Papers Session: The German Catechism and the Politics of German Memory Culture
Abstract for Online Program Book (maximum 150 words)
In a brief but pivotal moment during her reporting from the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt
suggested that the fact that there were Germans who resisted provides a condition for the possibility of
morals after the Holocaust. Drawing on this idea of the Good German, this paper examines how this idea
was transformed in recent years to reflect positive assessments of German memory culture by figures
such as Clint Smith and Susan Neiman, who use the image of a Good Germany to criticize the memory of
slavery in the United States. Their enterprise is contrasted in the final section of the paper with the
vitriolic debate around Dirk Moses’ German Catechism, showing the great discrepancy between the
discourse in Germany and outside it.