Die zweite Schuld oder Von der Last Deutscher zu sein

by Ralph Giordano

Aktueller denn je – der Klassiker der politischen Literatur.Ralph Giordanos erschütternde Studie untersucht die Folgen der moralischen Katastrophe, die ein Ausbleiben des Bekenntnisses zur Kollektivschuld bedeutete. Er schildert eindrücklich, wie das Versagen der deutschen Gesellschaft nach dem Holocaust die politische Kultur der Bundesrepublik geprägt hat. Und er weist nach, wie »der große Frieden mit den Tätern« zu einem Fundament der Staatsgründung wurde.In ihrem Nachwort beschreibt die Schriftstellerin Lena Gorelik die Aktualität dieses Buchs in einer Zeit, in der rechtsextreme Gedanken und Taten eine beängstigende Normalisierung erfahren.

Paperback

Published August 1, 2000

About the author

Ralph Giordano was a German writer and publicist.

Born to a Sicilian father and a Jewish mother, he was soon persecuted by the Nazi regime. His family survived the Holocaust by hiding in a friend's basement. After his experiences, he became a communist, but soon grew estranged because of his dislike for Stalinism and exited the German Communist Party in 1957.
In 1982, he published his most widely known work, Die Bertinis, a semi-autobiographical novel portraying the experiences of a family of mixed ethnic heritage (including Jewish) from the end of the 19th Century through the end of World War II. In 1988, it was presented in a television series aired on the Second German TV network (Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen, or ZDF).
Thereafter Giordano worked as a freelance writer and wrote numerous articles about his experiences in Nazi Germany and about the dangers of Neo-Nazi movements. He saw Islam as a threat: In a New York Times interview in 2007, he vehemently opposed the construction of a new mosque in Cologne, citing German mosques as "a symbol of a parallel society", and called the integration of German Muslims "a failure".
Ralph Giordano died on Dec. 10, 2014, aged 91, in a Cologne hospital of complications following a hip fracture.