German Politics and Society

Following our special issue on the 2002 Bundestag election, we now present an open issue of German Politics and Society.

Many writers have argued that anti-immigration politics in Germany

and other West European countries have been driven by radical-right

parties or the electoral maneuvering of national politicians

from established parties. Others have argued that waves of violence

against immigrants and ethnic minorities have spurred anti-immigration

politics, or that racist ideologies and socioeconomic inequality

are the root causes. By comparison, authors have paid relatively little

attention to anti-immigration mobilization at subnational levels,

including the public positions taken by subnational politicians and

the activities of movement groups, or “challengers.” Nonetheless,

research has shown that subnational politicians are often important

in pressing national campaigns for immigration controls. Moreover,

as I have argued elsewhere, anti-immigration politicians in Britain

and Germany have responded in large part to local challengers, who

were aided by political elites at local and regional levels.

Are collective memories currently changing in the land where the

“past won’t go away?” Long dominated by memory of the Holocaust

and other Nazi-era crimes, Germany recently witnessed the emergence

of another memory based on the same period of history, but

emphasizing German suffering. Most commentators stress the novelty

and catharsis of these discussions of supposedly long-repressed

and unworked-through collective traumas and offer predominantly

psychoanalytic explanations regarding why these memories only

now have surfaced. However, thanks to “presentist” myopia, ideological

blinders, and the theoretical/political effects of Holocaust

memory, much of this discourse is misplaced because these Germancentered

memories are emphatically not new. A reexamination of

the evolution of dominant memories over the postwar period in the

Federal Republic of Germany is necessary in order to understand

and contextualize more fully these current debates and the changes

in dominant memories that may be occurring—tasks this article takes

up by utilizing the memory regime framework.

The 2002 Soccer World Cup in Japan took place during the final

phase of the national election campaign for the German Bundestag

and managed to temporarily unite Chancellor Gerhard Schröder

(SPD) and his conservative challenger, Edmund Stoiber1. Both were

keen to demonstrate repeatedly that they were so interested in the

progress of the German team that they simultaneously interrupted or

left meetings to follow televised matches. Domestically, they support

very different soccer clubs. Stoiber is on the board of directors of the

richest German club, Bayern Munich, whose past successes, wealth

and arrogance, numerous scandals, and boardroom policies of hireand-

fire have divided the German soccer nation: they either hate or

adore the team. Schröder is a keen fan and honorary member of

Borussia Dortmund, which is closely associated with the industrial

working class in the Ruhr area. It is the only team on par with

Munich; despite its wealth, the management policies of the club

appear modest and considerate; the club continuously celebrates its

proletarian traditions and emphasizes its obligations to the local

community. Stoiber’s election manifesto did not even mention sport,

whereas the SPD’s political agenda for sport focused upon a wide

variety of issues ranging from welfare, leisure, physical education,

and health to doping, television coverage, facilities, and hosting

international events.

Riva Kastoryano, Negotiating Identities: States and Immigrants in France and Germany, trans. Barbara Harshav (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002)

Zafer Senocak, Atlas of a Tropical Germany: Essays on Politics and Culture, 1990-1998, trans. and ed. Leslie Adelson (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000)

Jay Lockenour, Soldiers as Citizens: Former Wehrmacht Officers in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1945-1955 (University of Nebraska Press: Lincoln and London, 2001)

Review by Omer Bartov

Volker R. Berghahn, America and the Intellectual Cold Wars in Europe: Shepherd Stone Between Philanthropy, Academy, and Diplomacy (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001)

Review by Robert Gerald Livingston

Geoff Eley, Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850-2000 (Oxford University Press, 2002)

Review by Paul Lerner

Tanja A. Börzel, States and Regions in the European Union: Institutional Adaptation in Germany and Spain (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002)

Review by Richard Haesly

Christoph Kleßmann, ed., The Divided Past: Rewriting Post-War German History (Oxford: Berg, 2001)

Review by Andrew H. Beattie

Wilfried Schubarth and Richard Stöss, eds., Rechtsextremismus in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Eine Bilanz (Opladen: Leske & Budrich, 2001)

Review by Lars Rensmann

Erik Ryding and Rebecca Pechefsky, Bruno Walter: A World Elsewhere (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001)

Review by Pamela Potter