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Perspectives on International and Multicultural Affairs Volume 1, Issue 1

By Yevgenia Arutyunyan

The purpose of this study is not to reassert that the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1918 took place. Scholars agree that available documentary evidence, both written and photographic, persuasively shows that the Turkish government undertook a systematic genocide against the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during World War I. My purpose is to reconstruct and analyze the treatment of the issue of the Armenian Genocide as a continuous process in Germany throughout this century, and thus to build a historiography of that treatment.

Since 1945: The New World And Old Wounds.

The Nazi regime in Germany came to an end together with World War II in 1945. Germany was defeated morally, physically, and economically. The victorious countries—the USSR, the U.S., Britain, France, and other allies—placed the top Nazi leaders on a yearlong trial in Nuremberg in 1945-1946 in what became known as the Nuremberg Trials, where one of the charges was "crimes against humanity." During the trials, the Armenian Genocide was referred to, but only briefly, since the main focus of the trials was the Jewish Holocaust. However, memories and legal ramifications of the Armenian Genocide had a solid presence during the Nuremberg Trials, as well as during the drafting of the United Nations Convention on Genocide in 1948.

From the end of the trials until mid-1960s and early 1970s, there was little or no mention of the Armenian Genocide in Germany. Such a silence is somewhat understandable, since most Germans were not willing to discuss even the Holocaust. Discussion of the Holocaust in Germany, particularly West Germany, was hindered by the fact that many former Nazis served in the new German government following the program of denazification, but also by the fact that Germany after World War II was somewhat like Germany after World War I in that it was exhausted morally and physically shattered. Germans stood at Stunde Null and hoped to start life over; old and painful memories were not something Germans wanted to carry over into their new era. It was not until the late 1950s and early 1960s that they began to respond to discussions of the Holocaust. German emigrants and the first trials connected with Auschwitz in the late 1950s and the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem in the early 1960s prompted these discussions. Things were changing. The late 1960s came to be viewed as revolutionary years in Germany, years during which principles of democracy were established and accepted in German minds. Humanitarian ideas, absent in the German political and ethical framework during and after World War I, were developing. It was at this point that the topic of the Armenian Genocide was revived in Germany.

Re-emergence of the issue of the Armenian Genocide was world-wide and, unfortunately, it attracted attention not because of its political topicality but because journalists became interested in the causes of the sudden spurt of Armenian terrorism that was directed primarily against Turkish diplomats throughout the world. Articles began to appear in Germany, as well as in other countries, discussing the causes of the terrorist acts; educational and research institutions turned to the forgotten topic. The Institute for Armenian Studies in Munich, for instance, compiled a three-volume collection of documents relating to the Armenian Genocide. In the foreword to the last volume, the author indicated that one of the principal aims for the compilation was "to achieve discussion of the problem of the Armenian genocide in international forums and by the governments, so as to end the violence against Turkish diplomats by Armenian extremists, who seek justification for their deeds in the indifference of world public opinion towards the problem of the Armenian genocide."¹ It is unfortunate that terror had to take place in order to spark the discussion of the genocide in Germany.

In order to attract the attention of the German reader, scholars and activists felt that they had to educate the public about the genocide first. Therefore, they began to reprint new editions of the existing books on the genocide, including works of Lepsius and Wegner. Articles began to appear in newspapers; at least one article a year was published, primarily in April, to reintroduce Germans to the Armenian Genocide.² terestingly, most of the reaction came from the Turkish population of Germany, which by the late-1960s constituted the country’s largest minority. Germany’s relations with Turkey were also very friendly due to the partnership in NATO. Meanwhile German Armenians themselves were hesitant to support open discussion in order to avoid possible conflict with their host country, because they knew that the topic would eventually lead to discussion of the German role in the Armenian Genocide.

By the early 1980s the number of articles, published books, and conferences on the genocide increased, as did the reaction of the Turkish population in Germany. Interest among German scholars and the public grew slightly higher as well, which can be attributed to a number of facts, including increased knowledge about the Holocaust that led to interest in studying genocide as a modern phenomenon. Some people became interested in the idea that Germany was not the first and only country to inflict genocide upon its citizens.

On the basis of these considerations, one may conclude that the reception of the Armenian Genocide in post-World War II Germany has become more complicated than ever before and involves issues of German identity, national and international politics, and ethical issues on a new scale. This chapter will attempt to provide an understanding of the treatment of the Armenian Genocide in post-war Germany. Scholars have not assessed the German treatment of the Armenian Genocide since the end of World War II, even though such an assessment can produce interesting political, ethical, and historical implications about post-World War II Germany.

* * *

Awareness of the Armenian Genocide during the Nuremberg trials had a dual nature. First, the genocide had legal ramifications for the trials due to the concept of "crimes against humanity" that was central to the idea of the Nuremberg tribunal. This genocide was originally introduced to the world of international law by the World War I allies—Russia, Great Britain, and France—on May 24, 1915. On that day the Entente powers explicitly and publicly condemned the Young Turk leaders of the Ottoman Empire:

In view of these new crimes of Turkey against humanity and civilization …the Allied governments announce publicly . . . that they will hold personally responsible . . . all members of the Ottoman government and those of their agents who are implicated in such massacres.³

