Wiedergutmachung and its Discontents
Wiedergutmachung and its Discontents

Summary/Abstract: This paper presents and analyses critiques of the post-war West German discourse of Wiedergutmachung from an intellectual history perspective. Focused closely on suggestive remarks of Theodor Adorno and Hannah Arendt, these critiques are mostly concerned with the insufficient care in intentionality, psychological inadequacies and improper self-serving or nature of the process as it emerged in Cold War West Germany. This essay then charts whether any elements of these critiques from the 1960s are echoed in the most recent wave of scholarly literature on reparations. Current critiques view Wiedergutmachung as a foundation for a “communicative history” that forges shared narratives between perpetrator and victim or as the starting point for a culture of victim competition. Contemporary discourse and historiography remains incomplete with the historical acknowledgment of these early intellectual critiques of the process of reparation. The primary elements taken from these earlier critiques include the importance of intentionality, intersubjective care and reconciliation through memory, especially in cultural discourses and institutions.

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