Von den Deutschen lernen

Germany as a Model? Susan Neiman compares the German and American approaches to the legacy of their own histories.

How can societies deal with the evils of their own past? Is there something politically to be learned from the Germans? When Susan Neiman, a young Jewish American, moved to Berlin in the 1980s, many in her circle found it incomprehensible. Yet she stayed in Berlin and witnessed how the Germans seriously confronted their own crimes: in both the West and the East, albeit in different ways. When Donald Trump became president of the United States, a man who revitalized racism, she decided to return to where she had grown up: the American South, where the legacy of slavery still shapes the present. Susan Neiman intertwines personal portraits with philosophical reflection and asks: How should societies deal with the evils of their own history?.