Victimhood and Acknowledgment

European History Yearbook

Edited by Johannes Paulmann in cooperation with Markus Friedrich and Nick Stargardt

Volume 19

Edited by Johannes Paulmann in cooperation with Markus Friedrich and Nick Stargardt

Founding Editor: Heinz Duchhardt

ISBN 978-3-11-057844-7

e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-058150-8

e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-057920-8

ISSN 1616–6485

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial NoDerivatives4.0 License. For details go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018958741

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.

© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Cover image: Lockerbie disaster memorial (Lockerbie cemetery), StaraBlazkova

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Contents

Petra Terhoeven

Victimhood and Acknowledgement: The Other Side of Terrorism

Anke Hilbrenner

Of Heroes and Villains – The Making of Terrorist Victims as Historical Perpetrators in Pre-Revolutionary Russia

Marie Breen-Smyth

Suffering, Victims and Survivors in the Northern Ireland Conflict: Definitions, Policies, and Politics

Anna Cento Bull

Reconciliation through Agonistic Engagement? Victims and Former Perpetrators in Dialogue in Italy Several Decades after Terrorism

Florian Jessensky and Martin Rupps

“May the burden of your ordeal gradually fade from memory”: Dealings with former Hostages of the Hijacked Lufthansa Aircraft ‘Landshut’

Charlotte Klonk

In Whose Name? Visualizing Victims of Terror

Petra Terhoeven

Conclusions

Forum

Gregor Feindt

Making and Unmaking Socialist Modernities: Seven Interventions into the Writing of Contemporary History on Central and Eastern Europe

Tillmann Lohse

A Collapsing Migratory Regime? The Map of the Migration Period and Its Iconology at the Beginning of the 21st Century

List of Contributors

Petra Terhoeven

Victimhood and Acknowledgement: The Other Side of Terrorism

In the summer of 2016 the New York Times recorded the results of a remarkable project.[1] With the help of 34 assistants worldwide, five authors had collected evidence on 247 victims of terrorism killed within two months in the spring of that year by attacks on “soft targets:” on two occasions each in Pakistan and Turkey, and one apiece in Nigeria, Iraq, Ivory Coast and Belgium. Relatives of all the victims were interviewed to find out more about the lives of the deceased. Photographs were collected and stories about the last family meetings recorded – “to reveal the humanity lost.” The authors thereby wanted to respond to concerns of their readers “that not all victims of terror are treated equally.” The NYT team had selected a number of portraits – including three large-scale color photos of killed couples of distinctly different backgrounds – as well as the most intriguing testimonies of sorrow of the 1168 direct relatives who could be identified. This personal evidence comprised almost the entire article. There were more than 100 victims – 44 of whom were under 18 years of age – who left behind bereaved parents “whose language of mourning translates across borders.” The 247 cases were sorted into groups according to nationality, religion, age, profession and family status. The routes from 26 countries of origin to the scenes of the attacks were plotted on maps. The authors also distinguished between those killed in “high-profile attacks” which made newspaper headlines and those killed in environments where violence had become an almost routine feature of life. The authors refrained from any explicit judgement. Instead, they used the material to paint a broad picture of the senseless destruction of human life and options. “What emerges is a tapestry of lives interrupted,” they concluded in bitterness, “[lives] splayed out gradually in those photographs, in anecdotal shards or bits of memory shared by those left behind, in the details of their dreams and the things left undone.” A number of victims were named, but all were counted as individuals. The perpetrators appeared only under the name of the respective organization claiming responsibility for the atrocities. All of them were Muslims, the authors added, but so were more than half of their victims.[2]

It is doubtless no coincidence that the article on “The Human Toll of Terror” appeared in the most prominent print medium of enlightened, left-leaning liberalism in the United States. The politically alert classes in the global West which had increasingly become a target for the world-wide operations of Islamist terrorism needed some reassurances about their value system and its universal scope. This is what this article stands for: It calls upon the concept of “global humanity” for journalists and readers alike, which is highlighted all the more clearly by the blind brutality of terrorism. Empathy with the victims as well as the bereaved serves as proof of the humanity of the living.[3] This new phenomenon could also be observed during memorials following the Paris attacks in November 2015, when the symbolic presence of survivors and mourners confined the politicians almost completely to the sidelines.[4]

In the history of terrorism this is something of a novelty. Most of the time, the victims of terrorism have stayed strangely in the background in public perception as well as in scholarly debates.[5] The German example is an excellent case in point: It shows the extreme divergence between perpetrators and victims in terms of public attention. The rising tide of literature on left-wing terrorism in West Germany focused almost exclusively on the personalities of the founding members of the Red Army Faction (RAF). As Walter Laqueur ironically noted already in 1987 when taking stock of the history of the RAF: “Hardly ever has so much been written about so few.” In fact, as the most militant and enduring anti-systemic group in the old Federal Republic they killed a total of 34 people between 1971 and 1993, a death toll far outnumbered by other terrorist excesses in Europe at the time.[6] Yet fascination with the perpetrators seems as strong as ever, as the most recent example shows: The voluminous edition of the scholarship records of Horst Mahler, Gudrun Ensslin and Ulrike Meinhof, all erstwhile recipients of prestigious stipends from the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes, seems to offer nothing new with respect to the ominous riddle shared by bourgeois observers at the time as to why and how their privileged sons and daughters with bright prospects for the future could thus be led astray.[7] In recent times, however, a new interest in the history of terrorism has emerged, as seen from the victims’ perspective.[8] But so far little has been achieved in the way of an updated and more nuanced picture of terrorism in the Federal Republic.[9] On the contrary, researchers still seem to follow in the logic of the perpetrators when questioning prominent survivors or portraying the dead as if they needed some post-mortem rehabilitation.[10] There is still little interest in the suffering of those whose family and friends were not targeted directly, but whose deaths were registered by the terrorists as “collateral damage” of a just cause and today seem to be taken more lightly. The same distortion can be observed in the most recent killing spree, this time of the right-wing Nationalsozialistischer Untergrund (NSU): In view of current refugee crises in which Muslims are generally stigmatized as dangerous and alien, it is more than likely that the names of the mostly Muslim victims of the NSU will go unremembered. It took years before the bereaved were actually acknowledged as victims.[11] They were re-victimized in the course of the prosecution by suggestions of aiding and abetting in murder and by a press bent on labeling the crimes as “Döner-Morde” without any respect for the bereaved families.[12]

Obviously, it is still normal to follow social reflexes of in- and exclusion when the degree and importance of the suffering endured by victims of terrorism and their families are concerned, even though, as argued in the NYT article, all victims of terrorism should at least in theory have an equal right to moral acknowledgement according to the standards of globalized humanity. But as Klaus Weinhauer pointed out already in 2004, victims of terrorism are far from simply self-evident – they are “being made.”[13] They are being defined in a complex and collective process in which degrees of belonging are also negotiated: “Defining who is a ‘victim’ of terrorism is acutely competitive and politicized.”[14] As a rule, victims of terrorism are targeted as representatives of a larger group, and “acknowledgement of their victimization entails recognizing this fact.”[15] No wonder that the journalist Carolin Emcke used her newspaper column in spring 2016 to encourage her readers to learn the names of the NSU victims by heart, unfamiliar as they were compared to the names of RAF victims, in order to publicly make amends for the disrespect which their families, of mostly Turkish background, had suffered at the hands of German society.[16] As the recipient of this year’s German Peace Prize she spoke out as a victim of terrorism herself, since approximately a decade earlier she had publicly acknowledged that she was the god-daughter of Alfred Herrhausen, the banker murdered by the RAF in 1989.[17] In her public effort to personally come to terms with this crime some 18 years after the fact, she entreated the perpetrators to finally tell their own story and break the silence in which both perpetrators and victims had been trapped ever since. She even encouraged the authorities to offer “amnesty for an end to silence,” even if it meant forgoing the public confession of guilt and remorse which was repeatedly demanded of the perpetrators. “They should be allowed to go. To be free. To be released from prison. But they should speak out beforehand. Please.”[18]

It is this need to come to a conclusive explanation of terrorist acts, ultimately even with the help of the perpetrators themselves, which unites not only Emcke with the families of NSU victims.[19] It seems to be the most essential common ground for each and every kind of injured party, be it as survivors of or as family bereaved by a terrorist attack. A variety of self-help organizations have formed since the 1980s to increasing public acclaim in places with more victims to deplore than in Germany. They are demanding “truth” as well as “justice.”[20] They may be made up of different political strands, but they carry all the signs of a social movement which in recent years has been “discovered” and investigated by social and political scientists alike.[21] Most of their works provide advice and best-practice proposals for present-day dealing with victims: they cannot replace, but can still be useful for historical research. They deal predominantly with the role of victim organizations in the ex-post clarification of terrorist attacks – as in the case of Northern Ireland or Spain. Rarely do they consider the role of individual victimhood as a prominent aspect of the terrorist logic of communication. But the close connection between “before” and “after” the event is widely acknowledged and partially integrated into the argument. As Rogelio Alonso summarizes his investigation into the bargaining role of Basque victim organizations in Spanish politics: “The political and social context in which ETA’s terrorism took place determined the mobilization and constitution of victims’ associations in the first place.”[22]

The aim of the 2018 European History Yearbook is to critically reflect on the above-mentioned historical and discursive transformations of terrorism and to integrate the causes and consequences of the new focus on victimhood into the discussion. The “figure” of the victim will have to be reconstructed within the manifold contexts of terrorism, especially with regard to the binary logic of terrorist activity which aims to evoke awe and sympathy at the same time. It will be a new departure for the Yearbook to look into these aspects of terrorist communication. What can be said about the specificity, if any, of victims of terrorism and as such of political violence more generally? What is it that sets them apart from other forms of victimhood – such as victims of war or criminality, in accidents or natural disasters?[23] It seems more than likely that victims of terrorism became increasingly visible with the growing public sensitivity to the consequences of injury and injustice in all social fields beginning in the late 1970s. They may have profited from “the charisma of the victim,” without, however, having been considered yet as part of this complex transformation, or at least as an independent strand in its discursive practices.[24] The attacks of 9/11 mark another caesura which sent shock waves well beyond the US. They left a great number of well-defined victim groups behind, the majority of which were well placed to make their complaints and sorrows heard in the public sphere.[25] But the new perspective on victimhood should be traced back to an earlier setting, since contemporary history should not just be tied to the problems of its time; its timeframe should instead be defined by the problem under consideration.[26] It comes as no surprise that terrorism is regarded as a typical phenomenon of High Modernity, globalized and intensified since the 19th century, but basically unchanged in its tactics and logic.[27] In fact, when considering the voluntaristic foundation of any terrorist act, it becomes less difficult to draw the line from the early and highly selective violence against monarchs or other “punishable” targets as representatives of political, social or ethnic groups to the ubiquitous targeting in today’s terrorism. This is what defines terrorist activity: It is in principle “arbitrary” inasmuch as it selects and victimizes its targets by violence. As the Spanish writer Sánchez Ferlosio concludes: “It would be less evil if they were killing people they personally hate; the inhumanity is in their readiness to kill anybody without any personal animosity.”[28] This is how fear is spread among members of the targeted group who might be in the wrong place at the wrong time for whatever reason; it is also why it is extremely painful for the bereaved to come to terms with their personal loss. All the same, terrorist violence is never wholly “blind” or completely haphazard. What matters is the symbolic force of the act itself which may send uplifting messages to potential sympathizers and, at the same time, a provocative warning to the forces of order in asymmetrical conflicts.[29] This is why it is of utmost importance to choose the “right” target and to maintain control of both the amount of violence applied in any particular case and its visual representation. As Herfried Münkler notes, terrorism is a sort of imaginative warfare “in which the battle with arms is only the driver for the real battle with images.”[30]

Peter Waldmann’s terminology has increasingly become the standard definition in terrorism studies, particularly in historiography. According to Waldmann, terrorism should be understood as a violent communication strategy directed at a political system by underground groups.[31] This definition allows for differentiating the concept from much more destructive forms of state terror. It stands in the tradition of definitions which tried to avoid the political, legal, and especially the moral trappings of any normative usage of the concept by focusing on the pragmatic dimension in order to allow for a value-neutral judgment. This trend toward a more scientific definition may also have been responsible for the crowding out of the “victim,” a central category in some earlier definitions of terrorism. When Alex P. Schmid collected 109 definitions in common use in 1983, 15% still regarded the “innocence” of the victim as a defining criterion for terrorist violence.[32] This definition is clearly questionable in scientific as well as moral terms. But it is equally obvious that to reduce the terrorist act to some communicative effect on third parties also implies losing sight of the relevance and visibility of victims as such. It also tends to underplay the effect of violence acts on perpetrators themselves. Wolfgang Kraushaar is correct in emphasizing the irreducible core of terrorist acts, i.e. the practical application of violence against an individual person, whereas threatening the public with violence in media reinforcements of terrorist messages is inevitably of a secondary order.[33] Accordingly, while retaining Waldmann’s well-tried definition – “Terrorism is primarily a communication strategy” – we need to make some adjustments with regard to the role of victims.[34] It bears repeating that as an analytical tool, the concept of terrorism is indispensable for a systematic understanding of the problem under review, but it is always tainted by the practical uses it is put to in the wars of interpretation sparked by the terrorist act itself. As a ubiquitous rhetorical weapon, the accusation of terrorism should be analyzed not just as part of the language of the original sources but also as a powerful discursive product in the making. In many ways the same is true for the concept of victimhood, which is closely linked to the politically exclusive label of terrorism. In particular, societies divided by antagonistic “cultures of victimhood” tend to insist on the exclusive right to victimhood while seeing terrorists only on the other side of the divide. In cases where terrorism as a label has been questioned, introducing concepts like ‘civil war’ or ‘armed conflict’ in order to pacify the warring parties for example in Northern Ireland, in the Basque country and sometimes even in Italy, many survivors and bereaved protest against the built-in rehabilitation of perpetrators and the insult to victims whose special status is upheld by their exclusive claim to “innocent” victimhood – in contrast to the dead of the other side.[35] Especially in the memory battles in Northern Ireland, it is still being contested whether dead members of the paramilitary groups should be included in the different material and immaterial efforts at reconciliation. Concepts play a decisive role in these battles: “It is nearly impossible to use inclusive language that does not offend at least someone.”[36]

The “Troubles” may be a special case – but even in cases with less clear-cut dividing lines rival narratives of victimhood is typical of terrorism since the use of violence is usually dressed up as a response to previous or ongoing violence by the opposite side, thereby reversing the roles of perpetrator and victim. The strategy of active self-victimization is equally typical for terrorist groups which hope to confer a higher status on their actions by putting their own lives on the line against the Leviathan of the state. This is not just true for suicide attacks, by now the almost “normal” form of attack. “Martyrs” are made in confrontation with the police, in hunger strikes, and in attempted assassinations, and they are usually remembered as heroes in sympathetic milieus and invoked to help close the ranks within the terrorist group itself.[37] There is obviously a subliminal logic of sanctification in terrorist practices: Voluntary “self-sacrifice” for a just cause seems even more justified when – as is often the case – more people are being killed by counter-terrorist measures than by terrorist attacks, not to mention the potentially detrimental effect of counter-terrorism on basic civil rights which the rule of law depends on for legitimacy.[38] Since state overreaction is a key component of the terrorist logic, it is essential to integrate the effects of anti-terrorism performance into the communication process set in motion by the terrorist act itself.[39] This is particularly evident in the case of present-day Islamist terrorism: Even mild criticism of the US “war on terror” in countries such as Pakistan, Yemen, Libya and Somalia would have to include at least the civilian death toll due to US air strikes or drone attacks in the “human toll of terror” enumerated in the aforementioned NYT article. Only shortly before this article appeared did Barack Obama give reliable data in this respect for the first time.[40] In the mass media of the West this evidence is hardly to be found as a sort of counter-narrative, but other audiences are paying more attention – not to mention the actual experience of loss and distress bound up with the “war on terror” on the ground.[41] In the following pages, however, only those “victims of terrorism” will be addressed who according to Waldmann’s definition have suffered and still suffer the consequences of terrorist violence, i.e. first and foremost the deceased, the injured and the survivors as well as their families and friends.[42] This is a pragmatic working definition which narrows the focus so as to avoid counting each and every personally or emotionally aggrieved party as a victim. In fact, the violent toll of the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland – 3,700 dead and over 40,000 injured in a total population of 1.5 million – was so high that almost every Irish citizen was suffering in some way due to terrorism, at least indirectly. After 9/11 some psychological experts even went so far as to contend that not just eyewitnesses but also virtually everyone who watched the events on TV could have been “traumatized.”[43] This may be extending the categories too far to still be useful for historical analysis, but it should be possible to ask how many people might have closely identified for whatever reason with the ‘real’ victims. In general, the concept of “trauma” will not figure in our definition of victimhood, nor will the traumatizing effects of the “critical event” (Bourdieu). We would prefer to use Waldmann’s term and call it “shocking.”[44] This is not to question the “transfer power” (José Brunner) of a concept originally used in the medical field which after moving into other social arenas also gave victims of terrorism an easy-to-understand and graphic language in which to express their individual psychological suffering. Not least, this diagnosis was instrumental in achieving legal and social acknowledgement, and in this case also eventually material compensation.[45] Arguing against an all-too-prominent role for trauma does of course not mean underestimating very real psychological stress as distinct from physical pain, yet it must be said that the strong emphasis on emotional wounds sometimes tends to disregard the mutilated body of the victim.[46] Generally speaking, the concept of trauma seems to be too rigid to take full account of the varied experiences of terror-related victimhood and the equally varied modes of personal coping with these experiences. In addition, the concept of trauma may be misleading insofar as it tends to suggest a sleight-of-hand equalization of different categories of victimhood which – in this case – may obscure rather than isolate the features unique to victims of terrorism. Finally, the ubiquity of trauma does not seem to prevent widespread discrimination against victims as bearers of an alleged “negative privilege.”[47]

Clearly, the concept of trauma is of recent origin and couched in very modern scientific terms, whereas the concept of victimhood carries almost archaic connotations which lend themselves to epic narratives and can never fully shed the signs of their religious origins. When designating yourself or another person as a victim, narration matters, not just information. The sacred sphere of irretrievable loss and grief is touched upon while reminding modern societies of the ultimate vulnerability and finality of human existence. The concept speaks of passivity rather than agency, helplessness rather than antagonism; this explains why some affected people actually refuse to be called victims: they fear it will weaken their claim to social recognition and legal rights.[48] On the other hand, it has become almost a prerequisite for collective action to identify objects of injustice or inequality as victims.[49] Yet, discarding the concept out of hand would be just as ideological as using it in an inflationary way. Karl-Heinz Höhn argues that the concept of victimhood is still indispensable for delegitimizing violence and aggression. He warns: “Wherever the concept is renounced, the phenomenon itself will soon be ignored. Cultural amnesia abounds and exculpatory arrangements will be in high demand.” The language of victimhood may thus be regarded as a “human code of conduct for dealing with the unredeemable.”[50]

In almost all countries afflicted with terrorism, the character of the numerous victims’ first-person accounts – whether autobiographies or interviews – suggests that a purely instrumental approach is inappropriate, for example with regard to particular forms of victimization encountered or recorded at different times. While a variety of political and economic factors do come into play, the frame of reference for public discourse on victimhood, however recently defined, still carries the intrinsic weight of religious traditions, themes and motives. This is true even when legal or criminological issues are concerned, or when material claims are upheld against the state, which is often charged with having failed to protect its citizens and therefore pressed by victims’ relatives to pursue investigations or even fully prosecute the perpetrators.[51] Some relatives even refuse to accept compensation as an insult to the memory of the deceased. It is also no coincidence that churches or individual clergy members play a defining role in the process by offering spiritual support to victims and perpetrators alike, even where – unlike in Northern Ireland – they are not part of the conflict themselves. Sanctification may, however, not just be due to specific speech acts, but also to a particular form of “silencing” which Jay Winter categorizes as “sacred” or “liturgical silence.”[52] Other forms of public silence in Winter’s typology are equally relevant for our topic: “strategic silence” in cases of deliberately unresolved political conflict, and “essentialist silence” in cases of denial of unwelcome truths, for example in bystanders impacted by violence. In any case, the healing effects of the talking cure are not necessarily self-evident. As Winter argues, silence is not to be confused with either forgetting or with disrespect: “Speech is morally neutral, and so is silence.”[53] What apparently matters most to those afflicted is the ability to decide when and how to speak. Many victims tend to fall silent when asked about their experience by the media. Ismael El Iraki, a survivor of the November 2015 Bathaclan massacre in Paris, only agrees to meet the press on the condition that no mention is made of the events themselves.[54] Similarly, many relatives of the victims of NSU terror have just one thing in mind: to be left in peace.[55]

But it would be wrong to assume that differences in victims’ readiness and ability to speak about their experience can be solely ascribed to subjective factors. Rather, numerous reports have shown that it is of utmost importance whether an audience is ready to listen and to respond sympathetically to what the victims have to say. This finding is borne out most clearly in the case of Holocaust survivors. In many ways, their singular experience and its aftermath in the ensuing legal, scientific, psychological and political wrangling prefigures the way in which today’s victims of violence may articulate their suffering.[56] For example, the idea of trans-generational transfer of emotional strain found in the literature on Holocaust survivors is also relevant for victims of terrorism. The same is true of the so-called “survivor syndrome.”[57] It would be fascinating to investigate the degree to which such trans- and supranational trends may be linked to the still strongly national discourse on political victimization in the 20th century, and analyze how this discourse may have informed the register of communication by and about terrorism itself.[58] Even regional and local conditions matter for the victims’ sense of self and their perception as victims by others. At the same time, different time layers interact in many ways. For example, German and Italian left-wing terrorists were acutely aware of the concomitant renegotiation of their respective fascist pasts, and in Spain the victims of Basque separatist violence received greater public recognition than the victims of the civil war. In some milieus, victims of Palestinian terrorism in the Middle East conflict are sometimes even declared “victims of a new Shoah.”[59]

In short, the visibility or invisibility of victims as terrorism “sufferers” should be regarded as the result of a complex interaction between different actors and social subsystems in the plurality of public spheres in modern societies.[60] Not only those directly affected are involved, but also politicians, the authorities (especially security and police departments), intellectuals, artists and experts in different professions, especially psychology and its sub-branch victimology.[61] The media plays a special role, as academic research has rightly pointed out, one which is now even scrutinized and criticized by journalists themselves.[62] In particular, they are much more circumspect today in using images and videos of perpetrators or victims after some controversial past experiences in this regard.[63] Yet while there may be a new sense of responsibility for victim’s families in respected print media, this new sensitivity tends to be undercut by social media. We see an exponential increase in both the direct and indirect potential threat of terrorist messages when most dramatic pictures of violence can be published without going through the more serious filters of established media. In any case, the visual and media representation of violence and its physical and emotional effects, often directed at different audiences, should play a central role in each of the historical constellations under investigation.

But a broader question also needs to be asked: How does our view of the history of terrorism change if the focus is shifted to its victims? If we look at their suffering, their agency, their helplessness, the hierarchies among them, and how they are acknowledged and/or exploited by society and politics? If we consider their central role in the propaganda of terrorism and its emotional shock effect on the public? If we examine the role of survivors in the social process of resolving conflicts conducted by terrorist means? The yearbook contributions address these questions in five historical case studies involving different types of terrorism and a variety of political and social approaches to confronting it. The range of victim types and forms of victimization they endured are equally broad. In terms of methodology, the authors display different aspects of the new cultural history of politics: discourse analysis, praxeology, and approaches used in cultural memory studies and visual history.

The first case study takes us to czarist Russia in the early 20th century. Anke Hilbrenner describes an episode from the last of a number of terrorist waves that shook the czarist regime starting in the mid-19th century. As the number of willing “terrorists” (their own designation) grew and as their actions became increasingly professional the spectrum of victims also broadened. At the end of the 1860s, Mikhail Bakunin’s Revolutionary Catechism had already divided power elites into different categories of victim according to their importance, the first being “those immediately sentenced to death.”[64] The aim at the heart of this strategy – a model that would be repeated by many later terrorisms – was to provoke the most brutal counterattacks possible so that the population would recognize the “true” nature of the regime and cast off the hated master. The violent campaign of 1905 that included the assassination of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich analyzed in the essay was actually part of a larger political coup initiative that would serve as a prelude to the Revolution of 1917. But was the identity of the victim therefore arbitrary? And what part did the media’s framing of the deed play in generating contrary emotions on the part of “presumably interested third parties”?[65] Hilbrenner explores the rules underlying the formation of “emotional communities” (Barbara Rosenwein) around both the murdered duke and his widow as well as the perpetrator and his comrades, communities defined by grief and sympathy respectively. Since the 19th and early 20th century are considered the laboratory where terrorist operating methods were born, the relevance of her conclusions extends far beyond the individual case.[66]

Marie Breen-Smyth’s look at the aftermath of the conflict in Northern Ireland also has paradigmatic significance. The particularly murderous dynamic of the Troubles with their heavy toll of victims was due to the existence of two closely entwined cultures of violence that a partisan state agent who repeatedly violated principles of the rule of law was notably unable to appease. Instead, the events bore some resemblance to a colonial conflict in which terrorist tactics were used by paramilitary groups on both sides. Was it possible given this situation to find a form of “transnational justice” that might ease the pain of those who had suffered and acknowledge their legitimate demands for compensation? Or were the claims of the opposing side simply denied? Breen-Smyth interprets the loyalist and republican efforts to make victimhood politically charged as “war by other means.” In so doing she also highlights the dangers in renewed instances of victimization by discursively reviving old images of the enemy time and again even after the cease-fire has taken effect.

Many observers of Italian society have noticed similarly divided and highly politicized recollections of the “years of lead.”

It was not separatist tendencies, but instead the antagonism between entrepreneurs of violence on both the right and the left that claimed 378 victims in cold-war Italy between 1969 and 1984.[67] Anna Cento Bull looks at an example of how the resultant deep rifts were bridged outside the framework of the frequently criticized criminal justice system. A mediated dialogue brought together individual surviving relatives and former terrorists with the aim of having each side at least listen to the other and take its experiences seriously. The essay discusses the significance of such initiatives both for the individuals involved and for the theory of democracy.

The essay by Florian Jessensky and Martin Rupps focuses not on surviving relatives but on victims who survived. The authors examine the fate of passengers aboard the Lufthansa airliner “Landshut” when it was hijacked en route from Mallorca to Frankfurt by Palestinian allies of the RAF at the height of the “German Autumn” in October 1977. Only after five tortuous days of extreme emotional and physical strain could the 86 passengers and three crewmembers be freed; the hijackers had executed the pilot shortly before. In a state that devoted enormous resources to the capture, prosecution, and long-term neutralization of – by European standards very few – terrorists, how were the needs of people directly affected by terrorism now to be addressed? The “Landshut” case is also particularly important in the German context because it involved an unusually large group of victims. Jessensky and Rupps look at not only the stance of the federal government and individual state agencies, but also Lufthansa’s crisis management, the interventions of psychiatric experts, and the role of the media.

Art historian and media scholar Charlotte Klonk addresses the question of what the – at least in part politically motivated – call to pay more attention to terrorist attack victims’ suffering in order to blunt the continued glorification of the perpetrators means or can mean on a visual level. She explores the artistic use of victim photographs in the aftermath of RAF terrorism, public reactions to the omnipresent victim icons of September 11, and the use of photographs at terrorist crime scenes that have been made into commemorative sites in New York, Warrington, and Berlin. Klonk’s questions are not only useful in relation to the various historical contexts treated in the essays of this volume. The answers she provides also lead directly into questions posed by the contemporary “turn to the victim” – issues that scholars and media representatives alike must face.

Anke Hilbrenner

Of Heroes and Villains – The Making of Terrorist Victims as Historical Perpetrators in Pre-Revolutionary Russia

Abstract: The paper deals with the discursive construction of victims and perpetrators after a terrorist attack in the Russian Empire before 1917. By analysing the attack of the famous social-revolutionary assassin Ivan Kalyaev on the unpopular Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich in February of 1905, the terrorist strategy of marking the victim an enemy of the people becomes evident. This narrative was meant to construct a huge emotional community of those, who felt clandestine joy or relief about the Grand Duke’s dead. The members of this emotional community could be perceived as supporters of the revolutionary cause, even though, they were functionary elites of the tsarist regime. This narrative has remained influential until today. A close look at the sources reveals homosexuality among the reasons for the Grand Dukes unpopularity. This irregularity made him an ideal target for the Party of Social-Revolutionaries (PSR), because the terrorists wanted to select a victim everybody could agree upon. The widow of the Grand Duke represents an alternative perspective on the assassination. Elizaveta Fedorovna offers a different image of the victim and challenges the narrative of Kalyaev as martyr hero of revolution.

Revolutionary Heroism and Victimization

Russia’s most prominent corpse is still lying in its mausoleum on the Red Square in Moscow. More than 25 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union people still stand in line to pay their respect to its dead founder: Vladimir Lenin. Some come for curiosity only, others for a multitude of reasons. Scientists and politicians argue, whether or not Lenin’s dead body figures as a Soviet version of a Christian relic.[68] Different interpretations exist of the morbid fact that the founder of a modern state that has now ceased to exist is still on display in the very centre of the capital: Lenin embodies a variety of ideas, reaching from a quasi-religious saint to a revolutionary hero. However, within all these “usable pasts” he is never described as a victim of a terrorist attack. This omission is striking, because a terrorist indeed fatally injured Lenin on August 30, 1918. His assassin shot at him twice[69]: One projectile hit his neck, the other one his shoulder. Lenin died years later after a long time of suffering. Only in 1922, the German physician Georg Klemperer was able to remove the bullet in his neck, but Lenin succumbed to his injuries the following year.[70] But even though this assassination attempt was used to introduce the Bolshevik violent policy of “Red Terror” on September 5, 1918, only five days after the attempt,[71] Lenin’s victimization by a social-revolutionary terrorist did not become part of his public memory, neither in official Soviet Leninism nor in the popular belief of Lenin as a quasi-Christian saint. Why did his victimization pass more or less unnoticed?

Lenin’s victimization does not seem to fit into his image as a revolutionary hero. A hero is supposed to be active and to take his fate (like the fate of the collective) in his own hands. Even more, Lenin stands for revolutionary violence, which seems to exclude categorically passive victimhood. In the context of revolution, violence is not necessarily perceived as morally bad. As a means to overthrow the system, violent action can become a heroic deed. Therefore, a revolutionary hero is rather a perpetrator of revolutionary violence than a victim. This positive perception of violence as the midwife of history is deeply rooted in the nineteenth century and in the ideological tradition of the French revolution.[72] It goes along with a positive identification with terrorism, a term that was used by the Russian pre-revolutionary terrorists themselves.[73] Additionally the narration of history privileges the perpetrator rather than the victim. Historical narratives prefer activity to suffering.[74]

Violence as “Weapon of the Weak”

Pre-revolutionary terrorists in the Russian Empire had a positive perception of revolutionary violence. There was a lot of violence in the Russian Empire, and authoritarian rule also used violent means to stabilize its regime in the face of revolution: Field courts-martial, punitive expeditions, public executions, deportations and the like give ample evidence to this fact. According to Laura Engelstein revolution in the Russian Empire in late nineteenth century became a “struggle for moral superiority” and as long as violence was used as “weapon of the weak” it was perceived as morally justified.[75] Terrorists made excessive use of this narrative: In order to win the struggle for moral superiority, it was necessary to mark the adversary as a potential threat to the revolutionary cause or, even better, as an enemy of the people as a whole. The people thus became the “real” victim, while the victim of the terrorist attack became the “real” perpetrator.

Many sources of the history of Russian terrorism are indeed moral tales of good and evil. Violence was an integral part of this universal struggle and forced terrorists and their enemies alike to mark their claims forcefully. This interaction became a discursive process escalating violence on both sides, authorities and revolutionaries, because each party reacted to the other with an increasing level of violence.

William Reddy introduced the notion of emotives into the historiography of the French revolution. An emotive according to Reddy is a speech act that names an emotion and by doing so evokes or even reinforces it at the same time.[76] If we follow Peter Waldmann and perceive terrorist attacks as acts of communication,[77] we can analyse the terrorist events as emotives.[78] As such they create “emotional communities” as introduced by Barbara Rosenwein.[79] The emotional communities can help to explain the connections between the actors involved and larger imagined communities, where, for example, political ideologies are no longer able to do this convincingly.

A terrorist attack causes grief, fear or disgust, for example, among a group that goes far beyond those affected. This “imagined community”, which I will refer to in the following as an “emotional community”, is united by its feelings, such as grief, and assures itself through the articulation of these feelings of a common horizon of values. However, these values remain unspoken, so that the emotional community can be charged with different values by its followers. Their grief can be interpreted as a symbol of solidarity with victims, as a commitment to the system targeted by the terrorist attack, as a plea for the need for stronger security measures or as symbolic resistance against the perpetrators or very likely as a combination of these confessions. In addition, several different “emotional communities” often form after a terrorist attack. Thus, those who feel satisfaction, clandestine joy, relief or triumph in the face of a terrorist attack also come together in such a community, and here too the openly exhibited feelings may have different intentions. Moreover, these communities are not stable; they are ephemeral and must be reawakened by new emotional impulses, such as another terrorist attack. Albeit another terrorist attack may create new and different emotional communities.

Emotional communities can explain why terrorists can become heroes and why the victims of terrorist attacks in certain communities are the actual perpetrators. They shed light on the motivation of terrorist acts beyond ideology and explain the competing histories of the perception of political violence. The concept of emotional communities can plausibly reconstruct the different reactions to terrorist attacks, some of which overlap and contradict each other, but which also coexist unconnectedly or mutually reinforce each other. I will explore the concept by discussing the different emotional communities formed after the assassination of Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich in the middle of the turmoil of Russia’s Revolution of 1905.

The saying “one person’s terrorist is the other one’s freedom fighter” can be applied to the victim as well: One person’s victim is the other one’s perpetrator. When Sergei Aleksandrovich was assassinated on February 4, 1905, different emotional communities emerged. One of them was formed around the widow, the Grand Duchess Elizaveta Fedorovna. Together with her supporters she mourned for the Grand Duke as the victim of a gruesome terrorist attack. Another community, consisting of the terrorists, broader parts of the revolutionary movement and even many liberal-minded members of the upper classes reacted with joy and relief to the news of the death of the Grand Duke. They perceived the victim of the attack as guilty and thus considered his murder justified.

This emotional community was likely to be amused by a cartoon brought before the public by a social-revolutionary publication soon after the Duke’s death (see image 1): The drawing shows a young woman skittling. Her Jacobin liberty cap labelled her as a terrorist in the tradition of the French “terreur”. Emblematic for the Russian terrorism of the time is the bomb she is pitching instead of the bowl. The nine wooden pins represent high ranking members of the government. The pin in the very front is a miniature of Tsar Nicholas II. His mouth is wide open resembling fear. This fearful scream contradicts the soldierly virtues expected of a European monarch at that time and thus ridicules him.[80] One pin has already been hit. This pin has the face of the Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich. The allegorical personification of terrorism features as the female hero in the centre of the image. Her action dominates the drawing, while the victims of the “skittle attack” are marginalized in the very background of the image, deprived of their human nature. Reduced to wooden toys, they have lost any individual dignity. To kill them is a game.[81]

The Assassination of Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich

“On Friday, February 4, 1905 at three o‘clock in the afternoon a member of the Combat Organisation of the Party of Social-Revolutionaries executed Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich because of his crimes against the people.” Combat Organisation Party of Social-Revolutionaries.[82]

The Party of Social-Revolutionaries (PSR) had started the second phase of terrorism in the Russian Empire by a number of spectacular assassinations of very unpopular members of the Russian autocratic government. Its Combat Organisation (Boevaja Organizacija, BO)was infamous and charged by broad segments of the society with the murder of the notorious Minister of Interior Vyacheslav von Plehve in 1904. The killing of the equally unpopular Sergei Aleksandrovichwas the next big coup of the PSR when terrorism was already turning into mass terror and anarchists were using the strategy of violence not only against unpopular politicians but virtually anybody.[83]

In its claim of responsibility, the PSR significantly avoided to mention the second victim: The Grand Duke’s coachman Andrei Rudinkin, who had been fatally wounded by the explosion as well. After a couple of days of suffering he succumbed to his injuries.[84] The explosion caused by the bomb was extremely powerful indeed. As a consequence, not only the coach, but also the body of the Grand Duke was gruesomely scattered: “At the crime scene there was a shapeless heap […] of small parts of the carriage, of clothes, and of a mutilated body […with] no head. Of the other parts, it was only possible to distinguish an arm and part of a leg.”[85]

The police report documented the scattering of the body of the Grand Duke as well.[86] The New York Times claimed: “Soldiers this afternoon discovered many pieces of the carriage in which the Grand Duke Sergius was riding when he met his death, and fragments of flesh were found on the top of the twelve-foot parapet of the arsenal, among the Napolenonic guns.”[87]

This ghastly deformation of the Grand Duke’s corpse was not only proof of the power of the terrorist bomb. At the same time it removed all dignity from death. The burial rites of the Romanov Dynasty necessarily required the embalmment and the lying in state of the dead body. The integrity of the corpse was of utmost importance for the bereaved and the fact that in this case it was so dramatically missing increased their sorrow immensely: There were findings of pieces of the Grand Duke’s flesh days after the assassination.

For the immediate witnesses the results of the explosion were just as shocking.[88] The horror paralysed many of the bystanders. One of the officers covered the remains of the victims with an overcoat and ordered the soldiers to organize a stretcher,[89] but the men remained inactive. “A lackey asked the crowd to take their hats off, but nobody reacted, nobody took his hat off or went away.”[90] This callousness was probably an effect of the shock but it also might have been due to the lack of popularity of the Grand Duke among the people of Moscow. The same was reported by Montgomery Grove, the British Consul in Moscow: “My informant added that the thing which also struck him was the stolidity, one might almost say apathy, of the crowd.”[91] When the Grand Duke’s wife Elizaveta Fedorovna came running to the crime scene, she shouted at the bystanders, horrified by their voyeurism: “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, to stand here and watch? Go away!”[92]

As immediate reaction to the assassination two different and conflicting emotional communities were formed. The widow’s horror and grief confronted the apathy of the bystanders. But as soon as the authorities gained control over the situation, the emotional community of mourning emerged.

National Mourning

The official reaction to the murder of the Grand Duke was national mourning. On February 5, 1905 the bells of every church in Moscow rang and many memorial services took place.[93] Newspapers printed orbituaries and reported the news of the day including their gruesome details.[94] The papers put a lot of emphasis on the fate of the coachman Andrei Rudinkin. At first it seemed that he had survived the explosion. On February 6 the liberal newspaper Russkoe slovo (Russian Word) reported, that Rudinkin was recovering. Many people visited him in the hospital including the representatives of a number of official institutions. Many came, not because they knew him personally, but because they wanted to demonstrate respect and solidarity to a victim of what they regarded an infamous terrorist attack.[95] Among the visitors there was also the Grand Duchess Elizaveta Fedorovna.[96] The wounded coachman became the hero of the emotional community that detested the terrorist attack. Moreover he became the ideal object of symbolic bemoaning of the victims. Even from the perspective of the revolutionaries the coachman must have been an “innocent victim”. Therefore, the authorities underlined their sympathy towards this “simple man”. By demonstrating their compassion to Rudinkin they tried to reach out to the indecisive strata of society and the liberals in order to make them condemn the terrorist deed. This was an attempt to expand the emotional community of the mourners to include the many seemingly unmoved subjects who did not want to feel pity for the unpopular Grand Duke. When Rudinkin finally died on February 8, 1905 the charge for the assassin became double murder.[97] At the same time, revolutionaries denounced the concern and the sympathy for the coachman as hypocrisy and ridiculed the “false tears” shed over him.[98]

The society of Moscow, where Sergei Aleksandrovich had been general governor until recently, flooded the newspapers with in-memoriam notices for the Grand Duke. Russkie vedomosti (Russian News) printed them on the front page. This went on for several days and among the mourners were the Society of Architects, the Moscow Musical Society, and a Society for the Acclimatization of Plants and Animals to name but a few.

The highest ranking mourner was the Tsar himself. Nicholas II published a text in the official newspapers of the Empire mourning for his ”beloved uncle and friend“.[99] In his diary he wrote:

A gruesome crime took place today in Moscow. Uncle Sergei was killed by a bomb when passing the Nikolsky Gate in his carriage. The driver was fatally wounded. Poor Ella, God bless her![100]

The Wife

“Poor Ella”, the Tsar’s sister-in-law and widow of his uncle Sergei Aleksandrovich, played a major part in the formation of emotional communities. After a political assassination, the mourning wife of the dead can be perceived as the incarnation of the innocent sufferer, and sometimes widows manage to transcend this moral status into a social role. In this respect, Elizaveta Fedorovna is a good example. The Grand Duchess was one of the most charismatic figures within the high aristocracy of the Russian Empire. With her caring personality she lent the memory of the unpopular Grand Duke a human touch. This humanity was stressed by her disrespect to the courtly rules bawling in public after her husband’s death, visiting the wounded coachman in the hospital and, even more, meeting the assassin in prison.[101]

In doing so, she transgressed not only social boarders, but also the boarders between the emotional communities divided by their mourning for either the victim or the perpetrator. Elizaveta Fedorovna was deeply religious and acted as patron of a number of charitable and cultural institutions. This contradicted her husband’s image as greedy and misanthrope. The couple had no children of their own, but they adopted the children of Grand Duke Paul, after their mother had died and their father had been exiled.

The death of her husband strengthened her religious and philanthropic enthusiasm even further. As a widow, she sold her personal belongings and founded a nunnery. Within this convent she engaged in health care of soldiers, as well as the care for orphans and the urban poor. At the same time, she became a builder and an art patron. She had a cross erected at the Kremlin gate, close to the place where her husband was killed. The church of her monastery was built by the famous architect Aleksey Shchusev, a pupil of Ilya Repin and Aleksandr Benois, who had already built the Kazan railway station. He was famous for Art Nouveau buildings and planned the cathedral in a seemingly medieval Novgorodian style.[102] After the 1917 revolutions he became one the most prominent architects in the Soviet Union and built among other prestigious buildings the Lenin Mausoleum.[103]

Elizaveta Fedorovna’s own life after the revolution developed quite differently. She was killed by the Bolshevik Cheka in the summer of 1918 together with her brother-in-law, the Tsar and the other members of his family near Yekaterinburg. Within the Russian Orthodox Church she is still considered a martyr because of her activities within the monastery and because of her murder by the Bolsheviks.[104]

The Other Emotional Community

But outside this emotional community of mourners who felt close to Elizaveta Fedorovna and the Tsarist family, grief for Sergei Aleksandrovich seems to have been quite rare. This lack of compassion can be explained as a result of his rampant impopularity as general governor of Moscow. In 1891, the Grand Duke had taken office from his liberal predecessor Count Vladimir Dolgorukov. The whole administration, appointed and trained by Dolgorukov, had met him with a great extent of scepticism. The same was true for the Moscow society.[105] Merely extremely conservative circles appreciated Sergei Aleksandrovich’s assertiveness and intellect. But not only liberals and the influential Moscow merchants, but even parts of the high aristocracy and court society rejected him.[106] He was known as a homosexual and was suspected to be a lover of under-age boys. His sexual orientation seemed to fit to the “oriental despotism” of his reign, which was deplored after the appointment of several favourites on important positions. Count Sergei Witte, the liberal Prime Minister of the Russian Empire during the 1905 revolution, described him as follows:

I had several occasions to meet the Grand Duke on business. Our views differed, for he was ultraconservative in his political views, and he was quite religious, but in a sanctimonious way. I should note that he was always surrounded by comparatively young men, who were excessively affectionate toward him. I do not mean that he had unnatural instincts, but there was evidently some psychological abnormality, which expressed itself in a marked liking for young men.[107]

In 1891 Sergei Aleksandrovich ordered the infamous expulsion of the Jews from Moscow. This expulsion was widely perceived as a kind of state-sponsored pogrom, not only in Jewish circles. Moreover the Grand Duke made the upper as well as the small middle class pay for his excessive life style.[108]

But Sergei Aleksandrovich detested not only revolutionaries, non-Russian minorities or the urban poor, but also the non-aristocratic elites, for example the wealthy merchants – a very influential social group in Moscow. Art patrons, such as Pavel Tretyakov, founder of the famous art gallery, who were important for the city because of their cultural and philanthropic engagement,[109] were treated by him ”as plebs“ as he, as member of the ruling dynasty, saw fit.[110]

It goes almost without saying that politically he was a hard-bitten reactionary. In the eyes of the contemporaries though, his worst sin by far was the ”Khodynka tragedy“:

The coronation ceremony for Nicholas II in 1894 was celebrated for the common people with a fair on the Khodynka field. The fair was traditionally a mass event this time very carelessly organized by Sergei Aleksandrovich. The field was muddy and full of ditches and holes. When about 500 000 visitors tried to move across the field towards the food stands a panic broke out. Count Witte remembers: ”I was on my way to Khodynka field when I learned that a tragedy had occurred there: that morning a fearful crush of people had left two thousand persons, most of them women or children, killed or maimed.“[111] Official numbers counted 1.350 casualties. This event with its many innocent victims overshadowed the whole coronation and thus the reign of Nicholas II. An investigation declared Sergei Aleksandrovich and the Moscow city administration responsible for the tragedy.[112] The memory of this event gave him the notorious nick name: “Count Khodynsky”.[113] But the Tsar did not want to take his resignation or even name him guilty.[114]

Nicholas II was very close and affectionate towards his uncle. That might have been due to the fact, that the Grand Duke was married to the Tsar’s sister-in-law. But in addition Sergei Aleksandrovich was a typical member of the notorious court camarilla of the time. Andrew Verner even suggested that the Emperor favoured social outcasts and eccentrics in his entourage, because he could expect an even higher degree of loyalty due to their precarious social situation.[115]

As a person Sergei Aleksandrovich thus incarnated many of the evils of autocracy. Moreover as a member of the very nucleus of the Tsarist family and of the infamous court camarilla he symbolized the crisis of the dynasty itself. That is why he was considered the ideal target by the social-revolutionaries. The terrorists hoped for a huge wave of sympathy, for the formation of a big emotional community of those who felt a certain satisfaction because of the dead of the Grand Duke that reached far beyond the traditional sympathisers of the PSR. This strategy proved to be successful indeed. Many people throughout the empire and across social and regional borders appreciated the Grand Duke’s murder. St. Petersburg writer Sergei Minclov[116] wrote in his diary: “February 4: In Moscow the chief adviser of the Tsar, Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich was killed in a bomb explosion. The news were received with great joy.”[117]

This joy was typical of the emotional community of those who met the authorities with reserve or criticism. How big this community actually was and how far it transcended social and political borders can be shown by another entry into Minclov’s diary. In a secondary school for girls the principle ordered participation of its pupils in an official memorial service for Sergei Aleksandrovich. But the 14 or 15 year old girls refused to attend, probably with the consent of their respective families.[118]

Especially in Moscow, where the Grand Duke had executed his unpopular reign, beyond the official mourning, many people reacted with relief. The assassin’s attorney, Michail Mandelshtam, remembers a donation of a huge amount of money from the merchant widow and art patron Varvara Morozova[119] which was reserved for the mother of his client. Mandelshtam interpreted this gesture as opposition to autocratic rule and realized that even the Moscow elites were taking sides with the assassin rather than with the victim.[120]

The PSR constructed this emotional community across political limits actively. In the BO’s claim of responsibility, the terrorists did not only argue for their fellow socialists and radicals, but especially dwelled on many accusations against the Grand Duke raised in bourgeois and even in government circles. To name but two examples:

1. The BO accordingly took revenge for the Grand Duke turning Moscow into an “arena of debauchery”. With this term “debauchery” the PSR clearly scathed the homosexuality of the Grand Duke, that was criticised not only by the conservative elites of court and society, but also by the more liberal minded politicians and the bourgeois elites.

