German Politics and Society

This is not the place for me to express my boundless admiration for

the scholarship of our dear friend and colleague, Gerald Feldman,

who passed from this world far too early in the fall of 2007. Nor

would I find it appropriate to address my personal friendship with

Gerry in these pages. I have done both elsewhere and—most important

to me—privately to Gerry's widow, Norma. Nevertheless, I do

find it more than appropriate to mention Gerry's involvement with

German Politics and Society. I was deeply moved and much honored

by Jeff Anderson's request to do so.

This article investigates Germany's role in CIA "extraordinary renditions" of terrorist suspects, focusing on two cases involving German citizens of Middle Eastern descent (Khaled el-Masri and Mohammed Zammar), and one case of an Egyptian cleric who had resided in Italy and was likely transferred to Egypt via a U.S. military airport in Germany (Abu Omar). Amid recent revelations about the extent of the CIA program for transferring and interrogating terrorism suspects, the question of Germany's potential responsibility under international law has gained public attention. Against the background of international legal rules governing responsibility of assisting states, this article examines what was known in Germany about human rights abuses in the above cases and evaluates official steps taken by the government to prevent or uncover violations. In the conclusion, the article addresses the need for increased institutional safeguards to hinder German involvement in questionable U.S. counterterrorism practices.

Intended to provoke contemplation and discussion about collective

identity in unified Germany, the Denk ich an Deutschland (When I think

about Germany) television film series was commissioned by Bayerischer

Rundfunk (Bavarian Broadcasting, BR) and Westdeutscher Rundfunk

(West German Broadcasting, WDR) and was produced from 1997 to 2004

by megaherz gmbh. The complete series consists of twelve documentary

films ranging from forty-five to sixty minutes1 with the first five (see

Table 2) having been launched on BR and WDR as a set in October 1998.

German popular filmmakers who participated in the Denk ich an Deutschland series brought a range of conflicting impulses to their meditations on Germany, including the universalizing tendencies of popular culture, together with the personal and political strains often present in documentary films. With varying degrees of success, each director agitates national identity via an idiosyncratic selfhood, a process which in turn expands our notions of Germany beyond generic convention. The best of the five films discussed in this essay—directed by Doris Dörrie, Fatih Akin, Katja von Garnier, Sherry Hormann, and Klaus Lemke—feature their creators' struggle to box themselves out of a larger collective identity. By modeling their own existential Bildung, they chip away at an otherwise implacable German identity and provide a psychic service for Germans potentially more salutary than the way Hollywood films sustain American identity.

Launched in 1998 on the eve of the eighth Day of German Unity, the Denk ich an Deutschland television film series was intended to reframe discourses on national identity formation in a positive light through documentaries focused on the present rather than on the dark German past. While Andreas Kleinert's Niemandsland (No Man's Land, 1998) and Andreas Dresen's Herr Wichmann von der CDU (Vote for Henryk!, 2003), the first and last films televised, do center on the present, they highlight dissonances between personal and national concerns. Still, Kleinert deconstructs the dissonances and artificial syntheses he himself invents in order to reveal them as constructs to be reconfigured by viewers. By showing the inability of politicians to bridge the gap between personal and national concerns due to the erosion of their private identities, Dresen also appeals to viewers to initiate needed societal changes themselves.

Deniz Göktürk, David Gramling, and Anton Kaes, eds., Germany In Transit: Nation and Migration 1955-2005 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007)

Anthony Messina, The Logics and Politics of Post-WWII Migration to Western Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)

Amy C. Beal, New Music, New Allies: American Experimental Music in West Germany from the Zero Hour to Reunification (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006)

Reviewed by Pamela M. Potter

Jeremy Varon, Bringing The War Home: The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2004)

Reviewed by George Ross

Olaf Georg Klein, Suddenly Everything Was Different: German Lives in Upheaval (Rochester: Camden House, 2007)

Reviewed by Joyce Marie Mushaben

Gareth Dale, The East German Revolution of 1989 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006)

Reviewed by Gary Bruce

Alexander Börsch, Global Pressure, National System: How German Corporate Governance is Changing (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007)

Reviewed by Richard Deeg

Steven Pfaff, Exit-Voice Dynamics and the Collapse of East Germany. The Crisis of Leninism and the Revolution of 1989 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006)

Reviewed by Jonathan Grix

Article Abstracts

Notes on contributors