Bernhard Heisig and the Process of “Coming to Terms” with the National Socialist Past

Abstract

The paper describes the cultural and political context in which, after the German Reunification, the oeuvre of the East German painter Bernhard Heisig was considered to be the work that accomplished the process of “coming to terms” with the National Socialist past. It is argued that, in line with the prevailing trend in West Germany during the Cold War, such interpretation of Heisig’s work wiped out the memory of the anti-Fascist resistance to the Third Reich from the framework under which the memory and identity of Germany were socially reconstructed. This operation responded to the requirements of the process of integration of the new German nation, in the orbit of Western democracies.