This connection was present in the minds of at least the jurists present at the Nuremberg trials. There was yet another interesting legal connection that was not known at the time and was disclosed in Germany and the rest of the world only in 1980. Robert M. W. Kempner, a German Jew, was one of the most important prosecutors at the Nuremberg trials. As he disclosed in 1980, he was one of the few law students attending the trial of Mehmet Talaat in Berlin in 1921, which became a basis for his understanding and performance at the Nuremberg trials. Mehmet Talaat is considered the architect of the Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey. His comments on the legal historical significance of the Talaat Pasha case are of significance, since they connect the two trials from the perspective of international criminal law:

…for the first time in legal history [speaking of the 1921 trial], it was recognized that other countries could legitimately combat gross human rights violations caused by a government, especially genocide, without committing unauthorized intervention in the internal affairs of another country.⁴

While the legal ramifications of the Armenian Genocide were rather indirect and silent, the historical presence of the genocide was slightly more concrete (although perhaps shorter lived) through the prosecution’s presentation of a document considered to be a stenographic report of a speech Hitler gave to his commanders in Obersalzburg in August of 1939. Even though its authenticity has been disputed and the document was not accepted as authentic during the Nuremberg trials, it was published and presented to the tribunal and the public. Moreover, it became a subject of lengthy studies by German and non-German authors, notably Winfried Baumgart, who took up five versions of the text of Hitler’s speech presented at the trials and concluded that Lochner’s document was indeed based on the original notes secretly taken by Admiral Canaris. He concluded, however, that the mention of the Armenian Genocide was added during the process of copying the document from the notes.⁵ The same year that Baumgart published his article, Edouard Calic published his book Ohne Maske, in which he presented two newly discovered interviews with Hitler. In one of them Hitler made a statement on the Armenian Genocide amazingly similar to the one he made in 1939.⁶

As the Nuremberg trials ended and Germany was plunged into the turmoil of political division and economic recovery, discussion of the Armenian Genocide was unlikely. Even the Holocaust was not welcome as a discussion topic except briefly during the denazification program of the late 1940s-early 1950s. Germany was at Stunde Null. During that time, Germans concentrated on economic revival under the Marshall Plan and on the establishment of closer ties with other European countries and the United States. Germany’s intensification of its foreign relationships extended into several areas of cooperation: economically, in order to avert an extended economic disaster similar to that of the Great Depression; politically; and militarily in the face of the Cold War.

It was not until the mid-1960s that attention to the Armenian Genocide reappeared in Germany. Its reappearance coincided with demonstrations commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the genocide that took place in a number of countries, including Germany. In 1968 Edouard Calic’s book and Baumgart’s articles were published in Germany; both authors mentioned the Armenian Genocide, though it was not the focus of either study. These demonstrations and publications did not produce much reaction in Germany. Possible reasons include little interest among the Germans in genocide as a phenomenon at the time and a still relatively weak Turkish community in Germany. During the early 1970s the issue of the genocide appeared in the scholarly world. For example, in 1973 the head of the Balkan Studies department at Leipzig University (GDR) published an article on the genocide; in it he generally countered the arguments of a Turkish historian, Salahi Soniel, who argued that no genocide had occurred.⁷

In West Germany, meanwhile, a few writers took up the task of re-introducing the population to the genocide. Introduction of the Armenian Genocide came from different perspectives. One of them was discussing the present situation of Armenians in Turkey (without mentioning the issue of genocide) and tying it to the issue of religious minorities in Turkey, as well as in Germany. One author, Jürgen Hoeren, pointed out that despite the Turkish Government’s assertions that its constitution favored religious equality, no such equality existed for the Armenians in Turkey. Hoeren also drew the public’s attention to a conservative, often discriminatory, attitude toward minorities in Germany.⁸

Despite these efforts, the low level of interest among the public and politicians in the issue of historical justice (from the perspective of the Armenians in Germany and throughout the world) brought about a strong reaction from the Armenian diaspora. In particular, Armenian terrorist groups became active in the hope that direct action would bring recognition. Their activities triggered larger-scale publicity and discussion of the genocide in Germany, as well as in the rest of the world.

Terrorist acts began on January 23, 1973, when an Armenian shot the Turkish consul, Mehmet Baydar, and vice-consul, Behadir Demir, in the Hotel Baltimore in Los Angeles. Thereafter more than 200 terrorist acts were committed that resulted in the death of 46 Turkish diplomats and many civilians. The tragic peak of the wave of Armenian terrorism was an attack on a passenger plane in Ankara in 1982 that led to the deaths of nine people and left 71 wounded, most of whom were guest workers returning to various European countries after a stay in Turkey. Terrorist groups like ASALA (Armenian Liberation Army) and Dashnaktsoutioun (Armenian Revolutionary Federation) stated that representatives of the Turkish government were their first targets, but not the only ones. Most of the victims had nothing to do with the genocide. As Wolfgang Gust described the terrorists’ choice of victims: "Their only ‘crime’ was that they were Turks."⁹

The Armenian terrorist phase ended in 1984 with an act against the Turkish embassy in Canada. Although the means used by the Armenian militant groups fall under articles of international crime and terrorism, the goal of opening the discussion about the Armenian Genocide in the world, as well as in Germany, was achieved. In some countries—the U.S. (at the state but not federal level), Canada, Argentina, and several others—discussion quickly resulted in official declarations of recognition of the Armenian Genocide. In Germany, however, only the media and a few scholars reintroduced the topic.¹⁰ Establishment of the Institut für armenische Fragen [Institute for Armenian Issues] in Munich in January 1977 signified the re-entrance of the issue of the Armenian Genocide into Germany.

