The Quest for a Culture of Remembrance
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE, ARMENIAN STUDIES | MAY 7, 2013 4:42 PM
Armenians in Germany Commemorate Armenian Genocide
By Muriel Mirak-Weissbach
Special to the Mirror-Spectator
BERLIN – Among the many nations where people gather on April 24th
every year to commemorate the victims of the 1915 genocide, Germany
holds a special place for three reasons: first, because it was here
that the Holocaust occurred, a case of mass murder that was modeled on
the Armenian genocide; secondly, because the post-war German political
world faced up to what the Nazis had perpetrated. It was not only the
fact that many of the criminals were brought to justice at the
Nuremburg trials, and that Germany acknowledged it as genocide, but
also that in the years and decades that followed, the reality of what
had been committed was subjected to historical scrutiny, so that
broader layers of the population and members of the successor
generations became aware of this past. Germans refer to this process
and what it has produced in civil society as `a culture of
remembrance’ (Erinnerungskultur). The third reason is that Germany’s
Turkish population is the largest outside of Turkey, a fact which has
a political, social and cultural impact in both countries.
This year memorials took place in several locations, at the historic
Paulskirche in Frankfurt as well as in Berlin, and a number of smaller
cities. In both Berlin and Frankfurt, the role of Germany then and now
was a central theme. At St. Marienkirche in the capital, Archbishop
Karekin Bekdjian celebrated the requiem mass and representatives of
the German Catholic and Evangelical churches spoke. Musical offerings
included liturgical church music from the Middle Ages and pieces by
Komitas, played on saxophone, the duduk, counter bass clarinet. Vocal
pieces were performed by Artak Kirakosyan, soloist from the Alexander
Spendiaryan Opera and Ballet in Yerevan.
In his greeting, Armenian Ambassador Armen Martirosyan addressed
issues of a fundamental character. Every year when commemorating the
genocide, he said, we ask `Why’: `Why did it happen? Why did the world
keep silent…? Why did the great powers close their eyes …to ethnic
cleansing? Why did they not bring the criminals to justice? Have we
Armenians drawn the lessons from this tragedy?’ He went on to note the
lamentable fact that `Ethnic cleansing was to become part of political
culture, an acceptable way to solve interethnic problems…’ in
reference to the Holocaust, and the more recent mass murders in
Rwanda, Cambodia and the Balkans. `The international community has
drawn no lessons from the genocide against the Armenians,’ he stated:
`immunity from criminal prosecution, indifference and inactivity
opened the way for the repetition of such horrible crimes against
humanity.’
For those nations which have recognized the genocide, Ambassador
Martirosyan expressed the gratitude of the Armenian people, and at the
same time denounced others which, though campaigning for democracy and
human rights worldwide, have sacrificed universal human values in
pursuit of their own geopolitical interests.
Referencing the cultural heritage of Armenians going back thousands of
years, he celebrated the rebirth of the nation, and said that its two
pillars, the Republic of Armenia and the Diaspora, must both be
equally strong. `Our unity is the course of our strength and our
diversity is the source of our resilience.’
Sibylle Thelen, from the Baden-Württemberg Regional Center for
Political Education, held the keynote on `The Power of the Many
Voices: No Pluralism without the Freedom of Remembrance.’ She
characterized the 24th of April not only as a `day of mourning and
remembrance,’ but also `a day of clarification and belated
reappraisal.’ Thelen, who is the author of a book on `The Armenian
Question in Turkey,’ has documented the process through which citizens
have gradually come to learn about, understand and face the historical
facts of the genocide. `With every passing year,’ she said, `the
memory of 1915 comes closer and closer – also in Germany. And a bit
also in Turkey.’ In her speech she touched on these developments in
civil society, among the Turkish immigrants in Germany and in Europe.
In Turkey, this process unfolds in various forms: there are citizens
who research and relate their family histories, discovering and
remembering their Turkified Armenian grandmothers; researchers link up
with colleagues abroad and import new approaches and questions;
artists explore the dark past, like Orhan Pamuk in his bestseller,
Snow, and Elif Shafak in The Bastard from Istanbul. Thelen cited a new
book, Serenade for Nadja by Zülfü Livaneli, which has continued this
literary experience. The protagonist of the book, a 38-year-old
Turkish woman working in a university, learns from a visiting American
professor the tragic story of 700 Jewish passengers on a ship named
Struma, who drowned in the Black Sea in 1941-1942 because no one in
the international community offered them help in their attempt to
escape persecution. Shocked by this story, she begins to research her
own family history and discovers one grandmother was a Crimean Tatar,
the other, an Armenian survivor who was forced to convert to Islam.
Facing this past, the protagonist goes through a self-reflexive crisis
which is painful, but liberating, as she gains inner freedom and
self-conscious independence. The fact that this book has sold 250,000
copies speaks volumes. For Thelen, the heroine `symbolizes Turkish
civil society’ which, though small, has realized that taboos about
history are inhibiting and enslaving. `It prevents the unfolding of
Turkish democracy,’ whereas `a Turkey that critically reappraises its
past makes its own way to a free, pluralistic Europe.’
As for Germany, she recalled a resolution on the Armenian question
which the Bundestag (Parliament) passed in 2005, on the 90th
anniversary. Although the text avoided use of the term `genocide’ it
was an attempt, in the words of one of its sponsors, to bring the
successor nation to the Ottoman Empire into the `European culture of
remembrance’ – the capacity Europeans have developed to face the
tragedies of the 20th century, recognize responsibilities and open the
way to reconciliation. The second part of the resolution explicitly
identified it as a duty for Germany to provide Armenians and Turks
support to work through the past to overcome it, for example, by
encouraging classroom education in teaching youth about the genocide.
Although Thelen could not announce great strides made in this
direction, she could point to some progress in introducing the theme
in history lessons.
In this context, she noted that with such a large immigrant
population, Germany faces the challenge of exploring new ways to
present its own history, including the history of immigration and the
reasons behind it. Means must be devised to allow newcomers to
participate in the collective memory of Germany, and to learn even
from its negative aspects. The speaker called for `historical work
which is intercultural’ and which provides `a multiplicity of
perspectives to approach the past and present.’ As an example, she
cited a project built around a concentration camp memorial in the city
of Ulm. Eighty per cent of the students came from immigrant families,
and the question posed in the project was: what does your history have
to do with me? The students investigated their own family backgrounds,
compared them, discussed them and sought to locate them in a
historical perspective. `It is a matter of sharing memory,’ Thelen
said.
Looking to the immediate future, she noted that next year 2014 we will
be commemorating the beginning of World War I, a watershed which has
also undergone a shift in focus of research: from political-military
accounts of the big battles, attention has moved to the cultural and
social background, and the war has been recognized as the first great
catastrophe of the century. The year thereafter 2015 marks the
centenary of the Armenian genocide and with it the memory will
inevitably prevail. `In the confrontation with history, suffering,
guilt and responsibility find their place in collective memory,’ she
concluded. `And that is how it should be.’
The second guest speaker was Cem Oezdemir, the national chairman of
the Green Party and member of the Bundestag. His speech was entitled,
`In Memory of the Victims of the Genocide against the Armenians 1915.’
Echoing Martirosyan’s sentiments, Oezdemir stressed how difficult it
is to grasp the `why’ behind the events: why the Young Turk leaders
destroyed the multi-ethnic, multi-religious Ottoman state with their
nationalist, racist ideology, and why the Armenians, known as the
loyal people, were victimized. To put the apparently inconceivable
crime in perspective, he reviewed the indispensable place Armenians
had occupied in Ottoman society as professionals, manufacturers,
intellectuals, artists. In Istanbul, for example, where they
represented a tenth of the population, there were nearly as many
newspapers in Armenian as in Turkish.
