Coping with the past

The defeat of Hitler in 1945 left Germany a "tabula rasa". "Normal" personal, civic and political life had to be reconstructed on entirely new foundations. The overriding question of German guilt naturally gave rise to other questions. How could the German catastrophe have come about in 1933? How did the successor states - the Federal Republic of Germany, the German Democratic Republic and Austria - view their joint past? In what ways did they rebuild their political, ecocomic and social structures? These are major themes of this special issue of "Monatshefte", based on a 1987 Northwestern University Symposium. Of the 14 papers included, eight discuss the Federal Republic of Germany, two each are devoted to the GDR and Austria, respectively, and two consider particular aspects of the political culture of prewar Germany. As Germany enters a new political and economic union, this gaze at the German past is timely.