An example of the German media’s treatment of the Armenian Genocide is an article in Frankfurter Rundschau in February 1982. The author set out to present reasons for the wave of Armenian terrorism, which, according to him, were often misinterpreted by the Western public as an Armenian terrorist group "strictly Marxist, loyal to Moscow."¹¹ He stressed that there were grounds for Armenian hatred of the Turks largely rooted in the genocide when "thousands of the Armenians were massacred, deported, and left to starvation."¹² He also goes further back in time to the Ottoman domination of the Armenian lands. In an impressive article, the author covers the history of Armenia, details of the genocide, and Turkish denial, concluding with a comparison of the Armenian case and that of Turkey’s Kurdish population. Re-introduction of the issue of the Armenian Genocide through the news of new terrorist acts by the Armenian militant groups and providing some sketchy background to the issue was typical of the early treatment of the issue in Germany.

By 1985, articles tended to provide more details about the genocide; they also attempted to raise awareness about the position of the 70,000 Armenians remaining in modern Turkey. Some of the articles even addressed the political reality of the issue of the Armenian genocide in contemporary Europe without generally singling Germany out. Some articles, however, pioneered the topic of the Armenian Genocide and political reality specifically in Germany. An article in Die Tagezeitung is a good example, especially since it came out on April 25, a day after Armenian genocide commemoration day, which to this day is not recognized as such in Germany. "Armenians—An Almost Forgotten Minority. Attempt to Forget the Past Events" was the name of the article; it commemorated the genocide, discussed contemporary assimilation policies towards the Armenians in Turkey today and referred readers to additional information on the genocide. It also presented two quotations—Talaat Pasha’s 1915 directive to annihilate Armenians [auszurotten], and Hitler’s famous 1939 reference to the forgotten genocide—that attempted to produce a comparison between the two genocides.

While most of the article was relatively historical and sociological, the author ended it by discussing the legal and political implications of the genocide. He also addressed political difficulties in Germany that prevent the Armenian Genocide from being officially recognized. More precisely, the author went back to the trial of Sogomon Tehlirian, who had murdered Talaat Pasha in 1921. The author concluded that, by acquitting Tehlirian, the Weimar Republic acted in defiance of the existing criminal law. It thus tried to distance the Weimar Republic from the imperial regime, the regime that "co-operated with those who committed the genocide,"¹³ namely the Ottoman Empire. The article’s conclusion pierced through the heart of the problem of recognition of the Armenian Genocide:

Ever since, the Turkish government has not recognized that it inflicted genocide upon the Armenians. . . Also the Federal Republic of Germany for a long time has not been making the "Armenian Question" public, which stems from unwillingness to go against its NATO partner, Turkey. There is no any particular responsibility."¹⁴

This conclusion is quite similar to the reason why Germany remained generally silent during the genocide—wartime military alignment with Turkey. The difference is that the absence of censorship in post-World War II Germany allowed a journalist to make such a statement, while during World War I the government controlled the press.

This attitude towards the issue expressed in articles was shared by some German politicians and resented by others. An example of the disagreement between the politicians can be found after the European Parliament passed a resolution in 1987 that declared the Armenian massacres a case of genocide based on the definition of genocide outlined during the U.N. Convention on Genocide in 1948. Moreover, the European Parliament decreed that Turkish recognition of the Armenian Genocide was one of the prerequisites for considering Turkish application for the European Union. Gerd Lemmer, then a member of the Bundestag from the CDU [Christian Democratic Union], was against the resolution because, he commented, "Historical reworking of the past cannot and should not be a job of the Parliament."¹⁵ Lemmer’s opposition to the resolution can be interpreted in another way. Due to the nature of the European Union resolution, Germany had to abide by it, and thus indirectly go against Turkey, Germany’s "buddy" [Kumpan] for 70 years.¹⁶

* * *

While the German public remained generally apathetic to the issue of the Armenian Genocide, the growing Turkish community in Germany, which since the 1970s gained a relatively strong presence, responded actively to any charges regarding the genocide. In the mid-1980s the responses became more numerous as the media gave greater attention to the issue. Major German newspapers became a battleground for pro-Turkish authors, pro-Armenian authors, scholars, and only later members of the German public at large. There occurred the most widespread and intense discussion of the genocide Germany since just after World War I, although it lacked active participation of the majority of Germans.

In March 1986, one month before the Armenian genocide commemoration day, GEO, a well-known German magazine, published an article representing the Turkish version of the massacres. It argued that Armenian treason, association with the Russia, and armed rebellion justified deportations; it denied that genocide had occurred.¹⁷ In response, an article-protest was published in Die Tageszeitung filed by the Society for the Endangered Peoples [Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker], which was founded in 1969 by scholars like Tessa Hoffman and human rights activists (mostly Germans) in defense of various ethnic, racial, and religious minorities. The author compared GEO’s article to something belonging to a rightist and 1915-censorship-dictated publication. The battle reached a high point when the society threatened to have a protest demonstration in front of the publishing house for GEO. The chief editor of the magazine prevented it, however, by promising that Tilman Zülch, the member of the Society who filed a protest on its behalf, would be able to publish a two-page article on the Armenian Genocide without the help of "competent ministries" in Ankara that provided information for Schraps’s article.¹⁸

Not all battles by the society and its supporters were as successful. Most of the time, the Turkish minority in Germany was able to place great pressure on those authors and activists who tried to start a discussion of the Armenian Genocide in Germany. Moreover, the German public remained largely apathetic to the issue, thus depriving the issue of its support.

