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In the Name of the Germans

Norbert Frei

From Theodor Heuss to Richard von Weizsäcker – the presidents of Germany and the country’s Nazi past

The German president, in his official capacity, speaks ‘in the name of the Germans’, even and especially when it comes to the country’s Nazi past. For Theodor Heuss and his successors in the Bonn Republic, this also meant speaking about their own contemporaries. In this brilliantly written and at times astonishing book Norbert Frei shows how German presidents suppressed their own personal histories and at the same time set the tone for talking about National Socialism and the Holocaust in a society that had yet to learn how to be critical of its own past.

Richard von Weizsäcker was the last German president to have lived through the Second World War as an adult. This explains the international fame garnered by his speech to mark the 40th anniversary of the end of the war, on 8th May 1985. For this reason, the book ends with Weizsäcker’s speech, and begins with Theodor Heuss, who – as the first head of state of the Federal Republic of Germany – had to find ways and means of speaking about the crimes of the ‘Third Reich’ ‘in the name of the Germans’. In this brilliant, meticulously researched book, Norbert Frei, author of the now-canonical study ‘Vergangenheitspolitik’ and one of the most renowned contemporary historians of our time, traces the long and winding road to the development of a statesmanlike art and respected praxis.

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Hardback

28.00 EUR

Published 2023-10-12T11:57:08.270Z by C.H.Beck , ISBN: 9783406808487

ISBN: 9783406808487