With the SED dictatorship in the GDR and the National Socialist regime, Germany experienced two dictatorships in the 20th century.

These two periods dominate Germans' view of their history, but they also constitute a special case in the wider European context.

One of the common stereotypes associated with Germany is the image of German thoroughness. It is regarded as a kind of quality mark for craftsmanship, technology, public order – and now also for the way in which Germany is dealing with its own recent past.

Whether thoroughness is specific to Germany is a moot point. What is beyond doubt, however, is that over recent decades, German society has experienced very dynamic and discourse-rich processes of remembrance, as a result of which the appraisal of the two German dictatorships – National Socialism and the SED regime in the GDR – has become a key element of German historical awareness.

Between suppression and study: dealing with the National Socialist past

The road towards this awareness was far from straightforward. The immediate post-war era was dominated by a culture of silence about the past: the crimes and suffering were simply too monstrous to talk about. In the GDR too – despite the prevailing myth of the other, anti-Fascist Germany – study of the National Socialist period was rudimentary. Nor should it be forgotten that with Germany's involvement in the Cold War, the process of historical remembrance was permanently at risk of being instrumentalised in the conflict between two radically different ideological and political systems.

It was only in the 1970s that the debate about National Socialist crimes filtered through to a wider public, at least in West Germany. A driving force behind this development was the active engagement of citizens' initiatives whose persistence ultimately had a defining influence on official West German policy as well.

GDR history: the history of dictatorship

As a result of the lessons learned from the delays in addressing the National Socialist past, the pace of the process after 1989/90 was far more rapid and the study of the SED dictatorship much more intense. The intention was to avoid any repetition of the mistakes that had resulted from the foot-dragging that followed the demise of the National Socialist regime.

Here too, the impetus came from civil society initiatives, which were instrumental in establishing memorial and documentation centres at sites that epitomised the former GDR regime. However, the dynamic pace of the process can also partly be explained by the different conditions: Germany in 1945 was confronted with a self-inflicted catastrophe on a global scale, making it both opportune and a matter of survival to focus on the future. At the end of the 20th century, by contrast, the public had developed a much more sophisticated and (self-)critical awareness of history. But it is also important to remember that post-1989/90, many of the ideological differences that embodied the East-West conflict, and the clash between contemporary East and West German experience, proved to be an explosive mix.

There has been – and continues to be – considerable debate and even conflict over the appraisal and classification of GDR history. In this context, various areas of conflict can be identified, some of which are briefly outlined below.

The comparison between the SED and National Socialist dictatorships

In the first years after the demise of the SED regime, comparison of the two German dictatorships proved to be a particularly sensitive issue. In many cases, the term "comparison" was instantly assumed to mean "equivalence". Accusations that the National Socialists' crimes were being played down or that the human rights violations committed by the SED state were being trivialised were commonplace, and there was an unmistakable tendency in some cases to establish a hierarchy of dictatorships: the bad regime and the not so bad. These debates were waged first and foremost over the memorial sites of relevance to both dictatorships, notably the National Socialist concentration camps such as Sachsenhausen or Buchenwald, which were used as Soviet special camps after the Second World War. There were repeated and undignified clashes, with the arguments ultimately being reduced to the number of dead. Learning the lesson that a critical debate about the experience of the various dictatorships means recognising the suffering caused in both cases, identifying the historical responsibility and also undertaking an objective analysis was, and remains, a difficult process.

The assessment of every-day life in the German dictatorships

A further point of conflict concerned the history of every-day life in the GDR. While historical research into daily life under National Socialism has generally adopted a critical focus, the depiction of every-day life in the GDR could often be accused of whitewashing reality – and with some justification, if we look at commonly held opinions and assessments. Every-day life in the GDR is frequently depicted as a niche which was separate from the dictatorship – a harmless potpourri of family, work and leisure. The SED and the State Security Service ("Stasi") are viewed as marginal phenomena and factored out of the equation, and even the poor provision of consumer goods in the GDR becomes the subject of nostalgic retrospection.

It goes without saying that not every person living in the GDR experienced the repression inflicted by the SED apparatus directly and consciously, so they may well be able to claim that they lived in a space untouched by dictatorship. And of course, some kind of every-day normality exists in a dictatorship as well. But it also goes without saying that the every-day reality is part and parcel of the dictatorship – and this recognition is only gradually coming to the fore.

The role of the GDR's State Security Service

One theme which sporadically attracts substantial media interest is the activity of the GDR's State Security Service – the SED's secret police, known as the Stasi. From time to time, former Stasi officers launch high-profile media campaigns in which they attempt to show that the State Security Service was simply an intelligence service like any other. They deny or draw a veil over the human rights violations and breaches of the law that were integral to the Stasi's operations (the information contained in the Stasi files which are one legacy of the regime are unequivocal on this point). Their carefully stage-managed performances at public events have given them a dubious notoriety. The impact of these initiatives is probably confined to politically relevant circles. Nonetheless, we must not overlook former Stasi officers' efforts to play an active role at memorial sites and in schools, for they clearly demonstrate the need for pro-active study of the past as a corrective to the distortion and instrumentalisation of history.

German history in the European context

The debates, outlined here, on the modern culture of remembrance have specifically German motifs and in many ways can only be explained in the German context, namely the country's dual experience of dictatorship and the existence of two German states.

Yet they also make a powerful statement in the wider European context, for they reflect, in a national framework, the issues of relevance to Europe from a transnational perspective.

Since EU enlargement in 2004, Europe's historical tableau has clearly changed. After National Socialism reached its apogee, Eastern Europe endured the experience of Communist dictatorship. Since 2004, the Western and Eastern European worlds of history have collided, resulting in wrangling over spheres of influence and unleashing tectonic shifts in Europe's self-perception. The content and reactions were akin to those with which we have become familiar in Germany's post-unification dictatorship debate. They include a mistrust of the new partner, a fear of a loss of significance, accusations of trivialisation or hyperbole, warnings about a revision of established assessments of history, and thus the belief that a "line should be drawn" under history.

As in Germany, in Europe too, reconciling the various experiences of dictatorships (and let's not forget the regimes headed by Franco, Salazar or Papadopoulos in this context) and integrating them into a shared understanding are tasks which now feature prominently on the agenda. Perhaps Germany's experience of recognition, appraisal and acceptance can help to develop a productive pan-European debate about dictatorship. As one, by no means insignificant, outcome of this process, we might recognise that civic awareness and a focus on human rights issues are indispensable in overcoming old and entrenched divisions into political camps and in opening up appropriate new arenas for political debate.