One of the less successful battles by the activists was fought in April 1986 with the broadcast of a documentary on the Armenian Genocide on one of Germany’s major channels, ARD, at a prime evening time—9 PM, thus assuring wide publicity and an even wider audience. A number of major newspapers published articles prior to the broadcast on the genocide, the documentary, and its author. Ralph Giordano—a journalist from Cologne and director—traveled to Turkey in search of materials only to meet apathy and outright denial. In his film he interviewed a Turkish specialist in constitutional law who asserted that "there was no genocide, but a civil war between two religious groups with victims on both sides."¹⁹ To prove him wrong Giordano presented a number of important reports from German consular sources describing the genocide in details, thus becoming the first TV journalist to use the archives of the Foreign Office on the issue.²⁰ However, the general goal of his work was to re-introduce the issue to German public, or as he himself said: "The event [of genocide] is not forgotten by us, it has never really been made known to us."²¹

The title of the film—"The Armenian Question Does Not Exist Anymore"—is a quotation from Talaat Pasha reported by the German Ambassador in Constantinople during World War I. Giordano compares it to Nazi rhetoric during World War II: "the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw does not exist anymore."²² He further compared the two genocides and touched the subject yet untouched by anyone in post-World War II Germany: the issue of complicity and responsibility of German diplomats in the Armenian Genocide.²³ German scholars I interviewed indicated that there were very few reactions to the film from Germans. However, there is material relating to a large outcry that came from the Turkish community in Germany. Soon after the broadcast, Giordano received a first death threat over the phone; demonstrations against the film and its broadcast over German national television followed. This pressure placed on the journalist, along with the possibility of greater social disturbance, led the director of ARD to promise that the film would not be shown on German television again. He kept his promise.²⁴

The years 1986 and 1987 saw further attempts to bring the issue to the discussion table in Germany. In addition to at least a few yearly articles on the genocide in major German newspapers, Giordano’s film, and a growing network of the German-Armenian Society, which was revived after the war, there was a need to educate the public about the genocide through scholarly publications as well.²⁵ Beginning in the mid-1980s, German scholars produced new editions and reprinted works published after World War I. Publications by Johannes Lepsius, Armin Wegner, Franz Werfel, Heinrich Vierbücher, and others were re-introduced to German readers.²⁶ Major newspapers printed reviews of the books, thus allowing a larger number of readers to get acquainted with the topic. One newspaper noted that the three publications it was reviewing showed "what haze government spread in order to divert its responsibility for the victims"²⁷ of the massacres. It drew connections between the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust by indicating how, through the military alliance with Turkey, Germany ignored Turkish activities against the Armenians, which became a model for Hitler’s "resettlement" ["Umsiedlungen"] policies.²⁸

The new wave of publications on the Armenian Genocide in Germany continued in 1987. The catalyst was the introduction of a resolution in the European Parliament by the Belgian representative to recognize the Armenian Genocide and to declare April 24 an official commemoration day. The day that the public became aware of the proposal, articles appeared in the newspapers discussing legal, historical, and political consequences of the resolution. In reaction, the Turkish private channel in Germany, Kabel-TV-Anstalt or ATT, organized a writing campaign in Berlin among the Turkish community in Germany (including political groups and Turko-Islamic groups). The channel closely watched the process of introducing the resolution in the parliament. Some of the reports of the channel contained inside information on the German role in the process. As a commentator informed the public on February 28, 1987, even though it went to the European parliament, it did so in diluted [abgeschwächt] form thanks to the SPD representative. Yet the channel accused German politicians of using the situation to express anti-Turkish feelings: "Politicians of this country (FRG) compete among themselves for placing Turkey in dirt. . . Only we ourselves can solve our problems."²⁹ In March ATT went on to attack German television, in particular channels ZDF and ARD, for showing pro-Armenian programs and films. Furthermore, it reprimanded European states, including Germany, for placing recognition of the genocide among the conditions for admitting Turkey into European Community.

The Tageszeitung published an article, "Auschwitzlüge auf türkisch" [Auschwitz lies in Turkish], commenting on the Turkish campaign against the resolution. Simply from the title, one can see the tone of some media opinion on the issue. Treatment of the Turkish position came to be very critical, and even compared it to the Holocaust deniers. As a pleased member of an Armenian community in Berlin commented: "The German side does not share this falsification of history."³⁰ This sentiment among many Germans perhaps explains the presence of only a few German signatures out of 35,000 total signatures on the Turkish petition.

The "Armenian Resolution" was passed by the European Parliament in June 1987. Most major German newspapers covered the event in some way. The Frankfurter Rundschau published the articles of the resolution, which included recognition of the Armenian massacres as genocide based on the definition of genocide outlined in the U.N. Charter of 1948, criticism of the current Turkish government for failing to recognize historical truth, and finally a recommendation to Turkey to review its position on the genocide before the European Parliament reviewed Turkey’s application for membership in European Union (then European Community).³¹ Interestingly, the article downplayed the recommendation to Turkey in light of its political implications. Indeed, thanks to the efforts of SPD member Haensch, the resolution stressed that the present Turkish government was not responsible for the tragedy of the Armenians during the Ottoman Empire.³²