2. Another reason for the assassination according to the BO’s claim was the “Khodynka tragedy”. This disaster was a public trauma reaching far beyond the revolutionary circles. Even the official government investigation had pled the Grand Duke guilty and a lot of criticism was uttered towards the Tsar for not having forced Sergei Aleksandrovich to resign.

In short, this propaganda aimed to rate the victim as the culprit, while the assassin, Ivan Kalyaev, was transformed into a martyr hero.

The Martyr Hero – Ivan Kalyaev

Liberals and radicals gathered in an emotional community celebrating the assassin Ivan Kalyaev as their hero. Because of his conviction and death sentence he became a martyr who was worshipped especially within PSR circles. The PSR circulated memorabilia such as leaflets describing life and death of the martyr “Ivan Platonovich Kalyaev”. One trace of this story was of special interest to his sympathisers. The bomb thrown on February 4, 1905, was not his first attempt on the life of the Grand Duke. Kalyaev had been close to the coach and ready for action already two days before, on the evening of February 2. But then he realized that the Grand Duchess Elizaveta Fedorovna and the two adopted children of the couple were sitting in the coach as well. So he turned around and refrained from his plan to throw the bomb.[121]

The fact that Kalyaev spared the lives of the innocent children and the Grand Duke’s wife added greatly to his myth.[122] It led to the perception of the PSR terrorists as acting on a moral high ground. For Isaak Steinberg, Kalyaev incorporated the altruism that distinguished the “heroic terrorism” of the PSR from the political violence of other actors (especially the Bolsheviks and their red terror).[123] In contrast, he labels Sergei Aleksandrovich, the victim of the attack as a „disgrace to humankind“.[124] Albert Camus too mentions this incident in the drama „The Just Assassins“.[125]He praises the conscience of the terrorists as a “precision instrument” calling them “tender-hearted murderers”.[126] Another admirer is Hans Magnus Enzensberger who referred to the PSR terrorists as “beautiful souls of terror”.[127]

In the courtroom, Kalyaev had the opportunity to present the arguments of the PSR to a broader public, even though the trial was taking place “behind closed doors”.[128] His attorney and the party alike were quick to publish his enflaming speeches, clearly addressed to his peers, although they were not physically present in court.[129] He denied the right of the judges to dispense justice, because they were “slaves to capital and violence”.[130] His own image was described as avenger of the people, appealing to the unconciliable hostility between authorities and revolutionaries, the latter being labelled “combatants”. In this battle, the revolutionaries represented „civilization“, while the authorities were perceived as “barbarian”. He even used the bible as an argument, comparing his adversaries to Pontius Pilate, blaming them to orchestrate a show trial. At the same time, he called the revolutionaries’ verdicts the “court of history”. The authorities were responsible for “piles of dead bodies” and the destruction of “hundreds of thousands of human existences”. Kalyaev thus pointed to the discursive construction of political violence, by blaming the authorities as the “real perpetrators”. Revolutionary and terrorist violence was thus the legitimate answer to the excessive violence of the authorities against their own people. “The revolutionary responds to this challenge with all of his hatred and opposes the violent threat with the parole: J’accuse!” With reference to the famous words of Émile Zola’s criticizing the unlawful jailing of Alfred Dreyfus,[131] Kalyaev identified with the unfortunate officer who had become victim of an anti-Semitic campaign in France several years before blaming the victim of his own lethal attack instead: The Grand Duke was portrayed as part of the unlawful tsarist government, a merciless and inefficient ruler of Moscow, responsible for the “Khodynka tragedy”. Kalyaev cited the outcome of the official investigation committee led by Count Konstantin von Pahlen. He quoted von Pahlen, member of the state council, by saying that one should not „place irresponsible people into responsible positions“. The PSR according to Kalyaev simply had to fulfil the committees verdict, because the tsarist government failed to do so: “And thus, the BO of the PSR had to hold the irresponsible Grand Duke responsible before the court of the people”.

This reference to the official investigation committee gives further evidence of the strategy, not to argue from a radical or socialist perspective, but to blame the Grand Duke for the many vices criticised by the elites, the liberals and broad segments of the society alike. Kalyaev therefore reached out to a great emotional community beyond the circles of the radical revolutionaries to people of different strata of society who despised Sergei Aleksandrovich and clandestinely rejoiced his violent death. In doing so, he successfully managed to gain the sympathy of many of his contemporaries inside and outside of the radical camp within the revolutionary turmoil of 1905.

Kalyaev’s performance on trial was published in the illegal but widespread PSR paper Revolutsionnaya Rossiya (Revolutionary Russia) in May 1905,[132] in the leaflets in memoriam of the Party martyr Ivan Kalyaev and the publications of his attorney Mandelshtam and therefore reached broad audiences. The memory of the martyr Kalyaev enabled the PSR to spread their ideas far beyond social-revolutionary circles. To strengthen this trend PSR publications featured for example poetry of the “poet”, Kalyaev’s nick name.[133] Such was his fame that five years later another famous PSR assassin Egor Sazonov wrote to his fellow social-revolutionaries from his detention in Siberia: “My first impression of Kalyaev was, that he somehow shone from the inside. He was a miraculous blend of power, tenderness, beauty and saintliness.”[134]

Confronting Emotional Communities

When Elizaveta Fedorovna came to prison in order to visit and talk with Ivan Kalyaev, he did not recognize her at first instance until she said: “I am his wife”. There are two sharply contradictory accounts of this meeting, one published by the PSR[135] and another one, written down in the official newspapers[136]: According to the PSR memory leaflet, it was Kalyaev, the assassin, who comforted his visitor and said to her: “Do not cry!” Then he explained the reasons for killing her husband. According to this version the widow did not know anything about Sergei Aleksandovich’s wrongdoings. But at a certain point Kalyaev stopped, unwillingly to increase the widow’s burden. Later he recalled: “I do not want to conceal that we looked at one another with a mystical feeling, like two mortals, who managed to survive. I survived more or less by chance, while she survived due to the will of the organization, due to my will, because the organization and I sought to avoid unnecessary bloodshed.”[137]

According to Kalyaev, there was an intimate atmosphere between them, so he even accepted a small icon, a picture of a saint, which the deeply religious woman gave to him as a sign of gratitude.[138] As per Kalyaev, the Grand Duchess was grateful because he had spared her life. At the same time she was full of resentment after having learned all about the misconduct of her husband, the Grand Duke.[139] Not surprisingly, the official newspapers described the meeting of Grand Duchess and assassin in a totally different way:

From sources close to the Grand Duchess we learned that Elisaveta Fedorovna visited the murderer and asked him, why he had killed her husband. The murderer answered: ‘I have executed an order of the revolutionary committee.’ The Grand Duchess asked him: ‘Do you believe in God?’ After he nodded, her Highness gave a small icon to the murderer and said: ‘I forgive you. God will rule between the Grand Duke and you, but I will appeal for your life.’ The murderer started to cry.[140]

The protagonists of the two versions are the same, and both accounts describe how an icon was given and received, but each of them tells a completely different story. In the official narrative, it was the assassin who cried, not the Grand Duchess. This image of a weak and remorseful assassin in tears contradicted strongly the PSR’s idol of the avenger, who willingly gives his life for the cause. His tears conflicted with the soldierly virtues and the image of masculinity that are necessary elements of the ideal terrorist martyr hero. The second narrative, the PSR account, was thus eager to correct this image. Kalyaev wrote an emotional and flaming letter to the Grand Duchess protesting against her testimony. This letter as well as a letter to his comrades were also published in the memory leaflet of the PSR. With those letters Kalyaev and the PSR intended to preserve his image as revolutionary.

The leaflet described Kalyaev’s execution, too. As a convicted member of the PSR he had rejected spiritual succour. This was published again to contradict the claim of the official newspapers that Kalyaev had confessed his faith to the Grand Duchess.[141] When Kalyaev was executed on June 1, 1905, the PSR newspaper was published with a black ribbon and a portrait of the hero on the front page – this was without precedent in the history of the paper.[142] The memory policy of the PSR constructed the image of Kalyaev as the virtous and moral hero, the tender poet and the brave fighter. This image was passed on well beyond the revolutionary times.[143] With Ivan Kalyaev the image of the heroic terrorist reached its peak.

Conclusion

The different reactions to the assassination of the Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich show the different discursive constructions of victims and perpetrators. The accounts of the social-revolutionary terrorists have bestowed Russian terrorism with great political and historical legitimacy that lasted until well into the second half of the Twentieth Century. Albert Camus and Hans-Magnus Enzensberger are only two of the many intellectuals who passed on the word of the „just assassins“. But even if the discursive construction of the victim as “real” perpetrator was and still remains to be persuasive its bias must be taken into account. The case of Sergei Aleksandrovich can show that there are many narratives, some of them contradicting the tale of heroic terrorism. And even if the terrorists claim to act on behalf of the people, it is them and not the people who declare the prospective victim of the attack guilty.

If the terrorists seek closeness to large sections of the population and their rejection of Sergei Aleksandrovich, then this has a tactical rather than a substantive reason: The terrorists deliberately argued along the lines that united a large public of critics of the Grand Duke. Not only the radicals but also large parts of Tsarist society, including the elite, blamed him for the catastrophe in Khodynka. That is why Kalyaev took up this criticism in order to be sure of broad social approval. This strategy is made even clearer by his implicit criticism of the Grand Duke’s homosexuality. Sergei Aleksandrovich’s sexual orientation placed him outside of the social norms of the time. His “oddness” made him an easy target for the victimization strategies of the social-revolutionary terrorists. But to be clear: There was no social revolutionary program that condemned homosexuality or other socially disreputable behavior. On the contrary, the social and sexual life of terrorists also challenged social morals and gender norms.[144] The fact that the terrorists embraced the accusation of “debauchery” shows, that the murder of Sergei Aleksandrovich was about combining the terrorist cause with the discontent of large sections of the population in a populist manner and, at least for the moment, forming a large emotional community of those who feel satisfaction at the end of the unpopular Grand Duke. The mere size of the emotional community was taken by the SR as proof of the broad social support for the social-revolutionary cause. They thus regarded this community-building, ephemeral as it may have been, as a propagandistic success, even if the political content of this act was extremely doubtful in the sense of the revolution, which the PSR also aspired to.

Not by chance, Lenin opposed the Social-Revolutionary strategy of terrorism by saying:

Individual terrorism is a product of the weakness of the intelligencija and is now going down into the realm of the past. Instead of spending tens of thousands of roubles and many revolutionary potentials for the murder of some Sergei (who was more effective for the revolution in Moscow than many revolutionaries), for a murder ‘in the name of the people’, we should rather start to fight together with the people.[145]

In ideological terms, Lenin rightly criticized the populist hypocritical pandering of social revolutionaries to the non-revolutionary public. On the other hand, the PSR was at that time the biggest political competitor to the social democrats around Lenin. He attributed the SRs growing popularity to this kind of populist terrorist acts which he therefore condemned so harshly. Sergei Aleksandrovich was indeed chosen by the PSR because his death promised to make up a broad emotional community of sympathizers, even among strata of society who would never support a socialist revolution. Therefore, killing him was part of a communication strategy, rather than a political deed. Sergei Aleksandrovich was chosen because he was so well suited to be discursively transformed from the victim of a terrorist attack into the actual perpetrator.

Marie Breen-Smyth

Suffering, Victims and Survivors in the Northern Ireland Conflict: Definitions, Policies, and Politics

Abstract: Three decades of armed conflict in Northern Ireland caused the death of over 3,700 people, injured tens of thousands and caused displacement, exile and a host of other effects. In the post conflict period, the suffering of the past has become a site of political contest, and a politics of victimhood has become a war by other means, frustrating certain attempts to develop policy and support measures for those bereaved or injured in the conflict. This article provides an overview of definitions, policies, issues and the politics of victimhood in Northern Ireland, positioning this overview in a broader discussion of the politics of victimhood.

Even when it is visible, not all suffering matters to us. In war, Judith Butler observes, people are divided into those whose lives are grievable and those that are not.[146] Lives that are not grievable are those lives that were never counted as lives in the first place. War waged to defend certain populations will end the lives of others–the ungrievable lives–in the interests of protecting those lives considered grievable.

Susan Sontag observed that: “No ‘we’ should be taken for granted when the subject is looking at other people’s pain,” an insight that is particularly apt in societies divided by war.

One way of posing the question of who “we” are in these times of war is by asking whose lives are considered valuable, whose lives are mourned, and whose lives are considered ungrievable… To those who are sure that right is on one side, oppression and injustice on the other, and that the fighting must go on, what matters is precisely who is killed and by whom… To the militant, identity is everything.[147]

Suffering is read through identity, and images of suffering and harm inflicted by the ‘other’ deepen political divisions and foster hatred and fear. Sontag points out that the footage of the Israeli army attacking Jenin refugee camp and seen by Al Jazeera viewers “did not tell them anything about the Israeli army they were not already primed to believe.”[148] Conversely, footage that depicts those with whom we are allied in an unfavorable light, is likely to be dismissed as “fake news”. To witness suffering and feel pity or empathy requires the belief that the sufferer is of value and did not deserve to suffer – is innocent. Thus, to pity or not to pity is to implicitly morally judge the sufferer.[149]

In the face of daily reports of suffering, Sontag argues that: “… So far as we feel sympathy, we feel we are not accomplices to what caused the suffering. Our sympathy proclaims our innocence as well as our impotence.”[150] Based on the forty years of the author’s engagement[151] with the human costs and suffering as a result of the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, this article sets the contemporary contests about that suffering, victimhood and post conflict truth and justice in Northern Ireland in a broader understanding of the politics of victimhood.

The Uses of Suffering

Much of the scholarship on victims concentrates not on those who have suffered, but on the uses to which their suffering is put. Scholarship on victims and on victimhood, victim culture, victimism and victimists[152] is a growing field, yet suffering is frequently taken for granted or ignored, whilst in many armed conflicts, civilian casualties are not counted – they quite literally don’t count.[153]

Where accounts of suffering exist,[154] they help clarify the relationship between suffering and victimhood.

1. Although suffering appears to be a key element in the construction of victimhood, it is neither a sufficient or necessary condition of victimhood;

2. The hurt, harm or fear can be experienced directly by a victim or indirectly by association with suffering individuals and with whom one identifies as part of a family, community or identity group;

3. Self-defined victimhood, it is a state of individual or collective consciousness to an experience of suffering, either directly or vicariously, of loss or harm inflicted wilfully by another party.

4. Victimhood can also be a socially or politically defined status attributed to an individual or a group by a third party, a society or some other agent, independent of that individual or group’s consciousness of themselves as victims, or as non-victims.

5. Not all of those who directly experience suffering identify themselves as victims or manifest a victim consciousness. For example, Primo Levi wrote: “It was my good fortune to be deported to Auschwitz only in 1944.”[155]

6. Levi describes what might be construed by contemporary analysts as ‘post traumatic growth[156]’ – gains from suffering: “[O]nto my brief and tragic experience as a deportee has been overlaid the much longer and complex experience of a writer-witness, and the sum total is clearly positive: in its totality, this past has made me richer, surer…”[157]

7. Not all sufferers are eligible to become victims, even if they aspire to that recognition or status. Some forms of suffering or some sufferers fail to qualify in the eyes of those with the power to confer victim status.

8. Not all who claim victimhood or self-identify as victims have direct experience of suffering. Rather victimhood may be part of a collective identity.

Being a Victim

Victim identity is often characterised by a focus on the pain, loss or fear to the extent the victim has limited or no ability to see any positive in the situation. Identifying oneself as a victim can lead to a heightened sense of one’s own vulnerability and hyper-vigilance related to the fear of re-victimisation. The victims may be preoccupied with their own situation to the extent that it compromises their ability to take account of the impact of their actions on others.

Victimization can also lead the sufferer to expect or demand certain dues from society, their community, from the perpetrator or those representing the perpetrator. These dues can include acknowledgement of their suffering, justice and the punishment of the perpetrator, compensation for the damage done, apology, in some cases revenge, restitution of losses and support services for the needs that have arisen as a result of their victimization.

Sufferers who have avoided remaining in the psychological and attitudinal state of victimhood face the challenge of identity management.[158] Alice Nocher,[159] who lost her teenage brother and her husband in the Troubles and who survived being shot six times herself, feared that her children will be caught up in cycles of revenge and retaliation. In common with other sufferers, her determination to avoid her family members seeking revenge, coupled with her concern for her children required her to manage her suffering and her identity in particular ways. Alice and other sufferers who succeed in taking this position must engage in the emotional labour in order to manage their responses in order to pre-empt the possibility that their suffering is used in justification of revenge or to fuel hatred or division.

The concept of ‘emotional labour’ was developed by Hochschild[160] to describe how workers are required to manage their feelings according to the demands of their workplace[161]. Hochschild focused on the commodified nature of emotion and the harmful effects of such emotional labour, whilst later studies have explored the gendered nature of emotional labour including the ability of females to reduce violent behaviour through the use of it.[162] When the sufferer manages their emotional responses, withholding the expression of certain emotions in order to regulate the effects on others, including members of their own family, they engage in a form of ‘emotional labour’.

Many of those who have endured such experiences are wary of, or resistant to, acquiring a victim identity, especially when they see the political and military purposes to which victimhood is deployed and how their suffering is appropriated politically. In Butlerian terms, victimhood is performative, and once attained, the maintenance of victim identity, will depend on the ability of the individual to “keep a victim narrative going”[163]

A person’s identity is not to be found in behaviour, nor – important though this is – in the reactions of others, but in the capacity to keep a particular narrative going. The individual’s biography, if she is to maintain regular interaction with others in the day-to-day world, cannot be wholly fictive. It must continually integrate events which occur in the external world, and sort them into the ongoing ‘story’ about the self.[164]

The environment, as well as individual disposition, is a factor in the development and maintenance of victim identity. The existence of campaigns or organizations raising awareness of the situation of sufferers are likely to be important in influencing whether or not victim identity develops and is maintained. Research evidence suggests that those with strong ‘other focus’ where they are concerned for example with avoiding their children becoming bitter or angry, as Alice was, are less likely to adopt a victim identity.[165] Korsgaard et al argue that other-oriented people are better equipped to tolerate personal discomfort. Religious belief may also play a role in self-regulation.[166] The degree to which victims will focus on a quest for justice is influenced by three factors: material self-interest; self-esteem; and moral values.[167]

Collective Victimhood

The label ‘victim’ is used both as a label applicable to those who have directly suffered, and as a characteristic of a national, ethnic or religious group. The status of victimhood can be attributed to an identity group so that the actual sufferers of gun violence or anti-Semitism for example are affectively joined with non-sufferers in their identity group. These members who have not directly suffered are assigned roles as vulnerable potential sufferers by virtue of their common identity, thus they can suffer the fear and denigration that this vulnerability entails and claim co-victimhood. The suffering of the bereaved and injured is quite distinct from this collective identity which, although it includes a sense of victimhood, is based on a shared narrative about the victimization of others in their identity group, as distinct from the direct experience of suffering. Victim identity forms part of the common group identity. Thus, the suffering of some identity group members can take on an iconic significance. Volkan’s[168] concept of ‘chosen traumas’ of a group describe how particular tragic events, such as 9/11 or Bloody Sunday, come to symbolise the vulnerability and suffering of the group and to offer evidence in support of present and future vulnerability, thus justifying prophylactic measures to anticipate and prevent future suffering of the group.

To be a ‘good’ victim group member is to recognise the suffering of some group members, the vulnerability of all – including the self – and to support all protections and counter-measures against those who actually or potentially can attack the group. To point to the harm these counter-measures cause to outsiders or to ascribe any responsibility to one’s identity group for provoking attack on it, or for harming outsiders is to risk accusations of disloyalty or of being a traitor. The danger of a shared victim identity is that it may develop to the point where it precludes any acknowledgement of the group’s ability to cause or responsibility for causing harm to others.

Suffering can also be deployed by political actors who take up the suffering or articulation of grief, pain and loss on the part of the sufferer to further claims on behalf of a political cause, party or faction. For example, candidates in the 2016 Presidential race in the US vied to compete for the African American or Latino vote, by condemning police shootings and expressing support for undocumented immigrants, both issues that cause suffering to individuals and families in these identity groups.

At the collective and societal level, both Loyalist and Republican politics in Northern Ireland have relied on their various senses of victimisation to justify their recourse to armed conflict. Competing claims to victimhood can be used to support and legitimize violence. Conversely Vollhardt[169] argues that a common sense of victimhood can lead to recognition of common interests, whereas Ben-Meir[170] holds that where both sides of a conflict have strong victim identities, the conflict can become intractable. Strong identification as victims can create impermeable boundaries around a group, preventing trusting relationships with outsiders and compromising communication. The fear generated by such ‘siege mentality’ can lead to telling outsiders what they want to hear, compromising communication. In armed groups, including the armed state organisations, bonds within the group may preclude engagement with outsiders, yet group members may ‘go through the motions’ when required to do so. When there is a history of lethal threat, contact with the other is distrusted, even when the threat has ostensibly disappeared.

Victims and Victim Politics in Northern Ireland

The armed conflict in Northern Ireland lasted from 1969 to 1998, cost over 3,700 lives, and injured tens of thousands more. While the conflict was still ongoing, a small number of voluntary organisations offered support to those bereaved and injured. The Cross Group, established by Maura Kiely when she lost her 19-year-old son killed as he attended Mass in Belfast 1976, is a support organization composed of both Roman Catholics and Protestants who have suffered the loss of loved ones as a result of the violence. The name reflects their belief that no one could be asked to bear a heavier cross than to lose a loved one to war. Lifeline was founded after the La Mon House Hotel bombing in 1978 “to bring together the innocent victims of the troubles”. The La Mon bombing killed 12 people, all Protestants, including three married couples, and injured 23. The Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) George Cross Widows’ Association was formed in 1980 to promote “health, leisure and companionship” for RUC Widows. Three years later, the Disabled Police Officers’ Association was established by members of the RUC and RUC Reserve injured as a result of the ‘Troubles’. In 1987, local community worker Mina Wardle set up Shankill Stress and Trauma Group to provide support for those affected by the conflict in the Shankill area. In that same year, Enniskillen Together, aimed fostering reconciliation, was set up in the aftermath of a bombing in Enniskillen that killed ten civilians and one police officer and injured 63. Women Against Violence Empower (WAVE) was founded by a Catholic nun in North Belfast in 1991 to help widows. It later developed a wider brief to provide emotional and practical help on a cross community basis for the bereaved and injured, opened branches across the country and became one of the largest organisations of its kind in Northern Ireland.

From 1994, the year of the IRA ceasefire that began the peace process leading to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, the number of groups serving or representing victims multiplied. The CAIN website lists[171] 11 groups operating before 1994 and 62 who were established after that. This proliferation was in response to the ceasefires and peace agreement and was supported by newly available funding for victims’ groups.

Contest over Victim Status

The emergence of victim politics in these groups is evident as far back as 1978 with the foundation of Lifeline for the ‘innocent’ victims of La Mon, and from 1994, in the naming of victim organizations like in: Families Acting for Innocent Relatives (FAIR); Homes United by Republican Terror (HURT).

At the heart of disputes about victims in Northern Ireland is the concept of the ‘innocent victim’ and arguments about who, then, qualifies as a victim. Both contemporary political cultures of Loyalism and Republicanism are cultures of victimhood[172] where Loyalists see themselves as victims of Republican violence, treasonous anti-unionism and of Popery whereas Republicans see themselves as victims of British Colonialism and Imperialism and the target of Loyalist discrimination and sectarianism. Since victimhood entitles the victim to sympathy, and any attack by the victim is legitimised by the victim’s suffering, there are political advantages to maintaining a victim stance for both Loyalists and Republicans. Victimhood offers an escape from guilt, shame or responsibility. A political dynamic driven by competing and escalating claims to victimhood is conducive to violence and abdication of political responsibility.

In the early stages of the peace process in Northern Ireland, the government’s Victims Liaison Unit at Stormont,[173] which was established in 1998 to “take forward the process of identifying and prioritising a package of measures to help victims, their families and support groups”[174] came under pressure to include prisoners in their remit for victims. Objections from the newly formed victim advocacy groups in the unionist community, some of which contained former soldiers and police officers, prevented the inclusion of prisoners. Their view was, and is, that legitimate victim status cannot be granted to those in any way associated with non-state armed groups or ‘terrorism’. Groups such as ‘Innocent Victims United’ in Northern Ireland have campaigned to change the legal definition of victims and survivors to exclude all except those they describe as “innocent” victims of the Troubles.[175] Nor do those killed or injured by the security forces seem to qualify as innocent in their eyes, and some campaign for an amnesty for members of the security forces involved in past killings.[176] Brewer[177] points out that these distinctions are aimed at making a claim to the primacy of the suffering of one’s own group, thus seeking to delegitimize others’ claims to victimhood, and emanate almost exclusively from Protestant/Unionist/Loyalist communities.[178]

The insistence, largely by unionists, on the ‘innocence’ of victims continues in the light of the official definition of victims, formalized in the Commission for Victims and Survivors Act (Northern Ireland) 2008 which defines the terms “victim and survivor” as “someone who is or has been physically or psychologically injured as a result of or in consequence of a conflict-related incident” and also “someone who provides a substantial amount of care on a regular basis” for someone who has been injured. The definition includes “someone who has been bereaved” and “an individual may be psychologically injured” as a result of “witnessing a conflict-related incident” or “providing medical or other emergency assistance” in a conflict-related incident. Psychological injury is defined in the Act as the result of “Witnessing a conflict-related incident” or “Providing medical or other emergency assistance to an individual” in a conflict related incident.[179] There are no ‘innocence’ qualifications in the Act. The failure of the Assembly to pass legislation on pension provision for injured victims is due to this kind of dispute about who qualifies as a victim, and the desire of some politicians to exclude those with a paramilitary-particularly republican paramilitary-past. Inside the Assembly, before it collapsed at the end of 2016 this failure to legislate was due in no small part to Northern Ireland’s largest political party, The Democratic Unionist Party’s opposition to inclusive definitions of ‘victim’. They argue that:

The current definition of victim, brought in under Direct Rule, is wrong. Terrorists must be excluded from the definition of victim. The DUP have already… introduced a bill to the Assembly to exclude terrorists from the definition of victim. Sadly the SDLP and the Alliance Party joined with Sinn Fein to block the Bill… The DUP stands ready and prepared to bring this Bill forward again. The DUP supports the immediate change in the definition of victim to exclude terrorists and call on the SDLP and Alliance Party to support the Assembly Bill.[180]

The Ulster Unionist Party take a similar line. Ulster Unionist Philip Smith, in response to Sinn Fein leader in Northern Ireland, Michelle O’Neill’s comment that “there is no hierarchy of victims”, said:

39 years ago the IRA bombed the La Mon hotel. I simply cannot accept that the people who were murdered that night as they ate their dinner, and who had no say in their fate, are in any way equal to terrorists who chose to join an illegal organisation and who also chose to set out to try to murder Police officers. No amount of clever phrases or hand-wringing can disguise the fact that the victims at La Mon were entirely innocent, and the dead at Clonoe were terrorists.[181]

Radford and Templer (2008)[182] argue that this definition of ‘innocent victims’ distinguishes between those who did and did not bear arms in the conflict, yet members of the state forces who bore arms are included in the definition of ‘innocent victims’ alongside civilians and non-combatants. “Terrorism”[183] – not the bearing of arms – is the issue, those to be excluded are those regarded as ‘terrorists’,[184] whereas others who bore arms in the conflict may, in fact, be included. The Republican paramilitaries, most especially the IRA, were regarded as ‘terrorists’ by the state, by loyalists and by some sections of the nationalist community, whereas republicans tended not to use the term ‘terrorist’ and Loyalist paramilitary groups have not always been seen as ‘terrorists’ by the state and by sections of the unionist community. The loyalist paramilitary, the Ulster Defense Association, who were responsible for around 430 deaths, mainly of Catholic civilians, in the conflict[185] was not proscribed as a ‘terrorist’ organisation until 1992,[186] just before the peace process began. During the time of their most intense killing of Catholic civilians, the UDA was not regarded by the state as a ‘terrorist’ organization. Thus, their members could be considered victims, according to the DUP’s argument.

Victims-as-Perpetrators-as-Victims

Definitions of victimhood and inclusion and exclusion are played out in an ongoing battle to establish ‘perpetrator’ and ‘victim’ as mutually exclusive categories in spite of evidence to the contrary.[187] The way in which perpetrators have been involved in violent action may render the boundary between victim and perpetrator inextricably complicated.[188] There are many examples both within Northern Ireland and elsewhere of those previously victimized becoming victimizers. Tony Doherty, whose father was killed on Bloody Sunday has written about how the violent loss of his father at the hands of the British Army led him to take up arms.

I’ve always drawn a direct line between my experiences as a young child in losing my father and my decision to join the IRA in 1980. It was the primary cause of me ending up in prison… In my second book, I’ve written about the hatred I had. I remember on the day of my father’s funeral… having distinct thoughts that this is totally wrong, and I would do something about it when I came of age… That thought remained with me throughout my teenage years and young adult life, so I definitely had hatred in my heart for the soldier who killed my father and for the rest of the soldiers who committed the atrocity on Bloody Sunday…That only goes to show that violence begets violence.[189]

In Uganda, Dominic Ongwen was charged with a war crime of which he is also a victim – the abduction of child soldiers.[190] Ongwen was abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) on his way from school aged 10. However, some years later, Ongwen was one of the five LRA commanders the International Criminal Court (ICC) deemed to be responsible for war crimes in northern Uganda.[191] Mahmood Mamdani’s (2014) study[192] of Rwanda points to this same dynamic between victimhood and the perpetration, in the Rwandan case, of genocide.

State armies and returning injured veterans may be regarded as victims of a government’s foreign policy, cannon-fodder damaged by a government’s militarism on the one hand, whilst on the other, they may be seen as perpetrators of war crimes or victimizers of civilian populations.[193]

Armed actors who point to their own credentials as sufferers may avoid to some extent the uncomfortable consequences of being seen as a persecutor. The relationship between the persecutor and the victim can be one of great intimacy, as Karpman[194] has pointed out. His ‘Drama Triangle’ described a triangular relationship between the roles of Victim, Perpetrator and Rescuer, each reinforcing the fixed position of each other and themselves, by acting according to each of the three roles – Persecutor, Rescuer and Victim, these roles being reversible as a result of the dynamic between them.

Conflict resolution and post-conflict work often correctly prioritizes work with armed actors, who, crucially, can deliver a cessation of violence and longterm security. Armed actors must be engaged and ‘humanized’ in order to support their transition to peace-time roles. Yet this engagement and humanization can be – or appear to be – at the expense of justice. Judith Herman,[195] in her 1992 classic work points out that:

In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator’s first line of defence. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure that no one listens. To this end, he marshals an impressive array of arguments, from the most blatant denial to the most sophisticated and elegant rationalization. After every atrocity, one can expect to hear the same predictable apologies: it never happened; the victim lies; the victim exaggerates; the victim brought it upon herself; and in any case, it is time to forget the past and move on. The more powerful the perpetrator, the greater is his prerogative to name and define reality, and the more completely his arguments prevail.[196]

In Northern Ireland, some groups of former members of the armed forces and indeed some former paramilitaries lay claim victim status on a par with civilians. Being accepted as a victim, especially in the post-conflict period, brings certain advantages such as entitlement to sympathy, access to services and support, as well as certain political advantages such as perhaps some understanding or justification for violent acts in retaliation and thus some moral rectitude. In the politics of Northern Ireland, however, the political project also involves moves to disqualify those considered to be ‘other’ – especially those ‘others’ we have harmed – from victim status, in order to avoid the disadvantages of occupying the perpetrator’s role.

Much of the political mobilization within the politics of victimhood in Northern Ireland, and indeed elsewhere, has focused on the issue of who qualifies as a legitimate victim. These conflicts at community level are reflected in the stalemate amongst the politicians which led to the collapse of the Northern Ireland Assembly in January 2017 and the failure to resurrect it during the following year. At the heart of this stalemate was Sinn Féin refusal to support the bill if the DUP insisted on excluding former paramilitaries from the provision and unionist insistence on this exclusion.

The Good Friday Agreement and subsequent Agreements failed to find a method of dealing with unresolved past killings and other human rights violations committed during the Troubles. With Sinn Féin’s in government and their connection with the IRA, the anger of hard-line unionists at having to govern with former ‘terrorists’ is manifest in their continued insistence on the qualification of ‘innocence’ for admission to the status of victim and thereby to entitlements to truth, justice and support. Jim Allister of Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) summarised this position:

I have little expectation that the powers that be – at Stormont or Westminster – will ever permit justice for innocent victims, because of the threat that would pose to the perverse political arrangements whereby the victim makers rule over us…Whatever lip service is paid to justice for victims, there is no quest for such, no appetite to bring the perpetrators to justice, because there is too much vested interest in protecting the disreputable status quo… In fact, innocent victims are an embarrassment to the political establishment, both to those who made them victims and those who brought the victim makers into government.[197]

Truth and Justice

Most of those victims seeking justice or the truth about the death of a loved one or other violent event in the past remain frustrated by the political failure to agree a comprehensive mechanism for truth recovery. The political debates and negotiations on truth recovery in Northern Ireland have generated more heat than light. Yet Bloomfield[198] noted that those who had relatives killed directly by state forces, or by alleged state collusion held a ‘firm view that revelation of the full truth of [these] controversial events was far more important for the victims they represented than any other consideration[199]’. Likewise, Gilligan[200] argues that healing can be better achieved through achieving justice rather than undergoing therapy.

In the light of the lack of agreement about a comprehensive truth recovery mechanism to deal with the past, initiatives aimed at truth recovery have been piecemeal with mixed results. Four initiatives in particular are noteworthy: investigations of the police and police accountability; two ‘think-tanks’ on dealing with the past; ‘cold case’ reviews of deaths in the Troubles; and public inquiries, specifically the Saville Inquiry into Bloody Sunday.

Following the recommendations of Dr Maurice Hayes, appointed in 1995 to review the police complaints system, the office of a police ombudsman was created and Nuala O’Loan was appointed, first as Police Ombudsman designate in 1999 and then in 2000 as Ombudsman under the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 1998. O’Loan investigated the police handling of the Omagh bombing in 1998 and found that the police had prior knowledge of the attack. She questioned the leadership then Chief Constable, Ronnie Flanagan, who then threatened to publicly commit suicide. She found collusion[201] between the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and the Ulster Volunteer Force in the murder of Raymond McCord, Jr., in 1997. In 2010, the volume of ‘legacy’ cases led to the formation of the Police Ombudsman’s Historical Investigations Directorate which accepts referrals from Historical Enquiries Team (HET) of the reformed Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI)’s where there is a concern about possible police criminality or where the police may have been responsible for deaths or serious crimes, in particular between 1968 until 1998.

A 1999 initiative by the Northern Ireland Association for the Resettlement of Offenders (NIACRO) and Victim Support led to the visit of Dr. Alex Boraine of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the publication of a report[202] on dealing with the past. This, in turn led to the formation of the Healing Through Remembering (HTR) and following an extensive public consultation on “how should people remember the events connected with the conflict”. HTR published a report 2002[203] recommending six methods of dealing with the past: a collective storytelling and archiving process; a day of reflection; a network of commemoration and remembering projects; a living memorial museum; acknowledgement leading to the possibility of truth recovery; and a HTR Initiative to take forward each of the methods.

In 2005 the Historical Enquiries Team (HET) was established within the reformed Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) with a budget of £30 million to work with bereaved families to ensure community confidence in the investigation of the 3,269 unsolved murders committed between 1968 and 1998. It soon became clear that the completion of their work would require longer than 2011, and in 2008, the HET reopened files on 124 shooting deaths by British Army soldiers between 1970 and 1973.[204] In 2008, it was announced that the HET would examine all Troubles-related deaths from January 1969 to 1998, totalling 3,269 deaths in 2,516 incidents, or ‘cases’. At that time, the team had a total of 175 staff[205] In 2013 the UK’s Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary found that the HET were reviewing ‘with less rigour in some areas’ cases of deaths caused by members of the security forces.[206] Following police reforms and budget cuts in 2014 the HET was closed down and replaced with a smaller Historical Investigations Unit (HIU), within PSNI.[207]

Some years after the HTR initiative, the government appointed The Consultative Group on the Past, headed by Denis Bradley and Robin Eames to ‘consult across the community on how Northern Ireland society can best approach the legacy of the events of the past’. Their report[208] contained some of the same recommendations as the earlier Healing Through Remembering report and identified two opposite viewpoints on dealing with the past: that the truth should be ‘sought and told’; and ‘the past should be forgotten in the interests of the future[209]’. They proposed the establishment of a Legacy Commission and questioned whether some victim and survivors’ groups were ‘compounding the division and suspicions[210]’. There was a strong reaction to their proposal for £12,000 payments to the ‘nearest relative of someone who died as a result of the conflict in and about Northern Ireland[211] and by December 2017, no legacy institutions had been established even though political agreement between the parties had been reached, but the Assembly had collapsed in January 2017.

Following a campaign by bereaved relatives the Bloody Sunday or Saville Inquiry was established in 1998 into the deaths of 14 anti-internment protesters at the hands of the Paratroop Regiment in 1972. It published its report on 15 June 2010. The findings of the Inquiry, chaired by Lord Saville of Newdigate, led to a public statement by British Prime Minister David Cameron in which he acknowledged that the paratroopers had fired the first shot, had fired on fleeing unarmed civilians, had shot and killed one man who was already wounded. Cameron apologised to the families on behalf of the British Government but concluded that:

… it is right to use, as far as is possible, the Historical Enquiries Team to deal with the problems of the past and to avoid having more open-ended, highly costly inquiries, but of course we should look at each case on its merits.[212]

British Army sources alleged that the Inquiry was one-sided,[213] Ulster Unionist Party leader Sir Reg Empey questioned the benefit of reliving the “darkest years” of Northern Ireland’s history, contrasting the £190m Saville Inquiry into 14 deaths with the absence of inquiries into the deaths at the hands of paramilitary groups[214] and Henry Patterson suggested that the Saville report created an unjust hierarchy in which victims of Bloody Sunday were taken more seriously than the more numerous victims of IRA violence.[215]

Victims and Public Policy in Northern Ireland

Prior to the signing of the Agreement in 1998, Secretary of State Mo Mowlam appointed Sir Kenneth Bloomfield as the first Victims’ Commissioner his 1998 report was accompanied by an announcement of a £5m down payment for work with those bereaved and injured in the Troubles. Adam Ingram was appointed as Minister for Victims and the Irish government appointed former Tanáiste (Deputy Prime Minister) John Wilson to review services to those affected by the Troubles who were living in the Republic of Ireland and a Victims’ Commission was established in Dublin.

In June 1998, the Victims Liaison Unit implemented enacted a temporary ‘initial support package’ of finance to establish a trauma unit for young people affected by the Troubles, and supporting local victims’ groups. Later that year a £250k Educational Bursary Scheme was established to provide educational assistance to those who had lost a parent in the Troubles, a Memorial Fund with matching funding of £1m and a review of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme that decided financial compensation to victims. A Touchstone Group was established to advise the government on victim issues, although they did not take up their seats. As mentioned above, these moves were not without controversy and pressure on government to, for example, include prisoners in their remit, or to only include ‘innocent’ victims.

In 2002 the government strategy for victims and survivors ‘Reshape, Rebuild, Achieve’,[216] saw local Health Boards appointing Trauma Advisory Panels to improve planning and co-ordination across the statutory sector. The strategy initiated a funding framework for the voluntary groups and the more permanent Northern Ireland Memorial Fund – “[a]n independent charity established in 1998 by the NIO to provide assistance to individuals in a wide range of areas… such as small grants, education and training, pain relief, amputee and wheelchair assessment and respite breaks”.

In October 2005, Bertha McDougall,[217] the widow of a Royal Ulster Constabulary Reservist was appointed as Interim Victims’ Commissioner, marking the beginning of a controversial period of history for this role. Mrs. McDougall’s was the first of several appointments to be challenged in the courts on the grounds of fairness and lack of due process; the post of Interim Victims’ Commissioner had not been advertised. The Victims and Survivors (Northern Ireland) Order 2006[218] (later amended by the Commission for Victims and Survivors Act (Northern Ireland) 2008)[219] was passed which, inter alia, provided for the creation of the role of Commissioner for Victims and Survivors for Northern Ireland and set out the official definition of ‘victim’ in the context of Northern Ireland.

Recruitment for a single post for a Victims’ Commissioner involved a long delay, and in January 2008, the appointment of not one but four commissioners was announced.[220] Bertha McDougall was one of the four (two men, two women, two Catholics and two Protestants) Commissioners.

Following the 2008 legislation, the Commission for Victims and Survivors was established as a Non-Departmental Public Body (NDPB) of The Northern Ireland Executive. A Victims and Survivors Forum broadly representative of victims and survivors came into being in 2012 for consultation and discussion with victims and survivors.

Conclusion

The suffering due to the violence of the past in Northern Ireland is not confined to the past, and is memorialized in the form of monuments to deaths, murals, ceremonies and marches located across Northern Ireland and beyond. The focus on this suffering, together with the emergence of a population regarded and identifying as victims has become a significant feature of the politics and policies of the post Agreement period. As we have seen, the identification of the population of ‘proper’ victims is a focus of conflict, as been the quest for truth and justice, and so too are the practices of memorialization[221] where vandalism and destruction of memorials has, in some places, become a ‘war by other means’, a further arena where past disputes and old enmities are re-enacted.

Efforts moving beyond these contests to date too often meet the same fate as the six-year-long promotion of an inclusive Day of Reflection and Reconciliation, an attempt at collective memorialisation by Healing Through Remembering. A 2011 evaluation of the effectiveness of the Day of Reflection concluded that “…the Day of Reflection has been welcomed and has had beneficial effects… However, it is much more difficult to identify broader outcomes, because the Day’s reach is not wide enough to claim societal impacts.”[222] Much of the research, policy and practice efforts made by and on behalf of victims in Northern Ireland could be similarly evaluated. The remedial actions and attempts to bridge the divides in the society in Northern Ireland have some distance to go before they can rival or mitigate the impact of the suffering and losses of the past.

Anna Cento Bull

Reconciliation through Agonistic Engagement? Victims and Former Perpetrators in Dialogue in Italy Several Decades after Terrorism

Abstract: From the late 1960s to the early 1980s Italy suffered a prolonged period of political violence and ideologically inspired terrorist acts, which caused deep social wounds and led to a sharply divided memory. Numerous memoirs published since the end of the conflict by both former terrorists and victims aggravated the divide, until recently. This paper analyses some of the memoirs written by the victims and relatives of the victims and above all a recent dialogue between former perpetrators and victims through the lenses of different modes of remembering. The paper explores the motivations and stances of the victims and relatives of victims who took part in this dialogue and argues that they partake of both a cosmopolitan and an agonistic approach to memory and reconciliation. The latter requires former enemies to confront each other as ‘adversarial citizens” with their divided memories and perspectives in an open-ended manner.

What makes victims as well as relatives of victims of terrorism engage in dialogue with former terrorists several decades after the end of the violence? Or, to repeat a question put forward by the editors of this volume: “How would it affect our picture of the history of terrorism […] if the contribution of survivors was regarded as a central feature in the social process of coming to terms with a conflict conducted with terrorist means?” This chapter addresses these questions with reference to the Italian case. As the author of this chapter has argued elsewhere, Italy has often been considered a role model for its pioneering “reward” legislation which accelerated the end of the violence and the reintegration of the terrorists into society.[223] However, as far as the memory of terrorism is concerned, the country continues to remain sharply divided at both the social and political levels.[224]

Reconciliation has not yet been achieved, either through retributive or restorative justice. While several judicial trials have failed to bring about justice in the eyes of the victims, repeated attempts at healing the wounds made by various actors, including the Catholic Church, the media, such as cinema and television, and, lately, the political class, have also fallen short of aspirations. As Hajek argued, “the wound remains open and continues to resurface in public debates”.[225] In recent years, however, a number of victims have opted to engage in a protracted and collected process of dialogue with the perpetrators, facilitated by three mediators. Lasting from 2009 to 2014, this dialogue has resulted in a collected volume, entitled Il libro dell’incontro,[226] which records the motivations, reactions and perspectives of all participants to the dialogue. In the volume (and the ensuing public debates), the participating victims reassert their agency and reclaim the process of “reconciliation” on their own terms, which makes their stances especially worthy of analysis.

The chapter is structured as follows. The first section provides an overview of political terrorism in Italy and the reasons why reconciliation has proved so difficult to achieve, while the divisive legacy of the violence has been so long-lasting. The second section discusses different understandings of, and paths to, reconciliation and the role memory plays in this process. The last section explores the contrasting position of the victims in relation to justice, truth and reconciliation and analyses the reasons why some victims opted to engage in a sustained dialogue with former terrorists, which recently culminated in the publication of the collected volume entitled Il libro dell’incontro. The conclusion discusses the wider significance of victims engaging in a dialogue several decades after the end of terrorism.

Italy: A Case of Non-Reconciliation after Terrorism

Several decades have gone by since terrorism came to an end in Italy, yet the legacy of the political violence which raged in the country from 1969 to the early 1980s has proved to be both long-lasting and all-encompassing, affecting politics, society and culture. Many factors have contributed to this inability to reach closure and achieve reconciliation. The complex nature of the violence, ranging from bombing attacks on innocent civilians to an “armed struggle” against the state carried out by extreme-left and right groups, and the murky political context in which it took place, dominated by the Cold War and the fear of Communism, left behind many ambiguities, unanswered questions and half-disclosed truths.

This is especially the case with right-wing terrorism, whose bombing attacks were orchestrated in connivance with sectors of the state, as they were part of a wider “Strategy of Tension”.[227] Successive trials, lasting well into the 2000s, have disclosed that the bomb which exploded in Milan on 12 December 1969, causing the death of 17 people and leaving another 88 injured, and the one that detonated in Brescia on 28 May 1974, killing 8 people and injuring 103, were designed to place the blame on leftist groups. This type of ‘false flag’ terrorism aimed at justifying a clampdown on civil and democratic liberties. Indeed, in the early 1970s the threat of a right-wing “coup d’état” was considered by many a serious and plausible one.

