The reception of genocide in Germany after 1949
Presentation at the international conference “Johannes Lepsius and Dealing with the Armenian Genocide” on 26/27 November 2010 at the House of Brandenburg-Prussian History in Potsdam.
At the beginning of April this year, ARD broadcasted Eric Friedler's documentary “Ageht — a Genocide.” The extensively researched film traces the genocide of the Armenians during the First World War on the basis of numerous historical sources by letting actresses and actors speak the traditional eyewitness accounts. Impressive reports, notes and diary entries from diplomats, nurses and missionaries who lived in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War, became eyewitnesses to what happened and recorded their observations in writing. The passive attitude of the then German Reich government as an ally of the Ottoman Empire, which, although informed in detail about what happened through its diplomats, did not intervene with the High Gate for strategic alliance considerations, is clearly addressed in the film. The reasons for the denial policy of the Turkish governments, which continues to this day, are also examined and, in contrast — using the example of the reactions to the murder of the Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in January 2007 — the activities of the Turkish civilian population, who are speaking out ever louder against the official account. And the conduct of the international community towards Turkey, which is characterized by strategic alliance considerations, is also the subject of the documentation. The film “Ageht”, which was also shown to members of the US Congress this summer, was awarded the German Television Prize on October 9 of this year.
After the film was broadcast, ARD broadcasters received numerous letters and emails from Turkish organizations, communities and private individuals expressing their displeasure with the broadcast of the film. Similar to 24 years earlier, when Ralph Giordano's documentary “The Armenian Question No Longer Exists” was the first to air a documentary on the genocide on German television[1], the broadcaster was accused of reporting unilaterally “only from the point of view of the Armenian side,” of sitting up propaganda and of having broadcast “demonstrably falsified material.”[2]. However, the broadcaster also received — as ARD chairman Peter Boudgoust said in an official statement in which he rejected the propaganda allegation — letters of approval: “With regret,” he wrote, “I note that, in your impression, the use of the term “genocide” has caused indignation among our Turkish fellow citizens in Germany. However, this opinion is by no means shared by all Turks, as the solidarity demonstration of more than 200,000 people in Istanbul following the murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in 2007 impressively demonstrated. Following the broadcast of “AGHET,” ARD received numerous emails — including from Germans of Turkish origin — which considered the film important and necessary. International historiography regards the Armenian genocide as proven. ”[3]
The film and the statement summarize very well the findings of historical research on the Armenian genocide and the current state of how the genocide is being treated in the world.
German politicians still find it difficult to respond so clearly to the events of 1915. On June 16, 2005, with the votes of all factions, the German Bundestag passed a resolution entitled “Remembrance and commemoration of the expulsions and massacres of the Armenians in 1915 — Germany must contribute to reconciliation between Turks and Armenians.” [4] The Federal Republic thus joined the ranks of more than twenty countries that had already formulated a resolution on the Armenian genocide in recent years.
The statement by the German Bundestag was regarded as a historic milestone in the history of reception of the Armenian genocide in Germany. For the first time, politicians have taken a position on this issue without any external impetus.
The resolution of the German Bundestag differs from that of the other states. For example, the word genocide does not appear in the text of the resolution, which was criticized in particular by the Armenian communities, but not only by them. The statement speaks of “organized expulsion and annihilation”; only in the explanatory memorandum to the decision, it is stated that “numerous independent historians, parliaments and international organizations (...) describe the expulsion and annihilation of Armenians as genocide.” The explanation also differs in that the text addresses the special role of the German Empire as an ally of the Ottoman Empire. The parliamentarians expressed their regret at the “inglorious role of the German Reich, which, in view of the wide range of information (...), did not even try to stop the atrocities.” And finally, the resolution is different because it gives impetus to action: it stresses that Germany has a particular obligation to visualize the story because of its historical role in the events and in view of the large number of Muslims from Turkey living in Germany and to normalize relationships between Armenia and Turkey and to contribute to reconciliation. The countries responsible for education policy are called upon to contribute to ensuring that the expulsion and extermination of Armenians is also carried out in Germany as part of the reappraisal of the history of ethnic conflicts in the 20th century. The Federal Government was called upon to ensure that the parliament, government and society of Turkey address their role vis-à-vis the Armenian people in the past and present without reservation.
Words that the parliamentarians of the German Bundestag had found in June 2005 on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the start of the genocide — as unsatisfactory as they were for some because of the compromises — had not been heard from political parties in Germany before and the fate of the Armenians in this context had a Attention not achieved by then in the German Maintain publicity.
