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German Politics
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From the national state

to the rational state and
back? An exercise in
understanding politics and
identity in Germany in the
twentieth century
Matthias Zimmer

TU Darmstadt, Institut fr
Politikwissenschaft,
Version of record first published: 28 Sep 2007.

To cite this article: Matthias Zimmer (1999): From the national state to the
rational state and back? An exercise in understanding politics and identity in
Germany in the twentieth century, German Politics, 8:3, 21-42
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From the National State to the Rational

State and Back? An Exercise in
Understanding Politics and Identity in
Germany in the Twentieth Century

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MATTHIAS ZIMMER

The end of the EastWest conflict and the unification of Germany in

1990 have dramatically altered the geopolitical shape of Europe.
Speculations abound, in particular as regards Germany: have the
spectres of German nationalism been banished for good? Is the new
Berlin Republic different from the Bonn Republic? This article traces
the national idea in Germany since the early nineteenth century and
argues that the Bonn years have been crucial in the development of a
civic culture which transcends the concept of a nation dominant in
Germany from 1871 to 1945. Rather than marking a return of
traditional nationalist concepts, the unification of Germany may well
open the way for a lasting reorientation towards a civic concept of
national identity in Germany.

In the early 1980s it was considered unfashionable to be concerned with

issues like nation, in particular in the German context. 'Nation' was
something reserved for the annual Bericht zur Lage der Nation im geteilten
Deutschland, an exercise in political rhetoric no one really took seriously,
except some stick-in-the-muds. The national history, according to the then
prevalent 'discourse', had come to an end in 1945. In the early 1980s we
discussed Brandt and Ammon's collection Die Linke und die Nationale
Frage and were somewhat puzzled by the attempt of both authors to
establish a lineage of national thought in the left camp. Even more
surprising was Wolfgang Venohr's book Die deutsche Einheit kommt
bestimmt, a collection of essays from what at the time was considered the
right and the left side of the political spectrum. Both seemed to meet in an
anti-Western and pro-national perspective.1 There were others, like Hans

Matthias Zimmer, TU Darmstadt, Institut fr Politikwissenschaft

German Politics, Vol.8, No.3 (December 1999), pp.21^2
PUBLISHED BY FRANK CASS, LONDON

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Joachim Arndt, Bernard Willms, Hans-Dietrich Sander, Armin Mohler,

Caspar von Schrenck-Notzing and Henning Eichberg, who espoused similar
views.2 Yet they, too, seemed to be either hopelessly anachronistic or just
deliberately provocative. After all, the national question was a non-issue,
and focusing on something amorphous like 'nation' was analytically
unsound and, in today's phrase, politically incorrect. 'Collective identity'
was acceptable as a frame of reference, because it opened new perspectives
and did not burden the analysis with the emotional subcontext of nation.
Karl Jaspers had already summarised in 1960 what seemed to be the
consensus in the 1980s:
The history of the German national state has come to a close, but not
the history of the German people. What we can pass on to our great
nation and to the world is the insight derived from our current
situation, namely, that the idea of the national state is an evil for
Europe and all other continents. While the idea of the national state is
the main destructive potential of the world, we can begin to
understand its roots and overcome it.3
This was, it seemed, the new spirit: a farewell to nation and nationalism, and
a warm welcome to Germany's model existence with her 'postnational
identity'.4 Germany was exemplary in her enlightened spirit that had
transcended the parochial confines of national identity. But what about
unification, what about the 'German question'? At best a nostalgic
reminiscence dear to the older generation, at worst transparent political
rhetoric no one believed in anyway. Unification was definitely not an issue;
it was, as Willy Brandt's controversial comment suggested, the 'distinctive
self-perception of the second German Republic'.5 To be more precise: it
seemed more like the distinctive self-perception of particular political
generations. Those who were socialised in the Bonn Republic did not seem
to equate the German question with national unification. Something
different was at stake, but not unification; the well-known publicist Peter
Bender, one of the icons of Ostpolitik thinking, summarised it in 1989: "The
content of the German question has changed. It is not about unity, but
communality; it is not the division of Germany that has to be overcome, but
the separation.'6
Looking back to the 1980s through the looking glass of unification it
may indeed seem odd that the national idea was held in such disregard in
the 1980s. The thesis is that even though we do witness something like a
revival of the idea of the nation, it is very much different from previous
experiences. For the first time since the founding of the Reich in 1871
German history provides an opportunity to integrate the romantic notion of
the nation with its potential for political emancipation; in other words,

UNDERSTANDING POLITICS AND IDENTITY IN GERMANY

23

combine the ethnic and the civic dimension, while at the same time
separating state and power on the one side, and community and identity on
the other. Yet the article also argues that earlier suspicions about the nation
in the contemporary world were not so misguided after all. Nations and
nationalism, although they seem to have staged a comeback with a
vengeance, are concepts of the past and will not prevail in the future, at least
not in the form we know them.

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GERMAN NATIONALISM IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Nationalism, according to Elie Kedourie, is a doctrine invented in Europe at
the beginning of the nineteenth century.7 What distinguishes this political
doctrine of Gemeinschaft from previous usage of 'nation' is that this
modern version is closely linked to the secular state and the French
Revolution. Moreover, and more importantly, nation and nationalism are
political ideologies of the emerging bourgeoisie, the middle classes.
Nationalism as the political programme of an imagined nation is antidynastic and combines the quest for political emancipation in the form of
the constitutional, liberal democratic state with the idea that mankind is
divided into nations and that those nations are entitled to their own state.
The nation state becomes the political manifestation of the industrial
society. Industrial society, nation state and political emancipation of the
bourgeoisie mutually reinforce each other.
From its very beginning, nationalism had two components: a civic
component, aimed at creating a constitutional state, and an ethnic and
cultural component, naming the political subject of nationalism and aiming
to establish a congruence of nation and state. Nationalism carried
democratic ideas and vice versa. In Germany, this was particularly
pronounced at the Hambach Festival in 1832, where German unity and
constitutional liberty were at the core of the political agenda. Whereas in the
1820s and 1830s there was a deep sympathy for other nations trying to
throw off their oppressors, German nationalism added a more unpleasant
feature in the 1840s. Following a statement of French Foreign Minister
Thiers threatening to revise the order of 1815 and extend France's borders
to the Rhine and the Alps, German nationalism took an anti-French turn and
turned inwards to unify all German territories; the Rheinlied and the famous
first stanza of Hoffmann von Fallersleben's poem Deutschland,
Deutschland tiber alles geographically marked the shape of Germany as an
'imagined territory'.
In Europe, nationalism took on different forms, depending on the
political context. In France, England and Spain nationalism meant the
integration of a territory by the state. In Germany and Italy, it meant

