Interviews with senior scholars Interview with Prof Dr Stefan Berger

Prof Stefan Berger is a historian and director at the Bochum Institute for Social Movements. He is renowned for his extensive research in the fields of historiography, nationalism, the history of German-British relations, and social movements. His work critically examines how collective identities are shaped, especially through historical narratives and nationalist discourse. Among his publications are The Search for Normality: National Identity and Historical Consciousness in Germany since 1800, 2^nd ed. (2003), Friendly Enemies: Britain and the GDR, 1949–1990 (2010), The Past as History: National Identity and Historical Consciousness in Modern Europe (2015) and History and Identity: How Historical Theory Shapes Historical Practice (2022). Prof Berger has been actively involved in the Aggressor project since the beginning and is a member of the management team of the project.

Amr Elashmawy: Could you please tell us a little bit about your research project and how it fits within the overall theme of the Aggressor project?

Stefan Berger: The Aggressor project started when Thomas Maissen contacted me, asking if I wanted to join an application to the Daimler and Benz Foundation which is now funding a graduate school around the Aggressor project. My background in researching national history writing was quite useful because aggressors play a significant role in national historiographies. In that sense, I was already very familiar with the concept of the aggressor.

It is not just about nationalism and national collectives. The Bolshevik Revolution in the Soviet Union also played a role by installing the first communist regime, which legitimised itself with a class narrative. This shift made class narratives far more prominent in international politics than they had been before. Of course, class narratives were already associated with the rise of international social democracy before 1914, but now a regime was in power that directly referenced and justified itself through a class-based narrative. This does not mean that individuals play no role. Especially in dictatorships or authoritarian regimes, authoritarian leaders can still be seen as aggressors. But what we are observing in this period is the rise of collective aggressors, and that is the focus of my research.

Justus Raimann: What types of sources are you examining in your research, and what makes these sources particularly relevant?

Given that I come from a background in the history of historiography, some of my sources focus on what historians have written about aggressors. However, since the project is not limited to historiography, I am broadening my range of sources to include more public history materials. Specifically, I am looking at caricatures, newspapers, and journals that depict aggressors. I am also examining public discourses, particularly newspaper discussions about aggressors, as well as political discourse—how the concept of the aggressor was used by political parties, in election campaigns, and in the international policy arena.

So, I am using a wide range of sources to show that, while we can still identify individual aggressors in this period, there is a noticeable shift towards collective aggressors. Of course, I am only dealing with a small selection of potential sources and topics. My project is, in a way, launching an idea—putting it out there for others to evaluate. That is just how research works: you put out an idea, and then others might decide whether it is correct or wrong, saying we should not look at it this way, or they might find it convincing and contribute to a shift in thinking from individual to collective aggressors. But that is something for the future to determine.

A. E.: You talk about the absence of real aggressor figures in Interwar Europe. What accounts for this? Was there a specific turning point, and what broader processes contributed to this shift?

I think, in some respects, I have already touched on this when I mentioned that the First World War initiated a period, especially in European or Western history, marked by a massive increase in nationalism and thinking in national collectives. During the interwar period, we see a shift toward hypernationalism in the West, fuelled by the First World War and the processes it brought about, particularly the collapse of empires.

The Ottoman Empire collapses, the Romanov Empire collapses, the Habsburg Empire collapses, and we see a rise of national ideologies, nation states and a push for these new nation-states to legitimate themselves through nationalism, particularly in East-Central and Eastern Europe, but not exclusively. If we look to the West, we see, for example, a new independent Ireland and various national movements grow stronger in countries like France and Spain—most notably in Catalonia, where the interwar period sees the first widespread mass nationalism among Catalans.

The other big development is the rise of world communism, which in a way promotes thinking less in terms of individuals and more in terms of collectives—specifically, class collectives. If you look at the Marxist-Leninist ideology that is at the bottom of communist regimes, there is a suspicion of the idea of individuals playing an important role in history – of the “great man” theory of history that was so influential in 19^th century historicism. Instead, the focus shifts to collective actors, particularly the proletariat—the working class—who has the mission of ending capitalism and bringing about the promised land of communism. In this sense, I think it again encourages the thinking in collectives, rather than in individuals.

J. R.: Could you also elaborate on the contribution of historians to this debate? Is this the historiographical nationalism you allude to in the title of your research project?

