'Hot' history. On the temperature of contemporary German history

Abstract
This article tries to answer the question why contemporary history in Germany (Zeitgescbicbte) has remained a 'hot' topic, characterized by continuous intense debates. It actresses this question from a comparative perspective and argues that the special place of the Second World War in German history still explains - sixty years after 1945 - why contemporary history in Germany is 'hotter' than in, for instance, Spain and France. The article further argues that the recent proposal of HansPeter Schwarz to introduce a new - post-1990 - periodization in the Zeitgescbicbte can be partially explained as an attempt to put the Second World War historiographically at a distance. The same argument is developed for recent proposals in history and in the media (especially by Guido Knopp) to put German national history into a 'European' perspective.