Author Description

More than a decade has passed since the Historians' Debate erupted in Germany.The themes that were at the heart of that impassioned controversy continue to pulsate in historical thinking about the National Socialist era. As a result of the Historikerstreit, increased credence is being lent to the issues of historicization, national identity, historical consciousness, the "guilt question", and collective memory, which heretofore had been considered tangential in the historiographical context of the Nazi epoch.This special double issue of History & Memory reconsiders the central themes that surfaced as a result of the the problematics of historical representation of the Third Reich and the Shoah as they pass from living memory; the place of personal and collective memories in historical narratives; and the uneasy questions of who should/can/may write whose history/ies. Several of the articles in this volume, which is dedicated to Saul Friedlander on his 65th birthday, will relate to Friedlander's rich oeuvre, which has probed many facets of this highly charged past.