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GERMAN POLITICS

bringing disjointed territories together. In other geographical areas, most

notably in eastern and south-eastern Europe, nationalism was primarily a
strategy of cessation and independence: cessation from the larger Ottoman
Empire or the multi-ethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire.8 Those types, as
much as they have to be differentiated to fit each specific case, nevertheless
point to one important aspect: German nationalism was different from
nationalism and nation building in both the West and in the East. Not only
was the development of the German national consciousness 'singularly
rapid',9 it was even more the political development of German nationalism
during the nineteenth century which set the tone for the German nation state
after 1871. This does not imply that the Germans followed a fatal
Sonderweg, a special path setting them apart from all other western
European nations. History's basic pattern is, as Thomas Nipperdey has
reminded us, not black and white, the contrast of a chess board; rather its
basic colour is grey in endless degrees.10 Yet looking at the processes and
outcomes of national unification in Germany, there were four important
factors that would prove to be pivotal for the course of German history.
(1) The split of liberal and national ideas following the revolution in 1848
which became politically cemented with the founding of the Reich in 1871.
Indeed, as Bismarck once bluntly stated, Germany did not look towards
Prussia for its liberalism, but for its power. The unification from above
created an authoritarian structure in which the bourgeoisie became
effectively excluded from political participation. One of the consequences
was a non-political attitude, and a retreat into what Thomas Mann once
aptly called 'machtgeschiitzte Innerlichkeit'.
(2) The constitutional imbalance of the German Reich of 1871. It was
dominated by Prussia, the strongest state and de facto unifier of Germany.
Prussia never dissolved in the German Reich like a lump of sugar, but had
constitutionally a dominant position. The Reich was in fact Prussian Reich
of the German nation, as Heinrich von Treitschke once described it." The
German Reich was a constitutional mess with a weak centre of government
and a less than clear constitutional role for the Emperor as its head. The
Emperor not only had to define his role in the constitutional arrangement of
the Reich, he also had to position himself in the German political culture.12
The Lander had a strong position in the Reich, and some of them had
already developed a national consciousness of their own (Bavaria, Saxony,
Hesse).13
(3) A siege mentality. Since the unification of Germany did upset the
European balance of power, the Reich could survive only by skilful

UNDERSTANDING POLITICS AND IDENTITY IN GERMANY

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diplomacy. The encirclement nightmares led to the proclaimed primacy of

foreign policy: the Reich was allegedly in permanent danger, and this
shaped the physiognomy of state and society. Moreover, it kept European
international relations in agitation. 'Trying to achieve absolute security for
their own country', Henry Kissinger observed, 'German leaders after
Bismarck threatened every other European nation with absolute insecurity,
triggering countervailing coalitions nearly automatically."4
(4) Finally, the Reich had no sense of purpose, or, as Klaus Hildebrand
phrased it, Germany 'lacked an idea of civilisation which would have been
able to ennoble sheer power and provide a more comprehensive
attraction'.15 As a result, power and the state became a purpose in itself,
aiding a restive and feverish industrial modernisation of Germany's
economy and society that threatened to break open the confines of
Bismarck's carefully drafted political co-ordinates of the new Reich. It is in
this context that the young Max Weber remarked in his inaugural lecture in
Freiburg in 1895:
We must come to understand that the unification of Germany was a
youthful spree, indulged by the nation in its old age; it would have
better been if it had never taken place since it would have been a
costly extravagance, if it was meant to be the conclusion rather than
the starting point of German power politics on a global scale.16
It was particularly in the wake of the First World War that German
intellectuals eagerly tried to address those imbalances and to formulate a
German mission and identity. It is here, at this juncture in history, that the
historical experiences of the French Revolution and occupation, the Wars of
Liberation, the historicist interpretation of history, the industrial
modernisation, and the political experiences of the Reich amalgamated into
the 'ideas of 1914'. It is here that the German nation was bestowed a
mission and a purpose. The primary opponent of the ideas of 1914 were the
ideas of 1789, of the French Revolution: it was the revolt against the cold
rationality of Enlightenment, the contractual basis of state and society, the
atomising individualism, the revolt against Zivilisation, against the iron grip
of technology and capitalist economy, against the ideology of progress.
What was truly German - and thus opposed to those Western values - was
a different idea of Freiheit that emphasised the integration of individuals
into a Gemeinschaft, and the premordial existence of the state. Ernst
Troeltsch may have best summarised this:
If one would try to coin a formula for the German liberty, one would
say: it is an organised unity of the people based on a dutiful, yet
critical devotion of the individual to the whole, supplemented and

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corrected by the independence and individuality of a free cultural

education. And if one would like to simplify such a clumsy formula,
bearing in mind the risk of being one-sided and vague, one could say:
State socialism and cultured individualism.17
And in this peculiar idea of freedom, embedded in the protective shell of a
powerful state, Germany found its mission, elevating the war to a battle of
ideologies. Germany was to save the national individualities in the centre of
Europe from the egalitarian universalism of Western political philosophy
and the assault of Eastern barbarism. The goal was not German imperialism,
but rather, in Troeltsch's words, 'a programme which saves national
individualities from either Anglicisation or Russification ... an allied bloc
which would protect the free development of all individual nations against
the ambitions of monopolistic and huge states', in short, 'the creation of a
central European bloc in which we hope to include all those who are
endangered or engulfed, a bloc that would be informed by German politicalmilitary, scientific-technical, and ethical and spiritual culture'.'"
The German mission, in mice, was to become protector of cultural
diversity, of a multicultural Mitteleuropa as a project which would give the
unique cultures in Mitteleuropa an adequate political form. Some more
chauvinist proponents of the ideas of 1914 fell into a more vulgar rhetoric for example, Werner Sombart, who observed that the war is a battle between
Handler and Helden, the Handler being the British doing everything for
gain, and the heroes being the Germans - a self-perception well established
since Richard Wagner's claim that to be German meant to do something for
its own sake.19 Conspicuously absent in most of the deliberations - with the
notable exception of an essay by Friedrich Meinecke20 - was the democratic
tradition of Germany, the tradition of 1848. The ideas of 1914 endorsed a
cultural nationalism based on a historicist ideology, but never came to terms
with liberal democracy. The balance between the universal and the
particular, between cosmopolitanism and the national state was lost and the
universal heritage of the Enlightenment was abandoned; the claim that
German historicism has dissolved the heritage of the Enlightenment wins
plausibility when viewed against this background.21
The experience in the trenches only deepened the alienation from
Western-style democracy; the 'new man, the storm pioneer, the elite of
central Europe',22 to quote Ernst Ju'nger, lived on the edge of the present
and was certainly not equipped to deal with the intricacies of democratic
procedures and the blessings of the democratic constitutional state.
Nationalism, not the universalism of democratic ideas was still called for.
To quote Ernst Jiinger again, from an article on the special right of
nationalism, written in 1927:

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Nationalists don't believe in universal truths. We don't believe in

universal morals. We don't believe in mankind as a collective being
with a central conscience and a joint law. What we believe in is that
all truth, law, and morality is strictly conditioned by time, space, and
blood. We believe in the value of the particular.23
The bitterness and the acrimony of the nationalist opposition against the
Versailles Treaty, and against the Republic, has to be interpreted in the
context of the ideas of 1914. In 1914, Germany set out on a mission from
a position of strength. This mission was betrayed and abandoned. What
was left of Germany's identity, of its nationalist ideology, its mission? The
exaggerated expectations of 1914 are the backdrop of the drama of the
Weimar Republic. Blamed for the frustration of national aspirations,
blamed for the Treaty of Versailles, and also blamed for the economic
crises in 1923 and 1929/30, the Republic never had a real chance. Under
the surface of the Republic a devastating concoction of revenge,
humiliation, and theories of decline formed a peculiar and potentially
explosive mixture.24 The Third Reich not only set out to tear the
humiliation of Versailles to pieces, but was also heir to the ideas of 1914.
Goebbels declared that 1933 undid the negative effects of 1789. Indeed, the
National Socialist Revolution was a culmination of the ideas of 1914, and
was thus warmly welcomed not only by the conservative elites, but also
appealed to large segments of the middle class. Hitler can be seen as a
continuation of certain traditions in German history, but he has also, as
Thomas Nipperdey has argued, perverted those traditions.25 There were no
ideas of 1939 that would have matched the ideas of 1914, and the call to
arms in 1939 was received with much indifference compared to the
national frenzy of 1914.26 The national idea was already exhausted and
perverted, and the Holocaust additionally discredited the foundations upon
which the national ideology was based.
RENAISSANCE OF THE NATIONAL QUESTION
The conditions after the Second World War were dramatically different
from those after the First World War. Both German states emerging from the
rubble of the Third Reich were 'rational' states, artificially separated and
destitute of national identity. They were rational states, both claiming the
tradition of the Enlightenment as their raison d'etre: the Federal Republic
the liberal democratic variant, and the German Democratic Republic the
Marxist variant. Both states owed their very existence to the necessities of
post-war development, and neither of the two German states initially had a
historical identity.

