Our past is part of us – it's no good denying it

Berlin, May 10, 1933

“This is only a prelude. Wherever books are burnt, human beings will be burnt as well in the end.” (Heinrich Heine, Almansor, 1821)

I vividly remember myself at the age of fifteen, sitting in a history lesson and weeping. The unfathomable scope of what Germans of my parents’ and grandparents’ generations had done to the world had just started to dawn on me. In a valiant – but fruitless – attempt to try to make sense of what had happened in the 1930s and 40s, to get to the bottom of it, I started reading all the books on the Third Reich I could get hold of. Ever since this history lesson, the awareness of these unbelievable cruelties, these violations of civilization has never left me. Coming face-to-face with horrible facts of such magnitude, realising that it is part of your own history is never pleasant – but it can’t be helped if you want to move on and create something new. Just ignoring – or santising – the past will be a constant obstacle for positive future development and profound changes. This holds true for private lives as well as whole countries.

Tempting as it might be, it isn’t in the least helpful to point the finger at American cruelties during the Vietnam War, the terrors of Stalin’s regime or the numerous unsavoury aspects of British or French colonial history. This is something these nations have to account for and come to terms with themselves. Pointing out other countries’ crimes doesn’t change German history or make it any more acceptable, for that matter. And it doesn’t make me feel any better about it either.

Besides the German language, this history is one of the things Germans and Austrians share. But this shared heritage is something many Austrians are completely unwilling to acknowledge. They have persuaded themselves that their country played no active part in the horrors. They were just victims – like all the others. A closer look at the facts would be helpful, albeit painful.

According to the website of the Centre for Democracy in Vienna, “hundreds of thousands of people gathered when Hitler delivered his speech from the balcony of the Viennese palace on occasion of the takeover of power by the Nazis. The crowd was in a frenzy. The shouts of “Sieg-Heil” accompanied by a raised right arm and outstretched palm turned the square before the palace into a symbolic site. This upsurge of exaltation stands in stark contrast to the Austrian myth of victimhood on which the self-image of the Second Austrian Republic is based. In order to be able to establish this myth, you had to block out these shouts.”

Square in front of the Viennese palace, March 15, 1938

During her first days in an Austrian school, one of my daughters was told by classmates that she wasn’t welcome because all Germans were Nazis – in contrast to Austrians – and Austrians wanted nothing to do with them. Austrians have done themselves no favour by not honestly dealing with the past for the last sixty years. In Germany, a figure like Martin Graf – third speaker of the Austrian parliament and supporter of rightwing extremism – could never have become a speaker of parliament. (I sincerely hope this will never be posssible!) And the likes of him are in prominent positions all over Austria. Personally, I prefer the drastic treatment I underwent at the age of fifteen when I was sitting in my history lesson, weeping.

Before moving to Austria, I was offered a job as a nurse on a geriatric ward. I was aware of the fact that many of the patients (with an average age of 85 years) were likely to have some recollections of WWII and even of the time leading up to it. I wondered how they might react to me. During the past nine years, I’ve only once got a really vicious reaction. Most of the other patients react in a positive way. When I first meet them and speak to them with my German accent, they just look at me. During one of the next contacts, they usually remark on my accent and ask me where I come from. After this, they almost always tell me what they did during the war, where they spent their compulsory labour stints or military service – overjoyed when I know the towns or villages they came in contact with. I don’t resent being associated with this important part of their lives. This is shared German-Austrian history. What I don’t like is the fact that tampering with the past as well as openly glorifying it are – or seem to be – socially acceptable in this country.

When we moved to Linz, my husband consulted a highly regarded Austrian tax accountant who told him during their first – and only – meeting that for him, strictly speaking, there was no such thing as Austria – in his heart he felt Germanic. I’m not sure what is worse or more damaging: still adhering to the idea of the Greater German Reich and the supremacy of the Aryan race or acting as if this history had nothing to do with Austria. But in a way, these two mindsets have a lot to do with each other. A visit to the former concentration camp Mauthausen near Linz should be enough to teach any visitor that it is of utmost importance to prevent something like the Third Reich from ever happening again. A first step in the right direction would be to honestly deal with the past.