The Original Sin of Europe’s Dark 20th Century–(Re)Integrating the Armenian Genocide into European and World History”

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Lecture by Stefan Ihrig

Our knowledge of the Armenian Genocide and of what it meant for the world at the time has been expanding rapidly over the course of the last years. As Stefan Ihrig shows it also provoked intense debates in Germany after World War I – to such an extent that we can clearly identify a larger and true genocide debate taking place there over the course of a few years. Many Germans came to the wrong conclusions though: for German nationalists and the Nazis the Armenian Genocide presented core lessons about ethnic policies and the international order. By virtue of its reception and the debates it provoked the Armenian Genocide thus was part of the pre-history of the Shoah. What does this mean for our understanding of the 20th century? In this lecture Ihrig will develop some ideas on how we have to rethink some core notions of the history of the last century.