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Looking primarily at the Federal Republic, three questions become

salient. Why did the Federal Republic become a stable state, how did the
Germans become democrats and, last but not least, how did the Germans
come to terms with the national question? The first question can be
answered easily. Stability was, first and foremost, imposed by external
constraints. The Federal Republic was, as some political scientists have
argued, not sovereign, but its freedom of action was constrained in a variety
of ways. Even after the Paris Treaties in 1955, the Western allies did not
completely give up all means of control. Moreover, security concerns
ensured that the Federal Republic would closely follow the Western path.
Secondly, the framers of the constitution had learned from the failure of the
Weimar Republic and almost became obsessed with political stability.
Constitutional checks and balances were set up to prevent the predominance
of one branch of the political system. The Constitution was also deliberately
drafted to form a 'militant democracy' which was to have the means to
defend itself against unconstitutional activities. Furthermore, the 1953
Election Act introduced the five per cent debarring clause which in effect
helped to narrow down the party system to two and half by the end of the
1950s. Thirdly, the economic miracle in the 1950s bought loyalty to the
political system. Social market economy became the founding myth of the
Federal Republic, lending stability to the political system and remaining
persuasive as a recipe for a quick economic recovery even in the process of
German unification in 1990.27 Yet those three factors - the lack of
sovereignty, the design of a 'militant' constitution and the provisions
against the fragmentation of the party system, and the success of the social
market economy - ensured the stability of the FRG in its early years and
provided the time for a democratic acculturation that the Weimar Republic
never had.
The second issue - how the Germans became democrats - is not so
easily answered. In 1945, there was certainly a feeling of a new beginning,
a new start. On the other hand, democracy Western-style was the unloved
offspring of war and occupation, a product of necessity rather than choice.
Heinrich Krone, for example, noted in his diary in 1947: 'We Germans have
no choice but between democracy and a new dictatorship, and both aren't
worth a penny. Let us opt for democracy then, being the better choice,
however unsuitable for us. The constitutional form for the German people
has yet to be invented.'28 It is not surprising that the democratic institutions
of the Federal Republic did not immediately bring about a democratic
political culture. Indeed, the 1950s seemed to verify Thomas Mann's verdict
in his Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man 'that the German people will never
be able to love political democracy simply because they cannot love politics
itself, and that the much decried "authoritarian state" is and remains the one

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29

that is proper and becoming to the German people, and the one they
basically want'.29 The Adenauer era is seen as notoriously conservative and
restorative, with Adenauer himself a representative of the authoritarian state
tradition in Germany; the early years of the Republic in general are seen as
a superficially disguised continuance of undemocratic traditions in German
history. This verdict contains more than a modicum of truth. The collapse of
the Third Reich did not wash away the views and attitudes that had
supported the Nazi regime. Suppression and denial rather than an open
debate on the crimes of the Nazi past characterised the Adenauer era. The
continuity of elites even in high-ranking offices and the processes of whitewashing made this attitude painfully obvious.30 A majority of Germans
retreated from the vicissitudes of politics into the less disquieting realms of
economic reconstruction and spiritual and cultural renewal. The attitudes
towards politics were detached and primarily output-oriented.31 Residues of
authoritarian beliefs and a general political indifference created a peculiar
mixture that was certainly a long way away from the 'civic culture' as
defined by American scholars; the subject rather than the citizen was the
predominant model of political behaviour. Still in 1965 Sidney Verba found
that there was a widely held political apathy and a pragmatic output
orientation towards politics. Stable democratic attitudes had, according to
Verba, not taken roots in the FRG.32 In the 'armoured consumer association
Federal Republic', as Rudolf Augstein once gibed,33 the slogan 'No
experiments' was the ultimate expression for the quest for security and
prosperity. Adenauer, the public father of the Bonn Republic, represented all
that was desirable in a private life: calculability, steadiness, prosperity,
decency, and the good old times prior to the two wars that seemed so
unchallenged by the crises of the twentieth century and modernity in
general.
It was only in the 1960s that the Adenauer era became the target of
criticism in the wake of a push towards further democratisation. Adenauer's
authoritarian style, the lost chances after the Stunde Null, the idle smugness
and self-satisfaction of the 1950s, the political failure of the father
generation in the Third Reich that was repressed in the 1950s, the
restorative tendencies of the Federal Republic - all this dominated the
political discourse in the 1960s. For some, the Federal Republic even
represented a poorly veiled continuation of those forces which had cleared
the path for the Third Reich and had now to be combatted in the name of a
militant anti-Fascism.34 Yet those more extreme reactions to the western
German democracy, and through it powerful ramifications in the terrorist
movement in the 1970s, were clearly confined to the left-wing fringe of the
political spectrum. The critical attitude towards the unpolitical and
conservative, even restorative tendencies of the Adenauer era slowly

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percolated into the political mainstream. The democratisation of state and

society, and the turning away from a more formal understanding of
democracy, found its memorable political expression in Willy Brandt's
slogan 'Mehr Demokratie wagen'. Citizens' participation increased and
found channels not only in the established parties, but also in local interest
groups, the new social movements and other forms of non-traditional and
unconventional political activities. As a result, the Federal Republic has
developed a civic culture with strong participatory elements.
Last but not least, there was the national question. Politically, the nation
state was buried in 1945. Mentally, it took the western Germans much
longer to come to terms with the end of the nation state. Indisputably, the
pernicious link of nation and 'Machtstaaf was broken, and German
politicians were eager to point out that this heritage of Bismarck had come
to an end in 1945. On the other hand, a strong national sentiment had
survived the war almost unscathed.35 The political rhetoric was imbued with
national imagery. The Basic Law, for example, was 'inspired by the resolve
to preserve [Germany's] national and political unity' (Preamble), and it was
even mooted in 1949 to add a black canton to the official flag as a constant
reminder of the division of Germany36 - the model here was the statues of
Strasbourg and Metz at the Place de la Concorde in Paris which remained
draped in black from 1871 to 1918. Yet those national sentiments were
exclusively focused on the division of Germany and were not indicative of
a resurgence of old-style nationalism.37 The choice of the national flag and
the national anthem in the Federal Republic were symbolic of a different
understanding of nation and nationalism, of the appropriation of the liberal
democratic tradition, of the civic model of nationalism. The national flag
with its colours black, red and gold emphasises the traditions of German
democratic liberalism of the first half of the nineteenth century. Whereas the
debate about the national flag aroused considerable controversy in the
Weimar Republic, its introduction went virtually unnoticed in the Federal
Republic.38 The national anthem represents a similar tradition. In 1922, the
Deutschlandlied was declared the national anthem, and during the Third
Reich it was played before the Horst-Wessel-Lied. Theodor Heuss, the first
president of the Federal Republic, feared that it had been discredited and
unsuccessfully tried to introduce a new national anthem. Eventually he
consented (more grudgingly than enthusiastically) to Adenauer's request to
keep the Deutschlandlied. It was adopted as the Federal Republic's national
anthem not by formal announcement, but by the publication of two letters
exchanged between Heuss and Adenauer.39
Symbols reflect an identity rather than they create one, and identity
certainly was a problem for the Federal Republic. It was to be a temporary
political system, pending the unification of all Germans - a Transitorium, as

