Klaus Beyer Apr 6, 2022:

Coping with the past or Re-assessment of history

are other posssibilities

Craig Meulen (asker) Apr 4, 2022:

add suggestions as a proposed translation @Björn - You are one of the few to actually post links to English usage - if you add your suggestion as a proposed translation I might even choose you as most useful ;-)

Craig Meulen (asker) Apr 4, 2022:

context @Phil
Of course context would be useful - I can't add the German here since it's a document you'd be able to find by searching if I did and I have to think of confidentiality. It's a text reflecting on the 3 decades in Bosnia and Herzogovina since the war started, and the lack of attention paid to the country afterwards (until Ms Baerbock recently visited). And the likelihood of tensions in the country flaring up again as a result of the war on Ukraine.

Björn Vrooman Apr 4, 2022:

@Craig I like Kim's reference but agree with Phil that it's pretty difficult to know what to suggest without further context.

As for Geschichtsaufarbeitung and Vergangenheitsbewältigung, I hope you can read pp. 101-104 of "Geschichtspolitik in der 'Berliner Republik': Konzeptionen und Kontroversen" (Google Book preview). The former is more about what impact the past has on the present. That kind of approach seems to have originated with Theodor Adorno, who--despite the title of his work--"rejected the contemporary catchphrase 'working through the past' as misleading, observing that 'its intention is to close the books on the past and, if possible, even remove it from memory.'"
("Presenting Difficult Pasts Through Architecture" by Manuel Becker)

Also, I believe the following article is a worthwhile read:
https://taz.de/Geschichtsaufarbeitung-in-Deutschland/!568147...

Made me think of "confronting the past":
https://www.si.edu/sidedoor/confronting-past

Similar usage examples at
https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/events/then-they-star...

and
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/02/04/serbia-srebrenica-confr...

Best wishes

Kim Metzger Apr 4, 2022:

working through Modern German has characteristically long words such as Geschichtsaufarbeitung and Vergangenheitsbewältigung to describe this complex process of dealing with, working through and even (the latter implies) "overcoming" the past. Using skills and methods developed to deal with the Nazi legacy, and honed on the Stasi one, no one has done it better. Just as there are the famous DIN standards – German industrial norms for many manufactured products – so there are DIN standards for past-beating. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/mar/16/german...

philgoddard Apr 4, 2022:

Could we have a few sentences of German context, please.