How was it before? In a review, it will therefore be outlined in what form and by whom in the Federal Republic of Germany the Armenian genocide was commemorated and which foreign and domestic political factors were decisive for this:
By the mid-1970s, the Armenian genocide had largely disappeared from public consciousness. After the end of the Second World War, the genocide of the Jews of Europe dominated the historical discourse of remembrance not only in Germany but worldwide. In the first post-war decades, the Federal Republic was engaged in reconstruction and efforts to reestablish itself in the international community. German-Turkish relations developed particularly quickly and intensively as a result of similar interests and shared experiences, which have linked the two states since the middle of the 19th century. Until the end of the Cold War, both Turkey and the Federal Republic were key components of the Western security system through their membership in NATO. The intensive trade relations between Germany and Turkey, which were in the military-strategic interest of the entire West as well as in the national interest of both states, were no less relevant. Turkey has not lost its importance in both areas to date.
Turkey was the first country after the victorious powers to which a German diplomat was sent in 1950. In the reports by German diplomats in Turkey from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, which can be viewed at the Federal Foreign Office, there are few but very informative passages in which the fate of Armenia is directly addressed. These are internal documents intended only for official use. These documents clearly show that, at a time when the fate of Armenians in the Federal Republic of Germany was almost forgotten in public consciousness, the employees of the Foreign Office were well aware of the extent and purpose of the crime committed against the Armenians. As the first official representative of a German government since 1944, the German Ambassador Wilhelm Haasim undertook a trip to Eastern Anatolia in June 1955 and reported, among other things, that his Turkish interlocutors “spoke quite openly about the extermination of the Armenians (...) not without understanding the tragedy of the struggle of annihilation as a historically unavoidable event.”[5]The report of his successor in office, who traveled to eastern Turkey and there also the area around Lake Van two years later, states concisely: “The Armenian question was completely resolved by the Turks. The last Armenians living in the Van and Kars area, who had survived the pogroms before and during the First World War, left the country in the early 1920s. ”[6]Northeast Anatolia was only visited again in 1972 by a member of the German Embassy. He no longer mentions Armenians at all. Among other things, he visited the old Armenian royal city of Ani and the Christian churches that were still very well preserved there. However, his focus was on the border character of the region, which was characterized by the highly developed idea of an alleged Soviet threat.[7] The Armenians were therefore not even perceived by him as a nation with their own history and culture, but only as part of the regime behind the Iron Curtain.
How can this (incomplete) perception be explained? First of all, it is the task of a diplomat to ensure good relations between his country and the state in which he carries out his mission. International law prohibits him from interfering in the internal affairs of the host state. It is therefore not surprising that the Armenian genocide did not play a major role in talks between representatives of the Federal Republic and Turkey. On the other hand, it should be borne in mind that diplomats were primarily concerned with current ethnic and political problems. The Kurds, a much larger number of whom lived in Turkey, therefore appear in the reports much more frequently and in greater detail. And finally, in line with the friend-foe thinking of the Cold War, the Armenians were just a group behind the Iron Curtain, whose concerns received no separate monitoring and attention.
On the other hand, what were the relations between Germany and the Republic of Armenia? Until 1990, Armenia was part of the Soviet Union as the smallest territorial republic and was therefore unable to act in foreign policy. Armenia was never in the West's field of interest, either economically or militarily. Under Soviet hegemony, genocide played no role at all in the bilateral talks. The treatment of pre-Soviet Armenian history, and in particular the genocide, was not welcome domestically; the national concerns of the Armenians were subordinated to the foreign policy interests of the Soviet Union, which were also aimed at avoiding straining relations with Turkey. Accordingly, until the end of the 1970s, there is not a single document from a German diplomatic representative in Moscow addressing the genocide of the Armenians, not even the reports from 1965, when mass demonstrations took place in Yerevan and Moscow, as in many other countries of the world, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the genocide[8], or about the construction of the genocide memorial in Yerevan in 1967, with which the Soviet leadership finally succeeded in ritualizing the increasing national consciousness of the Soviet Armenians and making it an integral part of ideology[9], behave accordingly.
In foreign policy, there was therefore no sensitivity to the issue in the first decades and it was not brought to politics from outside. In domestic politics, impulses to raise a specific issue to the political level usually come from those affected themselves. After the Second World War, only a few Armenians lived in Germany and they lived in seclusion. It was only the influx of Armenians from Turkey in the mid-1960s that led them to begin to organize themselves and, from 1965, to publicly remember their fate and demand recognition every year on the occasion of the 50th anniversary. However, perception remained limited for the time being.
