Judging the Past in Unified Germany

by A. James McAdams

• ISBN13: 9780521001397
• ISBN10: 0521001390
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-04-02
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

In recent years, no modern democracy has taken more aggressive steps to come to terms with a legacy of dictatorship than has the Federal Republic of Germany with the crimes and injustices of Communist East Germany. In this book, A. James McAdams provides a comprehensive and engaging examination of the four most prominent instances of this policy: criminal trials for the killings at the Berlin Wall; the disqualification of administrative personnel for secret-police ties; parliamentary truth-telling commissions; and private property restitution. On the basis of extensive interviews in Bonn and Berlin over the 1990s, McAdams gives new insight into the difficulties German politicians, judges, bureaucrats, and public officials faced sitting in judgment on the affairs of another state. He argues provocatively that the success of their policies must be measured in terms of the way they used East German history to justify their actions. In 1997, A. James McAdams was awarded the DAAD Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in German Studies. He is Professor and Chair of the Department of Government and International Studies at University of Notre Dame, in Notre Dame, Indiana. He is the author of East Germany and Détente (Cambridge University Press, 1985), Germany Divided: From the Wall to Reunification (Princeton University Press, 1992), and co-author of Rebirth: A Political History of Europe Since World War II (Westview Press, 1999). McAdams is also editor of Transitional Justice and the Rule of Law in New Democracies (University of Notre Dame Press, 1997).

Table of Contents

Illustrations	xi
Preface	xiii
Note	xix
Introduction: On Judging the East German Past	1	(22)
Interpreting the East German Past	9	(9)
Four Types of Retrospective Justice	18	(5)
Criminal Justice: Prosecuting GDR Officials	23	(32)
Competing Arguments for Justice	25	(5)
Seeking Justice within the Law	30	(5)
A ``Trial of the Century''	35	(6)
Judicial Architects of German Unity	41	(4)
The Risks of Going Too Far	45	(5)
An Ambiguous Message about Culpability	50	(5)
Disqualifying Justice: The Search for Stasi Collaborators	55	(33)
Contending Views on the Stasi's Reach	58	(7)
Distilling Truth from the Files	65	(7)
Screening for Stasi Activity	72	(5)
Appealing Dismissals before the Courts	77	(7)
The Competing Messages of Screening	84	(4)
Moral Justice: Assessing the Complete Record of Dictatorship	88	(36)
Finding Fault with the Churches	92	(9)
A Different Stand on the Deutschlandpolitik	101	(8)
Mixed Emotions about the Silent Majority	109	(7)
Revisiting East Germany's Difficult Past	116	(5)
A Better Commission?	121	(3)
Corrective Justice: Returning Private Property	124	(33)
The Narrow Choices Behind the Property Settlement	127	(6)
The Challenge of Implementing the Property Statute	133	(4)
The Legitimacy of Jewish Claims	137	(4)
...but the Irreversibility of Soviet Expropriations	141	(5)
Vying Responses to GDR-Era Injustice	146	(3)
Ambiguities of Drawing the Line	149	(3)
The Enduring Burden of Multiple Pasts	152	(5)
Conclusion: A Manageable Past?	157	(32)
The FRG's Constrained Options	161	(5)
On Judging the Past in the Right Way	166	(10)
GDR Wrongdoing in Perspective	176	(8)
Contending Venues of Justice	184	(5)
Appendix: The German Court System	189	(2)
Notes	191	(32)
Glossary	223	(4)
Bibliography	227	(12)
Index	239