Remmler Studies How Germans Define "Germanness"

Last year, Karen Remmler was in the right place at the right time. The newly tenured assistant professor of German spent her 1994-95 sabbatical in Berlin during the commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of World War II's end. Memorials to the Holocaust and WWII were everywhere, and Remmler studied how these reminders shaped public discussion about what constitutes "Germanness" and "Jewishness" in Germany today. According to Remmler, both Jewish and non-Jewish Germans want to honor those who died during the war while also constructing a current national identity that's not based on their roles as victims or perpetrators of WWII atrocities.

"Remembrance of the Holocaust and of World War II is very much a part of present-day Germany," Remmler says, and the commemoration sparked dialogue among Germans of various ethnic backgrounds about German-Jewish relations and culture.

Remmler says her own work and teaching "have to do with establishing similar dialogues and accepting difference," something she also does outside of academia. Remmler has led German-Jewish dialogues in youth groups and feminist groups in Germany and the United States, and volunteered to discuss the local exhibit, Reflections on Auschwitz, with college and high school students.

Her interest in German culture began early, with her family's stories about living in Nazi-occupied France. Family history grew into a professional interest during Remmler's graduate-school years and stints teaching in Germany and the United States.

In Berlin, Remmler researched German literature and began interviewing German writers and Holocaust survivors "because I wanted to connect how they remembered their past with what was going on in the public sphere." Remmler's first book, Waking the Dead: Walter Benjamin's Remembrance and Structures of Remembrance in Ingeborg Bachmann's 'Ways of Dying,' discusses similar differences between private and public forms of memory in the works of a postwar Austrian author.

While Remmler can't take all her students to Germany, she helped students in her Representations of the Holocaust in Film course connect personally with history during a weekend trip to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. "I couldn't teach contemporary German culture--my field--without addressing the Holocaust and how it's affected German culture," she says, "and I do this in a way that doesn't turn students off to German. This is part of German culture."

Note: Profiles of more newly tenured faculty will appear in future CSJs.