No event brought Germans to the discussion table set by the media as did the erection of a commemorative stone by Armenian Germans at a cemetery in Stuttgart in August 1987. The insignia on a granite block read: "zum Gedenken an die Opfer des armenischen Volkes" [to the memory of the victims among the Armenian people]. This incident led to the continuation of the discussion in the media of the Armenian Genocide after the European Parliament resolution into 1988. As newspapers reported, the cemetery was the last home of three hundred Armenians, most of whom fled from the Ottoman Empire in 1915-17. The reason for the Turkish outcry leading to administrative hassles on the part of authorities of the cemetery and the city of Stuttgart was the fact that the Turkish General-Konsul in Germany read "genocide" in the Armenian part of the inscription, rather than "victims." While the Armenian community of Baden-Würtemberg pointed to the European Resolution and to the fact that in German the wording was too restrained, the authorities of the city tried to avoid disturbances and civil strife. Out of 100,000 foreigners living in the city, 25,000 were of Turkish nationality. As article in Die Zeit concluded, "Mayor Thieringer… wants a diplomatic and mild solution."³³

There were additional ramifications of the incident in Stuttgart. The Council of the Armenian Apostolic Church of Baden-Württemberg decreed that inscribing the date on the monument was of a historical significance for the Armenians, especially in light of the recent recognition of the genocide by the European Parliament. Stuttgart’s Head Mayor Rommel asserted, however, that the city "could not afford to permit Armenians to inscribe the date of genocide on the stone."³⁴ His arguments led to yet another aspect of the incident, Germany’s own past. Rommel stated:

There should not be any monuments that make one people remember inflicted injustice through another placed on any German cemetery. Besides, we have our own past to deal with.³⁵

Rommel clearly refers to Germany’s own experience with mass murder. In his attitude, one can notice traces of historical revisionism that began to appear in Germany during the late 1980s. Perhaps he did not see at least one difference between the cases of Germany and Turkey: while Germany largely acknowledges the Holocaust, Turkey continues to deny the Armenian Genocide. Therefore, it was not a matter of constant reminder of what everyone acknowledges and knows about. For the Armenians, it was a matter of establishing acknowledged truth.

While Rommel would have preferred to do away with the monument, Mayor Thieringer allowed the monument to remain as it was. The resolution came after long discussions on the meaning of the Armenian word "Jeghern," which the Turkish Consul General claimed to mean "genocide." Thieringer was finally persuaded that the word meant "destiny, tragedy, calamity" rather than "genocide." The authorities approved the commemorative stone in the form and wording of its original design, but without inclusion of the date of the massacres.³⁶

* * *

The discussion of the Armenian Genocide in Germany has reached a new level since the mid 1980s. Thanks to the resolution of the European Parliament and incidents like the one in Stuttgart, media publications, the German public, scholars, and even political figures (although generally after retirement from politics) began to engage in some form of debate over the Armenian genocide in the newspapers. Authors of the articles and letters to the editors represented different backgrounds and perspectives, yet one can conclude that by the 1980s the articles more or less re-discovered and acknowledged the issue of the Armenian Genocide and its implications for German and world history.

A 1987 article reviewing a recent publication on the history of the Armenians offers insight into contemporary German scholarly thinking. The reviewer was very critical of the author and his scholarship. While recognizing contributions of the book in that it provided the reader with new perspectives on the history of the Armenian nation, he criticizes the author for including only pro-Turkish scholars. He ended by noting that that author’s conclusion that there was no such thing as the Armenian Genocide was "logic born out of cynicism."³⁷ It also was highly dubious, especially since the European Parliament had passed a resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide.

Throughout the 1980s, at least a few articles in major German newspapers about the genocide appeared every year between March and June. At the same time, the Turkish community in Germany continued to present its view of the Armenian problem. Diplomatic circles were perhaps most active in the endeavor. The German public remained largely distant from the battles in the newspapers. One letter to the editor caused an unusually vigorous response from Germans, however. In the June 13 (1988) issue of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one of the major German newspapers, appeared an open letter written by the Consul General of Turkey in Germany. The "Absolut friedliche Atmosphäre" [Absolutely Peaceful Atmosphere]—that is the generally peaceful co-existence of the Armenians and the Turks—suggested that there had been no genocide, only a civil war instead. Almost every week for the next two months the paper published a critical response.

One of the responses was written by a former president of the German Parliament. Dr. Kai-Uwe von Hassel pointed out false statements of the Consul General regarding Turkish policies toward the genocide, as well as lack of will on the Turkish part to discuss the issue that many people and governments in the world acknowledged. His approach was diplomatic and objective, and perhaps most consistent with the desires of the Armenians and pro-Armenian Germans:

To the best of my knowledge, Armenians living in exile do not blame the current government of Turkey for the genocide that took place seventy years ago. But they do want recognition of the fact that there is an Armenian Question. And here [on this issue] until now Ankara unquestionably holds back, almost hostile.³⁸

Some other responses were not as conciliatory. In July 1988 Dr. York-Friedrich von Bremen-Kühne of Bad Homburg went point by point in refuting the traditional Turkish argument in quite inflammatory language. He not only addressed the history of the genocide, but also treated the issue of modern Turkey’s behavior with regards to it. In response to the Consul General’s assertion that there was an Armenian population in today’s Turkey, Dr. Bremen-Kühne sarcastically asked the Consul General: "Excuse me, but where might they live, and what are their numbers?"³⁹ Moreover, he concluded by attacking Turkey’s teaching of history [Geschichtsklittering] in relation to the Armenians. This is the teaching that "every educated Turk" receives, and "Volkan Cotur [the consul general] is a great example" of it.⁴⁰ The author’s conclusion was hopeful: "The time would come when Turkey will believe in its Katyn."⁴¹

Commentaries in response to the consul general’s letter took the form of a debate, the first since the Talaat Pasha case of 1921. Dr. Christoph Heger published his response to the Consul’s article in the July 22 issue of the Frankfurter Allgemeine, which in turn elicited a response article from Cäcilia Demir, a German Turk from Schorndorf, which was published in the August 8, 1988, issue of the same newspaper. Other responses followed. For the first time since its appearance during and after World War I, the issue of the Armenian Genocide in Germany was publicly discussed by various elements of German society, rather than by a few select activists.

