Disputed memory: the Munich Council Republic and the KPD's politics of history (Geschichtspolitik)

This article begins by examining differences within the KPD during the events surrounding the Munich Council Republic of 1919, noting that different ideological tendencies within German communism arrived at different understandings of local events. The article then uses these events to reflect upon the politics of memory. By detailing how the party – or sections of it – reappraised the events of 1919 in 1925 and 1929, the author shows the complex interactions between the party's ideological development and it attitudes to its own history and how this reflected the KPD's Bolshevisation and then Stalinisation.