"Common memories are sometimes the best means of promoting peace." The initial idyll conveyed by Marcel Proust's beautiful words is deceptive, because there's an insignificant little insertion in the middle that actually splits the sentence into two parts: sometimes. The problem is that memories are sometimes by no means the best way of fostering peace. This is because an apparently shared memory of the same events may be quite different. The people involved may not have been on the same side. Or they may even have been enemies, or remain hostile to each other. Naturally, the Second World War is a case in point, and subsequently the expulsions carried out in its aftermath. What one person may see primarily as unimaginable suffering of the innocents, others regard as a long-overdue liberation. Europe - the European project - finds it hard to come to terms with its heritage of conflict.

Last Sunday, the subject of the fourth matinee in the series of discussions entitled "Debate on Europe" staged by the Allianz Cultural Foundation and national daily newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung focused on this issue. The participants addressed the question of how a genuinely shared European memory could succeed in promoting a European identity despite the burden of the past... The event at Munich's Residenztheater was sold out. In addition to the moderator, SZ author Franziska Augstein, the matinee hosted political scientist Gesine Schwan, French historian Pierre Nora and his Polish colleague Robert Traba.

"We have to join together in working through the problematic areas of our history and apply principles of fairness," demanded Gesine Schwan at the outset. A common memory in Europe has to come into being as a result of understanding the reasons for past hostilities and conflicts: "The less we repress the really awful experiences, the more likely we are to become better partners." Shared foreign relations or academic traditions are not sufficient to create the "basic material" for a European identity.

French historian Pierre Nora was not entirely in agreement. He referred to his concept of "lieux de mémoire" - places of memory - such as Verdun or the Declaration of Human Rights. He reminded us that the collective memory of a social group focuses on these memories in very different ways and advocated a dialectic strategy that was geared much less to the past and espoused a more confrontational core element. "We can only create a genuine feeling of similarity by addressing the differences." Meanwhile, Polish historian Pole Robert Traba maintained that Europe didn't need places of memory but really ought to promote a general consensus of "sensitivity toward the memories held by other people".

At the end of the lively and controversial discussion, the panel was agreed when Pierre Nora recalled the position of his generation: "We are a transitional generation." The next generation will be more spontaneously European: "And that's the way it should be".

JENS-CHRISTIAN RABE. All rights reserved: Süddeutsche Zeitung