvia, 95, 96, 107–8, 153–54, 176. See also Museum of the Occupation

Le Labo’ democratique, 134, 185–89, 192–93. See also Hached, Farah; Krichah, Samah Left Party (DIE LINKE), The, 136, 166 Leggewie, Claus, 12–13 Lettau, Meike, 147 Levy, Daniel, 29, 204 Libya, 130–31 Liebold, Cornelia, 101 Liechtenstein, 112, 161 Literaturhaus Berlin, 61–62, 143 Lithuania, 62, 87, 95, 107–8, 143, 171, 176, 179. See also University: of Vilnius Liu Xiaobo, 127–29 lustration, 9, 16, 98, 136, 186 Luxembourg, 113, 161 Mälksoo, Maria, 13, 98 Margolina, Sonja, 108, 153, 155 Marin, Alexandra, 34, 45 Mark, James, 14, 107 Martini, Tania, 5–6 Masoud, Tarek, 130–31 masters of memory/master atoners, 1–3, 17 matrix coding, 47–48, 93–94, 103, 111, 120, 130 Mauritania, 130, 147 Mbembe, Achille, 3–6, 202–203 McClurg, Scott D., 34 meaning structure, 21, 37, 39–42, 52, 90, 93, 113, 138, 141–42, 144, 200 Melber, Henning, 3 Melegh, Attila, 115–16, 166 Memorial (Russia), 60–61, 63–64, 69, 86, 88, 108, 142–43, 148, 171, 174–76 Memorial Berlin-Hohenschönhausen actor type, 56–58 history and function, 17–18 political position, 18–19 regions, 54–56 Memorial to the German Resistance, 100, 102 memorialisation, 1, 2, 9–10, 15, 30, 46, 95, 133, 135, 148–151, 153, 160, 163, 166–167, 180–83, 188–89, 204, 206 memory standardisation, 116, 203 memory zone definition, 21, 67 East Asia, 120–30, 137–38 MENA, 130–38, 170, 185–96

Index • 237 post-socialist/CEE, 94–103, 113–16, 136–37, 170–85, 195–96 post-Soviet, 103–10, 113–16, 136–37, 170–85, 195–96 Western European, 110–16, 136–37 See also region Michaels, Ralf, 202–203 Mignolo, Walter, 35–36, 203, 205 Ministry for State Security (GDR, Stasi), 9, 10, 16, 18, 96, 175. See also Stasi files; Stasi Records Law Mink, Georges, 97, 172 Moldova, 110, 147–48 Möller, Horst, 153, 174 moral remembrance, 30, 149, 203–204 Morocco, 130, 147 Moses, Dirk, 6–7 Moyn, Samuel, 205–206 Müller, Herta, 62, 87, 143, 171, 179 multidirectional memory, 5–6, 31, 36 Museum of Contemporary History (Seoul), 124–25 Museum of the Occupation (Latvia), 153–54. See also Nollendorfs, Valters Mutua, Makau, 204–205 Mützel, Sophie, 34, 38 Nagy, Rosemary, 206 Namibia, 3 narrative common histories, 47, 94–107, 109–11, 113–14, 123 expert exchange, 47, 94–104, 111, 113 learning from Memorial BerlinHohenschönhausen, 47, 111–12, 120, 125, 129–30, 134, 192 learning from the BStU, 47–48, 111, 120–23, 129 learning from the Germans, 22, 39, 47, 120–38, 147–48, 152, 158, 176, 180, 187, 189, 192, 196 learning from the Stiftung Aufarbeitung, 39, 47, 110, 121 other histories, 104–5 supporting global human rights, 47, 104–5, 108, 121, 125–30 narrative analysis, 47 Nasraoui, Radhia, 192–93 national division, 11, 20, 39, 43, 63, 123–24, 126, 137

