For a detailed examination of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Memorial see: James E. Young, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 155–84.
While there have been debates about the spontaneity of the gesture, Brandt himself argued that it was an unprompted impulse, a statement that was confirmed by historical witnesses. See Willy Brandt, My Life in Politics (New York: Viking, 1992); Sontheimer, “Willy Brandt in Warschau.” For an in-depth analysis of Willy Brandt’s genuflection, see Valentin Rauer, “Symbols in Action: Willy Brandt’s Kneefall at the Warsaw Memorial,” in Social Performance: Symbolic Action, Cultural Pragmatics, and Ritual, eds. Jeffrey C. Alexander, Bernhard Giesen, and Jason L. Mast (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 257–82.
Sontheimer, “Willy Brandt in Warschau.”
Ibid.
“Willy Brandt—Facts,” Nobel Prize, June 17, 2019, ➝.
Peter H. Merkl, “The German Janus: From Westpolitik to Ostpolitik,” Political Science Quarterly 89, no. 4 (1974): 803–24; Gert Krell, “West German Ostpolitik and the German Question,” Journal of Peace Research 28, no. 3 (1991): 311–23; James H. Wolfe, “West Germany’s Ostpolitik,” World Affairs 134, no. 3 (1971): 210–19; Gottfried Niedhart, “Revisionistische Elemente und die Initiierung friedlichen Wandels in der neuen Ostpolitik 1967–1974,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 28, no. 2 (2002): 233–66.
Brandt, My Life in Politics.
The use of this expression to designate massive crimes has a long history. See Words Cannot Be Found: German Colonial Rule in Namibia: An Annotated Reprint of the 1918 Blue Book, eds. Jan-Bart Gewald and Jeremy Silvester (Leiden: Brill, 2003).
Alois Riegl, “The Modern Cult of Monuments: Its Character and Origin,” trans. K.W. Forster and D. Ghirardo, Oppositions 25 (1982): 20–51; Alois Riegl, “Neue Strömungen in der Denkmalpflege,” Mitteilungen der K. K. Zentralkommission für Erforschung und Erhaltung der Kunst- und historischen Denkmale 3, no. 4 (1905): 85–104, ➝.
Nicholas Tavuchis and Aaron Lazare studied the rise of public apologies in the news, revealing how pervasive these statements have become in our contemporary culture. Nicholas Tavuchis, Mea Culpa: A Sociology of Apology and Reconciliation (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991); Aaron Lazare, On Apology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
Roy L. Brooks, “The Age of Apology,” in When Sorry Isn’t Enough: The Controversy over Apologies and Reparations for Human Injustice, ed. Roy L. Brooks (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 14–15; Politics and the Past: On Repairing Historical Injustices, ed. John C. Torpey (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003); John C. Torpey, Making Whole What Has Been Smashed: On Reparations Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006).
A trend that has been followed by the multiplication of apology scholarship starting in the 90s. To point out a few examples: Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); Jacques Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness (London and New York: Routledge, 2001); Edwin L. Battistella, Sorry About That: The Language of Public Apology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Public Apology Between Ritual and Regret: Symbolic Excuses on False Pretenses or True Reconciliation out of Sincere Regret?, eds. Daniël Cuypers et al. (Amsterdam/New York: Editions Rodopi, 2013); Michael Cunningham, States of Apology (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014); Mark Gibney et al., The Age of Apology: Facing Up to the Past (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008); Danielle Celermajer, The Sins of the Nation and the Ritual of Apologies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
Tavuchis argues that apologies have the power to inspire the recognition of a belonging to a “collective moral community.” For more details see: Tavuchis, Mea Culpa, 128.
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1979), 290–302.
United Nations, Charter of the United Nations, October 24, 1945, 1 UNTS XVI, ➝.
Elazar Barkan, The Guilt of Nations: Restitution and Negotiating Historical Injustices (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).
