German Politics and Society

Following two focus issues, we now present an open issue of German

Politics and Society. We are especially pleased to feature the work of

Peter Pulzer in the issue's lead article, "Votes and Resources: Political

Finance in Germany." In this article, Pulzer offers a detailed discussion

of party financing in Germany, a topic that is severely understudied

in relation to its importance. In addition to its meticulous

presentation of the German situation, Pulzer's piece is enhanced by

the comparative aspect that it brings to bear.

“Votes count,” Stein Rokkan asserted many years ago, “but resources

decide.”1 Political finance is one of the many arenas in which Alexander

and Shiratori’s “conflict between real inequalities in economic

resources and idealized equalities in political resources” is fought out.2

Yet the battleground is more complex than either of these authorities

suggests. Votes are also a resource. They legitimate, and they can also

punish, if those who cast them think that economic resources are

being used unreasonably. Above all, the determination of electoral

outcomes involves players others than voters and moneyed

interests. In almost all modern democracies there are referees of

varying effectiveness. In general, the referee is “the state,” but much

depends on the organs through which the state operates. Governments

are not necessarily neutral agents; they and the parliaments

that legislate on the regulation of political finance may merely reflect

the interests of dominant or established parties. Political finance can,

however, also be regulated, as for instance in Germany or the United

States, by judicial review. In addition the media almost everywhere

play an unpredictable role as spectator, watchdog or interested participant.

On a frozen field 35 kilometers east of Dortmund, members of Germany’s

elite—government officials, business leaders, and royalty—

assemble in the medieval city of Arnsberg for a 1,000 year ritual: the

Arnsberg Treibjagd (driven hunt). Like live-sized Hummelfiguren,

adorned in Bavarian-style Loden coats, expensive Zeiss binoculars,

priceless weapons, and accompanied by the German hunter’s best

friend, the Dackel, they ready themselves for the ancient and hairraising

wail of the hunting horns—the hunt is on! The playing out of

this medieval scene is soon interrupted, however, by an unlikely

group of fast-moving, jean-clad “hunting saboteurs” who, wielding

signs that read “Hunting is Murder,” proceed to barricade hunting

areas and to risk life and limb before high-powered rifles. The scene

plays itself out in the usual way: heated words are exchanged, the

police arrive, and the hunt is cancelled. Over the past few years, this

scenario has become more common in German forests. For the first

time in its deeply rooted existence, German hunting is under siege

by the anti-hunting movement, begging the question of whether this

age-old hunting culture will survive in the new century.

The Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) stands at a political crossroad.

In October 2000, Gregor Gysi resigned as parliamentary leader

of the PDS, and, though pledging to remain active in the party, he

will no longer hold any important party post. Gysi’s resignation was

no surprise, since he had already announced his intentions at the

PDS’s controversial Parteitag in Münster in March 2000. Nevertheless,

the reality of a “post-Gysi” PDS has only now begun to settle in.

More than any other politician in Germany—and perhaps more than

any German politician in recent memory—Gysi personified his party.

The sense of anxiousness among PDS leaders and the majority of

the party rank-and-file in the wake of Gysi’s departure is palpable.

Jeffrey Anderson, German Unification and the Union of Europe (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999)

Thomas Banchoff, The German Problem Transformed: Institutions, Politics and Foreign Policy, 1945-1995 (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1999)

Wade Jacoby, Imitation and Politics: Redesigning Modern Germany (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press)

Review by Marc Morjé Howard

Manfred F. Boemeke, Roger Chickering, and Stig Föster, eds., Anticipating Total War: The German and American Experiences, 1871-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)

Review by Geoff Eley

Elizabeth Heinemann, What Difference Does a Husband Make? Women and Marital Status in Nazi Postwar Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999)

Review by Jennifer Kapczynski

Michael Brenner, After the Holocaust: Rebuilding Jewish Lives in Postwar Germany. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997)

Review by Marsha L. Rozenblit

Fredric Jameson, Brecht and Method (London: Verso, 1998)

Review by Eric Jarosinski

Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht, Transmission Impossible: American Journalism as Cultural Diplomacy in Postwar Germany, 1946-1955 (Baton-Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1999)

Review by Anna J. and Richard L. Merritt

Sheri Berman, The Social Democratic Moment. Ideas and Politics in the Making of Interwar Europe (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998)

Review by Teresa Kulawik

Frederick Kempe, Father/Land: A Personal Search for the New Germany (New York: 1999)

Review by Hilary Collier Sy-Quia