National Socialism, 1, 4–6, 8, 12, 14–15, 17–18, 35, 40, 46, 63, 97–102, 107, 137, 153–55, 158, 164, 172, 177–78, 184, 195. See also Holocaust memory; Nazi-Soviet Pact; Second World War Nazi-Soviet Pact, 100–1, 107, 155 Neiman, Susan, 1, 2 Netherlands, The, 111–12, 176 network structure (method of analysis), 41–45 networks (definition), 38–41 Neumayer, Laure, 13–14, 46 Nigeria, 3 Nobel Peace Prize, 127–28 Nollendorfs, Valters, 153–55 Norway, 112, 176 nostalgia colonial, 3 post-socialist, 8–9 Nüsse, Andrea, 136 Nye, Joseph, 167 Olick, Jeffrey, 32 opposition (GDR), 8, 10, 16, 178 Palestine, 5 Pannwitz, Hannah, 133, 194 People’s Republic of China (PRC), 22, 39, 119, 127–29, 161, 164–65, 176. See also Bei Ling; Charta 08; Liu Xiaobo; Wang Wanxing perpetrators, 8, 9, 18, 30, 97, 107, 127, 172, 193, 206 Peru, 116, 160. See also civil rights activists: Peru Phillips, Ann L., 114, 156 Piotrowski, Piotr, 114 Platform of European Memory and Conscience (PEMC), 14, 98, 107, 176–77, 184, 195 Podoler, Guy, 121–22, 124 Poland, 16, 60–61, 67–69, 86, 95–98, 100, 102, 107–8, 110, 143, 155–56, 163– 64, 171–79, 182–83, 187, 195–96, 202. See also Institute for National Remembrance: Warsaw; Institute for National Remembrance: Wrocław; Kizny, Tomasz; Kreisau Foundation; Kreisau Initiative; Polish Academy of Sciences; Solidarity

238 • Index Polish Academy of Sciences, 155, 163 Posener, Alan, 4 postcolonialism, 3–5, 36 Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Totalitarianism, 13–14 Preda, Radu, 181–83 Profant, Tomáš, 106 Pussy Riot, 109, 129 Quijano, Aníbal, 35–36 racism, 1, 3–5, 15 Râmnicu Sărat (prison), 182, 184 Rapson, Jessica, 31 Ratka, Edmund, 147, 151, 194 region Caribbean, 43, 80, 144 Central and South Africa, 43, 80 (see also Ethiopia) Central and South America, 43, 54–55, 69, 71, 80, 112, 144–45 (see also Argentina; Brazil; Colombia; Peru) East Asia, 22, 39, 43, 54–55, 67, 69, 71, 77–84, 92–93, 119–130, 137, 143, 144–145, 162, 201, 204 (see also Democratic People’s Republic of Korea; People’s Republic of China; Republic of Korea; Taiwan) Middle East and North Africa (MENA), 22, 43, 54–56, 60–62, 67, 71–72, 78–81, 85–86, 88–89, 92–93, 119–20, 130–37, 141–53, 157–58, 162, 170– 71, 185–94, 201, 204 (see also Algeria; Egypt; Iran; Iraq; Israel; Mauritania; Morocco; Tunisia; Yemen) multiregional, 43, 55, 69, 80, 82, 84, 109, 144–45, 162 (see also European Institutions) North America, 43, 55, 69, 80, 102, 144–45, 162 (see also Canada; United States of America) post-socialist/CEE, 21, 43–44, 46, 54–56, 60, 64, 67–71, 74–91, 93, 94–103, 103–4, 106–10, 114–16, 119–20, 137, 141–43, 153, 156, 162, 170–85, 195–96, 201 (see also Albania; Bulgaria; Czech Republic; Hungary; Poland; Romania; Slovakia) post-Soviet, 18, 21, 43, 54–56, 60, 62, 64, 66–71, 77–88, 93, 95–96, 101–10,

