Authors
- Sukhorukova Olga Alexandrovna Candidate of Political Sciences, Associate Professor
Annotation
The article is devoted to the analysis of B. Shlink’s novel “The Reader”. The prerequisites of this study were the tragic events of the Second World War, their impact on the fate of the military and post-war generation of Germans. The ambiguous attitude of German society towards the Nazi past of its country, the events of the Second World
War, and the consequences to which it led, remain relevant in modern Germany and beyond. The central problem for the interpretation of the military past was the correlation of the concepts of “collective guilt” and “individual guilt”. In post-war Germany, the philosophers K. Jaspers X. Arendt made the first experience in determining the causes of a national tragedy and the guilt of German society associated with it. K. Jaspers, criticizing the concept of “collective guilt”, identified four types of guilt: criminal, political, moral and metaphysical. The first two belong to the sphere of competence of the court and the authorities; the two following are the products of a person’s conscience and his relationship to God. As history has shown, the activities of both philosophers did not bring results, moral and metaphysical guilt were not accepted by German society. This determined the purpose of the study: to identify the causes of this public reaction, to consider the relationship of concepts such as collective guilt and individual guilt on the example of the main characters of the novel “The Reader”. Based on the structural and functional method, the article analyzes the historical past of Germany, its socio-cultural heritage. Special attention is paid to the religious and political peculiarities of the formation and development of the German state and the related process of forming the values of national culture. This made it possible to trace the behavior of the characters of the novel in the context of traditional and secular values, to pay attention to the key term in the religious paradigm “repentance”. The results of the study indicate the secular basis of the values of the socio-cultural heritage of Germany. This contributed to the emergence of the National socialist ideology, the values of which determined the behavior of the characters of the novel, both during the war and in the postwar period.
How to link insert
Sukhorukova, O. A. (2024). “GREAT GERMANY”, OR WHY REPENTANCE DID NOT HAPPEN (READING BERNHARD SCHLINK’S NOVEL “THE READER”) Bulletin of the Moscow City Pedagogical University. Series "Pedagogy and Psychology", № 1 (49), 74. https://doi.org/10.25688/2078-9238.2024.49.1.6
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