An iconic gesture and its ambiguous memory: Willy Brandt's genuflection.
Celebrated, remembered, but not always understood. History and criticism of a gesture that moved the world.
Willy Brandt's genuflection on 7 December 1970 has become iconic: celebrated in German school books as the founding gesture of German Erinnerungskultur (culture of remembrance), considered one of the most significant moments in the development of Ostpolitik, even included in applications for German citizenship.
Yet the gesture contains a number of ambig…
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