While left-wing terrorism followed a more linear trajectory, the kidnapping in March 1978 of Christian Democratic statesman Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades left a trail of unresolved issues and recriminations, amid suspicions that his death had suited many opponents of the policy of rapprochment with the Communist Party Moro had been pursuing. The Moro episode is still viewed by many as shrouded in mystery and the question of who was responsible for his death (apart from the Red Brigades) is considered an open one, in light of the dubious role of the Secret Services, the P2 Masonic Lodge, the Mafia, as well as foreign intelligence services.[228]

The ambiguous role of the state during the ‘years of lead’ has left a legacy of mistrust in the political class and institutions. As for the victims and survivors of the bombing massacres, they are still aggrieved for what they see as a lack of justice, since successive trials have largely failed to bring the culprits to justice. The ways in which terrorism ended has also been a contributing factor in the heavy legacy left behind by the violence. From the beginning of the 1980s, an end to the violence was gradually brought about by a two-fold strategy carried out by the state: through repressive and intelligence measures and, later, through reward legislation introduced as a supplement to the repressive strategy. This reward legislation envisaged a differential treatment of defendants, according to whether they became “pentiti”, and disclosed information to the police, opted to “dissociate” from violence, or remained faithful to their beliefs (“irriducibili”). Many prisoners, who wanted to rebuild their lives outside of prison, were thus able to benefit from lenient sentences and to re-enter society. This way of putting an end to violence focused on reintegrating the perpetrators, while no proper reparation process was put in place for the victims and their relatives. In general, the point of view of the survivors and relatives of the victims was marginalised, which caused them to undergo a process of re-victimisation.

Admittedly, the Catholic Church played an important role in promoting reparative encounters between perpetrators and victims.[229] However, its main preoccupation at the time was to put an end to the conflict and promote reconciliation through repentance on the part of the perpetrators and forgiveness on the part of the victims, something which many of the latter were not prepared to do. An early attempt to foster reconciliation took place also via the media, when a documentary series by Sergio Zavoli, entitled La notte della Repubblica, was broadcast by RAI2 between 1989 and 1990. In the programme, as Hajek argues, “Reconciliation is sought, primarily, through the juxtaposition of personal accounts by a variety of eyewitnesses, ranging from former right-wing stragisti to left-wing terrorists, pentiti, and political representatives”.[230] As Andreasen and Cecchini have pointed out, the programme, while well-intentioned, was marked by a heavy imbalance in terms of how the perpetrators and the victims were represented, with a huge number of interviews with the former and only one interview with a victim.[231] In the 1980s and in the following decade, many former terrorists were able to achieve a high degree of notoriety by publishing their memoirs, often proudly reasserting their justifications for taking up arms. By contrast, the few memoirs written by victims, such as Colpo alla nuca by Sergio Lenci,[232] were unable to divert attention to their plight and constituted an exception. In general, the victims kept silent, feeling as if they had no voice or no sympathetic audiences.

Only much later, with the turn of the millennium, a “turn to the victim” occurred.[233] First and most importantly, a number of memoirs written by the children of the victims struck a chord with the public and created an aura of sympathy for their pain and suffering. This was especially the case with the collected volume I silenzi degli innocenti, which comprised several testimonies by victims of both left and right terrorism.[234] The following year, Mario Calabresi, the son of Luigi, a police commissar killed by a left commando in 1972 in revenge for the “suicide” of anarchist Giuseppe Pinelli while in police custody in Milan under suspicion of planting the bomb in Piazza Fontana, published a book that became a bestseller.[235] Secondly, the political class started to pay attention to the victims, with both reparative and commemorative measures. Thus in May 2007 Parliament approved a Law which established that 9 May, the day when Aldo Moro was found dead in Rome, was to be dedicated to remembering the victims of terrorism and the bombing massacres. Since then, the President of the Republic, incarnated first by Giorgio Napolitano and later by Sergio Mattarella, has officially presided over a solemn ceremony of commemoration, while acknowledging the continuing need to obtain truth and transparency in relation to the troubling past. At the 2009 ceremony, President Napolitano welcomed the widow of Commissar Luigi Calabresi, Gemma, and the widow of anarchist Giuseppe Pinelli, Licia, in a highly poignant encounter which for many represented a gesture of reconciliation between two opposing sides and two contrasting versions of the truth. Significantly, it could also be interpreted as a stance by two prominent victims not to allow their plight to be used in the service of biased and partisan reconstructions.[236]

Yet even these important developments did not mark closure with the violent past. At the political level, in fact, despite the end of the Cold War and the fall of the First Republic, Italy’s ideological divisions and enmities had resurfaced under a new guise. On the one hand, Berlusconi created a new party and mobilised his supporters under the banner of anti-Communism, even though the Communist Party had officially transformed itself into a social-democratic party. On the other hand, those who opposed Berlusconi accused him of reproducing the old corrupt political system and of aspiring to establish authoritarian rule. As a result, the memory of terrorism remained bitterly divided, with each side accusing the other of having connived with the terrorists for subversive and anti-democratic ends.[237] In this climate, many victims of terrorism were caught in the crossfire, with their grievances being used as a lever in order to attack political opponents.[238] At the cultural level, after years in which cinematic representations seemed to foster reconciliation,[239] a number of films and TV programmes were deemed to reflect “a cultural division that we may, if we wish, speak of as a kind of symbolic civil war”.[240]

In this context, tensions among the victims of terrorism as regards their stances on truth, justice, memory and reconciliation came to the fore and revealed a deep fracture, demonstrating that many victims still rejected reconciliation outright. In the same years, however, other victims embarked on a very different path, opting to engage in dialogue with former terrorists. Before discussing the victims’ stances and perspectives, the next section addresses the controversial concept of, and issues around, reconciliation, focusing especially on the role of memory.

Reconciliation after a Violent Conflict: The Role of Memory

Reconciliation processes are often controversial and fraught with tensions. Indeed, as Rosoux argued, “there is no consensus in the literature and among practitioners about the conditions necessary for reconciliation. For some, the core element of reconciliation is trust. For others, the key element is truth. Yet, others’ voices claim that the essence of reconciliation is a psychological process of transformation leading ultimately to an identity change”.[241] Those who focus primarily on retributive justice believe that for reconciliation to occur the rule of law must be applied so that justice is achieved through a judicial process. Those who favour reconciliation through “restorative justice” advocate healing through a “victim-oriented process”. This consists of reparations and apologies to the victims on the part of the perpetrators, rehabilitation of offenders, societal empathy for the victims, practices of commemoration and remembrance.[242] There is also little agreement concerning the end goal of reconciliation. According to Rosoux, this varies from achieving simple coexistence between former enemies, to reaching a shared condition of mutual respect as fellow citizens, to establishing societal “harmony”.[243]

The role of memory is also controversial. While some continue to argue that forgetting the difficult past represents the best way to achieve reconciliation,[244] nowadays the prevailing view is that the past must be confronted and “worked through”. However, what should be remembered is also contested. According to Brewer, reconciliation requires “recasting social memory as a peace strategy”. This means that what should be remembered is the suffering on all sides in order to promote a “unity of victimhood as an experience across the divide”. From this perspective, “sites of remembrance” can play an important role in bringing all victims together.[245] There is also the issue of whether reconciliation should strive to establish a “shared narrative of the past” or whether competing and contrasting representations should be able to coexist. As Manning stated, there is an underlying tension in the goals of reconciliation: “repairing social fabrics requires denouncing what ruptured them and the contrition of perpetrators; the liberal goals of peace and reconciliation foreground the importance of free speech and a public sphere in which competing narratives of the past coexist”.[246]

This in turn raises the wider issue of the relationship between reconciliation and democracy. As Gibson argues:

To the extent that reconciliation generates pressures toward consensus, pressures that delegitimize difference and differing points-of-view, then reconciliation does not serve democracy. In a democracy, people do not have to agree with one another; they do not even have to respect the views of others. Instead, they must agree to disagree, they must accept a set of institutional and cultural norms that allow all competitors to enter the marketplace of ideas.[247]

Finally, how the past is to be remembered is also a matter of controversy. Cento Bull and Hansen have distinguished between three main modes of remembering.[248] The antagonistic mode, often found in nationalistic or traditional political discourse, tends to be celebratory, glorifying or nostalgic. Victims and perpetrators are portrayed and remembered in binary and mutually exclusive terms. The cosmopolitan mode is based on the mutual recognition of the histories and memory of the “Other”’, as it emphasises the human suffering of past atrocities and human rights violations in a reflective manner.[249] In doing so, however, this mode de-politicises and de-contextualises the past conflict, representing “good” and “evil” in moral and abstract terms, in many cases as an allusion to the ultimate evil of the Holocaust. Cosmopolitan memory therefore puts the emphasis on an ethical approach to memory as opposed to a politicised one. The agonistic mode of remembrance, by contrast, tends to avoid moral categories and addresses the underlying social and political questions of the unsettling past in a self-reflective and dialogic manner. In this mode, a multitude of perspectives is simultaneously taken into account and reflected upon, ranging from victims to perpetrators but also encompassing bystanders, spies and traitors.[250]

Cento Bull and Hansen’s concept of agonistic memory draws on Chantal Mouffe’s theory of agonistic democracy which argues that conflict is constitutive of democracy.[251] A process of reconciliation inspired by agonism should therefore aim at transforming former enemies into adversaries as opposed to attempting to achieve harmony and consensus. Moving along these lines, Maddison and Diprose explicitly advocate that former enemies engage in “agonistic dialogue”. As they put it, “Key to this form of dialogue is proactively foregrounding the historical memory of violence, and allowing for the varied and multiple narratives and experiences of both individuals and groups (as well as the varied experiences of individuals within groups) to be expressed”.[252] This is not to say that consensus may not emerge from such encounters. However, ”While dialogue may result in partially shared understandings and consensus on conflict narratives, this is not the objective. Agonistic dialogue engages conflict dynamics rather than repressing such dynamics and their relational aspects”.[253]

In short, remembering and the “turn to the victims” have taken on different meanings:

1. Remembering as part of a search for justice for the victims and punishment to the perpetrators

2. Remembering as a self-reflective ethical process based on the suffering of the victims on all sides, devoid of the historical context and depoliticised

3. Remembering as a self-reflective process that explores the unsettling past with its darker sides and socio-political struggles without aiming at a shared narrative

While the first type of remembering does not envisage any dialogue between victims and perpetrators, the other two types often promote rapprochement and dialogue, but the nature of the dialogue would be very different. In the Italian case, how have the victims positioned themselves vis-à-vis memory and dialogue? Why have some of them embarked on a process of working through the difficult past in dialogue with the perpetrators? The next section addresses these questions.

The Victims’ Stances

A number of victims and relatives of victims of terrorism reject any possibility of dialogue with former terrorists and any form of reconciliation. Indeed, they continue to feel aggrieved for what they see as a lack of justice through the judicial process. Victims of left terrorism often berate the legislation that introduced lenient sentences for “pentiti” and “dissociati”, as it allowed many culprits to go free after relatively few years of incarceration. As for the bombing attacks, very few culprits have been brought to justice. Some of these victims have expressed their thoughts forcibly through their published memoirs and in public interviews. From this “antagonistic” perspective, the terrorists were criminals who killed without mercy and who deserve no pity or understanding. Thus Andrea Casalegno, son of a journalist assassinated by the Red Brigades on 16 November 1977, in a book published in 2008 portrays the former terrorists as devoid of any humanity, who do not deserve to be reintegrated into society or rehabilitated.[254] In a very bitter memoir published in 2012, Massimo Coco, son of a judge killed by the Red Brigades in 1976, openly condemns the lenient legislation approved by the state in the 1980s and proudly reaffirms his hatred for the perpetrators.[255] Indeed, he goes further in his condemnation, as he accuses those children of the victims who engage in dialogue with the former terrorists of “betraying” their own side out of careerism rather than out of conviction. As he clarified in an interview, “I do not differentiate between red or black terrorism, mafia or common criminality. I do not believe in ideal justifications [for violence]: the law was broken and this is a matter of interest to the judiciary”.[256] The uncompromising stances of these victims are reinforced by the position adopted by the largest victims’ association in Italy, Aiviter, which was founded in 1985 by Maurizio Puddu, a Christian Democratic politician wounded by the Red Brigades in 1977. In 2015, to mark 30 years since its foundation, Aiviter produced a document in which it reassessed its role in promoting legislative and welfare initiatives in favour of the victims, and fostering a memory of the past centred around the experiences of the victims. While truth and justice appear prominently in the document, there is no mention of any possible reconciliation. Indeed the victims are defined in the document as “entrepreneurs of public memory”, whose narratives are in stark contrast and opposition to the memories of the former terrorists.[257]

These recent stances of the survivors and relatives of the victims appear to reinforce the argument, propounded by Caviglia and Cecchini in 2009, that the narratives and reconstructions of the past put forward by perpetrators and victims represent “a plurality of voices without dialogue”, and that “public discourse on terrorism, present or past, is in Italy plagued by monovocality”.

However, other victims have opted to remember in ways which open up to the “enemy side” and on this ground have embarked on instances of dialogue with former terrorists. Some encounters across the divide have taken place on an individual basis, but from 2009 to 2014 a sustained dialogue was carried out at group level, in an unprecedented attempt to engage in a collective form of restorative justice. The dialogue involved former left terrorists who had undergone a process of reflection and self-reflection concerning the violent past, victims and relatives of victims of both left and right terrorism, a group of guarantors drawn from judicial, cultural and media institutions, as well as a group of ‘third party witnesses’ representative of society at large and of the young generation in particular. The encounters were mediated by three experts, Guido Bertagna, a Catholic priest, Adolfo Ceretti, a criminologist and expert on reparative justice, and Claudia Mazzucato, an expert on penal law and mediation. This process culminated in the publication of a collected volume entitled Il libro dell’incontro,[258] in 2015, and in a series of public debates involving various participants to the dialogue which have taken place in schools, cultural institutes and religious venues.

Why have some victims engaged in this extended dialogue and decided to make it public? What did they hope to achieve through participating in a form of restorative justice? How do they view themselves and their role in society? How do they remember the past? As we shall now see, the positions adopted by the victims who took part in the encounters with former terrorists partake of both cosmopolitan and agonistic memory. However, their view of reconciliation seems to favour an agonistic understanding of society and democracy.

The cosmopolitan take on the dialogue has been best put forward by Agnese Moro, daughter of Aldo Moro, the Christian Democratic statesman kidnapped and assassinated by the Red Brigades in 1978. She met first privately and later in public with one of her father’s kidnappers, Franco Bonisoli. She then decided to take part in the group encounters, in the conviction that the judicial process had run its course but had left behind persisting feelings of pain and desperation. As she stated in 2016 in a public debate following the publication of Il libro dell’incontro, “penal justice does not cure the evil that was perpetrated […] everything freezes and remains stuck in that moment”.[259] Reparative justice can help unfreeze this static position, allowing the victims to move on. This happens in two ways. On the one hand, the victim experiences at first hand a profound sense of pain and regret on the part of the perpetrators, and understands that pain and suffering are comparable across the divide. This creates a strong link between victims and perpetrators and makes the victims feel less isolated. Agnese Moro recalls that she “learnt about the pain of the others, those who caused it […] also the pain of the innocents, children of victims and perpetrators”. On the other hand, the victim is able to recognise the humanity of the perpetrators and no longer sees them as monsters. As Agnese Moro stated, “I look at them and do not see the monsters that have populated so many years of my life, I see faces weighed by various emotions that I can understand”.[260] Similar sentiments were expressed by Giovanni Ricci, son of Aldo Moro’s bodyguards killed during his kidnapping, who also took part in the group dialogue.[261]

Agnese Moro’s position recalls Brewer’s conceptualisation of reconciliation as a de-contextualised and de-politicised process. However, as various victims recall, during the dialogue a full range of emotions and passions were expressed, which went beyond feelings of pain, suffering and compassion as advocated by Brewer. As Giorgio Bazzega, son of a policeman killed by the Red Brigades, stated, during the encounters the former terrorists “let me vomit upon them all my hatred and my pain taking it on and helping me elaborate it, indeed for a long time they acted as a ‘punching ball’”.[262] In the book Il libro dell’incontro, the third party witnesses recall that they had listened to “words of pain and anger, silences, incomprehension”. Hence hatred and anger seem to be feelings shared by most victims, including those who took part in the dialogue. The inclusion of a full range of passions into the dialogue is in line with Mouffe’s theory of agonistic democracy and Maddison’s conceptualisation of agonistic dialogue. Mouffe has argued that: “the prime task of democratic politics is not to eliminate passions or to relegate them to the private sphere in order to establish a rational consensus in the public sphere. Rather, it is to ‘tame’ those passions by mobilizing them towards democratic designs”.[263]

The concept of democracy is a very important one in understanding the position of some of the victims in relation to adopting a dialoguing position. Manlio Milani, who lost his wife in the 1974 Brescia bombing and is President of the local House of Memory - formerly the association of the victims of the Brescia massacre -, epitomises the stance of those survivors and relatives who consider themselves citizens as much as victims. As Milani explicitly stated, “The victim […] must not lose the dimension of being a citizen”.[264] In his view, the Brescia massacre concerns Italian society as a whole and not just the victims themselves. Similarly, reparative justice concerns everyone. This stance appears to stem from two main considerations. The first is that many victims of terrorism were targeted precisely because they were genuine and progressive democrats rather than conservative or reactionary politicians or civil servants. Survivors and relatives of the victims should therefore best pay homage to their victimhood by upholding democratic values. The second is that they conceive truth and justice as having a wider transformative meaning for the benefit of democracy and not just for their own individual benefit. In this context, as argued by Smyth in relation to Northern Ireland (2007, p. 177), truth recovery should not be seen as a process that satisfies primarily victims’ demands and needs. Rather, it should be considered “a service performed by victims for the benefit of the broader society, often at some emotional costs to themselves”.[265]

Memory is also conceived in a broader sense than simply “the memory of the victims”. While welcoming the recent “turn to the victims”, Milani rejects the idea that the memory of the victims should replace that of the perpetrators. As Milani put it, “Memory is encompassing and everyone should have space to participate but in this space there should be a dialogue so that memory becomes public and acknowledged, albeit not shared”.[266] The difference with those victims who refuse to dialogise with the former terrorists revolves around how the latter are conceptualised. From an antagonistic perspective, the former terrorists are considered an irreconcilable enemy of the victims, whose voices should be silenced. From an agonistic perspective, it is possible to establish an adversarial confrontation with the former terrorists. On the other hand, an encompassing memory should not be confused with a shared memory. All the victims participating in the dialogue make it clear that their memories are irredeemably different from those of the former terrorists. Indeed from this perspective some victims openly rejected the term reconciliation in favor of the less charged term “recomposition”. This was acknowledged by the mediators to the dialogue. As Bertagna clarified in a public debate, the mediators initially proposed a draft document, which referred to the encounter as “a space of shared memory”. However, they soon realised that what was possible was achieving “a shared space for different and irreconcilable stories and memories”.[267] Again, this is reminiscent of an agonistic stance, since the objective of agonistic dialogue is not to achieve a consensus on conflict narratives. Rather, as we saw above, Maddison argues that agonistic dialogue should enable the free expression of “the varied and multiple narratives and experiences of both individuals and groups”.

Manlio Milani made a further important point in accounting for his participation in the dialogue. He explained that he wanted to understand why the terrorists opted for violence to change society whereas he, who used to be a member of the Italian Communist Party animated by a strong desire for radical social change, refused to embark upon that course. As he stated in interview,

The dialogue is difficult because many of them continue to justify their choices, hence they say, we are not criminals, we carried out a series of actions because we believed in certain ideas (which is true by the way). Hence, there must be a recognition that we acted in a specific historical context. However, I say to them: you have to explain to me why I, who lived in exactly the same period, experienced the same events, did not opt for the armed struggle while you did. And then they talk about ideology, which I only believe up to a point, in reality the issue which they have still not defined is the issue of the relationship with the state and of recognising themselves in the [democratic] state as such.[268]

In the above mentioned public debate, Milani stated that participating in the recent dialogue reinforced his own belief in the positive value of democratic institutions, a value that has to be upheld even when those institutions are used for undemocratic ends. In my long-standing research on Italian terrorism, I found that Milani’s position was shared by other victims of the bombing attacks. As they were confronted by a growing realisation that sectors of the Italian state connived with the terrorists in the Strategy of Tension, they became even more determined to stand up for democratic values and institutions. The decision by Milani and others to confront the former terrorists on this issue strongly recalls Mouffe’s concept of agonism. The transformation of former enemies into adversaries in fact requires, according to Mouffe, “a shared acceptance of ethico-political principles of liberal democracy”.[269] This means accepting that even irreconcilable differences should not be resolved through the overthrowing of liberal institutions and the physical elimination of opponents.

A contrasting position, however, was adopted by Paolo Bolognesi, President of the Association of the Victims of the Bologna bombing massacre. As he stated, “there is no reparation without truth”, and in his view the former terrorists have not told what they know about the bombing campaign or indeed about the assassination of Aldo Moro. There cannot be any dialogue unless the former terrorists first reveal everything they know.[270]

It is interesting to consider also the position of those victims who, while adopting a dialoguing position, do not think that the dialogue should be restricted to victims and perpetrators. Thus Luca Tarantelli, son of an economist killed by the Red Brigades in 1985, explained during a public debate on Il libro dell’incontro that he started to participate in the group dialogue with the former terrorists but later decided that he did not agree with this particular form of restorative justice as far as Italian terrorism was concerned and gradually withdrew from the process. In his view, a dialogic process should involve many more participants from a variety of spheres than just victims and perpetrators.[271] A similar position was expressed by Benedetta Tobagi, who explicitly stated that she believed a reconciliation process had to involve “a much broader discourse than a relationship between victims and former terrorists, taking the form of a process of elaboration of the recent historical events, to allow us to regain a renewed sense of citizenship”.[272] Nevertheless, there does not seem to be a fundamental fracture between these stances and those of the victims who took part in the dialogue, given that many of the latter also favour a broader process of societal dialogue and view the encounter with former terrorists as but one step in this direction, as opposed to a self-contained practice.[273]

Conclusion

In light of the preceding discussion, it is now possible to attempt to address an important question raised by the editors of this volume. They ask what it would mean and what would change “if the contribution of survivors was regarded as a central feature in the social process of coming to terms with a conflict conducted with terrorist means?” It is possible to argue, in fact, that in the Italian case the public appearance of numerous memoirs written by survivors and relatives of victims of terrorism since 2000 and the process of dialogue culminating in the publication of Il libro dell’incontro have indeed moved the victims centre stage. So how is terrorism viewed through their lenses? Why have some of them embarked in a dialogue with former terrorists so many decades after the bloody events that affected them so deeply? What role do they play in the social process of coming to terms with terrorism?

To start with, we have to acknowledge that we cannot refer to “the victims” as a collective entity. Some victims, as we saw, view terrorism as a criminal phenomenon, which should not be “ennobled” with recourse to political, ideological or indeed utopian values and goals. From this perspective, they reject the idea of, and indeed the need for, a social process based upon “reconciling” or “coming to terms” with the violent past. The judicial process alone should deal with past crimes of a terrorist nature and ensure that the culprits are brought to justice. The Italian state was wrong to intervene politically in order to legislate for lenient sentences, a behaviour that in their eyes remains unpardonable. As for truth, it should be pursued and achieved through the Courts. Paradoxically, however, there are some points of contact between the stance taken by these victims and the position of the state. In fact, even though these victims view terrorism as a criminal phenomenon, while the state recognised its socio-political nature in the ways it intervened to bring it to an end, in both cases we find a great reluctance, if not outright refusal, to promote and engage in a wide societal process of dialogue, debate and, arguably, reconciliation.

By contrast, those victims who adopted a dialogic standpoint in their memoirs and later took part in a sustained dialogue with former terrorists, place society, as well as individuals, at the centre of their understanding of what it means to “come to terms” with the past. At the individual level, encountering ‘the other’ opens up the possibility of unfreezing and re-humanising fixed and rigid identities which stand in relation of clear-cut contraposition (victims vs. perpetrators) without erasing persisting and profound differences. At the societal level, encountering ‘the other’ allows different and even contrasting narratives of the past openly to confront each other. More importantly, it also allows the emergence of an encompassing identity of (adversarial) citizens, above and beyond the other existing identities, which helps address the great fracture in Italian society caused by terrorism. This transformation of former enemies into adversaries who can legitimately share the same politico-institutional space and work through their divergent narratives of the past appears to stem from an acknowledgement of the persistently antagonistic and acrimonious nature of the memory of terrorism in Italy and it also seems to recall the concept of agonistic memory.

Finally, each position presents a different understanding of democracy and the democratic state. Those who advocate the rule of law and of the judiciary see the terrorists and terrorism as having broken the laws of the democratic state and therefore deserving appropriate punishment meted out by the Courts. They do not question the nature of the democratic state and its institutions nor do they see their role as that of defenders and upholders of those same institutions. Those who, regardless of whether they took part in the dialogue culminating in Il libro dell’incontro, advocate the need for confrontation, debate and exchanges, want to uphold the democratic state and institutions while simultaneously reclaiming the right to probe into their past and present flaws, distortions and manipulations. In this broader meaning, the truth cannot emerge purely from the judicial process alone, but requires a wider societal process of confronting Italy’s murky terrorist past, which should include representatives of the state and societal organisations.

Florian Jessensky and Martin Rupps

“May the burden of your ordeal gradually fade from memory”: Dealings with former Hostages of the Hijacked Lufthansa Aircraft ‘Landshut’

Abstract: At the height of the “German Autumn” four Palestinians hijacked the Lufthansa aircraft ‘Landshut.’ The essay looks at the behavior patterns of first the decision-makers at Lufthansa, second the federal government, and third public institutions when dealing with the passengers directly affected by the hijacking. The rescued hostages’ treatment by fourth the media and fifth medical-scientific research are then discussed. The essay takes the view that as victims of a highly-politicized violent crime, the ‘Landshut’ hostages occupied a special position. As ‘political victims’ they were able to open doors that helped sensitize society to the needs of victims of violent crime. Even so, interactions with them in all of the contexts investigated here can be described as at very least ambivalent.

A Red Bicycle From the Chancellor?

On October 13, 1977 four Palestinians - members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) - took over the Lufthansa aircraft ‘Landshut’ en route from Palma de Mallorca to Frankfurt. Their goal was to force the release of jailed leaders of the radical leftist West German terrorist RAF. RAF members had already been holding Employer Association president Hanns Martin Schleyer for about a month, and they, too, demanded the release of their comrades. The ‘Landshut’ hijacking was intended to exert additional pressure on the federal government. It marked the height of the so-called ‘German Autumn.’[274] The plane’s erratic five-day flight took it all the way to Mogadishu, Somalia. During a stopover in Aden, Captain Jürgen Schumann was murdered. The remaining 86 passengers and four flight crew members endured considerable physical and emotional hardship. In Mogadishu, Special Unit GSG 9[275] stormed the plane in a risky government-ordered maneuver similar to the raid of the hijacked plane in Entebbe. GSG members killed three of the hijackers during “Operation Magic Fire (Operation Feuerzauber),” and one surviving Palestinian sustained serious injuries. In contrast, all of the hostages could be freed largely unharmed. Use of the GSG 9 had been made possible not least thanks to skilled negotiations with other countries by the government, or more specifically, its special envoy Hans-Jürgen Wischnewski.[276]

A good two weeks after being freed from the ‘Landshut,’ 9-year old Gaby Coldewey received a letter from the chancellor. “Apparently out of happiness about the successful rescue mission at the Mogadishu airport,” wrote Helmut Schmidt, “a fellow citizen has sent me a check.”[277] The amount was enough to do a little something special for the children who had been held hostage in the Lufthansa aircraft. The chancellor announced a “consolation” for “the terrible days in the plane.”[278] A short time later a red bicycle was delivered to the Coldeweys. The recipient, however, was less than thrilled. She already had a bicycle - and her favorite color was blue. No one in the chancellery had asked her parents beforehand what the little girl might want.[279]

At the time, most people viewed the successful handling of terrorist threats in the fall of 1977 as an outstanding accomplishment of the socio-liberal government and especially Helmut Schmidt.[280] The chancellor’s letter, however, draws attention to political decision-makers’ dealings with people directly affected by the events, which happened outside the spotlight. What emerges are helplessness and lack of empathy, especially since the well-intentioned gesture had been initiated not by the government but a private individual. The former hostages reacted with incomprehension. Many complained they had been abandoned by the state and forgotten by the public once the general excitement over the “heroes of Mogadishu” had died down.[281]

We do in fact get the sense that for a long time the fate of the passengers and crew members of the hijacked airliner received very little attention.[282] It was not until 1996 that any legal action concerning the event was taken; in the Bundeskriminalamt the hijacking is still considered “an ongoing matter.”[283] It was above all the GSG 9’s rescue of the hostages that was remembered, since it provided a positive counterweight to the other, darker events of the ‘German Autumn:’ the Schleyer kidnapping and the Stammheim ‘Night of Death.’ In 1997, Heinrich Breloer’s docudrama “Todesspiel” for the first time presented the general public with a view of the erratic flight of the ‘Landshut’ from the inside, and also for the first time gave it the same kind of serious attention that was paid the dramatic events surrounding Schleyer and the Stammheim prisoners.[284] Though several former ‘Landshut’ hostages did get to speak, even Breloer’s film ended with their release. Viewers learned nothing about the later lives of those who had been rescued.

Research to date has likewise dealt almost exclusively with the perpetrators of terrorist acts. Only more recently have publications appeared – written primarily by journalists - that focus on the victims of the RAF.[285] Even here we can see a form of hierarchization: it was mostly prominent victims whose fates received attention. Victims ‘from the second row,’ whose encounter with terrorist violence had been more or less by chance, are still paid hardly any attention. The history of the Mogadishu survivors, however, is relatively well documented, doubtless due in part to the fairly large number of people involved.[286] Source material is thus readily available.[287] Two of the former hostages have also published memoirs.[288] Yet until now, historians have not turned their attention to the consequences for those who were taken hostage.[289]

That is the starting point of this essay. First, it describes the behavior patterns of Lufthansa’s most important decision-makers when dealing with the former ‘Landshut’ hostages. It then looks at the federal government and other public institutions, especially the state benefits offices.[290] Private initiatives such as the Der Weiße Ring, founded in 1976, could not be included here, however.[291] Additional sections examine dealings with the rescued hostages in the media and in scientific research, and in each case their own reactions are also taken into account. The conclusion offers some summarizing observations and proposes several explanatory approaches. The essay starts with the premise that as victims of a high-level politicized violent crime, the ‘Landshut’ hostages were in a unique position.[292] We contend that as ‘political victims,’ they were able to open a door and begin sensitizing society vis-à-vis crime victims as a whole – and do so even though in all contexts examined here they were dealt with in ways that were at very least ambivalent.

Crisis Management at Lufthansa

The Lufthansa saw itself as the first ‘injured party’ of the ‘Landshut’ hijacking. Therefore, Lufthansa played a dual role from the very start. The German airline needed to attend to the well-being of the passengers and crew while at the same time controlling the damage to its image as one of the world’s safest airlines. For Lufthansa, though, this was no new experience. Plane hijackings - especially by Palestinian groups - had increased dramatically in the ‘60s and ‘70s.[293] In 1972 and 1973 the PFLP had captured Lufthansa planes and thereby gained among other things the release of the surviving perpetrators of the Olympic Games attack.[294] New in the ‘Landshut’ hijacking were the large number of German hostages, the uncompromising stance of the government, and the resultant duration of the incident.[295]

Already on the first day of the hijacking Lufthansa formed a ten-person crisis team led by board member and flight captain Werner Utter. His team members started by offering support to those relatives of ‘Landshut’ hostages who had been awaiting its arrival at the Frankfurt airport. The others were informed at irregular intervals about where matters stood. It was also possible to get food and important medications to the aircraft and supply it with electricity. Utter and three other team members were later awarded the Federal Cross of Merit for their work.[296]

After the successful release of the hostages the company was concerned primarily with compensation for material losses. They paid a total of approximately 100,000 DM for lost baggage and clothing.[297] While this by no means completely satisfied all of the passengers’ demands,[298] in an internal memo the airline gave itself high marks. It was noted that the passengers overwhelmingly saw Lufthansa’s role as “positive,” and that most felt their material demands had been “satisfactorily” met. Yet many of the hostages had expected some additional “generous gesture” - from Lufthansa and the federal government.[299] This desire actually did lead to negotiations between the company and responsible parties in Bonn. They discussed giving the passengers and their families the gift of a European flight coupled with a vacation and sharing the cost, but ultimately nothing came of the suggestion.[300] In the Lufthansa PR department it was also proposed that a fund to support all RAF victims be established. “We are receiving an extraordinary number of offers of money for such a fund,” noted PR director Franz Cesarz already on October 19.[301] Most of these offers made reference to the death of Captain Schumann. Cesarz therefore suggested that Lufthansa contribute 200,000 DM to such a fund and seek additional support from other companies, but the Lufthansa board rejected the idea. Beyond providing compensation for direct material losses, it seems they saw no need to take further action.[302] Instead, they were concerned about the company’s image. In December 1977, crisis manager Werner Utter sent a letter to all former hostages, saying that he wished to express “not only solidarity, but also confidence that the burden of your ordeal will gradually fade from memory and be replaced by an enduring happiness about the fortunate outcome of the difficult experience.” Meanwhile, Lufthansa had also taken additional precautions “to make our flights more secure than ever before. That is what I also wanted to let you, who place your trust in our service, know.”[303] Moreover, it was important to emphasize “that LH, too, ‘is among the victims’” so that “in terms of claims or expectations” a clear distinction was drawn between the company and the federal government.[304]

The matter of compensation for physical and emotional suffering was seen primarily as the duty of government agencies.[305] Therefore, on October 24, 1977 and – at the government’s request – again on January 11/12, 1978, the company informed all victims that under the Victims Compensation Act or OEG (Opferentschädigungsgesetz), they were entitled to apply for government aid, and identified the respective offices in charge. One passenger who turned to Utter about the matter was told by other crisis team members that “in the position of an innocent party also impacted, Lufthansa is unable to fill the claimed gap - missing ‘compensation for grave fear of death’ - in any material way.” The man was again referred to the OEG, “certainly an excellent source of aid created” by the government.[306] A married couple also taken hostage had been more successful with Lufthansa’s insurance company. Though in the company’s view it had not been proven that the suffering the couple described was linked to the hijacking, the insurer was nonetheless graciously prepared to pay 3000 DM in compensation.[307] Most other passengers apparently did not even try to file for additional compensation from the airline or insurance company.

Crew members of the ‘Landshut’ represented a special case, especially the murdered flight captain Jürgen Schumann who left behind a wife and two children. As noted above, many donations were made to Lufthansa on his behalf. His family members were entitled to the usual survivor benefits in the case of death.[308] The rest of the crew received one week of special leave for each day of the hijacking, one free flight with two nights’ accommodation, and payment for the accrued hours of overtime.[309] Nonetheless, flight attendant Gabi Dillmann was subjected to a Lufthansa disciplinary action of sorts since she had allegedly not followed protocol during the hijacking (“non-compliant touching of passengers through hugging”)[310] and had come into conflict with the head flight attendant.[311] After these experiences, Dillmann did not return to her profession. In addition, Lufthansa connected Dillmann and Copilot Jürgen Vietor, who were without a doubt the best-known hostages, with STERN magazine so that the story would be “told properly.”[312] Even so, both were dissatisfied afterwards with the tone of the publication.

Because of its dual role as fellow injured party on the one hand and a business with obligations to its customers on the other, Lufthansa showed ambivalence and failure in many regards, and appears to have expected from the very start that the government would compensate for these. Yet the role played by politics and government agencies was no less affected by loopholes and vested interests, which left the former hostages feeling utterly bewildered.

The Government’s Position

Already during the hijacking, the uncompromising line of the Bonn crisis team around Chancellor Helmut Schmidt had sparked protests from relatives of the hostages. On October 17 several of them gathered in front of the chancellery. One child carried a sign guaranteed to get media attention with its message: “Mr. Chancellor, I want my mommy back!” Others chanted, “murderer! murderer!” A government secretary eventually spoke with the participants and made written notes of their demands. They insisted that the government immediately appease the hijackers and exchange the hostages for the RAF prisoners. This statement, however, was not made public.[313] All of the politicians involved realized that they were taking a large risk by choosing either a strategy of wearing down the hijackers or a military option. By his own later admission, Schmidt was prepared to step down if the rescue attempt should fail – the news of its success supposedly brought the ordinarily far from sentimental chancellor to tears.[314] What’s more, pressure on those in positions of responsibility had not begun with the ‘Landshut’ hijacking: they had already been in a state of emergency for a month. Several decision-makers who had been officers in the Wehrmacht seem to have internalized the RAF’s declaration of war, and in the decision-making process they deliberately adopted a military-style toughness.[315] Yet once the hostages had been successfully freed, government spokesman Klaus Bölling emphasized in a group statement by the large crisis team that the situation had by no means left them cold: “At every moment of this difficult test we were aware of the almost unbearable mental anguish of the people on board the Lufthansa aircraft. During those days we were constantly thinking about how worried and alarmed the hostages’ families must be.”[316] It was apparently important for those involved to give the public impression that they had empathized and suffered together with the victims.

For the politicians’ unyielding stance had at times led the hostages and their families to feel that 90 people were to be ‘sacrificed’ here on the altar of reasons of state - a view they were also anxious to make public. Flight attendant Gabi Dillmann expressed this feeling with particular urgency when, as a final ultimatum of the hijackers was about to run out, she spoke via radio transceiver to the outside world: “I would like to say that it is the failure of the German government that means we have to die. […] We would like you to know that the German government has not helped to save our lives. They could have done everything. The world no longer makes sense.”[317] The joy and gratitude following the successful release of the hostages helped overwrite this impression to a large extent, but it represented a not inconsiderable burden for the relationship between those held captive and the political decision-makers. Every conflict had the potential to revive the conviction that ordinary citizens ‘meant nothing’ to the state.

Politicians tried to turn the wave of euphoria and the international approval they enjoyed after the almost textbook-like rescue mission to their advantage. It comes as no surprise that the freed hostages who landed at the Frankfurt airport on October 18 were met by not only some 1000 onlookers and hundreds of journalists, but also a whole array of politicians. Key figures on the crisis team were notably absent. It seems that greeting the rescuers took higher priority: political ‘heavyweights’ in the cabinet such as Interior Minister Maihofer gave a red-carpet welcome only to the plane carrying Hans-Jürgen Wischnewski and the GSG 9 that landed somewhat later in Bonn.[318] Still, the plane hostages were met by among others five ministers (Ertl, Ehrenberg, Matthöffer, Gscheidle and Huber), governor of Hessen Börner, and Lord Mayor of Frankfurt Wallmann.[319] Only after this welcome did they receive something to eat in a Lufthansa cafeteria and new clothes courtesy of the company before finally being reunited with their loved ones in a factory building only partially concealed from the eyes of curious onlookers. There, Lufthansa had prepared a celebration that on the one hand was supposed to express joy over the hostages’ rescue, yet inappropriately also planned it as a memorial service for the murdered Jürgen Schumann. Monika Schumann came voluntarily to Frankfurt, and against all expectations – to the great embarrassment of the high-ranking politicians present – attended the reception.[320] “It was a peculiarly incongruous experience,” commented Rudolf Walter Leonhart in Die Zeit, thereby certainly capturing the feeling of most attendees.[321]

Lufthansa had actually intended to do something quite different. No formal reception had been planned originally, only a joint press conference with the government to which journalists had already been invited. But then, according to a note from Lufthansa PR director Cesarz, two directives arrived from the federal transportation ministry on behalf of the chancellor: “a.) The press conference will not take place, and b.) a large event for the return of the rescued passengers is to be held.”[322] We can only speculate about the reasons for this decision from the chancellor’s office.[323] What we do know is that with this move, a public show built around the successful rescue effort replaced public information about its planning and execution. As press expert Cesarz declared, the decision was a mistake that above all had negative consequences for the freed hostages: “considerable irritation in the press and an intense direct questioning of the passengers have ensued.”[324] We are left with the impression that here political interests outweighed the well-being of the victims and the public’s need for information.

On October 20, Helmut Schmidt hosted members of the GSG 9 together with the ‘Landshut’ passengers, crew members, and their families in the chancellery. Members of the GSG and the cabin crew were awarded the Federal Cross of Merit at this event; the large majority of the airplane hostages hence left empty-handed. That what mattered most was yet again a political show staged around the successful rescue effort became perhaps clearest when Schmidt leaned down to Gabi Dillmann in her wheelchair and kissed her on the forehead. The photo of this moment was seen around the world.[325] It not only symbolized the general relief that accompanied the hostages’ release, but also showed the chancellor in the role of savior. Schmidt was most certainly aware of what effect this spontaneous gesture would have. It is admittedly difficult when looking back to draw a distinct line between genuine engagement, media-driven staging, and the political instrumentalization of the victims. In many of the politicians’ actions, everything was in play at once. Initially, many victims actually did perceive the politicians’ show of sympathy as a comforting recognition. But this also necessarily generated high expectations about compensation for the ordeal they had experienced because of the federal government’s aims. As one hostage recalled, “The fact that our reception was attended by a large number of ministers and various other high-ranking government officials made us feel we were the object of special government interest. This impression was reinforced by various assurances that we would soon receive special non-bureaucratic aid.”[326] Numerous other receptions at various other occasions, but also media reports on the caesura-like character of the ‘triumph over terrorism’ that many felt the ‘Landshut’ rescue represented did the rest.

Government instruments were, however, anything but well-equipped to fulfill the wish for quick and unbureaucratic aid. In addition, many of the former hostages - as noted above - were hoping for a symbolic form of recognition. Like Lufthansa, though, the politicians decided against such a gesture. Though Wischnewski recommended paying the passengers a lump sum of 5000 DM for their pain and suffering, he was unable to persuade Helmut Schmidt. The chancellor did not wish to set a precedent by making such a payment; instead, he wanted to see that the OEG passed in May 1976 was used.[327]

Bureaucratic Red Tape?

The government’s decision to send former hostages down the path of official channels seems to make sense at first. After all, the socio-liberal coalition had just recently passed the OEG in order to provide “social security for those who due to acts of violence have severe disadvantages in terms of health and ability to work.”[328] At issue were cases in which victims were unable to file for restitution because the perpetrator either could not be found or had no money. The government had wanted to close this loophole. According to the justification for the bill, the goal of penal reform and modern crime policy was to prevent crime and re-socialize perpetrators, but “the fate of the victims of punishable offenses must not be forgotten in the process.”[329] Where the state had been unable to fulfill its duty to protect, it should at least assume responsibility after the fact. In this sense the OEG can be understood as a complementary element in the socio-liberal politics of liberalization. Politicians also hoped in this way to take the wind out of the sails of the many conservatives who opposed the liberalization of penal law.[330]

A claim to receive benefits under the OEG could be filed by anyone who due to an “intentional, illegal, violent attack” had “suffered damage to his or her health.” The corresponding payment followed in accordance with the Federal Benefits Law or BVG (Bundesversorgungsgesetz) of 1950,[331] which regulated pensions for victims of World War II.[332] The OEG was thus not a completely new law; rather, victims of criminal violence were now added to the already-existing law concerning war victims. Both laws - in slightly changed form – still exist today. The responsibility for processing applications, however, lies and lay not in federal offices but in the benefits offices of individual states or Länder. Given this basic construct, the expectations of the ‘Landshut’ victims could hardly be fulfilled. Compensation under the OEG did not automatically follow from the fact that someone had been affected by an act of violence. Instead, each claim had to be submitted individually and processed accordingly. The government thereby in a sense placed the obligation to collect on the victims.[333] What’s more, because the scene of the crime had been an airplane, claims could not be processed uniformly though a single official channel. Instead, agencies in the respective Länder decided the case based on where the applicant lived. The agencies, however, had absolutely no experience dealing with the new law – they often lacked even the claim forms – and rulings that set legal precedents came only in the decades that followed.

Moreover, regulations concerning benefits for victims under German social law meant that non-German victims of the hijacking had no way to file valid claims – that is, unless their home country had signed a “reciprocity agreement” with the Federal Republic.[334] But obstacles had also been put in the German ‘Landshut’ victims’ path to compensation. There was absolutely no doubt that they had been victims – the act had taken place practically in plain sight. That they nonetheless had to prove as much had something humiliating about it. Even the application forms seemed to mock their experience. They were asked for instance if they were “related by birth or marriage” to the – Palestinian – perpetrators, and “for what purpose” they had been “at the scene of the event” – a hijacked aircraft that had flown across two continents. Rhett Waida, who had been held captive on the plane, told Der SPIEGEL in 1979 that the “idiotic questions” had made it clear to him “that in reality no one is interested in what happened to me.” Waida and others therefore refused to even submit claims.[335]

In addition, the injuries that virtually all of the victims had sustained were not physical, but entirely mental and emotional. This fact presented a particular obstacle to their search for acknowledgment of the pain they had suffered. It was not just that the clear stigmatization of mental illnesses often meant victims were too ashamed to file a claim.[336] It was also virtually impossible to provide the proof required by social law that a mental illness, which often did not appear until months or years later, had been caused by the earlier act of violence. In the course of the following decades, the Federal Social Court had to reduce the burden of proof in numerous landmark rulings so that claimants would have even the faintest hope of success.[337] Rulings were also based on “the current state of medical knowledge,” which in the ‘70s was in a transitional phase concerning mental illnesses. Not until 1980, for instance, did the term “post-traumatic stress disorder” enter the authoritative Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM – III).[338] That German physicians and benefits offices often failed to recognize consequential damages is therefore hardly a surprise.

Generally speaking, during these years the chances of success for all victims of violence who filed claims were extremely low. In the first 30 months after the OEG became law, fewer than ten per cent of the claims were accepted – “an extraordinarily small quota in international comparison” according to Der SPIEGEL, experts therefore considered the OEG inefficient and in need of urgent reform.[339] These statements cannot be supported with empirical evidence using current information; statistics about the OEG have been collected only since 1997.[340]

The ‘Landshut’ victims definitely had some advocates in high places. On January 4, 1978, for instance, the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs requested that Lufthansa inform all passengers about the OEG. At that time, the ministry also directed all state ministries to request that their benefit offices be accommodating and “process [claims] as quickly as possible.”[341] At the same time, the Ministry of Transportation contacted Lufthansa, asking if the passengers were in need of psychological counseling. A Lufthansa employee responded: “After looking through all of the correspondence […] I feel it is not necessary to ask all passengers […] about the necessity for psychotherapy.” Only two passengers had requested treatment for “mental stress.”[342] This process shows that on the one hand, politicians at the federal level now had only an indirect influence since they had transferred responsibility to the Länder. On the other hand, these messages were reacting to criticism in the press, since the federal government had not “itself taken the initiative [to provide] medical aid.”[343]

This shows that in contrast to victims of ‘normal’ criminal violence, the ‘Landshut’ victims did carry unusual political weight: they had after all been the topic of political discussion and public attention and could potentially become one again. Thus they were ‘political’ victims - which at least gave them some advantages when dealing with officials. A report from the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs to the chancellor on the “status of benefits proceedings for the Landshut hostages” in the summer of 1978 indicates how these factors affected office practices.[344] Worth noting here is that in many cases the benefits offices themselves took the initiative.

