civic education and solidary participation in remembrance culture(s)

The paper reflects the difficulties concerning the participation of marginalized groups into the national remembrance culture(s), especially since October 7 th 2023 and the current war in Israel/Gaza/Lebanon. How can we deal with needs and challenges in the learning process of education for democracy within heterogenous groups of students with and without citizenship? Theatre-based interventions within post-memory work in public and safer-spaces are reflected. A multi-perspective regard to history and references to present humanitarian questions bring up the ambivalence between the reproach of antisemitism and the emotional appreciation of grief, anger and the feeling of powerlessness by students with Palestinian roots or even just Muslim religion. Especially the German wording of Israel’s security as “Staatsraison” includes a set of undefined assumptions that lead to an arbitrarily definition of “Leitkultur” in which minorities are normatively forced to step in. The creation of a pluralistic dialog about remembrance culture gets into conflict with the construction of national identity and the granting of legal citizenship. “Who is remembering and what for?” are the key questions that bring up a critical perspective towards the history and present state of remembrance cultures, which used to be grass-rooted and tend to be top-down organized nowadays. Finally, the paper suggests a set of creative and dialogic methods that differentiates post-memory into an individual side that reflects for example family-legends and the collective side that directly refers to (trans-)national policy.