114–16, 119, 129, 137, 141–45, 153, 156, 162, 164, 170–71, 174–76, 178– 80, 201–204 (see also Belarus; Estonia; Georgia; Kazakhstan; Latvia; Lithuania; Moldova; Russian Federation) Scandinavia, 43, 69, 102, 145 (see also Denmark; Norway; Sweden) Southeast Asia, 43, 55, 144 (see also Cambodia) Southeast Europe, 43, 56, 69, 78–80, 102–3, 145, 162 (see also Croatia; Serbia; Slovenia) Southern Europe, 43, 67, 69, 71, 102–3, 145 (see also Greece; Italy; Spain; Vatican) Western Europe, 21–22, 43–44, 46, 54–56, 67–71, 76–89, 92–94, 96–98, 101–3, 109–15, 119, 137–38, 145, 153, 162, 200–201 (see also Belgium; France; Liechtenstein; Luxembourg; Netherlands; Switzerland; United Kingdom) Regional Office for the Files of the State Security Service of the Former GDR (LStU) Sachsen, 71 Thüringen, 98 Relational Contingency Table Analysis (RCTA) BStU, 77–79 Memorial Berlin-Hohenschönhausen, 79–82 method of analysis, 76–77 Stiftung Aufarbeitung, 82–85, 101, 103, 109 relational sociology, 21, 32–33, 38 relationality, 6, 31–34, 39, 45, 59 relationship culture cultural blueprints, 21, 115–16, 137–38, 200–202 definition, 39, 90, 92–93 method of analysis, 41, 45–48, 56, 93, 120 network structure, 21, 56, 89–90, 113–14, 141 See also narrative relativisation/trivialisation, 4–6, 10, 18, 155 reparations, 3, 182, 188, 192 Republic of Korea (RoK), 39, 42, 67, 84, 112, 116, 119–29, 132, 135, 151–52,

Index • 239 157, 161, 176. See also Museum of Contemporary History Resolution on European Conscience and Totalitarianism, 14, 173 revolution, unfinished, 97, 126–27, 136 Reynolds, Andrew, 130–31 Rigney, Ann, 28, 31 Robert Bosch Foundation (RBS), 61, 112, 143 Robert Havemann Society, 164 Romania, 64, 95–96, 107–8, 110, 143, 157–58, 171, 176, 180–85, 188, 195–96, 202. See also Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile; Müller, Herta; Râmnicu Sărat (prison); Wagner, Richard Rothberg, Michael, 4–7, 31, 36 Rudnick, Carola S., 19–20 Russian Federation, 108–10, 115, 129, 137, 148, 156–57, 163–64, 176, 182, 187. See also German-Russian Museum; Margolina, Sonja; Memorial (Russia); Pussy Riot Sabrow, Martin, 10 Samaluk, Barbara, 114 Schmid, Thomas, 5 Schroeder, Klaus, 153–55 Second World War, 10, 13, 20, 100, 137, 156, 163, 177, 179, 182, 201. See also Holocaust memory; National Socialism; Nazi-Soviet Pact Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) archive, 105, 174–75 Seitz, Norman, 98, 108 Selg, Peeter, 37–38 semi-periphery, 137, 202–203 Serbia, 161, 182 Sierp, Aline, 13–15, 33–34 singularity/uniqueness (Holocaust), 4–6, 8, 12, 14, 30, 178 slavery/enslavement, 1, 4, 14, 122 Slovakia, 107–8, 173, 176. See also Institute for National Remembrance: Slovakia Slovenia, 107–8 Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), 4, 10, 19, 147, 151, 161–64 Social Network Analysis (SNA), 21, 33, 45 qualitative method, 21, 45–48

