The Federal President is said to have no actual power. His job is representation. But it is precisely this limitation that gives the office a particularly performative power, as Norbert Frei, Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Jena, states in his most recent study “In the Name of the Germans”: “The Federal President acts when he speaks.” Under this premise, the historian examines how the Federal Presidents from 1949 to 1994 dealt with the Nazi past, based on files from the Federal President’s Office, texts of speeches and press sources. In earlier works, Frei introduced the term “politics of the past” to describe the active shaping of memory in the post-war period. It therefore makes sense to now question the Office of the Federal President about its contributions to this practice.
Norbert Frei: “In the name of the Germans” – culture
