Reconciliation: A Definitory Approach

After the Second World War, the term “reconciliation” disappeared from the language for the time being, since the German–French and also the reconciliation in Europe in the interwar period had remained only superficial and had neither been able to prevent the rise of National Socialism nor the Second World War. Thus, in the first ten years after the Second World War, more neutral terms such as “rapprochement” and “understanding” were chosen above all. It was only at the end of the 1980s that the term experienced its real breakthrough, which it owed not least to impulses from the present. This development was accompanied on the one hand by the overcoming of apartheid in South Africa and the way it was dealt with, and also by the reconciliation policy in Rwanda. On the other hand, the term was also used in the states of the former Eastern Bloc after the Cold War had been overcome. Now, initiatives under the sign of reconciliation began in order to jointly come to terms with the divided history of conflict. The focus of this chapter is precisely how history is dealt with in post-conflict constellations.