Joyce, Hedda; (2023) Present Pasts: Nazi legacies and their meaning for the personal lives of German descendants living abroad. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

This thesis explores how non-Jewish Germans who live abroad relate to their national and family history. The patterns of engagement of these ‘third generation’ Germans with their heritage adds a new perspective to the contentious discussion of Germany’s efforts to deal with its Nazi past. Hailed by some as champions of Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung (‘working through the past’) and criticized by others for continuing with displacement strategies and self-victimization, German descendants often feel the need to develop a personal position of some description on the Nazi legacy. Through analysis of material from 43 in-depth narrative interviews and two focus groups, the thesis investigates this relationship between the NS period and present lives. A threefold approach incorporating personal, generational and socio- historical influences addresses the complexity of this undertaking. The study reaches beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries with an analytic approach that draws on the fields of psychology/psychoanalysis and historical phenomenology. Its focus on German descendants living in the UK and France brings to the fore the affective dimension of the interviewees’ national and cultural selves. This reveals the central role of affects, such as a sense of shame, that underlie any discussions and influence what interviewees know about their family history in the Nazi period. The geographical distance attained by those who live abroad is used by some to return with new awareness of their experience of the NS legacy. The history of the Holocaust is drawn on as an explanation for their decision to leave Germany and, in some instances, simultaneously affects their capacity to belong. Juxtaposing cases with descendants from persecuted families reveals conflicted cultural (un)belongings as a consequence of the history of social exclusion and exposes its lived reality as a potential blind spot in non-Jewish German consciousness. The study adds to our understanding of the complex psychological relationship between history, family and one’s sense of self in the context of both NS history and migration.

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