Die Globalisierung Der Wiedergutmachung: Politik, Moral, Moralpolitik, eds. José Brunner, Constantin Goschler, and Norbert Frei (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2013); Manfred Schmitz-Berg, Wieder gut gemacht? Die Geschichte der Wiedergutmachungseit 1945 (Düsseldorf: Grupello, 2017); Constantin Goschler, Wiedergutmachung: Westdeutschland und die Verfolgten des Nationalsozialismus (1945–1954) (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1992); J.D. Bindenagel, “Justice, Apology, Reconciliation, and the German Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility, and the Future,’” in Taking Wrongs Seriously: Apologies and Reconciliation, eds. Elazar Barkan and Alexander Karn (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 286–310; Regula Ludi, Reparations for Nazi Victims in Postwar Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Susan Slyomovics, How to Accept German Reparations (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014); Thomas U. Berger, War, Guilt, and World Politics after World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Barkan, The Guilt of Nations; Justice, Politics and Memory in Europe after the Second World War, ed. Suzanne Bardgett (London and Portland: Vallentine Mitchell, 2011).
Young, The Texture of Memory.
Ibid., 171.
A plaque written in Polish reads: “To commemorate the 30th anniversary of the remarkable gesture of Willy Brandt, in the square named in his honor, this symbol of memory of Polish-German relations was unveiled in the presence of German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek.” In the second paragraph, the text lists the artist Viktoria Czechowska-Antoniewska; and the architect Piotr Drachal. Finally, in terms of the initiators of the monument, the plaque states: “The monument arose as a public initiative of the Polish Council of the European Movement, and was undertaken by the Municipal Authorities of Warsaw, and supported by ROBEN and others of good will.” I wish to thank Juliet D. Golden and Małgorzata Domagalska for their help translating the plaque.
Brandt’s kneeling features prominently in the literature on national apologies and it is most often interpreted as a symbol of the new position of West Germany, later reunified Germany, in repenting for the crimes it committed during World War II. See: Replicating Atonement: Foreign Models in the Commemoration of Atrocities, ed. Mischa Gabowitsch (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017); Hermann Lübbe, Ich entschuldige mich: Das neue politische Bußritual (Munich: Siedler Verlag, 2002).
Carl Becker, “What Is Historiography?,” The American Historical Review 44, no. 1 (1938): 20–28; Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return: Cosmos and History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).
See: Robert Koenig, “Max Planck Offers Historic Apology,” Science, June 12, 2001, ➝; “Hollow Apologies Should Be Avoided,” Nature 403 (February 24, 2000): 813; Bernd Wirsing, “Not Too Late to Apologize,” Nature 404 (March 16, 2000): 222; Carola Sachse, “Was bedeutet ‘Entschuldigung?’ Die Überlebenden medizinischer NS-Verbrechen und die Max-Planck-Gesellschaft,” Berichte Zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 34, no. 3 (September 2011): 224–41.
Biomedical Sciences and Human Experimentation at Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes: The Auschwitz Connection. Speeches given on the Occasion of the Opening, Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Berlin, June 7–8, 2001, ➝.
Jona Laks, “To remember is the warning we have been given against forgetting,” in Biomedical Sciences and Human Experimentation, 16.
Max Planck Gesellschaft, “Symposium in Berlin”; Sachse, “Was bedeutet ‘Entschuldigung?’” 225.
Evan Hill et al., “8 Minutes and 46 Seconds: How George Floyd Was Killed in Police Custody,” The New York Times, May 31, 2020, ➝.
Melissa Macaya et al., “George Floyd Protests Spread Nationwide,” CNN, May 30, 2020, https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/george-floyd-protest-updates-05-28-20/index.html; Derrick Bryson Taylor, “George Floyd Protests: A Timeline,” The New York Times, June 1, 2020, ➝; Jackie Renzetti, “A Young Girl Who Watched George Floyd Suffocate Finds Her Place in the Protest Movement,” The Guardian, May 29, 2020, ➝.
CNN, Minneapolis Police Chief on George Floyd Killing.
Diana Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003).
CNN, Minneapolis Police Chief on George Floyd Killing.
Erving Goffman, Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2010).
