Artikel von Martin Sabrow

Macht und Maske: Herausforderungen einer Honecker-Biografie

TD: Jahrgang 22, Heft 2025, 1, Seite 55–67

Abstract

In societies under communist rule, it was not the individual who was in the foreground, but the party. In the German case, even biographies of Walter Ulbricht and Erich Honecker have to struggle with the problem that the life description threatens to become a biographically tinted institutional history, because the biographer does not have access to personal sources. The article discusses analytical approaches that avoid this dilemma. In order to explore Honecker’s political role and selfunderstanding as SED leader and head of state of the GDR, it asks in particular about the biographical baggage that accompanied Erich Honecker on his political path from 1945 to 1989.

Zeitgeschichte als Aufarbeitung

TD: Jahrgang 16, Heft 2019, 1, Seite 11–25

Abstract

The article reconsiders the relations between past and present in the era of “Erinnerungskultur”, i. e. remembrance culture. It describes the semantic careers of the terms “Zeitgeschichte” (contemporary history) and “Aufarbeitung” (coming to terms with the past) in the representation of the past in Germany after 1989. By discussing the inherent tension between both attitudes of coping with the past and ist historical burdens, the article reflects upon the characteristics of today’s historical discourse: a remarkable alliance between politics and historiography, the dominance of teleological perspectives, and the revival of the belief in the concept of historical lessons (“historia vitae magistra”).