Apparently, in response to public critique and political pressure, the offices themselves urged the former hostages to pursue claims or provide missing supporting documentation. At least eleven people failed to answer the official requests. Of the 35 people involved, in three cases the claims were rejected, 21 were accepted (a stay at a health resort was the usual award). In the remaining cases the decision was still outstanding, or other institutions (such as professional associations) had taken over the case. The ‘Landshut’ hostages had a considerably better chance of receiving aid than other victims of violence. This, however, only applied to those who remained undaunted by initial official rejections[345] and bureaucratic hurdles. Almost half of the German passengers never received government aid. Even so, the agencies saw their actions as forthcoming and engaged. One government secretary told a Bundestag representative that in some cases the benefits agency had “pushed the limits” of what was “possible using a generous interpretation of the law.” “I am unable to […] recommend any special treatment beyond what has already been achieved.”[346]

It was presumably public critique of the political dealings with the former hostages that prompted Minister of State Wischnewski to contact them all in the spring of 1978 with the “request for a conversation.” The aim was to “profit from your bitter experiences.”[347] Wischnewski invited the former hostages to a two-day June visit in Bonn. 66 of those contacted accepted the invitation. At Lufthansa and the government’s expense they first took a steamboat ride on the Rhine, during which they met one-on-one with Wischnewski. A dinner at the chancellery followed together with a follow-up conversation at the hotel the next day. Information was provided about compensation for pain and suffering and therapy treatment.[348] Wischnewski acknowledged afterwards that “it would have been better if these conversations had taken place sooner.”[349] One participant nonetheless expressed his justified suspicion that the real reason for the meeting had been a “scheduled critical television broadcast” that “in view of upcoming elections should not be allowed to dominate the field.” Afterwards, the government “airwaves” went silent once again.[350] Additional weeks passed until August 1978, when the former hostages were first assigned key contact people for “open questions and problems” by Wischnewski’s personal advisor Peter Kiewitt.[351] “No one took care of us for too long,” Rhett Waida told Der SPIEGEL one year later.[352]

On the whole, politicians’ and public institutions’ interaction with the hostages can be described as at very least ambivalent. Engagement was often present only where media exposure might bring political capital or where there was a danger of losing face. Twice, on October 19, 1977 and January 26, Bundestag representatives made inquiries “concerning alleged failure to provide psychotherapeutic treatment to the hostages.” Both times their criticisms were “dismissed” by the government.[353] Berlin Bundestag representative Lieselotte Berger (CDU) also made repeated efforts in offices and ministries for ‘her’ – i.e. Berlin – victims. In autumn 1980 she was still asking her wards if they had any “cause for complaint,” and met with them multiple times. It should be noted that each of these meetings was also carefully staged and covered by the media.[354] Genuine compassion was only to be found in isolated instances – other topics quickly dominated the fast-paced political order of the day. Meanwhile, the institutions actually charged with responsibility had neither the experience nor the means to adequately meet the victims’ needs and expectations. At the time, other victims of violence had similar if not worse experiences. The ‘Landshut’ hijacking in this sense served more as an opportunity to sensitize the public to a problem that had long been largely ignored.[355]

Media Focus on the Hostages

Already in early September 1977 with the Schleyer abduction the federal government had imposed a ‘news blackout’ that now applied to the ‘Landshut’ hijacking too. This meant that the government gave no or very limited information about developments to the media. Restraint was also requested in reporting about the abduction cases. In return it was promised that once the drama was over, all withheld information would be made public.[356] Most media outlets held to this agreement, which was broken only when occasional foreign reports reached the German public.[357] During the hijacking, the public therefore heard little about the fate of those taken hostage. This incidentally was also partially true of the government itself, since the seized airplane’s frequent changes in location and the great distances hampered communication.

The limited flow of information created space for speculation about conditions inside the aircraft that could be seen in photos only from the outside. This is also how relatives of the hostages became the focus of media attention. While his wife was still sitting in the plane, the husband of one hostage sold exclusive rights to her ‘story’ for 20,000 DM to the Münchner Abendzeitung. Normal everyday German tourists were thus in danger of becoming celebrities without even being asked. Lufthansa, however, did protect the privacy rights of the people on board, and to this day refuses to release the list of passengers.[358]

Once the hostages had been successfully freed, the tension of the previous days gave way to a general euphoria that also included journalists: “Hope has triumphed over despair,” proclaimed Südwestfunk radio director Alois Rummel on October 18. He mentioned the victims in only one sentence: “Thanks to our statesmen in Bonn, thanks to the brave members of the federal border patrol, condolences and sympathy to the widow of murdered flight captain Schumann, joy over those who were saved […]. The Federal Republic has regained its dignity. None of us need be ashamed of his tears.”[359] Except for “joy” over those who had been rescued, “sympathy” was extended only to Jürgen Schumann’s widow. The most important ‘victim’ of the events seemed not just in Rummel’s view to have been the “dignity” of the Federal Republic, which had now been happily restored. Here once more we see how heavily victimhood was politicized, in that the hostages were declared quasi-representatives of West German democracy – which ultimately proved that the hostage-takers’ calculations had been correct. The events were also well-suited to narratives of manliness and national honor in which the actors were also involuntary combatants for the nation. Here we can draw parallels with collective perceptions about the “Miracle of Lengede” and the “Homecoming of the Ten Thousand.”[360]

As noted earlier, upon returning to Frankfurt the hostages were met by hundreds of journalists whose promised press conference had been cancelled by the federal government – with “a disgruntled press” and “more intense questioning” of passengers as the consequences.[361] Die Zeit journalist Leonhardt recalled: “I would prefer to quickly forget […] the scenes: 600 journalists pounced on 60 hostages, ten of whom soon became especially popular for their greater willingness to speak.”[362] STERN alone had assigned 23 reporters for its planned series about the hijacking, and paid unprecedented sums in honoraria.[363] Though reports obtained this way about the internal perspective naturally drew attention to the suffering of those taken hostage, the line between sympathy and outright voyeurism was unclear. Interest in the well-being of the victims was in any case seldom voiced. The hostages were “sucked dry and exploited,”[364] recalled Sender Freies Berlin reporter Ebbo Demant. Aside from the journalistic duty to provide information and fill the ‘news void’ of the hijacking days, commercial interests seem to have been what mattered most. Only several of the victims like flight attendant Dillmann, who became a popular interviewee, felt their contact with the media was a form of therapy.[365] In the media, Dillmann together with flight captain Schumann became one of the ‘heroic figures’ of the hijacking. Tabloids quickly dubbed her the “angel of Mogadishu”[366] for the extraordinary concern she had shown for the passengers. Most of the other hostages in contrast rated their contact with the media as entirely negative.[367]

Though it was not possible here to examine the reporting on the ‘Landshut’ victims in a way that differentiates between individual media figures, the general impression that emerges is that most of the former hostages justifiably felt they were treated poorly. The relationship between the media and the victims was problematic, though admittedly this was not universally true. Journalists in search of the exclusive “hostage story” were admittedly not shy – and with their ruthlessness could cause additional suffering. Sudden notoriety could also have numerous other negative aftereffects such as jealousy and resentment on the part of neighbors. On the other hand, critical media reports like the ZDF documentary “106 Stunden zwischen Palma und Mogadischu. Die ‘Landshut’-Passagiere heute” in June 1978 were precisely what prompted those with political responsibility to act and raised public awareness about the insufficient benefits awarded the victims. Even if this type of reporting was the exception rather than the rule, the fact remains that many other victims of violent crime found no forum whatsoever for their concerns. Self-critical voices on journalistic interaction with the hostages and their families were on the whole few and far between. Unlike the “hostage drama of Gladbeck”[368] in the spring of 1988, for example, the ‘Landshut’ hijacking as yet seems to have sparked no general self-awareness debate in the media about ethically responsible interaction with victims of abduction.

The Hostages as Objects of Scientific Interest

In addition to the media, medical research was interested in in the ‘Landshut’ victims. Aachen Professor of Medical Psychology Andreas Ploeger contacted them all in December 1977 requesting a conversation. His goal was to study the “reaction of healthy people to extreme mental strain.” In January 1978, Ploeger received additional support from the Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI), which requested help for his project in the hope that it might yield “information for future strategies in dealing with groups of people in similar situations.” The Federal Criminal Police Office in particular was interested in the result, according to the BMI.[369] Ploeger had done comparable studies earlier with the trapped miners of Lengede[370] and after a mining accident in Turkey.

Ploeger’s studies were the result of a paradigm shift in psychiatry. Until well into the late 1950s it was widely believed in the field that a healthy adult’s mental resilience knew virtually no limits, and that only individuals with serious preconditions or ‘weak willpower’ developed mental illnesses. Every illness was thus considered ‘pre-programmed.’ A fundamental shift in thinking began to take place in the Federal Republic first in the context of compensation for victims of the NS regime. Psychic traumatization caused by experiencing violence now received increasing medical recognition, and the term ‘trauma’ was expanded to include broader and larger groups of victims.[371] This development included all western societies, and at its center stood the “recognition of the individual’s vulnerability.”[372]

With his research studies Ploeger was also processing traumatic war experiences of his own.[373] His interest in the ‘Landshut’ victims indicates that the trauma discourse of the late ‘70s was finally beginning to include victims of violent crime. The victims of terrorism appear to have played an important pioneering role in this development.[374] Der SPIEGEL stated in 1979: “Just how grave those psychological effects of crime can be is demonstrated by the results of studies done with the victims of terrorism, until now the only group of people affected by crime that scientists have studied in depth.”[375] The news magazine was referring here to studies done in the USA. In addition, though, the Dutch psychiatrist Jan Bastiaans had recently worked with hostages of Moluccan terrorists, and concluded that analogies with Holocaust survivors could be drawn. His verdict: “The actual ailments begin after one’s release.”[376]

Ploeger contacted a total of 65 passengers and crew members. He conducted lengthy individual conversations with more than 50 of them – all German nationals – up until late March 1978.[377] In many cases he diagnosed a need for therapy, and proposed to the federal government that he himself would provide treatment if they would assume the cost. In return, the psychologist offered to give them access to the results of his research. After lengthy negotiations, the Federal Ministry for Labor and Social Affairs informed him that the cost of treatment was covered by the OEG.[378] Though Ploeger informed all of the former hostages, only 16 ultimately also took part in his group therapy sessions. Ploeger himself recalled that the offer of help had come “too late” for many of them; most were “no longer motivated” for treatment.[379] Ploeger himself, however, may well have contributed to their reservations. His initial round of questioning, which had lacked any sort of therapeutic procedures, had left many of those questioned irritated at least.[380] Moreover, it was Ploeger who could decide on an “indication to participate” in the therapy.[381] Around the turn of the year 1978/79 two group meetings, each lasting several days, finally took place in the health clinics of Aachen and Damp 2000. However, several participants felt that Ploeger’s personal method of “psychodrama,”[382] which had patients in a group setting deliberately revisit their traumatic situations, provided not therapy but its very opposite: additional stress. Several felt they had been used as “guinea pigs” who were then “sent back home with their open wounds.”[383] Conflicts also arose over their housing. The participants did not understand why they should have to live on the same hall as people with war injuries and thalidomide victims – a view that presumably came from the above-mentioned impression that they belonged to a special category of victims. After disagreements with the ministry over honoraria, Ploeger’s therapy program was discontinued after only two sessions.[384] In the years and decades that followed, Ploeger and his doctoral students nonetheless continued to present numerous findings from their research.[385]

In addition to Andreas Ploeger, the psychologist Wolfgang Salewski also took great interest in the tormented hostages of the ‘Landshut.’ Salewski was the founder and director of the Center for Conflict Research and Crisis Counseling as well as psychological advisor to the federal government during the ‘German Autumn.’ He accompanied Wischnewski as the politician followed the ‘Landshut’ and negotiated with the hostage-takers. Salewski also traveled back to Germany with the freed hostages. He subsequently received a contract as advisor to the GSG 9. On his own initiative, Salewski too conducted some 40 conversations with former hostages up until March 1978. Like Ploeger, he initially had no direct therapeutic aim, but instead hoped that his investigations would advance conflict resolution, especially in hostage situations. He published the results of his interviews with the ‘Landshut’ hostages and other victims in a popular scientific study on “new violence.”[386] In the study, the conflict researcher interpreted terrorism as part of the increasing brutalization of society as a whole. Salewski saw this “new violence” in not only airplane hijackings but also riots at soccer matches, vandalized telephone booths and youth violence. Only one short passage in his reflections raised the question of how a hostage should behave in a plane hijacking and what the long-term consequences might be. Salewski, too, came to the conclusion: “psychotherapeutic treatment is certainly advisable. Especially when – as it happened after the events of Mogadishu – it is urgently requested by the hostages.”[387] As a follow-up to his question-and answer sessions he told the federal government that the hostages felt abandoned.[388] His colleagues at the institute also tried to organize a group meeting of the hostages, albeit at their own expense. The meeting never took place.[389] Salewski was nonetheless able to persuade several victims to participate in the above-mentioned critical ZDF documentary, whose scheduled airing apparently put the federal government under considerable pressure.

On the whole, it is clear that the ‘Landshut’ hostages became the focus of study primarily because researchers hoped to gain new insights about human behavior in or following extreme situations. Therapeutic aims therefore took a back seat at first. As a result, in many cases the studies tended to place the former hostages under even greater strain. At the same time, the experts involved were unanimous in following up their research with a recommendation of therapy, and they tried in a number of different ways to see that the hijacking victims received help. These offers of help came after a considerable amount of time had passed since the ‘traumatic’ event, remained stalled in the early stages, and were deemed ineffective by many former hostages. The actions of the participating researchers can be read as an attempt to claim scientific interpretive sovereignty over a new group of potentially ‘traumatized’ people.

In just how many cases an actual decrease in suffering might have been achieved must remain an open question - many treatment methods were somewhat experimental in nature – but it should be noted that politicians accepted the solutions offered by research only grudgingly or not at all. Initiatives from other countries also failed to resonate. As early as June 1977, for example, the chancellery was in possession of a report from the German ambassador in The Hague describing therapeutic measures taken immediately following two hostage-taking incidents only several months earlier in the Netherlands. Moluccan groups had taken teachers and pupils of an elementary school hostage and hijacked a train. The Dutch government responded with a comprehensive aid program for the victims: hostages’ relatives were housed in tents near the abduction sites. After police had stormed the school and train, freeing most of the hostages unharmed, the former captives were immediately placed in on-site trauma outpatient care. Psychotherapists provided immediate aid, and also made regular house calls in the following months. They cared for not only the victims themselves but also their families.[390] Yet when a Swiss journalist inquired on the day of the ‘Landshut’ rescue mission if the hostages would now receive treatment along the lines of “the Dutch model,”[391] he was referred to Lufthansa by the federal government. Apparently the government felt it had no responsibility in this matter. Even though here it is impossible to determine whether in the long run the Dutch victims fared better than the Germans, the difference in approach suggests that in Germany’s neighbor to the west the trauma discourse had already led to (more) pronounced change, and that society was already far more sensitive to the specific problems of victims of violence.[392]

Conclusion

The various parties who in the aftermath of the ‘German Autumn’ interacted with the largest group of victims of leftist and palestinian terrorism in the Federal Republic acted on every level discussed ambivalently at the least; were motivated primarily by self-interest; and in most cases acted without sensitivity to the needs of the victims of traumatic violent experiences. The reactions the victims encountered on the one hand raised expectations that could not be met, and on the other provoked incomprehension, frustration, and in the worst case additional emotional and mental suffering. The underlying causes can certainly not be traced back to one single factor. Lufthansa in its dual role as injured party and damage regulator was at times overwhelmed and tended to delegate responsibility to the politicians. From the company perspective this was understandable, since it was a matter of a politically-motivated hijacking aimed directly at the ‘heart of the state.’ Government decision-makers on the other hand, first and foremost the chancellor, felt that the recently-created legal instruments for providing benefits to victims were adequate even in this case. Here they failed to see that what the victims wanted was not only material compensation, but also and above all a symbolic form of recognition. Money for them was merely one of a number of ways to compensate for the injustice suffered and to relieve their emotional pain. At the same time, by bestowing so much special attention on the hostages, politicians created expectations that they subsequently failed to meet. It is impossible to say whether this lack of sensitivity may also have stemmed from the fact that the most important decision-makers - first and foremost the chancellor - had been marked by their own violent wartime experiences, and as a result underestimated the massive consequences that violence intruding into civilian life might have for those who experienced it. The different approach toward hostages taken in the Netherlands at least suggests that political interests aside, collective cultural factors played a fundamental role.

The ‘Landshut’ hostages were without a doubt ‘special’ victims of violence. The fact that they had landed between the fronts of a political conflict and been taken hostage in order to force a government decision about imprisoned leftist terrorists made them ‘political’ victims. As a result, they received attention from politicians, the media, and ultimately also scientists. Against the backdrop of the extreme strains they had endured, this special role led to elevated expectations, which in turn could become even greater frustration. Yet it also meant that they were able to mobilize spokespersons and thereby possibly even open doors for other groups of victims whose compensation slowly improved in the decades that followed. In notable contrast to victims of terrorism in other European countries the ‘Landshut’ hostages were not inclined to form self-help groups or victims’ associations, even though research on the ‘70s has shown a fundamentally altered relationship between citizens and the government that, among other things, found expression in citizens’ initiatives.[393] Unlike later groups of victims, survivors of the ‘Landshut’ hijacking acted solely as individuals.

In any case, further – especially comparative – research is needed to test the hypotheses presented here. In particular, the most serious terrorist attack to date in the history of the Federal Republic, namely the September 1980 Octoberfest attack motivated by right-wing terrorism that left thirteen dead and 211 wounded, might be a valuable point of comparison for victim-focused research.[394] Here once again, the victims seem to have received far less attention than in the case of the ‘Landshut’ hijacking – generally speaking, the event plays almost no role in the German culture of memory. While the victory over the RAF was seen as a victory over terrorism and as a key, positively withstood test of government mettle, the most serious attack in West German history, which the state could not have prevented, has been all but forgotten – including its victims.

Charlotte Klonk

In Whose Name? Visualizing Victims of Terror

Note: Translation by Landon Little, Berlin 2017.

Abstract: The publication of images following a politically motivated act of terror is never neutral. There is no such thing as a perpetrator image that simply shows a human being. For some such images illustrate an enemy, while for others they exemplify a hero or martyr. In circumstances like these, political instrumentalization is more often the rule than the exception. This also holds true for the visualization of victims. Rarely is collective grief the sole reason behind their public circulation. Just as powerful is often the desire to keep pain at a distance and to mobilize political opinion. In this context the need for images is usually not just about coming to terms with trauma and the settlement of conflicts. It oftentimes adds fuel to an emotional fire that can easily spin out of control.

A sober photo installation by the German artist Hans-Peter Feldmann served as the centerpiece of the controversial exhibition Regarding Terror. The RAF Exhibition presented in the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin from January 30 to May 16, 2015.[395] Under the title Die Toten (The Dead) Feldmann’s photo installation, which was first published as a book in 1998, showed photographs of individuals who died in connection with the terror wielded by the German Red Army Faction and other organizations from the late 1960s to the 1990s.[396] This included the members themselves, targeted victims such as the attorney general Siegfried Buback and the president of the Association of German Employers Hanns Martin Schleyer, both murdered in 1977, but also body guards, police officers, emergency forces, as well as civilians who lost their lives as innocent bystanders. The installation primarily showed portraits, crime scenes and images of public and private mourning, originating from previously published press material, but also included photographs of captured and dead perpetrators, made public under dubious circumstances. The sparse captions provided limited information about the names of the depicted and their date of death. Combined with large white frames, the images left considerable room for the viewers’ imagination. At stake was the cause of death and the surrounding circumstances, the interchangeability between the biographies of perpetrators and victims, and finally the loss of life that is at the heart of politically motivated acts of violence.

The organizers of the exhibition saw Hans-Peter Feldmann’s photo installation as a crucial testament against widespread allegations in the press that their aim was to mythologize the perpetrators at the expense of the victims.[397] In the aftermath of the attacks in New York on September 11, 2001 it became particularly evident that a disproportional fixation on the initiators of violence contributes to myth making and encourages copycat crimes.[398] As a consequence, voices were also raised in Germany calling for a reconsideration of the victims of RAF terrorism after many decades of attention focused primarily on the perpetrators.[399] However, exactly how and in what visual form the victims’ suffering can be remembered still remains unclear. It is a demand that should not be underestimated nor pushed aside or classified as trivial.

In Feldmann’s installation, photographs of the crime scene and of mourning brought to mind the more unknown victims, while the more famous were represented with official portraits and the perpetrators with images that were often subsequently used to mythologize them. There was, for example, only one photograph remembering Georg Wurster, a bodyguard and driver who was killed during the attempted kidnapping and killing of the Attorney General Siegfried Buback in 1977. It showed the car and two covered dead bodies as well as a bystander. Yet none of the bodies is Wurster’s, who only died eight days later in hospital. In contrast, a leading member of the RAF Holger Meins, who died in a prison in Wittlich following a hunger strike, was included in the exhibition with a famous photograph showing his dead body. This was an image that the lawyers of Meins’ family leaked to the German magazine Stern shortly after his death. Hans-Joachim Klein and Stefan Wisniewski recounted later that this image prompted them to become radicals.[400] Klein subsequently joined the Revolutionary Cells and Stefan Wisniewski the RAF. While a photograph of the scene of crime points to the event not the person and an official portrait of a victim to a flourishing life before suffering, the image of the dead body starved in prison evokes the stylization of the perpetrator as martyr. Thus, once again it was the initiators of violence and their famous victims that held center stage in Feldmann’s installation, not the less famous who lost their lives in the course of the events.

However, the sheer accumulation of portraits of the deceased shown before their death at improvised and impromptu memorial sites that have become a familiar sight in recent years is also not an adequate response to the demand that we should focus more “on the consequences of the deeds, instead of the biography of the perpetrators”.[401] Showing photographs of victims at spontaneous shrines is a practice that long predates the attacks on September 11, 2001.[402] They also often appear in news reports and increasingly on the Internet and represent in a certain sense counterfactual visualizations showing the deceased in the midst of their flourishing life, while death and its causes are ignored. Yet images of violent deaths may violate the dignity of recognizable victims and the feelings of their family members and are thus equally problematic as part of the public ritual of remembrance, unless authorized by the relatives themselves.

It is a dilemma that is hard to be avoided. Moreover, in the context of politically motivated crimes the publication of images is never neutral. There is no image of a perpetrator that simply shows a human being. For some it exemplifies an enemy, for others a hero or martyr.[403] The political instrumentalization of these images is the rule and not the exception. In the following I aim to show that the same holds true for the visualization of victims. Rarely is collective grief the sole reason behind their public circulation. Just as powerful is often the desire to keep pain at a distance and to mobilize political opinion. In this context the need for imagery is mostly not just about coming to terms with trauma and the settlement of conflicts. It oftentimes adds fuel to an emotional fire that can easily spin out of control, while it is better extinguished.

To Keep Pain at a Distance: Richard Drew’s “Falling Man” and its Impact

The desire to keep pain at a distance becomes particularly apparent in the resistance against images that visualize actual suffering. A particularly telling case is Richard Drew’s famous photograph with the title “Falling Man” taken on September 11, 2001. Among the many images that appeared after the attacks only this one caused an immediate outcry. It showed a man leaping from the twin towers to his death.[404] He was one of hundreds of individuals who jumped from the burning towers – perhaps still hoping to escape their desperate fate. However, the photo journalistic news coverage of the events prioritized the depiction of destruction and the heroic rescue of victims, while the dead and dying were largely kept out of the frame.[405] Richard Drew’s photograph was a notable exception. Drew’s image appeared in numerous newspapers around the world, including the The New York Times on September 12, 2001 and a day later in the German newspapers Die Süddeutsche Zeitung and Die Welt.[406] A storm of protest followed and the image quickly disappeared again from public view. Yet it seems to have been unforgettable for those who had seen it. The photograph would later resurface in literary treatments of the attacks, would become the subject of a documentary film and was discussed in countless academic studies making it today perhaps one of the most famous images from September 11, 2001.[407]

The photograph was one of many images captured at the moment of the fall by Richard Drew while holding the shutter-release button of his camera. However, only this one shows the figure in an almost monumental state of calm. The man is seen at the bottom edge of the upper third of the picture, roughly the spot of the image’s golden ratio. His arms are still clinging to his body, while his right leg is bent as in a dance. The horizontal sequence of windows is the only indication of his free fall, following an optical line that drops towards the lower righthand side. No beginning and no end is in sight.

What adds to the image’s visual significance is the division of the picture into a white and a black half and the position of the figure of the falling man in the field of their convergence. As a visual analogy for the state of limbo between life and death, the photograph presented a graphic visualization of despair. Its succinct aesthetic contrast symbolically captured the hopelessness of the situation. Hence it is not surprising that picture editors around the world spotted this one image among so many others in the photo database of the agency Associated Press and published it immediately following the attacks.

Confronted with the suffering of a living individual most certainly condemned to death, captured forever on the photograph, was for many readers at the time difficult to bear. The German Press Council alone received many complaints. The publication of the image allegedly showed irreverence, sensationalism, and disrespect towards those who tragically lost their loved ones in this manner.[408] The German Press Council’s Board of Appeals subsequently rejected all charges. It argued that the publication was justified based on the photograph’s documentary value for contemporary history. Moreover, since the identity of the individual could not be determined, the image did not violate, according to the Board, any personal rights.[409] The identity of the individual, however, did not remain anonymous. What followed was extensive research that led to the identification of the person and the publication of his portrait. For his family the news came as a shock. Suddenly the issue of suicide was at stake, making the loss for this deeply religious family even more devastating. Yet a nagging sense of uncertainty remained since various names continued to be released until the search was more or less narrowed down to yet another individual.[410]

There is a particular sense of despair in the intense journalistic efforts to give a name and a face to the dead. Suffering itself that is not assigned to anyone in particular and that can thus be ascribed to everybody seemed difficult, if not impossible, to bear. Photography’s unique relationship to reality fails to adequately explain the defensive responses and transferences provoked by this image. Even a bronze sculpture from the American artist Eric Fischl that showed an anonymous woman falling headfirst, meant to be displayed in the Rockefeller Center in New York to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, was removed after only one week following several vehement protests.[411] It is therefore hardly surprising that the visualization of victims are usually restricted to portrait photographs from their previous lives circulated by family members and friends. And it is these images that often also reach the media. Yet they too bear the risk of being instrumentalized. What serves as a form of remembrance for relatives, is frequently also used for the mobilization of particular political agendas. This is especially evident in the handling of memorial sites following a terror attack.

Instrumentalized Suffering: Memorial Sites and their Images

To commemorate victims of terror with personal photographs at improvised sites of public mourning is not a new phenomenon. In 1993, for example, when two boys – a three-year-old and twelve-year-old – were killed in a IRA bombing in the city of Warrington, family members and large parts of the population spontaneously expressed their grief and dismay. The victims were commemorated at the site of the attack with photographs, candles, flowers, and letters. One year later the Duchess of Kent unveiled a stone memorial plaque at the site of the attack that not only included the names of the dead and their dates of death, but also portraits of the two boys (Fig. 1).[412] What was initially an immediate expression of dismay became a permanent monument of victimhood. The faces of the young boys – now fixed in metal and on stone – expressed the promise of life that through their violent death was brought to a sudden end. Whereas in Northern Ireland the heroic glorification of fighters was just as central to the visual propaganda than the commemoration of the dead, blurring the boundaries between them, and primarily unfolded on house walls,[413] it was solely the memory of victimhood that was kept alive in England. Yet where fronts become visually entrenched, peace is all the more difficult to restore. The Good Friday Agreement between Great Britain and the IRA – a true milestone in the settlement of terror – only came about following secret negotiations over several years during which unforgettable wounds and deep mistrust had to be overcome on both sides.[414]

Fig. 1: Memorial to Jonathon Ball and Tim Parry, victims of an IRA bomb on 20th March 1993, 1994, Warrington, UK. © Tony Smith/Alamy Stock Photo

Even more monumental than in England is now the memory of the trauma of the 9/11 attacks in New York. Since 2011 two giant pools in Lower Manhattan mark the ground plans where the two towers of World Trade Centers once stood. Engraved on the copper edge of the two pools are the 2,983 names of those who lost their lives on this day (Fig. 2). American flags flutter over the engraved names and security guards are responsible for placing roses beneath the names of the dead to commemorate their birthdays. Organized and orchestrated by the government agencies Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, a culture of remembrance has been created that is deeply reminiscent of U.S. war memorials at graveyards, including names, flags, and fresh flowers.[415]

Fig. 2: National September 11 Memorial to the victims of 9/11, 2011, New York, USA. © Volkan Furuncu/picture alliance/AA.

It is noteworthy that the vast majority of photographs published immediately following the 9/11 attacks reflect, according to Gerhard Paul, a deep sense of “[an] American patriotic will to victory against an unknown evil”.[416] Civilian rescue workers were honored in the tradition of heroic soldiers and flags were raised everywhere. Thus the images contributed to a rhetoric of war that finally culminated in George W. Bush’s famous “War on Terror” speech on September 20, 2001. The National September 11 Memorial located at the so-called Ground Zero is an expression of this tradition. It conveys a war mentality in reaction to the attacks that led to a traumatic military intervention in Afghanistan in 2001 and to a misguided war in Iraq in 2003.

Following the Paris attacks on November 13, 2015 the French government also spoke of war. In a public memorial service in Paris two weeks after the attacks, President François Hollande reaffirmed his patriotic response by reading aloud the names of the known victims. However, since the majority of the assailants were either French or Belgian citizens the clear-cut patriotic notion of an enemy outside was elusive.[417] Militarily, France could of course target the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, but not its own citizens or citizens of allied nations. In this respect the French Government’s attempt to mobilize and strengthen its own power by using war rhetoric at a public memorial service remained weak and ineffective. To this day no national memorial site has been commissioned and it has been left to initiatives of local governments and victims’ associations to erect various commemorative plaques around the country.[418]

Yet it is a void that is easily filled by others in an attempt to promote their very own nationalistic politics.[419] This became particularly obvious following an attack in Berlin on December 19, 2016 when a radical, Islamic-minded killer drove a semi-truck into a crowded Christmas market located in front of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church killing twelve people. The German government’s response to the attack was remarkably restrained. In the days immediately following the attack countless citizens came unprompted to the site to express their grief and dismay. The informal memorial site, later moved to a side wall of the church, was supported and maintained by the City AG, a consortium of businesses and business owners along the Kurfürstendamm (Fig. 3). Shortly following the attack, the City AG erected two identical posters showing a panoramic aerial view of the area and also organized a keeper for the site who removed dead flowers and burned out candles and generally maintained order. The day following the attack a memorial service was held in the church that was attended by numerous politicians including the German Chancellor, the President of the Bundestag, the German Federal President, and Berlin’s mayor. One month later the victims were commemorated in the Bundestag and on two separate occasions in January and February 2017 Chancellor Angela Merkel attended the site during official state visits with the Presidents of France and Tunisia.

Fig. 3: Spontaneous memorial to the victims of a terror attack on 19th December 2016, 2017, Berlin, Germany. © Ulrich Baumgarten/picture alliance.

Nonetheless, the German government was reproached for “taking far too long to organize an official commemoration” as Regina Mönch wrote in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.[420] Moreover, it was suggested that the government had deliberately allowed the victims to vanish behind a façade of anonymity. It was an image at the memorial site that prompted this accusation (Fig. 4). Originally attached to a wreath and mounted on an easel, “the unknown creator,” Mönch wrote,

Fig. 4: Poster sponsored by an anonymous for the spontaneous memorial to the victims of a terror attack on 19th December 2016, 2017, Berlin, Germany. © Eventpress Roland/picture alliance.

divided [the image] into twelve spaces each underlaid with a national flag of the victim’s country of origin. In the Polish space there is a photograph of the murdered driver, the Israeli also has a photo, just like the Italian and the Czech. The German spaces, however, only show passport-sized silhouettes of still anonymous victims of this atrocity […]. Inquiries made at government agencies are always met with the same terse response that the anonymity of victims is due to data protection laws or the (unverifiable) wish of the bereaved.[421]

As early as December 23, 2016 an Internet blogger called for the names of the victims to be made public and accused the mainstream media of withholding facts particularly when “a Muslim slaughters innocent Europeans.”[422] The Bild-Zeitung conducted extensive research into the identity of the German victims and the journalist Alexander Kissler stated in an article in the magazine Cicero that a shared sense of mourning of the dead was actively suppressed. How else, he asked, could one explain the fact “that after an attack in the country’s capital the German government was not poised to pay tribute.”[423] Following an intensive campaign on the Internet all victims except for two where eventually identified and an oversized obituary was placed at the memorial site. The initiative noted on its blog that this gesture “should have been the responsibility of political leaders.” Only the release of the victims’ names would allow for a “true sense of condolence and the ability to process the events.”[424]

But who exactly has the right to share the identity of the deceased at the site of the tragedy other than the victims’ close friends and relatives? It is not a sign of lack of empathy if one cannot conceive of loss without knowing the names or images of the victims? Empathy seems at its greatest when grief is not individualized, as the controversy surrounding the photograph of the Falling Man from September 11, 2001 suggests. As both the complaints against Richard Drew’s image and the efforts to identify the victim show, it is in fact so intense that it has to be kept at a distance. It did, however, not take long before the anonymously erected obituary disappeared from the site in Berlin. Grief is after all something very private and nobody knows the reasons why some express it in public and others only in private.

To this day it remains unclear how the list of the names of the victims was compiled. “There are amateur researchers,” Regina Mönch noted in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, “who find heartbreaking obituaries in local newspapers and post them all around the world, be it a local community mourning a neighbor or a colleague of one of the victims.”[425] Whether or not the immediate friends and family members wished to share their grief in this way was presumably not asked. In this respect we can only be glad to live in a country in which government agencies honor principles of privacy when faced with requests from journalists. This is especially the case when political mobilization looms on the horizon, be it for the sake of the maintenance of state political power as in the U.S. and France or propaganda purposes of oppositional groups as in Germany.

In most cases instrumentalization of this kind is only possible at the expense of basic facts. In Berlin for example it was not true that no official memorial was held. Nor is it the case that no one felt responsible for the commemoration of the victims. On the contrary, in the days following the attack many visited the site of their own accord bringing flowers, pictures and keepsakes to express their compassion and dismay. It took admittedly a little longer until the local government, the district, the parish and relatives of the victims were able to form a jury that commissioned a permanent monument displaying the names of the victims and their country of origin on the steps leading up to the wall of the church.[426] Next to some names close friends and relatives have placed images of the deceased in commemoration (Fig. 5). The crucial poster of the nameless victims, however, was originally attached to a wreath that was donated as a symbol of condolence by a European-Turkish organization (Fig. 3: top right). The installation of the panel was placed so that it obscured a display of compassion that was hardly conducive to a worldview based on polarizing Muslim and Christian communities. Thus it remains highly questionable whether the Internet initiative for the identification of the dead was really about expressing condolences or rather a means of political propaganda commemorating the “victims of an Islamic terror attack on 19.12.2016” in the pursuit of German national interests.[427]

It is disgraceful when family members of victims are forced to struggle with governments and insurance companies over indemnities for their losses, especially since the real aim of terror attacks are states and not individuals. Equally disgraceful is the misuse of the dead in the pursuit of particular political interests. It fuels a conflict that in contrast to war does not know a winner. When relevant images that help to remember suffering and trauma without showing an identifiable person are withheld, as was the case with Richard Drew’s photograph Falling Man in a post 9/11 United States, the rhetoric of war and military mobilization, however futile, is on the horizon. To partake in the grief and sorrow of the immediate family, friends and survivors is one way to counter the perpetrator’s dominance of the images, however difficult it sometimes seems to bear. Yet the release of names and images lies solely in the hands of those directly affected. No state government, no advocacy group and no media concern has the right to circulate information and visual material that is not provided on a voluntary basis. One can only hope that the memory of the victims’ fate will be remembered despite and beyond the short-term success of political manipulations.

Fig. 5: Memorial to the victims of a terror attack on 19th December 2016, 2018, Berlin, Germany. © Revierfoto/Revierfoto/dpa/picture alliance.

Petra Terhoeven

Conclusions

How in the context of terrorist violence are our images of victims (and perpetrators) formed? What influences them, and what agents and narratives are involved? Anke Hilbrenner’s essay on the early years of modern terrorism, with its detailed account of different reactions to the Russian social revolutionary party’s 1905 murder of the unpopular governor of Moscow, gives an exemplary description of these mechanisms. Given the czarist state’s crimes it was relatively easy for the social revolutionaries to brand their own actions as morally superior counter-violence – even if in the case at hand it was not just the generally unpopular Grand Duke who was torn apart by the dynamite explosion but also his coachman. Hilbrenner shows that apart from the official national mourning, an emotional community formed that spanned social classes and reacted to the assassination not with sorrow and shock, but (malicious) glee and relief. To guarantee this response it had been essential to carefully choose a victim whose branding as punishable perpetrator himself in the organization’s written claim of responsibility would seem plausible even to readers who did not share the group’s social revolutionary ideas. The governor’s wife and children, on the other hand, had been deliberately spared in an earlier assassination attempt, which would prove decisive especially for the legacy of the perpetrator as a “just” angel of mercy. But even at the time, terrorists could label their own violence progressive and “civilized” and that of the autocratic state “barbaric” only if they restricted themselves to “legitimate” victims. The “slaves of capitalism and violence,” as the accused described his judges, could accordingly deliver only barbaric verdicts. All empathy had to lie with the heroic executed martyr who claimed to fight in the name of the people.

Parallels with the communicative strategies of leftist terrorist groups in the second half of the century are easy to see and suggest some interesting comparisons. “Serving the People” was also the title of an RAF text published in May 1972 in the run-up to the group’s first “terrorist” actions as defined by Waldmann. Here they used a quote from Chairman Mao to express their philosophy of the different values human life and death could have: “if you die for the people’s interests, your death is more ponderous than Mount Tai; if you are in the pay of fascists and die for the exploiters and oppressors of the people, then your death is lighter than the down of a swan.”[428] In reality, the RAF’s claim to have a mandate from the people was far less legitimate than in the case of the Russian social revolutionaries, even if the Meinhof circle did know how to use the flaw in legitimacy of the post-fascist democracy and the justified outrage over the Vietnam War of its American protector to its advantage. From the very start, drawing a Manichaean distinction between “exploiters” and “little people” on whose behalf they claimed to fight meant performing a juggling act. “The question: ‘would the prisoners’ release have taken place if we had known that Linke[429] would be shot in the process?’ – a question we are often asked – can only be answered with ‘no.’ … The cop who lets us go we will also let go,” stated the 1971 “Urban Guerilla Concept,” and the claim of responsibility for the May 1972 attack on the Springer Press building even specifically expressed regret “that workers and employees were injured.”[430]

Even so, the “innocent” victims did not prompt the terrorists to reconsider their strategy of violence. This was certainly due in part to the “leaden solidarity” of those 68ers who felt that what the RAF did “’in principle,’ that is theoretically or hypothetically, was justified, just not right here and right now, and when, then differently.”[431] In view of the overall very low tolerance for violence, even on the part of radical leftists, the RAF won considerably more sympathy by creating martyr legends with its own members in the role of victims of the state than it did with its deeds. Even carefully targeted attacks on figures hated by the leftists could at best occasionally produce “furtive happiness,” but nothing even remotely close to Russian society’s acceptance of social revolutionary terrorism.[432] The claim that those killed had “deserved” their fate nonetheless remained an essential part of the RAF narrative up until the dissolution of the group. After the so-called “Third Generation” killed a 20-year old American soldier in 1985 merely for the purpose of using his ID card to park a vehicle filled with explosives on the Rhein-Main airbase, their response to leftist critique was unequivocal: “for us the american soldiers in the frg are not both perpetrators and victims; we do not take this romanticized, social worker’s view of them. After vietnam (…) every gi has to understand that he is paid to make war, i.e. ALL OF THEM MUST UNDERSTAND THAT IT IS WAR – and decide for themselves.”[433] Not until six months later did the RAF, addressing “those who fight with us,” admit that “the shooting of the GI in that specific situation in the summer was a mistake that (…) blunted the effect of the air base attack.”[434] The group had to acknowledge that the attack had generated no feelings of triumph, only sympathy for the victim.

How an understanding of terrorist acts as “emotives,” that is, as both the expression and trigger of emotions as Hilbrenner suggests, might advance our thinking should certainly be explored further in future research. Precisely which emotions are articulated and evoked in this connection? What changes when democratically governed states are involved whose governments must defend their counterterrorism performance to voters? And might it be possible to explore the important issue of why states react as they do to terrorist attacks by drawing on the history of emotions? Feelings of shame and the resultant desire for revenge might be relevant here, since the state had proven unable to effectively shield its citizens from attack.[435] This failure of the state assumes a concrete shape in the victims. In this sense they are always “uncomfortable” and cause disruptions that might lead to fantasies of revenge and destruction instead of eliciting empathy and acceptance of responsibility. Clark McCauley has recently noted that terrorist groups are by no means solely interested in producing fear and shock in their enemies, even if most definitions continue to focus on these emotions: “Terrorists count on anger and outrage at least as much as they count on fear,” writes McCauley. “Anger is the emotion sought by terrorists aiming to elicit overreaction to their attacks – using the enemy’s strength against him in a strategy of jujitsu politics.”[436] Using the example of Israeli and American anti-terror measures in the 1980s and ‘90s, Andrew Silke has shown that military repression as a response to attacks is usually counterproductive; at the same time, he emphasizes the unyielding desire for revenge and retaliation in the impacted societies: “Human psychology is inclined to support and tolerate such hard-line approaches even if the policies only exacerbate and prolong the conflict.”[437] What role the exploitation of grief over the victims plays, and whether the indiscriminate expansion of allegedly “legitimate” targets in today’s religious terrorism might in some cases provoke equally indiscriminate responses from the state, thus giving victims a legitimizing purpose within the framework of constitutionally problematic counter-terrorism policies, would be worthwhile topics for further research.

As Hilbrenner’s example from a completely different context shows, grief over victims is an emotion that while not completely independent of outrage over the perpetrators is nonetheless a separate feeling, and one that actually has profound importance for symbolically re-establishing the moral order that the terrorists have violated. To counteract the terrorists’ discursive reversal of perpetrators and victims, it is essential for their opponents on the side of the attacked state that this grief also be made public. Only in this way can a community of mourners develop that not only very publicly denies emotional complicity with the perpetrators, but also counters the threatening delegitimization of the humbled power. Thus, in the case of the Grand Duke the absence of an intact corpse as the focal point for the usual mourning rituals was not only an emotional problem for his family members, but a political issue of the first order. This finding reflects the importance of funeral services for terrorism victims in morally discrediting the perpetrators and restoring disrupted order for the society that has been attacked – a little-researched topic until now and one with great potential.[438] Once more, the communicative opposition of competing victim constructs needs attention, as the example of the RAF again effectively illustrates: while at the close of the “German Autumn” on October 25 senior Bonn politicians attended a pontifical requiem Mass for murdered businessman Hanns Martin Schleyer in the Stuttgart Saint Eberhard’s Church, two days later at the Dornhalden Cemetery an antagonistic emotional community came together around the open graves of Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe.[439] The sympathizers who attended, many from other European countries, mourned the RAF founders as ostensible victims of a “barbaric” regime that was constitutional in name only. Parts of the funeral ceremony itself thus had “the character of a protest demonstration.”[440] It goes without saying that in this connection, the media as the means for relaying social and personal grief takes on particular importance.[441] While the state funeral for Schleyer was broadcast live, thereby expanding the community of mourners to include virtually the entire German (television-viewing) nation, the radical leftist oppositional public sphere was a forum for mourning the allegedly “murdered Andreas, Gudrun and Jan” – just as the leaflets of the Russian social revolutionaries had kept alive the memory of Kalyaev.[442] As Alex P. Schmid and Janny De Graaf observe, media reports on terrorism can act as not only “information machines” but also “identification machines.”[443]

On closer inspection, the key role that Hilbrenner assigns the Grand Duke’s widow in the community of mourners may also prove not be an isolated case. Just as in the cultural symbolism of war the killing of women and children was traditionally seen as taboo, in the history of modern terrorism, especially the social revolutionary type, victims of physical assault were long almost exclusively men. This was of course partially due to the imbalance of political power between the sexes: as long as victims were carefully selected based on their political “guilt,” it was literally almost impossible to attack women. On the other hand, from the 19th century on, the pain and the sorrow of those left behind had and still have primarily female connotations.[444]

Widows also had a particularly important function after the weeks-long hijacking dramas ending in hostage deaths that marked the culmination of confrontations between the state and leftist terrorists in Italy and West Germany in the late 1970s.[445] By standing beside Schleyer’s widow at the church funeral service, the Chancellor was symbolically apologizing to the family for the state’s earlier hard-line approach; and in allowing him to sit between her sons and herself, the widow was accepting this gesture. This was by no means a matter of course, as a comparison with Italy shows: there, the Christian Democratic party leadership’s conduct during the kidnapping of multiple prime minister Moro had caused such deep rifts between the government and Moro’s family that no reconciliation took place. Moro’s widow not only refused to participate in the state funeral; she refused to even hand over her husband’s body for the official burial. Yet in both countries, already at the time of the kidnapping but even more importantly afterwards, a conspicuous social need had become apparent: the need to turn the kidnapped and ultimately killed victims into heroes, even saints, in order to re-cast their passively endured fates as heroic acts of self-sacrifice for the community.[446] Especially in the case of Germany, these narratives contained elements of soldierly masculinity that should raise general awareness of how the category “gender” figures in the process of constructing images of victims. Not coincidentally, rumors of alleged homosexuality – i.e. a supposedly problematic, feminized masculinity – in the case of the Moscow governor helped to discredit the victim, playing right into the hands of the social revolutionaries.

What role the victims’ surviving family members in general and their widows in particular played in collective processes of mourning and coping, and whether they met attempts to use their murdered husbands for political purposes with resistance, support, or passive acceptance, must be examined on a case-by-case basis; the same applies to opportunities these women were given or denied because of their special charisma as victims.[447]

Not everyone who endures suffering develops a sense of victimhood, and not all those who claim to be victims have suffered themselves – as the essay by Marie Breen-Smyth reminds us. On the other hand, acknowledgment of victimhood can also be withheld when the pain suffered does not count in the eye of the beholder. Insistence on their jealously guarded victim identities and emotional isolation from the suffering of the opposite side were perhaps the most serious impediments to appeasing Northern Irish society, deeply divided by a decades-long pattern of violence and counter-violence. Several aid and self-help groups had already formed during the conflict to meet the needs of injured parties, but after 1994 the number of victim associations increased dramatically. A bitter dispute arose against the backdrop of the now-available compensation funds over the issue of who had the right to reparation payments and – perhaps even more importantly – who did not. The introduction of a disability pension for people with permanent physical injuries ultimately failed, since several politicians refused to include former members of the republican paramilitary in the pool of beneficiaries: under no circumstances could “terrorists” (also) be “victims.” For its own part, Sinn Féin rejected any ruling that did not also include the “victims” from its side. Initiatives to establish the Northern Irish equivalent of the 1990s South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission were – and still are – just as controversial.