Then, rather surprisingly for many, we had a reunified Germany, and that brought with it a renewed nationalism, particularly from the far right. But we also saw attempts by figures like Rainer Zitelmann to attract a more conservative stream of historiography, including the biographer of Konrad Adenauer, Hans-Peter Schwarz, and other established conservative historians in Germany. They aimed to develop a new, more upbeat, more positive national history to underpin a new national identity in reunified Germany. My book The Search for Normality, which first came out in 1997, was trying to analyze these developments. In a way, it was indicting both the conservatives and the left-liberals for giving up their positions from the 1980s and, instead, beginning a search for an allegedly "normal" nation-state—a search for normality.

A. E.: Can you tell us about the collective aggressors of the 20^th century? Who were they and how were they depicted? Also, what role did ideology (e.g. communism, fascism) play in this context?

I think the depiction of collective aggressors tries to construct particular features that are identified with those collectives, whether they are nations or classes, and turns them into recognisable traits. For example, if we are looking at caricatures of figures, these are not real persons but rather representations of nations or classes. So, we have the depiction of "the capitalist," which is not a specific individual—it is not, say, a big banker like a Rothschild, or any real person of which there were many, especially if we think of U.S. or British capitalism. Someone like Lord Leverhulme or various big industrialists like Henry Ford in the United States would be obvious examples, but that is not what we find in these caricatures. We may occasionally see caricatures of individual figures, but if we look at the Communist press in Russia during the 1920s or at communist caricatures in general, they do not focus so much on individuals but rather on a type. This type is "the capitalist"—usually depicted as fat-bellied, with a top hat, soft facial features—the direct opposite of the classic proletarian of socialist realism, a muscular male looking confidently into the future. These caricatures create a contrast between archetypes: the archetypal proletarian and the archetypal capitalist.

On the other side, if we look at nationalism, we also see attempts to frame particular nations into types. For instance, the British press in the 1920s, especially in caricatures related to Ireland, constructs an image of the Irish in a specific way so that you have a recognisable "Irishman" depicted in these caricatures, fitting a stereotype of what is considered typically Irish. Similarly, there is a search for what is typically German, French, British, or Polish, which constructs an image of the collective that is then translated into visual representations.

That does not mean, and I cannot emphasise this enough, that the individual aggressor is completely absent, especially when it comes to authoritarian figures. In those cases, we often see a focus on individuals. For example, in Western portrayals of communist Russia, there is significant emphasis on figures like Lenin and, later, even more on Stalin—classic examples of individual aggressors. I would imagine, and I believe there is someone in our project working on this, that if we look at Polish-Lithuanian relations during the interwar period, from the Lithuanian perspective, there is a clear individual aggressor in the form of Pilsudski, the authoritarian leader of Poland after 1926. He was a former socialist who turned into a very authoritarian nationalist leader. So, it is not that individual aggressors are completely absent, but it is interesting to observe the rise of collective aggressors during the interwar period.

J. R.: You already mentioned that when Europe was not really at war, there were a lot of civil conflicts, sometimes even civil wars. I'm wondering what role (collective) aggressors played in these internal conflicts. Can you give us insight into one or two examples of such conflicts?

A. E.: Would you say there's something inherently problematic in individualizing the aggressor? Also in the broader framework of the Aggressor project?

In some respects, I would say yes, because by focusing one-sidedly on an individual aggressor, the project is, in a way, reinforcing this very traditional idea of the importance of individuals—the “great men”—in history writing. That is why I would strongly argue for including collective aggressors. If we bring these collective aggressors more into focus, we can see that, in some respects—if I am correct—individuals play a lesser role in the 20^th century than they perhaps still did in early modern Europe or in the 19^th century.

In this way, I think we can ask more interesting questions. Of course, we can also explore these questions when looking at individual aggressors. For example, we can ask to what extent are these figures gendered? I think that is an interesting question. But this applies to individual aggressors as well, especially in the construction of maleness or femaleness among individual rulers or strong men in political history. However, this analysis can be applied very effectively to collectives too. We know from national history writing that historians often constructed their own nation as embodying typically male characteristics, while portraying the enemy nations with female characteristics. 

