Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier warned on the day of national mourning that society should grapple with the Bundeswehr as a parliamentary army. In a memorial hour in the Bundestag he called for “the speechlessness of many parts of society towards our army” to be overcome. “That is today’s assignment,” he said at the memorial hour. Accepting responsibility for German history should not mean “shying away from dealing with the conflicts of the present day and those who bear the heaviest and most difficult responsibility in them”.
The relationship between society and the army is shaped by the experience of two world wars, guilt and shame, Steinmeier emphasized. As a parliamentary army, the Bundeswehr is firmly rooted in the democratic constitution. People like to speak of the soldiers as “citizens in uniform”, said the Federal President. But if these soldiers were to be honored, as they did recently before the Reichstag, then many citizens would see them “in the end would rather be dressed in civilian clothes and without a torch in their hands”.
In mid-October, the Bundestag and the federal government honored the roughly 90,000 men and women of the Bundeswehr deployed in the recently ended Afghanistan mission with a grand tattoo, the highest military ceremony in the German armed forces. The pictures of soldiers with torches in front of the Reichstag building had caused some alienation and criticism on the Internet. A number of Twitter users felt reminded of the Nazi era.
Military rituals as a disruptive factor
Many Germans feel uneasy about military rituals, said the Federal President now. “You don’t want to be reminded of what the deployment of an army, including the Bundeswehr, means. Death and trauma, German soldiers in armed deployment, in foreign countries – we Germans like to suppress that.”
Wolfgang Schneiderhan, President of the German War Graves Commission, speaks at the commemoration in the Bundestag
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For a country whose name remains associated with the endless suffering that two world wars over Europe, whose army at the time was guilty of a murderous war of aggression, “some of the unease may be understandable,” said the SPD politician. But that does not make it easy for those who risked their lives for the country, the veterans of the missions abroad and especially the families of the fallen. “Because their trauma, their loss, their fear, pain or shame do not go away just because many others turn a blind eye to it. On the contrary.”
The head of state had previously thought of the victims of violence and war all over the world. Steinmeier complained that many places of German crimes in the Second World War, for example in the east and south-east of Europe, had been pushed out of the collective memory in Germany. Remembrance presupposes a common memory, “a space for memories that we share, in Germany, in Europe. Names, places and events that are inscribed in such a common memory.”
Memory gaps in the east
The name Auschwitz has “become the epitome of the murder of millions of European Jews,” said the Federal President. But Steinmeier lamented that the common memory does not have a map that shows the countless other locations of German crimes beyond the extermination camps in Belarus, Ukraine, Russia and elsewhere in Eastern Europe.
The memorial hour, under the patronage of Bundestag President Bärbel Bas, was dedicated to the memory of the cruel and costly war of aggression and annihilation in Eastern and Southeastern Europe, which began 80 years ago with the occupation of Yugoslavia and Greece and the attack on the Soviet Union.
Commemoration of the Neue Wache
Steinmeier and Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer had previously taken part in the wreath-laying ceremony on the day of national mourning at the Neue Wache. The Neue Wache in Berlin-Mitte on the Unter den Linden boulevard has been the Federal Republic’s central memorial for the victims of war and tyranny since 1993. The minister also took part in a ceremony at the Bundeswehr memorial in Berlin’s Bendlerblock.
The heads of the German state laying the wreath in the Neue Wache
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The President of the Volksbund, the former General Wolfgang Schneiderhan, said in the Bundestag that the day of national mourning is a day of appeal “never again to allow conditions that lead to war”. Reconciliation with other countries includes recognizing their suffering. That is why not only the German victims of the wars are remembered, but also the victims of the Germans.
The day of national mourning is a state day of remembrance; since 1952 it has always been held two Sundays before the first Advent. It has been celebrated in Germany since 1919 – originally to show solidarity with the relatives of the victims of the First World War. In the meantime, the Federal Republic of Germany is commemorating all victims of war and tyranny.
kle / uh (dpa, afp, epd, kna)
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