German Politics and Society

In the lead article to this open issue of German Politics and Society,

Michael Werz offers an insightful and ambitious sweep of the

large questions confronting Germany and the European Union in the

context of the twentieth century's legacies. Particularly welcome are

Werz's criticisms of the increasingly crucial role that anti-Americanism

has played in the establishment of a putatively multicultural identity

in Europe. Werz demonstrates how the American experience has

great relevance for Europe and how German and European intellectuals

do their cause a great disservice by dismissing this experience as

irrelevant, inferior—or worse.

Recent debates about the future of the European Union have focused

in large part on institutional reforms, the deficit of democratic legitimacy,

and the problem of economic and agrarian policies. As important

as these issues may be, the most crucial question at the moment

is not whether Europe will prevail as a union of nations or as a thoroughly

integrated federal structure. What is of much greater concern

is the fact that political structures and their corresponding political

discourses have lagged far behind the social changes occurring in

European societies. The pivotal transformation of 1989 has not been

grasped intellectually or politically, even though its results are

increasingly visible in both the east and west.

An immigration dilemma has confronted the Federal Republic of

Germany since the early 1970s. Postwar labor migrants from predominantly

Muslim countries in the Mediterranean basin were not

officially encouraged to settle long-term, yet many stayed once

immigration was halted in 1973. Though these migrants and their

children have enjoyed most social state benefits and the right to family

reunification, their political influence has remained limited for

the last quarter-century. Foreigners from non-EU countries may not

vote in Germany, migrants are underrepresented in political institutions,

and state recognition of Muslim religious and cultural diversity

has not been forthcoming. Since 1990, however, a much smaller but

significant number of Jewish migrants from eastern Europe and the

former Soviet Union have arrived in Germany. This population of

almost 150,000 has been welcomed at the intersection of reparations

policy and immigrant integration practice.

Within the enormous body of critical writings dedicated to literary

works devoted to the Shoah, the possibility of its very representation

and the problems arising in the potential deformation of memory

are frequent topics. In light of these issues, it might be helpful to

examine a well-known work of literary scholarship, Erich Auerbach’s

Mimesis, The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, written

between May 1942 and April 1945, as a potentially overlooked

example of a highly sublimated allegorical meditation on the contemporary

murder of Europe’s Jews. Auerbach’s classic work, which

explicitly takes literary representation as its central theme, seems to

use carefully and subtly selected examples from western literature as

figures for current events.

Michael Meyer, ed., Michael Brenner, asst. ed., German-Jewish

History in Modern Times, volume 3, Integration in Dispute: 1871-1918;

volume 4, Renewal and Destruction: 1918-1945 (New York: Columbia

University Press, 1997, 1998)

James E. Young, At Memory’s Edge: After Images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000)

Gavriel D. Rosenfeld, Munich and Memory: Architecture, Monuments, and the Legacy of the Third Reich (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000)

Peter Gay, My German Question: Growing Up in Nazi Berlin (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998)

Review by Charles S. Maier

Jan-Werner Müller, Another Country: German Intellectuals, Unification and National Identity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000)

Review by A. Dirk Moses

Margaret Lavinia Anderson, Practicing Democracy: Elections and Political Culture in Imperial Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000)

Review by Sheri Berman

J.H. Brinks, Children of a New Fatherland; Germany’s Post-War Right-Wing Politics, trans. Paul Vincent (London/New York: I.B. Tauris Publishers, 2000)

Review by Elliot Neaman

Stephen Padgett, Organizing democracy in eastern Germany: Interest groups in post-communist society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)

Review by John Brady

Alan D. Schrift, ed., Why Nietzsche Still? Reflections on Drama, Culture, and Politics (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000)

Review by Silke-Maria Weineck

Steve Hochstadt, Mobility and Modernity: Migration in Germany 1820–1989 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999)

Review by William H. Hubbard

Angelika Timm, Jewish Claims Against East Germany: Moral Obligations and Pragmatic Polic y(Budapest: Central European University Press, 1997)

Review by Belinda Cooper