Only the militant actions of various Armenian underground organizations abroad against Turkish diplomats and Turkish institutions around the world, which killed 40 people between 1973 and 1985 injured over 200 people and caused property damage amounting to millions of euros, recalled the genocide of 1915/16. The German media reported on these attacks and, in particular, the recognition efforts that began in international bodies and national parliaments, to which Armenian diaspora communities have increasingly turned since the mid-1980s to protest against Turkish denial policy and fight against oblivion (remember, for example, the statement in the Subcommittee on Preventing Discrimination and Protecting Minority Rights from the UN Human Rights Commission from The year 1985, to the European Parliament resolution 1987 and statements made by various national parliaments). At the end of the 1980s, newspapers also published background reports on the historical events of 1915/16. While the so-called Armenian perspective was initially juxtaposed equally with the official Turkish account of the events, since the end of the 1980s, the assessment of the events as genocide in accordance with the state of historical research has no longer been questioned in the German media. However, the focus of reporting was mostly on the often very harsh reactions from the Turkish side to these recognition efforts, such as following the decision of the French National Assembly, as a result of which Turkey recalled its ambassador from France, called for a boycott of French products and canceled commercial contracts worth several million dollars to French companies.[10]
Until 2000, there were no central, nationally organized efforts to recognize the genocide in Germany. The educational work was organized locally by Armenian communities, often in cooperation with human rights associations or church communities. However, these activities also often provoked Turkish protest, which in turn prompted local politicians to comment on the events and occasionally intervene in the planning in the spirit of Turkish protest. It is worth remembering, for example, the conference “Genocide and Holocaust” in Bremen in 1985, which was co-organized by the State Center for Political Education. At that time, following pressure from the Turkish Embassy in Bonn, the Turkish Consulate General in Hanover and the Foreign Office in Bonn, which all rated the event as anti-Turkish, the Bremen Education Senator intervened massively in its organization in the run-up to the conference. For his behavior, which was observed and criticized by the press, he also had to justify himself later in the Bremen Parliament.[11]
Another example is the dispute over the mention of the Armenian genocide in the Brandenburg curriculum.[12] On the initiative of the then Brandenburg Minister of Education Steffen Reiche, the genocide of the Armenians was included in the curriculum in 2002 as teaching content. Almost three years later, in January 2005, after the Turkish Consul General had expressed his displeasure at a joint lunch with Brandenburg Prime Minister Matthias Platzeck and Minister of Education Holger Rupprecht — the passage about the Armenian genocide had been secretly removed from the online version of the framework plan without official justification. However, the deletion did not go unnoticed and as a result, the media also reported very critically across the region and certainly surprisingly extensively for local politicians. After some back and forth and tired justification efforts on the part of the state government, the passage at the beginning of the 2005/2006 school year was reintroduced into the framework plan. Steffen Reiche described the Turkish intervention in 2005 as a “classic own goal” in response to the hitherto completely unnoticed mention of the genocide in the curriculum; the deletion had done more for the Armenian cause than much before.[13] This example clearly shows once again that the media attention that an event — in this case the mention of the genocide in the framework plan for the schools — received in the media was a result of the Turkish protest. For Turkey, however, the case was not yet closed. In autumn 2009, the Federal President of the Turkish Community in Germany once again called on the Brandenburg Prime Minister to remove the genocide of the Armenians from the curriculum. Describing the events of 1915 as “genocide,” according to his reasons, would put the students of Turkish origin under “psychological pressure,” which would impair their academic performance, and would also jeopardize “inner peace.”[14] In this case, the appeal had no consequences.
As a result of the strong emotional reactions of the Turkish government and also from some Turks living in Germany to any mention of the genocide, the public debate in Germany focused on whether it was advisable for Germany to address the issue at all and, above all, whether it made sense to use the term “genocide” for the events of 1915/16. Unofficial statements by politicians are often pointed out that the friendship between Turkey and the Federal Republic in particular obliges us to address even uncomfortable issues openly. In bilateral talks between Turkish and German government representatives and representatives of the state, however, these frank words can hardly be heard; soft phrases such as “a people must stand by their past” [15], as Christian Wulff chose them during his first trip as Federal President to Turkey in autumn 2010, during which everyone knows what is meant but is not said openly, are the rule. Or: There is a general appeal to EU candidate Turkey that readiness for Europe requires freedom of expression and also the “ability to critically deal with the past, including acknowledging debt.” When a first motion to recognize the Armenian genocide was submitted to the Petitions Committee of the German Bundestag in 2000[16] , the majority of politicians pleaded for restraint, even though they clearly stated in internal letters or to Armenian communities that the events of 1915/16 were undoubtedly genocide.[17] Arguments have been made for this across all factions, which also come up again and again today in the discussion on the topic and which are summarized below:
a) The most frequently and longest used argument is that historical events should be assessed by historical science and not by parliaments (as early as 1987, the Federal Government had commented on the decision of the EU Parliament with this comment and in 2000, a Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation Commission set up shortly before the above-mentioned petition decision was cited as an argument that the German side did not have to deal with the issue any further.)
