Claus Leggewie

Europe will have no future unless it deals appropriately with the past. This theory of political scientist Claus Leggewie is not new; historians such as Jacques Le Goff have long been pointing to the need for a common European remembrance culture. At history faculties, too, trans-national histiography is as much the order of the day as a Muslim in Munich. Yet Der Kampf um die europäische Erinnerung, a book co-authored by Leggewie and Anne Lang, is hard to beat in terms of its current relevance and importance. The writers take on the task of translating the vague concept of “European remembrance”, which has in the past prompted specialist discourse or pious platitudes from the educated middle class, into a radically reduced and easily-understood concept. (…) Using exemplary historical reports, the authors show how a specific political identity grows from the institutionalised debate in civil society on complexes relating to the past, an identity that legitimates itself through divided remembrance in both senses of the word. Only an open and always variable identity of this kind gives Europe the ability to act in solidarity and integratively, both internally and externally. This is a European Utopia which deserves the same fate as European remembrance, namely to be discussed and shared.

Maximilian Probst: „Geteilte Erinnerung“
© Die ZEIT, 17 March 2011