The Memoralization of 9 November 1918 in the Two German States

Abstract

For about 40 years, the two competing German states, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), shared a common past. However, this past was turned into differing histories, told as different stories. The divergent narrations of German history accentuated varying events or presented the same events in a dissimilar, often even conflicting way. This chapter discusses the construction and memorialization of a single event, the revolution that occurred in November 1918.1 The revolution became an essential part of the GDR’s founding myth and was memorialized as a national holiday while it was nearly forgotten in the FRG. The article sets out to spotlight how divergent politics of history led to opposing constructions and memorializations of a single event in the two German states. It focuses on the revolution’s decennial anniversaries in 1948, 1958, and 1968. Research on the anniversaries has been conducted by historians in recent years. Yet, most of these studies have focused either on the FRG or the GDR.2 By contrast, this chapter adopts a comparative approach. The analysis draws partly on published sources from the time of the anniversaries and on archival material from the German Federal Archive (Bundesarchiv) in Berlin.