In Italy, the rampant violence of the “years of lead” was not the result of ethnic or ethnicized conflicts but genuinely political ones. During this period terrorists on the left and right did not act independent of each another; instead, they radicalized one other in many ways through their own interaction and their close dealings with state agents, primarily intelligence agencies.[448] The many still-unanswered questions surrounding the ambivalent role of the state make coming to terms with the past south of the Alps especially challenging, both politically and emotionally, as Anna Cento Bull makes clear. She writes that in Italy, as in Northern Ireland, it was the ongoing political exploitation of the past after the final shots and bomb explosions that presented the greatest obstacle to healing the wounds that they had caused. Like in other fields, the Berlusconi era had particularly negative effects in this regard, since the Milanese businessman regularly poisoned the political arena by continually reviving anachronistic, anti-communist grudges while his own policies, driven by his own personal interests, eroded trust in the government even further instead of re-stabilizing it. Those who bore the brunt of the renewed polarization between left and right were the victims, who thanks to public interventions in these years were emerging for the first time from the shadows of the perpetrators and promptly found themselves caught between political fronts. If and how what Cento Bull sees as Italy’s “turn to the victim” in the new millennium was linked to international trends and events – first and foremost the terrorist attacks of 9/11, but also the growing number of transnational justice proceedings[449] – and which specifically national forms it takes have yet to be determined. In pursuing these issues further, particular attention should be paid to not only church representatives’ key role in the debate, but also the Catholic character of the country as a whole – by adapting the principle of confession and absolution for the political sphere, for instance. In any case, the questions that in Cento Bull’s view dominated the Italian public sphere could help provide new insights in other contexts or when comparing different national approaches: What preconditions need to be met if reconciliation is to succeed? What role does traditional jurisprudence with its focus on perpetrators play? And what is even a realistic goal to strive for when seeking reconciliation – on the level of the individual, but also that of society? How important is “truth,” including the sharing of confidential information about perpetrators?[450]

As Cento Bull shows, surviving relatives of Italian terrorism victims are by no means in agreement when answering these questions. The considerable heterogeneity of the victim group she describes is itself one of her essay’s most significant findings. Even those family members who since 2007 have participated in an experimental dialogue with former members of leftist terrorist groups, organized and moderated by church representatives, expressed a wide range of different feelings and attitudes toward the perpetrators. Drawing on Chantal Mouffe’s work on the theory of democracy, Cento Bull emphasizes the social relevance of such encounters: although they cannot reconcile contradictory memories and experiences, they can enable these memories and experiences to coexist in the same space and be borne in their oppositionality. Not only could bitter enemies become adversaries and imagined monsters become human beings in this way. Democracy itself could also profit from such initiatives in civil society in that they might be able to provide a sense of restorative justice where institution-bound approaches had failed.

The Italian example at the same time also helps to highlight the differences between left- and right-wing terrorism. The reconciliation efforts just described have certain limitations due to, among other things, the persistent refusal of former right-wing terrorists to acknowledge the human and political turmoil they had caused. Even in the mediated dialogue initiative it was the victims alone, not the perpetrators, who recalled the consequences of right-wing violence. This violence, which at the time eschewed written claims of responsibility so that its bombings would sow blind terror – the Red Brigades deliberately chose not to use explosives, since they were viewed as the weapon of the right – seems largely anonymous and faceless, even in retrospect. This finding is closely linked to the disappointing judicial balance sheet for “black” violence in Italy: while pentiti legislation led to widespread success in fighting left-wing terrorism, nothing even remotely comparable exists in regard to crimes committed in connection with the strategy of tension.[451] It would certainly be worthwhile to look more deeply into how differences in the way the state pursued left- and right-wing terrorism respectively affected victims.[452] In any event it is hardly surprising that, as Cento Bull shows, many of the victims’ loved ones feel that continuing the reconciliation talks only makes sense if government representatives are also included, so that they can at least get closer to finding the historical truth.

Especially since written claims of responsibility are often lacking, government agents such as investigators, prosecutors, and judges play a decisive role in the matter of whether victims of right-wing terrorist attacks are even considered “terrorism” victims and remembered as such. No consensus has been reached yet, for instance, over whether parents of the young people killed on July 22, 2016 in Munich lost their children to a single individual who had “run amok” or to a “right-wing terrorist attack.”[453] And the NSU murder victims were not the first ones to be defamed and partially criminalized by investigators following their violent deaths since the crimes were not acknowledged as right-wing terrorism.[454] When at the end of 1980 in Erlangen, the Jewish publisher Shlomo Lewin and his partner Frieda Poeschke had been the victims of an anti-Semitic murder, the investigators viewed him as a suspicious character with a “colorful past” and looked for the murderers first primarily from within the Jewish community.[455] Considerable evidence suggests that this crime, like the devastating attack at the Munich Octoberfest several months earlier, can be ascribed to the paramilitary sports group (Wehrsportgruppe) Hoffmann, though even today the many dead and injured are still officially considered the victims of a single mentally disturbed perpetrator.[456]

If only the victims of autumn 1977 and not those of autumn 1980 have found a place in the Federal Republic’s collective memory, it is no doubt partially because of how their respective victimizations were labelled by official agencies, and this in turn rests on the widespread and persistent underestimation – also among academics – of the right-wing potential for violence in the history of the Federal Republic.[457] An additional factor should be mentioned here: the lack of societal support for the “classic” victims of right-wing violence noted earlier in the editorial who are usually chosen from among social minorities. Hence during the wave of right-wing violence that accompanied the early ‘90s debate over restricting asylum rights, the federal government spokesman saw nothing amiss in declining the request that Chancellor Kohl attend the funeral for the Turkish-born victims of the Mölln attacks (November 23, 1992) with the remark that the government did not want to “slip into condolence tourism.”[458] Instead of decisively countering the “Foreigners Out” and “Germans First” slogans circulating at the time, the federal government’s callous neglect of the victims helped encourage a vigilante kind of terrorism that saw itself as supposedly defending the common good against stigmatized minorities: “vigilante violent offenders are non-state agents fighting with illegal means (primarily) in the name of an established group against outsider groups.” Accordingly, the anxiety that is by definition part of terrorist violence should only be unleashed in the target population group: “The deeds are intended to limit or further marginalize the social standing of the vulnerable group to which the terrorists think their victims belong and for which individuals as its representatives are attacked.”[459] Viewed against this backdrop, the 1993 restrictions placed on the asylum law can definitely be interpreted as a political concession and a legitimizing win for the vigilantism that would ultimately escalate to a new level in the right-wing terrorist NSU.[460]

But even the “German Autumn” as the peak of left-wing terrorism in the Federal Republic left many of those it impacted feeling bitter and disappointed. The essay by Florian Jessensky and Martin Rupps illustrates the ambivalent experiences of the October 1977 plane hijacking victims in their attempts to find recognition and restitution for their ordeal. Lufthansa felt that as the airline involved, it was first and foremost an injured party, and while the unfortunate passengers were reimbursed for personal belongings they had lost, the airline deemed it the government’s duty to address any further claims. And in fact, by staging the successful recovery of the hijacked plane as a political “victory over terrorism,” the government had raised former hostages’ hopes for speedy, unbureaucratic aid. That the chancellor was nonetheless unable to perform some generous act, and instead deferred to the victims’ compensation law passed just one year earlier, led to considerable frustration among many of the surviving passengers. This law actually turned out to be a completely inadequate way to make restitution for the comprehensive damage caused by a terrorist attack. Jessensky and Rupps show that in the end, the political character of their victimization nonetheless provided the “Landshut” survivors better chances for recompense than those of “ordinary” crime victims at the time. Their leverage lay primarily in their potential ability to create a media scandal over government lapses: at least some segments of the population apparently felt that it was most definitely the politicians’ duty to care for people who had been taken hostage in an attempt to blackmail the state. The federal government was well aware of this fact, too – and accordingly sought to contain the damage to its image as best it could.

The thesis that the “Landshut” case helped raise general awareness about the psychological consequences of any violent experience, as the authors contend, will need to be studied further in future research. What the essay does highlight once more is the issue of what is specific to being victimized by terrorism. “It is highly questionable whether the mere fact that an act is classified as terrorism has specific consequences for its victims,” wrote Anthony Pemberton recently – a claim in need of additional support.[461] For while Pemberton is doubtless correct in warning against essentializing victimhood by terrorism, the case explored by Jessensky and Rupps suggests that the political context in which the crime occurs can provide survivors with a greater power to act even when they are politically denied any special status. It must be said, though, that the successful recovery of the plane by the GSG 9, which cost no additional passengers their lives, is a key part of the image we have even today of the fortunately rescued passengers. While in the case of Hanns Martin Schleyer, whose family enjoyed no comparably happy ending, the government’s hard-line approach to the kidnappers was repeatedly criticized and questioned as the cold triumph of state reason, in the “Landshut” case the narrative of the strong state has triumphed. The risk the hostages faced when Schmidt’s appointed crisis team allowed ultimatum deadlines to pass, but even more importantly when the GSG 9 intervened, was and still is abundantly clear to the survivors and their families, yet the general public is largely unaware of it. Met on their return to Frankfurt by various second-tier politicians but above all by a gaggle of inquisitive journalists, the victims had no wounds that were visible to the public, which made their good fortune that much clearer, especially when compared with the unfortunate widows of the year 1977. General sympathy focused accordingly on Monika Schumann, whose husband had been shot to death in the aircraft in front of all the passengers. Only the psychiatrists on site seemed to grasp that those who had been forced to witness the brutal murder – threatenedwith death themselves – had also suffered, and these psychiatrists now turned their professional gaze on the former hostages. Of those who received treatment, however, the majority felt less like patients than scientific guinea pigs.

The fact that victims deserved sympathy and appropriate offers of help seems to have been realized by very few people in the Federal Republic at the time, though in the Netherlands it was already widely acknowledged. Synchronic and diachronic comparisons with other contexts are needed to give sharper contours to this still blurry picture. Generally speaking, the historicization of victimology including its political premises and the consequences of therapies provided represent a particularly urgent need for future research in the history of knowledge.[462] In this context it will definitely be necessary to also consider civic initiatives undertaken on the victims’ behalf: initiatives that promoted information about victimology, worked for its dissemination, and pushed for its translation into action in therapeutic, political, police, and legal practice.[463]

The essays in this yearbook suggest that even more than being a history of knowledge, a history of terrorism victims must be a history of the media, including the shifts in moral order that it both reflects and itself produces. Unlike the “symbiotic” relationship between the media and terrorists, the “super-entertainers of our time,” the complicated relationship between terrorism victims and the “fourth estate” has been the subject of very little research.[464] Here, too, the essay by Jessensky and Rupps offers first glimpses into a doubtlessly complex reality. Members of the media can voyeuristically exploit the suffering of victims, multiply it, and reproduce it repeatedly. On the other hand, many victims gain agency by successfully manipulating the media; a handful even enjoy “careers,” become “prominent,” and achieve material success. Especially in the recent past, the tendency to use the appropriate treatment of terrorism victims as a yardstick for measuring a government’s counterterrorism performance has above all been the mission of engaged journalists.[465]

But members of the media not only voice critique and create norms for action in politics. As a result of the “turn to the victim” they themselves have also long been the recipients of new moral demands, as the essay by Charlotte Klonk shows. According to this widespread claim, it is not the perpetrators themselves but rather the fatal consequences of their deeds that should be the focal point of public engagement with terrorism. In Klonk’s view, however, the counter-images laid spontaneously at crime scenes showing the victims while they were still alive, do not live up to this postulate. By visually overwriting the deed, these photographs actually avoid shock and keep pain at a distance. The author also sees an inability to mourn in the post-9/11 storm of protest directed at the media after the now-famous photo of the “falling man” was published,[466] an interpretation that finds support in the desperate attempts to discover the identity of the anonymous man who fell to his death. Klonk’s own main purpose is to warn about the potential danger of emotions aroused by images of victims, which in public spaces might be difficult to control. In her view, ostensible sympathy with the victims all too often conceals substantial political interests trying to exploit individual loss in connection with deliberate strategies of polarization. The top priority in any case should be the protection of victims’ privacy, including the right to their own images, whose public display they should also have the power to refuse.

By emphasizing the close connection between politics and medially conveyed emotionality, Klonk closes the circle begun in the essay by Anke Hilbrenner. Klonk and Hilbrenner’s essays, but also the others introduced here, pose the fundamental question: which moral systems, views of human beings, and notions of justice actually framed the social processes of negotiation around victimhood that are discussed? For the history of modern terrorism is above all a history of the moral legitimization and delegitimization of violence. As this volume shows, victims play a key role in this history – even and perhaps especially when they are categorized by political circumstances, when their suffering goes unrecognized, or when they do not agree on forms and goals of social reappraisal.

Forum

Gregor Feindt

Making and Unmaking Socialist Modernities: Seven Interventions into the Writing of Contemporary History on Central and Eastern Europe

Note: I would like to thank Bernhard Gißibl and Konstantin Rometsch warmly for discussing a first draft of this article with me.

Abstract: The historiography on post-war Central and Eastern Europe has proven highly productive in recent years and challenges many received assumptions about state Socialism that prevail in both Western and regional scholarship and the societal representation of this history. This essay enquires into the making and unmaking of state Socialism, discusses recent and innovative scholarship, and claims that the analysis of post-war Central and Eastern Europe provides useful methodological insights beyond the region and the specific time frame. In seven interventions, the essay calls for the situational, flexible, and de-centred study of Central and Eastern Europe beyond the constrictions of methodological nationalism and Cold War epistemology and with an emphasis on the processual character of modernity. In consequence, it is held that we need to perceive state Socialism as integral to the multiplicity of modernities and should integrate Central and Eastern Europe into European and global history.

Nearly 30 years after the end of state Socialism in Eastern Europe and around much of the globe, the historiography on Central and Eastern Europe faces considerable challenges when dealing with the most recent past. Studying the prehistory of our present contributes to public and political discourse and illuminates the problems of present-day society.[467] However, in recent years, popular discourse, memory policies, legislation and a significant number of historians in Poland, Hungary, or the Czech Republic have replaced a reflexive approach with the affirmation of historical truth and national history. In fact, historiography about these countries and post-Socialist countries more generally is divided, first, between a historicist approach that employs methodological nationalism and focuses on the political history of state Socialism and, second, scholars with a background in social and cultural history who study social, cultural, and ideological change and relate Central and Eastern Europe to global post-war history.[468] The latter approach provides intriguing insights that question received assumptions of Socialism and understands state Socialism as a contingent historical process. From a methodological point of view, this also helps to reflect contemporary history more generally and allows moving historiography beyond the received geographical containers of Central and Eastern European history and the findings of Cold War social sciences and early historiography.[469]

This article seeks to chart this dynamic field of research on the decades of state Socialism and brings forward seven interventions to rethink the contemporary history on Central and Eastern Europe. I will discuss recent, Western as well as Central and Eastern European, scholarship, present its findings and address its added interpretative value. I argue for a postmodern and transnational approach that goes beyond political history and helps to challenge the temporal, geographical, and methodological frameworks within which Central and Eastern European history has usually been written. This means to stress the legacy of the Second World War for post-war history, to apply a situational and flexible definition of Central and Eastern Europe, and emphasise history across borders. In place of the current research interest in power and violence, I would suggest studying the making and unmaking of state Socialism as inspired by Stephen Kotkin’s concept of “Socialism as a civilisation” and Shmuel N. Eisenstadt’s claim of “multiple modernities”.[470] In conclusion, I will discuss the trajectories of such a contemporary history of Central and Eastern Europe and relate it to general European and global history.

Historiography usually tends to present the decades of state Socialism in Central and Eastern Europe as a period of violence and oppression, to be followed by a period of radical historical change. Much of the literature emphasises national histories of heroism and victimhood, usually with a bias towards externalising the roots of violence and oppression to Communist or Socialist ideology.[471] Often following the paradigm of totalitarianism this research suggests a clear-cut opposition of “the state against society”[472] and frames Communism as an ideology imported from the Soviet Union lacking significant societal recognition. Two traumas, mass murder and totalitarian rule, are the main foci of the various state-financed institutes for the study of authoritarian rule in the region. For instance, the Polish Institute of National Remembrance investigates “Crimes against the Polish Nation” between 1939 and 1989 and the nation’s “Struggle and Martyrdom”, combining historical research with juridical prosecution and public education.[473] As the institutes in Poland and other Central and Eastern European countries employ a significant research staff, administer relevant archives, and in some cases run well-established publishing houses, they effectively shape research agendas in contemporary history and public opinion about the recent past of these countries.

In contrast to this history of externally imposed violence and oppression, the radical political change around 1989 towards democracy seems to offer a more positive outlook. Hailed by contemporaries as the “hard road to freedom”, a “return to diversity”, or even the “end of history”,[474] such liberal narratives have however been severely criticised by conservative historians. For instance, Antoni Dudek’s Regulated Revolution points to the negotiated character of Poland’s regime change and questions the extent and depth of transition from Communism to democracy.[475] More radically, in recent years, populist and conservative governments such as Viktor Orbán’s in Hungary or the second PiS government in Poland claim the continuity of Communist personnel and influence beyond 1989, presenting their own administration as the real and thorough termination of Communism some 20 years after.[476] Such narratives promote an essentialist understanding of Socialism as an unchangeable, static, and ultimately ahistorical regime. Following this understanding, Socialism was not a period of history but rather an ideological condition of the mind.[477] Opposing this perception of static Socialism, I will argue for a processual understanding of Socialist modernities that allows for the study of change, contradiction, and ambivalence of Socialist rule in post-war Central and Eastern Europe.

Covering the most recent past and the imminent prehistory of our present, the contemporary history of Central and Eastern Europe centres on state Socialism, effectively making it a history of the post-war period. Tony Judt argued that “the war changed everything”[478] and included the war’s legacy into his seminal account of post-war Europe as it paved the way for social, economic, and political change under Socialism. Along a similar vein, Polish historians like Andrzej Friszke or Andrzej Paczkowski proposed including the Second World War as a vital prerequisite for understanding Poland’s history in the post-war decades.[479] While this is most convincing and could be applied to Czechoslovakia and Hungary as well, empirical studies hardly connect the history of the Second World War with post-war developments. In this article, I will therefore pragmatically focus on post-war history and include the legacy of war at times. Similarly, I suggest to challenge 1989 as a clear-cut break and to study the long transformation of state Socialism.

If the contemporary history of Central and Eastern Europe requires a more open temporal frame, the same holds true for its spatial frame. Over the last fifteen years or so historians have effectively challenged Klaus Zernack’s and Jenő Szűcs’s classical definition of Ostmitteleuropa or East Central Europe as a historical region.[480] Recently, Markus Krzoska, Kolja Lichy, and Konstantin Rometsch convincingly have argued that post-war and contemporary history for this region should move beyond structural and longue durée arguments and have criticised the quasi-essentialist institutionalisation of this space.[481] However, this does not mean that the spatial concept lacks completely explanatory value. Joachim von Puttkamer, for instance, has emphasised the shared fundamentals of the political culture between Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary.[482] Moreover, historiographical debates about transcending the analytical container of the nation-state did not fail to make an impact on the historiography on Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary.[483] Research on transnational processes and constellations of entanglement between these states and the wider world further undermined assumptions about the three countries as an entity with clearly defined boundaries. Following this argument, I prefer to avoid the term East-Central Europe and, instead, make use of Central and Eastern Europe as an open spatial unit.

My emphasis on a more open time and space in writing the history of Central and Eastern Europe leads to the following seven interventions into historiography and suggestions for research yet to be done.

1Historicising Contemporary Research

Contemporary history writing faces the challenge that contemporaries of the events are still alive. In fact, many researchers themselves have witnessed the events that they study which requires constant reflection of the historian’s position towards their object of research. In response to the normative perceptions of state Socialism, it is necessary to historicise contemporary narratives and to revise contemporary research in the social sciences, especially Western scholarship.

The history of opposition against Communism illustrates how the contemporary narratives have misinformed our understanding of politics and society during late Socialism well into the present time. In his seminal study Worlds of Dissent, Jonathan Bolton analyses the formation of what was to become Charter 77 and deconstructs the powerful myths of the Czechoslovak underground. He argues that the stories around dissidence served a pragmatic and functional purpose within the narrow non-conformist circles rather than describing the emergence of organised protest. For instance, the dissidents’ frequent reference to human rights and the Helsinki accords enabled basic communication with Western benefactors and provided some protection against unlawful prosecution. However, these references fail to explain the roots of Czech dissidents in philosophical phenomenology and existentialism. Even more so, the universal scope of the Helsinki accords contradicted the immense pragmatism that many dissidents employed in their protest.[484] Bolton, moreover, repeatedly stressed the diversity of dissidents and their capacity to integrate such cultural and ideological diversity.

Other scholars such as Agnes Arndt, Robert Brier, Dariusz Gawin, or Michal Kopeček contributed to this new school in the history of dissidence and contextualised the narratives of dissidence further.[485] Putting dissidence into its historical contexts necessitates reflection of key analytical tools such as the concept of civil society. Since the late 1970s the concept of civil society has been used to describe the emergence of public opposition in Central and Eastern Europe, for instance when in 1978 Jaques Rupnik detected a “rebirth of civil society” in Poland.[486] More prominently, Andrew Arato and Jean L. Cohen modelled their theory of civil society along the example of Polish opposition and assumed that oppositional actors intentionally constructed civil society.[487] Arndt, however, revealed that Polish oppositional intellectuals had only learned of the term and probably of the concept from Western sources and came to use it several years after the formation of public opposition.[488] Similarly to the Helsinki narrative, the dissidents’ references to civil society served to attract Western support and added to their success. Such “keyword-communication”[489] produced a circular reasoning that has since been resumed time and time again when historians analyse opposition in Central and Eastern Europe as civil society. Instead, we need to historicise civil society as a political concept shared between East and West and make it an object of historical study itself.

30 years after the opening of archives, critical distance towards the history of Communism in Central and Eastern Europe still remains scarce. However, the example discussed here shows that the contemporary knowledge about dissidence is biased in two ways, from within dissident discourse and from Western scholarship. This crucial role of Western scholars for our understanding of social movements in Central and Eastern Europe forms a specificity of Central and Eastern European contemporary history and adds to the challenge of dealing with contemporary finding of the social sciences.[490] Given the strict limitations of sociology and political sciences under state Socialism, Western scholars and in some cases journalists filled this gap and presented a first analysis of dissidence and protest.[491] Many of these accounts reproduced inner-oppositional narratives, others even inspired oppositional self-conceptions.[492] Scholars need, however, to reflect their own involvement – or the involvement of their academic teachers – into the formation of these categories and need to establish new categories of analysis to cope with the temporal overlap between the subject of study and the formation of scholarly knowledge.

2Reassessing Power Relations

The call for historicisation includes reconsidering the description of social structures and in consequence reassessing power relations. The historical narration and commemoration of violence in Central and Eastern Europe widely follows a normative framework of oppression, collaboration, and resistance. It is obvious that such normative structures of violence characterise a context of war and occupation, but in the history of Central and Eastern Europe they extend towards authoritarian rule and often provide a narrative for the post-war history of the region. My intervention does not question that violence and oppression were integral aspects of this history. However, the strict normative and moral qualification of historical actors and their actions is unfit for historical analysis as it often reproduces contemporary judgement and follows contemporary understanding of social roles. Especially this static and normative understanding of social action runs the risk of neglecting, if not outright denying the victim’s agency. Here, I will draw on the dynamic research on societies under occupation and extend this inspiration to postwar history.

The distinction of occupiers and the occupied seems self-evident in societies under occupation. Yet, it is a gross simplification. In a recent contribution on the every-day history of the Second World War, Tatjana Tönsmeyer argued for a contextual and relational approach to power and violence that studies face-to-face relations and brings to the fore the agency of individuals in complex situations.[493] Maren Röger applies such an approach in her study on the sexual relations between German men and Polish women in Nazi occupied Poland. Bringing forward the agency of women in such relationships, Röger illuminates an aspect of occupation that had been often neglected in research.[494] Röger, however, distinguishes commercial, consensual, and forced sexual contacts and many of her examples crossed these lines while sexual coercion was frequent. In her study, she shows the fluidity of normative categories as contemporary racist Nazi ideology often failed to regulate sexual contacts or was openly circumvented. The negotiation of acceptable sexuality, and its description in terms of loyalty or collaboration adds to this fluidity.[495]

For many contemporaries the experiences of occupation and war continued into the immediate post-war period as Marcin Zaremba demonstrates in Great Fear, a study of the civil war-like situation in Poland between 1944 and 1947.[496] The normative distinctions established under occupation played a significant role for post-war societies in Central and Eastern Europe and often provided the episteme for the description of Communism. These normative distinctions posed the basis for the post-war legal procedures and in official discourse they effectively structured identity politics by marking out ‘true’ Poles, Czechs and Slovaks, or Hungarians against Nazi occupation.[497] From an anti-Communist viewpoint, this episteme translated into the description of state Socialism and provided the language against Soviet hegemony.

The historical analysis of violence and oppression in any form needs to address the complexity and ambivalence of power. This means studying different actors and their individual agency or Eigen-Sinn[498] beyond such contemporary normative rules. The study of Central and Eastern Europe in wartime and after the war blurs allegedly clear-cut distinctions of social groups and helps to unsettle an affirmative clarity of power.

3Rethinking Ideology

The history of state Socialism in Central and Eastern Europe calls for rethinking ideology, both from the angle of the history of ideas and with a view to social organisation. Ideology clearly has been a leitmotif in Central and Eastern European history throughout the twentieth century, and especially so during the Soviet styled regimes after 1948. But to this day, research too often perceives Socialism and Socialists as a holistic formation. Thereby, scholars run the risk of reproducing Socialist self-images as well as the paradigm of totalitarianism.

Two Czech historians, Michal Kopeček and Pavel Kolář, have tackled this monolithic understanding of state Socialism by analysing ideology as a social and intellectual process. Kopeček studies the political languages of Socialist revisionism and the formation of an inner-party reform movement across the region. While, after Stalin’s death, party leaders strove for national ways of Communism, radical Marxist intellectuals aimed for “the lost sense of revolution” and openly debated alternatives to party orthodoxy and bureaucratic centralism. The language of official Marxism provided a tool to openly express such critique and influence political discourse in the form of realpolitik. Revisionism eventually failed and was limited to a small group of intellectuals, but Kopeček exposes the dynamic plurality of political debates and the plurality of Socialist ideology in the 1950s.[499] Although the Socialist and Communist parties maintained a self-image of strict discipline and ideological uniformity, it was exactly this codified language that allowed for relatively open debates.

Kolář adds to this history of Communism after Stalin with a perspective from below, i.e. with the study of ordinary party members. In his book Post-Stalinism he enquires into the crisis of Socialist self-images in Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Poland during de-Stalinisation after 1956 and discusses how new approaches towards Communist history, the ideological shift from class to nation, and a new non-teleological temporality of revolution underpinned the reform process. Kolář argues that these conceptual changes of Post-Stalinism produced a “processual utopia” that was shared by ordinary party members without falling prey to ideological fanaticism or utter opportunism.[500]

Both authors convincingly deconstruct the crude and monolithic narratives of totalitarianism without even mentioning the concept. From a postmodern viewpoint, their emphasis on inner-party diversity and the processual character of ideology seems intuitive and is well in line with my two first interventions. They also move beyond classical historiographic revisionism and reveal how the political languages of Socialism interweaved conformity, deviance, and–as one might add–unresponsiveness. Within the field of Communist studies, these two books have the potential to initiate a sea change. With their interest in conceptual history and the history of ideas Kopeček and Kolář stand out from other contributions to the political history of Communism. In consequence, they deconstruct the dyadic opposition of state and party against society and also overcome an essentialist notion of the political that imagines history in terms of a Schmittian differentiation of friends and foes. Instead, Kopeček and Kolář study the Sinnwelt of state Socialism and take seriously that the Socialist utopia held, indeed, promise and attraction for many ordinary people and the new intelligentsia.[501]Without question such an approach towards the history of Socialist regimes breaks a taboo in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary, but their findings underline that it is worth doing so.

Both studies limit their analysis to the 1950s and early 1960s but it is obvious that their processual approach towards ideological Sinnwelten is most promising for the history after 1968 or what Judt coined “the end of the affair”[502] with Communism. In Prague and Warsaw, 1968 signified both the heydays and the violent end of reform Socialist and confronted revisionists with a shattered utopia. However, the ideological re-orientation that followed this experience of contingency awaits further scrutiny and will benefit from Kopeček’s and Kolář’s suggestions.

4Bringing Mobility to the Fore

Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary were highly mobile societies under Communism. This seems to be surprising given the manifold studies on the homogenising effects of the Second World War and its immediate aftermath for the region. For instance, Naimark and Mann pointed out the effects ethnic cleansing had on modern statehood in the region.[503] Poland before 1939, to give an example, had a population with approximately 30% of ethnic minorities, especially in the Eastern borderlands. After the German mass killings of Polish Jews, the re-drawing of state borders and the expulsion of Poles as well as Germans and Ukrainians rendered post-war Poland ethnically essentially Polish and caused significant societal change. Poles both from the Eastern border regions that now became part of the Soviet Union and from central Poland resettled to the new Western territories. Scholars such as Gregor Thum, Beata Halicka, Mateusz Hartwich or Hugo Service have stressed that this frontier situation in the “Wild West” and the integration of new and fragile local communities contributed greatly to the making of a new society under state Socialism.[504]

In his book A Country on the Move, Markus Krzoska suggests studying Polish post-war history from the angle of mobility, as this sheds new light on long-term social dynamics and transformations that are often omitted in the study of state Socialism. Clearly, such mobility rested on migration – both within the country’s shifting boundaries and beyond them. Krzoska convincingly demonstrates how policies of industrialisation triggered both urbanisation and a specific “incomplete migration” that saw industrial labourers commuting between rural homes and workplaces in industrial centres– a phenomenon that Sándor Horváth described similarly in the Hungarian case.[505] In longer perspective, such forms of mobility laid the path to labour migration across state borders that became (again) frequent after 1989 but had existed well before.

Moreover, upward social mobility complemented the geographical movement of Poles after 1945. As a consequence of Nazi and Soviet mass killing-Poland had lost approximately 40% of its political and cultural elites during the Second World War-industrialisation created opportunities of social advance for a young technical intelligentsia, but also for workers. Katherine Lebow analyses this demographic and social transformation in her book on the Nowa Huta steelworks and planned city on the outskirts of Cracow.[506] She follows the life of “new men” who deliberately participated in the Socialist project to improve their living conditions and start a different and more prosperous life. This included “women of steel”, who for a short period of time during Stalinism worked in hard manual labour and practically served as breadwinners to their families–thus transgressing traditional gender boundaries.[507] By the 1970s, more than a third of administrative and intellectual elites in Poland had progressed from the peasantry within two generations.

Finally, employing mobility draws scholarly attention to borders and the crossing of state borders. The international research project Hidden Paths within Socialism unveiled the fragility and permeability of border regimes in Central and Eastern Europe and presented numerous examples of legal, tolerated, or illegal border crossing despite harsh controls.[508] Especially the case of unofficial commercial relations and consumerism points to the value of investigating the mobility of objects. Commercial activities posed an integral part of international tourism under Communism, often simply to recoup the individual costs of travelling. In other instances, much needed goods regularly moved across state borders and in turn helped to meet consumer demand within planned economies. Jerzy Kochanowski illustrates how illegal smuggling from Slovakia satisfied Polish demand of zips throughout Socialism. Entire families from Warsaw travelled to the border region to stock up for the new season.[509] Such hidden paths of smuggling relied on much older contacts in the Carpathian mountains and among the Góraly community in both countries. Therefore, the movement of zips and clothes exposes Communist rule as surprisingly flexible and pragmatically accommodating, not only in one mountain region but also in specific fields of everyday life.

These three aspects of mobility underline that we need to study Polish society, and Central and Eastern European societies more generally, as in a state of flux during state Socialism. Social engineering, industrial urbanisation, but also deviant consumerism have contributed decisively to this fluid constellation and allow for studying social change in more details.[510] A relational approach towards these mobilities helps to relate the different levels of social action to each without necessarily marking off micro-, macro-, and macro perspectives.[511] Such relational historiography promises to increase our understanding not only of Communism, but of East Central Europe as such.

5Bearing Contradictions

The Soviet styled regimes triggered a radical modernisation in Central and Eastern Europe. Following the Marxist promise of progress and extensive propaganda displaying such development, modernisation was presented as a historical fact. Similarly, Western scholarship proposed a theory of modernisation that reflected on the Soviet example and resembled Marxist teleology.[512] However, investigations into such projects reveal the manifold contradictions of modernisation. Here, I argue that these contradictions are inherent to modernities and open a new perspective on the inner structure of Socialist societies.

Matěj Spurný enquires into the history of the mining town Most in Northern Bohemia and its complete relocation as a “laboratory of Socialist modernities”.[513] Between 1964 and 1970, Most was torn down and built again about a kilometre away to ensure easier exploitation of opencast coal pits. However, new Most was no top-down project of the Communist party or the radical planning of the Stalinist era but was in fact proposed by local mining managers. It testifies to the technocratic and economic administration of the 1960s. The clearing plan for the town argued with the effectiveness of such harsh measures for coal mining and affirmed a narrative of modern rationalisation. In addition, the planning of new Most promised rational solutions to social conflicts due to crowded living spaces, the improvement of hygiene and even a city of roses – and fulfilled such promises at least for a short time.

Strikingly, the town’s Roman Catholic church was not destroyed but moved some 850 metres to the east. Following a new awareness for the region’s heritage and some criticism of the town’s demolotion since the 1960s the church was shifted with an innovative and custom-built railway system. Under the rules of censured press, debates used a highly coded language, but they still took place in the public. As Spurný argues, moving the church brought two distinct modern discourses into conflict and cooperation, technocratic planning and heritage preservation. Although the ČSSR had not signed the international Heritage Convention of 1972, this context influenced the decision on Most’s church. With this, the Czechoslovak authorities made use of modernity in a double sense and turned the church itself into a “monument to modernity”.[514]

In his critique of modernisation as a normative concept of progress, Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman pointed to the fact that such emphasis on industrialisation and rationalisation conveys a notion of clarity and stability.[515] Spurný’s example of the city of Most and many others prove that modernity often provoked quite the opposite.[516] Modernisation comprises a bundle of processes, processes which often interfere with each other. Therefore, scholars working on modernity should focus on its procedural nature and modernisation, and confront the discourse of modernity with attempts at putting its concepts into practice.

Spurný embeds the history of Most into global perspectives of modern rationalisation and economic planning. He frequently points to similarities with Western European infrastructural modernisation and the critical discourse spawned by these processes since the 1970s.[517] This comparison also hints at the inter-war legacy of modernist planning, both in East and West, as first plans to relocate Most had come up in the 1920s and 1930s but remained technically complicated.

6Reaching Beyond the Nation State

Just as Spurný’s study inspired the asymmetric comparison of Czechoslovakia with Western Europe, many of the recent scholarly contributions discussed in this essay have put the nation state into perspective. Summing these studies up, it is necessary to move scholarship beyond the nation state in essentially three ways. First, scholars should employ a comparative research design; second, the entangled dimension of Central and Eastern European history needs to be further elaborated, and, third, Central and Eastern Europe should be more systematically placed within global history.

First, the comparison of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and – to some degree – the GDR provided crucial insights into the functioning of state Socialism as Kolář demonstrated. In addition, Christian Domnitz’s comparative analysis of official public spheres in Central and Eastern Europe revealed the pragmatism and adaptability of Polish media. Here, Poland markedly differed from the far more dogmatic and rigid discourse in Czechoslovakia or the GDR. Comparing the three cases he indicates both a significant unsettling of Socialist legitimacy and a turn of official and inner-party debates towards the concept of Europe well before 1989.[518] With this, Domnitz questions the received emphasis on the dissident debate on Mitteleuropa and reveals how both non-conformist and conformist actors opened up wider mental maps beyond the bloc divide.

Second, we need to identify further processes of transfer across the East-West divide and thus deconstruct the hermetic divide conjured up by Churchill’s 1946 image of the “iron curtain”. Historical research has so far emphasised the reception of Western developments in the East, thereby sketching a picture of silent Westernisation. As soon as we turn this perspective around the binary logics of the Cold War appear far less self-evident.[519] The history of opposition against Socialism proves most promising to carve out the entanglement of Central and Eastern Europe as the discussion of Bolton, Arndt, and others indicated. To add another example in more detail, Brier demonstrated how the Polish trade union movement Solidarność turned into a versatile symbol for Western political discourse. Competing political options, such as American conservatives, the German peace movement, or the French anti-totalitarian movement, appropriated the Polish opposition and seized on the concept of Solidarity during the 1980s.[520] In return, Polish actors stimulated such reception, employed their newly established agency, and brought Western support into use for the oppositional underground.

Third, these insights from historical comparison and the study of entanglements beg analytical integration within a global history framework. Historical research on Central and Eastern Europe was one of the first historiographical fields to deconstruct Eurocentrism. Larry Wolff’s seminal study revealed the invention of Eastern Europe and many other scholars argued against narratives of backwardness that had prevailed, for instance, in the study of Russia and the Soviet Union.[521] However, this methodological awareness has failed, by and large, to materialise into an empirical interest in the region’s global contemporary history.[522] Here, other disciplines such as anthropology provide a fresh perspective on Central and Eastern Europe, as for instance Christina Schwenkel investigated the history and mobility of Vietnamese contract labourers in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the GDR. Her contribution stresses the long legacy of Socialist internationalism unfolding in every-day history of Socialism and post-Socialism.[523] Further research, similar to Tobias Rupprecht’s study on vernacular appropriation of internationalism in the Soviet Union will take our understanding of Socialist societies further.[524]

All three suggestions underline the empirical potential and methodological reflection of contemporary history writing beyond the nation state as a container and beyond the historical region as an essentialist concept. Central and Eastern Europe was an integral part of European and global history throughout the twentieth century and a strictly national or local approach will fall short of a balanced analysis. The examples presented here also underline that the framework of comparison, transfer, and entanglements needs to be handled flexibly and should be inductively derived from the object of study.

7History from the Margins

Writing history from the margins provides new insights also for the centre. Two of my earlier interventions reflected upon Western categories in social sciences (2) and Eurocentrism (6) that shape our understanding of Central and Eastern Europe. Conservative authors from the region have also raised such criticism, for instance Zdzisław Krasnodębski who rallies against the Polish mimicry of Western liberalism since the 1980s and claims instead the authenticity of Polish political thought that should be accepted into a European canon of ideas.[525] In fact, Polish controversies over the history of Communism resemble in many aspects postcolonial discourse and point to the relevance of history from the margins.[526]

In her reflections on post-Socialism, Claudia Kraft confronts Poland’s history with the sensibilities and concepts of postcolonial studies.[527] She reveals the temporal quality of Poland’s peripheral situation as both liberal and conservative intellectuals conceptualise 1989 as a definite and essentialist rupture: A liberal narrative of 1989 revolves around Poland’s transition towards democracy and brings forward modernisation against persistant conservative traditions. In contrast to this, actors right of the political centre, such as Krasnodębski, define Socialism in essentialist term and normatively write it off as a “red century” that lasts beyond the alleged break of 1989 and needs to be eradicated from Polish culture.[528] However, Kraft argues for an epistemic understanding of post-Socialism that draws on postcolonialism and moves beyond narratives of modernisation or ideological authenticity. Categories such as “transformation” or “high modernity” are neither universal nor valid beyond time and space, but describe specific temporal constellations. Here, the study of Central and Eastern Europe’s post-Socialism provides a helpful example that might illuminate the study of contemporary region more generally.[529]

In his history of neoliberal Europe and economic reforms after 1989, Philipp Ther presents such a history from the margins although he does not employ postcolonial theory. Studying the liberalisation, deregulation, and privatisation of formerly planned economies, the author argues that Central and Eastern Europe went through an earlier and more successful transformation than Western or Southern European economies. Along the example of the former GDR’s integration into the Federal Republic of Germany, Ther develops a model of co-transformation–i.e. the conceptual and processual transfer from East to West.[530] Stricter regulation of the welfare state, discourse on civil society, and individual biographies of politicians from the former GDR are analysed to illustrate the transformation from East to West. Thus, following Ther, East Germany became a laboratory for neoliberal Germany since the 2000s.[531] In addition to this, Ther elaborates that since the economic crisis of 2008 a new mental map of Europe emerged that attributed Central and Eastern Europe with a more central position and marginalised the South of Europe as backward and in need of reform.

Postcolonial theory can enrich our understanding of Central and Eastern Europe not only around 1989 but also in medium and long-term perspectives.[532] However, if the attribute postcolonial is used – and it is used – this should be handled with care as Krasnodębski’s example shows. A postcolonial analysis means more than simply referring to a situation after colonial rule or anti-colonial attitude and making use of the moral empowerment such a situation provides. It means to approach contemporary history from a new position that moves beyond the historical narratives, the binary understanding of power and ideology, beyond the dominant actors of the time, and consequently beyond the epistemology of the colonial condition. In fact, a rather simple shift in focus may help to illustrate such “epistemic disobedience”, to use a concept of postcolonial theorist Walter Mignolo.[533] Ther, for example, emphasises the agency of ordinary citizens during economic transformation and stresses that many of these small private entrepreneurs transformed their countries more radically than did government economic policies. It is understood that such epistemic disobedience is in line with many inspirations of recent cultural and social history and summarises the interventions I have proposed in this article. In fact, postcolonial theory inspires new questions for the writing a contemporary history of Central and Eastern Europe.

Conclusion

This essay has enquired into the making and unmaking of multiple modernities of state Socialism and claimed that the analysis of post-war Central and Eastern Europe provides useful methodological insights beyond the region and this specific time frame. As this necessarily brief survey of recent literature on the transnational and cultural history of the region has shown, normative concepts like totalitarianism or an essentialist and monolithic understanding of Socialism have been productively unsettled. Transnational and postcolonial approaches to the region have also more generally undermined a normative understanding of the political that still prevails in much of the literature on Central and Eastern Europe after 1945.

Based on the existing literature I have put forward seven interventions in the field: First, I maintain that future research needs to historicise the concepts and findings of Western social research and develop more from cold war epistemologies. Second, future research will benefit from reassessing power relations and more emphasise on the agency of the allegedly powerless. This leads, third, to rethinking ideologies as an intellectual process and to study the Sinnwelten this ideology ensues. Fourth, a fresh view on mobilities, both geographical and social, human and post-human, underlines the fluidity of Socialist societies. Fifth, I suggested bearing the contradictions that follow from the study of modernisation as a bundle of processes and confront discourse of modernisation with the social and administrative processes it triggered. Sixth, I highlight the manifold insights that comparative research, the studies of transfer and entanglement between East and West, and global trajectories in anthropology have contributed to our understanding of the region. Finally, I argue for postcolonial theory and writing European and global history from the Central and Eastern European margins.

My seven interventions call for the situational and flexible study of Central and Eastern Europe beyond the constrictions of methodological nationalism and Cold War epistemology. We need to de-centre the Socialist projects in Central and Eastern Europe and relate these with other revisionist and non-conformist cultural formations in the region.[534] Such an understanding will underline the processual character of modernity and carve out the multiplicities of state Socialism. In consequence, we need to perceive state socialism as integral to the multiplicity of modernities and should integrate Central and Eastern Europe into European and global history.

In conclusion, it is crucial to approach the contemporary history of Central and Eastern Europe as a flexible and open research field. In a core definition, the region consists of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary often encompassing also the GDR and its most recent history spans between 1945 and 1989, but the inductive transgression of both time and space has proven most insightful and should be favoured over any restriction of the field. Adding to this, 30 years after the end of global Communism research continues to distance itself from the normative epistemes of this history. This epistemic disobedience and inductive research design will no doubt inform future research and enrich our understanding of the multiple modernities of state Socialism.

Tillmann Lohse

A Collapsing Migratory Regime? The Map of the Migration Period and Its Iconology at the Beginning of the 21st Century

Abstract: For more than two centuries the “Barbarian” migrations into the Roman Empire that took place during the 4th-6th century CE have been remembered all over Europe in the form of eye-catching maps. Depending on the political climate, the “tribal arrows” that aim to indicate both the ethnicity and routes of late antique and early medieval immigrants have been arranged in very different iconological settings corresponding to very different political interpretations of the historic events. This essay argues that recently developed maps which present the Völkerwanderung as the collapse of a restrictive migratory regime are based on rather poor sources. Instead, other feasible strategies of depiction are discussed that might also satisfy the current desire for historical guidance (especially within the “Schengen” states), but without ignoring the current state of research.

Historical incidents or developments are frequently used as political arguments. Although every historian is familiar with this truism, concrete examples may indeed merit thorough consideration. Such is the case with the so-called migration period that in Western periodization separates antiquity and the middle ages. In the fall of 2015 the demographical processes which are usually labelled as the “Barbarian Invasions”, the “Völkerwanderung” or the like[535] became once again a crucially important element of political discourse. Faced with an abruptly rising tide of refugees, many Europeans believed their continent to be at the brink of a “new migration period”, a mass immigration that not only fearful naysayers desperately hoped could be averted just in time.[536] A few years later, such dire predictions have become a bit less dramatic. Anyhow, the transitions between collective memory and political debate are still flowing with respect to migration processes that took place about one and a half millennium ago. Because everywhere – from Iceland to Portugal, Italy or Turkey – the Eurasian migration patterns between the years 375 and 568 C.E. are more than just an integral part of historical knowledge. The migration period is considered to be a “fact” that can provide a seemingly firm basis to scenarios of civilizational doom as well as to utopias of a borderless society.

For decades, cartographic illustrations have served as the main mnemonic code for the commemoration of the migration period. In 1801 the French navy lieutenant Emmanuel count de Las Cases published the original version of this type of map.[537] His “Map, Exhibiting the Transmigration, Course, Establishment or Distruction [!] of the Barbarians that Invaded the Roman Empire” was designed so intelligibly that other cartographers immediately sought to adopt it in a more or less modified manner for their own historical atlases. Before 1900 such imitations appeared in France as well as in Germany, Russia, Portugal and Spain. During the 20th century they became truly omnipresent in nearly all states that today comprise the Council of Europe. Sooner or later the Völkerwanderung map à la Las Cases became an almost indispensable part of atlases and textbooks for the teaching of history. In Germany, Hungary or Sweden this happened already around 1930, in Great Britain and the Netherlands around 1960, and in most other countries sometime in between.[538]

Since their invention many layouts for the map of the migration period have been developed. Looking for the commonalities of the various designs one quickly realizes that all of them entail what Erwin Panofsky once called natural (or primary) and conventional (or secondary) subject matters.[539] Essentially any Völkerwanderung map consists mainly of lines. In understanding these lines as pure forms, two kinds may be differentiated, namely delineating and connecting ones. Combined and arranged in a specific manner each kind of line triggers a certain concept or theme in the brain of the viewer, at least if he or she is familiar with the presupposed set of cultural codes: The linear contours represent Europe as a geographic entity. The linear connections mark the routes that late antique and early medieval groups of people are supposed to have taken in the course of translocation.

But with this iconographic analysis, not much is gained for the historiographical interpretation of maps dealing with the migration period. To decipher the narratives conveyed by them, the maps have to be read iconologically, namely as “cultural symptoms”.[540] A corresponding research paradigm was proposed by Panofsky some sixty years ago and has been widely debated and taken up since then.[541] According to him one may find in every piece of art some “underlying principles which reveal the basic attitude” of the artist’s social group “unconsciously […] condensed into one work”. And since such basic attitudes are inevitably related to political or ethical values, the varying natural and conventional subject matters of the maps under discussion may indicate quite different “intrinsic meanings or contents.”[542]

This essay does not aim to uncover all political agendas that during the last centuries have influenced the mapping of late antique and early medieval migrations. It rather focuses on maps that present this period as the collapse of a restrictive migratory regime. In the first section I will demonstrate that such examples, although hitherto rare, are quite a novel occurrence in the history of mapping the Völkerwanderung. Nevertheless, these maps draw on a long established iconological tradition whose historiographic argument they refine in a way that is both succinct and innovative. Since this “update” occurs as a result of current political developments, it is not very difficult to identify the “cultural symptoms” manifested in these maps. In contrast their scholarly evaluation is much more complicated, because in this case the historian is not merely challenged as a homo politicus, but also as a homo academicus. Consequently, in the second section I will discuss to what extent the core messages of maps envisaging the migration period as the collapse of a restrictive migratory regime correspond to the current state of historical research. The concluding third section shall be devoted to conceivable iconologies of late antique and early medieval migrations that might satisfy the current desire for historical guidance without ignoring the evidence of the preserved source material.