J. R.: How do we conceptualise the relation between individual and collective aggressors? Because it seems that most aggressors are neither exclusively one nor the other. Can we even speak of individualisation when the aggressor embodies traits that are characteristic of a collective? How can we conceptualise this tension as historians?

Well, it is a very interesting question because, obviously, in many conflicts we find both individualising aggressor figures and collective aggressor figures. The relationship between the two, I think, is very interesting. In some cases, if we look at Stalin’s Russia, the overwhelming presence of Stalin and the cult around him in the Soviet Union makes it almost inevitable that Stalin becomes the key individualised aggressor figure, standing in for a wider communist Russia. So, I would imagine here a strong preponderance of the individual aggressor type over any forms of collective aggressor types.

But if we look at other conflicts, this raises some very big questions. For example, if we consider democracies, are democracies less likely to be represented by individual aggressor types? Because in democracies, through the mechanism of elections, we have varying figures representing the nation. In that sense, I think we do not see the same tendency that we find in authoritarian or dictatorial regimes, where the dictator is often identified with the nation itself. Even today, if we think of North Korea or Russia, the leading figures in those dictatorships are often the focal point in portrayals of the wider nation.

This is perhaps less likely to happen in democracies. It is not impossible, especially if we have figures that dominate democracies for a very long time. For example, in portrayals of the early Federal Republic, Konrad Adenauer might become the focus, in a way representing a wider West German collective, because he was in power for such a long period. So, it is not impossible, but I think it would be an interesting question to explore further: to what extent do we see a difference between democracies and dictatorships or authoritarian forms of government? Perhaps we find more individual aggressor figures being prominent in authoritarian regimes and dictatorships than in democracies.

A. E.: What would you say is the legacy of this historiographical nationalism? How does it manifest itself today?

Well, I think the worrying thing is that it is far from being a thing of the past. Historiographical nationalism, in my perception, is very much alive and kicking. Maybe one other weakness of this project is that it is so focused on Europe. You could say that, on the one hand, you have to draw geographical borders in any kind of project, and Europe is already quite a big entity with so many different conflicts and so many different nation-states.

I am sure you could say it is entirely justified to focus on Europe. But, of course, what we have already seen in the project is that, in so many ways, in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, it is impossible to delineate European from non-European history because the history of colonialism and imperialism connects the European sphere to what we nowadays often refer to as the Global South.

In that sense, I think it would be good for the project to also bring in these connections between the European and non-European spheres. But if we are asking about the legacy of historiographical nationalism, then we can say that it was perhaps one of the biggest export hits of the 19^th century—this historiographical nationalism to the Global South.

Benedict Anderson has pointed out that perhaps the origins of nationalism itself do not lie in Europe but rather in Latin America and the anti-colonial struggles of Latin American states in the first half of the 19^th century. In that sense, it is perhaps difficult to talk about a European export because, partly, that export is rooted in a different sphere of the world, in Latin America.

But undoubtedly, if we look at the sources of decolonisation and the postcolonial states that developed especially after the Second World War, we see that nationalism is often a key ideology of those states, and historiographical nationalism becomes incredibly strong in many of these countries. This often leads to internal conflicts because many of these postcolonial states were multinational and multi-ethnic. The attempt to frame a national master narrative around dominant ethnicities often led to internal conflicts and civil wars. Sri Lanka, I think, is a good example of that, where after independence we have a strong Sinhalese Buddhist national master narrative emerging that focuses very much on the Sinhalese, a dominant ethnic group in Sri Lanka, excluding the Tamils from that national master narrative entirely. Then we see the development of a Tamil historiography that focuses internally on that ethnicity, leading to a long civil war in Sri Lanka between Tamil nationalists and the majority Sinhalese. It is just one example but there are many examples one could give where historiographical nationalism plays a role in exacerbating internal conflict, and there would be endless examples of nationalism exacerbating conflicts between nation-states. We have already referred to Latin America—19^th-century Latin American history is one of the bloodiest I have come across, with an endless succession of wars between different Latin American states over territory.

