Exhibition Horror Patriae
Section of Brown Flags
Today, no political party would dream of using brown as their color, as it has painful associations with the Nazis: it was the color of the colonial surplus uniforms worn by storm troopers in the 1920s and 1930s. Yet, scratch any surface in postfascist Germany or Austria, and you might find brown uniforms and other attributes of the Third Reich, like in the painting by Johannes Wohlfart exhibited in this room. Elsewhere, on a historic building, a pretty Styrian rose meant to adorn and honor outstanding preservation efforts covers the place once occupied by a swastika. Is the rose responsible for concealing it?
Vergangenheitsbewältigung (overcoming the fascist past) is a mighty ideological trope in German-speaking countries—more in Germany, less in Austria. But even in Germany, this expertise was gained relatively late, beginning in the 1980s. The myth of a “zero hour” and a “clean break” gave people an excuse not to face up to the full extent of the Nazi terror and the war. The blame was placed squarely on the leadership; most smaller perpetrators and supporters went unpunished. Substantial parts of reality were very slow to change. Nazi-era legislation was left intact, crucial experts and civil servants rehired, and invented traditions popularized by the Nazis were maintained quite uncritically. The work of mourning, more often than not, served the conscience of the perpetrators rather than the memory of the dead. Guilt is often worn as a badge of honor—singling out its wearer as the member of a chosen group.
In contemporary Ukraine, the battlefields are eerily similar to World War II, while in Palestine and Israel, the Shoah has become a pertinent argument of today rather than part of a shared history. These unspeakable tragedies of our times point at unhealed wounds, perhaps unhealable without addressing the painful past.