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Theodor Heuss called it. Thus, FRG politicians had initially been reluctant
to commit themselves fully to the new Federal Republic. It was Adenauer's
lasting contribution that he prevailed with his argument that the
establishment of the western German state and its integration into the West
would, in the long run, inevitably lead to unification. It is futile to argue
whether or not Adenauer really believed in this political strategy. But his
deep mistrust in the fickleness of the Germans, their lack of steadiness, led
him to anchor the Federal Republic in the political and economic
institutions of the West, which gave it additional stability and created, over
years and decades, a separate FRG identity which found its expression in
the term 'Bonn Republic'.
The building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 finally put an end to dreams of
reunification in the near future. It was also the building of the Berlin Wall
that prompted a reorientation of Deutschlandpolitik, first formulated by
Egon Bahr in his Tutzing speech in 1963. The Wandel durch Anndherung
rested on the idea that capitalism and socialism would converge due to the
constraints of modern industrial society. The German question was not
about unification any more, but about a more 'modern' understanding of
political processes. It is worth noting that this more 'modern' understanding
of political processes and the idea of the nation coincided not only with a
democratisation of FRG society, but also with the advent of different
conceptual frameworks in the social sciences and the humanities. In FRG
historiography, in particular the nation state, the national historiographic
tradition and the historicist perspective were critically re-evaluated. The
Fischer controversy of the early 1960s had pointed to questionable
continuities of the foreign policy of the German Reich and opened the way
for a critical re-evaluation of the Bismarckian nation state project in general.
Moreover, the dominant historicist school was challenged by new
approaches focusing on social and economic history, and a renunciation of
traditional concepts focusing on the nation state and 'high' politics. This
new historiographical perspective entailed an acceptance of the division of
Germany and of the notion that the German nation state was irrevocably lost
in 1945 - at least for a growing number of historians.40
As controversial as Ostpolitik may have been in the early 1970s, by the
end of the decade it was well established. The Christian-liberal coalition of
1982 was quick to emphasise continuity. A consensus had emerged across
the political spectrum in the FRG. Unification was not about to come, in fact
it even disappeared from the vocabulary of political rhetoric. For all the
years Helmut Kohl was Chancellor before the dramatic events of 1989, he
never used the term Wiedervereinigung. Eberhard Schulz remarked in 1982
that the insistence on the unification of Germany into some kind of nation
state can be found in the Federal Republic only in a small and marginal

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group.41 Indeed, it seemed that by the early 1980s the consensus about
'nation' was to see it more as vehicle of democratisation in eastern Germany
rather than a prescription for the congruence of ethnic and state boundaries.
Helmut Kohl wrote in 1979: 'Liberty and nation are inseparable. Our quest
and our yearning for the unity of our nation is not merely an empty formula.
We have always maintained that liberty and the rule of law have priority
over German unity whenever history has prevented us from realising
both.'42
With the exception of the older generation of politicians, who still had a
vivid memory of an existing German nation state, nation and unification
became increasingly concepts of yesterday. The Kohl government vaguely
referred to the unity of the nation, a concept it had inherited from the socialliberal government. But what kind of nation was meant? The historian Karl
Dietrich Erdmann once described the German situation as being one people,
two nations and three states.43 Quite obviously, the unity of the nation
excluded Austria, which had developed an identity of its own. The unity of
the nation thus was narrowed down to east and west Germany. But if the
Austrians had succeeded in building their own identity, how long would it
take for eastern Germans? How long would it take for the western Germans
to consider themselves a nation? In other words, how long would it take for
the Germans to internalise the division of Germany?
Since the Federal Republic was an incomplete nation state, and thus a
rather insufficient focus of political identity, the question had to be answered
what was to replace the nation; what would hold society together? For the
first decade of the FRG's existence this was not a major problem. The
German nation was still a frame of reference. For the time being, western
Germans experienced the surrogate identities of model Europeans and
emphasised their close relations with the United States, whose democratic
culture, its economic prosperity, technological edge and lifestyle they
idealised. Yet again, the 1960s were a critical period. The euphoria of
European integration disappeared in the red tape of European bureaucracy;
the innovation and the enthusiasm of the 1950s drowned in a flood of
regulations and incomprehensible common policies, most notoriously in the
agricultural sector. The United States, the great idol, tarnished its reputation
in the Vietnam War. The younger generation in particular nourished a very
critical attitude towards the United States during the late 1960s and early
1970s. The image of the United States was not the image of the defender of
freedom and of CARE parcels, the image of the economic and financial aid
in the reconstruction of Europe. Now, the United States was seen as selfcentred, engaged in a brutal and unjust war in Vietnam, backing
undemocratic and authoritarian regimes in Asia, the Near East and South
America, indeed capable of all kinds of immoral and heinous acts if it served

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the interests of the US or its military industrial complex. This had some
major repercussions in the late 1970s and early 1980s with the advent of the
peace movement.44 The United States became a villain not to be trusted. The
Reagan administration and its bellicose rhetoric in particular aroused
suspicion: the old certainties about who was responsible for the East-West
conflict and who represented the major threat to world peace gave way to a
deep mistrust of the policies of both superpowers.
One of the most fascinating aspects of the history of the 1980s is the
scintillating variety of concepts the peace movement brought into the debate
about the nation. Some argued that the Germans had forfeited the right to a
nation state. The division of the German nation was the punishment for
committing the crimes of the Holocaust. Others argued that Germany in its
divided status was more compatible with a peaceful European order than
being unified.45 Had not even the Christian-Democratic Chancellor KurtGeorg Kiesinger argued that a unified Germany would have a critical mass
too large for a healthy European order? But the most surprising and lasting
impact of the peace movement was the utilisation of the national question
for their own ends which caused Pierre Hassner in 1982 to remark with a
sigh that the German problem was back again.46 The national dimension was
utilised as a lever against the prevalence of the East-West conflict:
Germany was seen as an occupied country, as an object in the games of the
superpowers. Germans eastern and western had stronger bonds than to their
respective hegemonic power, and dropping out of the East-West conflict
was the solution to the perceived pending danger of nuclear extermination.
The national argumentation may have been directed against the East-West
conflict, and the potential for the nuclear annihilation of the Germans. But
it was also indirectly targeted at the Western integration of the Federal
Republic and often had anti-Western undertones.47
The renaissance of the national question was not confined to the peace
movement. Even on the level of government policy, a new self-confidence
characterised the relations between the Federal Republic and its allies. This
became especially clear in the Deutschlandpolitik of the Kohl government,
which tried to shield inter-German relations from the deterioration in the
relations between East and West on a global level.48 The underlying
rationale was similar to the argumentation of the peace movement: the
diverging interests of Germans in east and west on the one side and the
Soviet Union and the United States on the other. Even the Christian
Democrats, as was demonstrated in the debates about the future European
security architecture after the 1987 INF Treaty, were not wholly immune to
the temptations of national neutralism.49
The early 1980s also saw a revival of interest in questions of German
history and identity: the Staufer and Preussen exhibitions were unexpected