The Maps of the Migration Period and their “Cultural Symptoms”

Much like other historiographical maps,[543] those depicting the Völkerwanderung entail “cultural symptoms”. These symptoms, however, are not always the same. Besides the common iconographic repertoire outlined above, the individual works usually contain further figurative elements that – one may hypothesize – play a crucial role in shaping their respective iconologies. A survey[544] of roughly 350 historical atlases from almost 40 European countries produced during the last two centuries shows a vast number of such additions: above all legends and dates, but also miniatures of Germanic warriors, Hunnic horsemen or Slavic peasants.[545] Without question, all of these insertions carry a specific meaning. The best starting point for a comparative iconological analysis of the maps concerning the migration period is something else, though, namely the graphical division of the European landmass by means of coloring.

Admittedly, in different maps the areas that are distinguished from one another in such a way oscillate between state territories and settlement areas. But the manner in which spatial formation is depicted still allows a general distinction between two completely opposite interpretative patterns of the migration period that may be labelled as the “invasion narrative” on the one hand and the “colonization narrative” on the other.

While “invasion maps” present the Barbarian migrations as transgressions of Roman borders, “colonization maps” display them as a prehistory of the Germanic kingdoms established on Roman soil. The earliest cartographic elaborations of both such interpretations date back to the 1880s, when historical atlases became one of the most important learning media for teaching history at school. In the beginning the intrinsic meaning of these maps was not yet as readily apparent as in later times. This is because their erudite manufacturers tended to conceal the message of their depictions in a veritable jumble of information.[546] Later map designers knew how to avoid this mistake.[547]

In particular “colonization maps” quickly became popular with map makers. The rapid dissemination of this particular graphic rendition was facilitated by the fact that in most European countries – prior to the canonization of the tribal arrows of Las Cases – the standard repertoire of historical atlases already included a map showing the establishment of Germanic kingdoms in the early middle ages.[548] Over time, three subtypes were developed, each of them based on simple, but highly effective iconographic accentuations: firstly, panoramic versions projected the modern European system of states – at least partially – back into early Middle Ages.[549] Secondly, versions focusing just on a certain part of the continent depicted the mythical settlement of national forefathers.[550] And thirdly, versions designed in the geopolitical mindset of Nazism were supposed to justify future conquests of the “Third Reich”.[551]

As opposed to the impressive career of “colonization maps”, the advance of “invasion maps” proceeded rather sluggishly. In the first part of the 20th century they can be found only in historical atlases of German or British provenience.[552] Not until the second half of the century maps entitled “Barbarian invasions” did indeed depict Barbarian invasions. As would seem natural, maps of this type usually stemmed from countries with Romance languages.[553] The first attempts to advance substantially the iconology of “invasion maps”, though, came from Soviet scholars. Following their Marxist philosophy of history, Evgenij A. Kosminskij and Anatolij P. Levandovskij were not content with simply mapping the Barbarian incursions. In a map, published in 1951, they marked with red dots those areas, in which they determined revolutionary uprisings of slaves, peasants and miners to have taken place.[554] Subsequently, this cartographic concept of representing the migration period as the breakdown of a society of slaveholders was frequently adopted across Socialist states, until by 1989 the last of these depictions disappeared from historical atlases.[555]

Towards the end of the twentieth century, a second subtype of the “invasion map” emerged. Its most systematic iteration so far appeared with a map entitled “La pressione dei barbari durante la crisi del terzo secolo” (Fig. 1), which was published in 1997 by Marco Drago and Andrea Boroli in their “Nuovo atlante storico”.[556] In comparison to traditional versions some specific iconographic additions can be observed that strikingly affect the iconology of the map. In the drawing of the two Italian map designers the Roman border is not just a line that migrants cross in the course of their translocation. It is a bulwark, or more precisely: a bulwark that was devised to, but proved unable to prevent, this very crossing.

Two additional graphical elements bring about the visual transformation of the Roman border line into such a bulwark. Since both elements are not yet conventional cartographical symbols, the map-makers explain them in the legend. Massive black squares (24 altogether) are supposed to represent those legions of soldiers who were detailed particularly for border management, and jagged lines (13 altogether) are meant to symbolize the buildings that were erected especially for border security. Overall, the map’s depiction leaves no doubt concerning the true effect of the Roman border control: merely one barrier far from the actual border is able to stop the migration of the Gepids. Nineteen other tribes, however, easily continue on their chosen paths. And it is by no means only Germanic tribes that brave the restrictive migration regime of the Romans: in the East Parthians as well as Arabs and in the South Nubians, Blemmyes and Berbers find their way into the empire.

Fig. 1: “The Barbarian immigration pressure during the crisis of the 3rd century” (from an Italian historical atlas of 1997)

The idea to map the migration period as the story of a failing immigration control does not originate with Drago and Boroli. The two Italians just developed the most expressive iconography for such an interpretative presentation so far. They were likely inspired by a Völkerwanderung map that was published under the directorship of George Duby a few years earlier: The “Atlas historique Larousse”, initially published in 1978 and reprinted in 1992, already contained a map dealing with the problem of migration control by means of border fortifications (Fig. 2).[557] In fact, its border fortifications (limites) are drawn even more distinctly than in the Italian example, but as a whole the message remains less suggestive. In the French drawing, too, barriers nowhere ever are able to stop men and women who wish to translocate: The Picts smoothly surmount the Antonine Wall, as do the Suebians, Alans, Vandals and Burgundians cross the Upper Germanic-Rhaetian Limes. Furthermore, the colored highlighting of the Barbarian successor states, which as a rule appears to be very untypical for “invasionmaps”, emphasizes the collapse of the Roman migratory regime. But due to the extraordinary complex (and diachronic) design the general statement of the map appears more blurred than with the one by Drago and Boroli.

Fig. 2: “The Barbarian invasions” (from a French historical atlas of 1978)

Despite some small discrepancies, the migration period maps stemming from the “Nuovo atlante storico” and the “Atlas historique Larousse” obviously bear the same “cultural symptoms”: Both of them give the impression that in the early middle ages there were some people who tried to hinder the translocation of other people – but did so unsuccessfully! And both maps relate this observation to the Roman limites, the remnants of which are today considered world heritage sites.

With the adopting and elaborating design of the Völkerwanderung map that highlights border facilities as a means of immigration control, Drago and Boroli, wether intentionally or not, reacted to the gradual opening of the intra-European borders, which from the outset was connected directly to the protection of the common external border. The call for a joint migration policy of the so-called Schengen countries created a new awareness for the value of state migratory regimes and the instruments of their enforcement.

A close intellectual connection between the establishment of the European Union’s external border and the presentation of limites within maps of the migration period can also be observed on the basis of two younger adaptations from Eastern Europe: The map entitled “Didysis tautu kraustymasis” (= “The Great Migration of People”) published by Albinas Pilipaitis and Petras Gaučas in 2004[558] and the map entitled “Wędrówka ludów – Podział i upadek imperium rzymskiego” (= “The Wandering of People – Division and Fall of the Roman Empire”) published by Jacek Gawrysiak in 2008.[559] Both works were created during the period when Lithuania and Poland became full member states of the Schengen Area.

Iconographically these younger versions closely follow the map published by Larousse. The Polish one, however, does so less directly than the Lithuanian one, because in the former map the immigrating Barbarians do not cross the border fortifications (as they do in the French template), but bypass them (Fig. 3).[560] At first glance this might appear to be an insignificant detail, but regarding the iconology of the map it is vitally important. For tribal arrows passing border facilities suggest that the restrictive migratory regime of the Romans collapsed, even though it utilizes walls; whereas tribal arrows circumventing border facilities insinuate that the restrictive migratory regime of the Romans collapsed, because the walls erected for its enforcement did not sufficiently and comprehensively fence off the external border.

Fig. 3: “The Wandering of People - Division and Fall of the Roman Empire ” (from a Polish atlas of 2008)

Thus, at the core we are dealing with two competing historiographical claims that could very well be read as statements on the present and future migration policy of the Schengen countries. Whether scholars and mappers of late antiquity and the early middle ages should volunteer as political advisors at all, is a matter of opinion. But since maps such as the ones discussed above shape the historical awareness of future generations responsible historians cannot evade the following question: To what degree do such iconologies correspond with established historical knowledge based on latest research? With that, I will turn to the second section of my argument.

Some Scholarly Advice: Beware of Völkerwanderung Maps!

Völkerwanderung maps in the tradition of Las Cases have long been the subject of fierce criticism. At least since the 1960s international scholarship has deemed such drawings as largely unscientific. The ancient historian Gerold Walser, for instance, stated that the optimism of earlier researchers to reconstruct the tribal migration paths by combining the findings of archaeology and historical linguistics were “long gone”.[561] By contrast he observed that most of the historical atlases still did not demonstrate adequate restraint. Instead their mappers drew tribal history with rough lines across Eurasia and thus relapsed into the romantic notion that the migrating groups of persons were unchangeable ethnic entities.

The de-essentialization of the Barbarian tribes or peoples still preoccupies current research. In the last decade or so this methodological problem has probably been dealt with more consistently than ever before. For instance, it has been recently argued that there definitely was no “migratory avalanche” of the Lombards in 568 CE. What medieval historians just a generation ago imagined as a single, almost 100 kilometers-long trek of ethnically homogenous emigrants,[562] is now considered to have been a chain migration of very heterogenous small groups that dragged on for several decades.[563] Even more, by current migration researchers stress unanimously that translocations are a constitutive part of the conditio humana, just as birth, procreation and death. In the words of the British historian Peter Heather: “It is an inescapable conclusion from all the comparative literature, that a basic behavioural trait of Homo sapiens sapiens is constantly to use (…) migration (…) as a strategy for maximizing quality of life, not least for gaining access to richer food supplies and all other forms of wealth.”[564] If, however, migration is considered to have been not an exceptional, but rather the everyday mode of societies, and if men and women across time – individually or in groups – have been moving their residence, then there is no longer any real reason to single out one singular “migration period” from the historical continuum and to present it in a discrete map.

In sum, scholarly criticism regarding the Völkerwanderung maps may be subsumed under two objections: improper essentialization of tribes/peoples on the one hand and improper “epochalization” of the late antique and early medieval migrations on the other hand. A few years ago, the medieval historian Bernhard Jussen referring to both of these problems drew an obvious conclusion and unequivocally demanded: “Abolish all maps of the migration period!”[565]

Many historians may sympathize with this appeal, because Jussen is definitely correct in saying that the great population movements during the 4th–6th centuries did not take place as the map’s arrows suggest, that they were not that targeted, nor that compact – not even approximately so.[566] But in its decisiveness Jussen’s demand might fall short. Three issues I would like to take into consideration:

First, one should not underestimate to what extent the map of the migration period has been engrained into the pictorial memory of Europeans over the last decades. At the beginning of the 21st century it belongs, as shown above, to the commonly shared illustrative arsenal of historical imagination, in which political views and basic attitudes of European societies tend to “sediment”.[567] Academic historians simply may not have the means to erase the map from public memory.

Second, by bemoaning the “serious harm” Völkerwanderung maps do “to public historical imagination”[568] a rather indiscriminating perception of the picture is assumed. On the sole ground that the initial contact with such maps usually takes place during history lessons in school, the images are not merely passively received. In other words, the cartographical image and the picture act (Bildakt) do not necessarily coincide.[569] More than just a few history teachers may actually encourage their pupils to scrutinize the iconology of historical maps. And even where such basic rules of historical learning are disregarded, an uncritical reception cannot be taken for granted. In popular culture, the German movie “Die Feuerzangenbowle” (1944) and the French comic “Astérix et les Goths” (1963), for example, have caricatured the map and its application in school for good reason.[570]

Third, to eliminate maps of the migration period would mean to needlessly waste an opportunity to inform public debate. During the last two centuries generations of historians have used the mapping concept originally created by Emmanuelle de Las Cases to focus their understanding of late antique and early medieval migrations into a consistent iconology. If today’s scholars try to evade this challenge, they risk ceding the interpretation to others.

Alternative Approaches?

Any in-depth survey of maps showing late antique and early medieval migrations that date from the last two decades leads to very sobering results. Completely unimpressed by the scholarly critique, most historical atlases still repeat schemes of depiction dating back to the first part of the 20th century. The maps of Drago/Boroli, Pilipaitis/Gaučas and Gawrysiak seem to be the only ones that discernibly relate the historical plot to the present situation. By focusing on the migratory regime of the Roman Empire, these also pick up questions that are currently a topic of intensified discussion amongst historians and archaeologists. And yet, maps like the ones just mentioned may – at most – be a stimulation, not a model for an iconology that satisfies both the current desire for historical guidance and the evidence of the preserved source material. Two questions will suffice here to address the latter: Did the Romans really practice a restrictive migratory regime? And, were the limites actually their weapon of choice to enforce such a policy?

To make such a wide-ranging claim like the collapse of a restrictive migratory regime during late antique and early medieval times definitely requires more supporting evidence than a single reference to the “Historia Augusta” (written around 400 CE), which reports that emperor Hadrian (died in 138 CE) had ordered the construction of a wall, eighty miles in length, that was supposed “to separate Barbarians and Romans.”[571] Leading specialists of Roman border facilities, at any rate, suggest interpretations that point into a completely different direction. According to Egon Schallmeyer, for instance, the limites in the individual provinces were not heavily armed border systems, as the older literature has supposed, but rather a “line of encounter”. According to him, the main purpose of the new border facilities was “to focus the border traffic on single, particularly monitored gateways.”[572] Should not today’s historical atlases reflect research findings like these? All it would take to graphically transform the limites from an instrument of blockade and exclusion into an instrument for canalizing flows of people and goods would be some minor retouches. But, as a matter of course, the insertion of gateways to limites depictions by itself will not be sufficient to create an iconology consistent with the current state of research. In particular it has to be stressed, that the Roman border system based on limites already broke down during the second half of the 3rd century CE.[573] Its depiction in any map dealing with later periods, therefore, is simply anachronistic.

Furthermore, the ethnic coding of migration arrows belongs into the dustbin of history! The coloring of arrows should no longer signal ethnic homogeneity of the migrants or the wholesale translocation of “entire” peoples, but instead reference the character of the respective migrations. A military conquest, for example, has to be denoted in other ways than, say, the recruiting of soldiers or the accommodation of refugees. Similarly, ad hoc relocations caused by war or expulsion should be displayed in different ways than step-by-step resettlements as a result of chain migrations. All raids that did not aim at any permanent translocation, by contrast, should be omitted completely. Migration paths such as those taken by the Vandals, which are stored in the pictorial memory of the Europeans as a single, almost circular route going from the upper reaches of river Elbe to Rome or Sardinia, need to be segmented into several stages of different nature whose last one would definitely be located in Northern Africa.[574]

In addition, mappers should heed that all types of migration include remigration in some way or other. This phenomenon is well known from broadly documented examples of modern times; its absence during the middle ages seems not plausible at all.[575] Paul the Deacon (died 799), for instance, claims the Lombards had abandoned their dwelling places in Pannonia to the Avars only on the condition that they, if needed, would be allowed to return.[576] For an improved iconology of Völkerwanderung maps this means that the migration arrows should cross the borderline of the Roman Empire not only at specified gateways, but also in two directions. And if arrows are meant to represent historically accurate migration paths instead of mythographical references back to a putative original homeland, their future mapping will require much more geographical precision.[577] Frequently, such reconstructions will have to contend with the sparse data provided by the narrative sources. It’s hardly a stretch, however, to assume that outside the empire Barbarians travelled longer distances mainly on rivers, whereas inside the empire they used well-paved roads.

Finally, the coloring of areas needs some modification as well. Much will be gained, if the iconography of the maps differentiates more thoroughly between state territories and settlement areas, with a special focus on interrelations and not accordance. In this way it would be possible to show that with both Romans and Barbarians the two spaces were not necessarily congruent. Völkerwanderung maps that focus heavily on limites as “lines of encounter” may also benefit from marking completely different areas. This could be, for instance, so-called archeological cultures – i.e. the spatial distributions of typologically “equal” artifacts, whose ethnic interpretability nowadays is claimed just by very few specialists[578] – or even genomic mappings based on DNA traces from early medieval cemeteries.[579]

Admittedly, this is quite an extensive wish-list. Most notable, however, is not its length, but the fact that no mapper would be able to implement even a single one of these wishes at short notice. Why? Because historians have failed to do the preliminary work, due to their pronounced distaste for Völkerwanderung maps which became so widespread in the profession roughly two generations ago. Thus, the design of a sophisticated map addressing migration patterns during late antiquity and the early middle ages is by no means just a problem of “cartographic ethics”.[580]

List of Contributors

Marie Breen-Smyth has held academic posts at Universities in the US and the UK. She is a founding editor of the Taylor and Francis journal, Critical Studies on Terrorism and an initiator of the field of critical terrorism studies. She founded the Institute for Conflict Research in Belfast. She was 2002–2003 Jennings Randolph Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace and has worked with the Special Representative of the Secretary General of United Nations for Children and Armed Conflict. She publishes on political violence and its impact, ethics and methods in violent contexts, the Northern Ireland conflict, truth recovery and managing violent pasts, victim politics and counting casualties of political violence. She has also made two documentary films.

Anna Cento Bull is Professor of Italian History and Politics at the University of Bath, UK. She has published widely on political terrorism in Italy, including Italian Neofascism. The Strategy of Tension and the Politics of Nonreconciliation. New York and Oxford 2007, and Ending Terrorism in Italy, Abingdon and New York 2013 (with Philip Cooke). She is currently a partner in a Horizon 2020 project entitled Unsettling Remembering and Social Cohesion in Transnational Europe (http://www.unrest.eu/).

Gregor Feindt is a Research Fellow at the Leibniz Institute of European History. He studied Eastern European and Modern History, and Slavonic Studies in Bonn and Cracow (Jagiellonian University) and completed a PhD at Bonn on national discourse in Central European Samizdat. In 2015/2016, he was Visiting Professor for history and culture of East Central Europe with a focus on Poland at the University of Bremen. His research interests centre on Central Europe and the transnational history of the 20th century, especially with regard to Czechoslovakia and Poland. He is currently working on the experience of work and labour in industrial towns in Czechoslovakia. His recent publications include Sport under Unexpected Circumstances: Violence, Discipline, and Leisure in Penal and Internment Camps, edited with Anke Hilbrenner and Dittmar Dahlmann (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2018).

Anke Hilbrenner is professor for East European History at the University of Göttingen. She studied in Bonn and Bochum and taught at the Universities of Bonn, Bremen and Munich. Among her research interests is violence in the Imperial history of the Russian and Soviet Empires, reaching from East Central Europe to Siberia and Central Asia. She focuses on marginalized and subaltern groups, such as Jews or women. Her topics are sport, sciences, and terrorism. Among her recent publications are: The Perovskaia Paradox or the Scandal of Female Terrorism in Nineteenth Century Russia, in: pipps.org. The Journal of Power Institutions in Post-Soviet Societies Issue 17, 2016: Women in Arms. From the Russian Empire to Post-Soviet States, https://pipss.revues.org/ 4169, (8.5.2016); Hirš Lekerts Rache. Gewalteskalation an der Peripherie des Zarenreiches um 1900, in: Osteuropa, 66 (2016), Heft 4, S. 7–18 and: Sport und die jüdische Suche nach Gemeinschaft in den (ost-)europäischen Metropolen der Zwischenkriegszeit, in: Aschkenas 27 (2017/1), S. 71–92.

Florian Jessensky is Research Assistant for European Cultural and Contemporary History, Georg-August University, Göttingen since 2013. He is currently working on a dissertation with the working title, “The Role of Lawyers in the Conflict between the RAF and the State in the 1970s.”

Charlotte Klonk is Professor of Art History and New Media at the Institute of Art History and Visual History at Humboldt University Berlin. She currently researches the history, role and dynamic of images in acts of terror. Her publications include Science and the Perception of Nature (Yale University Press, 1998), Spaces of Experience: Art Gallery Interiors from 1800–2000 (Yale University Press, 2009) and most recently, Terror: Wenn Bilder zu Waffen werden (S. Fischer Verlag, 2017).

Tillmann Lohse is Research Fellow and Privatdozent for Medieval History at the Humboldt University Berlin. In 2017, he was Visiting Professor at the Goethe University Frankfurt; in 2018, he was fellow at the DFG Center for Advanced Studies “Migration and Mobility in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages” (Tübingen). His research interests cover the cross-cultural and inter-epochal comparison of pious endowments, the knowledge system and mediality of liturgical instructions as well as the global history of ascetical migrations during the medieval millennium. His publications include “Pious men in foreign lands. Global-historical perspectives on the migrations of medieval ascetics, missionaries and pilgrims”, in: Viator 44/3 (2013) pp. 123–136.

Martin Rupps is a political scientist, historian and journalist, author and editor at Südwestfunk. His publications include: Die Überlebenden von Mogasischu (Berlin 2012); Der Lotse Helmut Schmidt und die Deutschen (Zurich 2015); and Kanzlerdämmerung. Wer zu spat kommt, darf regieren (Zurich 2017). He initiated the effort to return the former Lufthansa airliner “Landshut” to Germany in the fall of 2017. It will be preserved as a commemorative space in the Dornier Museum, Friedrichshafen.

Petra Terhoeven is Professor for European Contemporary and Cultural History at Georg-August-University, Göttingen. She has published on Italian fascism and left-wing terrorism in its transnational context, including: Deutscher Herbst in Europa. Der Linksterrorismus der siebziger Jahre als transnationales Phänomen, München (Oldenburg) 2014; Hitler´s Children? German Terrorism as Part of the ‘New Left Wave’, in: Alberto Martín/Eduardo Rey (eds.), Revolutionary Violence and the New Left: Transnational Perspectives, Routledge 2016, pp. 126–144, Die Rote Armee Fraktion. Eine Geschichte terroristischer Gewalt, München (Beck) 2017.

Endnotes

1
Tim Arango et al.: The Human Toll of Terror, in: The New York Times (26 July 2016). URL: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/07/27/world/human-toll-of-terror-attacks.htm (18 Nov. 2016). I owe thanks to Florian Jessensky for calling my attention to this article.

2
This last remark was corrected a few days later: those responsible for one of the attacks in Turkey had not been Islamists, but rather Kurdish Marxists.

3
For the antonymic character and the general ambivalence of the concept of “humanity” in different historical contexts see: Johannes Paulmann: Humanity – Humanitarian Reason – Imperial Humanitarianism. European Concepts in Practice, in: Fabian Klose and Mirjam Thulin (eds.): Humanity. A History of European Concepts in Practice from the Sixteenth Century to the Present. Göttingen 2017, 287–312.

4
As an example: “Stille Gedenkfeier für 130 Anschlagsopfer”. URL: http://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2016-11/paris-anschlaege-jahrestag-gedenktafel-francois-hollande (18 Nov. 2016).

5
See: Orla Lynch and Javier Argomaniz: Victims of terrorism: an introduction, in: iid. (eds.): Victims of Terrorism: A Comparative and Interdisciplinary Study. New York 2015, 1–9. “Victims of terrorism, while increasingly visible on the international stage, remain a peripheral topic in the broader debates on terrorism and a fundamentally under-researched subject in the academic sphere” (1).

6
Walter Laqueur: Terrorismus. Die globale Herausforderung. Frankfurt a. M. 1987, 300.

7
Alexander Gallus (ed.): Meinhof, Mahler, Ensslin: Die Akten der Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes, herausgegeben, eingeleitet und kommentiert von Alexander Gallus. Göttingen 2016.

8
Anne Siemens: Für die RAF war er das System für mich der Vater. Die andere Geschichte des deutschen Terrorismus. Munich 2007.

9
For a positive exception see: Martin Rupps: Die Überlebenden von Mogadischu. Berlin 2012; also the important contribution by Wolfgang Kraushaar: Die RAF und ihre Opfer. Zwischen Selbstheroisierung und Fremdtabuisierung, in: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (20 Aug.2007). URL: http://www.bpb.de/geschichte/deutsche-geschichte/geschichte-der-raf/49306/raf-und-ihre-opfer (18 Nov. 2016). See also the disappointing volume edited by Haus der Geschichte Baden-Württemberg: Die Opfer der RAF, Karlsruhe 2009.

10
Critical discussion of Anne Siemens´ approach in: Nicole Colin: Täter- versus Opferdiskurs. Eine andere Geschichte des deutschen Terrorismus?, in: id. et al. (eds.): Der Deutsche Herbst und die RAF in Politik, Medien und Kunst. Nationale und internationale Perspektiven. Bielefeld 2008, 187–194.

11
Barbara John (ed.): Unsere Wunden kann die Zeit nicht heilen. Was der NSU-Terror für die Opfer und Angehörigen bedeutet. Freiburg 2014.

12
See Christian Fuchs: Wie der Begriff “Döner-Morde” entstand, in: http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/gesellschaft/doener-mord-wie-das-unwort-des-jahres-entstand-a-841734.html, 4 July 2012 (18 Nov. 2016).

13
Klaus Weinhauer: Terrorismus in der Bundesrepublik der Siebziger Jahre. Aspekte einer Sozial- und Kulturgeschichte der Inneren Sicherheit, in: Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 44 (2004), 219–242; see especially 223.

14
Cheryl Lawther: The construction and politicization of victimhood, in: Lynch and Argomaniz, Victims, 10–30; see quote on 16.

15
Rianne Letschert et al.: The Need of Victims of Terrorism Compared to Victims of Crime, in: iid. (eds.): Assisting Victims of Terrorism. Towards a European Standard of Justice. Heidelberg 2010, xi.

16
“It is awful to believe that these people were not worth the little effort […] In that respect my own inability to memorize the names of these victims was only part of the sad story of disregard they suffered at the hand of this society.” (My translation), Carolin Emcke: Namen, in Süddeutsche Zeitung (9/10 April 2016).

17
Reprint of the 2007 essay, originally published in Die Zeit, in: Carolin Emcke: Stumme Gewalt. Nachdenken über die RAF. Frankfurt a. M. 2008.

18
“Sie sollen gehen dürfen. Frei sein. Aus dem Gefängnis entlassen. Aber reden sollen sie vorher. Bitte.”. ibid., 61.

19
See the repeated declarations in: John, Wunden.

20
See more generally: Lynch and Argomaniz, Victims; iid., International Perspectives on Terrorist Victimisation. An Interdisciplinary Approach. Hampshire 2015; Rogelio Alonso: Victims of ETA´s terrorism as an interest group: Evolution, influence, and impact on the political agenda of Spain, in: Terrorism and Political Violence (2016), 1–21, especially 9.

21
Besides the works cited above, see the best overview by Stéphane Latté: Victim movements, in: The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements. Malden 2013, 1371–1377.

22
Alonso, Victims, 2.

23
For the broader context see: Winfried Hassemer and Jan Philip Reemtsma: Verbrechensopfer, Gesetz und Gerechtigkeit. Munich 2002. For victims of international crime see: Thorsten Boacker and Christoph Safferling: Victims of International Crime: An Interdisciplinary Discourse. The Hague 2013.

24
Thorsten Bonacker: Globale Opferschaft. Zum Charisma des Opfers in Transitional Justice Prozessen, in: Zeitschrift für internationale Beziehungen 19 (2012), 5–36; for changes in “knowledge” about war victims see: Svenja Goltermann: Der Markt der Leiden, das Menschenrecht auf Entschädigung und die Kategorie des Opfers. Ein Problemaufriss, in: Historische Anthropologie 23 (2015), 70–92, and by the same author: Opfer. Die Wahrnehmung von Krieg und Gewalt in der Moderne. Frankfurt a. M. 2017.

25
Bruce Hoffman and Anna-Britt Kasupski: The Victims of Terrorism. An Assessment of Their Influence and Growing Role in Policy, Legislation, and the Private Sector. Santa Monica 2007. This contribution deals, apart from some more general considerations, mostly with the situation in the USA. See also the memorial publication for the victims of 9/11 by Diane Schoemperlen: Names of the Dead. An Elegy for the Victims of September 11. New York 2004. Still, there is little reason for taking too much pride in the after-care for survivors and bereaved, as the case of the “dust woman” Marcy Borders shows, who died of cancer at age 42 after a “life full of drugs and fears” in 2015. See: http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/gesellschaft/9-11-ueberlebende-staub-frau-marcy-borders-ist-tot-a-1049891.html. (21 July 2018).

26
Anselm Doering-Manteuffel and Lutz Raphael: Nach dem Boom. Neue Einsichten und Erklärungsversuche, in: iid. and Thomas Schlemmer (eds.), Vorgeschichte der Gegenwart. Dimensionen des Strukturbruchs nach dem Boom. Göttingen 2016, 9–37, especially 10.

27
Most recently: Carola Dietze: Die Erfindung des Terrorismus in Europa, Russland und den USA 1858–1866. Hamburg 2016.

28
My translation. Quoted in: Peter Waldmann: Terrorismus. Provokation der Macht. Munich 1998, 14.

29
Ibid., 15.

30
Herfried Münkler: Die neuen Kriege. Reinbek b. Hamburg 2003, 197. See also Petra Terhoeven: Opferbilder – Täterbilder. Die Fotografie als Medium linksterroristischer Selbstermächtigung in Deutschland und Italien während der 70er Jahre, in Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 7/8 (2007), 380–399.

31
“Terrorism is defined by well-planned and awe-inspiring violent attacks on the political order from the underground. They are meant to spread feelings of insecurity and shock, but also to generate a sense of sympathy and support.” (My translation), Waldmann, Terrorismus, 12.

32
Alex P. Schmid: Political Terrorism. A Research Guide. New Brunswick 1983, 76–80. See more generally Victor T. Le Vine: On the Victims of Terrorism and their Innocence, in: Terrorism and Political Violence 9 (1997), 55–62.

33
Wolfgang Kraushaar: Zur Topologie des RAF-Terrorismus, in: id. (ed.): Die RAF und der linke Terrorismus, vol. 1. Hamburg 2006, 13–63, especially 42.

34
Waldmann, Terrorismus, 15.

35
See Alonso, Victims; Anna Cento Bull and Philip Cooke: Ending Terrorism in Italy. London 2013, especially 153–193; Marie Breen-Smyth: Lost lives: victims and the construction of ‘victimhood’ in Northern Ireland, in: Michael Cox et al. (eds.): A Farewell to Arms?: Beyond the Good Friday Agreement. Manchester 2006, 6–23. The problem is already evident in the naming of victim organizations such as: Families Acting for Innocent Relatives (FAIR); Homes United by Republican Terror (HURT). The letter “R” in the acronym was later re-interpreted as “Recurring,”, ibid., 18.

36
Karola Dillenburger et al.: Victims or Survivors? The Debate on Victimhood in Northern Ireland, in: The International Journal of Humanities 3 (2005/2006), vol. 4, 1447–9559 (online).

37
See as one of many examples the staging of the funeral of a Basque Eterra in his hometown: Constanze Stelzenmüller: Er war einer von uns, 31 Aug. 2000. URL: http://www.zeit.de/2000/36/200036_eta.xml (18 Nov. 2016). See also: Stephan Malthaner and Peter Waldmann (eds.): Radikale Milieus. Das soziale Umfeld terroristischer Gruppen. Frankfurt a. M. 2012.

38
Martha Crenshaw: Introduction, in: id. (ed.): The Consequences of Counterterrorism. New York 2010, 7–31. For a typology of victimhood and the differentiation between “victim” and “sacrifice” see: Herfried Münkler and Karsten Fischer: “Nothing to kill or die for…” – Überlegungen zu einer politischen Theorie des Opfers, in: Leviathan 28 (2000), 343–362.

39
Beatrice De Graaf: Evaluating Counterterrorism Performance. A Comparative Study. London 2011.

40
In the summer of 2016 a report by US secret services gave the number of 116 civilians killed in Pakistan, Yemen, Libya and Somalia between 2011 and 2016. Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria were not counted. The report acknowledges that NGOs put the number at between 200 and 900. In all, 2581 enemy combatants were killed from the air. See: Die Zeit, 1 July 2016. URL: http://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2016-07/drohnen-usa-barack-obama-zivilisten (18 Nov. 2016)

41
See Muqarrab Akbar: Drone Attacks and Suicide Bombings: Reflections on Pakistan´s Victims, in: Lynch and Argomaniz, International Perspectives, 225–246.

42
It goes without saying that categories such as distress or victimhood should in no way be discussed in terms of essentialism. See Caroline Arni and Marian Füssel: Editorial zum Themenheft “Leiden”, in: Historische Anthropologie 23 (2015), 5–10. There are still no internationally codified concepts of terrorism or victimhood. Sometimes victims are simply categorized as primary, secondary or even tertiary victims: “Primary victims are those who directly suffered harm from the terrorist attack, including those who experience property damage (economic loss) due to violent acts. The group of secondary victims consists of dependents or relatives of the deceased and first responders to acts of terrorism.” People who are open to terrorist threats and live in fear could be labeled as “tertiary or vicarious victims.” For an overview of the international debate see: Rianne Letschert and Ines Staiger: Introduction and Definitions, in: iid.: Assisting Victims, 1–30; the summing up quote above can be found in the same volume, ix.

43
On Northern Ireland see: Dillenburger, Victims; on the USA: José Brunner: Die Politik des Traumas. Gewalterfahrungen und psychisches Leid in den USA, in Deutschland und im Israel/Palästina-Konflikt. Berlin 2014, 239–246. In Israel scientific usage is characterized by a similarly broad definition of trauma: ibid., 247–276. For the ambivalent use of the concept of victimhood in the USA after 9/11 see Alyson Cole: The Cult of True Victimhood: From the War on Welfare to the War on Terror. Stanford 2007.

44
Contrary to the definitions in: Lynch and Argomaniz: “Victims of terrorism are first and foremost the victims of a traumatic personal experience;” “Being a victim of terrorism is the sum of many complex interactions including the personal experience of trauma and a politically and religiously motivated ideology;” [they] “have experienced very different but equally traumatic events,” 1, 3.

45
Brunner, Politik.

46
See the reports on physical ailments as a consequence of a gunshot to the knee (gambizzazioni), which was regarded as a “lesser punishment” by the Red Brigades: Cento Bull and Cooke, Ending Terrorism, 169. The prison term served by the perpetrators was often bitterly compared with the lifelong pain and physical disability of the victims.

47
Robert Spaemann: Bemerkungen zum Opferbegriff, in: Richard Schenk (ed.): Zur Theorie des Opfers. Ein interdisziplinäres Gespräch. Stuttgart 1995, 11–26, especially 12.

48
Lawther, Construction, here 12.

49
Latté, Victim Movements, 1372.

50
Hans-Joachim Höhn: Spuren der Gewalt. Kultursoziologische Annäherungen an die Kategorie des Opfers, in: Albert Gerhards and Klemens Richter (eds.): Das Opfer. Biblischer Anspruch und liturgische Gestalt. Freiburg 2000, 11–29, my translations from 15, 27.

51
This is particularly relevant in the Italian case where the results of the prosecution are often rather meager and degenerate departments of state are sometimes even directly implicated. This is why such interpretations abound among victims of right-wing terrorism as part of a general strategy of mistrust and escalation. See: Cento Bull and Cooke, Ending Terrorism. In Germany, the most prominent case is Michal Buback’s media and legal campaign to force the authorities to end the alleged cover-up of the presumptive murderer of his father. See: id., Der zweite Tod meines Vaters. Erweiterte Ausgabe mit neuen Fakten, Munich 2009. The title of the book carries the full weight of this accusation.

52
Jay Winter: Thinking about Silence, in: id., Ruth Genio and Efrat Ben-Ze‘ ev (eds.): Shadows of War: A Social History of Silence in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge 2010, 3–31.

53
Winter, Thinking, 10.

54
Nadia Pantel,: Nicht normal, Süddeutsche Zeitung (12/13 Nov. 2016).

55
See the evidence in: John, Wunden.

56
For the agency of survivors see: Katharina Stengel (ed.): Opfer als Akteure: Interventionen ehemaliger NS-Verfolgter in der Nachkriegszeit. Frankfurt a. M. 2008.

57
William G. Niederland: Folgen der Verfolgung: Das Überlebenden-Syndrom, Seelenmord. Frankfurt a. M. 1980. See also the contributions in José Brunner and Nathalie Zajde (eds.): Holocaust und Trauma. Kritische Perspektiven zur Entstehung und Wirkung eines Paradigmas. Göttingen 2011 (Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für deutsche Geschichte 39).

58
For the German case see: Martin Sabrow: Heroismus und Viktimismus. Überlegungen zum deutschen Opferdiskurs in historischer Perspektive, in: Potsdamer Bulletin für Zeithistorische Studien 33/34 (2008), 7–20.

59
Giulio Meotti and Matthew Sherry: A New Shoah. The Untold Story of Israel’s Victims of Terrorism. New York 2010.

60
Jörg Requate: Medien und Öffentlichkeit als Gegenstände historischer Analyse, in: Geschichte und Gesellschaft 25 (1999), 5–32.

61
On special knowledge with regard to victims of terrorism see: Yael Danieli et al. (eds.): The Trauma of Terrorism: Sharing Knowledge and Shared Care. An International Handbook. London 2012; Andrew Silke (ed.): Terrorists, Victims and Society. Psychological Perspectives on Terrorism and its Consequences. Chichester 2003; for legal aspects see also: Letschert et al., Assisting Victims. As an early example see: Frank Ochberg: The Victim of Terrorism: Psychiatric Considerations, in: Terrorism 1 (1978), 147–168.

62
See the still recommended volume by Alex P. Schmid and Janny De Graaf: Violence as Communication. Insurgent Terrorism and Western News Media. London 1982. On the most recent process of reflection within the media see for instance Bruce Shapiro: Mit Fakten gegen Panik, in: Süddeutsche Zeitung (13/14/15 Aug. 2016).

63
For the effects of visual representations of victims on their families see: Terhoeven, Opferbilder, 395. After the attacks of summer 2016 the use of pictures of violence was hotly debated among the editorial staff of Italian newspapers: Mario Calabresi: Oscurare l’orrore, in: la Repubblica (28 July 2016). Mario Calabresi also wrote an autobiography which tells the story of his family after the assassination of his father Luigi, one of the first victims of left-wing terrorism in Italy in the 1970s: Mario Calabresi: Spingendo la notte più in là. Storia della mia famiglia e di altre vittime del terrorismo. Milan 2007 (Der blaue Cinquecento. Die Geschichte meiner Familie im Schatten des Terrorismus. Munich 2003).

64
Quoted in Waldmann, Terrorismus, 54.

65
Herfried Münkler: Guerillakrieg und Terrorismus, in: Neue Politische Literatur 25 (1980), 299–326.

66
Waldmann, Terrorismus, 60; Dietze, Erfindung.

67
Right-wing terrorism claimed 199 lives, and left-wing terrorism 179. See Christian Jansen: Italien seit 1945. Göttingen 2007, 162–165.

68
Alexei Yurchak: Bodies of Lenin. The Hidden Science of Communist Souvereignty, in: Representations 129 (2015), 116–157.

69
See for example: V.K. Vinogradov: Delo Fani Kaplan, ili kto streljal v Lenina. Sbornik dokumentov. Moskva 2003; Semion Lyandres: The 1918 Attempt on the Life of Lenin. A New Look at the Evidence, in: Slavic Review 48 (1989), 432–448.

70
Robert Service: Lenin. A biography. Cambridge, Mass. 2000, 443; Georg Klemperer was the brother of the famous German philologist Victor Klemperer and Georg‘s medical care for Lenin is thus documented in Victor‘s memoir: Victor Klemperer and Walter Nowojski: Ich will Zeugnis ablegen bis zum letzten. Tagebücher 1933–1945. Berlin 1995, 733.

71
RGASPI: Postanovlenie soveta narodnych komissarov o krasnom terrore, 5 sentrjabr 1918 g. [Beschluss des Rates der Volkskomissare über den Roten Terror, 5. September 1918]. Moskva 1918. URL: http://www.1000dokumente.de/index.html?c=dokument_ru&dokument=0006_ter&l=ru (14. June 2018). See for example Alter L. Litvin: Krasnyj i belyj terror v Rossii. 1918–1922 gg. Moskva 2004.

72
Arno J. Mayer: Furies. Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions. Princeton 2002.

73
Pesnja terroristov. Lied der Terroristen aus der Zeit der narodniki vor 1900, 1. Jan. 1900 (Archiv PSR, IISG, International Institute of Social History,The Netherlands, Amsterdam); “Terror”, in: F.A. Brokgauz and I.A. Efron (ed.): Ėnciklopedičeskīj slovar’. S.-Petersburg 1890–1904, 69–81.

74
Even though holocaust studies seem to hint to the contrary, studies on Joseph Wulff and the historiography about the holocaust have revealed the problems of a history from the perspective of the victims: Nicolas Berg: Der Holocaust und die westdeutschen Historiker. Erforschung und Erinnerung. Göttingen 2003; Klaus Kempter: “Objective, not neutral”: Joseph Wulf, a documentary historian, in: Holocaust studies: a journal of culture and history 21 (2015), 38–53; Klaus Kempter: Joseph Wulf. Ein Historikerschicksal in Deutschland. Göttingen 2014.

75
Laura Engelstein: Weapon of the Weak (Apologies to James Scott). Violence in Russian History, in: Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 4 (2003), 680–693, 685.

76
William M. Reddy: The navigation of feeling. A framework for the history of emotions. Cambridge 2001, 104–110.

77
Peter Waldmann: Terrorismus: Provokation der Macht. Hamburg 2011.

78
Monique Scheer: Are Emotions a Kind of Practice (and Is That What Makes Them Have a History?). A Bourdieuan Approach to Understanding of Emotions, in: History and Theory 51 (2012), 193–220.

79
Barbara Rosenwein: Worrying about Emotions in History, in: The American Historical Review 107 (2002), 821–845, here 842.

80
Carola Dietze and Frithjof Benjamin Schenk: Traditionelle Herrscher in moderner Gefahr. Soldatisch-aristokratische Tugendhaftigkeit und das Konzept der Sicherheit im 19. Jahrhundert, in: Geschichte und Gesellschaft 35 (2009), 368–400.

81
Cartoon from the Collection of the Social-Revolutionary V.S. Minarchorjan from the revolution of 1905, Archiv PSR, IISG, 596.

82
Boevaja Organizacija PSR: Proklamation nach der Hinrichtung von Sergej Aleksandrovič. Flugblatt. Amsterdam [nach dem 1905] (4 Feb. 1905).

83
Anke Hilbrenner: Der Bombenanschlag auf das Café Libman in Odessa am 17. Dezember 1905: Terrorismus als Gewaltgeschichte, in: Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 58 (2010), 210–231.

84
“Zdorov’e kučera Andreja Rudinkina”, in: Russkoe Slovo (6 Feb. 1905); “Končina Andreja Rudinkina”, in: Russkoe Slovo (9. Feb. 1905); Obvinitel’nyj akt. O neizvestnago zvanija čelovek, in: Partija Socialistov-Revoljucionerov (ed.): Ivan Platonovič Kaljaev. (Otdel’nyj ottisk iz “Rev. Ross.”) (1905), 16–18.

85
“4-e fevralja 1905 g.”, in: Revoljucionnaja Rossija (5 Mar. 1905); translation in Anna Geifman: Thou Shalt Kill. Revolutionary Terrorism in Russia, 1894 – 1917, Princeton 1993, 55.

86
Obvinitel’nyj akt. Also see: H. Montgomery Grove: Letter to Sir C. Hardinge. Moscow 21 Feb. 1905 [N.S.]. Document No. 38, in: Dominic Lieven (ed.): British documents on foreign affairs / Part 1 / Series A. Reports and papers from the Foreign Office confidential print. Russia, 1859–1914, 3: Russia 1905–1906. Frederick 1983, 41.

87
“Funeral to be on Thursday. More Fragments of Grand Duke’s Body Found”, in: New York Times (20 Feb. 1905).

88
4-e fevralja 1905.

89
Grove, Letter to Sir Hardinge 1983. See also: ”Remains Lie in State. Foreign Royalties to Attend Funeral - Assasin Not a Mujik“, in: New York Times (19 Feb. 1905).

90
4-e fevralja 1905.

91
Grove, Letter to Sir Hardinge 1983.

92
4-e fevralja 1905.

93
Remains Lie in State.

94
Cf. e.g. ”Moskva, 5 fevralja“, in: Russkija Vedomosti (5 Feb. 1905); ”Ubijstvo Ego Imperatorskogo Vysočestva Velikogo Knjazja Sergeja Aleksadroviča“, in: Russkoe Slovo (5 Feb. 1905).

95
Zdorove kučera Andreja Rudinkina.

96
Grove, Letter to Sir (1983).

97
Končina Andreja Rudinkina; Obvinitel’nyj akt.

98
Michail L’vovič Mandel’štam: 1905 god v političeskich processach. Zapiski zaščitnika, 70/71. Moskva 1931, 251.

99
Nikolaj: ”Moskva, 6 fevralja“, in: Russkija Vedomosti (6 Feb. 1905).

100
Quoted after: Andrew M. Verner: The crisis of Russian autocracy. Nicholas II and the 1905 Revolution. Princeton 1990, 175.

101
I. Kaljaev i Velikaja Knjaginja, in: Partija Socialistov-Revoljucionerov (ed.): Ivan Platonovič Kaljaev. (Otdel’nyj ottisk iz “Rev. Ross.”) (1905), 7–16, here 7.

102
See e.g. Sebastian Kempgen: Die Kirchen und Klöster Moskaus. Ein landeskundliches Handbuch, vol. 21. München 1994, 361.

103
Jonathan Brooks Platt: Snow White and the Enchanted Palace, in: Representations 129 (2015), 86–115.

104
Cf. e.g. Alla Citrinjak and Margarita Michajlovna Chemlin: Velikaja knjaginja Elizaveta Fedorovna. Moskva 2009; Ljubov Miller: Grand Duchess Elizabeth of Russia. New martyr of the communist yoke. Redding 1990.

105
Kathleen Klotchkov: Der lange Weg zum Fest. Die Geschichte der Moskauer Stadtgründungsfeiern von 1847 bis 1947, vol. 5. Berlin 2006, 129.

106
Matthias Stadelmann: Die Romanovs. Stuttgart 2008, 217–218.

107
Sergej Julʹevič Vitte and Sidney Harcave: The memoirs of Count Witte. Armonk, NY 1990, 240.

108
Klotchkov, Der lange Weg, 131.

109
See also Waltraud Bayer: Die Moskauer Medici. Der russische Bürger als Mäzen, 1850–1917. Wien 1996.

110
Mandel’štam, 1905 god, 249.

111
Vitte and Harcave, The memoirs, 239.

112
Dominic Lieven: Nicholas II. Emperor of all the Russias. London 1993, 65–66.

113
See e.g. “Sud idet”, in: Revoljucionnaja Rossija (10 Feb. 1905).

114
Klotchkov, Der lange Weg, 131–134.

115
Verner, The crisis of Russian autocracy, 68.

116
See for Minclov: Peter Faderl: Sergej Rudol’fovič Minclov. Diplomarbeit. Wien 2011.

117
S.R Minclov: Iz ”Dnevnika. 1903–1906“, in: Oleg V. Budnickij (ed.), Istorija terrorizma v Rossii v dokumentach, biografijach, issledovanijach. Rostov n/D (1996), 496–501, esp. 498.

