When Bundespräsident Richard von Weizäcker addressed the Bundestag thirty years ago next May, he distilled the great truths about 8th of May 1945. “Der achte Mai”, he said, “war ein Tag der Befreiung”. Every five years, the symmetry of 1945 allows us not only to never forget the twelve years of the Hitler regime in Germany, but to return to a year which throws up exciting, uncomfortable and necessary topics which we as teachers of German can address to great effect.
One of the components of the senior German syllabus is one of cultural competence. And yet frustratingly, whilst the Alltagkultur of German speaking countries is recognised, the history of German speaking people is overlooked. This is a great pity, as for teachers of German, there is a compelling case for German history being part of what we teach.
To that end, 1945 allows students, all aware on some level of the significance of the year, to delve into four powerful digits and discover what life was like at this moment in time. Some teachers might use Ernst Jandl’s poem 1944/1945 as a useful starting point, before delving into other aspects of the year the war ended.
That year was eventful to say the least. 1945 was the year of the Dresden Bombings, captured in Kurt Vonnegut’s classic novel Slaughterhouse 5; the Flüchtlingstreks of some 12 million Germans from east of the river Oder, whilst at one stage seen to be politically suspect to discuss, can and should be discussed in its proper context: Europe as the year, as one British veteran pointed out on a BBC documentary, the year the people of Europe were on the move.
1945 was also the year of the final defeat of the Wehrmacht and the disintegration of the Nazi regime; Of Stunde Null and the moment when Germany, technically, ceased to be; when civilisation wended its way to the defining moment of the last half millennium: The Holocaust.
Discussions can and should inevitably lead to Auschwitz. And that is important. Whilst the moral and factual aspects are again well known, a learner of German should know about what ordinary Germans knew, how they struggled to acknowledge the true scale of genocide committed by on their behalf by many of them. For many families this was a time to bury terrible secrets, as seen in Tomi Reichental’s excellent recent documentary about one of his captors.
The ‘deep brown stain’, as historian Harold James refers to it, tarnishes the Germans sense of collective self. The years which followed, certainly the decades after World War Two, lead to decades of prevarication, dishonesty, denial and the struggle with what ordinary Germans has endured, and reconciling that with what they had perpetrated. For every lie, however, there was a truth that would out. The consequences of 1945, the unholy mess of that year, from military defeat, mass starvation and migration, to demagoguery and unprecedented genocide, make this a year which stands on its own merits as a unit of learning; One which can be done with great ease with colleagues in other subjects.
Resources are plentiful. It is a great tribute to this country that the Holocaust Education Trust receives as much public support as it does. The Goethe Institut and other institutions have also touched upon individual aspects of this tumultuous year. Online, the BBC has many fine documentaries which can be used, as is true of the German public broadcasters like ZDF and ARD, many of which are readily found in specific archives. For those who wish to ditch watching amusing clips of dancing cats on YouTube can find programmes and films which can be didactised easily enough. All one needs, as always, is time.
The reality is, that the outcomes of examining 1945 in the language classroom is not only to create a departure from familiar territory – of itself a good reason to take this on – but also allows students to analyse, speculate, describe past events and make critical evaluations, all the while using constructions and vocabulary which students will require at senior cycle.
To be perfectly honest however, if there were one overriding reason for using this year in our classes it is because it is the morally right thing to do. Racism is still with us, ignorance is still in our own society ‘es hört nie auf’ as Günter Grass wrote at the end of Im Krebsgang.
In my own classroom I have used on multiple occasions the words of Bundespräsident von Weizäcker on the 8th of May 1985, the most significant speech I would argue of the Bonn Republic. His appeal to the young act as the learning outcomes for students of this year and what it signifies:
“Die Bitte an die jungen Menschen lautet:
Lassen Sie sich nicht hineintreiben in Feindschaft und Haß gegen andere Menschen, gegen Russen oder Amerikaner, gegen Juden oder Türken, gegen Alternative oder Konservative, gegen Schwarz oder Weiß. Lernen Sie miteinander zu leben, nicht gegeneinander.
Ehren wir die Freiheit. Arbeiten wir für den Frieden. Halten wir uns an das Recht. Dienen wir unseren inneren Maßstäben der Gerechtigkeit.
Schauen wir am heutigen 8. Mai, so gut wir es können, der Wahrheit ins Auge."
This is an activity we can all share in, 70 years on from the most resonant year of the 20th century.
