German trumps his computing with his Nazi past – except when awkward Hanno Hauenstein star-news.press/wp

GRowing in Germany, we learned to believe that we did better. Better than the generation of our grandparents, which set aside their complicity under the thick mat rustles. Better even than our parents, whose rebellion At the end of 1960s, they rarely led to a serious account with the Holocaust heritage.

Born in the late 1980s, my generation learned about Auschwitz early. We visited former concentration camps and studied the Nazi regime not as an alien aberration, but as a warning: Democracies are dying like this. Today, with the ultimate right AFD and ethno-chauvinism on the rise, that warning never felt urgent.

In processing in German general elections in February, tens of thousands marched against AFD. Domestic intelligence agency Germany has classified the party as an empty extremist, and the new government committed to cooperate with naked minimum.

And yet a lot of resistance felt hollow. Notifications from Germany against revisionism are best in the best order. This week, awards winners for the most important journalism of Germany – HERBERT QUANDT media award – They were announced. Reward explicitly celebrated heritage Herbert QuandtEarly SS fan playing a central role in the Nazi war economy. Quandt monitoring of battery plants in which thousands of abused, exploited – and killed.

With his father, Günther Quandt, Herbert Quandt exposed to up to 57,500 people for slave work in battery factories. Family wealth Quandt was built on these crimes. Günther Quandt acquired Jewish companies after the Nazi expropriation (The so-called archeanizations). Herbert Quandt personally helped provide some of these contracts and monitor the planning of a satellite concentration camp in Nazi Poland. After the war, he continued working with Hardline former Nazis from the propaganda propaganda Joseph Goebbels.

Quandts are “denaracitated” through the superficial process that in fact protected them from any serious responsibility. 1960. HERBERT QUANDT became the largest shareholder of BMW. Today, his heirs, the richest family of Germany, is controlled by BMW, Mini and Rolls-Royce and held the main roles in the chemical and technological sector in the country.

2007 TV documentary exposed to the extent for the crimes of the Nazi family. Quandts responded by letting in Independent study It has found even deeper traps with the Nazi regime. Gabriele Quandt, grandson Günther Quandt, later told her The family was “wrong” To avoid facing the truth about your Nazi past so long.

But a journalist from time, spy and German public issueth Continue to line up for a reward – in force helping in the furious thrash of hereditary Digit, even after the war, aligned with the former propagades of the Nazis, which then borrowed to secure the free printing. What does that say about German media organizations? About Stories Germany talks about themselves – and those who refuses to say?

The annual award, founded in 1986. year, comes with a prize fund of 50,000 euros. This year, he went to die Zeit and three public broadcasters, chosen from 230 submissions. It is 230 journalists who are applying for the award called the man who – in any world – the war crimes trial would stop. If the candidates had a misconception, they were obviously insufficient to keep them to report them.

The acceptance of the Quandt award seems to not be performed by any reputational risk in Germany, with even progressive points of sale seeing prize money as welcome for quality journalism. This is not a revisionism in the style of AFD, but it is the form of amnesia, the cloak in liberal reputation. The jury includes some of the leading media data about the German media from the title as well as prominent as Handelsblatt and Axel Springer’s Bild and Welt.

But this is not just a story about Quandi. Indicates the wider German refusal to face the depths of the social entangled with state violence and genocide. Some of the German richest families – including Cover, Porsche, Bahlsen and Stoschek – He built their empires on Nazi cooperation and forced work. As David David de Jong journalist documented in his book, Nazi billionaires, most of them are unapprehents in West Germany the so-called economic miracle. Many defend their legacy to date – or, like Quandt, use rewards for Budge their modern philanthropic standing.

This type of amnesia is not restricted on board. Streets across Germany They still carry names Colonial administrators. In several cities you can walk Lüderitzstraße or Wissmannstraße – Street names honoring men who have helped orchestrate German genocide in today’s Namibia and brutal colonial campaigns across other parts of Africa. Germany Government Mirna refuses to pay compensation The descendants of the people of Herero and us, the primary victims of his genocide in Namibia – instead “Development” Packages to help negotiate not with the descendants of victims, but with the state of the Namebian state.

After the war, Germany renewed an international reputation on its policy officially recognition of their past crimes. But the computing carefully knocked carefully – embraced when flattering him to the German picture, neglects when he threatens personal gain or wider strategic interests.

German Foreign Minister Johann WadePhul, laid a wreath At Yad Vashem this month and called the legacy of the German Holocaust survivor Margot Friedländer. A few hours later WadePhul stood at a press conference in Jerusalem and expressed “understanding” Israeli blockades of humanitarian aid Gazi. Friedländer, who died days earlier at the age of 103, spent her last year warning against dehumanization. Contrast could hardly be Starker.

It is easy to condemn the past when it costs nothing. Speaking of serving injustice or crimes of your ally takes more courage.

Germany Current access to the culture of memory is selective and contradictory. The government relies on “historical responsibility” to refrain from the challenging of the Israeli government for their abuses in Gaza. However, at home, it seems to political and media classes in denial regarding the cultural sponsorship provided by Fortunes that enabled Nazi crimes.

My argument is not about the rebranding of the awards of individual media. It is a continuity of the collective lack of responsibility and transparency when it comes to the Nazi era. In the current political climate, it is also whether the post-war Germany “never promises more” retains its meaning or decreases to the slogan, noticed only when appropriate.

• Hanno Hauenstein is a Berlin journalist and author based in Berlin. He worked as a senior editor in the Berliner Zeitung Culture Department, specializing in modern art and politics

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