Historiographical nationalism, I think, is such a problematic subject because, in Europe and outside of Europe, it has been responsible for legitimating and fostering various forms of ethnic cleansing, genocide, and war. Which is why I think we need, in historical writing, a more reflective approach that emphasises the constructed nature of identities and allows for a more playful way of dealing with those collective identities that does not essentialise them. This approach avoids presenting them as the unchangeable core of everyone’s individual identity. I think we will never get rid of identities; we will never get rid of identity discourses, but fostering an understanding of the past that is more self-reflective about how we construct and negotiate those identities on a daily basis is an ongoing task for historians who want to move away from the essentialising characteristics of nationalist discourse in historical writing.

J. R.: Concerning nationalist historiography: I am wondering what it is that makes historiography so special in that respect? Collectives can be constructed through various means, yet historiography seems to play a particularly distinct role in shaping them. How does this special influence of historiography come about?

I think it has a lot to do with the way history writing establishes itself as a scholarly discipline in the 19^th century. What we see is a kind of professionalisation of historical writing and the development of the idea that there is a particular method at the core of this profession. This method allows historians to become the only ones who can truthfully interpret the past. They become, through their professionalism and methodology, the ones who can speak most authoritatively about that past because they have learned that profession. Unlike literary authors who have also been writing about history but who do not have to go into the archives, do not have to consult sources, and do not have to balance the different views that we find in those archives and sources—they are creatively free to deal with the past. But that, of course, means they cannot speak so authoritatively about the past.

So, in that sense, I think the historical profession had this very prominent role in public discourse surrounding identifications, which in a way continues into the present. Although one could, of course, ask to what extent historians today still have that role—it may well differ across different nation-states. If we look at Germany, I would perhaps say that there is a certain erosion of that role of the historian as a public intellectual who is very present in the media. This was different in the 80s when we think of the Historikerstreit which was fundamentally about the collective identity of Germans. It questioned whether that collective identity should be rooted in the most horrendous negative event in German history, the Holocaust, or whether it should also focus on more positive aspects of the German past. Historians did not initiate that debate—it was a philosopher, Jürgen Habermas—but still, historians were very prominent in that debate.

Historians would regularly write lead articles in major journals like Frankfurter Allgemeine or Süddeutsche Zeitung. In my view, this has diminished over recent decades, so historians are not as present as public intellectuals anymore. Maybe this is partly because historians are now so self-reflective about their past role that they no longer want to fulfil that role. There seems to be a broader recognition in the historical profession today that history is not the discipline that can naturally speak most authoritatively about the past.

There is a wider acknowledgment that the historical profession is shaped by a certain perspectivity, driven by normative ideas that we all hold as individuals, which guide our research and interpretations of the past. There is not one authoritative interpretation of history; instead, it is always a matter of debate, negotiation, and multiple perspectives shaped by different normative horizons. This shift in understanding might make historians more hesitant to take on the traditional role of being the ultimate authorities on historical matters.

Of course, if we consider, for example, the recent conflict between Ukraine and Russia, East European historians and Russian historians have been quite prominent in the media, interpreting these events. So, there is still this almost knee-jerk reaction: whenever there is a conflict or significant event, people turn to historians for commentary. But on balance, I would say this is something that is waning. Even if we look at the main news magazines on television or the numerous talk show events on German television, it is actually quite rare to see a historian. These days, you are far more likely to find politicians, public figures, journalists, and publicists, but very few professional historians.

Another aspect that should not be underestimated is the hesitancy within the profession that comes with the professionalisation of being a public intellectual. This is quite evident with some historians. Take Paul Nolte, for example—a historian who, for a time, was very present as a public intellectual. You could see him on many talk shows, on television, commenting on all sorts of topics beyond his particular area of expertise.

This visibility, in some respects, lowered his reputation among some historians. Partly, this reaction was sheer envy—many historians would love to be on television all the time. But there is also a belief that it is not professional behaviour. You can probably comment on what you are a specialist in. If you are a specialist on Russia and are asked to speak on the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, that is fine. But if you are a specialist in 19^th-century bourgeois Germany and are asked about the conflict in Cyprus, it becomes questionable if you are willing to weigh in on that.

So, there is perhaps a question of whether historians still want to be public intellectuals. In some respects, I would argue that it would be beneficial if they were more willing to engage in the public sphere because there is no shortage of issues where historians could contribute meaningfully and play a constructive and positive role in society.

Interviewers: Amr Elashmawy and Justus Raimann

Blog post design: Vilma Vaskelaitė

October 2024