quantitative method, 21, 41–45 Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), 8, 18–19, 112–13, 122, 126–27, 129, 134, 136, 157, 182 Society for International Cooperation (GIZ), 133, 188 soft power, 2, 22, 167, 201 Solidarity (Solidarność), 16, 178 South Africa, 4, 185 Soviet Zone of Occupation, 8, 19–20, 102 Spain, 67, 112–13, 187–88, 207 Spišiaková, Eva, 14 Stalinism, 4, 13–15, 35, 99, 106, 155, 164. See also USSR/Soviet Union Stasi files, 11–12, 16 Stasi Records Law, 9, 11, 16 Stiftung Aufarbeitung actor type, 56–58 history and function, 19–20 political position, 20 regions, 54–56 Stirn, Andreas, 124 Stola, Dariusz, 172 Sudan, 130 Supergedenkjahr, 10, 75 Sweden, 148 Switzerland, 98, 161, 148 Syria, 130 Sznaider, Natan, 29–30, 204 Taiwan, 127, 176 topic of collaboration Aufarbeitung, 46, 95, 96, 99, 105, 121–22, 124, 131, 158, 192 opposition, 46, 95, 104–5, 111, 121, 127–28 past crimes, 46, 95, 104–5 political imprisonment, 46, 111, 120–21, 125–28, 135, 165, 180, 182, 184, 188–89, 192 reconciliation, 46, 103, 122, 153, 188 reunification, 39, 46, 120–26, 152, 161 revolution, 46, 94–95, 101, 104, 124, 131–32, 147 secret police, 46, 95–97, 99, 104–5, 111, 131, 135, 172–74, 178, 180, 189 state archives, 46, 95, 97, 104, 106, 132, 186–88 totalitarianism, 46, 94–95, 97–100, 103–5, 126–28, 153–56, 158, 177

240 • Index Topography of Terror, 62, 87, 155, 189 transcultural memory, 31 Transformation Partnership, 132, 147, 150–51, 153 transitional justice, 2, 22, 114, 127, 132–33, 137, 144, 149, 153, 172, 182, 201, 203–206 Egypt, 131–32 Germany, 8–9, 11, 15 retributive, 122, 149, 186, 193 Tunisia, 131, 133, 136, 185–94, 196 transnational (definition), 27 transnational memory (theoretical framework), 27–36 Tunisia, 42, 60–62, 86–87, 130–31, 133–36, 143, 147–48, 150–51, 164, 171, 180, 185–96, 202. See also Ben Ali, Zine El Abidine; civil rights activists: Tunisia; Ghariani, Elyes; Jebali, Hamadi Tunisian Association for the Fight against Torture, 192. See also Nasraoui, Radhia Turkey, 150, 166 Ukielski, Paweł, 155, 182 Ukraine, 96, 100, 105–6, 110, 147–48, 174–76. See also Institute for National Remembrance: Ukraine; Security Service of Ukraine archive United Kingdom, 1, 2–3, 112–13, 116, 176 United States of America, 1, 2–3, 127, 148, 176, 205 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 204–205, 207 universalism, 22, 29–30, 35–36, 137, 164–65, 202–206

University of Bremen, 98, 108 of Hamburg, 63, 88, 98, 143 of Leipzig, 153, 163 of Vilnius, 62, 87, 143, 171, 179 See also Centre for Contemporary History; Free University; Hannah Arendt Institute; Humboldt University; Institute for Contemporary History USSR/Soviet Union, 43, 94, 96, 106–7, 110, 176. See also Nazi-Soviet Pact; Stalinism Vatican, 148 Vermeulen, Pieter, 34 victims, 3, 5, 7–9, 13–14, 16, 18–20, 29–30, 97, 99, 107–8, 125–26, 160, 172, 177, 179–80, 184, 193, 204, 206 Wagner, Richard, 153–55 Wang Wanxing, 71, 128 Wellman, Barry, 34, 45 Westerwelle, Guido, 134, 147, 163 Wezel, Katja, 107 White, Harrison C., 47 Wiedemann, Charlotte, 6 Wüllenkemper, Cornelius, 150–51 Wüstenberg, Jenny, 31, 33, 40, 67 Yemen, 130–31, 133, 151. See also civil rights activists: Yemen Young, Joseph K., 34 Yugoslavia, 43, 95, 96 Yules Q, 85–88 Zimmerer, Jürgen, 6–7 Zimmermann, Bénédicte, 32