전후 독일에서 나치 저항의 인식 변화

Abstract

This paper examined the process of investigating the Nazi history from a judicial perspective by the German society through the Remer-Trial. This trial was held in Braunschweig in March of 1952 according to an indictment on the crime of libel for a far-right agitator that criticized a resistance fighter on July 20, 1944 by taking advantage of the legal understanding by the German judicial branch that illegalized criminal prosecutions for crimes of Nazis immediately after the war. The Remer-Trial vividly condensed the history of the early federal republic in its lawsuit procedures and is thus evaluated to have recorded a turning point in the memory culture of modern Germany history. This paper sheds light on this trial based on the reception history of resistance on July 20, 1944 as an index for identifying the past progress of overcoming Nazism. The past history of the German society immediately after the war was being formed by people leading the interpretation under the two different conditions of the task of becoming de-nazified, while on the other hand, reconstruction in the Cold War system. Therefore, this paper investigates how the roles of political circles, academia, media, and the judicial branch developed as elites for interpretations on past memories. Afterwards, the progress of trials was examined to compare the trial strategies between the prosecutors and attorneys, while examining the opposing understandings that were represented in the early stages of overcoming the past. Lastly, this paper investigates the results of the Remer-Trial, or in other words, the meaning found in the long-term course of overcoming the past of Nazism by the German society through this trial that gave judicial justification for the July 20 resistance. The anti-Nazi resistance that did not receive unanimous support by most members of the German society following the war who had not completely turned their backs from Nazi propaganda finally recovering honor through the Remer-Trial was a groundbreaking case of post-war history. This lawsuit that deemed the Third Reich as an illegal nation and confirmed resistance to have been legal is judged to have been a normative behavior that provided the decisive basis for establishing July 20, 1944 as the historical consciousness of the federal republic. This paper reveals that Bauer utilized this trial to not only find Remer guilty and regain honor for the July 20 resistance, but gave theme to the entire resistance against the Third Reich and finally the reconstruction of the civil right of resistance.