PROGRAMM

The concept of Vergangenheitsbewältigung as a core value of post-war German identity has been widely debated both within and beyond Germany. Less discussed is how Muslims, who have played a large role in rebuilding the country since first arriving after World War II, were initially excluded, only to become, in recent decades, central to the country’s Holocaust memory culture—not as welcome participants, but as targets for re-education and reform. In conversation with Vienna Humanities Festival co-founder DESSY GAVRILOVA, anthropologist and author ESRA ÖZYÜREK will highlight the mechanisms by which German society actively “subcontracts” Holocaust guilt to Turkish and Arab immigrants while offering them false promises of equality and inclusion.

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ESRA ÖZYÜREK is the Sultan Qaboos Professor of Abrahamic Faiths and Shared Values at the University of Cambridge and academic director of the Cambridge Interfaith Programme. A political anthropologist, her research explores the intersections of religion, memory, and identity in Turkey and Europe. Her publications include Nostalgia for the Modern (Duke University Press, 2006); Being German, Becoming Muslim (Princeton University Press, 2014); and Subcontractors of Guilt (Stanford University Press, 2023) published in German as Stellvertreter der Schuld by Klett-Cotta Verlag in 2025. She previously taught at the London School of Economics and the University of California, San Diego.