The Sins of the Father: Generational Conflict, Vergangeheitsbewältigung, and the Creation of a Militant Generation

Abstract

This research paper has developed in conjunction with my academic development. I first became acquainted with the topic of vergangenheitsbewaltigung during my freshman year at SUNY Plattsburgh. Since then, I have done much reading (personal and academic) on how Germany, particularly the Federal Republic, 'worked through' their past and have found the tumultuous history' fascinating. In addition to the conceptual notions of 'collective guilt', I am also intrigued by the late 20th century social movements. and their development into radical domestic terrorist organizations.

As the Skopp Competition on the Theme of the Holocaust is primarily a creative competition, I elected to assume a non-specific issue of 'remembrance'. I argue that the sweeping social and cultural revolutions of the 1960s-70s have their roots in the perpetration of the Holocaust, and how it was (not) dealt with in the years immediately following the war. This research paper attempts to look at how post-genocidal Germans remembered the Holocaust, and how it spurred the social and cultural revolutions that have contributed so much to the postmodern and political Left.