“Fixpunkte des ‘antitotalitären Konsenses’”? The Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen memorials, Germany’s ‘double past’, and cultural memory in the Berlin Republic

This thesis sheds light on the ways in which Germany's 'double' National Socialist and communist past has been represented and contested since 1998, taking the Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen memorials as case studies. It pays particular attention to the intersection between discourses on the ‘double past’ and the institutionalization of remembrance in reunified Germany, signalled by the passing into law of a Federal Memorials Concept (Gedenkstättenkonzeption) in 1999 that sought to align the memorials with a present-day 'anti-totalitarian consensus'. Whilst Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen, having served as concentration camps during the Third Reich and then as Soviet internment camps from 1945-1950, have in a normative sense been co-opted into the ‘anti-totalitarian’ narrative, this thesis argues that it is necessary to at least partially uncouple the situation on the ground from the official position.