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successes, and Edgar Reitz's multi-part TV series 'Heimat' became

successful partly because it thematised identity and belonging, and idealised
community in small social circles.50 The German 'Suchbewegungen'51 led to
a torrent of publications on German identity, nation, region, Heimat. The
roaming quest for identity and a new form of Gemeinschaft was closely
related to the wearing out of the Utopian energies in foreign and domestic
affairs and a normalisation of the German political discourse. But this
phenomenon was not confined to the Federal Republic. In the GDR, the
SED started to appropriate German history for its own ends, trying to
construct a separate and distinct eastern German, that is, a socialist German
identity.52 It seems that this twin process in both German states marked the
limits of both as purely rational states, destitute of their own national
identity. It should be noted that the renaissance of topics such as nation,
identity and Heimat in the Federal Republic lacked any traditionally
nationalist undertones. It was a defensive quest for identity, maybe a sign of
the Federal Republic's attempt to come to terms with its own existence, to
find meaning beyond economic prosperity and constitutional patriotism.
A NEW GERMAN IDENTITY
The unification of Germany in 1990 came at a crucial juncture. In 1990, a
generation of politicians was at the helm who still had memories of the
German nation state and the tormenting process of the division of Germany.
National unity was a part of their political horizon. Twenty or 30 years later,
those memories would have faded away from public and political memory.
Unification - if it had been an issue at all - would most likely have taken a
different turn, if it had even happen. The decision to move the seat of
government to Berlin in particular would not have been conceivable. In
other words, the Bonn Republic, which was on the way to self-recognition
in the 1970s and 1980s, would probably have been more reluctant to accept
the risks of national unification in another two or three decades. The
national idea, it seems, has carried a late and decisive victory, although the
unification of Germany has indeed revealed the scope of mutual
estrangement, of differing identities in east and west.
However, nation and state in Germany today are strikingly different
from 1914. The social imbalances, one of the major problems of the Empire,
were eradicated during and after the Second World War. The Federal
Republic is not burdened by the social cleavages that were so problematic
for both the Empire and the Weimar Republic. In particular, the decline of
the first sector (the agrarian sector), the disappearance of the eastern
landlords, the de-differentiation between city and countryside, the social
integration of the workers, the quantitative equilibration of Catholics and

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35

Protestants and the political integration of the middle class have helped to
stabilise the Federal Republic and to root it firmly in the political culture of
Germany. Furthermore, the Federal Republic's social structure, having been
thoroughly transformed by the migration in the 1940s and 1950s, is today
being further transformed by the influx of foreigners. Germany has departed
from being ethnically homogeneous to become a multicultural society." In
a multicultural society, it becomes more difficult to organise identity along
the axis of ethnic nationalism.
Second, the foreign policy tradition of the Federal Republic is decisively
different from that of the Reich after 1871. Unification in 1990 took place
on a contractual basis with the consent of Germany's neighbours. Neither
the stifling immobility of the German Empire after 1871 nor the primacy of
foreign policy seem to characterise German foreign policy today. The
integration into the political and military institutions of the West and the
changed nature of European international relations in general have
effectively contained the spectres of Germany's traditional role in the centre
of Europe.54 Moreover, the Federal Republic has developed its very own
foreign policy tradition, emphasising a 'civilian' approach to foreign
relations and acting in a multilateral framework rather than unilaterally.55
This does not imply that military means are categorically excluded from
German foreign policy, as German participation in the war against Serbia
made clear. But Germany participated in a multilateral framework, and the
ambivalent reactions of the German population indicated a deeply rooted
uneasiness about the legitimacy of military means for foreign policy ends.56
Third, following Jtirgen Habermas, the decisive break in 1945 was the
Federal Republic's unequivocal commitment to the ideas of the West.57 The
ideas of 1914 never were a serious alternative. Even the conservatives after
the war jettisoned their old attitudes and welcomed Germany's new
ideological orientation. The broad consensus in German political culture
today sees the country as an established democracy. This consensus became
particularly clear in the mid-1980s in the historians' debate. All
participants, the polemical attacks aside, operated on the basis of the Federal
Republic's integration into the West and did not attempt to revive a national
historiography that sets Germany apart from the West. Moreover, the
Federal Republic's approach to the national question is another case in
point. The national idea was, in the tradition of the Vormarz, primarily a
question of democratisation and liberalisation in the east, and only secondly
a question of national unification.
It is true that the Bonn Republic operated under conditions very different
from those of the new Berlin Republic; in particular the long shadows of
1945 were a major point of reference. Whether or not this defining historical
memory will be replaced by the revolutions of 1989 and what consequences

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this may have is still open to speculation.58 But as important as historical

perspectives may be for the formation of an identity, the nationalism of the
years prior to 1945 has no future. Even if a new historiographic perspective
would suggest seeing the years between 1945 and 1989 as an unfortunate
aberration in Germany's national history, three factors would seem to
impede a re-appropriation of the old nationalist agenda: (a) the
transformation of the Westphalian system, (b) the fate of the nation in the
post-industrial society, and (c) the dynamics of European integration.
The first argument, the transformation of the 'Westphalian system',
holds that the modern state, as developed in the seventeenth century, a state
defined by a fixed territory, a sovereign authority setting rules and
exercising authority over a clearly defined citizenry - in other words, a
structure clearly defining the inside and the outside - is slowly dissolving.
One central aspect of this process is, in the words of Susan Strange, that
'state authority has leaked away, upwards, sideways and downwards'59 into
a network of supranational, subnational and non-governmental
organisations and institutions which increasingly provide services, set rules
and regulations and focus loyalties away from the nation state. The nation
state is no longer the single focus of loyalty and identity; the link between
political community and state power, forged in the nineteenth century, starts
to loosen. The clear-cut differentiation between inside and outside fades
away as the globalisation of markets, communication and migration
processes have permeated national boundaries and redefined the notion of
political space: 'Both nation and state have lost coherence, as borders have
become more permeable, national myths harder to maintain, ethnic diversity
more evident, personal prosperity more dependent on local and
transnational factors than on national protection.'60
This process is closely connected with my second argument, which
deals with the transition to the post-industrial society. This article argued
earlier that the nation state as it developed in the nineteenth century was the
political manifestation of industrial society. Nationalism was the political
programme of the bourgeoisie against the petrified aristocratic and
dynastic structure. If the underlying argument is correct that tectonic shifts
in the economic structures have ramifications for the social and political
structures, one would expect the nation state to be affected by the economic
changes. This is indeed the case. The economic transformation has eroded
the cleavages of the industrial society and created new ones. Some of the
major features of post-industrial society are an emphasis on services rather
than production, on knowledge rather than capital. It is an information
society in which time and space are compressed. Its organisational
structure is decentralised, mobile and flexible. It prefers small units over
large companies, intensive over extensive growth, networks over

