Remembering Rosenstrasse

Hilary Potter

Remembering
Rosenstrasse

History, Memory and Identity
in Contemporary Germany

PETER LANG

Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • New York • Wien

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2018933750

© Peter Lang AG 2018

Published by Peter Lang Ltd, International Academic Publishers,

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1988, to be identified as Author of this Work.

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This publication has been peer reviewed.

About the author

Hilary Potter holds a PhD in German Cultural Studies from the University of Bath. She teaches at the University of Leeds and previously taught at Cardiff University. Her research has also been published in the edited volume Memorialization in Germany since 1945 (2010).

About the book

In February 1943 intermarried Germans gathered in Berlin’s Rosenstrasse to protest the feared deportation of their Jewish spouses. This book examines the competing representations of the Rosenstrasse protest in contemporary Germany, demonstrating how cultural memories of this event are intertwined with each other and with concepts of identity. It analyses these shifting patterns of memory and what they reveal about the dynamics of the past–present relationship from the earliest post-unification period up to the present day. Interdisciplinary in its approach, the book provides insights into the historical debate surrounding the protest, accounts in popular history and biography, an analysis of von Trotta’s 2003 film Rosenstraße, and an exploration of the multiple memorials to this historical event.

The study reveals that the protest’s remembrance is fraught with competing desires: to have a less encumbered engagement with this past and to retain a critical memory of the events that allows for a recognition of both heroism and accountability. It concludes that we are on the cusp of witnessing a new shift in remembering that reflects contemporary socio-political tensions with the resurgence of the far right, noting how this is already becoming visible in existing representations of the Rosenstrasse protest.

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Figures

Abbreviations

INTRODUCTION

Remembering Rosenstraße

CHAPTER 1

The Rosenstraße Protest in Context

CHAPTER 2

‘Der eigentliche Streitwert’: The Rosenstraße Protest in Historical Debate

CHAPTER 3

Changing (West) German Histories? Gernot Jochheim’s Protest in der Rosenstraße

CHAPTER 4

Competing Biographical Memories: Nina Schröder’s Hitlers unbeugsame Gegnerinnen←vii | viii→

CHAPTER 5

From Screenplay to the Cinema Screen: Memory and Identity in Transition in Margarethe von Trotta’s Rosenstraße (2003)

CHAPTER 6

Memorialisation in Rosenstraße: A Microcosm of Patterns of Remembering

EPILOGUE

Multiple Layers of Memory: Looking Towards Future Remembering

Bibliography

Index←viii | ix→

Acknowledgements

In the course of writing this book I have had the support of a great number of people and benefitted from their wisdom. I owe you all a debt of gratitude. I would like to express my appreciation first to Renate Rechtien and Axel Goodbody. Without your dedication, support, advice, and encouragement with the original research that underpins Remembering Rosenstrasse, this book would not have been possible. I am eternally grateful. I would also like to express my thanks to all of my colleagues in the German section at the University of Leeds. To be able to work in such an intellectually stimulating environment is a joy, one that has made finishing this book possible. To my colleagues in the German team at Cardiff University, thank you for being supportive in the early stages of this project.

In addition, I would like to thank Laurel Plapp and the editorial team at Peter Lang Oxford for their support and enduring patience.

I would like to acknowledge the Association for German Studies in Great Britain and Ireland, for so generously awarding me a publication subsidy to help cover the costs of writing this book.

To my students past and present, I would like to thank you all for your enthusiasm. It has been enormously encouraging.

Thank you to everyone who voted for the photographs that accompany this book. I hope you like your choices.

To my many friends in the United Kingdom and across the rest of Europe, I thank you for your encouragement, your humour and simply for being there.

Thank you to my parents, sister and brother-in-law for your support.

To my nephews, my goddaughter and her siblings, I thank you for just being you. You bring such joy and laughter, it lends perspective and reminds me of the important things in life. That has made writing this book so much easier.

I should like to thank several people individually, whether you read drafts, offered guidance, encouragement, provided the opportunity to←ix | x→ talk about the book, or helped free up some time in those final weeks so that I could just keep writing. To this end, I would like to express my gratitude to Jan Berendse, Anne Buckley, David Clarke, Ingo Cornils, Judith Eberharter, Heiko Feldner, Helen Finch, Monika Hennemann, Marion Heuchert, Chris Homewood, Wolfgang Keinhorst, Anne-Teresa Markovic, Bill Niven, Christie Margrave, Corinne Painter, Stephan Petzold, Isabella Rosenthal, Ingrid Sharp, Caroline Summers, Stuart Taberner, Jane Wilkinson, and Ian Wallace.←x | xi→

Abbreviations

CDU Christian Democratic Union

CJA Centrum Judaicum Archive

FRG Federal Republic of Germany

GDR German Democratic Republic

AfD Alternative für Deutschland

BstU Der Bundesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen des Staatsicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik

DDR Deutsche Demokratische Republik

GDW Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand