German Protestants Remember the Holocaust

Drawing on the methodology of collective memory this dissertation analyses representations of the Holocaust and Jews in three German Protestant theological texts (Rheinischer Synodalbeschluss 1980, F.-W. Marquardt's Von Elend und Heimsuchung der Theologie and B. Jungst's Auf der Seite des Todes das Leben). The analysis of these texts is informed by the development of narratives of collective memory of the Holocaust in German society in the 1980s and 1990s (the miniseries Holocaust and Heimat, the Bitburg Controversy, the Historikerstreit and the Goldhagen Controversy) and by the study of generational transmission of Holocaust memory in the third generation of non-Jewish Germans. In particular, the paradigms generated by Christian reflection on the Holocaust and Jews and their consequences for current Christian-Jewish relations in Germany are addressed. The theological narrative of this study becomes increasingly complex through the inclusion of social and generational issues of Holocaust remembrance in Germany. Dr. K. Hannah Holtschneider, geb. 1971, Junior Research Fellow am Centre for Jewish-Christian Relations in Cambridge, UK. 1991 - 95 Theologiestudium in Wuppertal, Bochum und Dublin, 1995 - 96 Jewish Studies in Oxford, 1996 - 2000 Promotion in Birmingham.