In his narration of the nationalist upheavals in the late 19th century
which led to territorial losses in the Balkans and the expulsion also
of Muslims, Oezdemir drew on examples from his own family history:
uprooted Cherkessian ancestors on his father’s side who came under
Russian occupation in the Caucasus and a maternal Greek grandmother
who had to change her name and religion. It was in their desperate
attempt to hold the crumbling empire together that the Young Turks
propagated the creed of Turkish-Muslim superiority, and minorities
were doomed.
Oezdemir delivered sharp criticism of the attempt to rationalize the
systematic deportations and massacres of the Armenians as somehow
undesired by-products of the war, and argued strongly in favor of an
honest overhaul of history from the Turkish side. He said that formal
measures, for example, legal codes and bans, may serve the purpose of
denying the past, but they cannot heal the wounds of the past. Quoting
Hrant Dink on the need for the two peoples to help the healing
process, he called for a normalization of relations between Armenia
and Turkey, the opening of the border and accession of Turkey into the
European Union – a move that he believes, as does Sibylle Thelen,
would encourage the democratization process, thus contributing to
restoring truth in official historiography.
Like Thelen, Oezdemir also struck a note of optimism at this prospect,
pointing to current developments in Turkey as evidence; for one, he
cited progress (albeit limited) in allowing some Christian schools and
churches to restore their activities, and considered the recent
Turkish government talks with PKK representatives as signs of a
possible democratic solution to the Kurdish problem. In the context of
a new democratic constitutional order, essentially all minorities
could aspire to equal rights. Oezdemir implicitly challenged the
authorities to take further steps in this direction, by asking
rhetorically why those who dare deal with the Kurds or who have
acknowledged the repression of Dersim in 1937/38 cannot take a similar
approach to the Armenians – in time for 2015.
In the Paulskirche in Frankfurt, where the first freely elected
parliament convened in 1848, the historical events took center stage.
Prof. Dr. M.A. Niggli, Professor of Criminal Law and Legal Philosophy
(Philosophy of Law?) at Freiburg University addressed the oft-raised
question of whether or not the concept of genocide in reference to
1915 requires clarification, and answered with a resounding `No.’ It
was the jurist Raphael Lemkin, he recalled, who established the
scientific conditions for a legal definition of genocide precisely on
the basis of his study of the events in Turkey between 1915 and 1918.
And it was this concept which prevailed at the enactment of the
Genocide Convention at the United Nations. He also dealt with related
questions as to the numbers of Armenians who perished, the way many
survived, and the legitimacy of using the term genocide for events
prior to its coinage.
Michael Hesemann, who is an author, documentary filmmaker and
specialized journalist, has been working in Rome since 2008
researching documents in the secret archives of the Vatican for a book
on the Armenian genocide and the Vatican, to appear in 2015. In his
speech he reported on various interventions by Felix Cardinal von
Hartmann and Pope Benedict XV in defense of the Armenian cause, which
they launched immediately after April 24, 1915. Hesemann quoted from
two letters, one by Cardinal von Hartmann (and the other by the Pope
from March 12, 1918. Also participating in their efforts was the
Catholic Nuntius in Munich Pacelli, Secretary of State Cardinal
Gaspari and the Cardinal’s sister who had worked as a nun and
witnessed the genocide. They addressed their efforts to the German
government in Berlin directly, especially to Imperial Chancellor Count
von Hertling who was a Catholic himself. Hesemann quoted from the
answers of the Chancellor, who rejected the pleas for intervention in
an utterly irresponsible, cynical fashion. He also mentioned the work
of Johannes Lepsius, which was taken very seriously by Catholic
leaders, as well as his contact to Mathias Erzberger, a leading (CUT:
politician and) member of the Catholic Center Party in the Imperial
Diet. Hesemann’s speech culminated in his statement that although
Germany was not an accomplice it was in the know and therefore bears a
special responsibility to ensure that the truth wins out. Concluding
his remarks, he cited passages from the prayer which Pope John Paul II
offered during his 2001 visit to Tsitsernakaberd.
Although differing in form and approach, the leading speakers at
Germnay’s commemorative ceremonies shared the concept and the
commitment, that Germany can and should engage in efforts to make 2015
the year of recognition, reappraisal and the triumph of truth.