Due to the international pressures on Turkey that came from recognition of the Armenian Genocide by the European Parliament in 1987, by the International Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal in 1984,⁴² and by a number of countries, Turkish authorities declared that they were opening the archival materials on the World War I period to scholars. German newspapers took up the issue; the Die Tageszeitung published an article concluding that the Turkish declaration was a mere farce, "a political trick to create better [political] weather in Western Europe and the United States."⁴³

The German media rarely addressed political difficulties in connection with recognition of the Armenian Genocide in Germany or other countries. However, a few articles shed light on German understanding of the political realities. Michael Wolffsohn, the author of an article in the Die Tageszeitung, discussed the passing of an October 1989 resolution by the American Senate to celebrate the memories of the Armenian victims of the genocide on April 24, 1990, the seventy-fifth anniversary of the genocide. Wolffsohn addressed the fact that the resolution passed by a very small majority. The reasons were strong protests from the Turkish and Israeli embassies and their constituencies, the Bush administration, and Jews living in Turkey. The underlying political reason, though, was the fact that "Turkey was strategically too important to aggravate it through commemorating the Armenians."⁴⁴ Furthermore, this German author attacked the Israeli protests as hypocritical in light of his country’s own experience with genocide; but he pointed out that those protests had deep political undertones rooted in the fact that Turkey was one of very few countries in the region to recognize and have good diplomatic relations with Israel. Finally, Wolffsohn asserted that nations that "constantly remind Germany . . . of [its] responsibility for the Holocaust of the Jewish people cannot prevent commemoration of the genocide inflicted on another people."⁴⁵

April 24, 1990 was celebrated in many German states as the commemoration day for the Armenian Genocide. Many cities where an Armenian community existed had a day of planned events, lectures, and exhibits that attracted media coverage from the major newspapers, as well as from local ones. In Bremen, a series of daylong seminars were held around April 24 "about the course and background of the genocide."⁴⁶ The media’s attention to this event, and therefore to the genocide, contributed greatly to the fact that many more Germans knew about the genocide in 1990 than was the case a decade earlier. As a gift to the memory of the victims and a way to educate more Germans about the genocide, Edgar Hilsenrath wrote a novel about the Armenian Genocide, the first novel on the subject by a German author since Werfel’s Forty Days of Musa Dagh.⁴⁷ Hilsenrath traveled to various cities in Germany reading excerpts from his novel.⁴⁸

Some German states and political parties were now more active in giving positive treatment to the issue of the Armenian Genocide; as the Tageszeitung article on April 25, 1990 indicated, "the topic [of the Armenian Genocide] was a taboo until now."⁴⁹ The Parliament of Bremen recognized the genocide, the only state parliament in Germany to do so, and held commemorative sessions. In 1990 this session included a speech by Helga Trüppel, the speaker for culture and politics in the Green Party, a left-oriented party in Germany. She noted that, due to instructions from above, Bremen previously had followed the German tradition of silence on the issue of the Armenian Genocide. She emphasized, however, that the Armenian massacres were a case of genocide second only to the Holocaust, which Bremen authorities systematically hushed up.⁵⁰

Leading up to and after the 75^th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, newspapers published various articles about the genocide, many of which reiterated materials on the genocide published around April 24 every year—numbers of the victims, deportation areas, official Turkish policy, as well as sources for further reading like Lepsius’s collection of documents from the German Foreign Office Archives.⁵¹ Other articles presented the pro-Turkish point of view. In 1990, Rudolph Chimelli wrote an article from Istanbul for the Süddeutsche Zeitung, a conservative newspaper in Germany, in which he traced hundreds of years of peaceful existence of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, terminated by the Entente’s (and particularly Russian) encouragement of Armenian nationalism. He further noted that the number of the Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire had been greatly exaggerated. In reality, he continued, there were no more than 480,000 Armenian Christians; therefore, the number of victims of the deportations (he did not use the word genocide) could not be anywhere close to a million. Instead of Armenians being victims of genocide, he saw them as "victims of the war and its circumstances . . . pogroms, traditionally hostile Kurds, hunger and diseases, mass murder and death."⁵² Chimelli noted, however, that Armenian rebels caused the death of 30,000 Muslim inhabitants of Van during their revolt against the Ottoman authorities.⁵³ Chimelli’s conclusion was that the Ottoman Empire during World War I was a region of civil strife, rather than a site of genocide against the Armenian population. He added that 50,000 Armenians still live in Turkey and enjoyed religious freedoms.