118
Ibid., 499.

119
See for Varvara Morozova: Natal’ja A. Krugljanskaja: Varvara Alekseevna Morozova. Moskva 2008.

120
Mandel’štam, 1905 god, 249–250.

121
See e.g ibid., 247.

122
See for biographical data: Viktor M. Černov: V partii socialistov-revoljucionerov. Vospominanija o vos’mi liderach. S.-Petersburg 2007, 453.

123
Isaak Steinberg: Gewalt und Terror in der Revolution. Oktoberrevolution oder Bolschewismus. Berlin 1931, 182–187.

124
Ibid., 185.

125
Albert Camus: Die Gerechten. Stuttgart 1976.

126
Albert Camus: Der Mensch in der Revolte. Essays. Reinbek bei Hamburg 2011, 183.

127
Hans Magnus Enzensberger: Die schönen Seelen des Terrors, in: Politik und Verbrechen. Neun Beiträge. Frankfurt am Main 1990, 327–360, esp. 343.

128
The phrase “behind closed doors” was used in ewspapers as well as in the PSR memory leaflet on Kalyaev, see “Delo ob ubijstve Velikogo Knjazja”, in: Russkoe Slovo (6 Apr. 1905); [Byvšij Socialdemokrat]: Ivan Platonovič Kaljaev, in: Partija Socialistov-Revoljucionerov (ed.): Ivan Platonovič Kaljaev. (Otdel’nyj ottisk iz “Rev. Ross.”). 1905, 1–7.

129
Mandel’štam, 1905 god, 250; Ivan Platonovič Kaljaev: Poslednija pis’ma I. Kaljaeva. Pis’ma k tovariščam, in: Partija Socialistov-Revoljucionerov (ed.): Ivan Platonovič Kaljaev. (Otdel’nyj ottisk iz “Rev. Ross.”) (1905), 41–45.

130
See also for the following quotations: Ivan Platonovič Kaljaev: Reč Kaljaeva, in: Partija Socialistov-Revoljucionerov (ed.): Ivan Platonovič Kaljaev. (Otdel’nyj ottisk iz “Rev. Ross.”) (1905), 29–33.

131
Cf. e.g. Alain Pagès: 13 janvier 1898. J’accuse …!. Paris 1998.

132
Ivan Platonovič Kaljaev: “Reč Kaljaeva”, in: Revoljucionnaja Rossija (5 Mai 1905); “Otčet o zasedanii suda”, in: Revoljucionnaja Rossija (5 May 1905).

133
See e.g. P.S. Ivanovskaja: V boevoj organizacii, in: Oleg V. Budnickij (ed.): Ženščiny-terroristki v Rossii. Rostov-na-Donu (1996), 29–174, here 67–69.

134
Pamjati Kaljaeva. Moskva 1918, 28.

135
I. Kaljaev.

136
See for example this account: “Peterburg, 14.II.”, in: Russkoe Slovo (15 Feb. 1905).

137
I. Kaljaev, 7.

138
Ibid., 9.

139
Ibid., 7.

140
Peterburg, 14, II.

141
“Smert’ I. Kaljaeva”, in: Revoljucionnaja Rossija (1 June 1905); “Poslednie minuty Kaljaeva”, in: Revoljucionnaja Rossija (1 June 1905).

142
Smert I. Kaljaeva.

143
See Steinberg, Gewalt und Terror, 181–192; Savinkov, Erinnerungen eines Terroristen (1985); Boris V. Savinkov: Das fahle Pferd. Aufzeichnungen eines Terroristen. Kopenhagen 1909; Ivanovskaja, V boevoj organizacii; Pamjati Kaljaeva.

144
See e.g. Anke Hilbrenner: The Perovskaya Paradox or the Scandal of Female Terrorism in Late Imperial Russia, in: pipps.org. The Journal of Power Institutions in Post-Soviet Societies Issue 17: Women in Arms. From the Russian Empire to Post-Soviet States (2016). URL: https://pipss.revues.org/4169 (14 June 2018).

145
Wladimir I. Lenin: Von der Verteidigung zum Angriff. vol. 9. Ins Deutsche übertragen nach der vierten russischen Ausgabe. Berlin 1955–1964, 278–280.

146
Judith Butler: Frames of War: When is Life Grievable. New York 2010.

147
Susan Sontag: Regarding the Pain of Others. New York 2003, 10.

148
Ibid., 11.

149
Aristotle (ed.): Rhetoric. Stanley Frost: Book 2, Chapter VIII 2013.

150
Sontag, Pain of Others, 11.

151
First and very briefly as a social worker, then as a community organizer and activist, and from the mid 1980s as an educator, an academic researcher and writer working in Northern Ireland, South and West Africa and the Middle East.

152
Alyson M. Cole: The Cult of True Victimhood: From the War on Welfare to the War on Terror. Stanford University Press 2007.

153
See Taylor B. Seybolt, Jay D Aronson and Baruch Fischhoff: Counting Civilian Casualties: An Introduction to Recording and Estimating Nonmilitary Deaths in Conflict. Oxford University Press 2013.

154
See, for example, Philip Gourevitch: We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families. Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1998; Deborah Ellis: Children of War: Voices of Iraqi Refugees. Groundwood 2009; on Northern Ireland, Marie Breen-Smyth: Half the Battle: Understanding the Impact of the Troubles on Children and Young People. Derry Londonderry, INCORE / the United Nations University and the University of Ulster 1998; and Marie Breen-Smyth and Marie Therese Fay: Personal Accounts of Northern Ireland’s Troubles: Public Chaos, Private Loss. London 2000; and on film, Marie Breen-Smyth: Northern Visions ‘Injured’ (2011). URL: https://vimeo.com/60263045 (13 July 2018) and Marie Breen-Smyth: Northern Visions ‘And Then There Was Silence. . .1:09:13’ (2000). URL: https://vimeo.com/60470297 (13 July 2018).

155
Primo Levi (ed.) Survival in Auschwitz. Touchstone 1995.

156
Lawrence G. Calhoun and Richard G. Tedeschi (eds.): Handbook of Posttraumatic Growth: Research and Practice. London 2006.

157
Levi, Auschwitz.

158
For a more extensive discussion of the management of victim identity see Marie Breen-Smyth: The Uses of Suffering: Victims as Moral Beacons or Icons of Grievance’, in Vincent Druliolle and Roddy Brett (eds.): The Politics of Victimhood in Post-conflict Societies: Comparative and Analytical Perspectives. Basingstoke 2018, 211–236.

159
See Marie Breen-Smyth and Marie Therese Fay: Personal Accounts of Northern Ireland’s Troubles: Public Chaos, Private Loss. London 2000; and (film): Smyth, Northern Visions ‘And Then There Was Silence. . .1:09:13’ (2000). URL: https://vimeo.com/60470297. (13 July 2018).

160
Arlie Russell Hochschild: The Managed Heart. Commercialization of Human Feeling. Berkeley 1983.

161
See, for example, Tuija Virkki: Individuals’ efforts to express and regulate emotion and the consequences of those efforts as essential part of emotional labour. The Art of Pacifying an Aggressive Client: ‘Feminine’ Skills and Preventing Violence in Caring Work, in: Gender, Work & Organization 15: 1 (2008), 72–87.

162
Donna Baines: Losing the ‘eyes in the back of our heads’: social service skills, lean caring and violence, in: Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare 31, no. 3 (2004), 31–50.

163
After Anthony Giddens on identity. Anthony Giddens: Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Stanford University Press 1991, 54.

164
Ibid.

165
M. Audrey Korsgaard, Bruce M. Meglino and Matthew L. Call: The Role of Concern for Others in Reactions to Justice: Integrating the Theory of Other Orientation with Organizational Justice, in: The Oxford Handbook of Justice in the Workplace. Oxford University Press 2015.

166
Michael E. McCullough and Brian L.B. Willoughby: Religion, self-regulation, and self-control: Associations, explanations, and implications, in. Psychological bulletin 135.1 (2009), 69. URL: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Michael_Mccullough2/publication/24001207_Religion_Self-Regulation_and_Self-Control_Associations_Explanations_and_Implications/links/00463525bc60172b69000000.pdf (13 July 2018).

167
Ibid.

168
Vamik Volkan: Bloodlines: From Ethnic Pride To Ethnic Terrorism. New York 1998.

169
Johanna R. Vollhardt: The Role of Victim Beliefs in the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict: Risk or Potential for Peace?, in: Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 15: 2, 2009, 135–139.

170
Alon Ben-Meir: Historical Experiences and Perception (2013). URL: http://www.alonbenmeir.com/article/historical-experiences-and-perception/ (13 July 2018).

171
See http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/victims/groups/victimgroups.html#tear (2 Jan. 2018).

172
Marie Breen-Smyth: Remembering in Northern Ireland: Victims, Perpetrators and Hierarchies of Pain and Responsibility, in: Brandon Hamber (ed.): Past Imperfect: Dealing with the Past in Northern Ireland and Societies in Transition. Derry Londonderry 1998.

173
See CAIN‘Victims Liaison Unit’. URL: http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/victims/docs/victims_liaison_unit/vlu_newsletter_0199_1.pdf (13 July 2018).

174
See Marie Breen-Smyth: Victims and Victimhood in Northern Ireland, in: Michael Cox, Adrian Guelke and Fiona Stephen (eds.): A Farewell to Arms?: Beyond the Good Friday Agreement. Manchester 2006.

175
See Laura F. Graham: The “innocent” victims of the Troubles and the enduring impediment to peace in Northern Ireland, in: Shared Space: A research journal on peace, conflict and community relations in Northern Ireland (n. D.) URL: https://www.academia.edu/4802346/The_innocent_victims_of_the_Troubles_and_the_enduring_impediment_to_peace_in_Northe-rn_Ireland (13 July 2018).

176
Although this has not drawn support from the publicly funded and inclusive Victims’ Forum (for more on the Forum, see the section on ‘Victims and public policy in Northern Ireland’ below) Irish News (29 Nov. 2017): ‘Forum members from all sides oppose amnesty for security forces in Troubles’. URL: https://www.independent.ie/breaking-news/irish-news/forum-members-from-all-sides-oppose-amnesty-for-security-forces-in-troubles-36364562.html (13 July 2018).

177
John D. Brewer: Peace Processes: A Sociological Approach. Cambridge 2010, 165.

178
Marie Breen-Smyth: Reconciliation and paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, in: Judith Renner and Alexander Spencer (eds.): Reconciliation after Terrorism: Strategy, Possibility or Absurdity?. Abingdon 2012, 94–114.

179
Commission for Victims and Survivors Act (Northern Ireland) 2008.

180
Democratic Unionist Party: ‘Our Key Commitments to Innocent Victims of Terrorism’ (1 May 2014). URL: http://www.mydup.com/publications/view/our-key-commitments-to-innocent-vic-tims (19 July 2018).

181
O’Neill should be remembering innocent victims – Philip Smith Ulster Unionist Party (17 Feb. 2017). URL: https://uup.org/news/4855/O-Neill-should-be-remembering-innocent-victims-Philip-Smith#.Wyah4i2ZOi4 (13 July 2018).

182
Katy Radford and Sara Templer: Hearing The Voices: Sharing Perspectives in the Victim/Survivor Sector. Belfast 2008.

183
‘Terrorism’ is inverted commas, since it is the word used in the debate, rather than one favored by the author, who tries to avoid using the term due to the political judgement inherent in its application and the lack of precision in its meaning. The term is used as a means to delegitimize the adversary is part of the conflict itself. In this case, actions of the state security forces that terrorized communities would not be regarded as terrorism by those who advance the “innocent victim” argument. For more on the author’s position on this, see Richard Jackson, Marie Breen-Smyth and Jeroen Gunning: The Core Commitments of Critical Terrorism Studies, in: iid. (eds.): Critical Terrorism Studies: A new research agenda. London 2009, 156–177.

184
Some campaigners have argued for a much broader exclusion of sympathizers as well.

185
When the UDA finally decommissioned its weapons, UDA representative Frankie Gallagher expressed regret to the organisation’s victims:
“To all those in the community who have lost loved ones, we understand and we share in your sense of loss, but we are determined and are willing to play our full part in ensuring that the tragedy of the last 40 years will never happen again.” cited in Henry McDonald: “ Ulster Defense Association destroys its illegal weapons”, in: The Guardian (2010). URL: http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/jan/06/ulster-defence-association-destorys-weapons (13 July 2018).

186
The Ulster Freedom Fighters, the elite cadre of the UDA, were proscribed in 1973.

187
Marie Breen-Smyth: Burying the Past? Victims and Community Relations in Northern Ireland Since the Cease-fires, in Nigel Biggar (ed.): Burying the Past: Making Peace and Doing Justice after Civil Conflict. Washington DC 2003, 125–154.

188
Erica Bouris: Complex Political Victims. Bloomfield 2007.

189
Tony Doherty: ‘I regret the childhood that I should have had’. Irish News (2 Nov. 2017). URL: https://www.irishnews.com/arts/2017/11/02/news/tony-doherty-i-regret-the-childhood-that-i-should-have-had–1175953/ (13 July 2018).

190
International Criminal Court The Prosecutor v. Dominic Ongwen ICC-02/04-01/15 (2005).

191
Emma Gordon: Victims and Perpetrators: the Implications of the Dual Status of Child Soldiers. (2011). URL: http://www.e-ir.info/2011/08/03/victims-and-perpetrators-what-are-the-implications-of-this-dual-status-of-child-soldiers/ (13 July 2018).

192
Mahmood Mamdani: When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide. Princeton 2002.

193
Patrick G. Coy, Lynn M. Woehrle and Gregory M. Maney: Discursive Legacies: The U.S. Peace Movement and “Support the Troops”, in: Social Problems 55, no. 2 (2008), 161–189.

194
Stephen Karpman: Fairy tales and script drama analysis, in: Transactional Analysis Bulletin, 7, no. 26 (1968), 39–43.

195
Judith Herman: Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence–From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. New York 2015.

196
Ibid.; Leo Eitinger: The Concentration Camp and Its Late Sequelae, in: Joel E. Dimsdale (ed.): Survivors, Victims, and Perpetrators. New York 1980, 127–162.

197
Noel McAdam: Troubles amnesty and Truth Commission are ruled out by Robinson, Belfast Telegraph (27 Feb. 2012). URL: https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/troubles-amnesty-and-truth-commission-are-ruled-out-by-robinson-28719755.html (13 July 2018).

198
Kenneth Bloomfield: We Will Remember Them: Report of the Northern Ireland Victims Commissioner, Sir Kenneth Bloomfield. Belfast 1998.

199
Ibid.

200
Chris Gilligan: Traumatised by peace? A critique of five assumptions in the theory and practice of conflict- related trauma policy in Northern Ireland, in: Policy & Politics 34, no. 2 (2006), 325–345.

201
Police Ombudsman (22 Jan. 2007). Statement by the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland on her investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of Raymond McCord Jnr and related matters. URL: https://policeombudsman.org/PONI/files/9a/9a366c60-1d8d-41b9-8684-12d33560e8f9.pdf (13 July 2018).

202
Northern Ireland Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders/Victim Support: All Truth is Bitter: A Report of the Visit of Doctor Alex Boraine, Deputy Chairman of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, to Northern Ireland. Belfast, NIACRO/Victim Support (2000). URL: http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/issues/victims/docs/alltruthisbitter99.pdf. (13 July 2018).

203
The Healing Through Remembering website is available at http://healingthroughremembering.org (13 July 2018).

204
Βrendan McDaid: PSNI team to probe shootings by soldiers, in: The Belfast Telegraph (29 Jan. 2008), 3.

205
“Historical Enquiries Team”. House of Commons Hansard (5 June 2011). URL: https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2012-03-07/debates/12030785000002/HistoricalEnquiriesTeam (13 July 2018).

206
“#018/2013 – The Historical Enquiries Team’s approach to reviewing deaths during ‘the troubles’ is inconsistent, has serious shortcomings and so risks public confidence, HMIC finds”. HMIC. (3 July 2013). URL: https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmicfrs/news/releases/0182013-hmic-inspection-of-the-historical-enquiries-team/ (13 July 2018).

207
Claire Cromie: PSNI cuts 300 jobs and axes Historical Enquiries Team, in: Belfast Telegraph (30 Sep. 2014). URL: https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/psni-cuts-300-jobs-and-axes-historical-enquiries-team-30626460.html (13 July 2018).

208
Robin Eames and Denis Bradley: Report on the Consultative Group on the Past (2009). URL: http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/victims/docs/consultative_group/cgp_230109_report.pdf (13 July 2018).

209
Ibid., 24.

210
Ibid., 31.

211
Ibid., 31.

212
BBC News: “Bloody Sunday: PM David Cameron’s full statement” (15 June 2010).URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10322295 (13 July 2018).

213
“Bloody Sunday Inquiry: A soldier’s view – ‘I was in Derry that day. I just wish the Army hadn’t been’” in: Belfast Telegraph (16 June 2010). URL: https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/bloody-sunday-inquiry-a-soldiers-view-i-was-in-derry-that-day-i-just-wish-the-army-hadnt-been-28541696.html (13 July 2018).

214
Andrew Sparrow: “Bloody Sunday: the Saville Report as it happened” (15 June 2010). URL: https://www.theguardian.com/news/blog/2010/jun/15/bloodysunday-northernireland (13 July 2018).

215
Henry Patterson: “Henry Patterson: For many, the Bloody Sunday Saville Report has fallen short” (16 June 2010). URL: https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/henry-patterson-for-many-the-bloody-sunday-saville-report-has-fallen-short-28541900.html (13 July 2018).

216
Michael Potter and Anne Campbell: “Northern Ireland Assembly Research and information Service ‘Funding for Victims and Survivors Groups in Northern Ireland’” (2 Oct. 2014). URL: http://www.niassembly.gov.uk/globalassets/documents/raise/publications/2014/ofmdfm/9514.pdf (13 July 2018).

217
Mark Devenport: “What Defines a Victim in Northern Ireland?”, BBC News (26 Oct. 2005). URL: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/4375816.stm (13 July 2018).

218
The Victims and Survivors (Northern Ireland) Order (2006). URL: https://www.cvsni.org/media/1087/victims-and-survivors-order-2006.pdf (13 July 2018).

219
Commission for Victims and Survivors Act (Northern Ireland 2008). URL: https://www.cvsni.org/media/1086/victims-and-survivors-act-2008.pdf (13 July 2018).

220
Belfast Telegraph: “‘Victims’ post details revealed” (28 Jan. 2008). URL: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/7212044.stm (13 July 2018).

221
See for example, Kris Brown and Adrian Grant: ‘A Lens Over Conflicted Memory: Surveying ‘Troubles’ Commemoration, in: Northern Ireland’ Irish 31:, no. 1 (2016); Sara McDowell: ‘Armalite, the ballot box and memorialization: Sinn Féin and the state in post-conflict Northern Ireland’, in: The Round Table 96:, no. 393 (2007). URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00358530701635306 (13 July 2018); Sara McDowell, Máire Braniff and Joanne Murphy: Zero-sum politics in contested spaces: The unintended consequences of legislative peacebuilding in Northern Ireland, in: Political Geography 61 (2017), 193–202.

222
Healing Through Remembering 2012: Day of Private Reflection: an evaluation. URL: http://web-previews.com/healingthroughremembering/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/HTR_2011_DOR_evaluation.pdf (13 July 2018).

223
Anna Cento Bull and Philip Cooke: Ending Terrorism in Italy. London 2013.

224
John Foot: Italy’s divided memory. London 2009.

225
Andrea Hajek: Negotiating memories of Protest in Western Europe. The case of Italy. Basingstoke 2013, 173.

226
Guido Bertagna, Adolfo Ceretti and Claudia Mazzucato (eds) Il libro dell’incontro. Milan 2015.

227
See Anna Cento Bull: Italian Neofascism. The Strategy of Tension and the Politics of Nonreconciliation. New York 2007; Franco Ferraresi: The Radical Right in Postwar Italy, in: Politics and Society 16, no. 1 (1988), 71–119; Franco Ferraresi: Threats to Democracy: The Radical Right in Italy After the War. Princeton 1996.

228
There are numerous works dealing with the Moro case. See especially Richard Drake: The Aldo Moro Murder Case. Cambridge 2005; Sergio Flamigni: La tela del ragno. Il delitto Moro. Milan 1995; Miguel Gotor: Il memoriale della repubblica. Gli scritti di Aldo Moro dalla prigionia e l’anatomia del potere italiano. Turin 2011.

229
On the role of the Church, see Annachiara Valle: Teresilla. Riconciliazione e carità. Rome 2016; Annachiara Valle: Parole Opere e Omissioni. La chiesa nell’Italia degli anni di piombo. Milan 2008; Cento Bull and Cooke, Ending Terrorism.

230
Andrea Hajek: Coming to terms with terrorism. Sergio Corbucci’s Donne armate and the trauma of the anni di piombo, in: The Italianist, 34, no. 2 (2014), 219–234 and 223–224.

231
Marie Andreasen and Leonardo Cecchini: From passive victimhood to committed citizenship, in: Karen-Margrethe Simonsen and Jonas Ross Kjærgård (eds.) Discursive Framings of Human Rights. Negotiating agency and victimhood. London 2016, 94–113, 101.

232
Sergio Lenci: Colpo alla nuca. Rome 1988.

233
See Ruth Glynn: The ‘turn to the victims’ in Italian culture: victim-centred narratives of the anni di piombo, in: The Italianist, 18, no.4 (2013), 373–390.

234
Giovanni Fasanella and Antonella Grippo: I silenzi degli innocenti. Milan 2006.

235
Mario Calabresi: Spingendo la notte più in là. Storia della mia famiglia e di altre vittime del terrorismo. Milan 2007.

236
In an interview made public in 2009, the writer Giancarlo De Cataldo, author of Romanzo criminale (Turin 2002) and other novels dealing with right-wing terrorism, expressed a view of the role of the victims shared by many. He stated that, “The victims have been used, and are still being used, by those people who do not want that the truth on that historical period is reconstructed in its entirety, but want only a partial, biased, watered-down reconstruction of those years”. Pierpaolo Antonello and Alan O’Leary (eds.): Sotto il segno della metafora: Una conversazione con Giancarlo De Cataldo, in: The Italianist 29, no. 2 (2009), 350–365.

237
See Anna Cento Bull: The role of memory in populist discourse: the case of the Italian Second Republic, in: Patterns of Prejudice 50, no. 3 (2016), 213–231.

238
In 2010 and 2011, for instance, the Berlusconi government refused to send any representatives to the annual commemoration of the 1980 Bologna bombing massacre, accusing the victims of having been manipulated by the left in its partisan campaign of hatred against its political adversaries.

239
See for instance Alan O’Leary: Italian cinema and the ‘anni di piombo’, in: Journal of European Studies 40, no. 3 (2010), 243–257 and Hajek, Coming to terms, 219–234.

240
O’Leary, Italian Cinema, 253. As he states, Arrivederci, amore ciao and Attacco allo stato (Michele Soavi, 2006) “both re-exclude the terrorist from the national family”, in contrast to previous films which had represented them as being partially reintegrated into it.

241
Valérie Rosoux: Reconciliation narrative: scope and limits of the Pax Europeana, in: Journal of Contemporary European Studies 25, no.3 (2017), 325–339, esp. 327.

242
On the pros and cons of restorative justice see for instance John Braithwaite: Restorative Justice: assessing optimistic and pessimistic accounts, in: Michael Tonry (ed.): Crime and Justice: A Review of Research, Chicago 1999; Dennis Sullivan and Larry Tifft (eds.): Handbook of Restorative Justice: A Global Perspective. London 2006; Gregory Shank and Paul Takagi: Critique of Restorative Justice, in: Social Justice 31, no. 3 (2004), 147–163.

243
Valérie Rosoux, Reconciliation narrative, 327.

244
David Mendeloff: Truth-Seeking, Truth-Telling, and Postconflict Peacebuilding: Curb the Enthusiasm?, in: International Studies Review, 6, no. 3 (2004), 355–80. There is popular support for this stance. See for instance Simon Jenkins: Too much remembering causes wars. It’s time to forget the 20th century, in: The Guardian (9 Nov. 2017).

245
John D. Brewer: Memory, truth and victimhood in post-trauma societies, in: Gerard Delanty and Krishan Kumar (eds.): The Sage Handbook of Nations and Nationalism. London 2006, 214–224, esp. 224.

246
Peter Manning: Reconciliation and Perpetrator Memories in Cambodia, in: International Journal of Transitional Justice 9 (2015,), 386–406, esp. 406.

247
James L. Gibson: Overcoming apartheid: can truth reconcile a divided nation?, in: Politikon 31, no. 2 (2004), 129–155, esp. 151.

248
Anna Cento Bull and Hans Lauge Hansen: On Agonistic Memory, in: Memory Studies 9, no. 4 (2016), 1–15.

249
Daniel Levy and Nathan Sznaider: Memory Unbound. The Holocaust and the Formation of Cosmopolitan Memory, in: European Journal of Social Theory 5, no. 1 (2002), 87–106.

250
Cento Bull and Hansen, Agonistic Memory.

251
See Chantal Mouffe: The Democratic Paradox. London 2000 and On the Political. London 2005.

252
Sarah Maddison and Rachael Diprose: “Conflict dynamics and agonistic dialogue on historical violence: a case from Indonesia” (21 Sep. 2017), in: Third World Quarterly 6, URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2017.1374837 (16 June 2018).

253
They state that “In this sense, we argue that agonistic dialogue processes provide important opportunities for divided groups to explore attitudes about the historical experiences that continue to polarise them, with potentially transformative effects”. See ibid., 6.

254
Andrea Casalegno: L’attentato. Milan 2008.

255
Massimo Coco: Ricordare stanca. L’assassinio di mio padre e le altre ferite mai chiuse. Milan 2012.

256
Donatella Alfonso: “Massimo Coco: ‘Nel mio libro il diritto al rancore”’, in: La Repubblica (15 Jan. 2013).

257
Aiviter: “Trentennale dell’Associazione Italiana Vittime del Terrorismo e dell’Eversione contro l’ordinamento costituzionale dello Stato”. URL: http://www.vittimeterrorismo.it/storia/(12 July 2018).

258
The book comprises numerous, if relatively brief, considerations and reflections by the various participants to the dialogue, as well as much longer interventions by the mediators, who explain their approach to restorative justice and the role the dialogue they facilitated plays in this process. For a more detailed analysis of this volume, see Anna Cento Bull: Working through the Violent Past: Practices of Restorative Justice through Memory and Dialogue in Italy, in: Memory Studies, first published online on 3 August 2018.

259
See ‘Castenedolo…incontra’, part 1 of 5, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2OBZNpSxhM.

260
Ibid.

261
See Daniele Cambiaso: Recensione a ‘Il libro dell’incontro’ e intervista a Giovanni Ricci, in: Atmosfere letterarie (3 May 2016), URL: http://letterarie.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/recensione-il-libro-dellincontro-e.html (16 June 2018). See also Giovanni Ricci’s intervention at one of the public debates on Il libro dell’incontro. URL: https://www.radioradicale.it/scheda/497801/pre-sentazione-del-libro-dellincontro-vittime-e-responsabili-della-lotta-armata-a (16 June 2018).

262
See Bazzega’s comments to an article by Sciltian Gastaldi entitled “‘Il libro dell’incontro’: grande occasione mancata” [The book of the encounter: an important missed chance], in L’Espresso (27 Jan. 2017). URL: http://anelli-di-fumo.blogautore.espresso.repubblica.it/2017/01/21/il-libro-dellincontro-grande-occasione-mancata/ (16 June 2018).

263
Chantal Mouffe: Politics and Passions: the Stakes of Democracy, in: Ethical Perspectives 7, no.2–3 (2000), 146–150, 146.

264
See ‘Castenedolo…incontra’, part 1 of 5, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2OBZNpSxhM.

265
Marie Smyth: Truth Recovery and Justice after Conflict. London 2007.

266
Interview with the Author, 11 Feb. 2011.

267
See ‘Castenedolo…incontra’, part 1 of 5, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2OBZNpSxhM.

268
Interview with the Author, 11 Feb. 2011.

269
Mouffe, Democratic Paradox, 101–102.

270
See Francesco Grignetti: Terroristi e vittime al Senato. Scandalo e assensi per il dialogo impossibile, in: La Stampa (19 Jan. 2017).

271
See Luca Tarantelli’s intervention at one of the public debates on Il libro dell’incontro. URL: https://www.radioradicale.it/scheda/497801/presentazione-del-libro-dellincontro-vittime-e-responsabili-della-lotta-armata-a (16 June 2018).

272
See: Benedetta Tobagi, Luigi Manconi and Guido Bertagna: Le parole di Sonja, in: Una città, no. 161 (2009), URL: http://isintellettualistoria2.myblog.it/2012/04/20/benedetta-tobagi-luigi-manconi-guido-bertagna-le-parole-di-s/ (16 June 2018).

273
A much more radically dissenting position, however, has been expressed by Antonio Iosa, a former Christian Democrat who was kneecapped by the Red Brigades in 1980. He explained in an interview that he withdrew from the group dialogue with the former terrorists in profound disagreement with the restorative justice approach adopted by the mediators, which, in his view, aimed primarily at giving credit to and legitimising “the noble ideals of the terrorists”. See Luca Guglielminetti: Intervista ad Antonio Iosa su ‘Il libro dell’incontro’ (Dec. 2017). URL http://casamemoriamilano.eu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/1704-intervista-di-L.-Gugliemenetti-Gruppo-per-Sciltian.pdf. (16 June 2018).

274
For a historical overview of the events see Butz Peters: Tödlicher Irrtum. Die Geschichte der RAF, Berlin 2007, 430–450.

275
The GSG 9 was created as a consequence of the attacks of the Olympic Games of Munich in 1972 when all Israeli hostages were killed during a poorly executed rescue attempt by local police forces. The unit is – as special group of the German Border Patrol – non-military but its foundation was supported by the expertise of British and Israeli military Counter Terrorist Units. “Operation Feuerzauber” was the first mission of the GSG 9 and it established its – nearly unbroken - reputation as invincible and faultless elite unit. For the foundation process, see: Matthias Dahlke: Demokratischer Staat und transnationaler Terrorismus: Drei Wege zur Unnachgiebigkeit in Westeuropa 1972 – 1975, Munich 2011, 101.

276
Tim Geiger: Die ‘Landshut’ in Mogadischu, Das außenpolitische Krisenmanagement der Bundesregierung angesichts der terroristischen Herausforderung 1977, in: Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte 57, no. 3 (2009), 413–456.

277
Copy of a letter from Gaby Coldewey to Martin Rupps.

278
Ibid.

279
Gaby Coldewey: Kinder werden nicht erschossen, in: die tageszeitung (26 Oct. 2012). URL: http://www.taz.de/!5080928/ (16 June 2018).

280
Der Spiegel showed Helmut Schmidt on the cover with the title: “After Mogadishu: The Admired German” (“Nach Mogadischu: Der bewunderte Deutsche”), Der Spiegel 44 (1977).

281
The ZDF-Journal stated already in May of 1978 that the hostages had been “largely forgotten.” Quoted in Martin Rupps: Die Überlebenden von Mogadischu. Berlin 2012, 136. ‘Landshut’ copilot Jürgen Vietor says that after a Stern interview in the fall of 1977, he received no further questions until 1996. Ibid., 291.

282
A rare exception was the ZDF documentary “106 Stunden von Palma nach Mogadischu, die ‘Landshut’ Passagiere heute” by Wolfgang Salewski and Ruprecht Esser (1978). See below for further details.

283
Rupps, Die Überlebenden, 227–235.

284
“Todesspiel,” dir.: Heinrich Breloer (1997). On the depiction of the RAF in feature films, literature, and art see Petra Terhoeven: Die RAF. Eine Geschichte terroristischer Gewalt. Munich 2017, 114–121.

285
Anne Ameri-Siemens: Für die RAF war er das System, für mich der Vater. Die andere Geschichte des deutschen Terrorismus. Munich 2007; Carolin Emcke: Stumme Gewalt. Nachdenken über die RAF. Frankfurt a. M. 2009; Haus der Geschichte Baden-Württemberg (ed.): Die Opfer der RAF. Karlsruhe 2009.

286
For the SWR production “Im fliegenden Sarg” (2012) author Ingo Helmaus was able to use interviews that documentary filmmaker Ebbo Demant had conducted with the former hostages already in 1980 for his film “Flugplatz Mogadischu.” The film, however, focused on the hijacking itself. The SWR production “Die Geiseln von Mogagischu – das Leben nach der ‘Landshut’ Entführung” by Martin Rupps and Martina Treuter was released in fall of 2017.

287
Martin Rupps had access to the Lufthansa archive. Material concerning individual events is also contained in the Federal Archive in the collections of various ministries and the chancellery. Some material is based on conversations with former hostages and privately-owned materials.

288
Hannelore Piegler: Entführung. Hundert Stunden zwischen Angst und Hoffnung. Vienna 1978; Diana Müll: Mogadischu. Meine Befreiung aus Terror und Todesangst. Fernwald 2007; Christine Bode and Diana Müll: Mogadischu: Die Entführung der ‘Landshut’ und meine dramatische Befreiung. Munich 2017.

289
The study by Rupps, whose findings serve as the foundation for this essay, is hence considered a pioneering work in the field.

290
Other institutions such as health insurance companies were not taken into consideration.

291
Former passenger Diana Müll asked the “Weiße Ring” for help three years after the hijacking but was rejected. When she spoke of the experience decades later on a talk show, the head of the association contacted her and excused the action by saying that the organization had been new at the time. Rupps, Die Überlebenden, 219.

292
“Being a victim of terrorism cannot be understood as a catastrophic one-off experience that occurs in a political vacuum. It cannot be understood as a violent trauma in isolation from the societal perceptions of the perpetrators. Terrorism is a complex social phenomenon and being a victim of terrorism means dealing with being the recipient of this complexity,” Orla Lynch Javier Argomaniz: Victims of Terrorism. A comparative and interdisciplinary study. Routledge 2015, 3.

293
“Insgesamt wurden in den Jahren 1947 bis 1990 821 Flugzeugentführungen registriert. Ihren Höhepunkt erreichte die Luftpiraterie mit 85 Entführungen im Jahr 1969, in dem der Flugterrorismus nahöstlicher Provenienz einsetzte.” Annette Vowinckel: Flugzeugentführungen. Eine Kulturgeschichte. Göttingen 2011, 23.

294
In 1972, then-chairman of the board Culmann even decided on a place and time for the hostage exchange. “Terroristen befreit” in: Die Zeit 44 (1972), URL: http://www.zeit.de/1972/44/terroristen-befreit (16 June 2018). See also Thomas Skelton Robinson: Im Netz verheddert. Die Beziehungen des bundesdeutschen Linksterrorismus zur Volksfront für die Befreiung Palästinas (1969–1980), in: Wolfgang Kraushaar (ed.): Die RAF und der linke Terrorismus. vol. 2, Hamburg 2006, 828–904. Another Lufthansa aircraft was hijacked in Rome in December 1973. A total of 32 people died in that incident, most of them in a fire started by two phosphorus bombs that the Palestinian commando, before commandeering the German airplane, had put in a Pan Am aircraft still parked at the airport. See Petra Terhoeven: Deutscher Herbst in Europa. Der Linksterrorismus der siebziger Jahre als transnationales Problem. Munich 2014, 505–508.

295
Based on its experience following the abduction of politician Peter Lorenz, the federal government was on principle no longer prepared to negotiate a solution. See Dahlke, Krisenbereitschaft.

296
Rupps, Die Überlebenden, 61.

297
Memo to Undersecretary Dr. Jabcke, re: Hijacking Landshut, here: DLH measures for the passengers, 21 June 1978, in: BArch B136/12963.

298
A total of 70 passengers made “compensation requests” of 151,301 DM. Of that amount, Lufthansa paid 68 people 90,191 DM. In two cases Lufthansa’s insurance company paid out 12,000 DM. See: re. LH 181/ 13 Oct. 1977, processing of benefits 27 Jan. 1978, in: ‘Landshut’ file, Lufthansa AG company archive.

299
Memorandum concerning meeting with the ‘Landshut’ passengers on 24/25 June 1978 in BNJ, in: ‘Landshut’ file, Lufthansa AG company archive.

300
No reasons could be found in the files. See ibid., 3.

301
Note by Franz Cesarz, 18 Oct. 1977, in: ‘Landshut’ file, Lufthansa AG company archive, 1.

302
Comment, Claims from affected passengers, 21 Oct. 1977, in: ‘Landshut’ file, Lufthansa AG company archive.

303
Letter from Flight Captain Utter to all passengers, 28 Dec. 1977, in: Matthias Rath estate.

304
Memorandum concerning meeting with ‘Landshut’ passengers on 24/25 June 1978 in BNJ, in: ‘Landshut’ file, Lufthansa AG company archive.

305
Comment, Claims from affected passengers, 21 Oct. 1977, in: ‘Landshut’ file, Lufthansa AG company archive.

306
Letter from Lufthansa AG to Matthias Rath, 31 Jan. 1978, in: Matthias Rath estate.

307
Deutscher Luftpool to Edelgard Wolf on 20 Sep. 1978, in: Martin Rupps, private archive.

308
Lufthansa re-named its air traffic school in Bremen after Jürgen Schumann.

309
Rupps, Die Überlebenden, 155.

310
Gabriele Lutzau (née Dillmann) in conversation with Martin Rupps.

311
Rupps, Die Überlebenden, 127.

312
Jürgen Vietor in an interview with Martin Rupps.

313
14 family members signed this unpublished declaration. Rupps, Die Überlebenden, 73.

314
Schmidt in an interview with Heinrich Breloer for “Das Todesspiel.”

315
At least Helmut Schmidt, Hans-Jochen Vogel and Horst Herold felt it was key that the large circle of all political parties “consisted of primarily first and second lieutenants from the military.” Stephan Scheiper: Innere Sicherheit: Politische Anti-Terror-Konzepte in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland während der 1970er Jahre. Paderborn 2010, 117.

316
Joint statement from 18 Oct. 1977, quoted in Presse und Informationsamt der Bundesregierung: Dokumentation zu den Ereignissen und Entscheidungen im Zusammenhang mit der Entführung von HannsMartin Schleyer und der Lufthansa-Maschine ‘Landshut.’ Bonn 1977, 115f.

317
Quoted in Stefan Aust: Der Baader-Meinhof-Komplex. Hamburg 2017, 895.

318
Hans-Jürgen Wischnewski: Mit Leidenschaft und Augenmaß. In Mogadischu und anderswo. Munich 1989, 233.

319
“Empfang der geretteten Geiseln auf dem Frankfurter Flughafen” in: FAZ (19 Oct. 1977), 1.

320
“Mogadischu hat an meiner Seele gezerrt”, in: Der SPIEGEL 9 (1996), URL: http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/a-57920.html (16 June 2018). At Schumann’s burial service three days later in Babenhausen, Hans-Jürgen Wischnewski, Defense Minister Leber, Transportation Minister Gscheidle, und Lufthansa manager Utter delivered eulogies. All flags in Hessen were flown at half-mast. Copilot Vietor walked before the coffin carrying Schumann’s Federal Cross of Merit on a ceremonial cushion,“Wir schulden Schumann viel!,” in: FAZ (22 Oct. 1977), 56.

321
Rudolf Walter Leonhardt: Der Hölle von Somalia entronnen, in: Die Zeit 44 (1977), URL: http://www.zeit.de/1977/44/der-hoelle-von-somalia-entronnen/komplettansicht (16 June 2018).

322
Message from Franz Cesarz to Dr. Culmann on 19 Oct. 1977, in: ‘Landshut’ file, Lufthansa AG company archive, 2.

323
A joint press conference did take place the following morning with Interior Minister Maihofer, Minister of State Wischnewski and Lufthansa manager Utter. This suggests that they wished to wait for the return of the GSG 9. See Wischnewski, Mit Leidenschaft, 236.

324
Ibid.

325
Rupps, Die Überlebenden, 98.

326
Note by Matthias Rath from 9 Apr. 1979, reprinted from estate in: Rupps, Die Überlebenden, 162f.

327
Wischnewski, Mit Leidenschaft, 241.

328
Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 7/2506, 1.

329
Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 7/2506, Ibid.

330
On the beginnings of victims’ rights and victimology more generally see Svenja Goltermann: Opfer. Die Wahrnehmung von Krieg und Gewalt in der Moderne. Frankfurt a. M. 2017, 178–196.

331
Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 7/2506, §1.

332
For a detailed account see Svenja Goltermann: Die Gesellschaft der Überlebenden. Deutsche Kriegsheimkehrer und ihre Gewalterfahrungen im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Munich 2009.

333
Rupps, Die Überlebenden, 152.

334
At that time only Great Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands and Sweden had signed such an agreement. As a result, Austrian head flight attendant Plieger, for instance, received no compensation. “Und überall war Blut”, Der SPIEGEL 42 (1979).

335
Ibid URL: http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-39867110.html (16 June 2018).

336
The so-called “psychology boom” of the 1970s led to among other things a decrease in this stigmatization. It remained a societal phenomenon. See Maik Tändler: Das therapeutische Jahrzehnt. Der Psychoboom in den siebziger Jahren. Göttingen 2016.

337
Iris Borrée, Johannes Friedrich and Barbara Wüsten: Das kaum bekannte Opferentschädigungsgesetz. Die Leistungen und ihre Gewährung – Praxisprobleme und Novellierungsbedarf, in: Soziale Sicherheit 2 (2014), 69–76, here 74.

338
Tändler, Psychoboom, 81, and in greater detail Goltermann, Opfer, 197–213.

339
“Und überall war Blut” Der SPIEGEL 42 (1979). URL: http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-39867110.html (16 June 2018).

340
The numbers have remained constant since then. This means that a claim is filed in only 10% of incidents of violent crime – and of those, “only” 42.5% are subsequently denied. Borée/Johannes/Wüsten, Opferentschädigungsgesetz, 69.

341
Express letter from Director of Ministries Trometer to the ministers und senators for labor and social affairs of the Länder, 4 Jan. 1978, in: BArch B136/12963.

342
Note on conversation with Dr. Rehm, Transportation Ministry, 3 Jan. 1978, in: ‘Landshut’ file, Lufthansa AG company archive.

343
Director of Ministries Trometer to Deutsche Lufhansa AG, 4 Jan. 1978, in: BArch B136/12963.

344
Status of the benefits proceedings of the Landshut hostages, 22 June 1978, in: BArch B136/12963.

345
Based on conversations with many of the former hostages, Martin Rupps estimates that approximately two thirds of the first-time claims filed were rejected until political pressure changed the position taken by the agencies.

346
Government secretary Hermann Buschfort to Representative Lieselotte Berger, 12 June 1979, in: BArch B136/12963.

347
Quoted in Rupps, Die Überlebenden, 138.

348
Memorandum concerning meeting with ‘Landshut’ passengers on 24/25 June 1978 in BNJ, in: ‘Landshut’ file, Lufthansa AG company archive.

349
Quoted from the Süddeutsche Zeitung, 27 June 1978, in Rupps, Die Überlebenden, 139.

350
Note of Matthias Rath from 9 April 1979, reprinted from estate in Rupps, Die Überlebenden, 164.

351
Peter Kiewitt to all of the hostages, August 15, 1978, in: estate of Matthias Rath.

352
Quoted in “Und überall war Blut”.

353
Re: Hijacking of the aircraft D-ABCE (Landshut) of the Deutsche Lufthansa on 13 Oct. 1977, here: social services for the passengers affected by the hijacking, 2 Mar. 1978, in: BArch B136/12963.

354
Rupps, Die Überlebenden, 158.

355
See the SPIEGEL cover story “Gewaltverbrechen. Keine Hilfe für die Opfer” Der SPIEGEL 42 (1979).

356
The outcome was the quoted documentation from the Federal Press Office – which was notably criticized for its incompleteness.

357
Terhoeven, Deutscher Herbst, 457; same: Opferbilder-Täterbilder. Die Fotografie als Medium linksterroristischer Selbstermächtigung in Deutschland und Italien während der 70er Jahre, in: GWU 58 (2007), 380–399.

358
“Without the knowledge and consent of all other passengers, we are not allowed to provide such a list,” Lufthansa AG to Matthias Rath, 31 Jan. 1978, in: estate of Matthias Rath.

359
Commentary by Alois Rummel, 18 Oct. 1977, quoted in Rupps, Die Überlebenden, 82–84.

360
In 1963 in Lengede, 100 of the 129 trapped miners survived following the mine’s collapse. In 1955, Adenauer was able to bring home the last German prisoners of war being held in the Soviet Union.

361
See above, and also: Freudentränen bei der Ankunft in Frankfurt, FAZ (19 Oct. 1977), 39.

362
Leonhardt, Hölle von Somalia.

363
Rupps, Die Überlebenden, 113.

364
Quoted in Jutta Duhm-Heitzmann: Geblieben ist ihnen die Angst, Die Zeit 45 (1982), URL: www.zeit.de/1982/45/geblieben-ist-ihnen-die-angst/komplettansicht (16 June 2018).

365
Rupps, Die Überlebenden, 241.

366
Information provided in person by Gabriele Lutzau (née Dillmann) to Martin Rupps.

367
Beate Hagenkötter: Die Opfer einer Flugzeugentführung in der Nachuntersuchung: Auswertungsansatz nach dem Modell der erlernten Hilflosigkeit (Seligman). Aachen 1993, 65.

368
The incident involved a bank robbery followed by a joyride through Germany, during which the bank robbers also took additional people hostage. Journalists became directly involved in the events. See Jürgen Willke: Gladbecker Geiseldrama, in: Stiftung Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (ed.): Skandale in Deutschland nach 1945. Bielefeld 2007, 156–163.

369
From an unnamed ministry director to the hostages in January 1978, quoted in Rupps, Die Überlebenden, 165.

370
See among others Andreas Ploeger: Gruppendynamik in einer Extremsituation. Weitere Untersuchungen an den Überlebenden der Bergwerkskatastrophe von Lengede 1963, in: Nervenarzt 40 (1969), 308–314.

371
Tändler, Therapeutisches Jahrzehnt, 78–80.

372
Ibid, 80f. See also the detailed account by José Brunner: Die Politik des Traumas: Gewalterfahrung und psychisches Leid in den USA, in Deutschland und im Israel/Palästina-Konflikt. Berlin 2014.

373
Sabine Kroy: Wissenschaftler, Zeitzeuge und Schriftsteller: Andreas Ploeger, in: Aachener Zeitung (23 Apr. 2017). URL: http://www.aachener-zeitung.de/lokales/region/wissenschaftler-zeitzeuge-und-schriftsteller-andreas-ploeger-1.1608339 (16 June 2018).

374
A similar shift also took place around the same time concerning victims of rape. See Goltermann, Opfer, 191f.

375
“Und überall war Blut”.

376
Jan Bastiaans: Die wirklichen Leiden beginnen nach der Befreiung, in: Psychologie Heute 5, no. 1 (1978), 66–72, here 66.

377
Rupps, Die Überlebenden, 165.

378
Ibid, 171.

379
“Und überall war Blut” Der SPIEGEL 42 (1979).

