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Memory and History in Germany

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
Published date01 September 2008
AuthorAndrew Cohen
Date01 September 2008
DOI10.1177/002070200806300306
Subject MatterCanada-Germany RelationEssays in Honour of Robert Spencer
Andrew Cohen is an award-winning journalist and bestselling author. His latest book is
The Unfinished Canadian: The People We Are
. A professor of journalism and interna-
tional affairs at Carleton University, he was a visiting fellow at the German Institute for
International and Security Affairs in Berlin in 2007-08.
If Canada is famously said to have more geography than history, Germany
has more history than geography. What Canada really lacks, though, is not
history but memory. Survey after survey shows how little Canadians know
about the people and events that have shaped them. We do not teach our his-
tory and we do not celebrate our founders. It has made us a nation of amne-
siacs, blissfully ignorant of our past, stumbling about in a poetic fog.
The same cannot be said of Germany. Memory matters here. If Germany
has too much history, which may well be true, it is trying to overcome it. This
is particularly so in its public memory, a byword for presenting the past in
monuments, memorials, and museums. Or, put differently, how society re-
members, what it remembers, and who it remembers. Materially, we meas-
ure this in the exhibitions in museums, the signs on buildings, the statues
in parks. All reflect a people’s self-understanding.
| International Journal | Summer 2008 | 547 |
Andrew Cohen
Memory and history
in Germany

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