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hierarchies, economies of scope over economies of scale, idiolects over

grand narratives and so on.61 This list is certainly incomplete, but it
indicates that we are today dealing with a development in modernity that
bears several labels: post-industrialism, post-modernity, reflexive
modernisation, flexible industrial society and the like.62 Crucial for our
context seems to be that those tendencies and developments seem to mark
a departure from the rigidities of the nation state to a more decentralised
political structure and a more diversified social stratification. In other
words, nationalism in advanced industrial societies is bereft of its
traditional economic base, bereft of a strong supporter who could push it
on the political agenda.
The last point deals with European integration. In March 1882, when
delivering his famous address at the Sorbonne about what constitutes a
nation, Ernest Renan also reminded his audience that nations are not made
forever, that they have a beginning and an end and will probably be replaced
by a European confederation.63 Renan added that this was not the rule under
which the nineteenth century lived, since nations are still necessary as long
as no superior authority can guarantee freedom and liberty. Ever since two
world wars have demonstrated the darker side of the national idea, the
optimism of the nineteenth century has given way to the recognition that
there is no alternative to the integration of Europe; the German Chancellor
Kohl has even declared that European integration is a matter of war and
peace in the twenty-first century.64 It is ironic that German unification, the
last triumph of the nation state principle, has given an additional impetus for
European integration. The Maastricht Treaty goes to the core of state
sovereignty in the traditional sense. The three pillars of the Treaty - the
European Community with economic and fiscal union; co-operation in
domestic and legal politics; and, last but not least, the projected common
foreign and defence policy - have already transcended our notion of internal
and external dimensions of politics, eroded the distinction between
domestic and international politics and brought about problems of
governance unknown to the traditional nation state.65 Moreover, the
structural principle of subsidiarity has empowered subnational units which
sometimes even prevent the nation state from negotiating directly at the
European level. As a result, the European Union becomes more and more
characterised by a system of overlapping authorities and loyalties, a
multiple-level system, an almost, to use Hedley Bull's terminology, neomedieval order.66
The nation state, to summarise the argument, is in the process of
undergoing a major transformation. It will not inevitably disappear
altogether because it still has major functions to fulfil. Ralf Dahrendorf has
reminded us that:

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The pluralistic national state is one of the great achievements of

civilisation. No other framework exists that can pronounce and
guarantee the rights of its citizens. The monopoly of violence by the
state is the precondition of civil rights to be claimed and enforced.
Thus, the pluralistic national state is the conditio sine qua non to
safeguard liberty and a value liberals have to defend.67
What seems to be inevitable, however, is a gradual redefinition of the nation
state which is defined less by the nation and more by the rights and
entitlements it guarantees to its citizens. This concept of the nation state
would be compatible with the processes of transformation described in this
article. The nation thus becomes one dimension of identity amongst others,
and the emotionally charged definitions of citizenship emphasising
belonging will be augmented by a definition of citizenship emphasising
status. For Germany, this is certainly a major step as the emotionally
charged debates surrounding the reform of the Citizenship Act in 1999 have
indicated. Germany - as well as most other nations - is still far away from
the idealist notion of a cosmopolitan citizenship,68 and it may be prudent to
ask whether or not such a form of citizenship is desirable after all.69 But
Germany seems equally far away from the excesses of nationalism which
have accompanied German and European history in the first half of this
century. Historians another century from now may very well see the
unification of 1990 as a last but shallow triumph of the nation state and
emphasise the processes that lead beyond it.
NOTES
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Third International Research Colloquium on
German History, May 1997, at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
1. Peter Brandt and Herbert Ammon (eds.), Die Linke und die nationale Frage. Dokumente zur
deutschen Einheit seit 1945 (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1981); Wolfgang Venohr (ed.), Die deutsche
Einheit kommt bestimmt (Bergisch Gladbach: Lbbe, 1982).
2. For example, Hans-Joachim Arndt, Die Besiegten von 1945. Versuch einer Politologie fr
Deutsche samt Wrdigung der Politikwissenschaft in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland
(Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1978); Hans-Dietrich Sander, Der nationale Imperativ.
Ideengnge und Werkstcke zur Wiederherstellung Deutschlands (Krefeld: Sinus, 1980);
Caspar von Schrenck-Notzing and Armin Mohler (eds.), Deutsche Identitt (Krefeld: Sinus,
1982); Bernard Willms, Die deutsche Nation. Theorie, Lage, Zukunft (Kln-Lvenich:
Edition Maschke Hohenheim, 1982); idem (ed.), Handbuch zur deutschen Nation, 3 vols.
(Tbingen: Hohenrain Verlag, 1986-88); idem, Idealismus und Nation. Zur Rekonstruktion
des politischen Selbstbewutseins der Deutschen (Paderborn: Schningh, 1986); Henning
Eichberg, Nationale Identitt: Entfremdung und nationale Frage in der Industriegesellschaft
(Wien: Langen-Mller, 1978).
3. 'Die Geschichte des deutschen Nationalstaats ist zu Ende, nicht die Geschichte der
Deutschen. Was wir als groe Nation uns und der Welt leisten knnen ist die Einsicht in die
Weltsituation heute: da der Nationalstaatsgedanke heute das Unheil Europas und auch aller
anderen Kontinente ist. Whrend der Nationalstaatsgedanke die heute bermchtig

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4.
5.
6.

7.

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8.

9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

39

zerstrende Kraft der Erde ist, knnen wir beginnen, ihn an der Wurzel zu durchschauen und
aufzuheben.' Karl Jaspers, Freiheit und Wiedervereinigung. ber Aufgaben deutscher
Politik (Mnchen: Piper, 1960), p.53.
Karl Dietrich Bracher, 'Das Modewort Identitt und die deutsche Frage', Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung, 9 Aug. 1986.
Willy Brandt, Erinnerungen (Frankfurt a.M.: Propylen, 1989), p.157.
'Die deutsche Frage hat ihren Inhalt verndert. Nicht mehr um die Einheit geht es, sondern
um die Gemeinsamkeit; nicht mehr die Teilung mu berwunden werden, sondern die
Trennung.' Peter Bender, Deutsche Parallelen. Anmerkungen zu einer gemeinsamen
Geschichte zweier getrennter Staaten (Berlin: Siedler, 1989), S.189.
Elie Kedourie, Nationalism (4th exp. edn., Oxford, UK and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell,
1993), p.1.
See Theodor Schieder, 'Typologie und Erscheinungsformen des Nationalstaats in Europa', in
Theodor Schieder, Nationalismus und Nationalstaat. Studien zum nationalen Problem im
modernen Europa, ed. Otto Dann and Hans-Ulrich Wehler (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 1992), pp.65-86.
Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism. Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge, MA and London:
Harvard University Press, 1992), p.277.
Thomas Nipperdey, Deutsche Geschichte 1866-1918: Machtstaat vor der Demokratie
(Mnchen: Beck 1992), S.905.
Heinrich von Treitschke, Deutsche Geschichte im 19. Jahrhundert (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1909),
vol.1, p.vii.
See the excellent interpretation by Nicolaus Sombart, Wilhelm II. Sndenbock und Herr der
Mitte (Berlin: Verlag Volk und Welt, 1996).
Werner Conze, Die deutsche Nation. Ergebnis der Geschichte (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 1963), p.45
Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York et al.: Simon & Schuster, 1994), p.72.
Klaus Hildebrand, Das vergangene Reich. Deutsche Auenpolitik von Bismarck bis Hitler
(Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1995), p.23.
'Wir mssen begreifen, da die Einigung Deutschlands ein Jugendstreich war, den die
Nation auf ihre alten Tage beging und seiner Kostspieligkeit halber besser unterlassen htte,
wenn sie der Abschlu und nicht der Ausgangspunkt einer deutschen Weltmachtpolitik sein
sollte.' Max Weber, 'Der Nationalstaat und die Volkswirtschaftspolitik', in Johannes
Winckelmann (ed.), Gesammelte Politische Schriften (Tbingen: Mohr, 1958), p.23.
'Will man eine Formel fr sie (die deutsche Freiheit, MZ) prgen, so wird man sagen
knnen: organisierte Volkseinheit aufgrund einer pflichtmigen und zugleich kritischen
Hingabe des Einzelnen an das Ganze, ergnzt und berichtigt durch die Selbststndigkeit und
Individualitt der freien geistigen Bildung. Und will man eine so schwerfallige Formel
verkrzen, so wird man auf die Gefahr der Einseitigkeit und unzulssigen Allgemeinheit hin,
die bei allen solchen Formeln besteht, sagen knnen: Staatssozialismus und
Bildungsindividualismus.' Ernst Troeltsch, 'Die deutsche Idee von der Freiheit', in
Deutscher Geist und Westeuropa (Tbingen: Mohr, 1925), p.103.
'[Ein] Programm, da die nationalen Individualitten rettet vor Anglisierung und
Russifizierung ... ein verbndeter Machtblock gegen die Monopol- und Riesenstaaten zum
Schutze aller individuellen Volksgeister und ihrer freien Entwicklung...., die Bildung eines
mitteleuropischen Blockes ... an dem wir hoffen knnen alle Bedrohten und Verschluckten
anzuschlieen, und der unter wesentlichem Einflu der deutschen politisch-militrischen,
wissenschaftlich-technischen und ethisch- geistigen Kultur steht.' Troeltsch, 'Die Ideen von
1914', pp.54ff.; 52ff.
Werner Sombart, Hndler und Helden. Patriotische Besinnungen (Mnchen and Leipzig:
Duncker & Humblot, 1915). Wagner's famous definition can be found in his essay 'Deutsche
Kunst und deutsche Politik', in Richard Wagner, Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen
(Steiger, 1976), vol.8. (s.1.), pp.96ff.
See Friedrich Meinecke, 'Die deutschen Erhebungen von 1813, 1848, 1870 und 1914', in
Eberhard Kessel (ed.), Brandenburg, Preuen, Deutschland. Kleine Schriften zur Geschichte
und Politik (Stuttgart: F. Koehler Verlag, 1979), pp.509-31.

