Marginal justice: the persecution of so-called ‘asocials’ and the politics of historic justice in the Federal Republic of Germany

Abstract

SUMMARYUnder Nazi rule, tens of thousands of men and women, boys and girls were detained in penitentiaries, workhouses or concentration camps, or eventually killed, on the grounds that they were deemed ‘asocial’. The way they lived did not conform to Nazi notions of being a productive, valuable, well-adjusted member of the German Volksgemeinschaft (the German ethnic community). The article examines whether, when and how the Federal Republic of Germany has come to terms with the Nazi persecution of the ‘asocials’ and taken measures of compensation or commemoration. It shows that German politics has largely failed to confront the distinctive features of this type of persecution, namely that it targeted victims according to Nazi notions of productivity, economic usefulness and social conformism. It argues that the Federal Republic has failed to declare the logic of this persecution to be incompatible with its normative foundations. The article focuses on the activities by the German Bundestag pertaining to the persecution of the ‘asocials’. Source material consists of draft laws, parliamentary motions, parliamentary hearings, plenary debates, questions to the government in writing and government responses to these. It concludes that the Federal Republic of Germany has failed to distance itself from the productivist logic that underlay the Nazi persecution of the ‘asocials’.