German Politics and Society

Our Fall issue features five articles on topics that have been especially

salient in the current debates on and in Germany: the far right

in all its manifestations, the role of architecture in the representation

of memory and politics, particularly in Berlin, and the difficult (and

often painful) process of integrating eastern and western Germany,

especially in the labor market.

International comparisons of new radical right-wing parties usually

focus on differences in electoral fortunes, party organizations, and

leadership styles and conclude that Germany stands out as a special

case of successful marginalization of the new radical right. Explanations

for this German anomaly point at the combined effects of German

history and institutional arrangements of the Federal Republic

of Germany, of ideological dilemmas and strategic failures of the

various parties of the new radical right, and the efforts of the established

political parties to prevent the rise of new parties to the right

of them. By implication, this means that, whereas in countries like

France or Austria the new radical right plays a significant role in politics

to the point of changing the political systems themselves, the

German counterpart has a negligible impact and has little or no

effects on politics and polity.

Most explanations that have been advanced regarding the recent

successes of far-right parties in Western Europe suggest that these

parties should have also done well in Germany. With a high percapita

income and a strong export-oriented economy, Germany has

experienced large-scale immigration, a shift toward postindustrial

occupations, economic restructuring, unemployment, and social

marginalization of the poorest strata. These socioeconomic developments

have been accompanied by political responses which

should also benefit the far right: political parties have lost credibility, non-voting has increased, and ecological parties have become

established and have spurred environmental, feminist, and proimmigrant

policies.

Berlin 1948 and the longest airlift in history simultaneously ushered

in the Cold War, with a divided Berlin its best-known symbol, and

transformed West Berliners in the eyes of the Allied world from

Nazis to victims of Soviet aggression. By 1950, with Germany officially

divided, political elites of the East (GDR) and West (FRG)

took up the task of convincing their citizens and each other of the

legitimacy of their own governments. In spite of the primacy of

Cold War rhetoric in the media of the day, however, the most

pressing challenge of postwar society for both sides lay in redefining—

in perception, if not in fact—political and social institutions in

opposition to the Nazi past.

Commemorating National Socialism and Communism from the perspective

of 1989 often results in an uneasy conflation of German

guilt and victimhood. When the events of 1933-1989 are presented

as one long authoritarian period, war and tyranny can easily be construed

as external forces that simply befell the German nation.

While memories of national guilt are divisive, memories of victimhood

unify and simplify an otherwise ambiguous past. The 1995

restoration of Berlin’s Neue Wache is emblematic of this conflation

of guilt and victimhood. As the central German memorial to all victims

of war and tyranny, the Neue Wache neither distinguishes

between dictatorships, nor between perpetrator and victim.

How can one best investigate the mental attitudes and patterns of

behavior of eastern Germans eight years after political unification?

Since 1990, the method dominating this discussion has been based

on measuring the degree to which easterners have “caught up” with

the supposedly more modern western Germans. However, empirical

studies and surveys have shown that this model is an ineffective, even

inappropriate means of describing how unification has impacted the

lives of eastern Germans. In this article, I argue that a more appropriate

approach is to consider the enduring differences in the opportunity

structures among eastern and western Germans, as well as the

differences in their respective behavioral patterns. In this context,

“opportunity structure” refers to the opportunities provided and limitations

imposed by social structures. For the analysis of opportunity

structures, I focus on what I call “contradictory adaptation” and

“problematic normalization.” My analysis of behavioral patterns

emphasizes the logic internal to the subjects themselves (Eigenlogik).

This internal logic differs significantly from outsiders’ interpretations

of easterners’ behavior, as the following example illustrates.

Clay Clemens

Parties and Politics in Modern Germany by Gerard Braunthal

Jonathan R. Zatlin

Das Ende der SED: die letzten Tage des Zentralkomitees edited by Hans-Hermann Hertle and Gerd-Rüdiger Stephan

Mary Nolan

Languages of Labor and Gender: Female Factory Work in Germany, 1850-1914 by Kathleen Canning

Robert C. Holub

Habermas and the Unfinished Project of Modernity: Critical Essays on The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity edited by Maurizio Passerin d’Entrèves and Seyla Benhabib

Jeffrey Verhey

Willy Wählen ‘72. Siege kann man machen by Albrecht Müller and Hermann Müller

Kristie Macrakis

Reenchanted Science: Holism in German Culture from Wilhelm II to Hitler by Anne Harrington

Günter Minnerup

Willy Brandt. A Political Biography by Barbara Marshall

Michael G. Huelshoff

Europe’s Economy Looks East: Implications for Germany and the European Union edited by Stanley W. Black