Throughout the 1990s, the exchange of opinions in the media on whether there was an Armenian Genocide continued. The discourse expanded as historians joined the debate. By looking at the available articles from the decade, one may conclude that the debate was represented by the following sides: German Turks and Turkish diplomatic circles in Germany supported by some German scholars of Middle Eastern history on one side and German public figures, ordinary readers, a few German Armenians, activists in various human rights organizations, and members of the German-Armenian Society on the other side.⁵⁴

After 1988, discussion of the Armenian Genocide often came together with the coverage of the war between Armenians and Azeris over the Nagorny Karabach region, which while considered part of Azerbaijan, was almost 90% Armenian. The atrocities committed during the Nagorny Karabach war renewed the discussion of the Ottoman atrocities against the Armenians, except this time they reached a new level of publicity. The two events were taken up by the editor of Der Spiegel, the most well-known and respected German magazine, in a series of three lengthy articles in three consecutive issues of the magazine in 1992.⁵⁵

While the first and the third articles dealt primarily with the history of and current events in Karabach, the second article was dedicated solely to the exposure of the Armenian Genocide, its perpetrators and victims, its background and current place in history. In a nine-page article with gruesome pictures of the fate of the deportees—murders, death from starvation, and Turkish harems—the author extensively used materials from the German diplomatic sources, the trial of Sogomon Tehlirian in 1921, as well as other sources like works of Lepsius and Wegner. Well researched in the German archives, the article offered a compelling argument that the genocide occurred and brought a strong reaction from readers. In the "Letters from the Readers" section of Der Spiegel, readers of various backgrounds expressed their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the article and its message—Ottoman authorities committed genocide against the Armenian population of the empire.

While the letters generally represented the opinions of German Turks and Armenians, there were a few that came from German readers, including Ralph Giordano, author of the film about the genocide shown on ARD in 1982. Consequently, where Turkish authors saw "hate and contempt" directed against the Turks, German and Armenian authors saw the victory of historical justice.⁵⁶ Moreover, Turks residing in Turkey undertook a campaign of "Boycott through purchase"; Turks of Ulm purchased about one thousand copies of the issue of the magazine containing the first article in order to publicly "burn the unpleasant publication on the Münster Square" in the center of the city.⁵⁷ Immediately after the publication of the first article, the editorial staff of Der Spiegel received "an advisory" from the secretary of the Turkish-Islamic Cultural Society in Ulm to "write the truth."⁵⁸ Unlike the success of Turkish pressure on ARD in 1982 in relation to Giordano’s film, Der Spiegel published the two remaining articles in the next issues of the magazine.

The man responsible for the publication of the articles in Der Spiegel was Wolfgang Gust, one of the magazine’s senior editors. Originally from a journalistic background, Gust became interested in the Armenian Genocide, which led him to undertake a historical research in the German Foreign Office Archives. His findings resulted in major publications like The Armenian Genocide and The Tragedy of the Oldest Christian People In the World,⁵⁹ where he used various previously published and unpublished materials on the genocide. As Karl Holl noted in his review of the book, Gust also "spoke in detail and with sound reasons about considerable German joint responsibility [with Turkey], through which he brought to the discussion the unfortunate role of the Prusso-German military missions in the Ottoman Empire."⁶⁰ Gust’s book was perhaps the first scholarly publication in Germany to address the issue of the German role in the Armenian Genocide.

Another attempt to bring up the discussion of the German role in the genocide took place in 1997 with the publication of an article by Vahakn Dadrian,⁶¹ as well as with reviews of Dadrian’s recent book focusing on German responsibility in the genocide.⁶² Interestingly, only one of the letters from readers commented (in a positive way) on the main topic of the book—German responsibility. What sparked a discussion was the Turkish ambassador’s letter to the editors about "the lies" the reviewer’s articles contained, which was published in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung on December 2, 1997. In the next month and a half, the newspaper published readers’ responses to the ambassador’s denial, most of which expressed anger at the ambassador’s views and Turkey’s continued denial of the Armenian Genocide.

Nachum Orland published an interesting review of Dadrian’s book in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.⁶³ After discussing the sources, purposes, and details of the book, Orland concluded that Dadrian’s argument about German responsibility in the genocide lacked logic, while noting that the topic of Germans and the Armenian Genocide had its appeal. Whether Orland’s evaluation of Dadrian’s claims was representative of the feelings of German politicians and public is hard to say. One possible conclusion can be drawn from Orland’s article—there is little desire in Germany to discuss the German role in the Armenian genocide. To most Germans, Germany bears guilt for the Holocaust and does not need to be held responsible for yet another genocide.

No German historian has yet explored at length the issue of the Armenian Genocide. Scholars like Gust and Tessa Hoffman came to the topic from the backgrounds other than history, although their work has had considerable historical value. The work that comes closest is Uwe Feigel’s Evangelical Germany and Armenia: Armenian Relief Efforts of the German Evangelical Christian Since the End of the 19^th Century in the Context of Turko-German Relations.⁶⁴

* * *

Treatment of the Armenian Genocide since 1980 has not been limited to the media. Since the early 1980s, various organizations and committees began to examine the question. Many of them, sponsored by the Munich Institute for the Armenian Issues, did not have a political focus. They approached the issue from the standpoint of human rights and moral concerns.⁶⁵ The Conference entitled "Genocide and Holocaust" that took place in Bremen April 19 to April 24, 1984, focused largely on the Armenian Genocide. The conference became quite politicized when Turkish diplomatic pressure in Germany led to an official ban on stating the full name of the conference, which included the word "genocide," in the announcement at the government’s press conference. This incident led to strong criticism of Bremen’s office of mayor (dominated by the SPD party) from the CDU and the Green parties. ⁶⁶

