ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the historical context of German national identity as it emerged in the nineteenth century, in order to understand the case of postwar Germany. It presents remarks that outline a repertoire of German identities that respond to three-predominantly traumatic-marks of German history: the belated origin of the German nation state, the lack of a successful revolution in Germany and-most importantly-the Holocaust. The chapter focuses on the modes of coping with the Holocaust in postwar Germany. Faced with the Holocaust, the chapter considers the optimistic anthropology of the Enlightenment as a-possibly fatal-illusion. As a reference for identity, the Holocaust could not be contained within the confines of museums and archives. From the seventies onward, it increasingly entered a new institutional arena: the media. In Karl Jaspers' famous distinction between different notions of guilt with respect to the Holocaust ranges the so-called metaphysical guilt. Rituals of confession of guilt are not a harassing duty of political rhetoric in postutopian democracies.
