Melbourne Law School - Theses
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ItemMaking-good-again? Law, Aesthetics and Responsibility( 2021)Over the last 75 years since the end of WWII, the state-based gestures of taking responsibility for Wiedergutmachung (restitution) in the aftermath in Germany have been the most visible. But in this thesis, I argue for a new understanding of restitution, encapsulated by the literal translation of Wiedergutmachung in English which is ‘making-good-again.’ I examine the work of selected jurists, authors and artists who all engage with the NS regime and the Holocaust and contend they also offer accounts of restitution; they take responsibility for restitution through the ‘making’ of texts and objects. Parallel to this, I highlight the jurisprudential commentary within their accounts, focusing on questions of form and technique. This thesis therefore tells a different story about restitution which expands across genres, sites and temporalities; it re-writes the jurisprudence of restitution within the context of law and humanities scholarship. There are four main areas of focus. I begin by analysing a form of writing called the ‘gloss’ as published by a German-Jewish lawyer, Dr Walter Schwarz. Dr Schwarz returned to Berlin in the 1950s and practiced as a restitution lawyer, setting up a legal journal, where he also (pseudonymously) published ‘glosses’ which offer an account of the legislative restitution process. The first chapter sets up the way giving an account of restitution can be an ethos – of writing, but also of conduct, of practice. Chapter two is on the theme of writers, audience and responsibility, taking as a starting point the exhortation by W. G. Sebald regarding the role of literature to undertake restitution, and analysing literary works by Alexander Kluge and Heimrad Baecker. Chapter three focuses on visual art and its display, examining art works by Anselm Kiefer and Gerhard Richter. Finally, chapter four is a walking tour of Berlin’s memorial art, following the way making-good-again in the streets of Berlin becomes a question of legal place and movement. The practices of making-good-again examined in this thesis are dynamic, iterative and incomplete: they are practices of failure. Nevertheless, the question of how to conduct restitution emerges as a material question of responsibility asked through the making of texts and objects in different genres, including law. Responsibility in this context is shown to be shaped by practices, personae and places. The resulting thesis is an expansion and re-conceptualisation of the practices of jurisprudence, restitution and responsibility in the context of the aftermath in Germany.