NNG team at the Historikertag 2025 in Bonn

At this year's Historikertag in Bonn, our colleague Silke Fehlemann and historian Sabine Mecking (Marburg) will be exploring the question of whether historical scholarship can also provide consolation. Here you can find the program of the planned section.

Can Clio comfort? Historical science as consolation.

Section chairs: Silke Fehlemann (Dresden), Sabine Mecking (Marburg)

Historical studies question, understand and explain, but what potential do they still offer? Apparently, they also seem to have a comforting effect that goes beyond overcoming contingency. During the terrifying months of the coronavirus pandemic, historians provided comfort, confidence and guidance with their knowledge of previous, survived epidemics. Consolation is generally seen as encouragement and relief from suffering, although the term has long been used in a religious or pastoral context. Against the backdrop of increasing secularization, however, more and more people are apparently also seeking a secular consolation in which the historical perspective is important. This comforting dimension of history can be seen, for example - albeit in very different ways - in the historiographical "coming to terms" with the Nazi past and the Holocaust or in the historical view of the GDR, in which some representations cannot deny a nostalgic touch. However, this also raises the question of the extent to which a historical consolation effect can also be misused for power politics. Political battle slogans such as "Make America great again" or the backward-looking demand for a "turnaround in the politics of remembrance" point in this direction.

What opportunities and limits does the subject of history open up as an empathic science when its comforting effect is reflected upon? Or does this function even contradict the academic-rational orientation of the subject? The aim of the section is to highlight and discuss the consoling dimension of the historical sciences, as it has not yet been systematically reflected upon in contrast to the educational and enlightening function.

Historical science as consolation? An introduction

Silke Fehlemann (Dresden), Sabine Mecking (Marburg)

In their introduction, Silke Fehlemann and Sabine Mecking present different dimensions of consolation. They focus on three aspects: (a) nostalgia, the longing for the past, which manifests itself both in things and in narratives; (b) history can comfort us with continuity itself, with the certainty that our ancestors already overcame numerous challenges and crises. In addition, (c) it can comfort us with an outlook on potential when it looks back on the past, on power and/or greatness.

Consolation follows defiance and grief? Rituals of "coming to terms with the past" after 1945

Philipp Erdmann (Münster)

Philipp Erdmann discusses the extent to which the Nazi "coming to terms with the past" was processed in consolation practices. After 1945, looking back under the impression of the war and the Holocaust offered little consolation. On the contrary: commemorations, memorial dedications and other forms of public remembrance sometimes focused on mourning and educational and cautionary functions, sometimes on defiant glorification or even renunciation. Numerous functions were ascribed to "coming to terms with the past": (re)establishing community and power structures, creating individual and collective meaning or initiating reconciliation.

GDR historiography after 1989 as a consolation narrative

Martin Sabrow (Potsdam)

Martin Sabrow explains how caesuras in the GDR reappraisal after 1989 can be deciphered using the category of consolation: The second German dictatorship could provide consolation for a West German historical narrative that proved itself to have learned from the failure to come to terms with the past after 1945. Disempowered GDR elites, on the other hand, were comforted by the idea that the collapse of the GDR was only a short-term defeat in the centuries-old struggle for historical progress. Finally, the narrative of an everyday history stripped of the GDR's character of domination, which makes room for pride in a successful life under adverse circumstances, also offers consolation.

Consolation in the catastrophe. How history can be used as a "coping mechanism" in times of crisis and conflict in schools

Beatrice de Graaf (Utrecht)

Beatrice de Graaf shows how historians in the Netherlands fulfill their consolation function in schools when mass shootings or other disasters shock society. After 9/11, it turned out that it helped children to collect and tell stories about coping with crises from their own families. It is known from history education that history can provide comfort here. Against the backdrop of empirical research in secondary and vocational schools, we analyse how the historical contextualization of "disruptive moments" contributes to giving students support and coping skills in crises.