Judging the past in Unified Germany

Abstract

McAdams, A. James. Judging the Past in Unified Germany. Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press, 2001. 288 pp. $53.00 hardcover; $20.00 paperback. All countries that have successfully shed authoritarian regimes face the demand for retroactive for the victims. A. James McAdams's convincingly argued monograph analyzes how Germany has met this challenge with respect to the legacy ofthe SED-regime over the first decade after unification. Conceptually, McAdams distinguishes four forms of retroactive justice: criminal justice exemplified in the trials against border guards and SED functionaries responsible for killing civilians at the German-German border; disqualifying justice exemplified in the handling of the Stasi-files; justice exemplified in the case of the Bundestag's Enquete Commission charged to investigate the GDR-past; and corrective justice exemplified in the program of property restitution. McAdams's monograph masterfully examines how legal-constitutional, political, historical, and moral discourses intersect in the policy-- and decision-making processes necessary to implement retroactive justice. The author attributes Germany's success in this regard to the country's willingness to favor historical contextualization of past deeds over blanket moral judgments. This also describes McAdams's own approach, which is guided by the assumption that a genuine effort was made to do to victims of the GDR-regime. He supplements his examination of the historical record with interviews he conducted with decision-makers during the 1990s. His research leads him to debunk some of the cherished myths about unification. Me-Adams's first example, the trials against the border guards and SED-functionaries, illustrates the complexity of determining individual culpability. McAdams lauds the German Justice Department's recognition that a viable concept of law existed in the GDR, under which the perpetrators could be judged. In his opinion, the fact that most judges based their verdicts on existing GDR law rather than Western German standards refutes the cliche of the GDR as an Unrechtsstaat, which perpetrators frequently used in order to excuse their conduct. Hence, the courts were able to assess individual responibility while avoiding ascribing collective guilt to the East German population. McAdams gives equally enthusiastic endorsement to how the FRG dealt with the complicated historical and legal situation in the case of the Stasi files and property restitution. As to the latter, McAdams concedes it contributed most to the tensions between East and West Germans. At the same time, however, he takes issue with the popular notion that the government acted like a colonial power in taking over the GDR wholesale. …