Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier called for a stronger dispute between society and the Bundeswehr as a parliamentary army on the day of national mourning. “We have to overcome speechlessness - including the speechlessness of many parts of society towards our army. That too is a job on such a day, ”said Steinmeier on Sunday at the central commemoration of the day of national mourning in the Bundestag in Berlin. To accept responsibility for German history “must not mean to shy away from dealing with the conflicts of the present and with those who bear the heaviest and most difficult responsibility in them”.

The relationship between society and the army is shaped by the experience of two world wars, guilt and shame, said Steinmeier. As a parliamentary army, the Bundeswehr is firmly rooted in the democratic constitution. But if the “citizens in uniform” were to be honored as soldiers, as was recently the case in front of the Reichstag building, many citizens would probably see them “in the end rather in civilian clothes and without a torch in hand”.

In mid-October, the Bundestag and the federal government honored the roughly 90,000 men and women of the Bundeswehr deployed in the recently ended Afghanistan mission with a grand tattoo, the highest military ceremony in the German armed forces.

The pictures of soldiers with torches in front of the Reichstag building had caused some alienation and criticism on the Internet.

A number of Twitter users felt reminded of the Nazi era.

"We Germans like to suppress that"

Many Germans feel uneasy about military rituals, said the Federal President now.

“You don't want to be reminded of what the deployment of an army, including the Bundeswehr, means.

Death and trauma, German soldiers in armed action, in foreign countries - we Germans like to suppress that. "

For a country whose name remains associated with the endless suffering that two world wars brought on Europe, whose army at the time was guilty of a murderous war of aggression, “some of the uneasiness may be understandable,” said Steinmeier. But that does not make it easy for those who risked their lives for the country, the veterans of the missions abroad and especially the families of the fallen. “Because their trauma, their loss, their fear, pain or shame don't go away just because many others turn a blind eye to it. On the contrary. ”What society suppresses and withholds, it owes the soldiers, the disabled, the fallen and their families.

The head of state had previously thought of the victims of violence and war all over the world.

Steinmeier complained that many places of German crimes in the Second World War, for example in the east and south-east of Europe, had been pushed out of the collective memory in Germany.

But commemoration presupposes a common memory, “a space for memories that we share, in Germany, in Europe.

Names, places and events that are inscribed in such a shared memory. "

The name Auschwitz has "become the epitome of the murder of millions of European Jews," said the Federal President.

But the common memory does not have a map that shows the countless other locations of German crimes beyond the extermination camps in Belarus, Ukraine, Russia and elsewhere in Eastern Europe.

Laying of the wreath at the Neue Wache

The memorial hour under the patronage of Bundestag President Bärbel Bas (SPD) was dedicated to the memory of the cruel and costly war of aggression and annihilation in Eastern and Southeastern Europe, which began 80 years ago with the occupation of Yugoslavia and Greece and the attack on the Soviet Union would have.

Steinmeier and Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (CDU) had previously taken part in the wreath-laying ceremony on the day of national mourning at the Neue Wache.

The Neue Wache in Berlin-Mitte on the Unter den Linden boulevard has been the Federal Republic's central memorial for the victims of war and tyranny since 1993.

The day of national mourning is a state day of remembrance - always two Sundays before the first Advent.

It has been celebrated in Germany since 1919 - originally to show solidarity with the relatives of the victims of the First World War.

In the meantime, the Federal Republic of Germany is commemorating all victims of war and tyranny.