Robbery, Restitution, and Remembrance in Germany

Abstract The essay draws a panorama of the current state of the Holocaust compensation and provenance research in Germany. It discusses the German politic of “Wiedergutmachung”, the recent cases of restitution, the public debate about commemoration and the challenges when it comes to restituting objects robbed 80 years ago. On the one hand, Germany – especially with regards to restitution measures up to the 1960s – is used as a role model in the international discourse on restitution issues. On the other hand, there is also a history of critique accompanying the German “Widergutmachungspolitik”. The essay argues that future research should analytically separate the different levels of the history of compensation: the official German discourse and wording of commemoration politics, the history of actual payments, the research and remembrance done by institutions like universities or memorials, and the initiatives of survivor organizations and civil society. They follow their own agendas and often are contradictory.