In the House of the Hangman: The Agonies of German Defeat, 1943-1949
“Sixty years after the war, Jeffrey K. Olick revisits German self-understanding regarding the profound questions of who bears responsibility for wrongdoings of the past. This deft interdisciplinary exploration illuminates the moral, legal, and political discourses of the time to offer a revelatory, nuanced, and fresh account of the critical process of reconstruction of memory in shaping national culture. Olick makes an important contribution as well to the growing fields of collective memory, transitional, and post-conflict justice, offering a sober and timely message about the potential and limits of imposing democratic transition.”(Ruti Teitel, New York Law School)“Jeffrey K. Olick knows that national identities emerge from the way a people makes sense of—which is to say constructs—a shared memory of the past. He has become a reigning master of that intellectual terrain, as this important study of German political culture in the years following World War II attests brilliantly.”(Kai Erikson, Yale University) “In the House of the Hangmanis a moral drama that shows how postwar German officials tried to defend the dignity of the state and its citizens against the stigma of National Socialism and the Holocaust during the aftermath of World War II. This is a brilliant book that radically rejects reductive statements about the construction of memory and the invention of the past by recognizing the complexity of the relations between history and human experience.”(Barry Schwartz, University of Georgia)