380
Beate Keller, for example, in an interview, Rupps, Die Überlebenden, 171f.

381
Andreas Ploeger and Rosemarie Schmitz-Gielsdorf: Tiefenpsychologisch fundierte Psychotraumatherapie bei den Geiseln der in Mogadischu befreiten Lufthansa-Maschine ‘Landshut,’ in: Gruppenpsychologie und Gruppendynamik 15 (1980), 353–361.

382
Andreas Ploeger: Tiefenpsychologisch fundierte Psychodramatherapie. Stuttgart 1983.

383
Gabriele Dillmann in an interview with freelance journalist Roswita Krausz for her report “Fünf Tage im Oktober, Psychogramm einer Geiselnahme” Süddeutscher Rundfunk (18 Nov. 1978), quoted in Rupps, Die Überlebenden, 175.

384
Duhm-Heitzmann, Geblieben ist ihnen die Angst.

385
See among others Joachim Schmitt: Extreme seelische Belastung: Verarbeitungsprozesse während einer Flugzeugentführung und ihr Zusammenhang mit längerfristigen Folgewirkungen. Aachen 1987; Hagenkötter, Opfer.

386
Wolfgang Salewski and Peter Lanz: die neue Gewalt und wie man ihr begegnet. Zurich 1978.

387
Ibid, 211.

388
Rupps, Die Überlebenden, 167.

389
Ibid, 170.

390
Embassy report, Den Hague, from 16 June 1977 re: ending the hostage drama in northern Holland, in: BArch B 136/15685 pp.

391
Franz Cesarz to Dr. Culmann on 19 Oct. 1977, in: ‘Landshut file’, Lufthansa AG company archive.

392
Of whom many initially can or do not wish to report the need for therapy, see: note on conversation with Dr. Rehm, Transportation Ministry, 3 Jan. 1978, in: ‘Landshut’ file, Lufthansa AG company archive.

393
Nikolas Büchse, Von Staatsbürgern und Protestbürgern – Der Deutsche Herbst und die Veränderung der politischen Kultur in der Bundesrepublik, in: Habbo Knoch (ed.): Bürgersinn mit Weltgefühl. Politische Moral und solidarischer Protest in den sechziger und siebziger Jahren. Göttingen 2007, 311–332.

394
Ulrich Chaussy: Oktoberfest – das Attentat: wie die Verdrängung des rechten Terrors begann. Berlin 2015.

395
Klaus Biesenbach (ed.): Zur Vorstellung des Terrors. Die RAF. Göttingen 2005.

396
Hans Peter Feldmann: Die Toten. 1967–1993. Düsseldorf 1998.

397
Rolf Lautenschläger and Stefan Reinecke: Erbitterter Streit um ein altes Zitat, in: Die Tageszeitung (23 July 2003), 7. See also Ellen Blumenstein: Zur Vorstellung des Terrors und Möglichkeiten der Kunst, in: Biesenbach (ed.): Zur Vorstellung des Terrors, 18.

398
Robert Kahr, Frank Robertz and Ruben Wickenhäuser: Mediale Inszenierung von Amok und Terrorismus, in: Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 4 (2017), 33–38.

399
See among others Anne Siemens: Die Opfer der RAF, in: Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 40–41 (2007), 9–15.

400
Hans-Joachim Klein: Rückkehr in die Menschlichkeit. Apell eines ausgestiegenen Terroristen. Reinbek 1979, 281; Stefan Wisniewski: Wir waren so unheimlich konsequent. Ein Gespräch zur Geschichte der RAF. Berlin 2003, 18.

401
Kahr, Robertz and Wickenhäuser, Mediale Inszenierung, 37.

402
This term is coined by the American ethnologist Jack Santino (Jack Santino (ed.): Spontaneous Shrines and the Public Memorialization of Death. New York 2006). On rituals of remembrance in the context of September 11, 2001, see in particular Harriet F. Senie: Mourning in Protest. Spontaneous Memorials and the Sacralization of Public Space, in: Jack Santino (ed.), Spontaneous Shrines and the Public Memorialization of Death. New York 2006, 41–56.

403
On the political instrumentalization of perpetrator images, see Charlotte Klonk: Terror. Wenn Bilder zu Waffen werden. Frankfurt a. M. 2017, 151–212.

404
The discussion of Richard Drew’s photograph is based on a previously published text in Klonk, Terror, 226–231.

405
Brooke Barnett and Amy Reynolds: Terrorism and the Press. An Uneasy Relationship. New York 2009, 92.

406
New York Times (12 Sep. 2001), A7; Süddeutsche Zeitung (13 Sep. 2001), 15; Die Welt (13 Sep. 2001), 5.

407
Andrea D. Fitzpatrick: The Movement of Vulnerability. Images of Falling and September 11, in: Art Journal 4 (2007), 84–102; Godehard Janzing: The Falling Man, in: Gerhard Paul (ed.): Das Jahrhundert der Bilder. Göttingen 2008, 664–701.

408
Stefan Leifert: Bildethik. Theorie und Moral im Bildjournalismus der Massenmedien. München 2007, 188.

409
German Press Council (ed.): Jahrbuch 2002. Mit der Spruchpraxis des Jahres 2001. Konstanz 2002, 87.

410
Tom Junod: The Falling Man, in: Esquire (8 Sep. 2003). URL: http://archive.esquire.com/issue/20030901 (9 Oct. 2015).

411
Fitzpatrick, The Movement of Vulnerability, 97–98.

412
Simon Tomlinson: Yobs who stole Warrington IRA child bomb victim memorial escape prosecution after saying sorry to parents, in: Daily Mail (12 July 2012), 3.

413
See the comprehensive documentation in Bill Rolston: Drawing Support. Murals in the North of Ireland. vol. 4, Belfast 1992–2013; as well as Maximilian Rapp: Murals in Nordirland. Symbol der ethno-kulturellen Identität und Spiegel des politischen Wandels. Baden-Baden 2014 (in particular his statistical summary on page 239).

414
Louise Richardson: What Terrorists Want. Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat. New York 2006, 214.

415
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett argues that from very early on a commercialization of commemorative culture was implemented in New York City that now makes the memorial a prime tourist attraction. Barbara Kirschenblatt-Gimblett: Kodak Moments, Flashbulb Memories. Reflections on 9/11, in: TDR: The Drama Review 41, no. 1 (2003), 11–48.

416
Gerhard Paul: Bilder des Krieges – Krieg der Bilder. Die Visualisierung des modernen Krieges. Paderborn 2004, 448.

417
Michaela Wiegel: Ohne Strategie. Die französische Regierung verengt die Terrorismus-Debatte auf Sicherheitspolitik, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (5 Apr. 2016), 8.

418
Marc Zitzmann: Paris ein Jahr nach dem Terror, in: Neue Züricher Zeitung (12 Nov. 2016), 44.

419
Jack Santino suggests that there is always a political and activist element connected to spontaneous shrines. He argues that “in each case of spontaneous shrine there is a component of addressing a social issue, of trying to convince people, of trying to make something happen. Commemoration can be and often is private. The public aspects of the shrines are due to the social conditions that caused the deaths and the political issues they reference.” (Santino, Spontaneous Shrines, 1).

420
Regina Mönch: Die republikanische Toteninsel, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (8 Feb. 2017), 9.

421
Mönch, Die republikanische Toteninsel, 9.

422
URL: https://terminegegenmerkel.wordpress.com/2016/12/23/wer-sind-die-opfer-nennt-die-namen/ (31 Mar. 2017). Similar comments also appeared on the blog: URL: https://propagan-daschau.wordpress.com (31 Mar. 2017).

423
URL: http://cicero.de/berliner-republik/berliner-attentat-die-falschen-toten (31 Mar. 2017).

424
URL: https://www.fischundfleisch.com/ineslaufer/der-terroranschlag-von-berlin-die-gesich-ter-der-opfer-und-die-berechtigte-wut-auf-die-politischen-31198 (31 Mar. 2017).

425
Mönch: Die republikanische Toteninsel, 9.

426
Antje Lang-Lendorff: Der Platz bekommt einen Riss, in: Die Tageszeitung (14 Sep. 2017), 21. The monument was revealed to the public on the anniversary of the attack in Dezember 2017 and shows a golden line that flows from the steps onto the square.

427
As the text on a commemorative plaque at the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin read on 30 March 2016, see URL: https://www.fischundfleisch.com/ineslaufer/der-terrorans-chlag-von-berlin-die-gesichter-der-opfer-und-die-berechtigte-wut-auf-die-politischen-31198 (31 Mar. 2017).

428
Dem Volke dienen. Stadtguerilla und Klassenkampf, in: ID-Verlag (ed.): Rote Armee Fraktion. Texte und Materialien zur Geschichte der RAF. Berlin 1997, 112–144, here 112.

429
Georg Linke was a 62-year old library employee who had been shot and fatally wounded during Andreas Baader’s release from prison on May 14, 1970. See Willi Winkler: Die Geschichte der RAF. Berlin 2007, 163–165.

430
Das Konzept Stadtguerilla, in: ID-Verlag, Rote Armee Fraktion, 27–48, here 30; Erklärung vom 20.5.1972, in: ibid., 147. Responsibility for the wounded employees was attributed to the opposite side, however, who allegedly out of corporate greed had failed to have the building evacuated despite advance warnings.

431
Gerd Koenen: Das rote Jahrzehnt. Unsere kleine deutsche Kulturrevolution 1967–1977. Frankfurt a. M. 2002, 393.

432
The oft-cited phrase “furtive happiness” (klammheimliche Freude) was coined by the radical leftists of the Sponti-scene following the murder of Attorney General Siegfried Buback. However, it did not mean the same thing as support for the methods of the RAF. See Stefan Spiller: Der Sympathisant als Staatsfeind. Die Mescalero-Affäre, in: Wolfgang Kraushaar (ed.): Die RAF und der linke Terrorismus. Hamburg 2006, 2, 1227–1368.

433
Zur Aktion gegen die Rhein-Main-Airbase und die Erschießung von Edward Pimental, in: ID-Verlag, Rote Armee Fraktion, 344.

434
“An die, die mit uns kämpfen.” Erklärung vom Januar 1986, in: ibid., 349–360, here 349.

435
Ute Frevert: Die Politik der Demütigung. Schauplätze von Macht und Ohnmacht. Frankfurt a. M. 2017.

436
Clark McCauley: Constructing Terrorism: From Fear and Coercion to Anger and JuJitsu Politics, in: Michael Stohl, Richard Burchill and Scott Englund (eds.): Constructions of Terrorism. An Interdisciplinary Approach to Research and Policy. Oakland (Cal.) 2017, 79–90, here 83.

437
Andrew Silke: Retaliating against Terrorism, in: id. (ed.): Terrorists, Victims and Society. Psychological Perspectives on Terrorism and its Consequences. New York 2003, 215–233, here 231.

438
For a general introduction to the topic see Volker Ackermann: Nationale Totenfeiern in Deutschland. Von Wilhelm I. bis Franz-Josef Strauß. Eine Studie in politischer Semiotik. Stuttgart 1990.

439
See the scenes from both funerals in Volker Schlöndorff’s final segment of the collaboratively made 1978 film “Germany in Autumn” (“Deutschland im Herbst”).

440
Martin Steinseifer: ‚Terrorismus‘ zwischen Ereignis und Diskurs. Zur Pragmatik von Text-Bild-Zusammenstellungen in Printmedien der siebziger Jahre. Berlin 2011, 316.

441
Habbo Knoch: Mediale Trauer. Bildmedien und Sinnstiftung im ‚Zeitalter der Extreme,‘ in: Frank Bösch and Manuel Borutta (eds.): Die Massen bewegen. Medien und Emotionen in der Moderne. Frankfurt a. M. 2006, 193–216.

442
On the “blindness with which a number of West German leftists and an even greater number of leftists outside the country committed to the murder theory from the very first day,” see Peter Schneider: Der Sand an Baaders Schuhen, in: Kursbuch 51. Leben gegen Gewalt (March 1978), 1–15, here 10.

443
Alex P. Schmid and Janny De Graaf: Violence as Communication. Insurgent Terrorism and Western News Media. London 1982, 54.

444
Karl S. Guthke: The Gender of Death. A Cultural History in Art and Literature. Cambridge 1999, 82–127; Norbert Fischer: Die Trauernde. Zur geschlechtsspezifischen Materialisierung von Gefühlen im bürgerlichen Tod, in: metis 5 (1996), 25–31.

445
According to Thomas Scheffler, kidnapping is the “most publicly effective form of modern terrorism” and “a highly personalized human drama” that touches on “a sensitive juncture in modern politics,” namely: “the conflict between an ethics of personal space … and the impersonal logic of state reason.” Cf. id.: Vom Königsmord zum Attentat. Zur Kulturmorphologie des politischen Mords, in: Trutz von Trotha (ed.): Soziologie der Gewalt. Special Issue of Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie. Opladen 1997, 183–199, here 197.

446
On the general problem of investing the term “victim” with too much heroism and/or holiness, and on the dangers of its political exploitation, see Gerhard Botz: Opfer/Täter-Diskurse. Zur Problematik des ‚Opfer‘-Begriffs, in: Gertraud Diendorfer (ed.): Zeitgeschichte im Wandel. Innsbruck 1997, 223–236.

447
For the more recent past, see the history of the four so-called “Jersey Widows” or “Jersey Girls” Kristen Breitweiser, Patty Casazza, Lorie Van Auken and Mindy Kleinberg, who were widowed as a result of the 9/11 attacks and played a key role in the appointment of the 9/11 Commission, in Philip Shenon: The Commission: An Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation. New York 2008; also Kristen Breitweiser: The Wake-Up Call: The Political Education of a 9/11 Widow. New York 2006. My thanks to Hannah Rudolph for the “Jersey Girls” reference.

448
Guido Panvini: Ordine nero e guerriglia rossa. La violenza politica nell`Italia degli anni sessanta e settanta (1966–1975). Turin 2009.

449
Vincent Druliolle and Roddy Brett: Understanding the Construction of Victimhood and the Evolving Role of Victims in Transitional Justice and Peacebuilding, in: iid. (eds.): The Politics of Victimhood in Postconflict Societies. Comparative and Analytical Perspectives. Oxford 2018, 1–22.

450
José Brunner und Daniel Stahl have recently drawn attention to the right to truth as an important new concept in the discourse about human rights that has been the object of fierce debate since the end of the 20th century. See José Brunner and Daniel Stahl (eds.): Recht auf Wahrheit. Zur Genese eines neuen Menschenrechts. Göttingen 2016. The editors also note how the right to truth is violated in connection with the fight against terrorism, for instance when the CIA in its “war on terror” after 9/11 detained terrorism suspects without informing their families. See iid. (eds.): Introduction, in: ibid., 9–22, here 9. This meant that the families of presumed perpetrators experienced the same agonizing uncertainty about the fate of a detainee as the families of the victims.

451
On this topic see Guido Salvini: La legge sui terroristi pentiti: un primo bilancio. Milan 1983; Maurizio Laudi: Terroristi pentiti e liberazione condizionale: artt. 8 e 9 l. 29 maggio 1982 n. 304, con un’appendice a cura di G. Conso. Milan 1984. For a more general picture see Antonella Benazzo: L’emergenza nel conflitto fra libertà e sicurezza. Turin 2004. The attacks on public institutions in Italy between 1969 and 1980 are considered part of a covert “strategy of tension” that in all likelihood also involved several members of intelligence agencies; issuing no written claims of responsibility, it was intended to produce social unrest and in turn a greater willingness to accept authoritarian political models. See Mimmo Franzinelli: La sottile linea nera. Neofascismo e servizi segreti da Piazza Fontana a Piazza della Loggia. Milan 2008.

452
For the German situation see the sociological study by Andreas Böttger, Olaf Lobermeier and Katarzyna Plachta: Opfer rechtsextremer Gewalt. Wiesbaden 2014; for Italy see Anna Cento Bull and Philip Cooke: Ending Terrorism in Italy. London 2013.

453
The expert Matthias Quent, director of the Institute for Democracy and Civil Society in Jena, considers the incident a case of “lone wolf terrorism.” A counselor reported that for the parents of the victims, why their child had to die was a crucial question that “is not answered as long as society does not clearly identify the motive for the deed. The family members can have no closure.” See Lena Kampf and Kassian Stroh: Die Tat eines “echten Deutschen”. Drei Gutachter werten den Münchner Amoklauf als rechtsradikale Tat – anders als die Ermittlungsbehörden, in: Süddeutsche Zeitung (4 Oct. 2017). URL: https://lenakampf.de/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Artikel9.pdf (16 July 2018).

454
See the Editorial.

455
See Schleppende Aufklärung des Erlanger Doppelmordes. Der Journalist Ulrich Chaussy über seine Recherchen zu den Morden an Poeschke und Lewin (10 Mar. 2016). URL: http://www.nordbayern.de/region/erlangen/schleppende-aufklarung-des-erlanger-doppelmordes-1.5048543 (10 Jun. 2018).

456
Ulrich Chaussy: Das Oktoberfestattentat 1980. Der Vorhang wieder auf und alle Fragen offen. Erfahrungen eines Journalisten, in: Sybille Steinbacher (ed.): Rechte Gewalt in Deutschland. Zum Umgang mit dem Rechtsextremismus in Gesellschaft, Politik und Justiz. Göttingen 2016, 93–108.

457
This ignorance is also found among historians. In the relevant overviews of German history, or more specifically the history of the Federal Republic, right-wing terrorism is not mentioned at all (Herbert, Görtemaker, Wolfrum) or only in passing (Conze). My thanks to Tim Schanetzky for this reference.

458
Quoted in Christian Fuchs and John Goetz: Die Zelle. Rechter Terror in Deutschland. Reinbek b. Hamburg 2012, 65. In his entire time as chancellor, Kohl neither visited nor received a single victim of right-wing violence, nor did he participate in any funeral services.

459
Matthias Quent: Rassismus, Radikalisierung, Rechtsterrorismus. Wie der NSU entstand und was er über die Gesellschaft verrät. Weinheim 2016, 158.

460
Ibid., 157–163. The right-wing perpetrators’ sense of vindication over the change to the law is evidenced by among other things the attack three days later in Solingen on a house inhabited by two families of Turkish descent, which killed five people and seriously injured 14 more. Ibid., 178. On the NSU also see the editorial.

461
Antony Pemberton: Al Qaida and Vicarious Victims: Victimological Insights into Globalized Terrorism, in: Rianne Letschert and Jan van Dijk (eds.): The New Faces of Victimhood. Globalization, Transnational Crimes and Victim Rights. Heidelberg 2011, 233–252, here 234.

462
Only first steps are taken in Lyane Sautner: Viktimologie. Die Lehre von den Verbrechensopfern. Vienna 2014, 5–13. See also David von Mayenburg: “Geborene Opfer“. Bausteine für eine Geschichte der Viktimologie – Das Beispiel Hans von Hentig, in: Rechtsgeschichte 14 (2009), 122–147. An impressive history of how victims of war have been perceived from the early 19th century up until the present, with special emphasis on the category “knowledge,” is found in the latest monograph by Svenja Goltermann: Opfer. Die Wahrnehmung von Krieg und Gewalt in der Moderne. Frankfurt a. M. 2017.

463
For the German context, see for example the many activities and publications of the “White Ring.”

464
From a victimological perspective see Betty Pfefferbaum: Victims of Terrorism and the Media, in: Silke, Terrorists, 175–187. On the history of the media and terrorism still see Schmid and De Graaf, Violence. The quote is taken from Walter Laqueur: A History of Terrorism. New Brunswick 2001, 223.

465
This applies for instance to reporting about the federal government’s dealings with victims of the attack on the Breitscheidplatz Christmas market in Berlin.

466
See among others Godehard Janzing: The Falling Man. Bilder der Opfer des 11. September 2001, in: Gerhard Paul (ed.): Das Jahrhundert der Bilder. 1949 bis heute. Göttingen 2008, 694–701.

467
Anselm Doering-Manteuffel and Lutz Raphael: Nach dem Boom. Perspektiven auf die Zeitgeschichte seit 1970. Göttingen 2012.

468
For an introduction into this field, see Alexander Nützenadel and Wolfgang Schieder (eds.): Zeitgeschichte als Problem. Nationale Traditionen und Perspektiven, in: Europa. Göttingen 2004; Sorin Antohi, Balázs Trencsényi and Péter Apor (eds.): Narratives Unbound. Historical Studies in post-communist Eastern Europe. Budapest 2007.

469
For a further discussion, see the recent review section in Contemporary European History: Celia Donert, Emily Greble and Jessica Wardhaugh: New Scholarship on Central and Eastern Europe, in: Contemporary European History 26 (2017), 507.

470
Stephen Kotkin: Magnetic mountain. Stalinism as a civilization. Berkeley, CA 1997; Shmuel N. Eisenstadt: Multiple Modernities, in: Daedalus 129 (2000), 1–29.

471
As the Soviet styled regimes in Central and Eastern Europe mostly referred to Socialism, I mostly use this term. The difference, however, is only gradual.

472
Grzegorz Ekiert: The State against Society. Political Crises and their Aftermath in East Central Europe. Princeton 1996.

473
Both quotes represent departments of the Polish IPN, but the institute’s research agenda intensively reflects political changes and dynamics of Poland’s policy of history. For an overview over the different institutes, see Michal Kopeček: In Search of “National Memory”. The Politics of History, Nostalgia and the Historiography of Communism in the Czech Republic and East Central Europe, in: id. (ed.): Past in the Making. Historical Revisionism in Central Europe after 1989. Budapest 2008, 75–95.

474
Piotr S. Wandycz: The Price of Freedom. A History of East Central Europe from the Middle Ages to the Present. London 1993; Joseph Rothschild and Nancy Merriwether Wingfield: Return to Diversity. A Political History of East Central Europe since World War II. New York 2000; Francis Fukuyama: The End of History and the Last Man. New York 1992.

475
Antoni Dudek: Reglamentowana Rewolucja. Cracow 2004.

476
Florian Peters: Patriotische Geschichtsschreibung im Staatsauftrag. Polens neue Rechtsregierung bricht mit der historischen Legitimation des Neuanfangs von 1989 (May 2016), in: Zeitgeschichte-online. URL: https://zeitgeschichte-online.de/thema/patriotische-geschichtss-chreibung-im-staatsauftrag (13 July 2018); Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska, Sabine Stach and Katrin Stoll: Verordnete Geschichte. Nationalistische Narrative in Polen, in: Osteuropa 68.3–5 (2018), 447–464; Ferenc Laczó: Totalitarismus ohne Täter? Ungarns neuer Geschichtsmythos, in: Osteuropa 68. 35 (2018), 435–446.

477
For this critique, see Boris Buden: Zone des Übergangs. Vom Ende des Postkommunismus. Frankfurt am Main 2009.

478
Tony Judt: Postwar. A History of Europe since 1945. New York 2005, 40.

479
Andrzej Friszke: Polska. Losy państwa i narodu 1939–1989. Warsaw 2003; Andrzej Paczkowski: Pół wieku dziejów Polski, 1939–1989. Warsaw 2005

480
Both authors moved beyond Oskar Halecki’s 1950 differentiation of Central Europe’s two halves that is clearly embedded in the cold war. Oskar Halecki: The Limits and Divisions of European History. New York 1950; Klaus Zernack: Osteuropa. Eine Einführung in seine Geschichte. München 1977; Jenő Szűcs: The Three Historical Regions of Europe. An Outline, in: Acta Historica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 29 (1983), 131–184. For a wider discussion, see Stefan Troebst: Historical Meso-Region. A Concept in Cultural Studies and Historiography, in: European History Online (EGO), published by the Leibniz Institute of European History (IEG), Mainz 2012. URL: http://www.ieg-ego.eu/troebsts-2010-en (16 June 2018).

481
Markus Krzoska, Kolja Lichy and Konstantin Rometsch: Jenseits von Ostmitteleuropa? Zur Aporie einer deutschen Nischenforschung, in: Journal of Modern European History 16 (2018), 40–63.

482
Joachim von Puttkamer: Strukturelle und kulturelle Grundlagen des Politischen in Ostmitteleuropa im 20. Jahrhundert, in: Comparativ 12 (2008), 87–99.

483
Jörn Leonhard: Comparison, Transfer and Entanglement, or. How to Write Modern European History today?, in: Journal of Modern European History 14 (2016), 149–163.

484
Jonathan Bolton: Worlds of Dissent. Charter 77, the Plastic People of the Universe, and Czech Culture under Communism. Cambridge, MA 2012, 24–28.

485
Agnes Arndt: Rote Bürger. Eine Milieu- und Beziehungsgeschichte linker Dissidenz in Polen (1956–1976), Göttingen 2013; Robert Brier (ed.): Entangled Protest. Transnational Approaches to the History of Dissent in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, Osnabrück 2013; Michal Kopeček: Human Rights Facing a National Past. Dissident ‘Civic Patriotism’ and the Return of History in East Central Europe, 1968–1989, in: Geschichte und Gesellschaft 38 (2012), 573–602; Dariusz Gawin: Wielki zwrot. Ewolucja lewicy i odrodzenie idei społeczeństwa obywatelskiego 1956–1976. Cracow 2013.

486
Jacques Rupnik: Dissent in Poland, 1968–78. The End of Revisionism and the Rebirth of Civil Society, in: Rudolf L. Tőkés (ed.), Opposition in Eastern Europe. London 1979, 60–112.

487
Andrew Arato: Civil Society vs. the State. Poland 1980–1981, in: Telos (1981), 23–47; Andrew Arato/Jean L. Cohen: Civil Society and Political Theory. Cambridge, MA 1992.

488
Agnes Arndt: Intellektuelle in der Opposition. Diskurse zur Zivilgesellschaft in der Volksrepublik Polen. Frankfurt am Main 2007.

489
Lisa Bonn: Begriffskonjunktur Zivilgesellschaft. Zur missverständlichen Interpretation dissidentischer Bewegungen in Osteuropa, in: Lino Klevesath and Holger Zapf (eds.): Demokratie – Kultur – Moderne. München 2011, 121–131, here 121.

490
See Doering-Manteuffel and Raphael, Nach dem Boom.

491
Timothy Garton Ash: The Polish Revolution. Solidarity. New Haven 2002; Alain Touraine, François Dubet, Michel Wieviorka and Jan Strzelecki: Solidarity. Poland 1980–1981. Cambridge 1983.

492
Julia Metger: Writing the Papers. How Western Correspondents reported the first Dissident Trials in Moscow, 1965–1972, in: Robert Brier (ed.): Entangled Protest. Transnational Approaches to the History of Dissent in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, Osnabrück 2013, 87–108.

493
Tatjana Tönsmeyer: „Besatzungsgesellschaften: Begriffliche und konzeptionelle Überlegungen zur Erfahrungsgeschichte des Alltags unter deutscher Besatzung im Zweiten Weltkrieg“, in: Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte (18 Dec. 2015). URL: http://docupedia.de/zg/Besatzungsgesellschaften?oldid=125790 (13 July 2018).

494
For a wider discussion, see Nicholas Stargardt: Wartime occupation by Germany: Food and sex, in: The Cambridge History of the Second World War, 2 (2015), 385–411.

495
Maren Röger: Kriegsbeziehungen. Intimität, Gewalt und Prostitution im besetzten Polen 1939 bis 1945. Frankfurt am Main 2015.

496
Marcin Zaremba: Wielka trwoga. Polska 1944–1947. Cracow 2012.

497
See for instance, T. Pasák: Český fašism 1922–1945 a kolaborace 1939–1945. Prague 1999.

498
For a introduction into the concept, see Alf Lüdtke: Fabrikalltag, Arbeitererfahrungen und Politik vom Kaiserreich bis in den Faschismus. Münster 2015; Thomas Lindenberger: Eigen-Sinn, Domination and No Resistance, in: Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte (03 Aug. 2015). URL: http://docupedia.de/zg/lindenberger_eigensinn_v1_en_2015 (13 July 2018).

499
Michal Kopeček: Hledání ztraceného smyslu revoluce. Zrod a počátky marxistického revizionismu ve střední Evropě 1953–1960. Prague 2009.

500
Pavel Kolář: Der Poststalinismus. Ideologie und Utopie einer Epoche. Cologne 2016, 329–330.

501
In this they contribute to what Sabrow described as a cultural history approach towards the study of Socialist dictatorships. Martin Sabrow: Sozialismus als Sinnwelt. Diktatorische Herrschaft in kulturhistorischer Perspektive, in: Potsdamer Bulletin für Zeithistorische Studien 40/41 (2007), 9–23.

502
Judt, Postwar, 422.

503
Norman M. Naimark: Fires of Hatred. Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe. Cambridge 2002; Michael Mann: The Dark Side of Democracy. Explaining Ethnic Cleansing. New York 2004.

504
See also, Gregor Thum: Uprooted. How Breslau became Wrocław during the Century of Expulsions. Princeton 2011; Beata Halicka: Polens Wilder Westen. Erzwungene Migration und die kulturelle Aneignung des Oderraums 1945–1948. Paderborn 2013; Mateusz Hartwich: Das Schlesische Riesengebirge. Die Polonisierung einer Landschaft nach 1945. Cologne 2012; Hugo Service: Germans to Poles. Communism, Nationalism and Ethnic Cleansing after the Second World War. Cambridge 2014.

505
Markus Krzoska: Ein Land unterwegs. Kulturgeschichte Polens seit 1945. Paderborn 2015, 79; Sándor Horváth: Stalinism Reloaded. Everyday Life in Stalin-City, Hungary. Bloomington, IN 2017.

506
Katherine Lebow: Unfinished Utopia. Nowa Huta, Stalinism, and Polish Society, 1949–56. Ithaca 2013.

507
For a more detailed analysis of gender and labour relations, see Natalia Jarska: Kobiety z marmuru. Robotnice w Polsce w latach 1945–1960. Warsaw 2015.

508
Włodzimierz Borodziej, Jerzy Kochanowski and Joachim von Puttkamer (eds.): “Schleichwege”. Inoffizielle Begegnungen sozialistischer Staatsbürger zwischen 1956 und 1989. Cologne 2010; Włodzimierz Borodziej, Jerzy Kochanowski and Joachim von Puttkamer: Hidden Paths within Socialism, in: Journal of Modern European History 8 (2010), 165–178.

509
Jerzy Kochanowski: Jenseits der Planwirtschaft. Der Schwarzmarkt in Polen 1944–1989. Göttingen 2013.

510
Nigel Swain: Urban and Industrial Everyday Life under Socialism and Post-Socialism, in: Contemporary European History 26 (2017), 561–572.

511
For a concept of relational history in studying of migration, see Anne Friedrich: Placing migration in perspective: Neue Wege einer relationalen Geschichtsschreibung, in: Geschichte und Gesellschaft 44 (2018), 167–195.

512
Ulrich Herbert: Europe in High Modernity. Reflections on a Theory of the 20th Century, in: Journal of Modern European History 5 (2007), 5–20, here 8–9.

513
Matěj Spurný: Most do budoucnosti. Laboratoř socialistické modernity na severu Čech. Prague 2016.

514
Eagle Glassheim: Most, the Town that Moved. Coal, Communists and the ‘Gypsy Question’ in Post-War Czechoslovakia, in: Environment and History 13 (2007), 447–476, here 448.

515
Zygmunt Bauman: Modernity and Ambivalence. Cambridge 1991.

516
For a further discussion of the literature, see Swain, Everyday Life.

517
Other contributions to the urban and architectural history of Socialism have also stressed this entangled history of building modern cities, see most prominently Kimberly Elman Zarecor: Manufacturing a Socialist Modernity: Housing in Czechoslovakia, 1945–1960. Pittsburg 2011 and for an overview Vladimir Kulić: The Builders of Socialism. Eastern Europe’s Cities in Recent Historiography, in: Contemporary European History 26 (2017), 545–560.

518
Christian Domnitz: Hinwendung nach Europa. Öffentlichkeitswandel im Staatssozialismus 1975–1989. Bochum 2015.

519
Frank Reichherzer: Mit dem ‚Kalten Krieg‘ experimentieren. Ein Denkanstoß, in: Frank Reichherzer, Emmanuel Droit and Jan Hansen (eds.): Den Kalten Krieg vermessen. Berlin 2018, 1–14.

520
Robert Brier: Poland’s Solidarity as a Contested Symbol of the Cold War. Transatlantic Debates after the Polish Crisis, in: Kiran Klaus Patel and Kenneth Weisbrode (eds.): European integration and the Atlantic community in the 1980s. Cambridge 2013, 83–105. See also, Robert Brier: Entangled Protest. Dissent and the Transnational History of 1970s and 1980s, in: Robert Brier (ed.): Entangled Protest. Transnational Approaches to the History of Dissent in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Osnabrück 2013, 11–42.

521
Larry Wolff: Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press 1994.

522
In contrast, the global history of nineteenth and early twentieth century Central and Eastern Europe provides some intriguing studies, see for example, Sarah Lemmen: Tschechen auf Reisen. Repräsentationen der außereuropäischen Welt und nationale Identität in Ostmitteleuropa 1890–1938. Cologne 2018.

523
Christina Schwenkel (ed.): Vietnamese in Central Europe. Special Issue of Journal of Vietnamese Studies 12.1 (2017).

524
For the Soviet example, see Tobias Rupprecht: Soviet Internationalism after Stalin: Interaction and Exchange between the USSR and Latin America during the Cold War. Cambridge 2015.

525
Zdzisław Krasnode̜bski: Demokracja peryferii. Gdańsk 2003.

526
Agata Bielik-Robson: Dzikość serca i polska postkolonialna, in: Krytyka polityczna (16 Dec. 2012). URL: http://krytykapolityczna.pl/felietony/agata-bielik-robson/dzikosc-serca-i-polska-postkolonialna/ (13 July 2018).

527
See, for instance, Jan Sowa: Fantomowe ciało króla. Peryferyjne zmagania z nowoczesną formą. Warsaw 2011; Hanna Gosk and Dorota Kołodziejczyk (eds.): Historie, społeczeństwa, przestrzenie dialogu. Studia postzależnościowe w perspektywie porównawczej. Warsaw 2014.

528
Claudia Kraft: Phantomgrenzen und Zeitschichten im Postsozialismus. Ist der Postsozialismus postkolonial?, in: Béatrice von Hirschhausen, Hannes Grandits, Claudia Kraft, Dietmar Müller and Thomas Serrier (eds.): Phantomgrenzen. Räume und Akteure in der Zeit neu denken (2015), 166–190, here 184–186.

529
Ibid., 190. See also, Rüdiger Graf and Kim Christian Priemel: Zeitgeschichte in der Welt der Sozialwissenschaften. Legitimität und Originalität einer Disziplin, in: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 59 (2011), 479–508.

530
In this Ther’s argument clearly resembles Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff: Theory from the South or, How Euro-America Is Evolving Toward Africa. Boulder 2012.

531
Philipp Ther: Die neue Ordnung auf dem alten Kontinent. Eine Geschichte des neoliberalen Europa. Berlin 2015.

532
Dorota Kołodziejczyk: Post-Colonial Transfer to Central-and Eastern Europe, in: Teksty Drugie 1 (2014), 124–142.

533
Walter Mignolo: Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and De-Colonial Freedom, in: Theory, Culture & Society 26:7–8 (2009), 1–23.

534
Krylova suggested such an approach in critically discussing Kotkin’s Socialist Modernity. Anna Krylova: Soviet Modernity. Stephen Kotkin and the Bolshevik Predicament, in: Contemporary European History 23 (2014), 167–192.

535
See, for instance, Guy Halsall: Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West. Cambridge 2007, 376–568, here 10f.

536
Philipp Ther: Die Außenseiter. Flucht, Flüchtlinge und Integration im modernen Europa. Berlin 2017, esp. 285–287 and 305–308.

537
A. Le Sage [pseudonym of Emmanuel de Las Cases]: Genealogical, chronological, historical, and geographical atlas. Exhibiting all the royal families in Europe, their origin, descendancy, mariages [!], etc. London 1801, no. 16. For the background of the mapper, see Walter Goffart: The Map of the Barbarian Invasions. A Preliminary Report, in: Nottingham Medieval Studies 32 (1988), 49–64, here 53–60.

538
Walter Goffart: The Map of the Barbarian Invasions. A Longer Look, in: Marc Anthony Meyer (ed.): The Culture of Christendom. Essays in Medieval History in Commemoration of Denis L. T. Bethell. London 1993, 1–27, esp. 16–21; Tillmann Lohse: Die Völkerwanderungskarte als europäischer Erinnerungsort. Ein Blick in die Geschichtsatlanten und -schulbücher des 18. bis 21. Jahrhunderts, in: idem and Benjamin Scheller (eds.): Europa in der Welt des Mittelalters. Ein Colloquium für und mit Michael Borgolte. Berlin 2014, 33–78 and 307–327, here 46–49.

539
Erwin Panofsky: Studies in Iconology. Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance. New York 1939, 4.

540
Ibid., 16.

541
Most recently by Jens Jäger: Überlegungen zu einer historiografischen Bildanalyse, in: Historische Zeitschrift 304 (2017), 655–682, here 659–661 (with further references). The historiography concerning historical atlases has elaborated quite ambitious research designs during the last decades. For my purpose, however, the rather simple methodological approach of Panofsky suffices.

542
Panofsky, Studies in Iconology, 7.

543
Cf., e.g., Patrick Lehn: Deutschlandbilder. Historische Schulatlanten zwischen 1871 und 1990. Ein Handbuch. Cologne 2008; Sylvia Schraut: Kartierte Nationalgeschichte. Geschichtsatlanten im internationalen Vergleich, 1860–1960. Frankfurt a. M. 2011.

544
Lohse, Völkerwanderungskarte, 63–78.

545
Atlas po stara i srednovekovna obšča istorija: Za peti i šesti klas. Sofija 1969, 12; Historia e mesjetës për klasën e VI të shkollës tetëvjec̦are: harta. Tirana 1974, 1; Josip Lučić and Blagota Drašković: Povijesni atlas za osnovnu školu. 4th ed. Zagreb 1977, 8; Jean-Michel Lambin and Jean-Luc Carton: Atlas des collèges. Toutes les cartes des programmes d’histoire-géographie. Paris 2000, 15; Anabela Soares: Atlas histórico ilustrado. Porto 2002, 28.

546
An exemplary impression is given by Gustav Droysen and Richard Andree: Allgemeiner historischer Handatlas in sechsundneunzig Karten. Bielefeld 1886, 19.

547
Pathbreaking was Eduard Rothert: Historisches Kartenwerk 2: Karten und Skizzen aus der Geschichte des Mittelalters zur raschen und sichern Einprägung. Düsseldorf 1896, no. 3.

548
Lohse, Völkerwanderungskarte, 39, 42 and 47.

549
Presumably for the first time depicted by M. A. Denaix and Richard Wahl: Atlas physique, politique & historique de l’Europe. Paris 1829, no. 13.

550
An early example is Juan de la Gloria Artero: Atlas histórico-geográfico de España, desde los tiempos primitivos hasta nuestros dias. Granada 1879, no. 7.

551
Even after 1939 most German mappers did not espouse such a mode of presentation. See Lohse, Völkerwanderungskarte, 50–52. Around 1950, however, a geopolitically minded map of the migration period was still published by Renate Riemeck and Hans Voigt: Kleiner Geschichtsatlas. Oldenburg [s.d.], 4. In his discussion of this map collection Lehn, Deutschlandbilder, 394–96, does not mention that Riemeck in 1941 became a member of the NSDAP. Regarding the bigger picture, cf. also Guntram H. Herb: Das größte Deutschland soll es sein! Suggestive Karten in der Weimarer Republik, in: Peter Haslinger and Vadim Oswalt (eds.): Kampf der Karten. Propaganda- und Geschichtskarten als politische Instrumente und Identitätstexte. Marburg 2012, 140–151 (with further references).

552
Eduard Rothert: 30 Karten zur deutschen Geschichte. 4th ed. Düsseldorf 1905, 3; Ernst Böttcher: Teubners Geschichtsatlas. Leipzig [ca. 1930], 8; James Francis Horrabin: An Atlas of European history from the 2nd to the 20th century. London 1935, no. 3.

553
See, e.g., Sebastiano Crinò: Atlante storico, vol. 2: Evo medio e moderno. 6th ed. Milan 1960, 6, map C (“Schizzo itinerario delle principali invasion barbariche”); J. Vicens Vives: Atlas de historia de universal. Barcelona 161980 [first edition 1954], no. 17 (“Las invasiones germánicas”); António do Carmo Reis: Atlas de história de Portugal. Porto 21987, no. 12 (“As Invasões Bárbaras”).

554
Evgenij A. Kosminskij and Anatolij P. Levandovskij: Atlas istorii srednich vekov. Moscow 1951, 1f.

555
Lohse, Völkerwanderungskarte, 52f.

556
Marco Drago and Andrea Boroli, Nuove atlante storico. Novara 1997, no. 17/I.

557
Georges Duby (dir.): Atlas historique Larousse. Paris 1978 [repr. ibid. 1992], 30. Previously the Upper Germanic-Rhaetian Limes had been already depicted by Dimitŭr Konśtantinov (Atlas po bŭlgarska istorija. Sofia 1963, 5f.), but without shaping the map’s general impression. Later on, a slightly stronger accentuation of the Roman border fortifications appeared in another Bulgarian map of the migration period that might have been the inspiration for the French mappers. See Atlas po stara i srednovekovna obšča istorija. Za peti i šesti klas. Sofia 1969, 12.

558
Albinas Pilipaitis and Petras Gaučas: Visuotinės istorijos atlasas mokykloms. Vilnius 2004, 14. This map was reproduced by Ojārs Bušs et al.: Vēstures Atlants skolām. Riga 2009 (without pagination).

559
Jacek Gawrysiak: Atlas Historyczny. Od starożytności do współczesności – Liceum. Warsaw 2008, 17. A simplified version was published one year later: Jacek Gawrysiak: Atlas Historyczny. Od starożytności do współczesności – Szkoła Podstawowa. Warsaw 2009, 15.

560
According to the depiction only the Huns were able to cross the limites. Contrary to the German tribes, however, they were no immigrants, but just raiders.

561
Gerold Walser: Zu den Ursachen der Reichskrise im dritten nachchristlichen Jahrhundert, in: Schweizer Beiträge zur Allgemeinen Geschichte 18/19 (1960/61), 142–161, here 151f.

562
Jörg Jarnut: Die Landnahme der Langobarden in Italien aus historischer Sicht, in: Michael Müller-Wille and Reinhard Schneider (eds.): Ausgewählte Probleme europäischer Landnahmen des Früh- und Hochmittelalters. Methodische Grundlagendiskussionen im Grenzbereich zwischen Archäologie und Geschichte. Sigmaringen 1993, vol. 1, 173–194, here 182.

563
Michael Borgolte: A Migration Avalanche of Lombards in 568? A Critique of Historiographic Evidence of the Migration Period, in: Leidulf Melve and Sigbjørn Sønnesyn (eds.): The Creation of Medieval Northern Europe. Christianisation, Social Transformation, and Historiography. Essays in Honour of Sverre Bagge. Oslo 2012, 119–138.

564
Peter Heather: Empires and Barbarians. The Fall of Rome and the Birth of Europe. Oxford 2012, 579.

565
Bernhard Jussen: Die Franken. Geschichte, Gesellschaft, Kultur. Munich 2014, 17: “Schluss mit den Völkerwanderungskarten!”

566
Ibid., 17f.: “Die großen Bevölkerungsbewegungen verliefen nicht so, wie die Pfeile der Karten es suggerieren – nicht so zielgerichtet, nicht so kompakt, ja, nicht einmal so ähnlich.”

567
Bernhard Jussen: Bilderhorizonte. Wege zu einer Ikonologie nationaler Rechtfertigungsnarrative, in: Andreas Fahrmeir and Annette Imhausen (eds.): Die Vielfalt normativer Ordnungen. Konflikte und Dynamik in historischer und ethnologischer Perspektive. Frankfurt a. M. 2013, 79–107, here 82: “Politische Vorstellungen und Grundorientierungen einer Kultur sind sedimentiert inmehr oder weniger kanonisierten Reservoirs historischer Bebilderungen.” With due regard to historical atlases, see additionally Vadim Oswalt: Die Macht der Visualisierung historischer Räume – Atlanten der Weltgeschichte als Medium der Geschichtskultur in Europa, in: Saskia Handro and Bernd Schönemann (eds.): Raum und Sinn. Die räumliche Dimension der Geschichtskultur. Berlin 2014, 195–210.

568
Jussen, Franken, 17: “Diese Karten (…) haben viel Unheil in der historischen Imagination an gerichtet.”

569
Concisely, for instance, Gerhard Paul: Von der historischen Bildkunde zur Visual History. Eine Einführung, in: Idem (ed.): Visual History. Ein Studienbuch. Göttingen 2006, 7–36, here 18.

570
Lohse, Völkerwanderung, 56–58.

571
Spartiani De Vita Hadriani,XI.2, ed. Ernst Hohl et al. (Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana). Leipzig 1971, 13: “murumque per octoginta milia passuum primus duxit, qui barbaros Romanosque divideret”. See Wolfgang Moschek: Der römische Limes. Eine Kultur- und Mentalitätsgeschichte. Speyer 2011, 79f.

572
Egon Schallmayer: Der Limes. Geschichte einer Grenze. Munich 3rd edition 2011, 10: “[Der Limes stellte] kein waffenstarrendes und undurchdringliches Grenzsystem dar, wie noch die ältere Forschung vermutet hat (…), sondern eine ‘Linie der Begegnung’.” Ibid., 92: “Zweck der neuen Grenz- einrichtung war es, (…) den Grenzverkehr auf einzelne, besonders überwachte Durchgänge zu lenken.” See also Eckart Olshausen et al.: Limes, in: Brill’s New Pauly. URL: http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/brill-s-new-pauly/limes-e705510 (20th Dec. 2017).

573
Wolfgang Moschek: Der Limes. Grenze des Imperium Romanum. Darmstadt 2010, 106f.

574
Cf. already Walter Goffart: What’s Wrong with the Map of the Barbarian Invasions?, in: Susan J. Ridyard and Robert G. Benson (eds.): Minorities and Barbarians in Medieval Life and Thought. Sewanee 1996, 159–177, here 162f. and 174f.

575
Heather, Empires, 30 and 592f.

576
Pauli Historia Langobardorum II.7, ed. Georg Waitz (Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi). Hannover 1878, 89.

577
The earliest attempt of such a mapping strategy dates back to the 18th century. See Johann Georg Hagelgans: Atlas historicus, Oder allgemeine historische Charten, Darinnen die merckwürdigste Begebenheiten, so sich von Anfang der Welt in allen Königreichen und Landen biss auff unsere Zeit geäussert, abgebildet (…). Frankfurt a. M. 1718. URL: <http://diglib.hab.de/drucke/gb-gr-2f-3/start.htm> (20 Dec.2017).

578
Sebastian Brather: Ethnizität und Mittelalterarchäologie. Eine Antwort auf Florin Curta, in: Zeitschrift für Archäologie des Mittelalters 39 (2011), 161–172; Manuel Fernández-Götz: Ethnische Interpretation und archäologische Forschung: Entwicklung, Probleme, Lösungsansätze, in: TÜVA Mitteilungen 14 (2013), 59–76.

579
Patrick J. Geary and Krishna Veeramah: Mapping European Population Movement through Genomic Research, in: Medieval Worlds 4 (2016), 65–78.

580
Cf. John B. Harley: Can there be a Cartographic Ethics?, in: idem: The New Nature of Maps. Essays in the History of Cartography. Paul Laxon (ed.). Baltimore 2001, 197–207, here 204.