b) Concerns were expressed that relations with Turkey could be strained by a Bundestag decision. In this context, reference was made to the Turkish government's sometimes very harsh reactions to any mention of the genocide, such as reviews from parliaments.
c) There was a plea for restraint due to Germany's National Socialist past, which is why the Federal Republic of Germany in particular should refrain from making a statement regarding the Armenian genocide.
d) The particular population situation in the Federal Republic is not openly but implicitly cited as an argument, the low number of Armenians, the high number of Turks. The small number of Armenians sometimes means that they are not even perceived as a separate minority, as explained by CDU MP Karl Lamers in 2001, for example, why he does not consider a resolution by the German Bundestag to recognize the events of 1915/16 as genocide to be meaningful: “That doesn't move the public here, we don't have an Armenian minority. ”[18]
e) And finally, it is feared that the dialogue between Armenians and Turks could be disrupted by such statements and in particular harmed Armenians still living in Turkey.
The concern that the use of the word “genocide” could have a “counterproductive” effect on the intra-Turkish discussion prompted parliamentarians not to use the term in the statement by the German Bundestag in 2005. However, Turkey did not thank the parliamentarians for their magnificent restraint, but reacted as usual: Even before the decision was passed, the German ambassador in Ankara was summoned to the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Abdullah Gül was indignant that his country was being accused “in a cheap way,” Erdogan described the decision as “very wrong and very ugly” and accused the then Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of “spineless” to be. In Berlin, around 2500 people responded to the Turkish community's call for a demonstration under the title “Against the stigmatization of the Turkish people.”[19]
More than five years have passed since the declaration by the German Bundestag. A lot has changed in Turkey in these five years; the pictures of the solidarity demonstrations following the assassination of Hrant Dink in Istanbul in 2007 and the first public commemoration in Istanbul on the occasion of the 95th anniversary this year are just two examples that could be mentioned.
What is the situation in Germany? Since 2008, the Lepsius House in Potsdam has received federal funding. In doing so, the Federal Government wants to live up to the claim set out in the Bundestag resolution “to wrest the life and work of Dr. Johannes Lepsius from oblivion and to cultivate and preserve relations between the Armenian, German and Turkish people.”[20] There is little new to report in the area of education policy: Although the history chapter 1915/16 now appears in some school books, Brandenburg is still the only federal state in which the Armenian genocide is supposed to be the subject of history lessons according to the curriculum. Germany is still a long way from anchoring the event itself in the collective memory based on the state of historical research and the role of the German Empire as an ally of the Ottoman Empire.
In response to a small question from the Left Party in spring this year on the implementation of the 2005 Bundestag resolution[21], in which the Federal Government was asked what concrete steps it had taken since the adoption of the Bundestag resolution to influence the Turkish government so that critics of the official view of history may exercise their basic democratic right to freedom of expression without being prosecuted for it, the Federal Foreign Office stated that the Federal Government is engaged in bilateral talks with the Turkish government as well as in the context of the EU accession negotiations, the OSCE and the Council of Europe for use the basic democratic right to freedom of expression. However, it is unfortunately impossible for the public to understand in what form and with what emphasis this is being done. In official statements about the recent state visits by German government representatives to Turkey or vice versa, there is no mention of the genocide — whether named or circumscribed — not even in March 2010 during Chancellor Angela Merkel's visit to Turkey, a few days after the Turkish Prime Minister publicly announced in response to the genocide resolution of the Swedish Parliament that the latest resolution would only harm the Armenians themselves, and at the same time threatened, all illegally Armenians living in Turkey to expel.[22]
To the question also formulated in the Minor Question as to whether the Federal Government was of the opinion that the massacres of the Armenians in 1915/16 were clearly genocide within the meaning of the 1948 UN Convention, the Federal Foreign Office responded with the formulaic phrase that has been known since the 1980s: “The Federal Government welcomes all initiatives that serve to further address the historical events of 1915/16. The right to evaluate this research should be reserved for scientists. The Federal Government is of the opinion that dealing with the tragic events of 1915/16 is primarily the responsibility of the two affected countries Turkey and Armenia. ”[23] In this context, the Federal Foreign Office also referred to the protocols signed jointly by Turkey and Armenia in October 2009, which also include the establishment of a commission of historians. The Federal Government therefore continues, ignoring the results of historical research, in its practice of hiding behind historians, which has been practising for decades.
