German Politics and Society

Our spring 2000 issue features articles and essays that address the

most varied issues in German politics and society. What they all

share is the salience of their content for contemporary German life.

Moreover, they exhibit the wide range of expertise and the scholarly

excellence that students of Germany in the United States have

attained. We are delighted and honored to publish their work.

German neoconservatism and its role in the political culture of the Federal Republic is largely uncharted scholarly territory. Especially for English-language historians and political scientists, its place on the historical map is marked, “Here lie monsters.” This article is intended not as a definitive treatment, but as a sketch suggesting the contours of the subject. It has become commonplace to regard 1968 as a pivotal year in the history of the Bundesrepublik. This article suggests that this may be true in a broader sense than is usually meant: that the significance of 1968 derives not only from the 68ers and their transformation of the political culture of the left, but also from the neoconservative reaction to the 68ers, which helped recast the political culture of the non-left. The article begins by exploring some of the difficulties in getting a conceptual and definitional handle on German neoconservatism. It then proceeds to examine in some depth the career and ideas of one of the most prominent German neoconservatives, Hermann Lübbe. Then the article discusses several key issues, events, and processes that defined neoconservatism, before touching briefly on the reasons for its dissolution as a coherent phenomenon and reflecting on its place in the history of the Bundesrepublik.

In the decade since German unification, there has been a tendency by scholars and politicians alike to frame discussions of this event in terms of west-east or old states-new states, treating the five new states of Germany as one homogeneous entity. Moreover, the underlying assumption of many such studies is that the goal of political development is convergence, whereby the east catches up to or emulates the west in terms of economic prosperity, values, and levels of political participation. Unification, in other words, should lead to uniformity in institutional as well as political-cultural terms. Indeed, in its stated goal of striving for “Einheitlichkeit der Lebensverhältnisse” (uniformity of living conditions), the Grundgesetz provides some basis for expecting relative uniformity. Although a decade is not a long time, it is enough time to move beyond assumptions of uniformity and consider that unification has resulted in greater diversity in German politics and society.

This essay concerns one of the strangest exhibits of all time: the display of Friedrich Nietzsche’s live body in Villa Silberblick, a house overlooking Weimar, the “City of European Culture” in 1999. Since Weimar’s self-representation is organized almost entirely around the glory of a handful of long-dead men and the public spaces devoted to them, the town might as well have declared itself “City of Museum Culture.” Indeed, its culture has been strange at times, and its contradictions are not all that badly summed up in the double meaning of Silberblick, which can mean both silver view and cross-eyed vision. In the story of Nietzsche’s final years we will encounter both the silvering and the squinting.

Myron Weiner, ed., Migration and Refugees: Politics and Policies in the United States and Germany (Providence: Berghahn Books, 1997-1998)

Volume 1: Klaus J. Bade and Myron Weiner, eds., Migration Past, Migration Future: Germany and the United States

Volume 2: Rainer Münz and Myron Weiner, eds., Migrants, Refugees, and Foreign Policy: U.S. and German Policies Toward Countries of Origin

Volume 3: Kay Hailbronner, David A. Martin, and Hiroshi Motomura, eds., Immigration Admissions: The Search for Workable Policies in Germany and the United States

Volume 4: Kay Hailbronner, David A. Martin, and Hiroshi Motomura, eds., Immigration Controls: The Search for Workable Policies in Germany and the United States

Volume 5: Peter Schuck and Rainer Münz, eds., Paths to Inclusion: The Integration of Migrants in the United States and Germany

Thomas C. Fox, Stated Memory: East Germany and the Holocaust (Rochester: Camden House, 1999)

Ernestine Schlant, The Language of Silence: West German Literature and the Holocaust (New York: Routledge, 1999)

On March 11, 1999, Oskar Lafontaine stunned the Social Democratic

Party by resigning all his public positions: he stepped down as

Minister of Finance, chair of the SPD, and member of the Bundestag,

summoned his car, and headed for the Saarland. Lafontaine

seemed somehow to have believed that he would be able to operate

alongside Gerhard Schröder as a kind of co-chancellor; Schröder,

predictably, preferred other arrangements. In the postelection

euphoria of September 1998, the two rivals, whose cooperation had

been essential to the social democratic victory, acknowledged their

mutual dependence and pledged their continued “friendship.” In the

year and a half that followed, they clashed constantly: on policy, on

politics, on appointments.

Stephen F. Frowen and Robert Pringle, eds., Inside the Bundesbank (St. Martins Press: New York, 1998)

Peter A. Johnson, The Government of Money: Monetarism in Germany and the United States (Cornell University Press: Ithaca and London, 1998)

Karl Kaltenthaler, Germany and the Politics of Europe’s Money (Duke University Press: Durham and London 1998)