Guilt about the Past Read Online Free PDF

and that it should not be viewed and dealt with only from this perspective. It means that the literature of persecution and exile, so prominent in German literary scholarship since the eighties, can easily give up some of its prominence. It also means that the well-intentioned way in which German institutions take care of the Jewish legacy beyond what the Jewish community in Germany can afford and administer themselves should be more careful not to become patronising.
    If something is wrong with one’s biography, then one’s sense of self and also one’s relationships with others will suffer. What makes sense about the younger generation’s often-heard wish to be able to be proud to be German is not that being German is in fact a merit one deserves to be proud of. One deserves to be proud only of what one achieves, not of what one is. But the younger generation’s wish makes sense as an expression of the desire for a biography that allows for an undamaged sense of self and undamaged relationships with others. For these young people the Third Reich and the Holocaust can no longer be present the way it is for my generation, and if we would like them not to be dismissive of the past then they must be allowed to see the past merged into history. Instead of assuring the younger generation that they have the right to be proud or denying them the right, we owe it to them to integrate the past into our collective biography. The future of the presence of the past is history.

Mastering the Past through Law?
    What is past cannot be mastered. It can be remembered, forgotten or repressed. It can be avenged, punished, atoned for and regretted. It can be repeated, consciously or unconsciously. Its consequences can be managed either to encourage or discourage their impact on the present or the future. But what is done is done. The past is unassailable and irrevocable. The word ‘mastering’ in its true sense applies to a task at hand that must be worked on and worked through, until it is completed. Then the task no longer exists as such. That the term Vergangenheitsbewältigung , i.e. mastering the past, is used and recognised in Germany but has no corresponding word in English and French reveals a longing for the impossible: to bring the past into such a state of order that its remembrance no longer burdens the present.
    Roman law recognises the principle ‘ in praeteritum non vivitur ’. As a practical point of law it means that alimony cannot be claimed for the past but only for the present and the future. Its philosophical legal meaning is that we live in the present and into the future, not in or into the past; hence, the law governs and sets into order only present and future, not past, life. Of course, a judge can issue a verdict that awards compensatory damages or imposes jail time for an offence committed. Still, the compensatory damages are only an ersatz for the goods that were damaged or lost and the jail time does not make the offence ‘un-happen’. Even laws with so-called retroactive effect do not actually work retroactively; they operate instead in the present and the future with a mere reference to the past. Since laws often refer to and have to refer to the past, the question of whether a law is truly retroactive is often difficult.
    The notion that the past could be brought into form and order is foreign to the law. Law rests on the idea that at one point past acts are concluded and their consequences should therefore be settled. After a while the citizen has to come to terms with government actions or those of other citizens that he or she didn’t fight legally or didn’t fight successfully. After enough time, administrative decisions attain administrative finality and court decisions gain the force of law and can no longer be appealed. After sufficient time has passed, the statute of limitations prohibits state prosecution for most offences, as well as citizens’ claims for damages. In a country under the