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21. This is the main thesis of Georg G. Iggers, The German Conception of History. The National
Tradition of Historical Thought from Herder to the Present (Middletown: Wesleyan
University Press, 1983); and, with a different emphasis, Friedrich Jaeger and Jrn Rsen,
Geschichte des Historismus (Mnchen: Beck, 1992).
22. Ernst Jnger, 'Fire', quoted in Anton Kaes, Martin Jay and Edward Dimendberg (eds.), The
Weimar Republic Sourcebook (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California
Press, 1994), p.19.
23. 'Wir Nationalisten glauben an keine allgemeinen Wahrheiten. Wir glauben an keine
allgemeine Moral. Wir glauben an keine Menschheit als ein Kollektivwesen mit zentralem
Gewissen und einheitlichem Recht. Wir glauben vielmehr an ein schrfstes Bedingtsein von
Wahrheit, Recht und Moral durch Zeit, Raum und Blut. Wir glauben an den Wert des
Besonderen.' Ernst Jnger, 'Das Sonderrecht des Nationalismus' Arminius, 4 (1927), quoted
from Heimo Schwilk (ed.), Ernst Jnger. Leben und Werk in Bildern und Texten (Stuttgart:
Klett Cotta, 1988), p.105. For Jnger and the Weimar Republic, see Thomas Nevin, Ernst
Jnger and Germany: Into the Abyss, 1914-1945 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996),
pp.75-114.
24. See Manfred Gangl and Grard Raulet (ed.), Intellektuellendiskurse in der Weimarer
Republik. Zur politischen Kultur einer Gemengelage (Frankfurt a.M: Campus, 1994).
25. Thomas Nipperdey, Nachdenken ber die deutsche Geschichte (Mnchen: Beck, 1986),
Ch.11, '1933 und die Kontinuitt der deutschen Geschichte', pp.l95ff.
26. Hans Maier, 'Ideen von 1914 - Ideen von 1939', Vierteljahreshefte fr Zeitgeschichte, 38
(1990), pp.524-42.
27. Cf. Dieter Haselbach, '"Social Market Economy" and West German Identity', in Matthias
Zimmer (ed.), Germany - Phoenix in Trouble? (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press,
1997), pp.157-82.
28. 'Wir Deutschen haben keine andere Wahl als die zwischen der Demokratie oder einer neuen
Diktatur, und beide taugen nichts. Entscheiden wir uns also fr die Demokratie, sie ist das
Bessere, obwohl wir mit ihr nichts anfangen knnen. Die Staatsform fr die Deutschen mu
erst noch erfunden werden.' Heinrich Krone, Tagebcher. Band 1, 1945-1961, ed. Hans-Otto
Kleinmann (Dsseldorf: Droste, 1995), p.55.
29. Thomas Mann, Reflections of a NonpoHtical Man, trans, and intro. Walter D. Morris (New
York: Frederick Ungar Publ. Co., 1983), pp.16ff.
30. See Norbert Frei, Vergangenheitspolitik. Die Anfnge der Bundesrepublik und die NSVergangenheit (Mnchen: Beck, 1996).
31. With ample empirical evidence, Axel Schildt, Moderne Zeiten. Freizeit, Medien und
'Zeitgeist' in der Bundesrepublik der 50er Jahre (Hamburg: Christians, 1995), pp.314ff.
32. Sidney Verba, 'Germany: The Remaking of a Political Culture', in Lucian W. Pye and Sidney
Verba (eds.), Political Culture and Political Development (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1965), p.169.
33. Rudolf Augstein, 'Konrad Adenauer und seine Epoche', in Die ra Adenauer. Einsichten
und Ausblicke (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1964), p.82.
34. See Antonia Grunenberg, Antifaschismus - Ein deutscher Mythos (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1993),
pp.145ff.
35. See Jrg Gabbe, Parteien und Nation. Zur Rolle des Nationalbewutseins fr die politische
Grundorientierungen der Parteien in der Anfangsphase der Bundesrepublik (Meisenheim
am Glan: Hain, 1976).
36. Krone, Tagebcher, p.77.
37. See Peter Alter, 'Nationalism and German Politics after 1945', in John Breuilly (ed.), The
State of Germany. The National Idea in the Making, Unmaking and Remaking of a Modern
Nation-State (London and New York: Longman, 1992), pp.154-76.
38. The national flag is defined in Art. 22 of the German Basic Law.
39. See Hans Peter Mensing (ed.), Heuss-Adenauer: Unserem Vaterland zugute. Der
Briefwechsel 1948-1963 (Berlin: Siedler, 1989), S.111-13. Officially, all three stanzas are
part of the national anthem, but only the third stanza is being used at official events. On
German national symbols see Hans Hattenhauer, Geschichte der deutschen Nationalsymbole
(Kln: Bundesanzeiger-Verlag, 1998).

