German Politics and Society

The energy revolution poses a fundamental challenge to the German corporatist institutional model. The push for renewables in Germany arose almost entirely outside the prevailing channels of institutional power. Eventually, federal legislation helped support the boom in local energy production that was already underway, and it encouraged the further development of new forms of community investment and citizen participation in energy supply. Recently, the federal government has tried to put the genie back in the bottle by shifting support to large energy producers. But, as this article shows, the energy transition has provided a base for local power that cannot easily be assailed. The debate over German energy policy is becoming a contest between centralized and decentralized models of political and economic power. Prevailing institutionalist theories have difficulty accounting for these developments. I analyze the local development of renewable energy by means of a case study of the Freiburg area in southwestern Germany, which has evolved from a planned nuclear power and fossil fuel center to Germany's “solar region”. Incorporating insights from ecological modernization theory, I show how the locally based push for renewables has grown into a challenge to the direction of German democracy itself.

This article examines the changes in social movements, in particular the peace movement since the late 1970s, their processes of differentiation as well as their connections to older aspects of the movements. Of particular interest is the breadth of the peace movement, which succeeded in mobilizing several hundred thousand persons at the beginning of the 1980s. How points of conflict developed between this movement and an antiwar movement led by a “new youth movement” around 1980 is the focus of this article.

Well before the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea and the conflict in eastern Ukraine, the bilateral relationship between Germany and Russia began to deteriorate. This article traces German-Russian relations since the end of the Cold War in order to identify the reasons for the deterioration of the bilateral relationship. It examines the key debates inside Germany about its Russia policy, suggesting when and why the terms of the debates changed.

Hitler’s health, both physical and mental, remains a contentious topic with regular attempts to reach a finding. Was Hitler Ill: A Final Diagnosis? published in 2012 by Henrik Eberle and Hans-Joachim Neumann with a review of the latest documentation, claims to be the definitive account, finding that, aside from routine illness at times, he did not have any health problems.1 This account, however, is challenged by the evidence—documented on film and by observers—that Hitler had Parkinson’s Syndrome (PS). There is a strong case that this arose from encephalitis lethargica, acquired during service on the Western front. The finding that Hitler was not unwell, aside from routine health issues, cannot be sustained.

Erika Steinbach, Die Macht der Erinnerung, 2nd ed. (Vienna: Universitas Verlag, 2011).

Konrad H. Jarausch, United Germany: Debating Processes and Prospects

Reviewed by Louise K. Davidson-Schmich

Nick Hodgin and Caroline Pearce, ed. The GDR Remembered:Representations of the East German State since 1989

Reviewed by Jennifer A. Yoder

Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East: Forced Migration and the Politics of Memory, 1945-1970

Reviewed by Friederike Eigler

Peter H. Merkl, Small Town & Village in Bavaria: The Passing of a Way of Life

Reviewed by Joyce M. Mushaben

Barbara Thériault, The Cop and the Sociologist. Investigating Diversity in German Police Forces

Reviewed by Alexandra Schwell

Clare Bielby, Violent Women in Print: Representations in the West German Print Media of the 1960s and 1970s

Reviewed by Katharina Karcher

Michael David-Fox, Peter Holquist, and Alexander M. Martin, ed., Fascination and Enmity: Russia and Germany as Entangled Histories, 1914-1945

Reviewed by Jennifer A. Yoder