Date: Thursday, June 3, 1999
List members might be interested to read an interview with the organizers of the so-called Wehrmacht exhibition (Wehrmachtsausstellung) in last week’s DIE ZEIT. The title of the interview is “Am Abgrund der Erinnerung.” It’s available online:
http://www3.zeit.de/zeit/nacht/aktuell/199922.wehrmacht.n_.html
One of the makers, Hannes Heer, asserts that military historians have supported the exhibition from the very beginning. However, in an informative article in the “Berliner Morgenpost” titled “Wieder falsche Fotos? Neue Zweifel an der umstrittenen Ausstellung zur Wehrmacht,” Rolf-Dieter Mueller of the Military Historical Research Office (Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt) is quoted as saying that the “Präsentation ist didaktisch eine Katastrophe.” Indeed, this is a far cry from Heer’s claim!
In the same article a Hungarian historian argues that some photographs in the exhibit show not soldiers of the Wehrmacht executing Serbian civilians, but instead Hungarian soldiers shooting Serbian partisans in the Hungarian-annexed Vojvodina. It seems to me that the organizers tend to immunize themselves against legitimate scholarly criticism. By the way here is the online address of the aforementioned article:
http://archiv.berliner-morgenpost.de/export/home/netscape/docsroot/contents/bm/archiv1999/990531/politik/story04.html
Best regards, Jorg Bottger
Independent Scholar