A report on the situation of the Armenians in the Federal Republic of Germany and Turkey, presented at the meeting of the Evangelical Academy in Mülhelm/Ruhr April 26-28, 1985, approached the issue of the genocide from the standpoint of its relation to the wave of Armenian terrorism during the 1970s-early 1980s. Some of the more active committees and individuals undertook a private political campaign to seek acknowledgement of the Armenian Genocide by the German government. Walter Singer, a member of the European Committee For the Rights of the Armenian People, undertook a writing campaign to the German Parliament in the name of the committee in 1982. One of the letters argued that German diplomacy was capable of inducing Turkey to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide.⁶⁷

Although an official German acknowledgement of the Armenian Genocide might be too much to expect in today’s Germany, there have been a few unofficial marks of recognition. First, the genocide has not been denied by Germany during the post-World War II era. Second, a number of political figures have acknowledged the Armenian Genocide either when they stepped down from their political offices, as in the case of Dr. Hei-Uwe von Hassel,⁶⁸ or when they spoke personally rather than on behalf of government or a political party. Moreover, representatives of the Green Party (die Grüne) openly acknowledged the Armenian Genocide in Bremen in 1990.

An interesting case of unofficial acknowledgement of the Armenian Genocide is a letter from Philip, Prince of Prussia, descendent of Wilhelm II (German Emperor during World War I) to the ambassador of the Republic of Armenia in Germany as well as to the head of the Armenian Church on November 9, 1998.⁶⁹ In this frank letter, Prince Philip acknowledged German responsibility, and particularly that of his ancestor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, in the Armenian Genocide. He further referred to the political realities of today’s Germany, as well as to political circumstances surrounding his family that did not allow him to make public statements regarding the issue. In conclusion, he expressed the hope that the Armenian people never again would have to go through what they experienced during World War I.

Today, interested groups continue efforts to persuade the government to acknowledge that the Armenian Genocide occurred. An example of such efforts is a writing campaign led by Tessa Hoffman to the German Parliament. This campaign reminds the members of parliament and the German president that in recognizing the Genocide, Germany would follow resolutions of the World Council of Churches, the European Parliament, the UN Commission on Human Rights, and parliaments of Argentina, Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Greece, Cyprus, Lebanon, Russia, and Uruguay. The campaign also calls for Pope John Paul II to acknowledge the genocide.⁷⁰ This petition already has been signed by hundreds of people, including German Armenians, German Turks, and Germans, as well as by a number of organizations.

Many sympathetic people and researchers like Tessa Hoffman and Wolfgang Gust, both of whom know well the political realities of today’s Germany, avoid placing all efforts on the political acknowledgement, and devote much time to conferences, research, and publications, in attempt to educate the German public on the issue. They also seek ways to bring the Armenian and Turkish scholars together in order to discuss the issue, which would signify a progress on the topic since it would show that the Turkish scholars at least recognize the Armenian Genocide as an issue to discuss.

It is also important to stress that the German government does not deny the genocide, even though it is far from willing to recognize it. The major reasons for this stance are German diplomatic relations with Turkey and their common membership in NATO. Second, the Turkish minority in Germany numbers two million people, making Turks the largest minority and a strong interest group in Germany. Finally, as Tessa Hoffman indicated, if Germany was formally to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide, it might find itself in an embarrassing situation because of the German role in the genocide.⁷¹

German scholars and the government believe that they have established a direct dialogue on the genocide between the Armenians and the Turks. While the German government might have become an intermediary, their Turkish critics believe that its presence in the dialogue would seek to divert the public’s attention from the Holocaust.⁷² Thus German scholars and activists seek to establish a dialogue between the Armenians and the Turks. The first major exchange of information about the Armenian Genocide between Armenian and Turkish historians is to take place in March 2001, during a roundtable organized by the German-Armenian Society with the help of the German Protestant Academy.⁷³

Germany has come a long way on the issue of the Armenian Genocide since the end of World War II. The path from silence and ignorance to discussion has not been easy, and often has been marked by a pattern of reaction to various external pressures. Luckily, these responses eventually brought the issue of the genocide to the public’s attention and have given it a permanent presence in Germany.⁷⁴

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End Notes

¹ The Armenian Genocide: Documentation, vol. 8 (Munich: Institut für Armenische Fragen, 1987), 7. Emphasis added. Other reasons include placing "moral pressure upon Turkey which up to this very day has not admitted and does not condemn the genocide of the Armenians, committed by the ‘Young Turks’ in 1915 during the Ottoman Empire."

⁴² International Peoples’ Tribunal took place in Paris in 1984. After hearing presentations from various scholars on the issue of the Armenian Genocide, including Prof. Tessa Hoffman on the Armenian Genocide from the reports of German witnesses, this apolitical board decided that the Armenian massacres were indeed a case of genocide under the definition set by the United Nations in 1948. The stenographic report of the tribunal was published by Gerard Libaridian, ed. A Crime of Silence: the Armenian Genocide. (London: Zed Books, 1985), and Tessa Hoffman, ed. Das Verbrechen des Schweigens: die Verhandlung des türkische Völkermords an den Armeniern vor dem Ständigen Tribunal der Völker [Crime of Silence: Proceedings of the Permanent People’s Tribunal on the Turkish Genocide of the Armenians] (Göttingen: Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker, 1985).

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