Asylum Seekers, Antiforeigner Violence, and Coming to Terms with the Past after German Reunification

In the early 1990s, more asylum seekers entered the Federal Republic of Germany than at any previous time in its history. This unleashed the greatest wave of antiforeigner violence in Germany since the end of World War II. In the midst of this crisis, over a thousand Germans wrote to President Richard von Weizsäcker to share their views on the asylum debate and antiforeigner violence. Many letter writers turned to the experience and memory of the Third Reich and the immediate postwar years in order to explain their attitudes toward asylum seekers and antiforeigner violence. While some letter writers, outraged at the violence, proclaimed “never again,” more called upon memories of the Nazi era and the immediate postwar years to argue that Germany had no responsibility to care for asylum seekers. The analysis of these letters sheds new light on German attitudes toward asylum seekers as well as German memory of World War II. The article argues that while Germany’s Holocaust-centered memory culture gained ground during the 1990s, memories of World War II that emphasized German victimization followed by heroic renewal proved to be both durable and widespread. Memories of the Nazi era and the war years informed Germans’ attitudes on one of the most burning political issues facing the young Berlin Republic: what should be done about the arrival of hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers? This article also seeks to complicate our understanding of the relationship between Holocaust memory and racism. © 2022 The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.