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40. For the epochs of historiography, see Hans Schleier, 'Epochen der deutschen
Geschichtsschreibung seit der Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts', in Wolfgang Kttler, Jrn Rsen
and Ernst Schulin (eds.), Geschichtsdiskurs: vol. 1, Grundlagen und Methoden der
Historiographiegeschichte (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1993), pp.133-56. On German
historians, the national idea and unification, see Hans-Peter Schwarz, 'Mit gestopften
Trompeten. Die Wiedervereinigung Deutschlands aus der Sicht westdeutscher Historiker',
Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, 44 (1993), pp.683-704.
41. Eberhard Schulz, Die deutsche Nation in Europa. Internationale und historische
Dimensionen (Bonn: Europa Union Verlag, 1982), p.198.
42. 'Freiheit und Nation sind fr uns untrennbar. Fr uns ist die Forderung, die Sehnsucht nach
der Einheit der Nation, nicht irgendeine beliebige abstrakte Formel. Wir sind immer dafr
eingetreten, da rechtsstaatliche Freiheit auch vor deutscher Einheit gehen mu wann
immer uns die Geschichte die Erlangung beider zugleich versagt.' Helmut Kohl, 'Das
Wiedervereinigungsgebot als Bestandteil deutscher Politik', Politik und Kultur, 3 (1979),
p.23. On another occasion, Kohl was even more explicit: 'Nach meiner festen
berzeugung ist das aber keine Lsung (im Sinne der Einheit der Nation) eines Zurcks
in den Nationalstaat einer vergangenen Zeit.' Quoted by Karl Lamers, 'Zivilisationskritik,
Identittssuche und die Deutschlandpolitik', in Karl Lamers (ed.), Suche nach
Deutschland. Nationale Identitt und die Deutschlandpolitik (Bonn: Europa Union Verlag,
1983), p.45.
43. Karl Dietrich Erdmann, 'Drei Staaten - zwei Nationen - ein Volk? berlegungen zu einer
deutschen Geschichte seit der Teilung', Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, 36
(1985), pp.671-83.
44. Harald Mueller and Thomas Risse-Kappen, 'Origins of Estrangement: The Peace Movement
and the Changed Image of America in West Germany', International Security, 12, 1 (1987),
pp.52-88.
45. See for those different positions Harro Honolka, Schwarzrotgrn. Die Bundesrepublik auf
der Suche nach ihrer Identitt (Mnchen: Beck, 1987).
46. Pierre Hassner, 'Was geht in Deutschland vor? Wiederbelebung der deutschen Frage durch
Friedensbewegung und alternative Gruppen', Europa Archiv (1982), p.517.
47. See, inter alia, Dan Diner, 'Die "Nationale Frage" in der Friedensbewegung. Ursprnge und
Tendenzen', in Die neue Friedensbewegung (=Friedensanalysen 16) (Frankfurt a.M.:
Suhrkamp, 1982), pp.86-112; Thomas Jger, Europas neue Ordnung. Mitteleuropa als
Alternative? (Mnchen: tuduv, 1990), pp.121ff..
48. See Matthias Zimmer, Nationales Interesse und Staatsrson. Zur Deutschlandpolitik der
Regierung Kohl, 1982-1989 (Paderborn: Schningh, 1992).
49. Ibid., pp.194-9.
50. In a broader context, cf. Anton Kaes, From Hitler to Heimat: The Return of Film as History
(Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1989), esp. pp.161-92.
51. See Karl Rudolf Korte, 'Suchbewegungen: Wo ist der deutsche Standort?' in Werner
Weidenfeld (ed.), Nachdenken ber Deutschland (Kln: Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik,
1985), pp.19-36; and Karl Rudolf Korte, Der Standort der Deutschen. Akzentverlagerungen
der deutschen Frage in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland seit den siebziger Jahren (Kln:
Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, 1990).
52. See Eberhard Kuhrt and Henning von Lwis of Menar, Griff nach der deutschen Geschichte.
Erbeaneignung und Traditionspflege in der DDR (Paderborn: Schningh, 1988).
53. Cf. Hartmut Berghoff, 'Population Change and its Repercussions on the Social History of the
Federal Republic', in Klaus Larres and Panikos Panayi (eds.), The Federal Republic of
Germany since 1949 (London and New York: Longman, 1996), pp.35-73; Dieter Haselbach,
'Multicultural Reality and the Problem of German Identity', in Dieter Haselbach (ed.),
Multiculturalism in a World of Leaking Boundaries (Mnster: LIT Verlag, 1998), pp.211-28.
54. See Matthias Zimmer, 'Return of the "Mittellage'"? The Discourse of the Centre in German
Foreign Policy', German Politics, 6, 1 (April 1997), pp.23-38.
55. On the concept of a civilian foreign policy, see Hanns W. Maull, 'Zivilmacht Bundesrepublik
Deutschland. Vierzehn Thesen fr eine neue deutsche Auenpolitik', Europa-Archiv, 47, 10
(1992), pp.269-78. On German foreign policy options, see Gunter Hellmann, 'Goodbye

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GERMAN POLITICS
Bismarck? The Foreign Policy of Contemporary Germany', Mershon International Review,
40 (1996), pp. 1-39.
Indeed, proponents and opponents of the military strike against Serbia were (almost) evenly
distributed among the major parties. This would almost certainly have been different had the
Kohl government won the election in 1998. One of the ironies of Germany's involvement in
the war is that pacifism all of a sudden seems to be compatible with air warfare, if waged for
the right reasons; here, the position of some of the Greens converge with those of the more
outspoken social-democratic critics of NATO policies in the 1980s, most notably Erhard
Eppler. For some of these arguments see, in particular, Jrgen Habermas, 'Bestialitt und
Humanitt. Ein Krieg an der Grenze zwischen Recht und Moral', Die Zeit, 29 April 1999.
See Jrgen Habermas, 'Historical Consciousness and Post-Traditional Identity: The Federal
Republic's Orientation to the West', in The New Conservatism. Cultural Criticism and the
Historian's Debate (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989), pp.249-67.
See, inter alia, Peter Glotz, 'Deutsche Gefahren', in Die falsche Normalisierung. Die
unmerkliche Verwandlung der Deutschen 1989 bis 1994 (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp,
1994),pp.11-29; Jrgen Habermas, '1989 im Schatten von 1945. Zur Normalitt einer
knftigen Berliner Republik', in Die Normalitt einer Berliner Republik (Frankfurt a.M.:
Suhrkamp, 1995), pp.167-88.
Susan Strange, 'The Defective State', Daedalus, 124, 2 (spring 1995), p.56.
William Wallace, 'Rescue or Retreat? The Nation State in Western Europe, 1945-1993',
Political Studies, 42 (1994), p.75.
See David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity. An Enquiry in the Origins of Cultural
Change (Cambridge, MA and Oxford: Blackwell, 1990); Krishan Kunmar, From
Postindustrial to Post-Modern Society. New Theories of the Contemporary World (Oxford,
UK and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1995).
See Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (London et al.: Sage, 1992); Stefan
Immerfall, Einfhrung in den europischen Gesellschaftsvergleich (Passau: Rothe, 1995).
Ernest Renan, uvres Compltes de Ernest Renan (Paris: Calmann-Lvy, 1947), vol.1,
p.905.
Presse-und Informationsamt der Bundesregierung (ed.), Speech at the University of Leuven,
2 Feb. 1996, Bulletin, 8 Feb 1996, p.130.
See Beate Kohler-Koch and Markus Jachtenfuchs, 'Regieren in der Europischen Union Fragestellungen fr eine interdisziplinre Europaforschung', Politische Vierteljahresschrift,
37, 3 (1996), pp.537-56.
Hedley Bull, 'The State's Positive Role in World Affairs', Daedalus, 108, 4 (Fall 1979),
p.112.
'Der heterogene Nationalstaat ist eine der groen Errungenschaften der Zivilisation. Bisher
ist kein anderer Rahmen gezimmert worden, in dem die Rechte aller Brger verfat, also
formuliert und garantiert werden knnen. Das nationalstaatliche Gewaltmonopol ist
Voraussetzung der Geltung, also der Einklagbarkeit und Erzwingung von Brgerrechten.
Insofern ist der heterogene Nationalstaat Bedingung der Mglichkeit der gesicherten Freiheit
und ein Gut, das Liberale verteidigen mssen.' Ralf Dahrendorf, 'Die Zukunft des
Nationalstaates', Merkur, 48, 9/10 (Sept./Oct. 1994), p.751.
See, in particular, Andrew Linklater, The Transformation of Political Community. Ethical
Foundations of the Post-Westphalian Era (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina
Press, 1998), ch.6.
On the limits of such an understanding of citizenship, see Friedrich Kratochwil, 'Citizenship:
On the Border of Order', Alternatives, 19 (1994), pp.485-506.