I was born in 1958, thirteen years after the war, in a Germany that was still trying to find a place for its past. Where young generations were grilling their parents and grandparents about their involvement and where the reconstruction of a democracy sometimes seemed like a matter of two steps forward and one step back. In such a spirit of reconstruction, it’s very tempting to forget the past, or to ignore it. So it’s not surprising that at that time the idea arose that the new Germany would benefit by distancing itself from the past. They called it ‘einen Schlussstrich ziehen’, meaning ‘to draw a line under’. Somehow it made sense to look only to the future. It’s easier; you avoid feeling guilty but also feeling responsible.

It does credit to postwar Germany that this philosophy, which is essentially the ‘ich habe es nicht gewusst’-mentality (‘I didn’t realise’), didn’t gain any headway with a large part of the population and especially not with the post-war German government. Many Germans realised that they had to actively show how they did their best to learn to live with the past of their country. They understood that they could only do better than their ancestors by not forgetting.

Until this day, that still presents dilemmas for the country, for instance with the discussions about the preservation of the Nuremberg complexes, where the Nazi regime held their megalomaniac events. Should you maintain it in order to reassert the message ‘never again’ for future generations? Or would you send a painful message by investing millions in these ‘shameful stones’?

After the war there was a new European mobility, which laid the foundation for today’s mutual understanding. One of the people who convinced me to come to Maastricht was a now-retired German colleague, who moved to the Netherlands after the war because he visibly wanted to help build a postwar Europe. He wanted to let our neighbors see that the Germans wanted to be part of the new Europe. He was convinced that we can only live in a peaceful Europe and build a future if we respect each other, and therefore actually reflect on the past rather than ignore it. On both sides of the border people did their part, just as he did. After living and working in Limburg for twenty years, he returned to Berlin with a lifelong friendship with the region and its inhabitants.

Especially now that I work in Limburg, fifty years after he did, I realise that we owe a lot to people like him. When I first started in 2011 as president of the Executive Board of Maastricht University, my first official job was to represent the university at the Remembrance Day service in Maastricht. I was deeply touched by the ceremony. It strengthened my conviction that we can’t put a ‘Schlussstrich’ under the war. We need to continue to reflect on this period of history, even in places like Nuremberg. Remembrance, in whatever form it takes place, not only reminds us of the past but is also our bridge to the future.