The vision of the End. Guenther Anders after "Holocaust"

The article deals with philosopher Günther Stern Anders’s response to the airing
of the NBC miniseries Holocaust in Austria and in Western Germany in
1979. While much has been written about the TV miniseries, the reaction of
Anders (1902–1992) has not been the object of discussion. The present article
first examines the debate on the witnessing, visualization and representation of
the Shoah (Adorno, Agamben, Didi-Huberman, Lanzmann and Levi), focusing
in particular on the American TV miniseries Holocaust, and then investigates
Günther Anders’s reaction to this controversial fiction in the essay ‘Nach “Holocaust”’
(1979). Anders’s remarks about the miniseries are important in connection
with his cultural-philosophical studies on Auschwitz and Hiroshima-
Nagasaki as major turning points, as well as his theory of media. It is remarkable
that Anders was one of the first intellectuals to develop an interest in television
as a new medium.