All that remains is a sobering conclusion: Since 2005, there has been no significant progress in the attitude of Germany's public representatives. Looking back, the decision of the German Bundestag appears to have been nothing more than political lip service owed to the 90th anniversary, which was also formulated in such a way that it pleased the Armenians but did not hurt the Turks too much. As parliamentarians rightly put it, the fate of Armenians affects us Germans in a particular way — because of historical involvement in crime, because of the population situation in the Federal Republic of Germany and because of our own experience of collective guilt. For this very reason, German politics will no longer be able to evade the reliable findings of historians in the long run and will ultimately be forced to use conceptual accuracy when evaluating historical facts.
[1] On the reaction to Giordano's documentary, see Annette Schäfgen, Difficult Remembering. The Armenian Genocide, Berlin 2006, pp. 92-96.
[2] As stated, for example, in a letter from Hakki Keskin to ARD director Peter Boudgoust dated 11.04.2010; cf. also the letter of protest in the Hürriyet dated April 14, 2010 and statements at: www.turkishpress.de
[3] Statement by ARD Director Peter Boudgoust dated April 14, 2010, quoted from: http://aghet-1915.tumblr.com/ard-erklaerung
[4] German Bundestag, printed matter 15/5689,15. June 2006.
[5] AA-PA, B 11, volume 1417, Tgb. -No. T 292/55 of 29 July 1955, report by Ambassador Haas on his journey through eastern Turkey (4-24 June 1955). Haas also does not mention Armenians in his memoirs in the chapter about his time as ambassador to Turkey; here too, he only mentions a few Christian churches in connection with his trip to Eastern Anatolia, e.g. p. 301.
[6] AA-PA, B 26, volume 11, 82.01/5, Tgb. - No. 2372/57 of August 27, 1957, report by Ambassador Öllers about his official trip to Eastern Turkey.
[7] AA-PA, B 26, volume 463, report of the Council of Embassies. Class Dr. Wilke about his business trip to Northeast Anatolia from 23.-28.8.1972, sent on October 3, 1972, Pol I A — 81, Ber. NO. 1750.
[8] The only mention of the demonstrations carried out every year since 1965 in memory of the victims of the genocide is in the report of a Consul General in Ottawa, Canada, from 1971, who begins his report to the Foreign Office in Bonn with the words: “Ghosts of the past were awakened when a few hundred Armenians held a rally in front of the Turkish Embassy on April 24 in Ottawa to oppose the To protest the murder of one and a half million Armenians in 1915.” AA-PA, B 26, volume 465, report from the Ottawa Embassy to the Foreign Office in Bonn dated May 3, 1971 on anti-Turkish demonstrations by Armenians in Ottawa (I A 4 — 81.24; Ber.Nr. 413/71).
[9] Cf. Mouradian, La Mémoire, p. 275. Other national issues were also given greater prominence by the Armenian Soviet Government in this phase: In September 1989, a commission was formed to prepare for the repeal of the Moscow and Karser Treaties of 1921 and the annulment of the resolution that had led to the annexation of Arzach to Soviet Serbeidzhan. Cf. Hofmann, Tessa, Approach to Armenia, History and Present, Munich 1997, p. 136.
[10] Cf. Baha Güngör/Manfred Weber/Wolframeberhard, Die Volksseele kochen. The allegation of “genocide” against the Armenians brings many Turks onto the barricades, in: Focus 5/2001.
[11] Cf. In detail, Annette Schäfgen, Difficult Remembering, pp. 104-110.
[12] See ibid, pp. 138-142.
[13] Frankfurter Rundschau, February 6, 2005.
[14] Karen Krüger: Genocide in the curriculum. The poor students, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, August 7, 2009
[15] Süddeutsche Zeitung, October 22, 2010.
[16] For more information, see AnNetTes Chäfgen, Schwiiges Erinnern, pp. 122-133.
[17] See ibid, p. 133.
[18] Taz, February 13, 2006.
[19] Der Tagesspiegel, June 16, 17, 18, 20, 2005; Hamburger Abendblatt, June 18, 2005; statement by the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the decision of the German Bundestag (www.tuerkischebotschaft.de)
[20] German Bundestag, printed matter 15/5689,15. June 2006
[21] German Bundestag, printed matter 17/687,10. February 2010
[22] Spiegel online March 20, 2010, NZZ, March 17, 2010
[23] Response from the Federal Government dated 23 February 2010 to the Minor Question from the Left Party of 10.02.2010, Bundestag printed matter 17/687.